August 20th, 2007 by matt
I have to use a windows pc at work. I bring my Mac along to work for comfort and to actually do stuff when I need to.
I’ve started using Skitch on my Mac last week (thanks for the invite, Blake) and love it. It’s only a Mac app, though, so I’ve tried using Jing from TechSmith for windows. The Jing Project has some of the same aspirations as Skitch, but is not quite as snazzy.
One of the most unsnazzy things about Jing is that it simply crashes on my windows pc. It requires .NET 3.0, which I installed last week. I opened a support request with TechSmith, who were very responsive. They suggested I uninstall .NET 3.0 and .NET 2.0, then reinstall them.
How Microsoftmoric - just uninstall and reinstall. Just restart. Just kick it hard. Then maybe it will work.
Well, it worked for a few days, now it’s just crashing every time I start it up again.
The crazy thing is that the Microsoft error reporting dialog comes up, and it offers to show me what the error report contains. This would be the debug info that the Jing support people could use to actually help debug this problem. Hmmm, this could be useful.
The nice error reporting dialog will show me the debug info in a small little window, but I can’t select it or copy it. It’s just there and then goes off to some database in Redmond somewhere.
After some digging, I found where it writes the actual error / debug file. However, the DW20.exe process locks that dump (.dmp) file during the error reporting and prevents me from opening it or copying it to actually get at the data. After it send the report to Redmond, it then deletes the file.
How incredibly dumb and frustrating. Microsoft won’t let me get at my own debug data when something goes wrong.
The Microsoft help pages don’t. The only idea I came up with is to manually kill the DW20.exe process in the middle of the error report, which unlocks the .dmp file. The .dmp file is either encrypted, though, or encoded in binary because I can’t read it in notepad.
I did open a new support requrest with TechSmith and give them this error file. Hopefully they have some developer magic to read this file.
It’s experiences like this that prove that Microsoft doesn’t put the user experience first in their design. That’s why people love Apple - they are focused on the user experience. And that’s why using a PC and dealing with Mircrosoftic idiosyncracies can be so frustrating.
Interestingly, my complaint here is about Microsoft, not Jing, even though Jing is the application that is crashing. When you have a platform that is untrustworthy and unfriendly, users direct their frustration at it more than at the stuff that doesn’t work on top of it.
Apple certainly isn’t perfect, but at least I can get debug data when something goes wrong.
Tags: microsoft, error reporting, user experience, microsoftmoric, jing, jingproject, apple
May 3rd, 2006 by Matt
As I recently expressed, I’ve reached the tipping point in my experience with my PC and am now a Mac user in spirit – until I can afford to actually purchase a Mac. This week, Apple began a brilliant ad campaign aimed at potential switchers from PCs to Macs, and one of the ads completely describes my experience and current frustrations with my PC, which seem to grow by the day.
This morning, for example, I turned on my laptop and then had to read a chapter in a book (as in a real paper book, something not in electronic form) to wait until my machine was responsive enough to use. Good thing I had a book handy.
Go to the GetAMac ad page on Apple.com and then view the ad titled “Restarting”. That’s my PC life.
(I thought about embedding the video directly into this post, but honestly I’m afraid of crossing some copyright gray line of using Apple’s content, so I’m simply linking to the main Apple page.)
Technorati Tags: mac, pc, waiting, windows, mac+switchers
April 12th, 2006 by Matt
I really do like my Tablet PC. It has truly revolutionized the way I think about my computer and how use my computer in meetings. It has been a significant productivity gain to me in both my work and personal activities that I conduct on my PC.
However, I’ve reached my tipping point with the Microsoft Windows platform. My online life has been slowed down too much, my frustration level has been elevated too high, my twiddling of thumbs while the crazy disk just churns away has become too frequent. I’ve had it. I’m ready to switch to a Mac.
I have been an Apple fan for several years – back from the original Apple II, watching from the sidelines as they developed user-friendly and appealingly-designed computers. I always knew I could use Macs – who can’t? – but when it came to purchasing my own personal computers, a few things have always held me back:
- Availability of useful, quality, equivalent software apps between Mac and Windows
- Price-to-performance ratio was way too high on the Mac. Let’s face it, the overall speed experience even on a Power PC G4 Mac compared to a Windows P4 2 GHz PC was inferior at worst and only close at best, but significant price premium.
