There are a couple of easy scenarios where bringing someone in-house makes pretty clear sense.  The most obvious one is that if you can bring a person (or people) in-house full time for less than you spend on outsourcing. The other is that if you have a relatively complicated network (things like render farms and web server farms come to mind) where outsourcing isn’t all that practical. The other main reason why bringing your support in house is if you want someone on staff fully dedicated to only working on the IT for your business. 

If you have a smaller network whose primary users are essentially standard office users you really should be looking to see if outsourcing is a better fit.  When working as a consultant as both as a Sole Proprietor and as part of a break-fix consultancy I could support networks with 50 users relatively easily – especially when I had other technicians I could count on for assistance.  I think that a qualified in-house tech can likely support at least 100 users in a relatively ‘normal’ environment where a bulk of the users work primarily Microsoft Office and a couple of other line of business applications. 

It really comes down to cost vs. complexity vs. availability.  If you don’t mind spending $50k (and likely more) per year on a full time tech, if you have a large number users, or need someone every single day bringing someone in house might be for your business.  If not – go find a good MSP.  They’ll likely save you some money and should be able to take good care of your network.

Who your managed services provider is

Generally speaking, your managed services provider (MSP) is a pro-active IT support organization. Instead of simply reacting to every issue that arises they setup both their and your environments to try to put out the fires before they even have a chance to spark.  Through the use of monitoring tools and a pro-active thought process the goal of a managed services provider is to completely manage your IT infrastructure and minimize any downtime as much as possible. The big idea is that by keeping your staff more productive with reduced downtime they can be more efficient.

Most managed service providers have a standardized infrastructure that they roll-out to customers when they sign the contract.  Servers are updated or replaced, the network is documented, networking equipment upgraded when necessary, and monitoring tools are deployed.  Depending on the provider they may centralize things like domain names, Microsoft Exchange, firewalls, and/or your internet provider.  The goal with this model is to completely take over your IT so they can deal with any and all issues without having to reinvent the wheel every time.

Why managed services is a good fit

If you have a larger number of users (15-20+) and a couple of servers this is a model that should be investigated fully.  This model works very well if you are comfortable with having a static (or nearly static) charge for IT every month.  Under most plans there is a per user and/or per computer charge as well as other charges depending on what other services are being provided.  The benefit here is that nearly every computer problem you will run into will be covered so you won’t have the up and down cost.  In addition, it’s in the MSP’s best interest to reduce calls and outages as much as possible to conserve costs. This is where the strong infrastructure is vital.

Why managed services isn’t a good fit

Managed services will look more expensive on paper in many cases.  In fact, it might cost more dollars on the bottom line which can easily send decision makers running in the other direction.  If your network is under 10 users it might be a stretch, and certainly if you have fewer than five users.  It might be worth checking out but don’t be surprised to have some sticker shock.  Also, one of the biggest drawbacks of this model is that some MSPs integrate their network so tightly with the customer network it would be a major cost to switch IT providers should the relationship ever go south.  My concern with this is that it might become cost prohibitive to leave the MSP. There is a tough balance here as the MSP can make the argument that they need to tightly integrate the networks together so they can provide better service.  In many cases this is true but there is definitely a double edged feel to it.  Just make sure you know what you’re getting into.

A couple of other points

There are many shops that call themselves Managed Service Provders but they’re really Break-Fixers calling themselves MSPs.  Some will give you a certain number of support hours per month, but won’t necessarily monitor your servers and overall network health.  Some might not upgrade your infrastructure to conserve their costs even though it may need it badly.  Make sure that you understand what the MSP will be doing to integrate your network into their management solution.

It is also a good idea to pick a MSP that only does MSP work rather than a shop that does Break-Fix and dabbles in MSP.  One of the trends in the Small Business IT space has been to migrate customers from the break-fix model to the MSP model. In most cases it makes good business sense for both the IT provider and for most of their customers.  The problem that some IT providers don’t finish this process by firing their customers that won’t switch models. I’ve seen it where the IT provider has one foot on each side of the line as a permanent way of doing business which makes it hard to turn away from the extra hours from the BF clients.  It’s tough to balance being pro-active with a subset of clients and completely reactive to a different subset.  The clients with the biggest issues make the most noise and most likely will get more immediate attention when issues arise.  I’ll let you decide on who is likely to make the most noise. . .  The exception here is that if your provider is switching their existing client base over and will eventually get rid of ALL OF the remaining BF clients that refuse to switch models.

