How to name tech products

Image from FreeDigitalPhotos.net

What’s in a name? Would an Apple, by any other name, smell as sweet?  Would Jobs and Wozniak have had as much success with their company if it had been called Lemon?  Would a Blackberry be better as a Raspberry or a Gooseberry?  Would Raspberry Pi sell as quickly if it was Apple Pie?

With tech products there is no hard-and-fast rule of what works and what does not.  Is Apple’s habit of naming OSX versions after big cats (Panther, Puma, Mountain Lion) better than Google’s rule of naming Android versions after deserts (Froyo, Gingerbread, Honeycomb, Ice-Cream Sandwich, Jellybean…)?  Does it make one product more likeable than another? Does it make it more reliable?  Does it sell more?  Are either of them fundamentally better (leading to greater brand recognition and helping drive brand loyalty) than Microsoft’s Windows versions (Windows 95, 97, Millennium, XP, Vista, 7)?

Some tech products have names that have little more thought behind them than no one else had the name and the inventors liked it (see Firefox).  Others used branding experts to exhaust all possibilities in the search of the one, true, perfect name (iPod).  Some brands are vanity projects (Dyson and Dell) whilst the actual product names are instantly forgettable (Latitude E6320 anyone?).

In an age of multiculturalism, anyone thinking of branding has to think how the name will be received in different countries and languages.  Mitsubishi should have consulted their Spanish office when deciding to call their 4x4 ‘Pajero’ (which has connotations of self-pleasuring in the Iberian language) and, because it has to succeed in the USA to gain global acceptance, the name must be easy to pronounce in English.

It can have connotations of space (Galaxy) or be an acronym (Vaio).  It can be frivolous (Twitter) or a compound pun (Pinterest; Instagram).   It could even evoke the beginnings of a burning fire (Kindle).

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Having been asked to write something (above) for ZDNet Asia but for which I have been asked to include less questions, I created another version.  My inability to self-edit efficiently means I am including both versions in this post.... with full disclosure and apologies for repetition:

People who create, design and program tech products, have long had a sense of playfulness.  Perhaps it is the ability to create something from nothing, and name it, that gives a sense of power.  It is different from naming a child as one must consider the feelings and opinions of one’s spouse, relatives, the child’s grandparents and, in some cases, if the name is so odd, if it will lead the child to get beaten up at school.

With tech products there are no such limitations. But there are no rules either.  Some fruit are suitable names… but not all fruit.  An Apple computer would perhaps not have the image it does if it were a Lemon or a Banana.  Calling a smartphone a Blackberry might seem obvious now, but would we have embraced it if it had been called a Raspberry or even a Gooseberry?

The idle sound of birds talking led to the name Twitter…but it could just as easily have been Natter, or Cheep-Cheep, or Noise.   Raspberry Pi, the new open-source credit-card sized computer, has as much connection to its name as Apple Crumble or Strawberry Sigma.  The two main sources of computer operating systems have very different nomenclatures but neither indicates, at all, what the products actually are nor what they do. Some names, therefore, are designed to clearly differentiate themselves from the previous version, or maintain an air of seriousness some might consider appropriate for a business, such as with Microsoft Windows’s Millennium, XP, Vista and 7. Some try to exude power and passion, such as Apple’s OSX Cheetah, Puma, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard, Lion and Mountain Lion over the same period.  Some try to suggest a sense of fun, as with Google’s mobile operating system Android, which uses deserts in its naming: Cupcake, Donut, Éclair, Froyo, Gingerbread, Honeycomb, Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean.

Some product names have little more thought behind them than no one else had the name and the inventors liked it (see Firefox).   Some brands are vanity projects (Dyson and Dell) whilst the actual product names are instantly forgettable (Latitude E6320 anyone?).

In an age of multiculturalism, anyone thinking of branding has to think how the name will be received in different countries and languages.  Mitsubishi should have consulted their Spanish office when deciding to call their 4x4 ‘Pajero’ (which has connotations of self-pleasuring in the Iberian language) and, because it has to succeed in the USA to gain global acceptance, the name must be easy to pronounce in English.

