Jason Dunn

I’ve been trying to rely on the built-in applications inside Windows Vista as must as possible, to get a feel for how much (or how little) they’ve evolved. I think it’s all too easy for experienced geeks to get a new operating system and immediately load it up with all of their own favourite applications – overlooking the built-in applications. That does a disservice to the OS itself, and robs you of finding out how good or bad the included applications really are – let’s face it, the less applications an OS has installed (any OS), the more stable it’s going to be. Out of the box, Vista is a surprisingly well-rounded tool, offering almost everything you need built-in.

One app in particular I’ve been relying on heavily is Windows Mail, the replacement for Outlook Express. I have it configured on every Vista computer in my home to check my personal email, and my business email accounts are only checked with Outlook 2007. On the whole, Windows Mail is a pretty good app: strong spam filtering (though I thankfully don’t get THAT much spam), easy to use, nice user interface, spell checking, and fairly snappy. I’d have no trouble recommending it to people who want to use it as their primary email application. There are some things that I really don’t like though. Yeah, that’s right, it’s bullet time.

• IMAP sluggishness: I don’t know how or why, but Outlook 2007 is about 500% faster over IMAP than Windows Mail is. When I delete a message in Windows Mail it takes 1-2 seconds before it vanishes. It might be because it’s doing a real delete and moving it to the Deleted Items folder, whereas Outlook 2007 just flags it for deletion and hides it. Regardless, Mail should do that stuff in the background and bring the SNAP back to the Delete button over IMAP.
• Strange Lock-Ups: Today Windows Mail went all freaky on me, and is what inspired this blog post. Basically, it locked up: but not in a traditional Windows “Not Responding” kind of way. Task Manager said it was working normally, yet when I’d click on any part of the window I’d get the “No, you can’t do that ding”. The kind you get when there’s a dialogue box open somewhere that you have to deal with before you can get at the application itself. After a few minutes I got a warning about my mail server responding slowly, and it prompted me to WAIT or STOP. I clicked STOP. And it still wouldn’t respond – more dinging. I left it for a few minutes and went back to reading my hometown hero Rahul Sood’s blog. I came back and there was the WAIT/STOP prompt again. I clicked STOP again. It wouldn’t respond again. My frustration level was definitely rising…then all of a sudden it started working again. I don’t see any of those problems with Outlook 2007 accessing the same email account, so I have a hard time believing it’s all my mail server’s fault.
• User Data Storage Location Still Obscure: One of the best things about Outlook is the PST file. It’s a single file that contains all of the user’s data: every contact, every calendar event, every email, every note. That makes it really easy to back up, make copies of, etc. And if you move it from the obscure 12-level deep folder to your Documents folder (or My Documents for you XP types), it’s easy to re-link Outlook to the new file location and then it’s easy to back up. Windows Mail continues the horrid tradition of not only hiding all the email deep, deep inside hidden folders, but also scattering all the user data across multiple files and folders. Where is Windows Mail data located? C:\Users\Jason Dunn\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Mail. Oh, and you can only see that folder if you go into the options to make hidden files and folders visible. Why didn’t they just add an Email folder in the root user level, alongside easy to understand things like Music, Pictures, and Saved Games. How exactly is Joe User going to back-up his Windows Mail data? He’s not – he’s going to lose his email when his hard drive crashes.
• Window Fuglyness: Windows Mail was created for both email and newsgroups, and I happen to use it for both. The problem is that I have a specific arrangement of the window sections for email. I want the window to be only as big as it needs to be for me to see what I need to see of my email, so I remove columns, resize them, and create the perfect UI for me. When I switch over to the newsgroups view, and it’s all shot to hell. It needs to have remembered window states for each account. That’s probably not technically possible, but I can dream can’t it? This issue is so frustrating for me that I removed my personal email account from Windows Mail on my main workstation and I only check newsgroups with it now.

All in all, Windows Mail is a decent application that most people can rely on for day to day email. But I can’t help think it could be much more impressive if Microsoft wasn’t worried about encroaching on the Outlook fiefdom…

I spent a lazy Saturday working in my office, doing a bit of email and news postings here and there, but also listening to Much Music in the background. A TV show came on that I had heard of but never seen before: So You Think You Can Dance. I tend to avoid most reality TV shows, although a few have caught my interest over the years (namely Beauty & The Geek, and The Ultimate Fighter). I’m not sure why I got sucked into the dancing show – it’s not like I’m particularly a fan of dance – but it was an early episode where they were auditioning random people, and like driving past a car wreck, you just have to look. Several people who auditioned really could dance – they were amazing. But that’s not the subject of this blog post. What interested me more were the people who came onto the stage full of confidence, very sure of themselves, gave 100% of their effort…and still sucked. They were uncoordinated, unbalanced, sloppy, out of shape, couldn’t remember their routines, and shouldn’t have been up on that stage.

Just like the people on American Idol who think they can sing, there’s a certain “reality bar” that they all run smack into. Sure, with any form of artistic expression, there’s a certain amount of taste and interpretation – but music is math. If the melody line of the song goes to a “B” and you don’t vocally hit it, you’ve failed as a vocalist. Dance is much the same way – there’s a beat to the song, a cadence, and if you’re not executing your dance moves in time with the song, you’re not a successful dancer. Sure, there might be some exceptions (atonal jazz comes to mind), but those are the exceptions not the rules. If you’re going to get up in front of a panel of expert judges and deliver a mainstream dance number or song, you’d better actually have talent.

