Filed under: Cellphones, Misc. Gadgets, Household

We already know that a solid chunk of Britons use mobile internet while in the throes of passion, and now Captain Obvious (today known as Nokia) has awkwardly landed to tell the world that Americans do too. A recent survey, which we can only imagine was absolutely thrilling to conduct, found that some 53% of working Americans “have been interrupted by a work-related phone call or e-mail while in the bathroom.” Furthermore, some 23% have allowed a call / e-mail to interrupt them while on a date, but that’s probably because 59% of those polled never, ever turn off their mobile. Just think — the next time your buddy answers with a hint of stress in his / her voice, there’s a statistically significant chance that you’re barging in on some seriously personal business.

[Image courtesy of fletchy182]

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Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless

Last summer, Sprint was the laughing stock of the major US carriers in terms of customer service. Fast forward 15 months, and the very same carrier is now sitting atop the pile. A recent report compiled by Pali Research has found that Sprint’s wireless customer care response times were best in class, and just 2.5 years ago in its first survey, Sprint was dead last. The carrier answered a whopping 91% of calls that researchers placed to the care center in under 30 seconds, while 99% of calls were answered within 2 minutes. If you’re curious how the other guys did, try this: Verizon grabbed the silver with 85%, T-Mobile followed with 43% and AT&T took home the award of shame with just 33% of test calls answered within half a minute. So, the real question is: have you Sprint customers noticed an uptick in service levels? And are you AT&T subscribers growing increasingly impatient?

[Via phoneArena]

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Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Hmm, what have we here? A recent Microsoft survey sent out to select users has us wondering what on Earth the mega-corp is planning to do next, and judging by the looks of things, it has everything to do with Instant On. We’ve seen a number of these lightning-fast boot applications, with the most recent being ASUS’ Splashtop OS and the iteration loaded onto Dell’s freshest Latitudes. The survey makes mention that the “Instant On experience is different from ‘Full Windows’ because it limits what activities you can do and what applications you have access to.” The survey also asks about which applications would be most important to have quick access to, and it very plainly states that in this “scenario,” your PC would “be usable in eight seconds.” So, is Instant On coming to Windows? Who knows — but it’s clear someone at Redmond is giving it some thought.

[Thanks, Anonymous]

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Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Hold your horses, vaquero. Let’s not blow this all out of proportion here. While it’s no secret that a certain amount of Vista purchasers are utilizing that “downgrade to XP” option to its fullest extent, a small (and let us emphasize “small”) collection of data suggests that some 35% of “mainly enterprise-class users” have opted for XP over Vista on their newly-purchased rig. By scouring data from the 3,000 or so members feeding information to the InfoWorld Windows Sentinel tool, the site found that just over 1 in 3 users had defected to Microsoft’s previous OS. Granted, the tool cannot take into account Linux users or even the “Hackintosh crowd,” though as Randall Kennedy puts it, 35% is “still a huge percentage, and way out of proportion for even the dramatically unpopular Windows Vista.”

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Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Hold your horses, vaquero. Let’s not blow this all out of proportion here. While it’s no secret that a certain amount of Vista purchasers are utilizing that “downgrade to XP” option to its fullest extent, a small (and let us emphasize “small”) collection of data suggests that some 35% of “mainly enterprise-class users” have opted for XP over Vista on their newly-purchased rig. By scouring data from the 3,000 or so members feeding information to the InfoWorld Windows Sentinel tool, the site found that just over 1 in 3 users had defected to Microsoft’s previous OS. Granted, the tool cannot take into account Linux users or even the “Hackintosh crowd,” though as Randall Kennedy puts it, 35% is “still a huge percentage, and way out of proportion for even the dramatically unpopular Windows Vista.”

