Tag: Microsoft

Why doesn’t Windows have Spaces (or Ubuntu’s Workspaces)?

Why doesn’t Windows have Spaces (or Ubuntu’s Workspaces)?

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Microsoft used to be the first follower of the computer software.  They used to take all of the good things that were in the OS or software offerings from their competitors and put those offerings into Microsoft offerings.  Now Microsoft is so confused, they aren’t even being good followers.

I want to be fair, it is okay to be a first follower. In fact, it is often a great strategy. They can take the great ideas from the computing world and improve them to offer to their consumers at a much lower cost. This has been the modus operandi of Microsoft for decades. This must be a particular trait of Bill Gates that Steve Ballmer just doesn’t have.  Since Billy left Microsoft, Microsoft cannot even seem to copy good ideas anymore.

My current favorite complaint about Windows is the lack of Spaces that are on the Mac or Workspaces in Ubuntu.  This is the ability to have only certain application showing in a given screen. It really helps to keep your desktop less cluttered as you work. It eliminates having windows behind windows behind windows.  At a certain point you just don’t need those windows open if you cannot click on them in the desktop.  If you have to go to the taskbar to select the window/application that you want, then you have already learned the need for [Work]Spaces as they exist in more modern operating systems than Windows 7.

A good friend that absolutely loves all things Microsoft (he even thinks that their phone OS will someday be successful – LOL) tries to explain this to me. You can download an application that will patch the OS and make this functionality work. Sure, instead of an OS offering I install a hack into the OS and hope it doesn’t screw up everything else. I used one of these hacks when I switched back from Ubuntu to Windows XP and it completely screwed up my Registry. I don’t want to go down that road again with my Windows 7 laptop.  If you would like to try, here are some possible add-ons that might work for you to improve your productivity (try at your own risk – I am not saying any of these are any good):

How to handle 200 emails a day

How to handle 200 emails a day

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Mastering Technical Sales has a great article on their site explaining how to handle 200 emails a day. It is purposely written for suggestions to their target audience which is the pre-sales technical folks that are the brains in the IT sales world.

I pulled out a few of the more relevant paragraphs that were relevant to all regarding of profession but I suggest that you read the entire article.

I will start this suggestion list by sharing one of my habits. “Don’t file – SEARCH”.  Install one of the several desktop search indexing tools such as Google Desktop Search, Windows Desktop Search, or Copernic Desktop Search. Then, when you have read and are finished with an email, move it to a “Done” folder and forget about it.  Don’t try to figure out if you should file the email in the customer folder, the folder of the person that sent you the email, the folder for product problems or whatever.  Most people end up spending way to much time worrying about their filing system or trying to find an email in the file system.  Don’t worry about it – just search for the email in one of the above systems let the engine do the heavy lifting for you.

Unplug the machine. Almost every email system has a setting for receiving mail which says “poll every xx minutes”. Either set xx to something like 60, or turn it off completely and only synchronize your mail manually. You will be amazed how much time this saves you, as many problems will get fixed by other people and you don’t have to needlessly, and constantly, switch thought processes from one task to another and back again.

Train the people who email you the most. Especially if you are in a customer-facing position, they (the righteous emailers) have no right to expect you to respond inside 30 minutes. So, even if you can respond rapidly to these folks, don’t do it – wait for a couple of hours when appropriate. Should you decide to start answering emails between Friday evening and Sunday afternoon you are on the slippery road to electronic assimilation by the machine. Can you say CrackBerry?

Make your inbox a real inbox. It is a place where new mail arrives and waits to be processed. It is not a place to store pending tasks/to-dos or even to keep emails you don’t know what to do with. Your working inbox should be less than a screen full of messages, which equates to 20-25 emails for most of us.

Color up your world. Microsoft Outlook has a nifty feature which allows you to color code messages based upon who sent them. If you are a high email individual or a visual learner this can prove to be very useful. My system does the following:

  1. Red – My boss, his boss, executives and my primary HR contact.
  2. Green – My direct reports
  3. Purple – Anyone else in my department/division
  4. Grey – My peers within the company
  5. Brown – My “watch list” – typically Sales Directors and Area Managers
  6. Yellow – Automated Expense, HR, Purchasing and other approval requests

Take a trip to OHIO. The acronym stands for Only Handle It Once. When you do perform your hourly check of your inbox – take immediate action whenever you can. Either respond if it is a quick item, read and file if it is an FYI, delete it whenever possible (unless of course it is from a customer and you are the primary recipient), delegate it if appropriate or flag it as a task/to-do and move it to a “Take Action” folder. Just don’t let it sit in your inbox once you
have read it.

Your Mother was wrong! You do not have to send back a thank you every time someone helps you out. Reserve the thanks for special occasions, and responding to the nice people in HR, Finance and the office manager. Better yet, if you are in the same office, get off your rear and go say it in person.

Make your boss more efficient. Assume that your direct supervisor is even busier than you are, and if you can save her from thinking too hard it will reflect well upon you. So try phrases like “Julie – please read through point #3 below and reply with your approval or any questions by Thursday”. 95% of bosses will love this, and for the other 5% it gives you an opening to find out exactly what they do want. Once again, less room for misunderstandings and fewer last minute panics and reworks.

