Part 21: Control-alt-delete to log in

When I start up my Mac, it boots to a login screen. I type in my password (in the past, I never even had to do this, it just booted to the desktop, and if I ever find the need to do so I may set it back to that) and it goes to my desktop.

On the PC? It boots to a screen that says to hold down Ctrl-Alt-Delete. Once I do this, it allows me to enter my password. Once my password is in, it goes to the desktop. Now, I sometimes wonder why it needs this extra step; why it makes me do the three-fingered salute instead of just letting me type in my password. So I clicked "help" today for more information. I found that:

To log on, hold down the Ctrl and Alt keys, then press the Delete key. This key combination is recognized only by Windows, so pressing it before logging on ensures that you are giving your password only to Windows.

This applies only to your Windows or domain password. Passwords associated with Web pages or specific programs will not require you to press Ctrl-Alt-Delete.

Oh, where to start.

This key combination is recognized only by Windows

No shit, Sherlock. This is a Windows machine. I am booting Windows. I am going to use Windows. I am being forced in to dealing with Windows. Do I have a choice, Mr. Gates? I of course chose Windows because it is such a secure platform.

pressing it before logging on ensures that you are giving your password only to Windows

Oh, goodie. I'm sure that it would be next to impossible for someone to write a script that could be contained in a virus that would, I don't know, spoof this page and be activated by Ctrl-Alt-Delete.

And what if you turned on your machine and it didn't ask you to salute, but rather just gave your a password screen. Would you flip out and think it had been sabotaged? Or would you enter your password and go on your merry way?

Passwords associated with Web pages or specific programs will not require you to press Ctrl-Alt-Delete

Because most of these programs are not written by Microsoft, and therefore employ normal logic in their processes.

Well it seems as though you can turn it off. Done. But OH NOES it might kill my computer:

"Disabling the CTRL+ALT+DELETE sequence creates a 'security hole.' The CTRL+ALT+DELETE sequence can be read only by Windows, ensuring that the information in the ensuing logon dialog box can be read only by Windows."

Riiight. Whatever.

Part 20: Tab-delimiting whether you want it or not

Sometimes, I have data I want to put in Excel that's not in terrific shape. For whatever reason (generally: I didn't create it) fields are separate by a variety of methods: commas, spaces and tabs. What I want to do is put it in to excel, search for multiple spaces, replace them with a symbol (perhaps an ampersand) and then use the "text to columns" feature to get the text to line up properly in columns.

Yes, that is what I want to do. Excel, however has other ideas. I paste the data and it says (Is it the paperclip? At least seems to have been mercifully killed off.) "oh, look, I see tabs, they must want it tab-delimited" and it tab-delimits it. Which would work great, if it were tab-delimited. But if that were the case, I could just as well put it in to rows and then to a text to columns and tab delimit it myself. But no, it takes one step forward and at least three steps back.

So my data is all mangled. Some rows had three tabs and were delimited in to three columns, some had five and were in five, some had none, and were in none. Oh lah-dee-dah. That didn't work, so I went back and tried a "paste special." Assuredly, if I chose to paste in "text" it would, you know, let me paste text, without the formats. Oh no, the columns remain.

That's one step back. The next step back is to open Word. Why Word? Well, even though it is part of the same product suite, it seems to have been written by an entirely different team of chimpanzees. I paste the data in to Word and it doesn't break in to columns, probably because Word doesn't have that capability. I then find all tabs and replace them with spaces, so that every column is now delimited by multiple spaces.

Now, I can paste this in to Excel, and it doesn't break in to columns (thankfully it doesn't recognise it as "space delimited" and throw in a bunch of blank columns). I search for two spaces and replace it with a semicolon. Now I have strings of semicolons (e.g. ";;;;;"). That's easy enough, I run a series of "find ';;' replace with ';'" until I have each field separated by a semicolon. Then, I do text-to-columns, semicolon-delimit and Voila! I have my data in the format I want.

That was simple, right?

