I’m an iPhone user, it’s my personal cell phone that I use for pictures, Facebook and texting. My work cell phone is an Android and I’m not a big fan of it’s email application or Touchdown – which is my primary purpose for my work phone. So when the Nokia 900 was heralded as the savior of the Windows Phone platform I was really looking forward to replacing my Android with it. I’ll go into details but in the interest of saving you some time here is the synopsis:

Today I returned my Lumia 900. The phone itself is OK and put up against 1-2 year old cell phones, it’s actually quite nice. However, put up against the competition in 2012 and the experience you’d get with any new phone, you’d either have to be an idiot or employed by Microsoft in order to buy one. Almost any other device on the market should be able to shame this device on usability, apps and battery.

Good

Battery Life – It lasted way longer than any Android phone I’ve ever used. It was even better on phone calls.

Task Switching – Probably the best part of the Windows Phone experience, it seemed as if the Windows Desktop experience got ported to the phone and switching from one thing to the next was great. If the copy & paste worked any better I suppose this would be the killer feature.

Keyboard – While arguably better than the iPhone, it’s not even close to what Android and others offer. Compared to older versions of Windows Mobile and Windows Phone, the new keyboard feels smoother, more accurate and more reliable. I don’t think I’ve autocowrecked one word while having the phone

Bad

Brick feel – Phone feels much heavier and much larger than it appears. You never get that sense of the device disappearing and being immersed in the task as you do on the iPhone or Android. The key positioning and layout on the side / top of the device feels pretty unintuitive.

Swipe all day – Microsoft has tried to position the new OS as a way to get all the information you need right as you turn the phone on. Instead of opening apps up to see updates you could see them right away. Sounds great but that’s not quite how it worked out: I found that the social apps always showed outdated and useless information. For example, my Facebook was great at following people I don’t care about (full stream) but in order to update my status or dive any deeper on other folks timelines requires swipe after swipe after swipe. Almost all other apps worked the exact same way.

Microsoft advantage is barely noticeable – The selling point of using this phone in business (and we’re a Microsoft-powered business) was key, and the OS disappointed on that front. The whole experience feels like you’re messing around with notepad than an Office application.

Ugly

Browser – Somehow, it’s worse than the Android. Almost every site I pulled up rendered the view as if it was running on a 24” screen not a 4” one.

Email – It felt like Outlook was taken over by Pinterest and then half way through decided it should look like a text message.

And the worst part, the reason you shouldn’t even think about this phone: Apps. The selection is terrible. The apps that are there look like trial versions of similar apps available on the iPhone and the Android. This of course is only when they aren’t freezing and crashing.

Summary

I feel too bad for Microsoft to be honest about how terrible this thing is. So I’ll try to be nice. It beats Palm Treo. It’s even better than Windows Phone 6.5. If you work for Microsoft or have to like them because you’re mooching off their ecosystem – you’ll love it – you have no other choice really.

If you’re on Android or iPhone that was built in the past year or two, you will find the upgrade disappointing. If you actually use your smartphone as a smartphone and depend on apps for both business and personal stuff (think photo taking/editing, tracking of your exercise or finances or notes or sports or..) you will be returning your phone as well.

If you’re a gamer.. Well.. I hope you have a nostalgic side for the Atari quality and experience. It was a nice throwback.

If you use your phone as a phone only and barely scratch the surface of the apps, I suppose it’s OK but there are many other phones with better battery, better price, better screen that are lighter, faster and even cheaper. With a 2 year contract the Lumia 900 costs –$50 (courtesy of a fumbled launch / bug) and if that’s the part that appeals to you get ready to be disappointed for the next 2 years.

I could not find one thing – from camera to keyboard to apps to voice quality – that distinguished this phone above and beyond all of it’s competitors. When you considered the Apps (the very reason for buying a phone) and the fact that there are practically none – what is the sense for purchasing the device?

Love

There is still a chance that you’d love this device.

I love my 1975 Corvette Stingray. Despite it’s rust, lack of ABS or airbags I truly enjoy driving it. It has worse gas mileage than my Corvette Z06, it’s slower, it costs more to maintain and more to insure. Yet, I love it. The look, the feel and the noise is thrilling. Now if I could get a ‘75 Stingray with an LS7 engine, ABS, magnetic ride control and I still bought my rusty coffin powered by a LS82.. well, I’d be an idiot.

