Dear Friends,
We got that big dump of snow on Valentine’s Day with just about three feet up at my house on Prickly Mountain. Unlike our friends down south, everyone seems to be smiling whenever we get the big snow. The snow plow drivers have work, the ski areas and restaurants are busy, and the skiers are definitely grinning, too. Emily and I drove to our store in Manchester, NH on Tuesday and it seems that they don’t pull out the plows there until the snow is over. It was a mess in town and it took us about an hour to get from Manchester to I-89, which is usually about a 15-20 minute drive, to head back to Vermont.
We have had a lot of discussions lately about our e-newsletters and I am very interested in your feedback on Kibbles & Bytes. It has always been my intention that this would be a vehicle that allows us to talk to our most loyal and valuable customers each week with a combination of news about Small Dog and Apple as well as a handful of special offers. I have tried to keep it personal and personable and to balance it as a friendly communique to our customers.
Every now and then, questions are raised about the value of the effort and what the return on investment might be. I feel that the value is in the communication itself, not necessarily how many of our specials sell each week. I think that many companies would find the ability to talk directly to almost 30,000 opt-in customers each week to be a real asset.
What are your thoughts? Do you find this newsletter to be of value? Do you look at the specials? How could we make it better? Drop me an email and let me know!
I’m often asked about which Mac is the best purchase for a home. In general, we ask a lot of questions about what the Mac will be used for, who will be using it and whether a portable or desktop Mac would be most suitable. I’ve put together a special bundle for Kibbles & Bytes readers today on a complete system for your home that would suitable for anything from a dorm room to that new house up in the mountains.
This week, we’re featuring a desktop solution: a 21.5-inch iMac with 8GB of RAM, a 2.7GHz i5 processor and a big 1TB hard drive. It comes with a full-sized keyboard and Bluetooth mouse. This iMac is ideal for a family with several people who would share it for homework, internet, email and general use. It always makes sense to include a backup drive (especially with a standard hard drive), so we’ll add the Seagate Backup Plus 2TB drive that is sized just right for this iMac. With Time Machine, you will always have an up-to-date backup of your data when the drive is attached.
For Wi-Fi and network connectivity, we’ve added an AirPort Base Station (Apple refurbished) with 1-year Apple warranty that will do just fine. No system is complete without an Apple TV, so you can access all that content on your big screen TV or mirror the content from your iMac. We will toss in an HDMI cable, too! Last, but not least, you might want to print out some of that homework or some photos, so we’ll add in a Canon Pixma MX522 Multifunction AirPrint Photo Inkjet printer. This will allow wireless printing from your iMac (or any other Macs, iPads or iPhones in the house). It is a printer, copier, scanner and fax machine in one!
Since this is a shared iMac, we will also add a set of Urbanears Plattan Headphones in Tomato (red for belated Valentines) so that you can listen to music without bothering others or the kids can do some gaming without all the game noise. We want you to be ready for anything, so we have included the AppleCare Protection Plan for iMac that will give you three years of hardware warranty (instead of one) and three years of Apple technical support (instead of the 90-days that comes with new Macs). This bundle has it all: a great family desktop Mac, a backup solution, wireless networking, a color printer and some cool headphones.
Just for Kibbles & Bytes readers, I am offering this bundle this week for only $1777.77!