IE Not Responding

Wed, 11 Jul 2007 02:14:53 GMT

This is even better than adding a printer on Vista - not!

This is screen shot of IE running full screen on my desktop.
What? Can't you tell? :)

Adding a Printer in Vista Just got Worse

Thu, 22 Mar 2007 02:00:17 GMT

Last week, I got a beautiful new laptop at work with Vista on it.

I approached my first week of Vista with patience and an open mind: I knew that things were going to be different - that's kind of the point. All the nooks and crannies of the old Windows that I knew so intimately have changed and now I feel a little less adequate as a person. But overall, I'm learning quickly (the Search bar on the Start menu is becoming my friend) and darn - my glass bubble screen saver and side bar are SO PRETTY! They do make me smile.

I've gone over a full week before I had the need to print something (which makes me feel proud of technology). So I finally reached the point where I needed to configure a printer to my laptop on my corporate network.

On Windows XP, this used to be so easy:

1. I would go to the Start Menu and click on "Printers and Faxes"

2. A window would launch and there would be a big task bar on the left hand side. The top section said "Printer Tasks" and the first task was....you guessed it! "Add a printer"

3. In the "Add a printer" wizard I would click the Next button three times: once to get through the "welcome" screen and twice to accept choosing a printer from the network (which was the default option selected) and third time to find the printer on the network.

4. Then the "Find printers" dialog would come up and I would click "Find Now". It would show me a list of printers available to me on the network in my building.

5. I would then select the printer I wanted and click OK.

6. The printer would be added and I would have two more clicks to determine if it should be my default printer and complete and exit the Wizard.

I'm glossing over some clicks in these bullets - so while conceptually there seems to be 6 STEPS I think overall it's about a 10-click process at best.

While very smooth, this process stands for tons of improvement. In Vista, it just got worse. Here's how:

On Vista I want to add a printer.

1. I go the Start menu and I have no idea what to click on.

2. I type the word "Printer" in the Start menu search box and click on the "Printers" item listed under "Programs".

3. I now get a new looking window that lists the default printer and fax connections.

4. I'm now looking for the big "Add a printer" button. I have a million folders listed on the left side...a bunch of printers on the right...Where is my "Add a printer" button?

5. I have now had to perform DOUBLE the amount of steps that I did previously to get to this point. Now I'm in the "Add a printer" wizard. This looks like an improvement (below). I choose the second option to add a network printer.

6. Unfortunately, no printers are found:

7. Searching again gets me the same result so I have to click "The printer that I want isn't listed" (or Cancel and add no printer).

8. Now I have to find a printer by name or TCP/IP address

Of course there must be a good reason I couldn't have just come straight to this dialog in the first place, or bypassed it completely when the wizard tried to search for my printer on the network. I'm just not sure what that reason is.

9. I click "Next" in this dialog and get to my friendly "Find printers" dialog FROM STEP 4 (I'm now on STEP 9) in the previous scenario on XP.

10. I select my printer and wait for it to be added. It's taking a long time....Vista is thinking and:

I have to INSTALL THE DRIVER for the printer!!

11. I click to "Install Driver". Did my machine just crash....wait, what is going on? Some other applications just crashed and....oh: I get the security prompt from Vista to allow the driver to install. Lovely.

12 - 13. Now I'm done and the printer has been added and it takes two more screens to set the printer name and print a test page:

Now 13 steps later I am convinced that adding a printer just got worse on Vista.

LAME!

Lame Alerts - will they ever end?

Fri, 25 Aug 2006 21:20:31 GMT

Back when I worked on Office there was a campaign to banish "lame alerts" (it's killing me right now that I can't remember the name of the PM who championed this. Anyone who reads this, and knows who I'm talking about, let me know and I'll update this post). I still have the buttons that they made for everyone pinned to my cork-board as inspiration. It looked like this:

Every time an annoying dialog or pop-up jumps in front of me, I remember that campaigning and wish I was running that special release of Office that had the "This is lame" button on all of the alerts; and that I could press the "This is lame" button and someone who cares would hear my (and everyone else's) pleas to get rid of this all to frequent, and terrible, nuisance.

Yesterday I happened to be going through a, what seems to be quarterly, computer melt-down. About once a quarter my computer (and usually my cell phone and Media Center PC and every other electronic device) just "checks out". It won't boot, is missing some driver or just all together too slow. And I'm stuck troubleshooting the problem for what feels like days or weeks. These are already frustrating times when one's productivity devices decides to "check out" while one is trying to be productive.

And leave it to those annoyingly lame alerts to help you during those times!

I stumbled on one too good not to share (AND it actually didn't come from Microsoft! <wink>). Here she is:

Isn't she just beautiful? This just cracks me up because it actually recognizes the machine I have (a Tecra M3) and tells me that it's not supported and required all in the same time!! LAME!!

Beck's Microsoft Blog: Gripes

IE Not Responding

Adding a Printer in Vista Just got Worse

Lame Alerts - will they ever end?