The Lair

My landlord is quite enthusiastic about embracing technology. On the face of it, he’s completely atypical of your everyday geek - but those dusty jeans and Harley Davidson leather jackets actually disguise someone who is pretty technically adept, but very self deprecating about his undoubted abilities.

Recently, he got himself one of those fancy new fangled iPods.

Only, the iPod is notoriously finicky about the formats of video that it will play - so he needed to sit down and do a conversion job from his existing archives. He asked me what I would use and I had no hesitation in pointing out VLC. Free, plays practically anything and the transcode wizard will convert into different formats as well. Unfortunately, VLC isn’t pretty. Yeah, it does the job but he didn’t like it. So he actually went shopping and bought two pieces of software (not one, two) that he liked. Why did he buy it? Because “I just liked the look of it and I knew I’d enjoy working with that software“. Aside, it was Xilisoft Video Convertor and DVD Ripper.

Anecdotal, perhaps - but yet another reminder of how much looks actually matter. Functionality means very little - and people are actually prepared to pay money even when free alternatives exist. Granted, the prices were low enough that it counted about as much as getting dinner delivered from the nearest indian takeout but even so …