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Why I haven’t written much about Windows and its applications recently

Richard Frisch — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 13:05:40 +0000

The simple answer is that Windows 7 just works.

You may have noticed that in the past six months the only post I wrote specifically about Microsoft Windows or a Windows-specific application was Windows 8 – Why do they call it Windows? I still use Windows 7 on a daily basis. Contrary to what you might think from my posts, Windows 7 is my primary desktop operating system. I like it a lot and prefer it to any version of Mac OS X. It is undoubtedly the best version of Windows that Microsoft has ever sold. But, desktop Windows and its applications are mature compared to the mobile market or even compared to Mac OS X. There were significant improvements in moving from XP to Vista and then to Windows 7. I love the unified search baked into the Start button and Windows Explorer. I make great use of the Window 7 taskbar and jumplists. Many of Windows 7’s improvements are under-the-hood and not apparent to the user.

I am unaware of any new, astounding applications written specifically for the Windows Platform. Important applications like Microsoft Office continue to change, perhaps to evolve, but for the most part there has been little new in the last five years, perhaps the last decade. Some might argue the Office Ribbon, first introduced with Office 2007, is a significant improvement. Yet, the Ribbon primarily rearranged the user interface (UI) and denigrated the user experience (UX) for anyone who was already proficient with Office applications.

Non-Microsoft, Windows applications are not standing still. For example, in the last several years, Adobe has significantly enhanced its high-end video editing application, Premiere Pro. If you have the right hardware, the current version, CS5.5, outshines previous versions and competitive products. I don’t think Adobe is done yet. However, Premiere Pro is an expensive niche product and few of my readers care.

Microsoft is hard at work on Windows 8. I expect to write more and more about Windows 8 as its 2012 public release approaches. Until then: security, privacy, cloud services, synchronization, mobile platforms, the trend of consolidating control in technology industries, and my Titans and Tyrants of Technology project will garner the lion’s share of my attention.

Windows 8 – Why do they call it Windows?

Richard Frisch — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 13:14:35 +0000

Microsoft released the Windows 8 Developer Preview download shortly after they started their 2011 Build Conference in Anaheim, CA. I downloaded and installed it to see what’s cooking.

Windows 8 is a radical departure from earlier versions of Windows. The user interface (UI) has been reimagined as a touchscreen UI. It is called Metro and follows design work originally shown in the Vista Windows Media Center and Microsoft’s Zune software and hardware. It is similar to the Metro UI used in Windows Phone 7.

The title of this post comes from an email I received from my friend Walt, who had also played with the preview. He wrote,

I downloaded and installed the W-8 Preview yesterday as I’m sure you did. Of course I installed it on a PC rather than a mobile or tablet device and, for use with a big screen, dual screens, keyboard and mouse, Metro is a giant step backwards. It’s impossible to do much of anything without landing in Metroland where, without the ability to “swipe,” there’s no escape (the Windows key lets you toggle but not escape – the escape key does nothing, there’s no simple “back” button.)

Metro seems to be where Microsoft is headed but in no way is it “Windows.” The apps are full screen – you can’t move them, resize them, minimize or maximize them – they’re not windows.

Members of the press have been given shiny new tablets and are therefore raving about Metro. Maybe the final W-8 release will let enterprise users completely disable the App Crap but, short of that, I don’t see how it’s going to fly in productivity situations. I’m not even sure we need an all-in-one OS as opposed to a modular approach with compatible features. Maybe it’s a viable idea but it needs to scale correctly to the device at hand. W-8 does not – at least not for non-mobile, non-tablet devices, at least not yet.

One more thing – that green is UGLY, almost as ugly as Ubuntu brown! What were they thinking? Steve Jobs was right years ago when he said, “Microsoft has no sense of style, no taste!”

My own impression mirrors Walt’s. I don’t “get” the Metro UI on a desktop or laptop computer without a touchscreen. It makes no sense to me. I quibble with Walt’s characterization as it is a step “backwards.” It is not like anything Microsoft has ever implemented in the Windows UI. It is more like a step off a very high cliff, IMO.

Windows 8 is currently pre-release software. Microsoft has many months to tweak or change the UI to make it more like Windrows 7, Vista and Windows XP. I don’t think they will.

Both Microsoft and Apple are moving their desktop operating system UIs to be more like a touchscreen tablet interface. Apple added the Launchpad application and many multi-touch gestures to their Lion release. Some of the gestures are quite useful.