Tech products often try to suggest the future, or science fiction. So any suggestion of space is valid, as with Samsung’s Galaxy range, or Sun.    Acronyms will sometimes work, such as with Sony’s Vaio range, whilst some companies go for compound puns, such as with Pinterest or Instagram.   A verb suggesting the beginnings of a roaring fire might, for some, be a strange alternative to paper-based books (Kindle).

One can go through a complex branding exercise to try and suggest a name that summarises the essence of the product (iPod), or one can name a product after one’s daughter (Apple’s Lisa or the MySQL database) or a popular TV programme (Python) or an item of clothing the founder wears (Red Hat Linux).

In summary, there are no hard-and-fast rules about what names work and what names do not.  The only rules are:

a.        Make sure no one has used it before;

b.       Make sure it can be pronounced in English;

c.        Make it memorable.

How does Google Drive controversy?

Having been a fan of Google's products for many years, with Gmail, Google Docs, Google Maps, Google Desktop (RIP), Android, Picasa, Google Scholar, Chrome, Google Books and Google Translate figuring prominently in my private use of technology (oh - and I use Blogger too) - not to mention the work use of Google Analytics and Google Adwords - I was looking forward to the long-awaited Google Drive - an online storage facility for all and any files so that I don't need to remember a USB stick or have my laptop to ensure I can get to any file anywhere.  I already pay around $5 a year to increase my storage on Gmail/Picasa etc. to 20GB.  Very reasonable I think....although I've noticed that this deal no longer exists and the nearest other option is to pay $2.49 per month (just under $30 per year) for 25GB.  I'm not happy about this...but it's not a huge burden on finances.

When I got an iPad from work, I discovered the joys of Dropbox and having all my documents sync'd on the work laptop, the home desktop and the iPad... but being very price-sensitive, chose the basic version (i.e. free) with a 2GB storage limit.  It forces one to clear out documents and folders every so often rather than continuing to accumulate files that will never be read again - which is no bad thing.

So with the launch of Google Drive announced yesterday I immediately thought that as soon as there is functionality built-in to the various iPad apps that currently link to Dropbox, I'll be able to switch to G-Drive.

But then, of course, the controversy starts with some people trying to show that Google is now 'evil' (in contrast to their motto 'Don't be evil') by combing their Ts&Cs, adding 2 and 2 together and getting 3.14159.   ZDNet, a site that is usually a reliable source of tech news, has an article entitled "How far does Google Drive's terms go in 'owning' your files?" by Zach Whittaker.  Zach tries to highlight a difference in the Ts&Cs for Google Drive which say:

Your Content in our Services: When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide licence to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes that we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content.

What was missing from the article is the same line in the Ts&Cs that both Dropbox and Microsoft have, which says:

Some of our Services allow you to submit content. You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours.

And of course the post is riddled with comments explaining the 'what's yours is yours' part with others saying that Google is the anti-christ, should be burnt on the circuit-boards of public opinion and wondering what Google would do with their data?

So, with no other information available other than my own common sense, I imagine that what Google wants to do is have the right to crawl our files to identify trends and gather data. They won't be 'reading' our files, but if they can identify x% of G-Drive users have Britney Spears photos, or y% have a last will and testament, that might be of use to the wider public.

There is another use, however. Google Translate works not by translating every word in turn like a first-year language student with a well-thumbed dictionary, but by comparing phrases and finding the same phrase on the internet with a translated version and making an assumption that the translated phrase will hopefully work as a translation for the new text also.  Surely, therefore, if Google suddenly has access to more data with which to mine such translations, the better?  Surely the ability to see how documents are written (by people who probably do not have a blog or a website) will help formulate semantic language generators for artificial intelligence?

In the same way that you should not leave sensitive data on a laptop, iPad or mobile phone without having a password block on the machine and encrypting the actual document (how many laptops, iPads and mobile phones are stolen every day, compared to successful hacks of online document repositories?) one should be careful about encrypting documents before storing them online.

But there is a big difference between actively reading my emails, documents and data, and allowing computer code to analyse it.  If it were not for Google's 'bots' identifying key terms in my emails, they would not be able to offer me a great email product for free subsidised by ads that I was able to quickly blank from my vision.  If it were not for my house being on Google View, I would not also be able to use the service to see other places that help me when driving or walking to an appointment.