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Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

Buried under predictions that 2012 will bring dominance for Blu-ray over DVD and breaking news that the PS3 just may have had a hand in winning the format war the Entertainment Merchant’s Association 2008 Annual Report on the Home Entertainment Industry holds survey results showing 87% of PS3 owners reported they watch Blu-ray movies on their console. That’s a stark contrast to last year’s NPD survey indicating 60% of owners didn’t even know it played them. We don’t know what’s behind the jump, be it better marketing/consumer education, or something wrong with how one the surveys were conducted. You can mull that one over during the fast money round while also peeping results that say 22% of HDTV owners think they’re watching HD programming, but in fact are not — not like we haven’t heard that before.

[Via PS3 Fanboy]

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Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

digg_url = ‘http://digg.com/tech_news/Worldwide_PCs_in_use_surpass_1_billion’; So, we hear that Planet Earth is home to four billion phone lines. Now it can claim to house over one billion installed PCs — what do those neighboring planets have on that, huh? According to research firm Gartner, the number of “installed PCs worldwide has surpassed 1 billion units,” and it estimates that said figure is growing at around 12-percent annually. Should this trend continue, we’ll be reporting on 2 billion sometime during 2014. It should be noted that this figure accounts for computers in use rather than units shipped, and while the current ratio remains slanted towards mature markets, Gartner expects emerging markets to (expectedly) account for a larger share as we climb to 2 billion. Unsurprisingly, the firm also suggests that around 180 million PCs will be replaced this year, with around 35 million of those hitting landfills “with little or no regard for their toxic content.” Kind of puts a damper on things, wouldn’t you say?

[Via Reuters, image courtesy of Wikimedia]

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Hey you — yeah, you. The one reading this here gadget site. You know what? You’re a jerk. A complete kneebiter. That’s the conclusion of a recent study conducted by Mindset Media and Nielsen Research, which evaluated the “mindsets” of 25,000 American adults and found that technology fans scored high on such traits as leadership, “dynamism” and assertiveness, but had low marks in modesty and could be perceived as arrogant and conceited by others. That’s fine by us — we’re not going to turn down leadership for being well-liked, after all — but we’ve got a feeling those survey results are going to change as soon as someone at Nielsen needs his or her printer drivers updated. Obligatory Nick Burns video after the break.

[Thanks, Benjamin; hoodie from ThinkGeek]

Continue reading Study finds that we’re all arrogant jerks, can probably fix its own damn iPod next time

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Filed under: Cellphones

According to a recent, sensational survey from Samsung Mobile, 61 percent of lazy, distracted, and impossibly ignorant cellphone users over the age 18 say they would be comfortable casting their vote for President of the United States via a text message. Meanwhile, the totally serious and meaningful survey found that eight in ten (or 80 percent) of teens under the legal voting age would use their mobile devices to cast a ballot in the election. Additionally, Samsung Mobile discovered that 90 percent of cellphone users would like an ice cream cone, while another 87 percent would like an ice cream cone only after eating a quarter-pounder with cheese. Soon Samsung Mobile hopes to determine what percentage, if any, of the people surveyed know who is running for the office of president.

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Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

Apparently, video is all the rage these days. Just ask the folks who received a survey from Microsoft about services which may or may not be coming to the Zune. It’s possible your heart might skip a beat when you read questions like, “I would rather download a movies from an online service than buy a DVD,” or, “My friends and I regularly send each other links to online videos.” Though the question, “I’m willing to carry a larger MP3 player if it improves the quality of the display,” could just be suggesting a new Zune-XXXL is on the way. Regardless of what it you take away from these cryptic messages, remember one thing: just like that Netflix survey, this may not mean anything at all.

[Thanks, Ducttape38]

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Filed under: Displays, HDTV, Home Entertainment

Although Circuity City has claimed that its employees are trained and well equipped to handle any questions you may have concerning the digital TV transition, we’d highly recommend taking any advice sales pitches you receive in-store with a sizable spoonful of salt. According to new data from MassPIRG, sales clerks at Best Buy, Circuit City, RadioShack, Target and Wal-Mart “routinely gave inaccurate information about digital TV converter boxes and the government coupon program” when questioned by undercover researchers. Rather than get into what schemes were used (hint: buying a new set was often suggested over picking up an el cheapo converter), here’s an overview of the facts. First off, you won’t even be affected by the cutover if you receive your local broadcast stations via any means other than over-the-air. Secondly, all that’s needed to convert digital OTA signals to signals that your analog set can digest is a (relatively) inexpensive converter box. Lastly, we wouldn’t even recommend paying full price for said box — you know, considering that the government’s handing out $40 coupons to anyone who signs up here. So yeah, next time you catch some young buck trying to push that pricey HDTV rather than actually help you out, feel free to put him / her in their place.