This is the choice that you have with Windows Phone. You can either get an iPhone and Android device that is far above and beyond where Windows Phone is.. or you can go with your heart instead. You like what you like, can’t argue that.. but apples to apples and android to iPhone to Lumia.. Hope you’ve got a big heart.

Over the past week I’ve outlined what I believe to be the future of technology management in small to medium businesses. I’ve discussed how we got here, what we need to focus on managing, how we need to involve the decision makers in the management of business aspects of technology and who will do the work in the future… which is already here.

If you would like to consider the full thesis, here are the details and factors as I see them:

1. No future without the past
2. unRMM – What’s managed?
3. unPSA – Whose business is it anyway?
4. Derrivatives – Who does the IT work?
5. Ultimately, who pays the bill?

Before we figure out who pays the bill..

Before you can send out the invoice you need to put something on it. Exactly what are you billing?

In the distant past the invoice consisted mostly of infrastructure components (networking gear, computers, printers, monitors) and majority of the profit came simply from facilitating the transaction. The hardware business is tough and the margins are almost non-existent these days even if you’re as sophisticated as Dell and HP – and almost all of their profit comes from large Fortune 500 and government contracts. In small business, hardware game has passed. Regardless of how slick and charming the hardware guy may seem, people aren’t stupid and they won’t pay $3000 for a workstation just because of your smile.

In the more recent past, majority of the revenue was service based and highly profitable as managed services providers realized high scalability – one engineer managing hundreds of endpoints remotely. But businesses are downsizing the infrastructure and the complex junk. When you remember that most of the MSP value proposition was built back in the days when spyware was a huge problem and people couldn’t keep up with their system patches and unreliable backups that were criticial to onsite infrastructure – those problems have largely been addressed by Microsoft and others over the years.

Managed services value proposition was built on the problems we had in early 2000’s – missing patches, spyware, malware, failed backup jobs, hardware instability, etc. As these issues are not prevalent today more small businesses are rightfully asking why they are paying so much to have their technology managed when most of their technology is either reliable or in the cloud where the service is managed by the provider.

Just as we learned how to build profitable and scalable businesses without the huge hardware margins, we will find a way to build profitable businesses as the MSP model starts to sunset and faces huge competition from larger (cheaper) providers.

Where is the money, Vlad?

It’s actually much simpler than it seems. However, it requires a change in the model and restructuring of how the business plan is executed.

Let’s rewind: You used to sell a ton of infrastructure and make a large margin on configuring it all to play together. You no longer do that but now you make a huge margin managing all those systems remotely as your clients become less and less dependent on them. As your clients invest more in portable devices and mobility becomes a norm dictated by their LOB apps (no, there is no software vendor on the planet, including Microsoft, that wants to support the customer with their on-premise server deployments)… well, pretty soon you won’t have much to manage on site.

This is usually where the philosophical fights start… but please keep on reading. It is normal to be scared and to resist change because it means lack of visibility and predictability. Reality is you can’t maintain the status quo because all your vendors and suppliers are teaming up against you and sooner than later they will make it impossible for you to execute your business model profitably.  If you can agree to at least consider the following point I think it will make the world of difference to you:

Just as we transitioned from selling hardware to selling management services remotely for a fraction of an in-house IT persons salary, we can transition to what is next. What is next is the reality of most of these services being delivered remotely through the cloud – from voice to email to faxes to meetings – everything is becoming virtual, mobile, on demand and portable.

The bad news is you no longer get to profit from managing that technology.

The great news is that you no longer have to sink time into managing that technology.

Back in the early SBS days it took weeks to build a client network and onboard them. Then we got into Swing Migration and suddenly it was under a week. Then it went to the cloud and we no longer had to deal with Exchange at all. I can tell you first hand that many of your competitors and peers have even forgotten how much Exchange sucks, I know because I hear the outrage every time there is even a minor issue with Exchange that we host.

So no, you will no longer have to maintain an expertise in eseutil or schedule blocks of hours away from your family to defrag mail databases.

However, that time can now be reinvested and – just as it was when we moved from hardware to MSP – scaled to a more profitable venture.

You can’t profit from hoping that your clients are stupid

Read that a few more times.