My Recommendation

If the cost is the primary concern and you previously used a provider that used the break-fix model try this: Take what you spent last year on your IT support.  Then assume you’ll have either a small-mid sized project or outage that requires 20 additional hours from your IT provider.  Also, account for lost productivity and/or loss of data if you have a major outage. Add those numbers together and see how it matches up.

It’s vital that you learn as much about your IT provider as possible when you’re making your decision.  Picking the wrong option could prove very costly.  As a business decision maker you need to understand your IT needs from your business requirements and make sure your IT provider can address your concerns.  Ideally they’d bring some additional information and reasonable recommendations in your discovery/prospecting meetings.  It’s not your job to know the technology, but it is your job to protect your business and make sure that you’re making the right choice.

Who the break-fixers are:

I define break-fix (BF) as a consultancy with a couple of technicians or perhaps more that primarily focus on waiting for customers to call them when things are broken in addition to project work.  While many SP consultancies also operate in this model (much like I did) I am making the distinction between the two that BF consultancies have more than one tech.  The addition of a second tech really helps the scale issues I mentioned in my previous post.

Normally, the break fix shop has a sales person or two in addition to the techs which allows the techs to keep focused on the customer support and projects while the sales team works on generating leads.  The techs are responsible for billing time, proposing new projects for existing clients, and helping the sales team with proposals.

Why they’re a good fit

Break fix shops are a good fit for small-mid sized customers.  Many of the scale issues I mentioned as a downside for the Sole Proprietors go away as just having two or three techs allows several problems to be fixed at once. An additional benefit of having multiple techs is that they are able to specialize in certain aspects of technology which allows them to provide better technical services to their clients without requiring everybody to be an expert on everything.  This makes it much more likely that they can handle more complicated networks, larger user bases, and frankly a much larger customer base.

This model is especially beneficial to clients that don’t mind occasional expenses (sometimes major depending on the size of outage or project) but don’t want a fixed monthly cost.  There are many times when having a fixed monthly cost makes more sense, but I ran into many clients and prospects in my time that a fixed cost wouldn’t work for them for one reason or another.

Why they’re perhaps not a good fit

This method is much more of a firefighter type of way to work your IT – waiting for bad stuff to happen and then your IT provider comes in to put the fire out.  It’s harder to be pro-active in this environment as between projects and fire fighting there isn’t much time to do the proactive steps that really should be done.  I also found that it was harder to justify pro-active steps to a customer when bills got questioned.  I’m good at putting out fires, but I’d much rather spend my time making sure that the fires didn’t happen in the first place. Unfortunately, billing a customer for reviewing logs and checking the health of their network, servers, and workstations doesn’t always go over well. The thing that goes over worse is the fact that putting out fires is also normally expensive – more expensive than being proactive by a long shot.  Good customers understand this when it’s explained to them, but there are many that simply don’t until they get bit by an outage and get a couple thousand dollar bill.

The whole billable time thing is the other issue.  Outages generate lots of billable time, spyware creates a lot of billable time, and projects create a lot of billable time. Lots of billable time leads to large bills and those bills to customers generate issues.  In addition, techs are praised and in many instances get bigger bonuses when they bill more.  This method is very similar to law firms or other professional services firms where the associates are all trying to generate more time to bill.

In the IT industry constant long hours can easily lead to burnout.  When techs try to squeeze in as much billable time in a given month to bump their bonuses burnout creates itself.  When I was having a good month I might work an extra 10 or 15 hours per week in the evenings or weekends which grew old.  The problem is that once you get used to doing this it’s hard to stop because your clients come to expect it. When techs grind out 50-60 hour weeks and are consistently billing 30-40 hours per week they tend to get tired of it. Burnout leads to turnover. If they’re not part of the ownership or have no potential to earn their way into ownership you can only grind for so long.  I can and am willing to grind out as much billable time as possible but not if my name is never going to be on the door, and frankly that’s precisely why I’m not working at a BF shop any longer.  I billed a lot of time, and could have easily done more if there was a light at the end of the tunnel. My personal rant aside, I really grew my skills in this model so it wasn’t all bad.