Google hasn't sold its corporate soul to the devil.  I personally don't think they have abandoned the ethos of 'Don't be evil'.  But corporations, as with all organisations, are just like people.  And as Joe E Brown (right) said at the end of Some Like It Hot:  "Nobody's perfect!"

How do you know you have failed?

"99 percent of success is built on failure." -  Charles Kettering

I have recently heard much talk about how all good entrepreneurs have lived through failure and that, in fact, an entrepreneur needs to fail on the road to success.  The Guardian's Tech Weekly Podcast recently discussed this when talking about the new 'Silicon Roundabout' area of London rich in technology start-ups and why none have achieved comparable success with their 'Silicon Valley' counterparts.

Apparently the British don't tolerate failure the way those in the US do.

If one peruses the millions of words recently written about Steve Jobs, much is spoken about his products which failed, his personal failure in being sacked from Apple, and how he spoke in the (now famous) Stanford Commencement Speech about how he learned from those mistakes.

But no one seems to know how to answer one simple question:

How do you know you've failed?

There are hundreds, if not thousands of potential entrepreneurs worldwide who have great ideas.  Many of them put the ideas into practice and develop those ideas into a functioning product or service or artistic endeavour (such as a composition, an artwork or a novel).  Many of them are persistent in trying to get funding for their company or to get others to back their ideas both financially and morally.

Some are lucky. Through friends, family and serendipitous connections with investors and mentors, they are able to get their business off the ground. They might get a mention in the local press or even the national media. They might present at trade shows or speak at conferences.

But they do not achieve the critical mass necessary to make the business profitable.  Some investors are patient and, as with Amazon, will wait up to seven years before seeing even a modest profit; but many investors are less patient and will stop funding a start-up after a few years of operation.  Would Amazon have survived if it had taken two more years to move into the black?  Bill Gates said "Microsoft is always two years away from failure".

When should creatives, in business or the arts, decide to cut their losses and try a different direction?  Pulp, the Sheffield band, took sixteen years from forming to reaching national and international success.  In 2009, The Economist wrote how entrepreneurship was finally 'cool'.

So all the angel investors, VC funding, government grants and deregulation of start-up bureaucracy is great, but perhaps what is really needed is some objective guidance and advice for when someone should persist with their idea because their time will indeed come; and when they should just pack it in and try something different.  We could call them "Reality Checkers".

For those who do wish to persist, I recommend reading the quotes on innovation on ideachampions.com.

Perhaps the best quote for me, however, is by Douglas Adams:

"A learning experience is one of those things that says, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.'"

An atheist's view of Steve Jobs

It was two weeks ago today that the world started an outpouring of comment on Steve Jobs and his sad death. As it is sad whenever anyone dies... a bit of a tautology that is repeated by every media outlet whenever anyone famous dies of any cause at any time in their life.

Apple's website is still, two weeks after his death, showing the memorial photo any time you visit the website.  A day of memorial one would expect.  A week might be appropriate for the founder and CEO of your company.  But how long will it now stay up? Will it be dropped, unceremoniously, without notification, after three weeks? Or a month? Or will they keep it there for a year?  What is the appropriate amount of time to grieve for someone you didn't know at all, except through the vicarious the spotlight of celebrity?

Candles outside the Apple Store, London

The outpouring of emotion, such as flowers and candles laid outside the Apple store in London, echoed the sudden quivering of the traditionally British stiff upper lip and ultimate breakdown of the previously stoic public into a collective, sobbing, emotional wreck, when Princess Diana (or Mrs Diana Windsor, as some might prefer it) sadly died (see the flowers below).

Flowers outside Kensington Palace

Then, as now, I find myself wondering why people care so much.  Surely, it is because the person (Jobs, Diana) was famous? That people felt that they knew them? Or was it that they found the death of a celebrity a useful catharsis for them to release pent-up emotion for some other, more private, loss?

I am not a psychologist and shall not attempt to understand it, suffice to say that I don't.

However, another phenomenon seems to have occurred around the death of Jobs.  Stories of him being a bully and a tyrant have finally seen more widespread coverage since his death, which allows one to reasonably address the fact that far from being the best CEO in the world, his is a case study that should be used in business schools to show how a great leader should not behave.

An apparently obsessive care for the detail of products makes a great product designer, not a great boss.  A culture at an organisation where people fear the CEO does not make for the best working environment.

