Advances in technology continue to make computers smaller, lighter, and cheaper. Journalist Larry Magid has pointed out that tablets are even smaller, lighter, and cheaper than laptop computers. Several manufacturers—including Android, Apple, HP, and Amazon (Fire series)—make both tablets and laptops. We even found an “iKeyboard” that lets us touch-type on our iPad.
We just spent a frustrating hour trying various possibilities. We keep a list of all the passwords that we have used in the past. Fortunately, our spouse has spent a lot too, and could shed some light on this mess. With all their resources, Microsoft should not leave their customers wasting time and being upset.
We have used an “Airpot” for many years. For those who are not familiar with airpots, they are tall insulated containers for water or other liquids (especially coffee). We find it convenient to have hot water literally at the touch. We make cocoa. And we use it for an immediate rinsing of cooking and eating utensils.
The original reason for this to help farmers who needed daylight to do their chores. But more recently they have powerful lights on their implements.
We have three electronic watches—a Casio F-91W, a Casio PERSONAL TRAINER, and a SEIKO ALARM PULSE METER CHRONOGRAPH. We cannot find any helpful information on the Web to help us change the time shown on the watches.
After a half-century, we re-started playing our mothballed trumpet and joined the Los Trancos Woods Community Marching Band in California. When we visited the Mountain View music store, we saw a red plastic trumpet at a very low price and fell in love. The band has a good sense of humor, and its leader plays a green slide trombone, so it was an easy decision to buy it. The downside is that the valves stick sometimes.
We enjoy watching movies on our large-screen display. But we don’t enjoy all the effort that we have to expend. We have to look at several sources, e.g., Netflix and look at previews, and Google, to find a movie that seems appropriate. Sometimes we have to run the movie through our Apple telephone.
What does “Microsoft Outlook 2016” have to do with this? And why go through all this? In fact it was very simple.
All too frequently we receive an email that requests us to tell how well a supplier performed before we even sat down in front of our computer. Even worse, the questions often include ones like “What is your likelihood of recommending our services to others?” And the services often include those of low-level staff members.
We had spent several hours drafting a difficult four-page email document to an important executive. Then POOF! Outlook deleted it. To make things worse, Outlook sent us a message that there is a bug. Instead of sending such a message, why doesn’t Microsoft fix their bug? Apparently, they have known it since May 11.
Using Microsoft software sometimes is its own punishment. Worse, the punishment occurs randomly. We may have been working along happily enough, but suddenly the software shows a picture (with a promotional comment about one of its products, e.g. its Edge browser) and demands a password. Oh, we think, this is the new way. This way continues for a while, but then it flips back to the previous no-password/no-ad.