Part 19: Menu madness

Why, oh, why, does Windows collapse menus? Sure, I don't use every setting on a menu every time. But the extra time I spend wondering where oh where the options have gone before I realise that half the options on a menu are hidden certainly makes up for it. Please, let me just see every menu in its entirety every time.

There's probably a setting to change this but it would probably take fifteen minutes to find.

Part 18: Closing documents

Every so often, and by every so often I mean on an almost-daily basis, I have several Excel files open. In Windows, several Excel windows sort of cascade in to one main window, that is to say that there is the program window and several documents opened inside of it. It makes life easier in that you can minimise them all at once, but I'm not sold on how it works. (In OS X the windows open separately, that is to say that you can close one of them at a time.) It is not necessarily bad, it's different. It would make a lot more sense if this protocol was used for all applications, but of course it is not.

But here's where it gets bad. If I want to close the file I am looking at, I hit the wee "x" in the corner below the main red "x" to close it. That's fine. That almost makes sense. But let us say I want to close the whole program. I hit the red "x" and it asks me if I want to save the top-most file. And then it asks me for the others.

Now perhaps I have seven files open, and I get to the fifth one and realise, "oh, I don't want to close them all." So I hit cancel. I assume that it will take the rest of the files I have closed and do with them what I told it to do (save, don't save) but no...once you hit cancel it reverts to its first state, with all the files open! Then you have to go through and re-save/not save them all again. Fun!

Part 17: Save as PDF

When OS X came out in 2001 it included something that was, at the time, a nifty feature. In the print dialogue you could select, for any document, "save as PDF" which would, not surprisingly, save it as a PDF.

At a time when cross-platform compatibility was not what it is now (it was maybe slightly worse then, it still stinks) PDFs were relatively universally viewable (as they still are). But it's still quite useful, and I use it often.

Today, I learned how to create PDFs on Windows. Since there is nothing built in to XP (Which came out, ahem, a year later.) you have to use third party software. In this case, it has two pop-ups whilst it saves as a PDF unless you pay.

As my coworker put it "You'll get a bunch of pop-ups because it's free."

Has vista remedied this? Or, because Acrobat is not a Microsoft format, have they ignored it?

Part 16: Presenting with notes

Setting up projectors is hopeless. I think a clip from an article sums it up well:

A functional Presenter View has been included in Microsoft's PowerPoint 2007 ($95 upgrade at Amazon, for PowerPoint alone). Microsoft finally gave professional speakers software that allows us to have private, online notes synchronized with each of our slides.

But before you go running to install that product you should know three very important things: First, if you are a PowerPoint 2003 user seeking to get this feature you will be saddled with the significant cognitive overhead of having to learn PowerPoint 2007, with very marginal benefits for the vast majority of those who already know and are good at using PowerPoint 2003. PowerPoint/Office's 2007 ribbon interface is quite irritating to learn for PowerPoint 2003 users (there are third party plugins to get the classic 2003 interface but they don't help all that much). Second, remember that Microsoft doesn't allow PowerPoint 2003 and 2007 to exist on the same computer. They force you to install only one or the other on your machine. Third, don't think you can use PowerPoint 2007 on your laptop (for display) and your familiar 2003 on your desktop (to create and edit your presentations) without the following limitation. If you create anything in PowerPoint 2007 on your laptop, even using the 2003 compatible file type, it often won't display properly in PowerPoint 2003, and sometimes vice versa. So you if you install PowerPoint 2007 on your laptop to use its Presenter View you really shouldn't use your laptop to make or edit slides (unacceptable for most of us), or as I said, they won't display properly in PowerPoint 2003 (you'll get random font, size and italics changes when you try to import slides from your 2003 into your 2007 slide decks, lots of fun).

Bolds theirs, italics mine.

Where to start? Well, first it takes Microsoft years to figure out something which should be intuitive: that people want to have notes on the computer and slides on the projector. Trying to set it up in Office is hopeless, even when you are projecting on the computer and the screen it refuses to detect the second display.

Second, the updated version of their software was so braindead and not the least bit backwards compatible, so installing it results in a cascading litany of issues; enough that it is not even worth it.

