So I bought a new monitor from Staples the other day and, of course, the sales associate pushed the extended warranty on me. Sure, why the hell not, for $20 it covers dead pixels plus another year on top of the manufacturer’s warranty. But it was only after I paid that I heard, “be sure to register your product to activate your warranty.”

Great. A new task to do, and this was just after I finished filling out a paper form for the “Staples Rewards” program. You know, the other thing that gets pushed on you when you buy something. “Fill out this form, and you’ll get X% back the more you buy.” It doesn’t cost anything, and who knows, maybe I’ll shop at Staples again at some point, right? Either that or I’m just a push over in person.

So then I get home and go to the site given me for product/warranty registration. And wow, is it a color-coded, form filling good time! Click on the graphics above and below to experience it for yourself.

Since I got this far, I figured I may as well blog about it. Staples isn’t the only time I’ve seen this, but it’s the most recent. My suggestion to retailers: automate all of this and get your systems talking to each other, and you might just get more than the push over customers!

First, a quick recap on Radiohead’s place in the world of digital distribution experimentation:

In 2007, Radiohead decides to release their album “In Rainbows” exclusively on Radiohead.com with a unique “choose your own price” model. You pick how much you pay (free being an option), and you then can download the album. Next, comScore releases numbers from the Radiohead experiment, which suggest that most of us are cheapskates and freeloaders.

Then, Radiohead responds to comScore’s numbers and says they “no way reflect the true success of the project” even if also stating that the real numbers are “not for public consumption.” Finally, Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke calls the whole thing “a one-off response to a particular situation.”

Fast forward to 2011, and we have Radiohead’s latest distribution model: their new album The King of Limbs is only available on their site for a price of $9 and up (depending on which version you get). The release date was February 18, 2011. But even if I call myself a mild-to-moderate Radiohead fan (have — and have paid for — most their music), I haven’t yet listened to “The King of Limbs.” Here’s why:

My music purchase behavior starts with Zune (I am a Zune Pass subscriber, which means I can listen to most mainstream music via a monthly subscription fee), then goes to Amazon MP3, and then moves to iTunes as a last resort. Occassionly, a fourth location I’ll go for music purchasing is Amazon, for the physical product once known by many: the CD. However, that’s only in the case where the CD comes with something I can’t get with just the digital download.

So where does Radiohead land in my music purchase process? Nowhere. It’s not on Zune, Amazon MP3, or iTunes. And Amazon has the CD listed with a release date of March 29, 2011, but with no extras included.

So why don’t I just go to Radiohead’s site and pay them directly?

1. That’s not where I shop.
2. That’s not where I trust my credit card to be stored/used.
3. That’s not where automated services reside post-purchase to make sure my downloads automatically integrate into my two platforms for music organization (Zune & iTunes).

In short, the fulfillment experience is messy. That’s what I’d expect if I were to opt-in to pirating music. But if I’m paying? It needs to be seamless.

Radiohead should stick with what they know: music. And I’d rather make a statement by not purchasing Radiohead’s album, than make a statement by jumping through their hoops.

I’ve been lurking on Redfin for quite some time now. What is Redfin? It’s an online real estate company with an easy-to-use website that lets you search/filter/find real estate for sale. It also provides some cool analytics for looking at market trends. It’s nice and web2.0-like, what with custom RSS feeds and other pretty robust tools to make your real estate hunting super easy.

But that’s only part 1 of what they do. They’re also a discount brokerage firm that provides the full service you’d expect from a good agent representing you during a home purchase. The difference being that Redfin refunds you half of the buy-side real estate fee after closing. In our case, that’s going to be a check for $5,500.

We’ve been working with a Redfin agent for over a week now and have been pretty impressed. She did an excellent job representing us through the back-and-forth negotiation process as well as constantly keeping us up-to-date on which forms were needing to be signed by when, etc.

And now… we will be home owners in August! It’s hard to say how this whole ordeal might have gone down without Redfin. Oh wait, actually it’s pretty easy to say:

It would have been more difficult to find the place / compare it to market trends. It would have likely cost $5,500 more. And last but certainly not least, it would have not come with this kind of service (love the quick turnarounds with iPhone email responses during off hours).

For more info on Redfin, see TechCrunch’s extensive coverage.