When Jim Collins studied exceptional leaders and came up with the concept of a 'Level 5' leader who enabled great change at an organisation that survived a change of leadership and continued to make the organisation highly successful, he  described parable of the fox (which knows many small things) and the hedgehog (which knows one big thing).  Jobs was probably a hedgehog - he knew how to make great products and charge customers a premium for them.

Ansoff's Growth Matrix

When discussing technology innovation on the masters courses, Apple is frequently  cited as an example of an organisation with a great growth strategy - for product development and diversification - creating new products for existing markets and creating new markets (as per Ansoff's Matrix shown here).

Through the use of iTunes, Apple have also managed to ensure casual customers become loyal customers (achieving market penetration).

It is also worth remembering how much Apple's stock has risen recently, from an average of $7 to $10 for most of its life to 2004, to a current $420 - showing how much the iPhone and iPads have radically changed Apple's revenue structure.

Apple stock from 2000 to 2011 from Yahoo! Finance

So it can be safely stated that Steve Jobs was a great CEO in delivering value to the shareholders and creating products that became market leaders for several years after launch.

Image by Edward Eustace

But that is it.  The deification of Steve Jobs is somewhat unnecessary.  I realise that posting a blog about him is perpetuating the impression that he is the only person of worth who has died.  His inventions certainly changed the technological landscape by influencing how Microsoft developed Windows (the OS that most people still use) and how mobile technology can become ubiquitous.  Interesting to note, by the by, how Microsoft make no mention of Apple's use of the WIMP interface (Windows, Icons, Menu, Pointing device) in their own potted history of Windows.

The BBC documentary in May 2011 showed through MRI scans how "Apple was actually stimulating the same parts of the brain as religious imagery does in people of faith".  The theory (by Dean Hamer) that there is a gene which predisposes people to being religious or having 'spiritual experiences' helps explain my own perplexed view of the Apple faithful (or iCult as it has been dubbed).

So if Hamer is right, I am genetically predisposed to treat all evangelicalism with suspicion...be it for Apple, football, or one of the many gods.

The Church of Apple has many devotees - and a higher than average percentage of them work in the media - helping fuel the constant messages of Apple omnipresence.

But in the end, us atheists must pray, with ironic tongue firmly in cheek, that sense will see the day, reason will out, the blind shall have their veils lifted and that everyone shall see that there is no god. There is only:

HTC Sucks - and not in a good way

Having been a fan of Android phones in principle since they came out (the open nature of Android, the viable alternative to iOS and the Apple fanfest, the particular liking of Google's way of doing things as opposed to how Apple or MicroSoft do things) I have been traumatised by my experiences with my first Android phone.

Money being an object for most people like me, I could not go and buy the Google Nexus S (a Samsung phone) but haggled with my mobile company (Three) to get a £10 per month SIM card with all-you-can-eat data, 750 minutes of talking, 150 texts and a few other things.  I then bought a mobile separately working out that over 2 years I would save almost £200, as opposed to paying a monthly contract of £25 or more.  I bought the HTC Desire (the precursor to the HTC Desire S and HD versions) as a friend had one and had had no problems with it and I saw good reviews on the internet.

The friend in question doesn't use apps.

I've uninstalled all apps except for Google's own apps and a couple more, and yet am still in danger of running out of internal phone storage space. Again. After 8 factory resets trying to remedy the matter.

Yesterday, three apps (Goggles, Maps and Evernote) automatically updated themselves and the remaining internal memory went down from 44MB to 22MB in an instant and then trickled down to 15MB with me doing nothing on the machine!

HTC only made 150MB of internal memory available for apps. So even though I move all my apps to the external storage (the SD card), they still leave residual memory on the internal storage that eats away until there is nothing left.

When the memory slips below 15MB, Gmail and Exchange stop updating.

HTC have, eventually, offered to repair the mobile, and I might ask them to just to make sure there is no fault with the hardware. But I fear the fault is with the design.

For the first time ever I'm jealous of iPhone users who have no issues with app space running out.