My Recommendation

My recommendation is this: In a perfect world, your IT support would be more pro-active than reactive. If you can work this model with either Sole Proprietor or a larger shop and be pro-active more power to you.  The best fit for this model is if you have just a handful of users as it’s conceivable that you could go a month or two without any IT expense. Just make sure you have someone internally monitoring your backups.  Honestly though, if you have more than 10-15 users you should look for a fully managed solution, you’ll have less downtime which will lead to more productive workers.

Who your sole proprietor is:

Your sole proprietor is usually one of several things: he/she is currently unemployed and is likely still looking for a new job, working as a consultant on the side of a regular job, or simply has decided to strike out by themselves to make a run at being self employed.  The sole proprietor is usually a jack of all trades – they have to balance servers, workstations, networks, generating business, marketing, and the company finances to name a few things.  It was common for me to work at least 60 hours a week trying to keep my revenue up and clients happy.  As a consequence it’s easy for a SP to be stretched thin.  In my experience I was perhaps over-dedicated to serving my customers as I would handle calls, emails and trouble tickets nearly any hour of the day.  I’ve also met several other SPs that are very similar.  In this job market I also think there’s quite a few people out there that are picking up a few hours to help make ends meet.  I started in the middle scenario as I worked on the side of my regular job for extra cash and then transitioned it into my full time gig once I got laid off from the job I had been with for several years.  Ironically, they outsourced their IT and I was a casualty of that effort.

Why a SP is a good choice:

Choosing a SP is a good for your business if you want to deal with the same tech and decision maker every time.  Chances are that a SP will go out of their way to do everything they can to help.  Also, generally speaking, a SP will either have lower rates and/or will negotiate their rate a bit more than a larger organization.  I know that, especially early on in my business, I would cut my rate for projects if a customer asked – I didn’t want to (and frankly couldn’t afford to) lose the business.  As my business grew and I became more comfortable with how I fit in with customers and prospects I started to raise my rates.  That said, I was still a little bit cheaper than many of my competitors and had the discretion to adjust them if needed.

I think a sole proprietor is a great fit for smaller networks. If your business network is in the 1-10 computer range a SP very likely can handle nearly all of your needs.  If your network is larger than this it might be a good idea to ask your potential SP some questions as to their overall qualifications, other customer sizes and their general availability.  In my experience I could handle a many smaller networks, but the minute you add a 25-50 person network or two to the equation it starts to get a bit difficult to keep everyone happy.  There’s a slippery slope between over-extending yourself and trying to grow your customer base as a SP.  My technical skills grew greatly when I was a SP but there were times when I was definitely in the weeds when I was stretching my tech skills some.

Why a SP might not be a good choice:

Many of the reasons a SP is perhaps not a great choice relate to scale – your SP is a single tech and only has a certain amount of time in a day to work on customer issues.  If the tech is already working on a customer issue across town, is sick, on vacation (though not terribly likely), or is generally unavailable they may not be available to handle your issues immediately which could be frustrating if you’re in a bind.

Most of the issues I experienced around this was for my larger clients.  Since they were larger, they had more users which led to two different types of scale issues that I found frustrating.  The first was emergencies – an emergency at a larger organization will likely result in more panicky phone calls and will have a larger impact on your day.  Additionally, my larger customers typically had more frequent smaller issues that required more calls for support which was a challenge time wise.  This also happened with smaller customers but it was much more apparent in my larger customers.

The other reason why a SP might not be a good choice (and this weighs a little more heavily on true Sole Proprietors than a single tech with support staff) is that there is a higher than average chance that your tech may just disappear.  I landed many new customers who found me when their previous technician either disappeared or went back to a full-time job and didn’t have time to help them any longer.  As it turns out I disappeared as well, though I did find another company and introduced them to as many of my customers as I could before I left.  Most of my customers were very appreciative.

My recommendation:

I think hiring a SP is a great way to get quality support for your organization as clearly I helped support my family for a few years as one.  I think you need to make sure you know your SP a bit before giving them full reign over your network.  How many customers they have, how big their average customer is, what their general availability is, if they’re planning on being around for awhile (not looking for a job), and do they have any backup in case of emergency would be good points to address with them.  It’s also a good idea to make sure that the key points of your IT infrastructure are addressed as early as possible to build a good foundation for their role in your organization.  You can read my key points in my previous post here.