Launchpad makes a Mac look like an iPad with columns and rows of app icons and the Dock at the bottom. I don’t know any Lion user who likes Launchpad. I have read many online comments disparaging it. However, Apple does not require a user to use Launchpad. It’s there if you want it but can be ignored. Microsoft’s Metro UI in Windows 8 is almost impossible to ignore in the Developer Preview.

Windows 8 is designed to run on many more devices than previous Windows versions. It will run on Intel, AMD and ARM chips. It will work with traditional keyboard and mouse/trackpad using computers and touchscreen tablets. It will break many applications, and more importantly, it will break whatever knowledge you have about how to configure and use Windows.

If Windows 8 were released “as is” today, my advice to my customers would be as follows:

If you are a home user buy a Mac the next time you need to replace or upgrade. The Mac OS X Lion UI is more like Windows 7 than Windows 8 is.
Businesses should begin testing their applications on Windows 8 to see what breaks. If mission critical apps don’t work, consider switching to Macs or Linux. Stay with Windows XP or Windows 7 as long as you can.

Since Windows 8 is so unlike any other version of Windows from 1.0 to Windows 7, Walt’s question, “Why do they call it Windows?” is a great question. It isn’t like Windows. Maybe they should rename it Microsoft Windows Phone 7 for Desktops, Laptops and Tablets or MWP7DLT for short.

Why I am abandoning Windows and you will too

Richard Frisch — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 18:51:35 +0000

Microsoft recently released the final version of Window 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1). Thus far, my experience in updating 8 machines is: 2 succeeded, 5 failed, and one “succeeded” by force. This last one is my main Windows machine. It failed to install SP1 using Windows Update. SP1 installed when I used the Microsoft 2GB administrator’s download. The forced upgrade worked, but now the machine does not hibernate properly. It did before.

[Update 2011-03-20: Using Windows Update on 9 W7 machines: 2 succeeded, 7 have failed.]

I wasted over 10 hours trying to get Windows Update to install SP1 on my main machine, troubleshooting the failed update, downloading the DVD file, installing SP1 from the DVD, troubleshooting hibernate issues and unsuccessfully attempting to restore the machine to just before SP1 was installed.

Though Microsoft has improved over the years, this is still not an atypical experience. Issues like this also occur with Apple and Google. However, I have lost tolerance for Microsoft-induced problems. After three decades of these issues. Microsoft should know better. They do. They just don’t seem to care enough about their end-users.

In the past this would have been more than simply frustrating. It might even have been catastrophic. Today it doesn’t much matter.

I am slowly moving away from Microsoft platforms. As recently as five years ago, I spent 100% of my computing time on Microsoft Windows. Today is different. I spend about 50% of my time on Windows (mostly Windows 7), 30% on Mac OS X (mostly Snow Leopard), 15% on Apple iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Apple TV) and 5% on Google Android devices. I expect Android and iOS to grow within the next 2 years to more than half of my computing time. Truthfully, I am agnostic when it comes to operating systems or platforms. There are features to like and dislike about all of them.

Today we want and expect to do whatever we want, where we want, and when we want, without regard to OS or hardware. It should just work. And it often does because we are no longer dependent upon a single provider to satisfy our computing needs. Choice means we can use Microsoft if they fit our needs, Apple if they are best, Google when they dominate, or some other company.

I depend upon cloud computing more and more. Dropbox and Google services form the basis of much of my computing today. I use Microsoft Live services to a lesser degree. (This article was created and edited in the Microsoft Word Web App, part of the free Microsoft Live cloud-services. I wrote and edited it on both Windows and OS X machines. Since the file and the application are on Microsoft servers that I access via the Internet I am indifferent to the platform.)

I also maintain an Apple MobileMe account so that I can support customers foolish enough to want to use Apple cloud services. Apple has a long way to go before I will trust their cloud-based services.

Although this document was created on Microsoft Live SkyDrive using the Word Web App, I primarily depend upon Dropbox to make my active files available on whatever device I need them on. I depend upon Google email, contacts, calendar, documents and spreadsheets to augment that experience. I still use Microsoft Office on both Windows and OS X. But the times have changed. I could give up Microsoft Outlook but not Google calendar. In fact, the main reason I continue to use Outlook is to help me support my clients that depend upon it.