Warner Brothers had come up with a slick promotion to get some much needed buzz around Blu-ray. My consensus: great idea but flawed execution. Here’s how it works (and why it won’t work):

You send in the cover art sleeve (keep the disc) and the UPC from your HD DVD movies. And for $4.95 per movie, plus $6.95 S&H per order, you’ll be sent back brand new Blu-ray copies of any movies you have in HD DVD. There are a few restrictions (only 1 copy per movie and only up to 25 movies per household) but nothing really that prohibitive.

At first glace, it seems like a decent offer, especially for someone like me who bought an HD DVD player with 10 movies included for under $200. But why is Warner Brothers trying to make anything off of this? At best, they should be giving away these movies under these circumstances (to owners of the HD DVD versions) and, at worst, they should sell them at cost (which is likely quite a bit less than $5 per disc). Here’s why:

I’ve been interested in Blu-ray for sometime now. And I have blogged about my HD DVD decision mistake quite a bit along with my interest in eventually switching to Blu-ray. That is, if the format wars of online movie distribution don’t get resolved first. So any incentive to do this (like this one from Warner Bros.) gets me interested.

But I would go out and buy (or order via Amazon) a Blu-ray player right now — on the spot — if this offer were closer to pocket change. As it is, it’s still a significant cost to switch to Blu-ray (albeit at a lower cost than yesterday) with this extra $60 needed.

And me, combined with the much larger volume of switchers if this were free, being a Blu-ray customer for the next who knows how many years, with a Blu-ray Netflix account, is worth more to Warner Bros. than the short term $60. Actually, they’d get much less than $60, since only some of my movies are Warner Bros. which ties into the other reason this won’t work well.

Part 2 of the failed execution is not making this a much bigger deal by joining forces with Paramount and Universal and having them offer the same thing. If these companies really want Blu-ray to take off, these are the kinds of promotions they’re gonna have to start doing together.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still thinking about making the switch. But it’s not the impulsive, easy decision it should be (for me, and anyone else who made the bad HD DVD discretionary purchase and is not thinking of discretionary spending in a bad economy) for this to really help Warner Bros. in the long run.

My barometer for Blu-ray player pricing (the Amazon Blu-ray store) tells me that most players can’t get under the $200 price mark with the cheapest at $159. All this despite Engadget predicting earlier this year that the market would be flooded with $150-or-less players.

And even if I pay less than $150, that doesn’t mean I’m willing to give up the two most important features which are absent in my current crappy HD DVD player (but were present in my older regular DVD player — hate it when moving forward in one way is moving backward in two other ways): it needs to boot up fast and remembers where I left off in a movie (if I turn it off and then turn it back on).

So, nice try, Warner Bros. You got me thinking. But you need me to be decisive.

Meet Lisa and her son Jackson, who’s looking for “speed, big hard drive, and a good gaming computer” for under $1,500. After a quick look at some PCs, Lisa says, “Let’s go see the Macs, they’re kind of popular at this age.” But then, Lisa points out that “…these are way more money, dude” quickly followed by Jackson saying (about a Mac), “It’s a little too small.”

So back to the PCs: We’re shown how you can use a PC with a remote and then we see both Lisa and Jackson get really excited about none other than “Bluuu-ray!” And, of course, Blu-ray is missing from Macs. For me personally, not a huge selling point of the PC. But for others like Lisa and Jackson, it seems pretty cool. And that’s the point being made here: there’s something for everyone.

This is the third ad in this series (embedded below), and just like I thought the second was better than the first, I think the third is better than the second. Having a mother/son shop together gives a little more credibility to the unscripted, regular people feel that wasn’t as apparent with the first two.

As always, though, it’s only a matter of time before the Apple community figures out which Sony Vaio was purchased in the ad and does a much deeper comparison. I always enjoy seeing the reaction as much as the ad, and this time is likely to be no different.

*Update* When it rains it pours. The Windows blog has a post up entitled “Avoid the Apple Tax – Cash in on the value of Windows” (which is quickly being questioned) while there are a number of other Microsoft ads out today featuring cute British kids.

Microsoft just came out with its second Laptop Hunters video. Personally, I think this one is better than the first one, but you decide (embedded below).

