Office 2007 first impressions

I like to wait for the early adopters to report back on the first service pack before I deploy any major software releases myself. With that said, I'm just now getting my first taste of Office '07.

So far, I don't have much good or bad to say about it. I guess it is what it is - just the next version of Office. I don't mind the ribbon and I imagine it'll be just fine once I get used to it.

I do have one issue with it, which is more of a peeve than anything that truly affects productivity. The color schemes are absolutely useless. It's not that I feel left out because want a green scheme, an orange scheme, or a purple scheme (for the uninitiated, you're given the choice of blue, silver, or black). My issue is this: what good is configuring your OS appearance preferences if applications don't observe them? These "skinned" applications all seem like they were created by someone who just didn't have anything better to do. Unfortunately, almost all applications seem to be going that way. Norton has been doing it for years with their consumer stuff (luckily their corporate stuff still uses normal window appearances). Winamp has never used regular Windows forms. Roxio has recently started using the skinned appearance, and even AutoCAD now restricts users to either a "light" or a "dark" color scheme. To me, applications like this can just be distracting. I much prefer when apps have a consistent look and feel. Wasn't that one of the original selling points of Windows in the first place?

Windows Tip: WindowKey + E starts up Windows Explorer

After years of observing Windows users, I've learned that most users enter windows explorer in the following directory:

c:\documents and settings\username\start menu

This doesn't seem to be a very good starting place, but from what I've seen, most people launch windows explorer by right clicking on the start menu and selecting "explore." Going back to the advent of Windows '95, this method was probably intended to manage the shortcuts in your start menu. Since the explorer shortcut was originally very deep under the start menu, I guess users just found their way to explorer via the start menu editor.

A quicker method of launching Windows explorer in all modern versions of Windows is to hold down the window key and the e key together. It also starts you in the "my documents" folder which is a better starting point.

Vista x64 first impressions

I recently upgraded to Windows Vista x64 on a Dell M6300 with 4GB of RAM. So far I've been blown away by the snappy performance of the system itself and, in particular, all of the Autodesk software that I've run on it so far (Civil 3D 2009, AutoCAD 2009, Map 2009).

I've heard all of the horror stories of Vista and, yes, I've seen the Apple commercials, but since I purchased the system new as a 64 bit workstation, Dell naturally configured it with hardware which is all supported by Vista x64. The only peripheral that I had to worry about was my old Lexmark P4350 printer, which luckily, Lexmark provides a driver for.

I should also point out that I've turned off all of the eye candy which I just don't need. Even in XP, I've always been one to turn off window animations, cursor shadows, smooth scrolling, start menu animation, and all of the rest of the fluff that just doesn't add to productivity. With Vista, I've decided to configure it about the same. After just a few days, things are going extremely well.

It's still way to early to tell, but I think I'm going to be very happy with Vista x64 and this system in general.

I'll post some benchmarks as soon as I can.

(For the Linux trolls, I should also point out that this system is for business apps that Linux simply won't run. I like linux. I get it. I know that it's good and I have ubuntu on my old old laptop. I've used it off an on, when I had a specific use for it, since about 1993 when I used slackware on a '386. So please don't try to convince me that any Linux flavor is superior to Vista. For the apps I run, it's very apparent that Vista x64 was a wise choice).