Your experience will vary from mine. But the handwriting is on the wall. Microsoft’s dominance is waning and no single company is ever likely to dominate computing like they once did.

Microsoft Mice and Apple Fingers

Richard Frisch — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 12:20:24 +0000

Use a finger or use your whole hand: this is the basic difference between Apple and Microsoft. I bet Steve Jobs excelled at finger painting in kindergarten and that Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s current CEO, and Bill Gates, Microsoft’s founder, did not. This is why Apple succeeds with the iPod, iPhone and iPad, and is an also-ran in the keyboard and pointer device world.

After thirty years of working with personal computing devices, I conclude that Microsoft understands hands. Apple does not. Steve Jobs and Apple understand fingers. Steve Ballmer, Bill Gates and Microsoft do not. I believe this explains many of the differences in their consumer product offerings and why Apple is succeeding in the mobile world, while Microsoft is foundering in handheld devices.

Keyboards and pointing devices—mice, trackballs, touchpads and styluses—are known as Human Input Devices (HID) in the computer world. They have been necessary adjuncts to computers since the beginning of the digital computer. They require one or two hands to operate properly. Imagine using your desktop or laptop computer without a keyboard and pointing device. If you can you would have an iPad, a tablet computer that eschews these traditional HIDs for the finger.

Microsoft and its hardware partners, particularly Logitech and Kensington make many good keyboards and mice. Some are great. Apple does not make great input devices. Apple keyboards and mice go from okay to awful. None are great. They recently eliminated the number pad from the iMac standard keyboard. I suppose having those extra keys was too confusing for iMac owners. Apple’s long string of mouse design failures is well documented. They avoid having extra buttons on their mice. Their mice don’t fit your hand as well as the competitors. This gibes with Apple’s form-before-function designs. I wonder if it isn’t because Steve Jobs has problems using more than one finger at a time.

A reverse issue occurs with Microsoft. Microsoft’s tablet offerings predate the iPad by several years. They never succeeded like the iPad, which has already sold more than 2 million units worldwide. I doubt that Microsoft’s hardware partners have sold as many tablet devices over the years as the iPad has in two months. The reasons for this are many but a major reason is that they required a pointing device other than your finger. Even if the device allowed for finger-input many of the controls, e.g. menus or hyperlinks, required precision that a finger is not capable of performing. Microsoft’s solution was to add a stylus to the tablet rather than change the user interface (UI) and retool the operating system to work with fingers. Apple was masterful in recognizing this and adopting a non-desktop UI for its iPods, the iPod touch, iPhones and iPads. Most of the time, a single finger is all you need.

Typing on an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad is doable but not desirable. The UI is not designed for hands. It is designed for one or two fingers. You can attach a Bluetooth keyboard to an iPad. However, you quickly realize that the inability to use a pointing device, other than your finger, reduces functionality to the point that it may not work as you want. It is hard to exactly select text or other objects, copy it, delete it, move it, or alter it with only your finger. A mouse would come in handy.

Who would have thought that kindergarten skills would play such a significant part in 21^st century technology? Not me.

On a related matter, I haven’t divined why Google gets cloud computing, while Microsoft fumbles and Apple fails. If you have any thoughts on this please let me know.

Should you upgrade to Microsoft Office 2010?

Richard Frisch — Thu, 13 May 2010 15:45:29 +0000

Office 2010 is here. Large Microsoft customers can buy it now. Consumers or smaller businesses will be able to buy it June 15.

I have a fair amount of experience with it as I have used different versions of Office 2010 for over a year now. I like it. It is fast. It feels faster than previous Office versions.

The user interface (UI) is better than Office 2007. Office 2010 expands use of the Ribbon to all Office apps, including Outlook 2010. The Quick Access Toolbar is more usable and allows the power user to avoid the Ribbon for many activities. The Office Button, found in 2007, is gone, replaced by the File button, a much improved item, which takes you to the Backstage View.

So should you buy it? My answer is yes, maybe or no. The answer depends upon which Office applications you use, how you use them, how much you use them and your budget.

I recommend you upgrade if you are dependent on Outlook XP (2002), 2003 or 2007. By “dependent”, I mean you live in Outlook. If you are a casual user, primarily using it for email, there is little reason to upgrade.