What this has taught me is two things:

a. avoid HTC like the plague: there is a reason their handsets are cheaper...although TechRadar does list 3 of them in the top 10 Android phones, and 3 in the top 5... irritatingly...
b. look for internal storage for apps when buying a smartphone.  I have never, however, seen this listed on the product specifications online or instore.  You have to dig deep to find it...but it is worth digging.
c. if you want a recommendation for any hardware from a friend, make sure the friend is a similar user to you. If they are a light user, then it won't help a heavy user judge performance.

Yes...that is 3 things...but anyway...

All of this is, of course, obvious. But the obvious only presents itself sometimes too late...

MBA graduates cherry-pick technology employers

A little late, perhaps, but such is the way of the web that so much information makes it hard to keep track of everything.

My excuses for only now seeing a CNN article on the Top MBA Employers, published in May 2009.

What is interesting is that tech. companies like Google and Apple are in the top 5, alongside the predictable consultants such as McKinsey and BCG. Microsoft is at a still-respectable 12, but then there's a huge gap before getting to IBM (31), Cisco (42), Yahoo! (67), Ebay (69) and HP (70) and Nokia (85).

The tech. companies surely have a more secure future than many of the others in the list. BMW, for example - a car manufacturer - is at 22. Even the CIA fairs better than some, at 47.

So why is this? Is it based on salary? I doubt Google pay the best...

Is it based on prestige? Having to read endless reports and models by McKinsey and BCG for an MBA may give them an unfair advantage (if the post office began producing endless research, case-studies and 'nineteen Ns' models for logistics supply-chain management, maybe they'd be top of the list).

I admit to being surprised that MBA graduates aren't targetting tech. companies more, but perhaps the biggest problem is that they tend not to be taught much (in my experience) about new technology. They'll study ERP systems from the 80s, or how to project manage a new implementation, but they're not too hot on keeping up with the latest trends.

Is this the fault of the business schools who teach what is known (the trouble with new technology is no one can be 100% certain what will work and what won't) or with the students - who tend to be younger than the faculty - not engaging with their peers outside the MBA and seeing the potential of Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, bio-tech and so on?

Some schools concentrate on entrepeneurship, but that doesn't help the majority who want a good job with good prospects and a good salary. It would be interesting to see a study of the tech. firms who have recruited MBA graduates, and an attempt to measure (against a control firm) whether or not the fledgling company has benefitted from their educated intake.

...and another thing!

Another fine example of what I was talking about yesterday... increased choice provides increased confusion. The first and biggest on the block will usually win (tho' not always, as Google has often shown)... and, (and this is the plea for world peace on earth and goodwill to all whatsits), why can't Adobe and Microsoft work together to produce a product that works for everyone?

On every system.

Always, combining the best bits of both Flash and Silverlight.

This article on the Wall Street Journal shows that this is very far from what is happening.

As it is, Microsoft's size and persistence means that more will adopt Silverlight, but surely this just makes it more complicated for us, the punters, the users, who now have to download (and regularly update) yet another plug-in when browsing the InterWeb?

Just imagine the utopia where all website producers knew which format they needed to produce video (and other animations) in... all users were able to view all content on every website... and the big companies could stop wasting grillions of pounds, dollars and euros investing in R&D to re-invent the wheel. If the wheel exists, maybe suggest putting a nice pneumatic tyre on it, or paint it pink, but don't think that we need a new type of wheel that won't work with any of our existing carts, roads or tyres!

Why can't they all agree on one software package?

I read a wee article today on VNU Net (www.v3.co.uk) that "IBM is reportedly dumping Microsoft Office in favour of its own version of Open Office, Lotus Symphony" and again I felt a bit of a rant coming on.

I've sat down now, but that hasn't removed the desire to rant.

I like to think I'm not a geek, but I do like good technology. Let's remember, from the Compact OED, is defined as:

technology

• noun (pl. technologies) 1 the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes. 2 the branch of knowledge concerned with applied sciences.

— DERIVATIVES technological adjective technologically adverb technologist noun.

— ORIGIN Greek tekhnologia ‘systematic treatment’.

So.... 'the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes'... so let us assume the 'application of scientific knowledge' is the software...be it MS Office or Lotus Symphony or Google Docs or Open Office or whatever.

The 'practical purposes' are removed by virtue of the fact that the documents produced by the different software systems are never 100% cross-compatible. Now, one could easily argue that none of them are perfect... but by having large endorsements of different packages means that smaller companies and inidividuals are increasingly going to diverge from one package to purchase and/or use, by choice, the one they know. Which will be the one they experience every day at work (at IBM, or Microsoft, or Google, or any organisation that uses their software).

