[Hands0n]

... in Bluewater today and it was empty - while all of the other mobile phone/network stores had loads of customers. Even the usually quiet 3 store has some seven or eight punters looking or talking with the staff. Contrast the O2 store, and all the staff - all seven of them, were huddled in the back right-hand corner of the store having a bit of a mothers meeting. There wasn't a single customer inside the store.

There was a time when the O2 stores used to be fairly heaving with shoppers.

[Ben]

The new O2 store in Canterbury is often dead also.

I needed a topup from them a couple of weeks ago. There are 4-5 desks and a front desk. There were two staff on, and both seemed to be messing around doing bugger all. Had to wait about 10 minutes :/ I don't plan on going back!

What can I say. From a retail POV they could certainly use the iPhone.

[miffed]

I almost wet myself last time I was in an O2 shop (Sittingbourne)

Trying to sell the benefits of an SE wXXX to someone , I heard him say

"The iphone will be great , but I won't use it for the same reason I have an SE walkman instead of an iPod - because you have to use iTunes which is really difficult to get to grips with - whereas the Sony walkman uses sonicstage - which is FAR better ....."

WTF !! Sonicstage is the worst piece of software EVER !!! - it make ZX 1K Chess look good !!

[Hands0n]

Sony Sonicstage is indeed a pile of poo. I do remember once buying a Sony MD (never again!) which came with is own management software that would only install on a factory-built XP system. I build all of my own stuff and so the software would resolutely refuse to install. The MD player and its software was consigned in my "nice try, no prize" box of bits (I had bought it in a foreign Duty Free shop) and it has never since seen the light of day.

For anyone to say iTunes does not work or is hard to use suggests that they have not exactly tried it themselves. Coupled with the iPod it has to be the most homogenous MP3 platform ever built, period. And no one can with any degree of reason suggest that Apple don't get the Man Machine Interface (MMI) absolutely spot on!

[Ben]

Believe it or not, it's the awful Sony software that drove me into the arms of iTunes and the iPod! I'd resisted for so long, using Napster and god knows what else, and WMP all my life, but SonicStage, and some other POS Sony inflicted on me, was the final straw!