On Monday, January 23rd, we’re going to start giving away a notebook sleeve and a portable speaker with every personal sale of a premium Creative Suite (does not include Design Standard).

It’s a $40 value, so it’s a pretty good promo. Images of the sleeve and speaker are below. The external dimensions of the sleeve are 11″ x 15″, so they’ll fit most notebooks a little smaller than that, depending on the thickness.

You could mention this promo to personal customers purchasing the standalone Adobe items (Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Flash), or to personal customers purchasing laptops. We will be promoting this on WISC, the Tech Store catalog, social media, and print starting on Monday, so we can expect customers to know about it and ask questions about it.

There are sleeve/speaker sets in the Tech Store and at HSLC as of Friday, 1/20. I’m going to put reminder notes on our Tech Store stock of the eligible items starting on Monday.

We have 72 sleeve/speaker sets on hand, and that’s all we’re going to get. We’ll give them away for all sales through the Tech Store, HSLC, and WISC starting on 1/23 until we run out.

Please let me know what questions or comments you have.

Wanted to bring everyone up to speed on the upcoming “Teach Me How To DoIT” Day.

When:  Wed, January 18 from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm

WHO:  Primarily faculty and staff on this day, but everyone for future events

Where:  Both Dayton Street and HSLC locations  (we will have coffee and treats if people would like them)

What:  Our short term goal is to offer our consulting services to faculty and staff on this day, but eventually, to everyone, every day.  Our long term goal is to get our customers thinking of DoIT as the place to go FIRST when they have any technology question.  We hope to eventually be able to serve that need by scheduling appts that are convenient to the customer and will offer them the best information/consulting at the Tech Store. (Like the Genius Bar)

How:  This year we have asked our customers to schedule 1 hour appointments to be more organized and offer more focused assistance.  Customers click on the link sent out in our mass e-mail.  This link will connect them to a doodle poll where they will request an available time and enter their e-mail address.  Matt S. is managing the sign-up process and following up with each customer to find out what kind of device they need help with and what kind of help they need.  This will help us be better prepared when the customer arrives.

On the day of the event, we will have 5 stations set up at Dayton Street (3 in the Tech Store sitting area and 2 in the Help Desk Area) and one station set up at HSLC (as you walk into the BookStore).  We are open to sending another consultant to HSLC if the walk-up traffic warrants it.

On the day of the event, Dan Collins will have a check in sheet.  We will ask each person to check in and then Dan will direct them to the consultant they are assigned to (by Matt).  If their appt runs short of the hour, then that consultant would be available for the remainder of that hour for any walk-up customers that may need help.

We need all Consultants (Tech Store and Help Desk) to think about how they will handle some very specific situations.  What will you say if your appt goes the full hour and our customer still has questions?  What if there is no additional information you can offer this customer?  What if the device they have just won’t do what they want it to do?  Please think about these situations and be prepared to respectfully utilize your customer service skills to manage these situations.

Remember to send each customer away with as much information as possible.  Following each appointment, the consultant will be making an entry in WiscIT to log the interaction (yes this includes the Tech Store staff!!).  We will also be forwarding a survey to the customers to ask them some more detailed questions about their experience and how they might suggest improvements.

Please contact Matt Sirianni or Patti Havlicek if you have any additional questions.

At the end of today, Tuesday 01/03/12 all the MacBook Pros will revert to their normal pricing, i.e., no longer a $50 discount:

These Macs all still qualify for a free printer for personal purchase only.

There is a power issue with the Toshiba Canvio hard drives and any MacBook Air/Pro. Apparently the drive draws slightly above spec for power and Apple strictly limits USB power so the drive will not spin up. This drive should still work fine with any PCs or if you put a powered USB hub between the drive and the computer.

Please see this link for more info:

http://www.electronista.com/articles/11/12/28/apple.power.cutoff.technology.blamed/

Toshiba is working with Apple for a permanent fix. This will affect item number C60994 and the powered hub I recommend pairing it with is C59776.

