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!