The Miracle of two day delivery - NOT

When Congress removed the restriction that only the Federal Government could deliver mail within the US and the UPS, FedEx, Emery, DHL and others came into existence they initially only served businesses in the cities and close in environs.

Things were good.

They then expanded to cover people at home, and marketed to shippers to use them.

Things were good.

Two day delivery arrived.

Things were good - for them.

However, I find that two day delivery, or any rush delivery to a home address, is really useless unless you live a lifestyle out of the 1950s where someone is always home.

Order on Wednesday, shipped out that night.

You have to sign for it.

Thursday it arrives and you are not home so slip is left.

You get home after 5 PM Thursday and thus the package is already on the truck for the next day so cannot be held for pickup.

You get another note.

Weekend comes and goes and thus on Monday, sometime during the day, you leave work to get to their local facility and stand in line to get your 2 day next day delivery package.

So I always recommend never to ask for two day or next day delivery if you order ANYTHING on a Wednesday - it will never get to you till the following Monday anyway. Go Ground and save money. It will STILL arrive on the Following Monday / Tuesday anyway!

For packages you do not have to sign for, then they will leave it on your front door. Just hope no thief is cruising through your neighborhood and gets it - there is nothing to stop him and no proof that you did not get it. Then you have to file a claim to get your money back and STILL order it again.

Another recommendation is always request a signature for anything being delivered - it will take you two to 5 days longer to get it - but you will get it. Especially in dicey neighborhoods.

 

 

 

VITSA SP1 is Here - Ho Hum, Just like VISTA

I do not use VISTA daily - only in a test lab. However with identical hardware VISTA just runs slower - by design. It is trying to do SO much more in the security area, plus all the integration of other "features" that it has to constantly check on them for no matter if there or not, so it just will run slower since it uses up CPU cycles to allow these features to exist.

For the IT MANAGMENT people - it makes their life easier - it just shifts the time saved by these 20 people to letting the users waste more time by all the things they cannot do - and must call to the IT staff to do for them - and waste time relearning how to do THE SAME TASKS in a different way - without any real gains in efficiency in doing those tasks. There is no compelling program or OS feature that tells people "getting this new OS will make it easier to do this task now because of the OS."  A good example is when MS built into Explorer the ability to see thumbnails of images. That make things easier for people to work with images - I cannot think of a SINGLE feature in VISTA that makes it easier to do a TASK.

Things are invented to allow people to do tasks easier. VISTA, for users, is designed to look pretty.

VISTA is like having a pretty women deliver a watered down overpriced drink to a college guy on vacation -  it makes him feel good for a few minutes but leaves him with less money and not any happier than he was before.