Poll Result - Preferred Lead Size

The results are in. Thanks to those who voted and/or commented on the recent poll.

The question was, "What is your preferred lead size?"

The results are

17.1% = 0.2 / 0.3 / 0.35 / 0.4mm
37.8% = 0.5mm
29.3% = 0.7mm
6.1%   = 0.9mm
1.2%   = 1.1 / 1.15 / 1.18mm
2.4%   = 1.3 / 1.4mm
4.9%   = 2mm
1.2%   = Bigger than 2mm

Total = 182 votes

For comparison, the same poll back in 2007 produced this result

0.3mm = 7%
0.5mm = 42%
0.7mm = 22%
0.9mm = 11%
1.1 to 1.4mm = 5%
2mm = 7%
Even bigger = 4%

The 0.3mm size range seems to be the big mover. Orenz?

Poll - Lead Size

Ok, well I'll give Google Forms a go.

What is your preferred lead size?

This is the link to the multiple choice survey form. You can click on it, or copy and paste into your browser address bar.

01-October
Poll is now closed. Thanks to all who voted and commented. I will publish the results shortly.

Poll 11 - Push Point Pencils

The Poll has closed. The poll was in conjunction with my review of the Yoropen pencil, and asked the question “Are pop-a-point pencils mechanical pencils?”
 
The options and votes were

• Yes – 23 votes (23%)
• No – 66 votes (66%)
• Not sure – 11 votes (11%)

No prize for guessing there were exactly 100 votes cast.

I admit it is not a totally black and white situation, but I personally don’t consider push-point pencils to be mechanical pencils, so this poll doesn’t give me any reason to reassess that.

Poll 10 - Vanishing Point Mechanical Pencils

OK, the Poll closed a while ago.

The poll question was prompted by my review of the Paper Mate Apex mechanical pencil and was "What should we call vanishing point mechanisms".

The options and votes were:
Double Action - 4 votes (5%)
Double Push - 6 votes (8%)
Dual Action - 4 votes (5%)
Vanishing Point - 54 votes (79%)

Clearly "Vanishing Point" it is, which is certainly my prefered option. I'll make a label and apply it to applicable posts so you can click on it and see posts related to vanishing point pencils.

Such a pity that the Pilot Vanishing Point mechanical pencil is vanishing.

Poll 9 – “I Am A Regular Reader From…?”

The polling stations have just closed and the final results of the readership survey have been tallied, giving the geographical locations of those of you who self-describe as regular readers of this blog and who took the time to vote. There were 489 votes cast, a reasonable increase on the 422 votes in the 2009 poll. The locations, vote percentages and number of votes were:

UK – 10% (51 votes)
Germany – 4% (21)
Spain – 2% (8)
Italy – 1% (7)
Other Europe – 8% (41)
Turkey – 3% (16)
Africa – 0% (1)
Japan – 2% (9)
Singapore – 1% (4)
Other Asia – 4% (22)
Australia – 4% (21)
Canada – 8% (38)
USA – 43% (212)
Brazil – 3% (13)
Other Cent/Sth America – 2% (10)
Elsewhere – 3% (15)

Thanks to those of you who voted. Just like in previous polls I get the feeling that Japanese people don’t vote. The 9 readers just does not tally with the direct views from Japan whenever I post a new article. Japan is also the only place to show a decline in readership.

As always I am very interested to hear from any and all readers and learn a little about the pencils of their part of the world, but at the risking of being accused of favouritism I would like to say a special Hello to the lone solitary person from Africa. Love to hear from you, my contact details are on my blogger profile. Also, I would be very interested to hear from any of you who are in Turkey, Other Central/South America (please don’t be offended Brazil) and of course good old Elsewhere. I am rather surprised at the number of you Elsewherers. It would be good to know where you are from – either by contacting me or leaving a comment on this post.

As you might expect, about 250 (50%) votes were recorded within the first 3 days of the poll, and then things became a fairly constant progression of about 20 – 25 votes (5%) per day for the next 10 days that the poll was open. This was still the case on the last day so there are obviously a fair number of regular but not so frequent readers.

Readership Survey - Poll 9

It’s that time of year again, when I try and figure out how many of you there are and where you come from. I’ve become somewhat stat-obsessed and have 4 different visitor counters on this blog and naturally they all disagree with each other, but they do paint the same overall picture. About 55% of visitors are from the good ole USA, 10% from the UK, 5% from Canada, 3% from Australia and then the first of the non-English speaking countries – Germany clocks in at 2% and Japan at a little less. But that’s visitors, and I’m interested in regular readers.

