I cannot believe I have only been working on the Windows Phone 7 team for three months.  So much has happened, it feels like a lifetime.  What’s been most impressive to me has been the pace of the engineering team.  Considering how many technologies from across the company we are bringing to WP7, it’s absolutely amazing what they are doing.

This week, during Andy Lees’s keynote at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, we announced that the Windows Phone Developer Tools have gone BETA.  Beta means that we have a near final version of the tools for building apps and games for Windows Phone 7.

I wanted to share with the community just how excited the developer community has been.  As a data guy, I like numbers because they tend not to lie.  Since the Mix10 release in March of the first CTP tools (and then the refresh in April), we have seen over 200K downloads of the Windows Phone Developer Tools.  That was before we shipped a Beta, and certainly before we had 5M devices in market to fuel demand.  At some point we’ll release the Beta download numbers, but based on the number of people registered for the live training course next week (hint: it’s got a comma in it), there’s a lot of people who want to build apps for Windows Phone 7.

For me, that’s a pretty solid indicator of the excitement levels, how much our developer community is anticipating getting involved with WP7, and that it is time to get serious about building apps and games, or building out your business, for Windows Phone 7.  The opportunities are plenty, even if you don’t want to build apps.  We showed one of our partners, Preemptive Solutions, on stage at WPC showing how they are building analytics tools so that app developers can build better apps.  Get creative, and start building.  Stay nerdy my friends.

The rumor mills and speculation are running at fever pitch.  I really should have predicted that 2010 would be the year of the tablet.  With bloggers falling all over themselves trying to get the scoop on the Apple table, it seems that the bloggers are trying to call a tablet from Microsoft to be announced tonight, though Mary Jo says “I don’t think so.”  With all that in mind, I was trying to figure out how to explain the world of tech in which we live.

Any unannounced, but speculated on, Apple product lives at the intersection of Impossible, Inspiring and In-Demand.  People may scoff at the notion of “in-demand” being applied to a table, but Bing tells me that there are 22.5 million results for Apple Tablet.

Here in the developer platform product management team, we have kicked off a new campaign about the .NET Framework.  There are so many people doing so many amazing things with .NET, and we want to hear from you.  The site linked to above has stories from some of our customers doing some very unexpected things with the .NET Framework.

Those stories were submitted by our field, but now we’re asking you directly.  Are you a .NET developer?  Have you done something cool you want the world to know about?  Great, come share your story and get featured on the wall of fame.  Free traffic and visibility is never a bad thing.

For those of you willing to create a demo of your product using DemoMate from Impresys, you could win a car or a 12-day Galapagos Islands trip.  You heard me…Bob Barker says “come on down!”  We’re looking for interesting and unique solutions build on top of our stack.  Bonus points if you interop with non-MSFT technologies.  We have a distinguished panel of judges who will select the winner.

Last, if you are going to be at PDC, come to our party.  We’re working in conjunction with the great guys at .NET Rocks (who, incidentally, have a great dev focused podcast) to throw a party at 8pm in the Visual Studio/.NET Lounge Theater.  Free food, drinks, prizes…good times to be had by all.

Robert Cringely has an article up at the NY Times about Chrome vs Bing.  It’s a fine piece, but there’s a bit in the middle that makes me shake my head:

Microsoft makes most of its money from two products, Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office. Nearly everything else it makes loses money, sometimes deliberately.

This is not an uncommon refrain, though most times people call MSFT a one trick pony.  This continues to confuse me.  I sat down with Scoble a couple of weeks ago at the Structure09 conference and we talked about MSFT.  He’s a former employee, and he too made this quip when the topic of Bing came up.

I read through the most recent 10-Q for Microsoft to see if I could pull out proof of what I am about to state, but the content wasn’t there.  There’s more detail in the 10-K filing from last year, so here goes.  If we start from the premise that Microsoft did $60B in revenues in 2008, and Office and Windows are the only products we have, where does that leave us?