Here’s updates on products we carry in the store:

- HP will be raising prices on toners effective Jan 2nd. Most current toners will rise in price only 2% but a number of older toners will see a price increase of up to 25%. “Currency weaknesses” were given as the reason for the increases. Ink is not affected at this time.

- Epson ink, however, recently had some price increases and they’ve already taken effect. The prices in the catalog are correct and current.

- Western Digital will be reducing the warranty on their Caviar Blue, Green and Scorpio Blue drives from 3 years to 2 years. The Caviar Black and Scorpio Black will maintain their 5 year warranties. This also takes effect on Jan 2nd but any drives we have in stock before that date will still have the 3 year warranty. This means it is possible that we will have otherwise identical drives for awhile that have a 3 year or 2 year warranty. Western Digital offers this if the customer is unsure of the warranty on their drive:

“If you have any doubt about the warranty of a drive you purchased, you can go to support.wdc.com, select Warranty and RMA Services and proceed to the Warranty Check page.”

Western Digital hasn’t given a reason for this change but I’m guessing it is related to the desire to replace less drives while they recover from the flooding. We’re still going to carry Western Digital drives for now but I am exploring other options.

- We will have a limited time sale on a special version of the Logitech M515 Couch Mouse. If you’re not familiar with this product, it’s designed to be used on fabric (thus the name). The special version on sale will be part number C61240, the “Black Smoke” color. The price will be $24.95, about 50% off the normal $48.95 price. I ordered 20 of them and once they’re gone, they’re gone. I have a demo of the gray one we stock if you want to show it off for customers. It’s great for being used with a computer hooked up to your TV or when you’re on the go with your laptop.

- Just a reminder, if a customer wants a 500GB external hard drive, the Toshiba Canvio we carry (C60994) is readily available. While it is $5 more expensive than the Buffalo one we carry, it is USB 3.0 and has a longer warranty. Personally, I think that is well worth the extra $5. As of this email we have over 175 in stock so we’re not going to run out. Most other hard drives are still very supply-limited – what we have might be all we can get.

- Speaking of hard drive shortages, I’m hearing that it will start improving in the April-June time frame but January and February is going to be the hardest time to get drives. I’m working hard to get as much stock as I can for the store but we might have holes in our lineup, particularly on harder-to-get drives like FireWire or IDE.

We are getting a shipment in of prior generation MacBook Pros, they should be ready for sale by this Wednesday:

We’ll have a few dozen of these to sell, but once they’re gone that’s it.

What are the differences between this prior generation model and the current model? Very few.

This prior generation model is known as the MacBook Pro (13-inch, Early 2011). It has a 2.3GHz Intel Core i5 processor and a 320GB HD.

The current generation model is known as the MacBook Pro (13-inch, Late 2011). It has a 2.4GHz Intel Core i5 processor and a 500GB HD.

Both models have the same graphics card and Thunderbolt capability.

We will be selling the gently used prior generation MacBook Pro demos that we had in the Tech Store at Dayton and HSLC. Below is a list. Note the descriptions have the current end of warranty coverage. The first five in the list never had extended AppleCare applied so they are still eligible to have their warranty extended if the customer so chooses by purchasing an AppleCare Enrollment Kit (note that the two year extension would just be added on to the current end of warranty date, not the date that these get sold to the customer). The last two items in the list already had AppleCare applied to extend coverage out to the date indicated and thus can’t have their warranty extended anymore.

All of these Macs have Lion 10.7 installed on them.

These will show up in the catalog within a day, any questions let me know.

We are bringing back the Free Printer, for personal purchasers of most any Mac. Currently this printer is the HP 3050A which is also available for sale in our catalog for $39.99. One nice thing about this printer is that it is AirPrint capable, allowing iOS devices like iPads, iPhones and iPod touches to print directly to it.

Here are a few things to note:

• We are continuing our $50 off deal on the 13″, 15″ and 17″ MacBook Pro line. The free printer is now in addition to this deal.
• The Mac mini will not qualify for the free printer.
• Lastly also note the the $20 off AppleCare deal we had been running is now over.