Lastly, it’s a good sign if your SP has a contract for you to sign.  As I grew my business I made my customers sign an agreement that essentially laid out several things such as rates, terms on payment, my availability, and a few other points.  It wasn’t an exclusivity type of contract, but it laid out what our relationship would be.  I found that to be especially helpful as if I was competing against another company just having this made me look a little more organized than some of my competition. 

This post will detail what I feel are the most important items that you need to address with your small business network.  If your current IT provider doesn’t do this for you it may be time to ask them why.  In future small business IT articles I’ll detail some of the different IT support options available.  I’ve been involved with several small business IT providers and have seen many of the positives and negatives of each scenario. Also, if you have an in-house resource these items should already be addressed.  If not, your IT person has some work to do.

Onto the issues:

Is your data backed up and can you restore it from your backup?

Do you even know how much data you have?  Do you know where your data is?  What would happen to your business if you lost your files; what would happen if you, one of your employees, or all of your employees lost their email; what if you lost your customer data; or what would happen if you lost your accounting data?  There are many MANY ways you can backup your data and for each network there are easily at least a handful of good options.  Now that you’ve thought about those pleasant nuggets and have your data backed up somewhere can you restore and access it again?  Backed up data is no good if you cannot restore it.  Make sure your IT provider can address both backing up and restoring your data.

So, you have your backup, what happens if the building burns down?

You’ve taken steps to make sure you have your backup and you can restore said backup – what happens if the building burns down, thieves steal your computers, or some freak natural disaster destroys your building?  You took that backup off-site didn’t you?  Any qualified IT support person will help you plan for this.  It’s always easier to replace hardware that was destroyed or stolen than it is to re-create your data.  In fact, if you don’t have your backup off-site and you do lose it for some reason it’s not unreasonable to think that your business might be done.  Shut the doors and send your customers elsewhere.  Customers will understand a disruption if a disaster does happen but they won’t be so understanding if you can’t help them when you are back up and running.  If you don’t have an off-site backup plan, get one – now.

Do you have your network documented?

There has always been a certain subset of IT workers that keep everything in their head. They may make excuses as to why they haven’t written things down, but an underlying reason frequently is to create a sense of job security.  If your consultant won’t provide you documentation of your network you have to start wondering if it might be time to look elsewhere.  Here’s the thing, they shouldn’t provide it for free.  In other words, expect to pay for it – probably 4-5 hours worth on average.  Building documentation on any computer network is not a trivial process, and doing it right takes some time.  When I was a consultant I tried very hard to document each of my client networks at least for myself.  I couldn’t keep everything in my head as it’s easy to forget details here and there.  The key here was that unless my client asked me to provide said documentation for them I kept it on my end.  If they asked me to provide this document for them I had my own process in which I fully fleshed it out and handed over a binder with a full write-up of their network.  Every business that has more than a couple of computers should really have a good set of documentation.  This is without exception.  If you ever have an IT crisis having this valuable information at hand can reduce (or eliminate) downtime, and if you ever need to change IT providers this documentation will make it MUCH easier to do so.  In addition, should your building get destroyed or someone steals your equipment you can also use this documentation to assist with replacing your hardware.  Oh, and one last thing – keep your documentation safe (don’t just leave it laying around) and keep a copy off-site.  I will go more in depth on documentation in a later post.

Is your network secure?

Do you have customer data on your network?  Do you have financial data for your company (and possibly customer financial data depending on your business) on your network? Do you have or want wireless?  Do you want remote access?  If you answered yes to any of these questions you really need to make sure your network is secure.  This is especially true if you have wireless or remote access as both open potential direct holes to the internet.  Your network security should address your firewall(s), VPN, wireless, anti-virus protection, anti-malware protection, and file permissions at the minimum.  All of this information should also be in your network documentation.  If it’s not – get it in there now.

These are my top four issues that I would address with any of my customers – they are critical to running your business’ IT infrastructure.  Even if you have just a couple of computers they’re important, and possibly even more important since you may not have a server to centralize your data storage.  If you think I missed a critical point please let me know.  I will definitely talk more about these topics more in the future but this is a good place to start.

