The one thing that has gone out the window is good customer service. Well there are a few exceptions and I will talk about them later. Before everything went “to the net”, people would pay extra to make sure they got good customer service. People went to Macys (not me) since they treated their customers with better customer service. You paid a premium. Today I go to Target over Walmart since I get better customer service. I know I pay more but it is worth it in my book.

I goto to Publix grocery stores. They are cleaner and better customer service over their competition. Here is a true story (over all the fiction I write ). I went to my local Publix to buy some groceries. I could not find a particular type of canned bean. Not a big deal. I know they are more popular is the SouthWest part of the country and not here. I mention it to the assistant manager that happened to be standing next to me. He asked if I needed help since I looked confused. And I told him it wasn’t a big deal. Well I came into the store about 4-5 days later and the manager tracked me down to show me that they carry those beans on the shelf now (which I think is going over board on the customer service) and made sure I got a can. He didn’t want me to miss out on them. Now did he need to do any of that? not really. Am I a big spender in the store? nope, not even close. But he wanted to make sure I had great customer experience.

Now here is a company I always love to talk about when it come to customer service. They are the best in my book, hands down. USAA is an insurance company, a bank, an investment company, and who knows what else all for military members & their families. I was not in the service but my father was. I lucked out. When you call them up, no matter what person you get, you will never get “call 800-blah-blah-blah”. They hand you over to another person. No queues. No call backs. none of that crap. Not only do they hand you directly to another person, they tell the other operator what your are looking for, who you are, etc so the new person is in the know without you having to start from ground zero on each and every person. Here is a perfect example. I called up to check on my coverage of my car insurance. The nice lady helped with everything. And when it got done with her, she asked “is there anything else we can do to help you today?” and when I responded with I need some help with my home owners insurance, she got a home insurance person on the phone to help me. Full transfer. WOW. Then when I got done with that insurance I asked about the flood insurance, again a full transfer to another live person. When that person was done with me, I got transfer to another person for my banking. What normally would have been 4-5 calls to the 800 number, was one. Never having to tell them whom I was, or what I was looking for, the next person in the list of operators knew everything before they got on the phone. WOW, I mean freakin WOW! And to add more sweetness to the cake, each of them showed me how to do what I was having them help me with on their website so I wasnt tied down to waiting on them. Waiting? they are on the spot ready to go.

I will other companies would take the same attitude and make sure their customers have a great experience. They will stick with you even if you arent the cheapest.

So as many of you know I have been jail breaking my iPhone since i got it years ago. Why? I hate being told I cant do something. Like most Americans I am that way. As a geek, don’t tell me that I can do something with technology. I will do it just to prove you wrong. Now many people jailbreak their iphones so they can be mobile hotspots (MiFis/MyFis/etc). I am not doing that. I just don’t like shackles.

So yesterday (last night to be specific) I downloaded greenpois0n and proceeded to jailbreak both my iPhone 3GS and my iPad WiFi. Both worked like a champ. The iPad I had to try twice since I (user error all the way) screwed up the first time. If you are going to do it, please read the lifehacker article. I did both in an hour. Why so long? I had to upgrade to 4.2.1 using iTunes first then jail break away.

Ok here is part two of my quest to find the solution to my Mozy problem. Earlier this week I checked out Backblaze, F-Secure, Carbonite, Amazon S3 and Crashplan. I posted my results on the blog, and tweeted/emailed about it. Within minutes I was getting some replies with people I did not check out. Those included Jungledisk, Spideroak, Acronis, & Livedrive

Here is the challenge (management-speak for issue) that I need to solve is having backups. Not only backups but cost friendly and my mother has to be able to operate the software.

“mom friendly”

First all I need to explain why “mom friendly” is a requirement of mine. Not all of us are geeks. That is fine since it keeps the geeks employed. When my mother’s laptop dies, has issues, whatever I can swing by her house and fix it. The less I have to do the better. But her sisters, my cousins, family, friends, etc are spread across the nation (technically the globe). And for all those people I need a tool that doesn’t need my “hands on” their machine to fix/install/whatever. If it is friendly enough for the “mom friendly” approval sticker then I can deploy it wherever I need to.

Jungledisk

Jungledisk is cheap but they rely on 3rd party storage space. They use either Rackspace or Amazon S3 depending on which is giving them a better price. Does it matter to you? probably not. But if they get into a contract dispute with one of their vendors, it might be rough on you as they start moving stuff around.

