Re: -> Basic stuff not available??? <-

Activesync used to be more malleable, but I think they were trying to go
for "ease of use" and trimmed lots of control out of it. (While I don't
agree with that direction, I do understand it.)

Really? Well, looks like being too simple is more of a hassle than
anything else. Too bad.


True, but while I've really screwed things up with third-party apps, they
generally don't mess with the PIM database.

Really? Lucky you.
I've got a lot of troubles now with tens of duplicates that keep
coming after each sync.


If things are that messed up, you can either delete then recreate the
partnership, or employ a dastardly trick to exploit another long-time
activesync weakness- since Activesync will only sync with thevdefault
folders, I simply create a "temp" subfolder on the desktop and move all
the contacts to it (then do the same for the calendar, etc.)

Yes but the problem with that is that you lose all third party
conduits for synchronization when you create a new partnership and
have to reinstall all other applications to reinstall the sync modules
for them.


It peaked, IMHO, at 3.8, and has been a downhill slide, both in
functionality and stability, since...

:-(


Here's where we part company. While I appreciate a good rant as much as
the next guy, MS makes a bunch of good products most of which are pretty
darn user-configurable.

Really? Actually I think they stopped doing good products after Word
4.0 for the Macintosh. When was it? In the mid-80s?
Since then, I think that they're just piling up more and more code on
less and less stable products. House of cards in a way.

If I complain about Microsoft it is because of the bad quality of
their products. I actually really don't care whether they are abusing
a dominating position. To me what's more important is the quality.
Look at how Mac software for example are well thought. They spend time
thinking about features, how they are related together, how they are
impacting each other, etc... before starting writing code.
Looks to me that Microsoft products are just adding fixes to older
code, making them worse and worse.

Do you have access to PC Magazine? The "latest" December 4, 2007
Dvorak's Inside Track on page 62 is interesting in that way.
Mac OS/X has been rewritten from the ground up. Why isn't Microsoft
doing the same with their soft? I'm sure they do have some talented
coders but it looks like everything has grown so big that it's now
totally out of control.

Remember the time, I think it was Excel 2000... a few key combinations
in Excel showed MS Flight Simulator menus and dialog boxes! How can
something like that happen? Are they intricating all code pieces
across all products? Really, it's amazing!


Every now and then they make a design decision that I find questionable,

Sure. But honestly, it's clear that Apple uses real designers working
hand in hand with communication psychologists. Their UI are well
thought, not improvised. Why isn't Microsoft doing the same thing?


but I'll wager someone else finds it useful,
and they can't please everyone. Yet everytime someone has a nit to pick,
we get to hear how "horrible" every piece of MS software ever written
is/was. ("I can't believe they ROUNDED the corners of the dialog boxes!
Geez, don't these guys understand how to build a UI?!?" etc.)

:-) You made me smile at least.
I agree that you cannot satisfy anybody. But to me the problem with
MS is definitely quality. Looks to me that they just don't have a clue
what it is. Can they even spell the word?


Like what? Outlook 2K7 seems ok to me, but I've avoided upgrading so far
because many folks are having WinMo sync issues with it, and I use e-mail
and PIM on my mobile more than on my PC.

Well, this is not the place to talk about Outlook 2007, but here are a
few I just ran into lately:

- No "redirect" option for emails, only forward

- Reply to an HTML message cannot let you insert text in between
paragraphs in "content flowed" format. In Outlook 2003, I heard that
you can position your cursor where you want to type text in and then
press the "unindent paragraph" button so you can type text without
having the vertical blue line in the margin (so the reader knows where
you answer is). Doesn't work at all in 2007.

- A lot of messages to be sent stay stuck in the Outbox. No way to
have them sent. Some go through some remain there.

- In the contacts, in Business Cards view, there is no way to have it
show "Lastname, Firstname" (the line in bold that display "Fullname")
even if you format "Fullname" to actually show "Last, First", it
always shows "First Last"

- No way to attach icons to appointments

- No way to have Outlook 2007 keep your "junk mail" settings. If you
tell it NOT to filter anything, it resets to "Low" filtering

- You can't edit the main contact form design. If you try to do so, it
reverts back to the old 2000 look. No way to keep its original design.

- In email boxes, there is no way to have display a "Name" column that
would display the sender name when in INBOX or the recipient name in
the SENT items. You have to display both Sender and Recipient (of
course, you know that the mails you got where for you, and that you
are the author of the messages you sent, why spend room displaying
that info?).

- No way to "paste as quotation"

- No way to search contacts by emails addresses. The Instant Search
doesn't work. Even though it offers you an email field for the search.
Actually even looking for names doesn't work. If you look for, say
"dre", it will return only the contact names STARTING by "dre" but
will miss, say, "Andrew". You have to go through "Advanced Find".
So what's the point in having Instant Search? (I heard though that
it works fine under Vista, but not under XP).

- Created new Notes keep being called Note, Note1, Note2, Note3. Seems
to be a bug. I can't have them being titled with the first line of the
note content.

I have others, but not in my mind right now...
But I think this is a pretty good list to start with, isn't it?

Steve

Sincerely,
Steve JORDI

(Remove the K_I_L_LSPAM from my email address)
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