As part of being unemployed for a few weeks I’ve started writing some blog posts as it relates to IT and am at least sort of proud of the work. I am in the process of taking a second pass through the first few articles. I plan to start posting these articles next week. My goal is to post three articles per week for the foreseeable future. I’m trying to get at least a week or two ahead immediately as I’m prone to occasional bouts of procrastination.

I hope you find my articles useful. Please let me know if you do, don’t or have other suggestions or comments.

Thanks.

The last couple of years I’ve played primarily on ESPN Leagues and found their live scoring on the web to be decent, and their mobile website live scoring was also done well.  My primary reason for liking the ESPN way of doing things was that they had free live scoring when others charged for live stats.

This year ESPN released an iPhone/iPod Touch application on Apple’s App Store so I thought I’d give it a spin.  The first thing to notice is that the price of the application was pretty steep: $4.99 for something you can get basically for free by using their mobile website.  I figured it was probably worth it so I plunked down my $5 and downloaded it.  After entering my ESPN username and password it brought up my teams as expected (One thing to note is that you must use your ESPN username and password – don’t use your email address as it won’t work).  The interface was pretty intuitive and easy to navigate.  On the home screen in addition to viewing your teams you also have the options of myFantasyCast, NFL Scores and Fantasy News.  The best option here if it’s gametime is to use the myFantasyCast as you can quickly cycle between your teams which is a pretty handy feature.  The NFL Scores is exactly what you’d expect and looks pretty similar to the ESPN ScoreCenter App.  The Fantasy News section is basically an aggregate of the news stories relating to Fantasy Football from ESPN.

Managing Your Team(s)

In contrast to the mobile website managing your rosters in the app is definitely smoother.  You can also view the breaking fantasy news and player cards very quickly and easily.  Overall, managing your team vs the mobile website definitely goes to the app.

Scoreboard/Standings/Players/Schedule

This is another easy win for the App – it’s just more refined than the website though provides the same basic information.

Message Board/League Settings

These are features not even provided on the mobile website.  If your league uses the message board with any frequency this would be a feature that is handy to have.  Also, the ability to see the rules of the league on your device might also prove useful.

Activity Feed

This is a cool feature that you can view Player Updates, Transactions and League Manager actions.  I find that I check this at least a couple of times per week to see quickly what’s going on in my leagues.

The Ads

BY FAR THE WORST THING about the ESPN Fantasy Football app is in addition to the $4.99 they present you with ads in the software. The accepted convention for ads in iPhone software is that if the app is free ads are just fine.  When you charge for the app the ads should go away.  Apparently, ESPN didn’t get the memo. The ads are pretty annoying – they appear in the upper right hand corner with a 1″x1″ square when there isn’t data up there (for example on the front page) and then in the screens like the roster, scoreboard, etc it’s a small banner on the bottom of the screen just above their bottom line crawl.  It’s really REALLY stupid that they have ads at all, it’s the sort of double-dip that you would not expect from the Worldwide Leader.  I hope they fix that soon, but there is no indication that they’ll be removed at this time.  Emails to ESPN’s customer service have gone unreturned and through an exchange via Twitter they were non-commital at best.

The Service

When I tried to check my scores on opening Sunday the service was down on and off for the entire first game.  They were pretty responsive to tweets as far as the status when I asked what was going on.  Once the service returned it worked very well and was a good couch companion. We’ll have to see how week two goes as if it continues to go down when the program is actually most useful it will easily be a deal breaker.

Notifications

While the program has “push” notifications it isn’t really timely – it just updates you hourly based on scores, Injury updates and Start/Bench alerts which pretty  much just tells you if your opponent changed their lineup.  The feature isn’t all that useful to be honest.

Features That Need to be Added

I would love to see detailed stats for players in the scoreboard as it just gives you the total number of points for each player.  Having those stats available even if you just clicked on any specific player would be quite helpful.  As it stands, you have to go to the NFL scores section and into each game to check on the actual stats.

The other thing to add would be a push notification to notify you when your players (and possibly your opponent’s players) do something significant (scores, fumbles, or other noteworthy actions during the game).

Conclusion

The application is pretty useful if you are a ESPN Fantasy Football user – even with the $4.99 + ads.  Either the ads should go away or the cost of the application should be free.  It also seems like they’re going to charge you a yearly fee for this application which seems a bit unreasonable, but that is very much subject to change so we’ll have to wait and see.  I’d also pay attention to see if the service goes down again on Sunday – the service needs to work through the whole weekend without outages.