Third, even this workaround doesn't necessarily work.

I only spent an hour trying to set the computer up to try to do this today. After failing miserably, I sauntered off, glad that it wasn't me making the presentation.

Part 15: Comic sans

Comic Sans, perhaps the only font with a website and movement to ban it (which I fully support), was created by Microsoft. Or, in other words, Microsoft unleashed this evil on the world.

Reading things in Comic Sans makes my eyes hurt. For serious.

Part 14: Insert...expletive here

Often in my typing, I have need to leap for the "backspace" key. It happened twice typing the last sentence. When I do, once in a while, I'll hit the "insert" key on my keyboard. All of the sudden, I'm typing over something I'd already written, and once I realise that I have to undo it or retype it.

This feature may have had a function in, oh, the '80s, but since the advent of the mouse it is much easier to drag over the part you want to delete rather than type over it. I mean, this function has been obsolete for twenty years, an eternity in computing terms, yet not only does Windows still support it, but the keyboards are designed to put the insert key half an inch from a big key that is often used (and generally flailed at).

Part 13: Reply with attachment? No way, Jose.

I get an email from a vendor. They want the email replied to with the attachment they sent.

There is no way in Outlook to easily "reply with attachment" it seems.

No, seriously.

I hate windows.

the vendor responds

I like my mac laptop better then any windows device.

Part 12: Requires mouse handling

Someone was trying to move the toolbar which had relocated itself. Once I couldn't figure it out (I tried right-clicking it which got me nowhere) I googled it.

http://www.xp-tips.com/relocate-taskbar.html

I love the parts like

Moving the Windows taskbar is quite straightforward. However, it does require reasonably precise mouse handling. If you are new to computing and still developing your mouse-skills, coaxing the taskbar to move where you want it might seem a little difficult. If you are not yet confident with fiddly mouse manipulation, I would suggest that you postpone using this tip until you gain more mousing experience.

As opposed to, say, a Mac, where you do go to properties and do it that way. And it does not require mouse handling.

my dad responds

I showed this to our [house]guest, who works for the folks from Redmond. He just shrugged.

Note to Windows: File indexing speeds searching.

When I need to find something, anything, on the Mac, I type anything in to the spotlight doohickey and it finds all documents which have anything in the name OR in the document, and since it is constantly indexing it, it finds them in seconds.

On a PeeCee, well, if I drank coffee I'd have time to get a cup.

Part 10: Hook up a projector...and pray

One of [my coworkers] was starting a presentation. Well, he was trying to get the projector to be detected. One of the times Windows goes most braindead is when you try to plug it in to a projector. I mean—wow.

He couldn't figure it out. I know that the basic technique is to go in to displays and basically "start clicking stuff." I did. After a couple minutes it started to work (I had no idea what I did but unlike, say, an Apple, there was no button which said "detect displays"), but a few seconds later, you could no longer mouse on to the other screen (no way to, as the Mac puts it, "mirror displays"). So then I had to go in and do it again, and it worked. His presentation loaded and showed up on the projector screen and I said to him "are you doing ANYTHING else but showing this presentation?" The answer was no, which is for the best. And they had a plate of cookies—I'd told him that if I figured it out, I wanted a cookie. And I did.

my dad responds

If you have Windows set up to spread itself over 2 screens, it gets confused when you hit the keys on a laptop to also share with a projector.

But then, Windows is just plain confused...and Mac does a better job of running Windows than Windows does. The new version of VMware does multiple snapshots and virtual machines, which is all I'd need for work. Our tech guy in Europe uses a Mac, in fact.

Oh, yeah, and my Mac always figures out the projector the first time. It does need a dongle, though.

Part 9 (aka Part 2 redux): ASCII can bite me

Why, to get any symbol like a bullet (•) or em dash in windows is there no easy key stroke like there is on a Mac? Am I expected to memorise a bunch of ASCII codes to type with the alt key held down?

my dad responds

Even then I can't get them to work predictably. There's a program called charmap in Windows whose help page is useless.