The client business was $16.8B, but includes Windows Vista, XP, Media Center, and Tablet.  Note, it doesn’t include Windows Server, a completely different product.  Each of the client variants of Windows could certainly come under one product banner.

For Server you would have to look at the Server & Tools business (STB), which for 2008 turned in $13.7B in revenue.  STB consists of Windows Server and SQL Server.  It also includes our tools business, which is Visual Studio.  Let’s not forget Exchange or System Center.

Our online services business, though a money loser (at the operation income level), and perhaps the one that draws most of Cringely’s ire, put out $3.2B in 2008.  This includes all of our search and all online properties.  That’s multiple billion dollar revenue businesses right there.  Are costs out of control?  Sure, but it’s not like building a billion dollar business is something at which you sneeze or can do in a garage.

Next up is the Business Division.  This one churned out $18.9B.  Office is a part of that business, but so is Project, Dynamics, and Sharepoint.  I don’t have specific numbers, but those are not small products by any stretch of the imagination.

Last we have Entertainment & Devices.  E&D has the Xbox, all of our games, Zune, and our hardware.  Zune may not be a money maker on the revenue side, but we sell a lot of mice and keyboards, and those Xboxes are doing OK.  Our game attach rate is very high, and with some top selling first party titles.

We also have businesses built around premium support and consulting services, and those aren’t small businesses either.  Just consider what the scope must be given our product base.

So, for a company that apparently only has 2 products, the list I enumerated of “large” products – businesses that could be stand alone multi-billion dollar market cap companies – is pretty impressive.  There are only 332 companies listed on American exchanges that have market capitalizations north of $10B, and we could fill that list with at least 10.

Mini-MSFT is back, with a post about Microsoft turning The Corner.  It’s interesting to contrast his point of view with that of MG Siegler over at ParisLemon.  Given my own perception of  Valley bias on the part of Siegler (he is one of the new voices of Techcrunch after all), it’s great to see that we’re making progress which is being met with receptivity and not suspicion.  Further, everyone is focused on the most important beneficiaries – customers.

I have to admit, since returning to the company a little over a year ago, I have had this sense that things are looking up.  Don’t get me wrong, there’s no shortage of frustrations for me, but that’s to be expected when you come from a tiny company where you were the founder and CEO to a large company where you a cog in a wheel.

With the new fiscal year, I have a new role and a new team, and I plan on making liberal use of my training and experiences in constrained resource environments to do some things that will harken back to the mojo days of the late 90s and IE/Netscape goodness.

I know I posted a joke leaked screenshot of Chrome OS, and many people found it funny, but I firmly believe that this pre-announcement was the absolute dumbest thing that Google could have done.  First, they are starting to show a trend of pre-announcing products, with ever increasing time between announce and availability.  You could see this with Java support in App Engine, but then Wave, and now Chrome.  What are they thinking?  FUD worked 10 years ago, but not anymore.

Second, operating systems are our thing.  We have *YEARS* of experience building and delivering operating systems to market.  If it we so simple as to slap a pretty face on a Linux distro, someone would  have taken us out a long time ago.  There’s a long road of tattered carcasses that have tried to be “the next great OS.”  I use a Macbook at home for personal work, and enjoy OS X, and generally regard it as a great operating system.  Even with the Apple Fan Boy magic, they are marginally high single digit market share.  Ouch.

Third, and this is the important one, Google has given us a rally cry.  Whereas you could make the case that legions within the company felt that Ballmer’s quest to topple Google in search was Quixotic at best, no one, and I mean no one, comes into our house and pushes us around.  Expect to see the company galvanize around this new encroachment.  Expect a wave of pride, and something akin to, dare I say, nationalism, sweep through the company.  To pre-announce a thing a scant few months before Win7 goes out the door is going to bite them in the rear.  Win7 hasn’t had a bad review yet, and people are very excited to get it.  I have been running it on all my personal and work machines (other than the Macbook) for months, and it’s awesome.