My suggestion is to check and see if the mobile website gets you the information you want before, during and after the games.  If you find yourself wanting more I’d check out the ESPN app.  Also, if you’re a Yahoo! fantasy football player their app is free and apparently excellent.  Perhaps I’ll go sign up for a Yahoo! fantasy football account and see how that app compares.  Maybe this is the year Yahoo! catches and passes ESPN…

I hate to say it but the honeymoon is over. I now hate the damn thing. No, it’s not because it has become addictive (which it has). It’s not because I wish I had an iPhone (which I do but only a little bit). No, it’s because all it can sucessfully do any longer is crash. It crashes when syncing music, it crashes when playing games, and now it crashes when trying to factory reset the thing.

First of all, I define this crash as the device shuts off and you have to push and hold the home and powe/sleep button. Then you wait about five minutes and normally it comes back up. It has always crashed on occasion while playing games but not enough to make me concerned, though it was easily enough to make me annoyed when I was in the middle of a game or some other super important task.

Then in rapid succession I installed iPhone OS 3 and SimCity and it’s been a rapid decline into iPod Touch hell ever since. My once beloved device stopped being its normal useful and fun self. SimCity crashed with such regularity only procrastination along with me wanting to troubleshoot this out has kept me from requesting a refund. I figured that since I could almost guarantee a crash in SimCity it would be a good tool to see if whatever was causing the crashes was fixed by my troubleshooting.

I performed a full restore from factory settings, installed only SimCity and CRASH. When I tried to uninstall SimCity it didn’t help at all. in fact it started to crash regularily even during syncs. I figured, no problem, do another restore, and I’d be all set; except it started crashing during the restore process. I’m now stuck with an iPod that can’t even make it through a factory reset without crashing. So, I have a $300 paperweight for the moment and am not too happy about it. I resigned myself to making an appointment with the arrogantly named Genius bar.

My guess is that one of the memory modules is having a problem reading, writing or both. Let’s see if Apple lives up to their normally praise worthy support reviews. Ideally they’d just swap out a brand new 16gb iPod in the store but I won’t be holding my breath on this one.

At least I can borrow my wife’s pink Nano for a couple of days. I think I’m comfortable enough in my manhood for that.

********* Update 7/5 *********

Still crashes when I try to sync my music – every time. Podcasts synced okay but I will probably just use the pink nano for audio for a few days until my replacement comes in. Seems odd that it crashes when syncing. I’ve been able to load a few apps but nothing that will tax it’s little malfunctioning brain.

********* Update 7/5 *********

Just got back from the Apple Store and they were able to get the iPod back to a usable state but they’re going to replace it anyway because there’s dust between the screen and glass. I have a feeling that the guy at the GB didn’t think it was going to remain crash free. Just have to wait a couple of days now.

********* Update 7/7 **********

Replacement iPod received.  Seems to work fine.  Extensive testing to commence.

********* Update 8/1 **********

Replacement iPod still working fine, and I was impressed with Apple’s customer service.  Hopefully it doesn’t break again until I’m ready to buy a new one

Mountain Dew

I tried the Mountain Dew first, and it’s pretty good. I drink Dew all the time so I’m pretty familiar with its taste. The first thing I noticed that the taste didn’t ‘bite’ as much as the standard Dew – it was just a little bit muted. This wasn’t a bad thing though, it was just something I noticed.

Overall, the taste was very similar to the standard Mountain Dew which is a good thing.  I suspect that’s what they were going for though and as I have a few more I may revise my impressions of it but overall it’s a worthy replacement.

Pepsi

Let me start off with saying that I’m a Coke guy.  I’ve never been a huge fan of Pepsi at all.  If the choices are Pepsi or water I would almost always choose water.  I was curious to the taste of Pepsi Throwback so I picked up a couple of bottles of it along with the Dew.  I was pretty impressed by the change – it’s not wildly different but it certainly tastes better than standard Pepsi to me.  If this was the regular formula for Pepsi I would probably not switch from Coke but it would make it where I would order a Pepsi from time to time.

