A Week With Windows 7

Windows 7 Beta has been a pretty good experience overall. What seems to detract from it is Internet Explorer 8. Since so much of what we do is browser based, that makes its being so half-baked, so particularly disappointing. As a matter of fact, I'm making this post from Google Chrome, because of the numerous problems with IE8.

Windows 7 Beta as an OS itself is surprisingly good. Installing SQL servers, CF, Flex, etc... has been flawless and very manageable. The actual OS overhead is far better than Vista, where the systems can be "punishing," to use a word. That's the good.

Now for what might be bad. There are two area's to look at. First off, going from Windows XP to either Vista or Windows 7 is a dramatic change. Things are moved around, the work flow is very different. In and of itself, change is not a bad thing. The problem is introducing change without being intuitive. The end result is frustration for so-called "regular," computer users. They want to work on their task. They don't want to spend 45 minutes trying to figure out how to change their profile picture. It's relative to the system shock of going from Office 2003 and office 2007. I've had to help a lot of frustrated people because the paradigm shift was so extreme.

The second thing which is idiotic is the number of versions of Windows Vista and planned versions of Windows 7. Currently there are four (4) versions of Vista. That's ridiculous. Most people could deal with 2 versions of XP, home or pro. That made sense to people. Four versions is just opening a can of worms and introducing an elephant to a pool party. You don't want the complications. Anyone who knows me is aware that I'm a Apple fanboy, but there's a reason for that. Do you know how many versions of OS X Leopard there are? One. You can use it for the home network or corporate network environment. It doesn't matter. You pay only one price (99.00 USD). What could be better. Microsofties for being so smart are impressively dumb, when it comes to stuff like this. If they continue with the same pricing structure and confusion, it will be proof that Microsoft is not learning from their mistakes.

Jaye Morris

Interested in Getting Things Done

I've always been interested in task management apps. I have way to many requests and demands on my time to easily remember things. Its also important to say that it's not that these tasks and requess are not important, but more like I'm in data overload.

Using the Outlook task manager was okay, but it also tied my to my laptop, which I don't always want to carry with me. When I had the MotoQ is was a litle better, but still somewhat clunky.

After I got my 1G iPhone, I was really bummed out, because there was zero task management available. But with 2.0 that was the first type of application I started looking for.

Enter OmniFocus. I ponied up with my 20 bucks. I felt that it was slow but robust. Some of the features and workflow was a little hard to figure out. But I was introduced to something that I was not familiar with... GTD (Getting Things Done). You can learn more about it from David Allen It's a methodology for becoming more productive and effective.

Since that time, I've been looking for an easy implementation to integrate into my life via my iPhone. I heard about desktop and iPhone application called "Things." The desktop version in available as a free preview. It's surprisingly impressive and feature rich for an alpha version. There is a really cool video demo on screencast.

Connecting both the desktop and my iPhone literally took about 30 seconds. That's no exaggeration. The iPhone app is guick and effective. It certainly doesn't feel as bloated at the Omnifocus and it's half the price (9.99).

The only drawbacks that I have found is that it does not have the "tags" like in the desktop version, but that's an easy fix. The other drawback is there is no "search" function. Those two things are kind of minor and it really is an outstanding app. And if you ask what my criteria was, in judging that, it's simple. I'm "getting things done."

~ Jaye

Thinking About Microsoft

Beating up on Microsoft and picking them apart is nothing new. It's a religious right on any given day. I am primarily a Mac user, so I'm not one to drink the "Microsoft Kool-Aid." But there are some important to remind and encourage people about with certain products. Specifically, I'm talking about Microsoft Office.

MS Office is something that Microsoft does very right, especially Excel. I like to think of Excel as the "Swiss Army" knife of software. The application in and of itself is awesome. You can easily use it in a variety of ways. The obvious it calculations and formulas. The other is as a flat file database. You can do some really cool stuff that on the surface seems simple, but in reality can be a little mind bending. I can't tell you how many times I've used it to create and manage and been data through CSV files. I love that stuff. We don't talk enough about it.

As a matter of fact, people in tech world are famous for talking about how deep Adobe Photoshop is. But the truth be told, so is Excel. If you want to go in that direction, it's impressively deep in scope. I've seen some mind-blowing stuff that would meet the needs and demands of any serious business person. Unfortunately most people only use about 10 of the available feature set.

Word is Word. I've had friends write anything form novels to training manuals to automated forms. There are some interesting tools inside. You can do a heck of a lot more than design certificates with MS Word. The forms tool is pretty interesting to play with.

I'm not going to go into each application, but by now you have a feel for the direction I'm going in and what I'm talking about. The bottom line it that MS Office is something that the boys and girls at Redmond got right. If you look into it, you can find some cool stuff. Apple has a famous phrase. "Think Different." It would not be a false thing to apply towards the suite.

Let us know your thoughts. Happy computing!

Jaye

Productivity 2.0

There is a great article on "Zen Habits," on Productivity 2.0. The article does a terrific job in contrasting old (usually ineffectual thinking) vs. New School (high quality employee output. Give it a read. There are some really excellent points in there.

Jaye