Channel 9 - Discussions by Shawn

Coffeehouse - Request for Opinions on Backpack-style Laptop Bags...

Shawn — Sun, 12 Sep 2004 22:33:19 GMT

You didn't say how much you have to spend or how big of a hurry you're in but if you've got some time and a limited budget I highly recommend a trip to eBay before you buy anything. There's usually a pretty good selection of bags there and they can usually be bought for very little money.

As for a recommendation, I have a Belkin bag that I really like. Unfortunately, I don't have any of the paperwork with it anymore so I'll tell you want I like about the bag since I don't know the model numbers. It has:

- nicely padded straps
  - lots of conveneintly placed pockets - they make grabbing a pen or cellphone easy
  - two completely seperate compartments - one for the laptop and another for my books. This makes it easy to remove either the laptop or my books but doesn't require that I remove both to get one or the other.  Most of the "bookbags that hold laptops" just have a padded divider in the main compartment.
- a well placed pocket for my a/c adapter
- a top mounted handle
- although I've never submerged the bag it has kept everything inside of it dry even in the worst of rainstorms (I park a good ways off and sometimes get caught in the elements)
   - a design that allowed me to cut off the waist straps without hurting the bag. I think waist straps totally suck but to each thier own.
   - It has a low key appearance. Some might even call it boring.

Good luck with your purchase. Let us know what you finally pick out.

Coffeehouse - Space wars: Hotmail will give 250MB email storage for free!

Shawn — Tue, 27 Jul 2004 19:31:43 GMT

I'm actually fine with paying for Hotmail access and 250mb is more than enough for me.

Has there been any thought been given to providing the software required to make Outlook and MSN/Hotmail's Contacts and Calendar sync up with each other to the users that purchase the larger inbox?

I know Google(GMail) received a lot of attention for providing users with a gigabyte of storage for free by why not compete on features that people would actually use instead of unneeded capacity?

I'd gladly pay $25/year for a service that mimic'ed Exchange for my own personal use.

Coffeehouse - HoTMaiL vs GMail - bring it on!

Shawn — Thu, 15 Jul 2004 12:46:59 GMT

Knute wrote:

I wonder how much GMAIL paid O'Reilly to write that piece? "Tim we'll give you a $100,000 to dispell the growing concerns over our new highly anticipated service"....

If you guys want to blindly believe that this type of privacy intrusion is ok, that's fine. Just keep following the shepherds like sheep....

~ Knute

Privacy and email in the same sentence? And a free web based email service at that?

I've always though of email as being the digital equivalent of a post card.

Coffeehouse - Recommend a good Outlook Site, Newsgroup, or Forum?

Shawn — Mon, 03 May 2004 00:10:38 GMT

kclemson wrote:

Start here to look up any and all information related to coding in Outlook: http://www.outlookcode.com/d/index.htm.

You do not have to be connected to exchange to use custom forms.

If it doesn't work, I wonder if something like storing data in excel and having a pivot chart would help?

Thanks for the reply. I've been looking online a bit just to see if anyone else has tried to accomplish what I'd like to do but I haven't found anything yet.

Right now I already have all my running data/times in an Excel spreadsheet and it works pretty well. Since I'm pretty much married to Outlook for tasks, the contact list, and email I thought I'd just try to incorporate that too.

I'm signed up for a VB.NET class this summer (it's required for the curriculm - I'm not that geeky) so I'm hoping to learn a few things that can be put to use. I just hope the professor has a clue.

Since it was brought up, I'd like to recommend leaving NNTP features out of Outlook and focus more on refining the functionality already present (Outlook 2k3 is the best looking and easiest to use email client I've ever used - keep up the good work!). I know I'm probably in the minority here, but I use Outlook for filing away my personal things. I use OE for my crap email and Newsgroups. I don't need newsgroup contents in my ever growing .pst file. Just my two cents.

Just an interesting note, Google brought this page up as the top link on one of my searches. While I voted for it, maybe the search functionality for the forums isn't needed so badly after all.

Coffeehouse - Check out the GmailRequestListWiki

Shawn — Fri, 30 Apr 2004 00:50:07 GMT

Great idea! Thanks for sharing the wealth!

Coffeehouse - Does anyone actually watch the videos?

Shawn — Fri, 30 Apr 2004 00:31:15 GMT

I was going to write that I'm not much into the videos until I realized that Dare Obasanjo co-authuor-ed the RSS client that I'm using.