We’ve got a guy with a $1,500 budget looking for portability, battery life, and power. And he says he’s “technically savvy” and knows what he wants.

After spending some time in the Mac section, he sums up his experience by saying “Macs to me are about aesthetics more than they are about the computing power. I don’t want to pay for the brand. I want to pay for the computer.”

Ouch. That pretty much sums up the Mac critique of this commercial. Oh, and it ends with “I’m a PC Because I’m Really Picky.” Can’t wait to see how the blogosphere responds to this one! I’m sure there’s plenty to dissect. Interestingly enough, I had an exchange with VentureBeat’s MG Siegler yesterday that now seems relevant:

Bob Caswell: So are you saying you’d be a lot more convinced if someone was given much more than a $1,000 and still picked a PC?

MG Siegler: Yes, that would certainly be more convincing.

In any event, just remember that if you were offended or victimized before, who knows your state of being after this.

*Update* Good ol’ Dan Lyons offers his two cents to the Newsweek audience. He may be a little late to the discussion (centering around last week’s ad), but he’s got plenty of good things to say and uses numbers and stuff to back himself up rather than relying on opinion like we do here in the blogosphere.

Also, have to say, I love the latest discussion we’re having over at VentureBeat. And for those interested, you can follow me on Twitter: @bobcaswell.

Laptop Hunters #2 – Giampaolo

So Microsoft put together an ad (embedded below with more to come apparently) that does what Apple started (comparing PCs and Macs) only from Microsoft’s perspective. That is, when either side plays this game, they focus on the pros of their team while pointing out the cons of the other side all while conveniently forgetting to mention their own cons.

That’s how commercials work, you see. By and large, Apple and Microsoft are playing the same game. A game that Apple started, I might add. And kudos to Apple for starting it; it seems to have worked well for them.

But now that a strong response is out by Microsoft (a separate tangential conversation is whether Microsoft should be throwing so much money at a “response” campaign; that’s debatable), the Apple fanboys are restless (this topic was at the top of Techmeme earlier today) and feel the need to point out the “offense,” “pointlessness,” and “inaccuracies.”

Wow. Talk about a classic case of dishing out but not being able to take it. Case in point, what was the first point of the author who wanted to explain why this was so offensive? In his own words, “…she goes into the “Mac store” — red flag here already, anyone who is even remotely interested in a Mac knows it’s the Apple Store…”

I can’t even begin to understand what that has to do with anything remotely relevant to being offensive, but to each his own, I suppose. Anyway, back to my original point: When Apple ran their commercials, I didn’t feel the need to take offense or complain about inaccuracies and onesidedness. It was a pretty good campaign. And now Microsoft has put together a decent response by using a similar formula.

Why can’t we just leave it at that? Do we really need to get out the fine tooth comb and go through all Apple’s ads and all Microsoft’s ads and benchmark them against some universal neutral fairness system (which doesn’t exist)?

Laptop Hunters #1 – Lauren

About a year ago, I was on vacation and annoyed at how much hotels charge for Internet. So I blogged about it. I’m on vacation yet again but this time am blogging about how I’m not annoyed. The difference?

I’m blogging from my G1 phone (just installed a sweet WordPress blogging app). In fact, I’ve got everything I need on this baby and won’t be giving any hotels $10 per day for awhile.

Paying for Internet on my phone just paid off. One month of Internet on the phone is the same cost as 2-3 days of hotel Internet. And phone Internet gives me some cool flexibility whereas hotel Internet only gives me what I’m used to getting at a tenth the cost.

Kudos to T-Mobile, and down with overpriced hotel Internet!

The first half of my title is taken straight from the title of an email I received from Netflix a couple days ago (see end of post for text of the email). In short, as of December 15, 2008, Netflix will no longer carry HD DVDs. Around the same time I got this email, coincidentally, a friend of mine sent me an email about an online sale offering $2 HD DVD movies.

You see, back before we knew the outcome of the HD wars (one year ago), I chose HD DVD over Blu-ray. I got a player and 10 HD DVDs for $174 (well, actually for $124 since Amazon gave me a “we feel sorry for you” $50 gift card once it was clear HD DVD lost). Interestingly enough, now Blu-ray prices are being slashed in the same way HD DVD prices were slashed a year ago.