[Via Electronic House, image courtesy of StarBulletin]

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Filed under: Cellphones

We know it’s probably going to be pretty hard to believe this, but according to a recent survey of mobile phone users, Palm ranks absolutely last in customer satisfaction. If you believe what the folks at ChangeWave Research have to say (and the 4,182 people they questioned), only 30-percent of Palm users reported being “very satisfied” with their device, while companies like Apple and RIM garnered 72-percent and 55-percent, respectively. Of course, considering current trends with the company, and the fact that it’s just started paying out to users for repeated repairs on devices, this doesn’t come as much shock. The report demonstrates that users are moving to smartphones at an alarming rate — but with rankings like this, they’re probably avoiding Palm devices. Guys, it might take a little more than Bono to fix this mess.

Update: Our friends at Palm contacted us with some supplemental information which they wanted to get across concerning this research and related studies. According to them, two separate, third-party firms (Satmetrix and Russell Research) conducted studies which came to the opposite conclusion of ChangeWave’s work. In their words: “The Satmetrix survey found that 65-percent of respondents rated their overall satisfaction with Palm as an 8-10 out of 10. Also, the Russell Research study found that 56-percent of respondents were either “very satisfied” or “extremely satisfied” with their Palm smartphone device.”

[Via Palm Infocenter]

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Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

In today’s episode of “no surprises here,” we look at a recent study published by Piper Jaffray & Company which attempts to take an intimate look inside the minds of high schoolers across the US. As you’d probably expect, none of the results were all that shocking. When asked about MP3 players, some 82-percent of those that already owned some form of DAP stated that it was an iPod, which was slightly up from last fall. Additionally, 64-percent of those surveyed admitted to downloading music illegally, which may actually be an (ever-so-slightly) positive figure considering that the percentage actually dropped from 72-percent in 2006. As for the iPhone, just 3-percent of students claimed that they owned one, but nearly 10-percent stated that they were looking to pick one up “within the next six months.”

[Via CNET, image courtesy of MSN]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Digital Cameras, Misc. Gadgets

We’ve seen ways in which quite a few marketers earned their bonus, but the bright lad (or dame) who dreamed this one up deserves a serious promotion. In what’s likely to be confirmed as the “world’s smallest questionnaire,” Olympus sent out slides with questions to valued high-end microscope customers in order to boost awareness and hopefully drum up more business. The survey was shipped just like any other specimen slide, and it reportedly drove up traffic to the firm’s website by around 24-percent. Click on for a closeup of the actual questions.

[Via OhGizmo]

Continue reading Olympus creates ‘world’s smallest questionnaire’ on specimen slide

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Cellphones

digg_url = ‘http://digg.com/apple/iPhone_triumphs_in_usability_study_as_if_we_didn_t_know’; We’ve given you your chance to choose a champion amongst the iPhone, HTC Touch and LG Prada, and while the latter wasn’t included at LG’s request, the other two were recently pit against Nokia’s N95 in a study of usability. The test was reportedly conducted by Perceptive Sciences, a Texas-based usability consulting firm, and relied on data from just ten individuals who had “never used any of the three devices.” The group was asked to “perform a series of tasks on each handset with quantifiable results, such as the time needed to find and use the on / off switch,” and when all was said and done, the iPhone managed to snag the gold. Of course, we wouldn’t take these results to be the bonafide truth, but if you’re interested in seeing what all the mobiles (and guinea pigs) went through before a winner was chosen, head on over to the read link.

[Via iLounge]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!