The Magic of Branding

As a consumer, business or otherwise, if you didn't already know (or at least suspect) what it was, what would you think Symantec Endpoint Protection 11.0 was? It is described as: "It includes Symantec Endpoint Protection, Symantec AntiVirus for Linux and Macintosh, and mail protection which shields against malicious email."

So, it's an Anti-virus program? With anti-malware and perhaps spam-blocking, phishing prevention, or other features? Why is that, exactly, "endpoint" protection?

I'm sure the product itself is fine. I haven't used it, but I've used Symantect Norton Anti-Virus before and it's a bit of a resource hog, for me.

But what, specifically, is an endpoint, and why do I need mine protected? Apparently, it's important enough to protect my endpoint that they've come up with 11different iterations of it!

Reminds me a little bit of the classic "What if Microsoft made the iPod?" video. In a desire to make product branding distinct, unique, and to "stand out" companies tend to obscure what the product is and what the product does. What about "Complete Protection"? "Whole Computer Protection" . . . I dunno, I think there has to be a better way to get the message across than "endpoint" protection.

But maybe that's just me.

Corel Wordperfect for Office X3 for only $17.95

For those of use looking for an alternative to some of the Microsoft Office products would do well to look at Corel WordPErfect OFfice X3 (part number WPX3STDENGPC). There's software for word processing (and some might say much more manageable than Microsoft Word), editing spreadsheets, doing slide shows ala PowerPoint, and more. And for only $17.95!


And it has complete suppy for the Adobe Acrobat PDF format. And it can import PDFs. How about them apples?

But what about all your Micrsoft Office docs? What about the Microsoft Office documents folks are always emailing you? It's easy to open, edit and save Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files. So you can work with all your Microsoft Office documents (and save 'em as PDFs), you can save your WordPerfect documents in Microsoft Word, Excel or PowerPoint format to send to colleagues . . . and you get it all at a bargain price.

You really can't beat it. If Corel had done a better job of marketing WordPerfect Office over the years, it'd be on a lot more desktops . . . and it probably wouldn't be nearly such a bargain. Because it's easy to use, slimmer and lighter than Microsoft Office, with 99% of the power and value of Microsoft's product. I've used them both, and there are of course some handy things about using Microsoft Office on Windows, but there isn't a better value in productivity software out there than Corel's WordPerfect Office X3. Buy it today. We have it for only $17.95, or $15.95 a piece for orders of 20 or more.

And, while you are at it, take a look at some of our other bargains on 3rd party software.

---

BTW, check out our Excess Software section, which includes stuff like Windows 2000 Server, Adobe Ovation, Microsoft SQL Server 2000, Office XP Pro, Microsoft XP Pro, Microsoft Small Business Server 2003, and more. Have a blessed day!

The Market for Older Software, Part Deux

Like, for example, Microsoft Windows NT 4.0. Why is there still a market software? Because, believe it or not, some people still need it. They have vertical applications that only run on this software, or they've got machines in service that can run later-rev software without problems, etc. Yes, there is still a market for Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 Workstation, and we've got it for a great price: only $19.95. For as long as we have it in stock. Which probably won't be forever, because I'm not kidding: people still need this stuff, and sometimes will snap up 100 copies at a time. So, if you need NT 4.0 Workstation, pick it up now. We've got it in stock, and for only $19.95. Did I say that already?

But that's not all . . .

Even better, we've got Microsoft Windows 95 2.1 OEM with USB for only $17.49. Are people still running Microsoft Windows 95? Still buying it? Yes, there are markets for Windows 95. Most of them international, and a few in obscure vertical markets domestically . . . but people still need it, and still buy it. And, with the advent of Windows Vista, you will see later generation OSes like Windows '98, Windows 2000 (my personal favorite) and Windows XP holding on for even longer than venerable classic OSes like '95 and NT Workstation 4.0.

Only $17.49, as of this posting, for Windows 95 OEM with USB. Only $19.95 for Windows NT Workstation 4.0. As of this posting. And as of this posting, we've still got 'em in stock. Get 'em while the gettin' is good.

