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Keeping Busy!

It seems that as soon as I think I'm getting to grips with Microsoft's latest technology they present me with something new. Regular readers will have seen something to that effect here several times before. Office 2010 is just around the corner and I've only just got to grips with 2007. It seems churlish to complain since, although first sight of Office 2007's ribbon brought gasps of horror from us old-timers, I have grown to love it. I like the way it looks and, now that I've got past the omigod-where-are-all-my-tools stage, I find it really intuitive and easy to use. In my work training business users and teaching university students to use Excel and Access it has become clear that, for new users, Office 2007 is much easier to learn than its predecessors. So thank you Microsoft for keeping us supplied with bigger and better versions of your products. I appreciate that you have a mighty workforce and you need to keep them busy but you need to slow down and let the rest of us catch up!

Likewise, the latest version of Windows is almost here. I really like Windows Vista and whilst I don't want to tempt fate I've been using it on two desktop machines and a laptop since day one and I have yet to see a blue screen. Fond as I was of Windows XP, as it began to age I became quite familiar with the dreaded "blue screen of death" which so often accompanied the installation of some new software, or a new piece of hardware, or maybe just an updated driver. The best thing in XP was System Restore. Don't listen to all those people who tell you that Office 2007 is awful and Vista is a nightmare, most of them are mindlessly repeating what they have heard from someone else who, like them, have never used it. Ask someone who actually uses it... like me!

Suggestion Box (OK, it's a rant)

So carry on making things better Microsoft, do the stuff we really need. I want my PC to switch on like my TV does so I can use it right away. Don't tell me about Sleep and Hibernate - I switch mine off when I go to bed. I stopped using Vista's Sleep mode when, having put the PC to sleep I didn't leave it as usual but stayed at my desk to finish some other jobs. After a few minutes the PC woke up by itself and began doing its own stuff. I'm fairly confident this isn't anything sinister since my anti-virus program is up-to-date and does regular scheduled scans and the firewall in in place, but in my book sleep should mean sleep. So now it gets switched off.

And make it so that my PC is never (ever!) too busy doing its own stuff to work for me. I've lost count of the times I've sat at my PC and had to wait whilst it finishes doing f**k knows what (see, you've made me say a bad word) before I can read my email. And whilst we're on the subject of emails, why do I have to wait whilst that email that I don't want to read from M&S (look at all the new stuff we've got in stock that won't fit you because you're a fat b*stard) or HMV (buy these new DVDs now whilst they are twice the price they'll be in a fortnight) takes ages to download its million images of things I don't want before I can delete it? Don't go away. I haven't finished yet... Who had the brilliant idea to make Internet Explorer my boss? I'm reading my mail and something catches my eye so I hit the link in the email. IE fires up with a blank screen and I wait... and wait. This isn't Microsoft's fault since most web pages these days are full of ads and all sorts of other cr*p that makes them take ages to load. So I switch back to Outlook to carry on reading my mail whilst the page loads. But IE has other ideas and jumps to the front again. The screen is still blank so, mildly annoyed, I switch back to Outlook again. Oh, no says IE. You asked for a web page and you're jolly well going to sit here until I'm ready to show it to you. Now I'm really p*ssed off and try to close IE, only it won't let me. It's too busy trying to download a page that by now I don't want to see. So, Microsoft, I know you probably love your computers even more than I love mine, but let's not lose sight of who's the boss here.

The Perpetual Student

One thing I like about my job is that there's always some new challenge, and this usually means that all my spare time is occupied with trying to keep up with the latest version or technology so I'm ready when my clients need my skills. It usually takes a while for new technologies and new versions of programs to take hold. If you go to your local computer store to buy a copy of Microsoft Office you'll get Office 2007 but the majority of business users are still using Office 2003. However, there has been a notable increase in the uptake of Office 2007 in the last year and, as I mentioned here recently, a significant increase in the demand for Microsoft Access as businesses try to handle an ever increasing volume of electronic data. Although I had Office 2007 up and running from the day it was released I didn't really get to grips with it until the University decided to switch all its PCs to Office 2007 and I realised that I was going to be using it for teaching the following semester.

Microsoft's SharePoint, a technology that has been around for several years, has also suddenly taken off replacing the ghastly Lotus Notes as a vehicle for presenting and sharing information thanks largely to its close integration with Office 2007. I had never really taken any notice of it before but now I have a stack of books on SharePoint waiting for me to have the time to learn enough about it to keep one step ahead of my clients.

Meanwhile, as business intelligence becomes more and more integrated into the web, I'm studying ASP.NET. In case you haven't heard of it, it's the leading technology for building interactive web pages and data-driven web sites (ASP means Active Server Pages). This is taking me a while not because it is difficult, you can program your web pages with the familiar Visual Basic, but because there just aren't enough hours in the day. The Dummies people are making a fortune out of me! I have their books on ASP.NET, ASP.NET 2.5 and now ASP.NET 3.5, desperately trying to keep up with Microsoft as they make it more powerful and feature-rich. And it's about time I stopped using FrontPage to edit my web site and switched to Expression Web (yes... I've got the Dummies book on that too).

So why do I do it? Simple, it's the best job I ever had. I do it because it's what I want to do. In a couple of weeks I'll be 59 years old and despite the dire predictions of the medical profession (and thanks to their timely interventions!) I am still alive. Come back in 20 years and I'll probably still be here grumbling about yet another version of Microsoft Office.

Cheerio!

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