We’ve rounded the corner, for sure.  We’ve rounded it and rejoined the race.  We were off in the woods for a while, but we’re back in the race and have a lot of power in the engine.  The next few years are going to be incredible.  I’m excited to work at the company, but more excited as a consumer who is going to benefit from Google, Apple and Microsoft all going at it hammer and tongs for phones, search and operating systems.

UPDATE: Looks like the original post is top spot at Techmeme…this week is going to be interesting.  That’s all I can say out loud.

This week should be an exciting one.  Not only do I get to travel down to CA and see old friends, I get to talk to a bunch of great startups, and cap the week off by participating in a panel discussion at Structure 09 – the 1:30PM session titled “Toward Cloud Computing: Private Enterprise as a First Step.”

The panel is being run by George Gilbert, who, like myself, is an ex-Wall Street guy, and he used to work at Microsoft.  He’s now running TechAlpha, and based on the few conversations we’ve had in preparation for the panel discussion, it should be a good one.

If you are going to be at the conference and want to get together to talk about your company or your cloud needs, find me by sending me a DM or @ on twitter – I am @brandonwatson.

It looks like I will be speaking at the Structure09 event on June 25th in San Francisco.  I was invited to join a panel on cloud computing, and am honored to have the opportunity to share the stage with many industry heavy weights.  Quite frankly, I’m not sure I measure up to the panel, but the team over at GigaOm have faith in me.

If you haven’t already registered, they gave me a discount code for anyone who reads this blog or follows me on Twitter.  It should be a really good event.  They had their inaugural event last year, and I’m certain this one will be even better.  Here’s the synopsis of the panel:

Toward Cloud Computing: Private Enterprise Clouds As A First Step

Enterprises aren’t yet able or ready to migrate their applications to public clouds.  Public cloud infrastructure can’t run existing enterprise applications without requiring a rewrite.  Yet the lure of usage-based resourcing is strong. The solution? Build your own cloud with your existing infrastructure investment as a first step. This panel will contrast vendor visions about how internal systems can work in unison with external cloud platforms. A must attend for those looking to find solutions or opportunity in the migration path to cloud services.

Panelists

Moderator – George Gilbert, Lead Analyst, TechAlpha
James Urquhart – Market Manager Cloud Computing,Cisco
Brandon Watson – Azure, Microsoft
Steve Herrod – CTO Vmware
Dave Hitz, CTO, NetApp
Joseph Tobolski, Cloud Computing Lead, Accenture

Summary

There was a report released April 15^th by McKinsey called “Clearing the Air on Cloud Computing.”  The premise of the report was that the cloud was actually quite a bit more expensive for large corporations than running their own datacenters.  While it allows a nod to small to medium businesses in stating that the cloud may make sense for them, the top line message was that cloud services overcharge for things that companies could do for themselves.  The piece ends up being a push for virtualization, and knocks Windows as a main cost issue for moving to the cloud.

Report Out

The report starts out with McKinsey’s view on the cloud.  They lay out that the premise for the cloud has been lower cost and faster time to market, but the reality is that these claims are overstated and that “cloud computing” is at the top of the Gartner hype-cycle.

The report takes it one step further to claim that since there is no agreed upon definition for what the “cloud” is (apparently they found a study that found 22 definitions for the “cloud”, which seems low to me considering the conversations I hear at conferences and on news groups), large companies should not think about “internal clouds” but rather focus on the immediate benefits of virtualization of servers, storage and network operations.  They posit that the newness of the cloud is distracting IT departments’ attention from technologies that “actually deliver sizeable benefits; e.g. aggressive virtualization.”