Trend Micro PC-Cillin

We've sold a lot more Trend Micro software than we're currently carrying, and we hope to again. But right now we've got a great price on Trend Micro's PC-Cillin Internet Security 2008 1-USER OEM (part# TIS085671). That price being $14.95, or $13.95 if you purchase 20 or more.

As I may have mentioned, even though the goal of this blog is in no small part to promote our store (and educate, of course!) I prefer to write about things about which I actually have something to say, or have direct experience.

I have direct experience with PC-Cillin, as it's running on my daughter's Dell Laptop (which is also running Windows Vista, which I'm not a huge fan of--for many reasons--but sometimes you need it and, anyway, this post isn't about Vista). It works well. As with all Internet Security software, the updates are frequent and intrusive, which I'm not a big fan of, but I have yet to see Internet Security software that works (for free, or at any price) that isn't intrusive in some way or others, and updates to have to be frequent in order to ensure security.

For the home user, I'd recommend PC-Cillin over Symantec, or AVG (which I use at work). Panda Anti-Virus and Internet Security (which I've used, and can be a little more intrusive, in my opinion, than PC-Cillin, but does the job and more at a great price) or PC-Cillin are better choices for the home user. We also carry the very popular Kaspersky line of Internet Security and Anti-virus products, but I haven't actually used them myself, so I'm not in a position to review them. But if you've used them and you like them, we've got some great prices on them, so come on by!

Intuit Turbo Tax for Business 2007

We have it. That is, Intuit Turbo Tax for Business, 2007, New Retail Box for only $69.95 as of this posting. Yeah, tax time for 2007 is over, but what better time to pick up a bargain? Things don't change that much from year to year, so if you're looking for a solid business tax package, check out our current Intuit Software section, including Turbo Tax, Quickbooks Pro 2008, and Quickbooks Simple Start 2005.

---

Oh, and if you're needing to update or expand your anti-virus protection, we've got Symantec Antivirus 10.0 10 User Business Pack (Part Number 10368462) for only $129.95. Now, that's a deal!

Adobe Acrobat Perseveres

Albeit a little slowly for me. I'm still not exactly won over by the Acrobat reader, or the full Acrobat Suite, but what are the alternatives? None, really.

And Adobe Acrobat as a file format has it's advantages, especially within the Adobe Suite. It offers generally decent cross compatability between applications such as Illustrator and InDesign, and even Photoshop can open PDFs. There are several PDF exporters an annotaters for popular applications such as Microsoft Word and Quark Xpress, and, of course, Mac OS X offers build in PDF support. Any PDF can be viewed natively, previewed extensively with QuickLook, and any thing that can be printed can instead be saved to a multi-page PDF. Which is, if you think about it, pretty darn handy.

And Adobe Acrobat PDFs are now common in pre-press--especially the type of printing one can get done online--as it is a self-contained file, with almost everything you could need. And almost all available browsers have built in PDF browsing, or an easy-to-get plug-in to do the job.

So what's my hang-up? Well, for one thing, it took forever for Adobe to deliver on the promise of PDF as a self-contained pre-press output format. Or, at least, it took forever for me to be able to send a PDF to a pre-press house and get out what I expected. Secondly, cross-compatibility between applications could probably still use some work--maybe Adobe Illustrator CS3 can open all the pages in a PDF document? I haven't checked that yet.

And the Adobe Acrobat Suite never seemed as full-featured, or as easy to use, as I would have expected from Adobe. Added features, such as the ability to fill out PDF forms, took forever to work out the kinks and actually become useful. And now that they've finally gotten all the kinks out and Adobe Acrobat is, on the whole, pretty robust (though still not perfect), I rarely have a need for it. Other than the Reader (which should have an easy way of bookmarking pages, or automatically converting--on the Reader end--tables of contents and indexes into clickable links that take you to that page, rather than depending on the author to set that up (which they rarely do).

But . . . still, on the whole, it's a handy, truly portable document format, and if you need to do more with it (and we can verify that you are a student or school employee--heh!) then Adobe Acrobat 8 Profession, for only $121.95 (as of this posting) is the way to go. We've got it in stock as of this post so, if you are a student or school employee or otherwise entitle to make academic purchases, I'd suggest you shop with us.