The last time I checked out Blu-ray pricing on Amazon (my quick and dirty benchmark), the Playstation 3 was still the best deal (with any Blu-ray player cheaper still well into the $300′s but without the bonus of being a gaming system). But now, looking at Amazon’s list of Blu-ray players, the Samsung BD-P1500 player comes in lowest at $204.47.

It doesn’t stop there. Analysts are predicting more price cuts for this holiday season, and a leaked “Black Friday” ad for Wal-Mart shows a Magnavox Blu-ray player for $128. As I mentioned in a post nearly a year ago, the “format wars” matter more post HD DVD death than they did when the term referred to Blu-ray vs. HD DVD. It’s just that now “format wars” refers to Blu-ray vs. traditional DVD vs. streaming/downloadable content.

At under $200 I would consider a Blu-ray player, though my reasoning might seem unconventional. The HD DVD player I bought a year ago is my primary movie player for any disc (i.e., regular DVDs I own or get through Netflix, which is a lot of my media consumption). And its boot time / load time is excruciatingly slow, plus it doesn’t remember where I stopped a movie if I turn it off and back on again.

In other words, it’s a crappy DVD player even if it “upconverts” DVDs and plays HD DVDs. The question is, then, whether or not these under $200 Blu-ray players are dog slow with no memory feature. Hopefully Blu-ray isn’t making the same mistake as HD DVD on this front: releasing a player that feels crappy in every way other than picture quality. I could be wrong, but I think consumers still care about other conveniences too.

Unfortunately, the two conveniences/features I’m most interested in don’t seem to be easily comparable across products. This is where an Amazon deal or a Wal-Mart 4:00 a.m. deal lose out. I may only buy a Blu-ray player after I get to use it in a Best Buy (or wherever), which means I’ll likely be paying a premium.

Bottom line: In my opinion, Blu-ray is only a good buy if the premium over an upconvert DVD player isn’t much ($50ish more, meaning the Blu-ray player is well under $200) at the same time as the Blu-ray player having the same features we’ve come to expect from our movie players (in my case, boots up fast and remembers where I left off).

Does anyone know of a Blu-ray player that fits these criteria? I’ll update this post if I find anything.

*Update* Lots of below $200 deals coming out today, including one player that boasts a quick load time!

See below for the Netflix email:

HD DVDs are going away

Dear Bob,

Effective December 15, 2008, we will no longer carry HD DVDs. At that time, we will automatically replace any HD DVD titles in your Queue with standard DVDs when available. You don’t have to do anything.

Last February, we announced that since most of the major movie studios had decided to release their high-def movies exclusively in Blu-ray, we were going exclusively Blu-ray as well and would be phasing out our HD DVDs.

We’re sorry for any inconvenience. If you have any questions or need further assistance, please call us at 1-888-638-3549.

- The Netflix Team

Somehow I missed the Craigslist memo. It could have something to do with the fact that I haven’t used even eBay for a while. (I used to be on eBay quite a bit but gave it up a few years ago when Amazon proved to be a worthy replacement with much less hassle.) But we recently moved and found ourselves with a couple of items needing a new home due to space constraints in our new place. Namely: a Yamaha electronic keyboard and a spare fold-a-bed.

So I signed up for Craigslist and posted these items online. Here’s what I found:

• The keyboard went right away even though it was priced at less of a bargain than the bed ($75 vs. $35 for the bed)
• When both items were picked up (at different times), both parties buying almost forgot to pay until the last minute making for a potentially awkward situation (though both seemed very nice)… interesting coincidence
• For whatever reason, for the bed, I received four very interested inquiries who requested my address and setup a time only to “no show” and not respond to any further correspondence. The fifth person finally did come and get it.

My whole experience is admittedly anecdotal and could be quite the exception for all I know. And there are plenty of stranger “exceptions.” But it is all I know of Craigslist at this point. Overall, I’d use it again, sure, but only if the context dictated it as the best choice (i.e., if I move and need a theoretically easy way to get rid of big items). Outside of this kind of scenario, though, I’m not sure. It feels like it’s the world’s largest and most streamlined ongoing garage sale. While that’s all fine and good, I’m finding that model doesn’t work as well for me. But it seems to do wonders for plenty of people.

Anyone else used Craigslist with similiar (or different) results?