The early part of the report unfortunately spends as much time as many of the conferences are these days on the minutia of what definition is right, and what “the cloud means.”  More than anything, these diversions are tiresome for the observer and confusing for IT managers.  They zero in on the following traits:

1. Hardware management is abstracted
2. Capex to opex
3. Elastic demand for resources.

That sounds like what we presented at the Azure launch at PDC, but far be it from me to ask McKinsey to give Microsoft credit for the definition.

They call Windows Azure a cloud example, and not Azure Services Platform.  This confusion is consistent with customers and press/blogger sentiment that I am seeing.  Windows Azure is a piece of the overall Microsoft cloud play.  It’s an application hosting environment, which serves as the foundation, though not required, layer for other code execution paths in the Azure Services Platform.  One can build applications that live completely on-premises without using Windows Azure, but utilize other pieces of the Azure Services Platform.

They do call out the difference between a cloud and cloud services.  Cloud services has the two key tenets of hardware abstraction and scaling elastically.  The service could run on top of a cloud or not (e.g. SaaS).

McKinsey makes the mistake of confusing operating costs and startup costs.  The use of clouds by small companies is a result of startup costs, cost of capital, and availability of funds.  Those companies are the ones who are not already invested in large datacenters and likely lack the resources to build their own.  Whereas large companies have sunk costs in their datacenters, and will most likely externally claim that their operating costs are much lower than reality.  Over time, as they have to think about expanding and building new data centers with new equipment, large companies will most certainly then be looking at the cloud in much the same way that small companies are now.

McKinsey lays out the four main hurdles to adoption of cloud by large companies:

1. 1) Financial – cloud is not cost effective compared to large company datacenters (calculations to follow)
2. 2) Technical – security and reliability concerns, and re-architecting of apps.  I’m not sure about the first two, since they don’t offer any data (in which case, it’s a perception issue).  For re-architecting, this also is confusing.  Since AWS is essentially virtual hosting, you can move your apps to AWS with little to no work.  Azure is a different story, but AWS is the focus of this report.
3. 3) Operational – Perceptions of IT flexibility have to appropriately managed
4. 4) Organizational – org changes will be required to operate in a cloud world

The report claims the “typical” enterprise datacenter has the following metrics:

• · 10% utilization
• · $20M/MW
• · $.1 kW-hour
• · $14K/server (2CPU, 4 cores each CPU)

We finally get into the calculations for large and small/medium companies at slides 23-24.  They don’t show their calculations, but claim that the Total Cost of Assets for this typical datacenter is $45/month for CPU equivalent.  Assuming 36 month depreciation, that $14K server is $48/month.  Doing the math on Amazon’s Reserved pricing (for Linux servers – not available on Windows) yields:

McKinsey’s conclusions are simply wrong.  All of the instances work out to the same pricing per month, but vary depending on your agreed upon term of use (1 year or 3 years).  Importantly, assuming the 3 year depreciation schedule of their $14K server, the equivalent 3 year cost from AWS is $21/month/core.  This pricing does not include bandwidth costs, but I compare it to the $14K server purchase price.

Even more confusing is that on the two slides they have separate EC2 pricing conclusions for small/medium companies and large companies, even though they have the same line of demarcation for what is economical – the $45/s month per CPU month.  The boys at RightScale also take exception to the reporting of the numbers by McKinsey.

Page 25 is where things get interesting.  McKinsey claims that there’s a 144% gap from running one’s own datacenter to complete outsource to AWS (which is an unreasonable premise, as wholesale outsourcing is not the message delivered to any customer from any cloud player).  McKinsey then claim “the key factor is that the majority of servers that can be migrated are Windows servers.”  The implicit claim is that Windows makes AWS more costly.  A CIO takeaway may be “well, we have a ton of Windows boxes, so this won’t make sense.”  It’s true that AWS pre-made images running Windows are more expensive, especially if you include authentication services.  That’s for their pre-made images, and doesn’t take into account customers who have their own VL licensing. (NOTE: I am checking on our licensing policies here – it has been pointed out that license portability issues may be an issue)

On this same slide, McKinsey only attributes a 10% labor savings from moving to a third party provider.  They don’t substantiate that number, and it feels very light to me.  There is no talk of any of the automation that comes from moving to the cloud and using their tools for scale and elasticity.  Think tools like RightScale or Microsoft Systems Center.