Office 2010 has lots of new features—a built-in screen capture tool, found on the Insert tab in Word and PowerPoint: Protected Mode pumps up security on downloaded documents helping to protect you from malicious files: better auto saving of open documents; improved Save File dialogs; lots of new Smart Art templates—to name a few. Word, PowerPoint and OneNote 2010 have co-authoring, which allows for simultaneous editing of a document by multiple people or by one person on multiple computers.

Do you often share or collaborate on Word, PowerPoint or Excel documents? Then consider upgrading. I mentioned the new co-authoring features above. There are other sharing features. You can easily send a document, save it to the web, publish to a blog, or fax it without a fax machine. (You need an Internet fax service. Go to http://j.mp/dCkbf7 to find out more.) Office 2010 integrates seamlessly with Microsoft’s Windows Live web-based services.

Separately, Microsoft has created Office Web Apps. This is their response to Zoho Office and Google Docs. They are a work-in-progress. It is hard to assess their usefulness. They are limited function versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint. It appears that there are four versions:

Windows Live paired with SkyDrive
Docs.com – Facebook affiliation
SharePoint 2010 self-hosted
SharePoint 2010 web-hosted

Microsoft Web Apps response times can be frustrating. Google Docs is faster. The interface is the Ribbon. The feature set is crippled so that you still need the desktop applications to access anything beyond rudimentary application features.

If you are buying a new Windows 7 computer get Office 2010. Windows 7 and Office 2010 work very well together. Go ahead and get Office 2010.

However, if you use Office applications infrequently, because you primarily use your computer for socializing and surfing the web, or you are a photographer and live in Photoshop rather than Office, or your current version is good enough, or you do not want to spend the money then do not upgrade. If you are a Mac user you have to wait for Office 2011 to get a refresh.

Microsoft almost never makes things simple. Most of you have four versions to choose from:

Home and Student
Home and Business
Standard
Professional

table

trial editions

Microsoft Office 2010 Quick Access Toolbar – quick tips

Richard Frisch — Sat, 08 May 2010 15:31:01 +0000

When Microsoft introduced the Ribbon in Office 2007 they took away our ability to easily customize the menus and toolbars that existed in previous versions of Office. Microsoft added the Quick Access Toolbar, a weak replacement for that lost customization.

The Quick Access Toolbar (“QAT”) lets you place frequently used control icons in one place so you don’t have to find them on the Ribbon each time you want to use them. The QAT has File Save, Undo and Repeat controls installed by default. You probably have your favorites that you use all the time. Why not add them?

Many Office 2007 users ignore the tiny QAT because they don’t know about it and can hardly see it. I suggest you get out your magnifying glass, locate it in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc., and use it. It will speed up repetitive tasks by reducing the significant extra number of mouse clicks that the Ribbon requires over a menu and toolbar interface.

Microsoft has improved its functionality with the soon-to-be-introduced Office 2010. Some of the following items will work in Office 2007 others may not.

Position the QAT below the Ribbon rather than above

Click on the drop-down control on the right side of the QAT.
Select Show Below the Ribbon from the drop-down menu.
The QAT is now underneath the Ribbon.

This saves you moving your mouse all the way across the Ribbon to get to your most frequently accessed shortcuts that you’ve added to the QAT.

Right-click Ribbon icons to add to the QAT

Right-clicking on most icons will display a context menu with an item to Add to Quick Access Toolbar
Click the Add to Quick Access Toolbar to add it it the QAT.

Thanks go to my friend Ed Bott for teaching me/us this.

Take your QAT customizations with you

Do you work on multiple computers? Would you like to easily install your QAT customizations on all your computers?

Click on the File menu item (upper left).
Select Options
The applications Options dialog opens.
Click on the Import/Export button.
Select Export All Customizations.
Make a note of the file name where you are saving the file.
Copy the file to the other computer.
Open the Office application.
Click on the File menu item (upper left).
Select Options
The applications Options dialog opens.
Click on the Import/Export button.
Select Import Customizations File.

Do this for every Office application you customize. This will also export/import other Ribbon customizations you have made, if any.

Hide the Ribbon and use the Quick Access Toolbar

Click on the chevron control on the far right side of the application’s Ribbon tab bar, next to the question mark in the blue circle. This will hide the Ribbon giving you lots more vertical screen space to work in. The QAT is still visible. If you need the Ribbon click on the same control to restore it.

