Technologizer

If you use Windows 7 and haven’t taken our satisfaction survey yet, I beseech you: Please take a few minutes and tell us about your experiences. We’re going to close the survey shortly and can use all the real-world data we can get. Thanks!

I’m happy to report that I spent Thursday night in the company of a couple of hundred old friends, new friends, people I’ve admired from afar and wanted to meet, and assorted members of the Technologizer community. Our Tech the Halls party in San Francisco was a blast–mainly because the folks who showed up were so darn interesting.

Oh, and the ones who stuck around until the end got to witness something pretty special. After we raffled off some prizes, our friend Dale Larson–who, among other things, was an Amiga engineer–sent a Tweet to his girlfriend Laura La Gassa from the stairs where we’d been giving away stuff:

Laura, you’ll be pleased to learn, replied thusly:

What we all saw wasn’t the first Twitter proposal, but it still felt like a little moment of history. Here’s a Tweetstream from party attendees with coverage of the memorable moment and the rest of the bash. Thanks to our sponsors–SugarSync, Marvell, Eastwick Communications, and Marketwire–for helping to make it all happen.

Many thanks to everyone who’s taken a few minutes and participated in our satisfaction survey for Windows 7 users. Hundreds of you have done so already–but we could use some more responses, especially from folks who have bought new PCs with the OS pre-installed. Click here to take the survey if you haven’t already–thanks in advance, and I can’t wait to share the results.

It’s the holiday season, more or less! So Technologizer is throwing a holiday party–our second, following the T-Tweetup back in May. We’re calling it Tech the Halls, and it’s this Thursday, November 19th in San Francisco. It’s about to “sell out”–but if you’re in the Bay Area and would like to attend, click here for more information and to RSVP. (If it is sold out by the time you read this, contact me. We’ve set aside some tickets for Technologizer readers.)

Tech the Halls is pleased to be sponsored by SugarSync, Marvell, Eastwick Communications, and Marketwire. Hope to see some of you there!

We’re still very, very early in the Windows 7 era: The operating system only went on sale as an upgrade and on new PCs on October 22nd. But it’s not too soon to check in with people who pounced on Windows 7 at the first opportunity–after all, their experiences will help everyone else decide whether the upgrade  is worth the effort and money. And if you’re one such early adopter, we’ve got some questions about your experiences.

Click here to take our quick survey about Windows 7. Thanks in advance for participating–we’ll leave the survey up until 5pm PT on Friday, or until we’ve collected enough results for a meaningful report on the state of Windows 7 satisfaction so far.

What are you up to at 1pm PT today? If you’re not otherwise occupied, check out the live stream of John C. Dvorak’s CrankyGeeks at Justin.tv. I’ll be guesting on the show, which will also be available for viewing at the CrankyGeeks site and as an iTunes download.

I’ll do my best to be cranky, or at least mildly vexed…

Good grief! Kiplinger’s Personal Finance has published its Best of Everything 2009 feature, which provides picks for everything from mutual funds to cars to colleges to travel deals. It’s also got a category for “Best Tech Gadget Guru,” and Kiplinger’s choice in that category is…me!

Whether he’s discussing Microsoft’s mobile-phone software or praising a cool netbook,HARRY MCCRACKEN doesn’t mince words. His Technologizer site (www.technologizer.com) is a fast and furious way to keep up on the latest tech trends. His blog has quickly become one of the most influential sites for tech news and opinion.

I’m flattered–many thanks to the good folks at Kiplinger’s for such a nice honor.

Reynaldo Rivera’s 2006-era MacBook Pro has lost its screen, not to mention a few of its keys. Its trackpad and optical drive don’t work. Its mouse is held together with tape, and he uses a battered copy of Dante’s Inferno as a mousepad. It outputs video to a 13-inch standard-def CRT TV–and must do so by routing it first through an old VCR. Oh yeah, I forgot: It recently stopped running, period.

This, my friends, is no ordinary bad PC–and that’s why it’s the winner of Technologizer’s Worst PC in America contest. Reynaldo gets the nifty HP Envy 13 laptop, courtesy of HP. Thanks to them, thanks to Reynaldo–and thanks to everyone who entered. You guys own some terrible computers!

To wrap things up, I’ve published some visual highlights of selected contenders as a slideshow, and you can also check out all the entries.

Over the past couple of weeks, members of the Technology community have been gracing this site with words, pictures, and videos about some truly terrible personal computers. But it’ll all end tonight at 5pm PDT, when we stop accepting entries in our Worst PC in America contest.