McKinsey also knocks the uptime factor, claiming that enterprises set their own SLAs at 4 9s or higher.  In practice, this number is lower for any enterprise, but they have their own targets.  There are no web sources which track the downtime of enterprise resources, but there are a few for the cloud providers.  McKinsey claims that since AWS SLAs can’t match those of enterprises, enterprises won’t be interested.  There’s no punitive recourse if an IT manager doesn’t hit SLA, except perhaps that he might get fired, but AWS would be on the hook for real monetary damages, necessitating SLAs that are more realistic.  It’s easier to posture and claim you are designed for 4 9s than to say you have signed an SLA for 3 9s with a cloud provider.  4 9s, which is the enterprise target, allows only 52 minutes of downtime per year.  One server reboot a month could put you over that number.

On slides 29-30, McKinsey claims that large enterprises can increase their server utilization rates from 10% to 35% with “best in class, aggressive server virtualization.”  Additional cost controls can be gained, they claim, through adopting data center best practices, yielding TCO savings of 50%.

Finally, they liken the hype around cloud to that of the dot com bubble, and ominously point out that the NASDAQ fell 80% when that one burst, suggesting that CIOs should avoid investing in the cloud hype.

What’s Missing from the Report?

· The report lacks any mention of the massive economies of scale which come from a large cloud provider purchasing equipment.  Further, even things like the cost of power are glossed over, as our own internal $/kW-hour are much lower than those proposed for the “typical” datacenter.

· At present, AWS has near monopoly pricing power in the cloud, and it behooves them to keep those prices high.  With additional competition, prices will come down.

· There is no mention of the speed to market associated with procuring and provisioning servers for any new projects, nor is there any mention of the risk mitigation for new projects.

Additional Links

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/16/mckinseys-cloud-computing-report-is-partly-cloudy/

http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2009/04/the_big_company.php

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=16384

http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/15/cloud-computing-enterprise-technology-cio-network-cloud-computing.html?partner=technology_newsletter

http://www.elasticvapor.com/2009/03/amazon-reserves-right-to-host-your.html

http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2009/04/anticloud_hype.html

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/15/when-cloud-computing-doesnt-make-sense/

http://blog.rightscale.com/2009/04/15/mckinsey-doesnt-get-the-cloud/

http://bizbox.slate.com/blog/2009/04/mckinsey_sez_cloud_computing_b.php

http://cloudpundit.com/2009/04/16/mckinsey-on-cloud-computing/

http://cloudpundit.com/2009/04/16/mckinsey-on-cloud-computing/

Everyone seems to be all over this netbook meme that’s been floating around for a while.  When I first played with a netbook, it was an Asus 9” Eee PC.  I have to admit, I didn’t get it at first.  The machine that I was given to borrow over a few days was running Windows XP.  It had a very small keyboard.  Do I have large hands?  No.  (You know what they say about guys with small hands right?  They still can’t type on netbooks.)  I just found the keyboard very difficult to acclimate to for even basic tasks.

I returned the netbook, and a couple of months later was treated to another loaner.  This time it was the Lenovo S10.  Ahhhh, now we’re talking.  The keyboard was still very frustrating, and while “the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog” turned out something closer to “tje qujkfs bokraskdj fokse sfdl; sdlkt” I did eventually get used to the keyboard (we’re talking a few hours of use) and can now touch type on it no problem.

My issue with the netbook was that it’s effing slow.  Don’t listen to what anyone tells you.  It’s slow. The Atom processor is slow.  The memory (even with 2GB) didn’t feel sufficient.  The graphics were painful, and when loading web pages, which have a habit of stressing your graphics if there are any flash pieces or AJAX-y stuff going on, things seemed to bog down.  This was all on XP.