After watching that, I was really glad that Channel9 includes videos. While I don't feel like I'm closer to the guy now that I've seen him in video it does help me, well, I guess the closest word I'm thinking of here is relate, to the guy more when I read his blog in the RSS client he helped create.

While I can say I've only watched two of the videos I'm really really glad I did see the two I did.

(BTW, it wouldn't hurt to interview more females. Call me lonely, but I'd much rather watch the Women of Microsoft than the men.)

Coffeehouse - iTunes now has support for WMA and Lossless Audio

Shawn — Wed, 28 Apr 2004 23:33:07 GMT

If only the (outrageously overpriced) iPod supported that many formats.

Me personally, I'm no fan of iTunes. When you install the program it installs no less than three services onto your machine.

If judged on its merits alone, I'd rank iTunes dead last in the player/client category.

Coffeehouse - Show us your workspace

Shawn — Sat, 24 Apr 2004 13:52:56 GMT

msemack wrote:

Shawn wrote:

Where'd you get that desk? I really like the looks of it. Stylish yet functional.

(I would have asked you this directly but you didn't list an email address and PM's aren't enabled on the forums yet)

I got it from Wal-Mart. I don't know if they carry them anymore. I know I haven't seen it for sale at my Wal-Mart for a long time. It cost about $30.

Oops, I thought I had my e-mail listed. I'll fix that.

Thanks for the reply. Congrat's on finding a desk like that for so little money. You've got a good looking setup there.

Appreciate the addition of the email address, too.

Coffeehouse - Created a Orkut community for Channel9

Shawn — Sat, 24 Apr 2004 13:42:22 GMT

Great idea! I'm not a member of Okrut yet though so I'd appreciate the invite.

Coffeehouse - IM'ing at Microsoft

Shawn — Sat, 24 Apr 2004 04:15:03 GMT

Wow.. I didn't realize that you couldn't personalize the "away" messages with Windows Messenger. That's a huge weakness and will need to be fixed with later releases if I'm ever going to be able to convince my friends to migrate over to that platform. Hopefully this is just a client problem and not a limitation within the protocol (as the former should be much easier to fix).

We often "profile" each other just to see who's doing what in their away messages. Knowing that they just went to see a blockbluster movie if a cause enough for a later conversation.

While I'm asking for things, can you add the ability to customize your profile as well if it's not already included with the latest release? I've got some friends that pratically have thier own "AIM Profile Blog" going even though they have no idea what a blog is.

Coffeehouse - How should Media Player be improved?

Shawn — Sat, 24 Apr 2004 03:55:33 GMT

Jaz wrote:

from the looks of things, most people would prefer it if you just bought out Nullsoft.

Too late! AOL bought them out a few years ago.

Good point though. Winamp is the only thing I use for audio files. I use Media Player Classic for everything else.

That being said, it would be really nice to be able to use WMP X to buy music with much like you can with iTunes. Unfortunately, I think that the iTunes client is even more pathetic that the one that Real puts out.

Apple do you really need to install 3 system services and Quicktime AND set all four of them to start automatically when Windows? (Maybe we can call it the most bloated Windows application. Ever.)

Coffeehouse - Xp Pro System Restore

Shawn — Sat, 24 Apr 2004 03:42:38 GMT

Catatonic wrote:

Saved my *, when I least expected it. Consider it a form of insurance.

Same here. It's like an airbag for your computer. You certainly don't want to go testing it's effectiveness but it might prevent some serious damage.

Unfortunately, it can have harmful effects similiar to an airbag. Remember how Blaster got backed up into the System Restore folder?

Coffeehouse - Recommend a good Outlook Site, Newsgroup, or Forum?

Shawn — Sat, 24 Apr 2004 03:36:02 GMT

kclemson wrote:

I definitely cover exactly what it sounds like you're asking for... making Outlook's programmability easily accessible to non-coders is one of my goals.

Thanks! I honestly haven't had time yet to look into reading through all the links you all have provided me yet but I'm hoping tomorrow (Saturday) will be the day.

To further explain what I'm trying to do, all I want to do is modify the default Journal entry Form in Outlook 2003 (academic edition if that matters). Since I pretty much use Outlook to manage everything but my finances I thought I'd use the Journal to track how well/poorly I've been following along with my excercise plan. Given the visual nature of the Journal this would give me a really quick look at my progress. Unfornately, the default fields aren't really suitable for this.

At first this might seem to be a quirky use of this part of Outlook but with a little work I think it'll prove to be the perfect tool.