Overall

Overall, if the Throwback versions are truly less unhealthy as opposed to the high fructose corn syrup options I would definitely support replacing both the standard versions with the natural sugar versions.  I suspect though, that the health impact is very small and I wouldn’t be surprised if the Throwback versions are more expensive than the standard variety.

I’d say based on taste alone I would support a change to the Throwback for Pepsi wholeheartedly. I’m not as convinced about Mountain Dew, though I have a few bottles left so reserve my right to change my opinion in either direction there.  I think my biggest problem here is that I’ve been drinking Mountain Dew for so long any variance to the flavor takes a bit to fully get used to.

I hear that Coke with sugar is MUCH better than standard Coke.  I hope that they release that at some point as I’d definitely give that a shot.

On a side note, if anyone has any tips on how to stop drinking pop alltogether I’m all ears.

The device is about as perfect as a mobile device as one could hope for.  It does pretty much everything I could ask for.  The browser is good, the app store is a fun diversion with many fun and interesting apps, the music plays great, and the video quality is second to none in a portable device this small. 

The Battery

I am yet to run the battery all the way down and I’ve used and used and used it.  I routinely listen to podcasts 5-6 hours per day and the battery barely moves.  I’ve watched a couple of hours of video and barely even had power drop to half way.  The closest I got to running the battery down was when I was on a weekend trip.  I listened to music for a couple of hours on the way up, watched a couple of hours of video, surfed the net and checked mail all day, and listened to music all the way home again.  After all that, the battery still had about 40% of juice left. 

The Screen

The screen is beautiful.  It’s amazing how such a small screen can look so nice. The touching isn’t as precise as using a stylus, but it’s a tradeoff that I’m willing to accept. 

The Keyboard

This is where I thought I would grumble extensively though I’ve been pretty pleasantly surprised.  I’ve been thumb typing for pushing 7 years now as I had one of the original Blackberry devices that was the pager style.  I’ve always preferred the tactile feedback. I still prefer the “real” keyboard but as far as a screen keyboard I don’t think I could find much better.  Because you’re tapping the screen with your fingers (or thumbs in my case) you will likely make a ton of mistakes.  The good thing is that for most obvious ones the iPod will fix on the fly.  I try not to write anything long-form on it though as it would get old REAL fast.

The Speaker

The built in speaker (new to the second generation touch’s) is a very welcome addition.  I have wanted a built in speaker for my iPod since my very first one.  While this speaker isn’t  the best it does exactly what I want it to do – play podcasts.  I don’t expect much from it music-wise but for listening to spoken audio it does a pretty decent job.  I listen to podcasts and audiobooks about 75-80% of the time.  It’s great being able to start the day with listening to The Best of Mike and Mike while getting dressed.  It’s also great when I’m working and don’t want to wear headphones.  It’s not going to fill a room with sound but it easily serves my requirements.

The other stuff (Wireless, Audio, etc)

I’m not going to spend much time on the audio over headphones as it’s excellent as always.  I’m not an audiophile and I find the standard iPod headphones to be just fine.

I’m having some wireless issues, though they appear to be just at home as I’ve not had issues while out and about.  Basically, what happens is that my iPod still stays connected to my wireless access point but it won’t pass traffic.  I have a ping utility that when I’m having issues I can’t ping by name or IP address.  It’s annoying, really annoying but I haven’t dug too deeply into it.  If I figure it out I’ll make a follow up post on the off chance anyone has a similar issue.

Gripes

Aside from my keyboard and wireless annoyances I do have a couple of things that bug me about the device.  The biggest thing that bugged me at first was that the headphone jack is on the bottom.  For most users it probably isn’t a big deal, but the mount I use in my car required me to drill a hole in order to get it to work in the mount.  Another car related item – with my old iPod I could easily pause it with just hitting the pause button.  With this iPod I have to hit the home button, slide my finger across the screen and then hit the pause area on the screen.  It requires three times the interaction to pause it.  Those are the main gripes – neither are show stoppers by any stretch.

Overall

I don’t think I could come up with a better portable device for surfing the web, listening to podcasts or music, watching videos and playing causal games on.  It does all very VERY well, and I certainly recommend anyone considering a portable music device to check this thing out.  The price tag could push a few away though – $229 for the 8gb, $299 for the 16gb, and an overpriced $399 for the 32gb.