Given that I work at Microsoft, it may be a bit out of school to say this, but there was no way I was going to put Vista on this thing.  The machine was having enough of a time getting out of bed, there was no need to strap weights to its belt.  However, working at Microsoft as I do, I was able to put the beta build of Windows 7 on this little baby.  Build 7000.

I am happy to say that I have been running the netbook since beta started and have had no problems.  It’s not fast, and I feel bad for you if you bring your netbook up on the network from sleeping and Outlook is open and tries to synch.  Guh!  The 600px screen height is maddening, and you really don’t want to be doing anything other than light web browsing, typing email or editing docs.  OneNote is fantastic on this computer.  You have to minimize the Office 2007 ribbon (right click on it to do this) to really have anything reasonable in the way of screen real estate.  Don’t think that you are going to do any modeling on Excel.  The keyboard and screen make this hard.  Very hard.

So that’s a long preamble to bring me to the main point of this post.  Keir Thomas over at PC World has written an article suggesting that the uptake on Linux on the netbook is a complicated issue.  No it’s not.  Linux on the desktop sucks.  Period.  Thomas would love to pull a rope a dope and suggest that since Windows has a lead in the mind of the consumer, and they are already comfortable with Windows that they are willing to forgive the problems presented by a netbook out of box experience, whereas with Linux they are not.  This is wrong for a couple of reasons.

First, if the computer really is a tool, then the software shouldn’t matter.  In reality, it does.  The computer is a workbench, and you need the software tools to get things done.  The hardware is not the tool.  The operating system and associated software is.  The Linux community doesn’t make it easy to on-board.  It sucks to be you if you have to go online and ask questions about getting started with Linux.  The haters will rain insults down on you, or, as the author suggested, give you answers that are simply overly complicated.  That’s the Linux community in a nutshell.  This is not how the 95% of computer users who aren’t nerds like us want to interact with a computer.

Second, the hardware for the XP and Linux experience is the same.  So you can’t say the the awkwardness of the hardware is only applicable to Linux because their onboard experience sucks so bad.  No, the keyboard is just as small for everyone.  In fact, I would argue that because the Windows customers know what to expect out of the software, the awkwardness of the hardware would be more pronounced.

Third, is the XP factor.  Windows 7 is to Windows XP as web20 is to birthday cake candles.  That’s my Chewbacca defense coming through.  I’m making light of this a little bit, but let’s be clear.  Windows 7 looks absolutely nothing like Windows XP, and to even the most nerdiest of nerds (i.e. me) it took some time to get comfortable with the new cockpit.  You cannot buy a netbook with Windows 7, but many people are putting the beta on these machines.  It sings baby.  Windows 7 on the netbook, with the ecosystem of software available for it, will create a fantastic computing tool.

Fourth, the Apple factor.  I know you can hackintosh your way into running OS X on the Dell minis.  The Microsoft haters love to say what a great OS Apple has.  I use it at home on a personal laptop.  It’s nice.  I won’t argue with that.  I will argue that if Windows sucked so bad, why aren’t more people putting OS X on their netbooks?  You can do it.  It’s not terribly difficult.  The hardware issues would be the same as the Win and Linux users.  Windows can’t suck that bad, can it?

People use Windows because they know how to use it, there’s tons of software for it, and you can get done what you need done.  Was Vista a stinker?  Yes, the first version was pretty bad.  The SP1 version is a huge step up.  Windows 7, however, is amazing.  I’m running it on all my machines now, and except for some of the expected issues running non-beta internal builds, I haven’t had one problem.

If Google were right, and the Web was the platform, then people could get by running netbooks using only Linux with Firefox.  Unfortunately for Google, things aren’t that simple, and won’t be.  In fact, I am going to go out on a limb here and say that the Twitter guys are demonstrating the power of the Microsoft championed “Software Plus Services.”  Yes, you can access Twitter from the web, but the APIs have enabled many third party software pieces that run on phones, PCs, and other end points.  You need software to really make Twitter sing (tweet?).