Posting Facebook updates, tweets, updating iTunes and upgrading the firmware on your iPhone or your printer is no longer a geek job. Anyone can do it.

In the long long ago you had to create a system floppy disk. Copy the new ROM to the floppy along with the flashing tool. Reboot and boot off the floppy. Run the flash. Try to save the existing rom. Realizing that the backup would not fit on your current rom. Removing all the extra junk Microsoft put on the boot disks. Going at it again. Something going wrong. RTFM. Crossing fingers, etc. That era is gone.

Now everyone can patch.

Most of the time they don’t even know it’s happening. They just restart with the new version of Firefox or IE.

And that’s the scenario for the on premise gear. When it comes to online services… forget about it, you don’t even know when it’s done unless the provider bothers to email you.

You cannot continue to hope that things will remain complex because folks building all these gadgets and software solutions need to sell more of them. They can’t sell them as efficiently or as quickly if there is a shadow fee of an IT person that’s going to move in with you to deploy it. Small businesses are not buying IBM clusters to play chess or Jeopardy with. They are buying iPads and Android phones that a single-digit-per-hour retail store employee is all to happy to configure for them!

Profit from the fact that your clients are smart and get busy with more success

Now read that a few more times.

You can’t profit from ignorance and people that are bad at math. It takes a lot of money to build a casino. Lottery is cornered as well. You can’t hope that there will be an unlimited amount of inept people out there because if they are inept how will they earn the revenue to pay your services.

When businesses are in the startup mode, they like to do things on their own to save money and cut corners. When they mature and grow the cost of their time exceeds the cost of your service.

Focus on creating services that are affordable enough to be delegated to you.

Deliver a solution that makes it easy for the business owners to delegate complex tasks to you.

(fact: It’s taken me over 20,000 words to get to the bottom line which is highlighted above)

There are thousands of different things that you can do better, faster and more effectively for your clients when it comes to technology.. for a fee. All that’s missing is an impulse for them to call John when they are looking at a problem they shouldn’t be dealing with.

Maybe your customer will not buy a printer from you. Maybe they won’t even ask you to set it up for group printing. They won’t even bother asking you how to connect their iPad to it. The secretary can change paper and ink cartridge on his/her own. But eventually that secretary will spend two hours troubleshooting the printer and the manager will step in to “help” – if they are smart, they will get in touch with you within the hour. That’s where you can offer to have it worked on right now for a higher fee or later tonight for a lower fee. You can come on site, have someone pick it up, listen to them tell you all the other challenges they are facing and find a way to help.

No, you won’t be able to get them to sign a management agreement for 50 times what the printer costs. Those days are coming to an end.

You will however be able to collect a multiple of their salary because it’s impacting their business.

You will have far more clients because the fact above will make most of your peers and competitors close down their shop.

The easy IT money era is over. The smart IT era is beginning.

If you’d like to see what it looks like, please join me this Thursday at noon EST:

Shockey Monkey Reloaded

Thursday, December 1st, Noon EST (max 1000 seats; will be recorded)

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/812869640

You can be the IBM they can afford and trust. And yes, people will trust you far more when you’re not screwing them with fuzzy math and stuff they don’t need.

You have to hand it to Google, they really don’t stop. The announcements that came from the Google I/O conference this week (regarding TV, mobile, etc) are just amazing. They are pretty much the fastest moving IT business these days and nothing says that more than their phone software: Android.

They released 2.2 which in a nutshell removes the need for all the MiFi / 3G USB dongles. It provides not just a faster OS and a much more effective phone, but also turns the phone into a wifi hotspot. Currently, you have to wait for Froyo to be pushed over the air which might take a few weeks. But you want it now, right?

Hop over here if you have a Nexus One (for T-Mobile). Here is the process according to Rob Jackson of Phandroid:

1. Download the Android 2.2 firmware for the Nexus One – here is the link to download
2. Rename the file update.zip and copy it to your microSD card via USB. [Note: make sure the file is named update.zip and not update.zip.zip.]
3. Power down your Nexus One
4. Hold down the “Volume Down” button as you power the phone back on.
5. A screen should appear showing your phone’s system searching for various files. Scroll down to “recovery” and press the “Power” button.
6. When you see the triangle with an exclamation point symbol, press the “Power” and “Volume Up” buttons at the same time.
7. From the menu that appears, select “Apply sdcard:update.zip.”
8. When the screen displays “Install from sdcard complete” select “reboot system now” and wait for the phone to power back up.