- Widespread innovative development took place on the Windows platform, not the Mac. If you wanted to find a freeware or shareware app that did something useful, chances are you could find something on download.com or other sites for Windows, but very few of these existed for the Mac. Freelance developers were writing for the mass market, which was Windows. Also, the cost of entry to be a Mac developer was pretty high compared to Windows, so most beginning developers would take the path of least resistance and most gain and go with Windows.
I could always get more performance for my limited dollars with a Windows box, so my money has always gone to buy Intel machines running Windows. I spent a couple of years running Linux at home, but found it was too tricky to meet the needs of the rest of the family that wanted to use the PC.
But today, when I went to pair my Bluetooth headset with my PC so I could use my VOIP client, I received the all-too-familiar blank windows with an hourglass. Not quite the blue screen of death, but just as frustrating. Some process had simply gone awry and taken over the all-too-precious memory and CPU resources and had effectively crashed my machine.
I’m tired of having to wait 3–5 seconds every time a new window opens on the screen before the cursor is completely responsive. I’m tired of pressing a button to start an app and just waiting. I’m tired of waiting. I’m tired of hacking the registry when I need to clean up after old software.
Today my overall Windows OS experience has reached the tipping point of turning negative. There are always checks and balances, good and bad, pros and cons to any platform. For me up to today, Windows has always come out on the positive side - the benefits have outweighed the detriments.
I know that I’m running some beta software – Flock and Office 2007 beta. I know these things can have a negative impact on performance and stability. I know I push my PC to the limit, with some UI enhancement - and CPU resource draining – apps like Object Dock and TopDesk. Sure, if I took off all the software, the machine would be lightening fast.
The bottom line for me right now is that it doesn’t do what I need it to do. It doesn’t keep up with me. It doesn’t offer me a useful and robust interface and a solid platform on which to run my apps. I wouldn’t have to use the Office 2007 beta (Outlook mainly) if I had the UI and functionality in an existing app.
I can get this on a Mac. With the new Intel Core Duo platform, the Macs now have a viable price-to-performance ratio. The UI of OSX is of course an order of magnitude better than anything else anywhere. The stability is very solid, by all accounts I can find. The app development is booming, and there are so many innovative apps developed just with the Mac in mind: SubEthaEdit, MemoryMiner, DeliciousLibrary, OmniGraffle, FrontRow to name just a few. And now, my favorite PC app, the one that would keep me from switching, MindManager, has a beta for Mac.
Yes, I am willing to give up the productivity of a pen and ink on my computer, the great functionality of OneNote 2007 and the promises that Outlook 2007 brings – to trade them in for a Mac.
There’s now just one reason that I haven’t acquired a new MacBook Pro and officially made the switch – a simple matter of $2,500. I just can’t afford it. Apple makes a nice margin on their computers, which they’re certainly entitled to, but it keeps me out of the Mac game. Yes, you get what you pay for; the problem is, I just can’t pay for it.
So, I’ve already switched on the inside, I just have to wait for the finances to catch up. Maybe I’ll figure out a way to make extra money while I wait for my apps to open…
Technorati Tags: mac, windows, mac+switchers, macbookpro, 2500+dollars+is+a+lot+of+money
November 1st, 2005 by Matt
Presenters University is an excellent site that collects tips, tricks, templates, clip art and other useful content geared towards effective presentations. Microsoft PowerPoint, the ubiquitous presentation delivery tool, is featured, but they also have sections for Apple’s KeyNote and Corel Draw.
One of the new articles added in October is by Troy Chollar of TLC Creative Services. Troy provides 13 tips for professional formatting in PowerPoint, based on his experience and work at his company. Here are a couple of highlights:
- Turn off SNAP OBJECTS TO GRID and SNAP OBJECTS TO OTHER OBJECTS.
- Use the Slide Layout task pane
- Use the Align and Distribute tools in the Draw menu
- Troy offers 2 public tools – PowerPoint add-ins from the PPTxtreme tool set – that help align and format multiple objects between slides. [I was not familiar with these add-ins and they look like they will be very useful]
- Consistent layout of similar objects across multiple slides
- Add shadows, rounded corners and/or beveled edges to inserted photos in a presentation
This article is a great refresher for those that have been putting together PowerPoint presentations for a while, and a great place to go after learning the basics of PowerPoint for the not-so-experienced. I encourage you to check it out.