We’ll then pick an, um, winner based on both the badness of the PC and the creativity of the entry–and its owner will receive HP’s slick new Envy 13 notebook, courtesy of HP.

If you’ve been too shy to share your clunker with us, now’s the perfect time to fess up. Go here to read the rules. To enter, reply to this forum thread–which contains all the entries so far–and tell us about your machine.

On Monday, I blogged about the FloH Club, a new service providing phone-based tech support to non-geeky senior citizens on topics ranging from figuring out Facebook to troubleshooting sick PCs. Its biggest distinguishing characteristic: Its spokesperson is beloved Brady matriarch Florence Henderson.

If you’re reading this, you’re almost definitely not part of the FloH Club’s target market–but you might know somebody who is. And the club has offered to give a certificate good for three months of complimentary service to a member of the Technologizer community. (If you win, you can give it to anyone you like.)

Entering’s easy: Just send an e-mail to contest@technologizer.com with “FloH Club” in the subject line, and do it by 12pm noon PDT on Monday, October 19th. We’ll randomly draw a name from everyone who enters and alert the winner by Tuesday, October 20th.

A little over fifty-five hours remain until we close our contest to find the Worst PC in America and declare a winner–who will receive HP’s slick Envy 13 laptop.We’ve received some great entries–and by “great,” I mean that some of them are gut-wrenching–but I’m positive there are technohorrors hidden at the back of closets out there yet to be discovered. You’ve got until 5pm PDT on Friday to reveal all.

You can check out the entries so far (plus some discussion of ‘em) here. And here’s information on how to enter your own machine. Please do–and tell your friends. This may be the first and last time in recorded history that owning a mind-bendingly crummy computer has its advantages…

Our search for the single most embarrassingly lousy computer in our great nation continues! We’ve received some great nominees so far, which you can check out here. But I’m hoping that more of you will fess up to owning truly crummy machines, especially since we’ll pick one person who enters the contest to win a slick new HP Envy 13 laptop, courtesy of HP.

The contest continues until this Friday, October  16th at 5pm PDT. Here are the official rules and details on entering. Tell your friends–especially the ones who still have terrible old computers lurking in their closets…

I’m tickled to report that I’m going to be a guest today on Reporters’ Roundtable, a new CNET podcast. I’ll be in excellent company: The host is Webware’s Rafe Needleman and Gdgt’s Ryan Block is also guesting. And the topic’s a fun one: the past, present, and future of tablet computers.

The show is taping at 1pm PDT, and you can watch us live. The recorded version will show up here. Check it out, won’t you?

Attention, computer owners! Some of you own some really lousy PCs–either ones that were dogs in the first place, or which have gotten so roughed up over time that they’re just plain sad. Maybe most of these machines aren’t in active use–I sure hope not–but if they aren’t, they’re lurking in closets and attics across this great nation. I just know it.

And we want to hear about them, since the one type of computer more memorable than a great one is a bizarrely terrible one. Here’s your incentive to spill your guts: Courtesy of HP, we’ll pick a winner from among all people who tell us about their bad PCs–and that person will receive HP’s extremely slick, feature-laden Envy 13 notebook as a prize. (Thanks to HP for providing it.)

Enter the contest, won’t you? It’s easy–just tell us about your crummy machine in words, pictures, and/or video. Go here for full details on how to do that–you have until 5pm PDT on October 16th to tell your tale. (Comments are closed on this post so nobody accidentally enters here.)

Please spread the word by telling your loved ones, friends, coworkers, and random strangers to visit http://technologizer.com/worstpc–the more rotten computers we uncover the merrier…

TWTRCON DC–the second edition of the conference on Twitter for business which I helped launch–is hitting the nation’s capital on October 22nd. The list of speakers is impressive: Everyone from Craiglist’s Craig Newmark to political strategist Joe Trippi to folks from Intuit, PepsiCo, H&R Block, Dunkin Donuts, the NFL, the Wall Street Journal, and USA Today.

If you’re tempted to go, here’s a little added incentive: TWTRCON is extending a 20 percent discount to members of the Technologizer community. Use discount code SPKR32 when you register at the TWTRCON site, which has more details on the speakers, the agenda, and the venue.

Shameless self-promotion: This Wednesday (that’s September 30th) at 3pm PT, Wired’s Chris Anderson will be conducting a videocast (aka a “Thoughtcast”) on how disruptive technology is changing business. As author of The Long Tail and Free, the guy knows what he’s talking about.

The Web cast will be held at HP’s Input|Output site, and I’ll be watching and–here’s the sef-promotional part–tweeting my thoughts as part of the event’s official Twitter stream.

If you’d like to check out the event, head here. Hope to see you there…