Outlook 2007

I use Microsoft Outlook 2007 at work for our work email. It’s an exchange account so I had to use it over other mail clients. I’ve grown to like it over the past year, but I never used it for anything other than email. I don’t keep a calendar at my work, nor do I save contacts in the address book, no I never used the program to its full potential.

Last week my Gmail account was hacked (still not sure exactly what happened) so I wanted to create a new email address to start using to replace Gmail. I will probably never stop using my Gmail account, but I will use the new email address I created for my more pertinent information. I decided to sign up for a Mobile Me account. I never would have even considered paying for an email account in the past, but since I got my iPhone I’ve been looking for an easy way to keep my calendars, email, and contacts all in one place. I could sync the calendar on the iPhone with Google Calendar, but only if I synced it with my MacBook first. I wanted something that would sync my calendars over the air. Mobile Me became that answer. I still have to open up my MacBook for it to sync with Google, but I don’t have to sync my iPhone to it anymore. Now my iPhone syncs with my PC only.

I decided to setup the Mobile Me account on my PC in Outlook and have it sync my contacts and calendars as well. While the Mobile Me website is a nice looking website, I don’t want to have to log in to webmail whenever I want to check email. In the past, using Gmail, I didn’t mind because Gmail login was integrated with all my other Google services and I have a Gmail notifier installed in Firefox. Outlook 2007 is much better than I would have ever thought. After all, it is a Microsoft product and I am beginning to loathe everything about Microsoft. They actually did do something right for once though. Outlook 2007 is better than 2003 by leaps and bounds, and Mobile Me works quite well with it. There were a few weird inconsistencies with deleted items appearing with just a line struck through it, but I believe I fixed that issue and everything should be working great now.

Customer Service

My MacBook developed a crack along the wrist rest due to the lid’s impressions on the surface. It was a common problem with the model that I have and is covered under the AppleCare plan. The same thing happened to a friend of mine and several other people on the internet. It was one of those flaws that were just cosmetic and didn’t inhibit the use of the computer.

This past weekend I finally had time to take it to West County Mall’s Apple store to get it fixed. I made an appointment with a Genius and they took a look at it, gathered information and grabbed the part from the back before anyone else could. The Genius told me it would be ready in 2-3 days. I was kind of bummed because I heard reports of it taking 20 minutes if they have the part in stock. Apparently they were quite busy with repairs. So, I leave expecting it to take 2-3 days. 3 hours later I get a call from the Apple store telling me it’s ready to be picked up. I hate fanboys as much as anyone, but I can see why people like Apple so much. People rave about the customer service they experience when buying an Apple product and now I can too.

iTunes Problem Leads to New Solution

Friday night I plugged my iPhone into my computer and let it sync. Next thing I know, all the apps on my iPhone were deleted and some of the songs and videos that were on the iPhone were removed as well. It’s no secret I really do not like iTunes, especially with how slow and buggy iTunes 8 is, so when I started iTunes the other day and it told me the library was corrupted and it backed up the corrupted file and loaded up a new, I thought nothing of it. Typical iTunes being stupid and not working how it’s supposed to. I never thought that the broken library file would effect my syncing, but it did. I’m guessing because the file was broken, the new one it created didn’t have all the music and applications that it should have. Therefore, when my iPhone synced, it deleted the things on the iPhone that did not exist in the library.

I added the applications, music, and podcasts back into iTunes. The problem was knowing what songs were deleted from the iPhone. I add only checked files, but that doesn’t always work (because iTunes sucks). So sometimes I have to add them to a playlist in order for them to sync, even though they are checked to sync. Trying to figure out which ones were in a playlist or already on the iPhone would take forever. That’s when I decided to do a little searching. That’s when I found this post. Basically, what I did was create a smart playlist that included items that I check. As soon as I check an item, it is added to the playlist. If I uncheck, it is deleted. I set up my iPhone to sync that playlist, now every song that I check is synced with my iPhone. It’s the easiest way I’ve found to manually manage the music to sync. So, iTunes breaking and not doing things right made me find a solution that I never knew about that will save me a lot of time. Of course, if iTunes “just worked” I wouldn’t have had to search for a solution in the first place.