If you're not, we've got Adobe Acrobat 8 Standard, which has much of what you need but, like Windows Vista Basic, it'll be that one thing you need most that it doesn't seem to have. Still, we've had standard consumer versions of Adobe Acrobat Pro in stock before and we will again, so if it has been a while, come check out all our Adobe software.

And have a great (and blessed) day!

Software and Comic Books and Music CDs and Half.com

I sell a few items on eBay's Half.com, like Planet P's Pink World, for $75, if you want to pick it up. I started doing that around the time I was working for a company called Licensing Ventures Incorporated, who sold quite a bit through channels like Half, eBay, and the Amazon marketplace.

If you've ever bought or sold on Half.com, you've noticed, no doubt, they don't sell software of any kind, and precious little hardware. They also don't have a marketplace for odd or antique items that are eBay's bread and butter, like cigarette cards (I used to have a lot of these and somehow lost them all, some of them classics, and I can't tell you how depressing that is when I reflect upon it, but nevermind). More common and contemporary are comic books. So what's the big deal? Well, the best thing about Half.com is that it's not an auction site. It costs nothing to list your products, and you can leave them on there, at whatever price you set, for as long as you want. If you have competitve prices on software like we do, then it'd clearly make a great, inexpensive marketplace for our software. Even if they only took major products, like Microsoft and Symantec, it'd still be a great marketplace for us.

For people (like me) who have a lot of comic books but don't want to sell them unless I'm going to get a decent price for them, it'd be a great place to sell them.

The best thing about half.com is that it's a straight competetive marketplace. It's not cluttered with auctions or a mix of "Buy it Now" and only "Buy it Now" and auction products sorted by the end of the auction, it's just a sales site where if I wanted to be a nickel better than my closest competitor, I can be, or if I want to be $5 more than the closest competitor so that I might sell my product after everybody else's is sold and gone, I can do that, too. As a seller of software in a competetive marketplace, I'd love to be able to sell Microsoft Office 2007 OEM that way. Right now, it's only $299.95, or $297.95 each if you buy 10 or more copies, BTW.

Alas, we cannot. So, I'm selling some music and some books on Half.com personally, and that's about all it's good for now. I miss the days of my Filemaker Pro price harvester that I used at LVI, where I'd collect all our competitors prices and then try to price us a penny or two below them, in order to be more competetive. That was fun!

For a little blast from my past, check out in the Internet Archive of HitMeNow.com, which I have some fun stories about. Including how it may have floundered (in my opinion) because we were going in too many directions at one time, but also how they even had a Memphis office for me to get a job at because they had purchased Kozmo.com, that dot.com boom company that was going to deliver music, DVDs, books, food and basics to anybody who ordered them in under an hour. Wonder why that didn't work out. Could be because they spent all their venture capital on limousines and Kozmo.com embroidered shirts.

BTW, the beginning of the end of HitMeNow.com happened, in my opinion, when a guy named Jeff Abrams came on, a guy with a corporate background at big box retailer Best Buy, who some have credited with architecting the largely unsuccessful effort to use music CDs as a loss leader at Best Buy (the idea being that they'd come in for the cheap music and leave with a projection television set)that helped begin the process of putting stand-alone music retailers, like Camelot music,out of business. Click on his name above to read about it, or click here.

One of the big pushes while I was at LVI was to get DropItOff.com off the ground, and I guess they did, because unlike HitMeNow.com, that URL still works, and much has been done since I worked there. Hope it's working for them, I know most of the the stripmall stores I've seen spring up to take folks stuff and list it on ebay, etc., have all ended up closing. I'm not sure there's that big a market for Internet middle-men in the Web 2.0 era. Time will tell, I suppose.

Anyhoo, I still think it's unfortunate that HitMeNow tanked, but it was a fun job and a very interesting place for an entertainment geek like me to work. On the whole, I look back at it with fond memories.

And speaking of entertainment, we've got Roxio EasyMedia7 Basic for $5.95 and Roxio Easy CD Creator for $11.95, as of this posting. If you're interested in that kind of thing.