That’s where I see things have changed in our society – there will always be a certain percentage of the population who thinks more of themselves than they should, but I have a strong hunch that if a TV show like American Idol or So You Think You Can Dance were on during the 1970s or 1980s, we wouldn’t see the things we’re seeing today. In fact, I have vague memories of watching shows like Star Search in the ’80s where people would only get on TV if they were talented. One might argue that the only reason we’re seeing the no-talent delusional types on camera is for the cruel entertainment value, and I certainly don’t disagree with that, but what strikes me is how these people really do think they’re good.

I went through elementary school in the ’80s, where, at least in Calgary, grades mattered, students failed and were held back a year, and if you made it through to the next grade you had to be good enough. Over the past decade or so, I’ve seen story after story about North American education (mostly education in the United States) where the emphasis is placed on self-confidence rather than aptitude. Grades don’t matter as much as how the child feels about himself. Rather than hold Little Johnny back a grade because he can’t read or write properly, they push him forward because anything else would make him feel bad about himself. Does self-esteem matter? Certainly. Some of the most angry people I’ve met in my life – the types that lash out at everyone around them – suffer from a lack of self-esteem. They hate themselves, and they try to inflict that hatred upon others around them. Bullies are a classic example of this type of behavior.

As I watch reality TV shows with contestants who suffer from the deadly combination of belief in the superiority of their own talent, whilst suffering from a complete lack of said talent, I can’t help but wonder if these are the same people who were told all their life that they were really good at spelling when they truly weren’t. They were told they had wonderful voices, when they really didn’t. They graduated from high school with kind words from teachers about how hard they tried, when they actually lacked the basic skills required of a high-school graduate. Has North American society (and I do mean society as a whole, I do not solely blame educators for this) created a generation of children, who are now young adults, that believe they can do things they really can’t? Is there a generation of people who, full of ultimately empty self-confidence, will step forth onto the highway of life only to get hit by the 18-wheeler of reality? I don’t think we’ve done them any favours.

I should point out that I think this issue effects Western society as a whole, where many people can’t be honest with each other, again pointing to the issue of self-esteem. That’s a topic for another rant however…

This morning, after having checked the HP driver page for the 10th time in two months looking for a Vista driver for my 2600n colour LaserJet printer and finding nothing, I decided to try contacting someone at HP to see if I could get any answers about where their Vista drivers were for this printer. Vista has been available at retail for almost a month now, two months for many beta testers, and many new computers being sold come with Vista. Vista is here, people are using it, and they want it to work with their hardware. At first I tried their online chat tool, but despite entering in the proper product name and full serial number, it wouldn’t allow me into a chat with a tech, stating that my product was “not supported”. And this wasn’t a Vista-specific chat either, it was a general-purpose “talk to our techs”. I filled out the form with this comment:

“I’ve been waiting over two months for Vista drivers for my 2600n printer – where the heck are they? I’m an MSDN subscriber and have been running Vista Ultimate RTM for over two months, patientingly waiting for HP to release drivers for the 2600n printer I purchased. What’s going on? Where are the drivers? I keep checking the Vista driver page, hoping for an update, but one never happens… The fact that your online form doesn’t even have Vista as an option tells me a lot about how behind the times HP is. Also, your online chat tool is broken – it rejects “LaserJet 2600b” and “CBYC60G0LM” as the serial number – it says that the product isn’t supported and won’t let me start an online chat.”

I clicked SUBMIT, and saw this in my browser:

http://atwnt947.external.hp.com/snip
Error Occurred While Processing Request
Element EMAIL_ADDRESS is undefined in SESSION.

That’s not very helpful is it? I clicked back and submit again. This time I saw some additional information:

Please try the following:
Enable Robust Exception Information to provide greater detail about the source of errors. In the Administrator, click Debugging & Logging > Debugging Settings, and select the Robust Exception Information option.
Check the ColdFusion documentation to verify that you are using the correct syntax.
Search the Knowledge Base to find a solution to your problem.

Browser Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0; SLCC1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; Media Center PC 5.0; .NET CLR 3.0.04506)
Remote Address *.*.*.*
Referrer http://atwnt947.external.hp.com/snip
Date/Time 21-Feb-07 11:34 AM

At this point my blood was starting to boil a bit. I looked over the form and changed a couple of things – I had selected “Other” for OS since they didn’t have Vista listed, so I changed it to XP and tried again – this time, the form submitted successfully. Don’t they test their online forms to ensure that they work with all user-selected choices?

Here was the response I recieved less than an hour later. Props to HP for getting back their customers quickly, but check out the quality of the reply:

“On reviewing your mail, we understand that, you want to install the Vista driver for Color Laser Jet 2600 printer. Jason, I understand your concern. However, I would like to inform you that, this printer is compatible only with the operating systems listed below:

Mac OSX
Microsoft Windows 98 SE
Microsoft Windows 2000
Microsoft Windows XP

Vista is still not included in the supported and compatible operating system’s list. Our research team is working on it. Driver for this operating system would be released by July. However, you can try XP driver for it and check for the issue. Jason, please do check our website for updates. If you have any other query, then do contact us. We would be glad to assist you.”

That’s either a reply from out-sourced overseas technical support, or from someone in North America that didn’t get past grade eight in school. Either way, it’s not a satisfactory response. If a customer emails you asking about Vista drivers, telling him Vista isn’t supported and listing off the operating systems that are supported is just plain insulting. And if it really does take until July (!!!) to see drivers for this printer, my respect for HP will take a huge nose-dive. I was expecting to have to wait a few weeks for Vista drivers for most of my hardware, not a few months.