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More Reasons Why Charter Sucks

I’ve written before about my experiences with Charter. It hasn’t gotten any better. Recently we were having problems with our Charter Cable. We called and were able to get an appointment for someone to come out about 4 days later, which is actually quite amazing as Charter is known for making appointments a month out. The problem we were having is the cable box was losing the digital signal about every 5 minutes and cause the screen to go black and digitize for a few seconds. The cable guy came out, did his tests, and concluded the signal was too strong. Now, I’m not a technician, but this makes no sense to me because the problem was not happening anywhere else in the house and the two other boxes (one that was identical to the problem box) were fine. Well, he puts some splitter thing that lowers the signal on to the cable and then puts the old box back in says that should fix it. Surprise, it didn’t, but it didn’t happen again until after he left. We call Charter back and they wouldn’t send someone back out the same day when their first technician didn’t fix the problem to begin with. The next day they can have someone come out is the following Wednesday. This is 8 days without being able to watch anything on that TV because the box is bad.

I was off for a few days last week so I decided to head to the Charter office to exchange boxes myself, still keeping the Wednesday appointment in case the box switch didn’t work. So, now I’m driving out of my way to fix a problem with their equipment myself. Awesome. I get to the office and there is quite a line. Most of the people in front of me are there to complain about billing. The lady that was working was extremely rude to the customers with billing questions. She even told one guy that the previous Charter employee he talked to lied to him! Wow. Nice way to salvage the reputation of your failing company, tell customers that the employees lie to customers. I don’t believe the previous Charter person did lie, because it was about a package that I had seen advertised quite often, yet the lady in the office refused to believe the price and called the customer and other employees liars. I really can’t believe this company. Finally, it’s my turn in line and the lady is just as rude to me as the other customers. I get my box and take it home.

I hook it up and follow the directions on the sheet they gave me to reset the box so it knows what channels to get. I got 3 channels. I call Charter. They send a signal to reset. I still get 3 channels. 2 hours later I call back, the lady sends a signal and tells me I will have to wait until my Wednesday appointment. I tell them this is unacceptable because after going to replace their equipment because they didn’t send one on the technician’s truck before, I deserve someone out that day. She says they can have someone out the next day. I ask to talk to her supervisor so she puts me on hold. She comes back about 10 minutes later and asks for some information, like where the box is, the serial number on the box, etc. She finds out, by asking this, that the new box wasn’t put into the system under our account. So, dubmass bitchy lady at the office didn’t even do her job right. Then again, neither did the first Charter person I talked to. You’d think that would be a standard question they would ask to make sure the equipment is in the system, especially if it’s obvious you’re not getting a signal to your box.

Charter is a completely useless company. Rumor has it they will be filing for bankruptcy soon. As if that’s hard to believe.

A New Medium

I read an article on Wired yesterday about SanDisk pushing to replace CDs with “SlotMusic,” basically an album, complete with artwork, on a MicroSD card. Five to 10 years ago, this might have caught on for a while. Let’s face it, CDs are crap. They are easy to scratch, and if you do, the whole thing is ruined. If this had come out in a cost-efficient way 10 years ago, we’d see slots built into most devices and maybe the success of iTunes would have been a bit different. We can’t really say for sure. The one thing I can say is this is a big mistake for another industry, the movie industry.

After a fight between Blu-ray and HDDVD we are seeing that neither are really winners. HDDVD is dead and Blu-ray sales are extremely low with no bright future in sight. What the SlotMusic’s failure is going to do, and it will fail because a physical medium for music is dead in a culture of iTunes and MP3s, is prevent other people from taking the chance to change other mediums. This SlotMusic card idea is perfect for movies. Movies don’t come with album art, so you’re not missing anything there. DVDs scratch just as easily as cds, so there’s another reason not to continue the disc medium, and with the increasing capacity of the cards, you’ll be able to put higher quality movies and extras on a single card. This is where DVDs should be heading. Unfortunately, I think the inevitable failure of SlotMusic will prevent that. Without widespread adoption, prices on cards will still be too high and you won’t see gadget manufacturers adding readers to TVs, DVD players (because you still need something to play your craptastic DVD collection), and other devices.