I spent nearly 90 minutes on the phone today with the folks at ACD Systems, the makers of the awesome ACDSee. I’ve been using ACDSee since 1998 or so, and always upgrade to every new version (though to be fair the upgrade process has been free lately because I’m a member of “the media”). Why would I spent 90 minutes on the phone with them? I’ve been giving them direct feedback here and there about their product via email for a little over a year now, and they suggested a phone call to talk about my ideas and suggestions for their product so I obliged.

There was a product planner, a developer, and a marketing person in the room, and they let me open up my brain and dump all the ideas, fixes, improvements, and concepts I had for how I thought ACDSee could be made even better. I feel very passionate about computer hardware and software that I use, and am always looking for opportunities to improve it. That’s partially out of a desire to have a better tool for my own needs, but it’s also because when I pick a product I tend to stick with it - I have a very strong sense of loyalty, like a sports fan to his home team, so I want to see the product I’ve picked “win” in the market.

The folks at ACDSee are great - they listened intently, engaged me on many levels to drill down into my ideas, and were genuinely enthused to listen to me talk about how I’d like to see the product improved. The next version won’t have everything I asked for of course, but I bet I’ll see quite a few of the little things addressed.

Any company that’s willing to engage deeply with their customers is a winner in my books - more companies should do it, but most are afraid of their customers and try to keep them at arm’s length.

Now I just need to find a way to make money doing this…

I swear that WiFi overall as a technology is less and less stable every year. Back when it was only 802.11b, I don’t remember having nearly as many problems as I have lately. I’ve owned D-Link, Belkin, Netgear and Linksys routers - all have been replaced in my hunt for a fast, stable router that works with all of my equipment. The past month or so has been particularly hair-pulling; I’ve been in wireless router hell.

A couple of weeks ago my still-quite-new D-Link 802.11n router (a DIR-655) flaked out on me. I spent an hour thinking it was my cable modem, eventually narrowed it down to the router, then wasted an hour on the phone jumping through D-Link tech support hoops just so I could get an RMA and get the router exchanged. It took talking to three techs before they’d admit there was a hardware problem with the router. From the beginning the router had compatibility problems with my wife’s iPAQ 1950, even with the latest firmware on both devices. It’s embarrassing in a geeky way when my wife has to Exchange sync over WiFi at work because the home network is never functioning. I bought the iPAQ 1950 to replace the previous iPAQ that had trouble connecting over WiFi, hoping that the newer model would be more compatible with modern WiFi. It’s not. I don’t believe the compatibility problems are due to a hardware failure - I think the DIR-655 just has poor compatibility with WiFi devices, which is a common issue I’ve seen with routers over the past two years.

I then switched to my backup router, also a D-Link (DI-624). It kept dropping my connections, both wired and wireless, so I swore I’d never buy another D-Link router. I went out and bought a Belkin 802.11n router, another brand I’ve had trouble with in the past and never wanted to buy again - but there are only so many choices on the market. The Belkin router worked perfectly when I swapped it into place, but now my Fujitsu P7020 laptop running Windows XP refuses to connect to it regardless of which mode I put it in (WPA, WEP, no security, 802.11n/g, or 802.11g). The HTC Touch won’t connect to it either - it can’t even see the network. The AT&T Tilt locked up the Wireless Manager trying to connect to it, so I reset it. Trying to even remove the wireless network setting locks up the wireless manager on the Tilt. When I did manage to get it to connect to the Belkin router and prompt me for the WPA password, it would try to connect for a few seconds, then come back and show me a list of networks again. My Dell XPS M1330 can connect to the Belkin router if it’s in 802.11g/n mode, but not if it’s in 802.11g only mode. I’m in wireless hell.

The ultimate frustration here is that whenever I can’t get wireless working properly and I’m in desperate need of a connection, I always connect to a neighbour’s unsecured network called “default” - and almost every device can connect to it (the Tilt can’t however). I’m tempted to go knocking on some local doors to see who’s router it is, and ask if I can buy it - because clearly whatever old, unsecured hardware they’re using is superior to all the modern, expensive routers that I keep buying.

I received a phone call yesterday where the caller said he was from the Royal Bank of Canada (the bank I use) and they had a customer survey for me. I had a million things to do, but I asked how long it would take - I could spare a couple of minutes. He said the survey would take 10 to 13 minutes on average. I asked if there was some sort of incentive for doing the survey (maybe a month of no-fee banking?) and he sheepishly said no. I politely said that my time was worth something and declined to answer the survey. He seemed stunned that I wasn’t willing to give up 15 minutes of  my time (I tend to be rather…expressive when asked for my opinion) for nothing. I suspect that the majority of the people they get to answer these surveys are the kind of people who feel special when asked for their opinion - which would typically be the kind of person who’s not in any sort of leadership position at work or home life. I’d say even your average frazzled home-based mom with kids wouldn’t want to give up 15 minutes for no good reason. So who are the people who the Royal Bank is going to get their results from? Not a good cross-section of their customer base, that’s for sure.

If you’re doing a phone survey without any perks for the person answering the questions, it should be a short, under-two-minutes survey. If you want someone to give up 15 minutes of their time, give them something…ANYTHING…to make it worth their while.