Want to learn more? Here is a Microsoft video tutorial. And I suggest you get a copy of Microsoft Office 2010 Inside Out by Ed Bott and Carl Siechert.

Microsoft Office 2010 is social in an unexpected way

Richard Frisch — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 15:52:56 +0000

I installed the final version of Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 on my main Windows 7 rig this week. It will be released to the general public in June 2010. I had been using the beta before this. The final version installed with a bit a difficulty. I first had to uninstall the beta and then reboot before I could install it.

However, I received the above error after rebooting and trying to install it. It took some time and effort to track down the issue. DynDNS Updater, a program I run in the background, was blocking the Office 2010 installation. I exited DynDNS Updater and the installation proceeded without further issue. I restarted DynDNS when the installation was complete.

Office 2010 is quite similar to Office 2007. It tweaks the UI/UX in many small ways. These add up to an improved experience over Office 2007. I still prefer Office 2003’s menu and toolbar interface over the Ribbon. I find the Ribbon sucks productivity out of my work by requiring more mouse clicks than Office 2003 and by using up too much vertical screen real estate. The Ribbon has been added to Outlook 2010.

While working on a Word document this morning I was surprised by a new Word dialog.

Microsoft wants us to help improve Office’s dictionary and thesaurus tools. I clicked the Send Now button. If you are concerned about privacy you can find out more at http://office2010.microsoft.com/en-us/privacy-statement-highlights-for-microsoft-office-2010-HA101098558.aspx

Office 2010 has different SKUs than Office 2007. The ones in green in the image below will be available for retail purchase.

Display file extensions in Mac OS X Finder or Windows Explorer

Richard Frisch — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 14:02:02 +0000

File extensions are important and useful. These are the characters that follow the final period in the file name. They are usually 3 or 4 characters long. They tell an operating system whether or not a file is an application, like Excel.exe, or the file’s associated application. The EXE extension tells Windows that the file is a program. The Mac parallel is APP. Microsoft Word documents use extensions like DOC, DOCX, or DOT. This informs the computer that they are opened with Word.

File extensions are hidden by default on new computers. I guess the smart people at Apple and Microsoft think these important bits of information will confuse a computer user like you. I disagree. They inform us about our files. Since computers have hundreds of thousands or millions of files this extra information helps us navigate.

So how do you show extensions?

Apple OS X Finder

Open a Finder window.
Click on the Finder —> Preferences… on the menu bar.
The Finder Preferences dialog should open.
Select the Advanced tab.
Check the checkbox Show all filename extensions.
Close the dialog window.

Windows Explorer (XP)

Open a Windows Explorer window such as My Documents.
Click on the menu items Tools —> Folder Options…
The Folder Options dialog should open.
Select the View tab.
Uncheck the Hide extensions for known file types checkbox.
Click the OK button to close the dialog.

Windows Explorer (Windows 7 and Vista)

Open a Windows Explorer window such as Documents.
Click on the menu items Organize —> Folder and Search Options…
The Folder Options dialog should open.
Select the View tab.
Uncheck the Hide extensions for known file types checkbox.
Click the OK button to close the dialog.

Windows 7 is here, there, everywhere

Richard Frisch — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 10:18:56 +0000

It took Microsoft 24 years but today they release a version of Windows that is the best client operating system they have ever sold. The UI/UX (User Interface/User Experience) is a big improvement over Windows Vista and XP. I believe that Microsoft Windows 7 surpasses Mac Snow Leopard in many ways particularly in the UI/UX and that Apple is now playing catch-up.

Kudos to Stephen Sinofsky and his team for a job incredibly well-done.

Windows Genuine Advantage still sucks

Richard Frisch — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 16:17:34 +0000

I just sent the following comment to the Microsoft employee, Alex Kochis, Director, Genuine Windows, responsible for the Windows Genuine Advantage program. (It should be named Windows Genuine Pain-in-the-ass Program.)

I am a TechNet member and a Microsoft Partner. I am running Windows 7 Ultimate RTM (64bit). Windows 7 reports that "Windows has been activated".

I keep getting alerts "You may be a victim of software counterfeiting…"

I am not. Your god awful Genuine Advantage software is in my face and only because you don’t know what you are doing. I once had a Vista machine terminated by your servers going down. I am more than a little tired of this.

I am frustrated and angered by your incompetence. Either get this right of go away but stop annoying me.