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.