Part 8: Outlook not so good

Outlook has now downloaded each message that I missed in the past week five times and shows no sign of stopping any time soon.

I will now light myself on fire.

[This may have been our braindead mail server, but when in doubt, blame Windows.]

Part 7: Let's just call it "Window"

Let's say I'm in the folder "My Computer". Then I click on My Computer on the start menu to get another folder. And it brings me to the same damn one. Suppose I maybe wanted to view them side by side and then navigate different places? Why call it "windows" if you can only have one? It's Window! NO S!

Part 6: Keyboard shortcuts braindead

If I want to create a new folder, control-n does nothing. Nor does it open a new window. Nothing.

Part 5: Downloading pictures without ease

I plug in a digital camera. It randomly downloads the photos somewhere. It is then faster for me to plug back in the camera and figure out where it hid them than use the braindead search feature. [On a Mac, I can either use iPhoto or manually download them myself.]

Part 4: Email threads (or why GOOG >>> MSFT)

Suppose I am having an email conversation as follows:

Ari to David
David to Ari
Ari to David
David to Ari
Ari to David

And perhaps then Ari wants to send another email to David without having received an interceding reply.

In Gmail, Ari clicks on "reply" and it's smart enough to figure out that Ari wants to reply to David.

In Outlook, Ari clicks on "reply" and it's so braindead that it thinks that Ari wants to reply to himself!

Part 3: XLSX my tuchus

Someone in the office wants to save excel spreadsheets on a different drive. They right click the files in explorer and choose "save as" and then it only lets they save it as an Excel 2007 file, with an .xlsx extension name. Other people who try to open them with older versions are thus up a creek. But, when you choose save-as from explorer, you can't save it as a good, old .xls file. Why? Who knows. But for a company which spends millions of lines of code making their OS backwards compatible, this is horrid. I used it to make the point that when we next upgrade our computer systems we should have a real upgrade to a real operating system. I'm just glad I'm not using windows. Did you see the bit in the NYT about Microsoft execs inside emails about how Vista was not nearly ready for market?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/business/09digi.html

And this

http://www.forbes.com/free_forbes/2007/0226/050.html

is a great pan of Vista. Which I hope to never have the pleasure to use.

my dad responds

I saw the Times article, well done. The Forbes article sounds like you
could have written it. Our product has to support Vista in our next
release. I cringe at having to support our support of Vista.

That change to file formats in Office 2007 (not just in Excel) is a
real pain. Most people here still haven't upgraded, and I wind up
having two copies of everything. MS was under pressure from the
European Community to move to open formats, but you can't convince me
that anyone is going to adopt their new ones just because they're in
XLS. OS X is so far ahead of Vista that it's like the lead Toyota has
in hybrids.

Part 2: ASCII WHY?

When I want to type a cents sign (¢) on a Mac, I type option-4 (option-#) and it pops right up. If I want to type a jolly pounds sign (£), it's option-3 (option-#). If I want a Paragraph marker (¶) it's option-7. Sure not all of the shortcuts make sense (option-E then __ for an accent) and some are kind of roundabout (the aforementioned accent, the option-U then __ for a diaseris) but they are all there. When all else fails I hold down the option key and the shift-option and scroll across the keyboard until I get what I want.

¡™£¢∞§¶•ªº–œ∑´®†¥¨ˆøπåß∂ƒ©˙∆˚¬…Ω≈ç√∫⁄€‹›fifl‡°·‚—

Look at all that good stuff!

Now...in Windows, there is no option key. There is an alt key that seems to be pretty much useless. To get one of these symbols, you have to figure out (using google in my case) that you have to hold down the ALT key and type a three digit ascii code that has nothing to do with anything. At least in html you can type & and get an ampersand. Not in Windows. Nope.

I hate windows.

my dad responds

In Word there is a whole screen that you can get to insert a special
character, and it even gives you a hint of the keystroke combination.
Talk about shooting fleas with an elephant gun...

Part 1: Scaling GIFs

I put up a new map and shrunk it down using html commands. It's a GIF. The Mac renders the shrunk-down image fine. Windows? Good luck. Good grief.