So, if you self describe as a regular reader, then I’d appreciate you participating in the poll over in the sidebar. As you can see there are two poll gadgets there. The first is country specific, so if you are from one of those top visitor log countries then please vote by country in the first poll. If though you are like me and don’t live in one of those countries then please vote by area in the second poll.

Obviously I would appreciate it if you kept to the traditional democratic concept of “one person, one vote” rather than some sort of “vote early, vote often” system.

Thanks for participating.

2010

Well 2010 is upon us so I thought I should announce The Plan. I know it’s crazy talk, but there are other things besides mechanical pencils, so this year my master plan is to publish one blog post per week. Posts will tend to alternate between something significant like a proper review and something lighter and less laborious. We will see how well The Plan is implemented.

Now for a few other things.

Firstly, in the news it is reported that Porsche Design have ceased their contract with Faber-Castell, and Pelikan will take over manufacturing their products.

Secondly, Palimpsest, a blog you might want to browse, primarily focusing on the relationship between various historical figures and their writing instrument of choice.

Lastly, I have recently been disturbed by Google Webmaster Tools telling me my blog is way way way down low in the page loading speed rankings. I make it into the slowest 10% of pages on the net, though apparently that’s not exactly unusual for blogs. I have always paid some attention to my blog loading speed because for the first few years of this blog I was on dial-up. So, I’d like to get your opinion on my page load speed, in comparison to other blogs, hence the Poll over in the sidebar.

Speed! In comparison to other blogs this blogs pages load - Fast, Average or Slow?

*********
Update - 16 January - Thanks for your comments and poll votes about page speed. I've ended the poll as the results are clear. Total 56 votes, with Fast = 50%, Average = 46% and Slow = 4%. So, as I suspected, I don't have much to worry about re page speed despite what GWT says.

Poll 7 – “I am a regular reader from…?”

Below are the final results for Poll 7, giving the geographical locations of those of you who self-describe as regular readers of this blog. There were 422 votes cast, a big increase on the 182 self-described regular readers of Poll 6. The locations, vote percentages and number of votes were:

Australia – 4% (18 votes)
Canada – 8% (35)
Japan – 3% (14)
UK – 6% (27)
USA – 45% (191)
Asia – 3% (16)
Europe – 22% (96)
South & Central America – 4% (18)
Elsewhere – 1% (7)

An extra special hello to the seven of you who, like me, live in “Elsewhere”. Apart from the grand total, no real surprises in the results. I continue to suspect that Japanese people don’t like voting on my Polls. The number of hits via Japanese language feed services that regularly arrive shortly after I publish is about two times the number of votes.

Quiz 1 below has a little cartogram of the results.

Quiz 1

What does this map represent?

Poll 7 – BIC Matic Classic

Poll 7 has closed.

Running in conjunction with my review of the BIC Matic Classic, the poll question was, “BIC Matic Classic. A #1 seller. Have you used it?”

83 votes, 53 votes (63%) for YES and 30 votes (36%) for NO.

Results of 'Readers - Poll 6'

Well firstly, thanks to everyone who submitted a comment on the readership poll. I wasn’t really expecting that, so it was nice to receive them. I’ll trust that the poll results are reliable, that no one decided to “vote early and vote often” and Zimbabwe the results. Final figures after the 2 week polling period closed are 118 ‘Frequent’ readers and 64 ‘Occasional’ readers, making a total of 182. For the record, that’s actually a little less than my prediction of 200 – 250. Still it’s good to know how many of you / us there are out there.

Poll 6 - Readers

Aaarrrrgggh…
It’s been gnawing away at me for ages. Just how many of you are there? These days my Sitemeter records 11 or 12 thousand hits per month for this blog, but most of these hits are just simple Google searches. My Blogger profile view counter is over 2,100. Anyway, shades of narcissism if you like, but I’d really like to know how many pencil folk there are out there, how many “regular readers”? So, time for a Poll, “How often do you read this blog?” I’ll leave it up to you to self-describe whether you are a frequent or occasional reader.

Sorry, no voting button for just plain old “No”.

Poll 5 – Rubber Grips

The latest poll has closed.

The question was, “Rubber grips on mechanical pencils?”, with voting choices
Love ‘em = 60 votes (32%)
Hate ‘em = 78 votes (41%)
I’m neutral = 49 votes (26%)

We all know I’m not really a fan of rubber grips. I’m not surprised at the above results from readers of this blog, but from the number of pencils with rubber grips I suspect manufacturers believe, and their sales reflect, that the majority of the public prefer rubber grips. Any pencil can be made “better and more ergonomic” by adding some rubber to it. Well, that seems to be one theory anyway.