Now, if you’re on AT&T / Rogers you’ll see this instead:

Installing updated…
assert failed: file_getprop(”/system/build.prop”
, “ro.build.fingerprint”) == “google/passion/pas
sion/mahimahi:2.1-update1/ERE27/24178:user/release
se-keys” || file_getprop(”/system/build.pr
op”, ro.build.fingerprint”) == “google/passion/
passion/mahimahu:2.2/FRF50/38042:user/release-ke
ys”
E:Error in /sdcard/update.zip
(Status 7)
Installation aborted.

The build EPE54B (AT&T / Rogers) Nexus One phone has a newer radio so the package above will simply fail. So you have to wait for it to come OTA. On the other hand, you could unlock the boot loader, flash Amon-RA and install a repackaged Froyo release. Now if that seems like a foreign language, it might be a good idea to wait.

I love my Apple iPhone 3GS and I can’t really imagine life without it – it takes pictures, video, has great games, FaceBook and TweetDeck rock and when you need to kill time it’s awesome. However, my business phone is just not something iPhone is meant for. So after over a year of searching around I’ve decided to try and replace my business cell phone with the Google Nexus One.

Reasoning

Microsoft will be releasing Windows Mobile later this year. It’s about 90% likely to suck as Microsoft always does when they chase. I’ve never been a fan of Palm and it looks like they are about to die. Blackberry I have religious issues with.

So that left Android. I chose Google’s Nexus One because it got great reviews and unlike literally all the other handsets, it’s not controlled by the carrier so I don’t have to be at the mercy of a carrier when it comes to upgrades.

First Impressions

It’s an HTC. If you’ve ever purchased nearly any Windows Mobile phone you know what I mean – cheap Chinese piece of junk. Feels and looks cheap. Accessories look 3rd world all the way.

The OS is clunkier than the iPhone, not quite as intuitive and the keyboard is not even close to the iPhone one. Nexus One also has four shortcut keys underneath the screen so when you’re typing an email you can hit the buttons rather easily. The app selection is pretty diverse and looks better than the App Store. The Exchange AS works, but there is no way to provide a signature for sent mail – very, very strange but apparently being worked on. The phone itself is very responsive but also very hot. Multitasking implementation is awesome – killing applications isn’t, you need to launch another app (task killer). Voice Search is not very accurate. Battery life is about the same. The camera is amazing. Tethering is supported and the AT&T 3G is moving quite fast. Customizing ringers, etc is a bit touch and go.

In a nutshell, it’s decent. It’s no iPhone, not even close. If I had to choose only one, I would definitely get the iPhone. But for pure business… That I’m not so sure on.

So far, no show stoppers. I’ll post an in depth review after using it for more than 1 day

There has been a lot of hype around the Droid phone from Verizon and with a few of my friends getting one and not sharing any impressions I had to go and check it out. I spent about half an hour playing with it: It’s cool, but not impressive. Sticking with the iPhone 3GS.

Here is my initial impression: the keyboard is too small to be far more useful than an on screen one. The web browser is impressive, but zooming in to read the content is painfully slow. One thing that did surprise me was the collection of apps, it doesn’t look like anything I have on the iPhone would be difficult to replace with the Droid and Android 2.0 marketplace. The other impressive thing – camera. Absolutely amazing. Ton of features but still sloooooooow.

Biggest disappointment: GPS. The GPS detected me about 6 blocks (over a mile) away from where I actually was. The device was not as snappy as expected. The picture album left quite a bit to be desired, even though the device is far more feature packed than the iPhone in nearly every area.

In my opinion, Droid might be the best smartphone that isn’t an iPhone. But as much as it pains me to admit this, and give Apple more kudos or money, the iPhone simplicity and smoothness wins. While I wish I had better 3G, the Droid requires extra $ to enable Exchange 2007 access and there is no tethering. So yeah, better 3G but still the same dirty telco tricks that will make this yet another device that’s a slave to it’s carrier.

Dave Sobel, cohost of the SBS Show, wants to know.