• Windows, MaxOSX and Linux clients. [good/good/good]
• price is variable based on usage. This could be good or bad depending on how much you want to use.

for me not the winner.

Spideroak

This is one that I never heard of before. Woody (@woody2143) is the one that turned me onto it. When testing them in my bake-off I was having trouble registering an account with them but I think it was a network issue and not a Spideroak issue.

• Windows, MacOSX, and Linux clients [good/good/good]
• decent price for amount of space you get but it isn’t unlimited. They do pricing in the 100GB chunks. [decent]

not the winner but I like them as an alternate.

Acronis

Another newcomer to the party. I haven’t heard of them prior to working on this project. They are Windows only which is a show stopper for me.

• WIndows client only. [bad]
• cheap price but a cap on usage. personally I have more than 250GB of space to be backed up per computer. [bad]

not a winner.

Livedrive

another newcomer to the party. All of their MacOSX support is under “technology preview” which means it is beta code that may or may not work. Also the cheaper priced plan doesnt give you all the automatic features that the $17 does.

• Windows and MacOSX* clients [good/so-so since it is beta code]
• not “mom friendly” unless you use the $17/month plan. [not good]

not the winner.

Here is the chart of all the platforms/services that I have checked out.

Conclusion (so far):

I still like Crashplan(+) the best. They have the most options of where your data goes. Can go to an attached disk drive (like TimeMachine), goto another computer in your network (like from your laptop to desktop or vice versa), goto a friends computer (like your buddy that lives across town or the country), or goto their cloud. Crashplan also just won the PC Advisor Awards 2011 award for Best PC Utility. They are also offering a 15% discount for Mozy users that switch to them.

coming up soon (next week or two) is how you can run your own Crashplan server at your home.

With recent news of Mozy starting to charge a lot more for their backups, there has been lots of panic of what to do. We all need our backups and they really should be offsite. So like many of my friends, my bill was going to go up over 1000% (some of my friends calculations were over 2000% increase). So what do we do? Well as a storage geek I sat down and looked at many of the competitors. But my main two requirements was “it isn’t going to break the bank each month” and “mom can do it”. Money is always a factor in everything. And I am not rich so I have to work within my budget.

Unlike myself, my mother is not a geek. The backup solution has to just work, and not give her all sorts of pop-ups/messages/alerts. The less she knows about it the better. Now her machine is a Apple Macbook so it is not online all the time (or even on). So the software has to be able to restart itself and continue when she is online.

So I looked at Carbonite, Backblaze, S3 (not really backup software but cloud storage), F-Secure and Crashplan. I am running (as I type this) backups using Carbonite and Crashplan+ on my MacbookPro. Yeah both of those and Mozy running will impact the network connectivity a little. Carbonite keeps stopping the backup. I am guessing it is trying to start a connection to a new carbonite server that I have not given it permission to talk to yet and it aborts. Crashplan+ started when I said go and and run continuously since then. I probably shouldn’t be running all three together and that might cause a little skew. But they should be able to work with other stuff is running on the computers. So here are the results….

Backblaze

I have heard rumors and horror stories over the years about them so they were already low on my list.

• Windows and Mac clients (no Linux) [good/good/bad]
• $5/month per computer for “unlimited” [good pricing]

not the winner.

S3

There would have to be some backup software on top of S3 storage. Plus their pricing takes someone with a PhD in mathematics to understand.

• No clients/software directly, must go with 3rd party [bad]
• pricing is cheap but unable to guestimate the monthly price. [bad]
• not “mom friendly” [really bad]

not the winner.

F-Secure

F-Secure is known as an anti-virus software company and not a backup company. Henri (henriwithani) recommended this as an option.

• Windows and Mac clients (no Linux) [good/good/bad]
• not “mom friendly”. If you look at the screens of how configure/run the backups, there is way too much there for her. [very bad]
• Says it is secure but doesn’t tell us how it is secure (what encryption method and key strength). ROT13 is encryption but anyone can decrypt it.

not the winner.

Carbonite

This is a good choice (even back when I was pushing Mozy). Has lots of options.

• Windows and Mac clients (no Linux) [good/good/bad]
• $55/year which is a good price point [good]
• Can access your backed up files via web browser, iPhone, Blackberry & Android. [good and bad]
• Encrypted files using 128bit Blowfish. [good not great]

They mention that your files are safe from anyone getting into them since they are encrypted but I can access them from my iPhone? there is not a lot of processing power there to decrypt files. I suspect they decrypt the files and send them to the iPhone decrypted (over SSL link). Which means they can get to your files.

not the winner but a close second.