Poll 4 - The Greatest Brand

Poll 4 has closed. The poll was

Question: “‘There Can Be Only One’ (From Highlander?) Which is the greatest brand of mech. Pencils?”

This time there were 220 votes, down on the previous two poles. The votes were cast as follows:
Caran d’Ache x 15 (6%)
Faber-Castell x 29 (13%) [2nd]
Lamy x 11 (5%)
Ohto x 10 (4%)
Papermate x 13 (5%)
Pentel x 68 (30%) [1st]
Pilot x 24 (10%) [3rd]
Staedtler x 23 (10%) [4th]
Uni x 0 (0%)
Zebra x 7 (3%)
Some other brand x 20 (9%)

Straight out of the starting blocks, Pentel established a good lead. After just one day of votes, the top five were (from 1st to 5th) Pentel, Faber-Castell, Caran d’Ache, Staedtler and Papermate. At the half-way stage it was Pentel, Caran d’Ache, Pilot, Faber-Castell and Some Other Brand. In the end Pentel was the clear winner, which doesn’t surprise me at all. Two things did surprise me though. First was that Uni (Mitsubishi Pencil) got zero votes, and that Some Other Brand got 9% of the vote, and was actually the fifth highest scoring selection. This tends to indicate I got my selection of voting options wrong. If you voted for Some Other Brand then feel free to leave a comment and let me know who you voted for. Mont Blanc, Retro 51, Bic, Pelikan, Alvin, Standardgraph, Cross…?

I think that’s it for polls for the meantime, unless I think of some other question I just have to ask.

Poll 3 – Preferred Lead Grade

Poll 3 has closed. The poll was:

Question: “What is your preferred mech pencil lead grade?”

The 268 votes were cast as follows:
2H or Harder x 18 (6%)
H x 9 (3%)
F x 9 (3%)
HB x 96 (35%)
B x 62 (23%)
2B or Darker x 74 (27%)

Another poll, another 268 votes?! Astonishing. 268 votes cast in this poll, exactly the same number as cast in the preceding lead diameter poll. With 35 % of the vote, HB is the preferred lead grade of readers of this blog. I can’t imagine that surprising anyone. I did expect B and 2B to score rather well, but perhaps not quite as well as they did - I expected a fairly good tail, but it was more substantial than I thought. I guess this reflects use by artists and many general writers wanting a good dark solid line. The hard grades did better than I thought too, even though they remain far less popular choices.

Combining the results of the lead diameter and grade polls together in a completely unscientific way, winner with winner, second with second, etc produces this – the most popular lead is 0.5mm HB, second most popular is 0.7mm 2B, and third is 0.9mm B. That’s actually not that crazy a result.

Poll 2 – Preferred Lead Diameter

Right then, Poll 2 has closed. The poll was:

Question: “What is your preferred mech pencil lead diameter?”

The 268 votes were cast as follows:
0.3mm x 19 (7%)
0.5mm x 114 (42%)
0.7mm x 59 (22%)
0.9mm x 30 (11%)
1.1 to 1.4mm x 15 (5%)
2mm x 20 (7%)
Even bigger x 11 (4%)

Nothing too surprising here, with 0.5mm a clear winner, and 0.7mm an easy second. I was a little surprised at the size of “the tail” – 0.9mm and bigger getting a combined 28% of the vote. A few manufacturers push 0.7mm over 0.5mm leads due to strength issues, but you could interpret this poll to imply it’s not that big a deal. On the other hand, voters on this poll might not be representative of the pencil using population at large and so skew the results towards 0.5mm.

Now hopefully I’m not going to go overboard on polls, but I’ve got a couple more questions coming soon.

Poll 1 - Lamy 2000

OK, so the poll closed a while back, and I thought I had better save the results for posterity. I can't see any feature for saving polls, other than typing up a whole posting like this, so...

Question: "Is the 'feel' of the Lamy 2000 the best of all the pencils in the world".

The 82 votes were cast as follows:
11 x YES.
14 x NO.
53x Don't know because I haven't got a Lamy 2000.
4 x No, and Dave, you are an idiot for suggesting it.

Right, well then, those of you who said 'NO' or 'NO... and you are an idiot...', now's the time to speak up. Whats better than the Lamy 2000? I await your comments.