Dave is putting together some content around virtualization with the SMB focus and is taking on all advice you wish to pass on.

Seems like Nextel-Sprint just keeps on finding ways to tie more stones around its ankles as it sinks further and further into the ocean of companies not to work with. Betanews is talking about Sprint’s upcoming implementation of a 5GB cap, effectively killing any sort of mobile multimedia experience you may have dreamed of in the future. This is not particularly bothersome today because the state of 3G networks in USA can at times rival the speeds of modems in the late 90′s… You have to try damn hard to get 5GB of data transferred over a 3G card.

So, why is Sprint going to do this? Why are they implementing a software cap that 99% of the customer base cannot hit today? Because WiMAX 4G networks that are getting built right now make all sorts of media things possible, and when WiFi can replace your broadband cable/DSL connection Sprint does not want to have to deal with the issues of network caps, bandwidth throttling, crippling applications and then some.

Establish the precedent early is the name of the game.

Ironic, this being announced on a day that Roku announces the Netflix device, allowing you to get this $100 box and play 100,000 movies from your Netflix subscription for $9 a month.

What we are seeing here is a ton of people all of which want a cut not off the services they deliver, but from the companies actually making money. It’s like me going out to my ExchangeDefender customer, all pissed off that they are making more money than me, and asking them for some extra money! Except the people asking are government organizations (State tax revenues from Internet sales), phone and television companies (free phone calls, free TV) and the list goes on.

What I hope someone points out is that the growth everyone is seeing is due to the things being open and as more interesting things show up online more people part with their hard earned money for the service – a scenario in which everyone makes more money. But as the greater fool theory crashes with the first participant trying to change the rules of the game to capture higher percentage of the transactions, their growth goes away. In this case, Sprint wants to make its network more profitable, but in doing so it will sacrifice any opportunity to grow. 3G is still a premium service, and premium services don’t succeed if you’re indistinguishable from the alternatives yet crippled….

It is no longer a surprise that iPhone absolutely destroyed Windows Mobile in nearly all categories, or that Blackberry has reincarnated from their lawsuit to become the most demanded business communications solution around. It is far less surprising to those of us that actually use, or rather put up with, the dinosaur that is Windows Mobile 6. I recently got two of the latest Windows Mobile 6 phones from AT&T and just how pathetic they are for some of what I would consider the most basic of mobile functions. No messenger, no ability to customize start menus, no ability to even set a homepage. No, I am not joking. And yes, a year from now when Windows Mobile 6.1 becomes commonplace, Microsoft will claim innovation and huge leaps in the software usability (in stealing the Cardfile UI that has been provided by Samsung for over a year on i600).  So frustrating.

However, this week is the MVP Summit and I’m always asked about how this and that gets done on the WM device so here are top three tricks to WM6 Standard:

Changing the homepage

If you didn’t purchase your phone directly from the manufacturer or Expansys, it was likely riddled with garbage links your carrier has put in to make Pocket Internet Explorer even more useless. I always change my homepage to Google not just because the search is terrific, but because Google will make browsing on your PocketPC a little more tollerable. You know that Cached feature where they will show you the latest cached page even if the server is down? Well, Google for Windows Mobile has a way of stripping out extra content and presenting easilly readable text on the Windows Mobile device.

Problem: You cannot change your homepage on WM6.

Solution: First, download this registry editor. Navigate to “HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\AboutURLs” and change the value of the home registry key to the URL you want your Pocket Internet Explorer to start with.

Customizing the start menu

If your carrier is anything like mine, useful WM6 applications are buried three levels deep while all the garbage you will never use is front page. If you attempt to delete it from the Start menu, you will receive a note that the file manager could not delete or move the files.

Problem: When you attempt to delete or move programs on the devices start menu your access is denied. Your phone is Application Locked.

Solution: First, you need to application unlock your WM6 device. You will need to download this software. Copy SDA_ApplicationUnlock.exe to your Windows Mobile phone and execute it. After the unlock you will be prompted to reboot your phone and will now be able to nuke carrier trash apps.

You also might want to snag Total Commander, which helps get to the areas the built in file explorer just does not seem to want to go into like \Windows\Start Menu

Messenger

Aside from the basic $3 phone functionality, the only useful thing on a Windows Mobile device is Pocket Outlook. Virtually every carrier has stripped Windows Mobile 6 of the Messenger application and they all try to push you through their broken IM implementations or sell you Goodlink (which is the exact opposite of the title, neither a link nor good).