Software is an amazing thing.  You have more power in your cell phone than was used in the command modules that put all the men that have ever walked on the moon.  Think about that for a moment.  Software on those end points (phones, PCs, netbooks, etc) make them special.  The hardware is your workbench, and software is your toolset.

I am not the first person to write a review for the financial software service Mint.com.  Nor will I be the last.  However, after using the product for just a week, I felt compelled to reach out to my readers and let them know that if you have as much of a deep seeded hatred for personal financial software tools (*cough* Money…*COUGH* Quicken) as I do, then you have most likely given up on the category entirely.

Myself, I needed another run at a personal financial software tool like I needed another run at dealing with the tech support line at the cable company.  With the impending arrival of my third child, and the economy being in the state in which it is, it is no longer suitable to utter "leave it to me" to my wife when issues of our personal finances come up.  You see, she went to the bank and withdrew a pocket full of "I don’t give a shit" for whenever I would try to insist that my Wharton MBA was sufficient credential for her to avoid such topics.

Any time I have tried to use any of the aforementioned software packages, they would prove too onerous for the family to use.  Further, it was complicated to ensure that we could share a file across machines.  Synchronization became a complete pain in the ass.  Bottom line – I loathed the software.

The number one problem I had with any of these packages was simply getting started.  The need for the opening balance was enough to derail most efforts.  Don’t you dare try to use Quicken or Money without reconciliation of that opening balance.  You want to get your transactions into the system?  Sure, no problem.  Want to have them categorized?  You’re on your own.  Want the data that the bank provides to be enough so that your software would simply figure out how to auto-classify new transaction?   Good luck with that.  Forget to download transactions for a month and you only use your debit card for all transactions?  Your night is ruined.

I am willing to go out on a limb and suggest that there is an entire mini-generation of computer savvy young professionals who may never use personal finance software because of the horrors of the on-boarding and maintenance processes of the old guard packages.  This is where Mint.com shines.  Shine is not strong enough a word.  The sun is melting my eyeballs it’s so bright.

The first thing you need to know is that Mint is read only.  There’s no concern that someone can compromise their site and gain access to your accounts.  Mint is a reporting tool, not a money management package.  It’s this delineation, in my opinion, which ultimately frees them from the design decisions which have destined others to fail.  They chose to do one thing (reporting) and do it very well.

When you create your account, you need nothing other than an email and a password.  There’s no personally identifiable information about you stored at Mint.  When you add your bank accounts, you simply provide the login credentials to your bank online service.  If you are like my wife, that last bit was a non-starter.  Mint understands this, and provide this great starter page about privacy and security.  It got my wife over the hump.

I put in our account credentials for our bank, and a few moments later it said it had validated the information.  Iwas not prepared for what happened next.  My last 90 days of transactions had been downloaded, and mostly (probably 95%) auto classified.  I can count on two hands the number of transactions which were incorrectly classified.  Gas, hair cuts, groceries.  It was all done automatically.  All the data was there, and beautifully presented with charts, graphs and data tables.  I didn’t have to do any heavy lifting.

As a reporting tool, Mint strives to give you the tools you need to track transactions, your cash flow, budgets, etc.  They auto compute moving averages for your spending categories and let you know how you are doing against those averages for the month on a real time basis.  They will also send you emails (or SMS)when you go over your budgets for the month.

If you want to get really nerdy, you can plot your spending against the US at large, against a state, or even a city.  All of that data is presumably pulled from their own data sources.

The usability is top notch, with plenty of clean interface decisions that make for a, date I say it, enjoyable personal finance experience.  I really like being able to drill down into the pie chart of my monthly spend and see the transactions and amounts for the category types.  There are some usability nits and nats, but overall I am really impressed with the product.