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RANT! No more faith in Microsoft

RANT! No more faith in Microsoft

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After being on an iPhone for a year, I don’t think I could ever go back to a Windows Mobile phone.  I used the Windows Mobile platform for probably 11 years (including the original Windows CE non-phone devices) and it always seemed like the NEXT generation would solve all my problems. The next generation never did come and by the time I gave up, I was in the habit of restarting the phone every morning.

I recently tried to install the desktop search tool from Microsoft.  After several tries and lots of reading online, I couldn’t get the add-on installed that would allow this tool to search my Outlook 2003 files (let alone my Thunderbird personal email).  I gave up and installed Google desktop and was completely indexed on everything in one overnight session.

I have no faith in Microsoft anymore.  I have had to go back to Windows on my laptop rather than Ubuntu but that is just because my 2G RAM laptop was struggling with Ubuntu and a virtual machine with Windows so that I could use Outlook and Office.  If I didn’t have to be completely compatible with the rest of my company then I would likely not have a single Microsoft product on my computer or in my life.

I could survive without MS Office.  OpenOffice does everything that I ever need it to do.  I don’t need the extra functionality that overloads the MS Office product line.

The only product that Microsoft makes that I really like is Windows Live Writer (which I use for blog posts).  But when I was on Ubuntu, I found that Scribe on Firefox was perfectly adequate for my needs.

If I could get Evolution to really work well with our company Exchange server, I would be off of Windows.  I always struggle with the Calendar syncing, calendar invites, and the Global Address Book.  If someone could create a smooth interface to Exchange then it would be goodbye to Microsoft for me!

RANT! WHY CAN’T A DEVELOPER MAKE EVOLUTION WORK OFF OF EXCHANGE SO THAT I CAN DROP MICROSOFT!

I am done with this topic for now but I reserve the right to rant more on it someday.

Qumana for Linux doesn’t work on Ubuntu

Qumana for Linux doesn’t work on Ubuntu

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I enjoy using Ubuntu rather than the trash that Microsoft puts out.  I have a dual boot computer so I can always go back to the evil empire if I need to but my default OS is Ubuntu.

Sadly, the tools for managing blogs in Ubuntu are a bit slim so I was excited that Qumana was putting out a version for Linux.  I tried several times to get it working and have come to the conclusion that it is not ready for prime-time.  It simply doesn’t work well in my environment.  So I am still creating posts with Scribefire or the built-in tools that WordPress provides.

Hopefully, Qumana can get this working but for now it looks like it is DOA.

RANT! iPhone needs better apps management

RANT! iPhone needs better apps management

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Yes, I know that I just praised the iPhone from Apple as being a great phone.  In fact, it is the best phone that I have ever owned and I have had quite a few.

However, the management of application icons leaves a lot to be desired. 

First of all, it is not possible to name the different screens.  So while it is possible to congregate all of your games onto a particular screen, there is no way to name this screen and jump instantly to it.

Second, whenever you update an application to its next revision (and at this early stage, this happens a lot) the icon will jump back to the earliest possible spot.  This means that when you do an update, the icon forgets where you first put it (as in the games screen described above) and sticks it on the very first screen of the phone.  If there are no more open spots on that first screen, it puts it on the second screen (and so on).  This makes it tedious to reorganize your applications as developers work out bugs in their early versions.

If this was Microsoft, I would expect this bad behavior.  Microsoft regularly rearranges my Start menu when I do a patch to it or upgrade their Office application.  I hate it but I expect the idiots in Redmond to treat me like an imbecile.  Apple though is the king of cool interfaces, but as I have said before, software should not act smarter than me.

I am not the only one that feels this way, I hope that Apple is listening to this complaint.

APPLE – PLEASE GIVE US SOME WAY TO BETTER MANAGE OUR APPLICATION ICONS.  YOU ARE BETTER THAN THIS.

I am done with this topic for now but I reserve the right to rant more on it someday.

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RANT! Music formats should get along – 2 of 2

RANT! Music formats should get along – 2 of 2

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So why don’t iPods support WMA and similarly, why don’t other devices support AAC (Apple’s format)?

The why is simple. WMA is the format that many companies (e.g. Yahoo) use in their stores to sell music. WMA is developed by Microsoft and it is a competitor. Is it a better sounding format? For the most part, no it is not – the formats are essentially tied in audio capability for the average listener and the average audio speakers.

So it is a competitive issue. Apple makes the best device on the market with something like 90% market share. They don’t like Microsoft, so they don’t play nice to Microsoft. It definitely is not a revenue issue for selling songs on iTunes since at 99 cents per song, Apple isn’t making a lot of money on the songs. They do make a bunch of money for every iPod that is sold though.

They can still have iTunes be the pre-eminent way of managing your audio and video collection by supporting WMA. I even bet there is code within Cupertino somewhere that has iTunes playing WMA.

Hey Apple: Allow WMA on your iPods!! This doesn’t make any business sense! And while you are at it, allow other companies to license AAC to play on their devices – once again this will promote your iTunes product and store.

I am done with this topic for now but I reserve the right to rant more on it someday.

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