Problem: Give me Windows Live Messenger!!!!

Solution: Thank you for reading Vladville, here you go.

The overall problem

Microsoft doesn’t now, nor does it appear in the forseeable future, have a way of getting a reliable Windows Mobile experience into the hands of the potential Windows Mobile users. I have been using Windows Mobile since WindowsCE 2.1 and Cassiopedia A20. In all this time, Windows Mobile 6 is by far, uncontested, worst release of Windows Mobile ever. Although technologically superior to WindowsCE 2.1, the carrier neutering of the phone and flood of junk applications, multiple device/app/system locks, lack of software upgrades (did you know your Windows Mobile device has a Windows Update application on it?) and obvious lack of innovation by all indications make Windows Mobile.. well, neither.

I hope that the links and tips provided here make your WM experience a little less painful and you can count on me to express the above sentiment which I have been getting from many of you at the Microsoft MVP Summit next week.

Interesting conversation over at Techmeme about the Engaget coverage of the upcoming HP 2133 ultra portable laptop looking to take on the popular Asus Eee. Asus has definitely done for UMPC with Linux what Microsoft, Samsung, Ogo and others combined could not with XP/Vista – a commercially successful ultra mobile PC.

Here is what HP is bringing to market, at $599 retail:

Now before you dismiss it on size, price, power, processor, resolution, memory or any individual component that fails in comparison to your average entry level laptop, remember that this is meant to be ultra portable and dare I say, ultra affordable. HP sports a Via C7-M 1.2 – 1.6 Ghz processor which is an equivalent of an Intel Celeron at similar speeds. For about $200-$300 more you can get a faster processor, more hard drive space, Vista Business, bigger battery. So there are options to make this fit different needs, but at $600 for the portable Vista system with a webcam, wireless and a 2lb PC just slightly longer an 8.5 x 11 piece of paper, this can fit a lot of mobility and portability needs.

Does this trend obsolete Microsoft Windows Mobile? In my opinion, yes. Windows Mobile experience, in both use and development, is not where it needs to be and is at least a generation or two behind where iPhone is in terms of user experience. Development for a device of this type will also be far more attractive than compiling Windows Mobile packages for different architectures, obtaining CAB signatures from the Windows Mobile marketplace, worrying about UI layout (Standard rectangle, Pro, Pro square) and not to mention the components and extensions that make Visual Studio a true RAD.

Oh, and it’s cheaper than a PocketPC device, far far cheaper than the UMPC-like Windows Mobile solutions such as HTC Advantage. Full specs below:

So what do you think? Is there a market between an entry level laptop and a PocketPC? I am not sure if this device will come with a VGA-out which would easilly make it a realistic replacement for office information workers that can quickly take it to meetings and dock to the larger monitor, mouse and keyboard at their desk.

Blackberry global network takes a monumental dump again, leaving millions of heroin addicts blackberry users without their email for several hours.

But you know who I feel for? Microsoft! Yeah, an underdog yet again. Blackberry follows up its 14 hour outage with a four hour outage and BB customers hug their little devices like a weed junkie hugs his bag of weed and a bag of chips. Apple outright rapes their iPhone early adopters, first by crippling the device, then by doing a $200 discount a month into the sales and discontinuing their 4GB model, then by crippling third party applications, then by setting the app cost to $6 and iTunes only barring the users from any decent software and locking it down to a crappy carrier… and Mactards hug their devices too.

Though it may not be nice to make fun of addicts, they are such because they love the products even given the insurmountable lack of reliability and functionality others percieve. I sure hope Microsoft is paying attention to this and responding so it doesn’t again have to dig billions into its wealth to buy a distant second competitor long after the war has already been lost (in this case, search).

And as to our gentle neighbors to the north.. Any chance you guys can either fire Jag Shokar from his position of Blackberry SP Alliance Manager or perhaps find some other H1–B reject in your monkey bucket that can process partner applications? Clocking on a month now of waiting for an update to a partner app that was submitted six months ago…. Does Canada take a 6 month vacation to scate around and chase penguins or are you just completely incompetent as evidenced by your network / staff response?