Crashplan/Crashplan+

This had the most options out there. And the pricing is great.

• Windows, Mac, Linux and Solaris clients [good/good/good/cool]
• Free if you want to backup to either external drive (like a USB drive), to another computer at your home, to a friends computer. Or you can backup to their cloud for a low price (you can do either per computer or family plans so it hard to give hard numbers here). [great]
• 128bit or 448bit encryption (non plus vs plus versions). [good/great]
• Continuos backups (plus version) so you never loose files. [good]
• “mom friendly”. [good]

So this option peaked my interest the most. It gets all my (intel) Macs (iMac, & Macbookpro). It gets my linux machines (which I have LOTS which I wont be backing up most of them). It is mom friendly. Plus I can do “backup to a friends house” option. Which is awesome. So in a follow up posting to this, I am going to spec out and build my Crashplan+ backup server (just a linux host with lots of space and crashplan+ running).

@Crashplan tweeted this morning (Feb 2nd) that they will give all Mozy users switching to them %15 off the purchase (special ends Feb 15th). Which is a great marketing idea for any of the competitors to Mozy.

the winner.

more to come soon….
part 2 is here.

Recently PivotalTracker announced changes to their service. instead of being 100% free for everyone, they are going to start charging some people. And lots of people panicked. myself included (I hate to admit). Well some of us emailed Pivotal Labs (creators of PivotalTracker) our concerns and they were very prompt to respond in a polite, professional manor with a good reply. Not “we will think about it.” or “we will take it under advisement.” or any of that crap. They gave valid (and I think good) options (in their responses).

Then I get an email from them yesterday with a revised pricing scheme. They raised the caps on the number of items per person on the different plans. Just not the number of people per plan. Which made probably 90% (if not more) people happier.

I have to say the way that PL has handled this is awesome. They announced their changes. Listened to their customers meanwhile giving them good options (within the new rules). And then they announced changes to their plans that was based on their customers new pain points.

Thanks Pivotal Labs!

I have been a long time fan of Mozy. Recommended it to family, friends, clients, coworkers, strangers, just about everyone. Why? it was a flat fee per month ($4.95) and you got unlimited* backups. unlimited*? the backups were slow (not a lot of bandwidth) but in theory there was no limit.

This was great. It worked so well, that I put my mother’s mac laptop on it. No more worries by me that her stuff was not backed up or safe. It just worked. Which is perfect for her. Unlike me, she is not a geek.

Now I get notice that starting March 1 this year the pricing goes through the freakin roof. What I was paying for 2 years for 3 computers, wont even cover my macbookpro for a year. Not even close.

So between now and March 1st I get to scramble to find a new backup method. Carbonite? something homegrown? Time Machine from MacOSX?

in 2010 the big buzzword around storage was “Cloud Storage”. Something I really dont want to hear again. Every vendor has cloud storage, but based on their definition of cloud storage. EMC has <a href=”http://www.emc.com/products/family/atmos.htm”>Atmos</a>. But how many others are true cloud storage? Atmos, you are given a URL then you get your storage via REST/JSON/etc. No NFS. No SAN. Just a web URL.

Next year there will be a new buzzword. I am just curious what it is.

Until recently I was working for a company that was not too found of its staff using non-controlled communication mediums. aka blogging.

I had every intent of blogging again after why the gap in posts but things at the office got wonky. Now I am employed at a company that is not in fear of blogging. I just cant speak for them. And you know what, I wouldnt want to be the spokesperson for a company anyways.

no good excuse.

between extremely busy at work and at home the time hasntbeen there. plus I had written about a dozen partial posts only iPod and never finished/posted them. all of which got nuked when I upgraded the firmware & blogging software (all at once). I should have known better. it is probably for the best.

all storage vendors are talking about one of two things these days. either storage clouds or virtual storage. and no two people will give you the same definitions for them. so that makes it hard as hell to compare and contrast them.

now here is a mini-rant of mine. how do you virtualize storage to get rid of your SANs? some people are touting getting rid of your “expensive SAN” by virtualizing it. WHAT? give me a break.

now the other mini-rant is storage clouds. venders please oh please stop renaming or tagging your products as “clouds”.