Shurely (hic) it wouldn't be too much to ask for the different software-makers to collaborate on producing the definitively perfect office package? They could brand it differently and price it differently to tie in to the other software or Operating Systems if they must (e.g. Windows, Leopard, Linux, Chrome...) but at least they would all be compatible with each other across machines of different ages. That, as anyone who has tried to open a document at home done on Office 2007 at work, when the home package is Office 2003, is not always simple.

So slapped wrists and eternal shame on IBM for trying to get their staff to use Lotus Symphony rather than MS Office. If any of us outside the Big Blue do business with them, we'll now have to make sure our documents are saved appropriately and have appropriate plug-ins to open their documents and...

...and while we're talking about it, why can't all mobile manufacturers use the same operating system... it's irritating enough trying to format for the hundreds of different handset screen sizes and resolutions currently on the market, without also having completely different systems every time you upgrade a phone.

I've just upgraded from a 'quite good phone' to a 'smart phone' - within the same nameless Finnish brand - and yet basic functionality from the old phone doesn't exist on the new one. One would have thought that the most basic usability testing any software or hardware manufacturer would do would be to ensure old habits are easily translated onto the new system.

But, harping back to Office, the 2007 version proved that the Seattle giants do not know their arse from their 2003 elbow... and I now spend up to 10 minutes hunting for certain functionality. Surely (again, so soon?) it would have been better to provide the new interface on 2007 as the default interface, but allow users to switch back to the previous one (where they know where to find things)? That way they could educate new users in new 'best practices' without irritating the hell out of those of us who were very very used to the previous incarnation.

Like a Glam Rocker... which platforms should I go with?

There comes a time when life has moved on... new stuff happens (sometimes called 'technology') and people work, or want to work, in different ways.

So they then look at what stuff they have (i.e. the technology they use currently) and decide, for example,

• 'it is very irritating to not be contactable when I'm out of the office... maybe I do need one of those new fangled mobular cell-type phones the yuppies have!'

or

• 'instead of wasting time sending leaflets through the post that nobody reads, I should send direct email marketing so I can exactly track and measure who has opened what and what the clicked on, to help follow-ups'

or even

• 'maybe if we got a decent website, we could sell stuff directly to the punters and cut out the huge numbers of middle-people'.

Well, we're currently in that kind of place, thinking 'what we've been doing so far is fine and dandy and has won awards and no one's complained about it really, but what we really need is to drag our Web 0.0 system into the 21st century and prepare it for the great Web 2.48 world where we're all interconnected and we have social networking integrated with the content delivery, integrated with folksonomies, integrated with e-commerce, integrated with collaborative wikis; and all of it held on a cloud somewhere over the Atlantic'.

But to do everything we want, there are so many options. Should we go down the route of the huge expensive monolithic products from IBM (Portal) or MicroSoft (Sharepoint) which can do everything we want but will cost us two arms and half a leg every year forever in license fees... or do we go down the open source route and get a system built on Joomla or Elgg or Moodle or Wibble or FlimFlam; which will be far cheaper, and can probably do everything we want and more (but we can't really see a case of that right now) but seems a little, as someone said, 'stickle-brick' - with little add-ons and so on. Will that see us through for another 10 or 20 years? Or will it be so hackable in 5 years' time that we'll have to spend three arms and four legs every year on security measures to stop the hackers hacking?

It's all very irritating... why can't we just have one system for everyone? And we then build on that... one social network (not Myspace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Ning, Xing, Plaxo, Friendster...), one blogging system (not Blogger.com, Wordpress, Livejournal etc.) one Wiki system... and everything will be eternally forwards and backwards compatible with everything?

Well... I know the answer, but it's not easy. Given the money, the big boys seem like a good safe bet. But it's a lot of money. So at what point should one go with the new systems?

Is Firefox better than I.E.? Well... some of the sites I need to use don't work well on Firefox. And when it's left open for days at a time it seems to eat my RAM like a salt through a slug... in short... I'm flummoxed. Gut feelings are all well and good but once you've taken antacids, you have to think with your head. And that, at present, is in two minds (not an easy trick!).