And is everything I've read so far correct? Do you have to connected to an Exchange Server (which is certainly not an option for me regardless of whether it's a limitation of the Academic version of Office 2k3 or not) to use Custom Forms in Outlook?

Thanks for all the replies. Have a good weekend!

Coffeehouse - When will certain Windows settings be set to more efficent settings by default?

Shawn — Fri, 23 Apr 2004 04:58:11 GMT

The freeware offline defragger you listed above is pretty nice. I've got it set to run on every reboot with my work and home machine and have yet to see it cause a problem.

Both are running XP SP2 RC1 at the moment.

Coffeehouse - Show us your workspace

Shawn — Fri, 23 Apr 2004 04:52:24 GMT

msemack wrote:

Here's my workspace at home.

http://www.semack.net/workspace.htm

Where'd you get that desk? I really like the looks of it. Stylish yet functional.

(I would have asked you this directly but you didn't list an email address and PM's aren't enabled on the forums yet)

Coffeehouse - MSN Messenger, MS Office Spell-Checker?

Shawn — Thu, 22 Apr 2004 00:29:41 GMT

Great idea! I just want to add that I hope the spell checker works with Windows Messenger too. I don't care much for MSN Messenger; Windows Messenger has a much cleaner interface.

Coffeehouse - Recommend a good Outlook Site, Newsgroup, or Forum?

Shawn — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 18:54:26 GMT

Great! Thanks for the linkage.

I'll be going through this tomorrow night as I've got friends in town tonight.

Coffeehouse - Give me your best Windows diagnostics tips!

Shawn — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 18:52:40 GMT

Since you just told us what type of machine you're using you just made what I was about to say irrelevant.

When I was experiencing a problem very similiar to what yours it was because I was using RAID drivers for my 3rd and 4th IDE controllers but I had RAID disabled in the BIOS. After enabling it everything's been fine since.

Best of luck though; stuff like this can really drive you nuts!

Coffeehouse - Recommend a good Outlook Site, Newsgroup, or Forum?

Shawn — Sun, 18 Apr 2004 23:44:21 GMT

I know Google's always an option but I'm hoping someone here could recommend a good WebForum, Newsgroup, or Website for Outlook to me.

I'm not an Exchange admin or anything; it's just that I depend on Outlook a lot and am wondering if there's anything I'm missing out on. Hints, tips, tutorials, things like that. I'd really be interested in sites that might explain how to make (mostly UI related) changes in Outlook using only basic programming skills (if that's even possible).

Also, is there a way to enable Forms in Outlook 2003 when using Pop3 to get email, ie, no Exchange Server? Everything I've read says no.

TIA

Coffeehouse - Favourite Web Browser

Shawn — Sun, 18 Apr 2004 05:08:41 GMT

cerkit wrote:

RssBandit is my first choice.
Then I use IE 6 for whatever else.
Anything else is fuzzy dice.

And I'm in total agreement here. RSSBandit is the best open source RSS client there is right now. You Sharpreader folks should really give it a try.

That said, who cares about the browser anymore. AFAIC, it's all in the RSS client. I surf the web from CrazyBrowser (IE skin job) when I need to use a browser extensively, but otherwise, it's RSSBandit.

Coffeehouse - Solid Text Editors for Programming on Windows

Shawn — Sat, 17 Apr 2004 15:36:31 GMT

Notepad2 is a great little text editor. I was using Metapad before but I think Notepad2 is going to be my new "default" text editor.

Coffeehouse - Channel9 T-Shirts.

Shawn — Sat, 17 Apr 2004 03:20:10 GMT

Good point. Still, I'm surprised that's all there is. Or am my eyes missing something else?

Coffeehouse - InfoPath...

Shawn — Sat, 17 Apr 2004 01:04:45 GMT

I found Infopath to be one of the neatest things that Microsoft has come up with lately (though they may have just bought it from someone for all I know). I was really bummed to find to out that the Corp versions of Office 2k3 came with InfoPath but my personal copy of Office 2k3 Professional Edition did not.

I can't see why anyone would want InfoPath to be interoperable with Adobe Acrobat. Either IE or Word would seem to be a better choice instead.

Coffeehouse - Is there a god?

Shawn — Sat, 17 Apr 2004 00:52:35 GMT

Jeremy W. wrote:

I actually enjoy the opposing, well thought out, opinions. If your customers don't complain, you'll fail because you aren't getting enough feedback. Microsoft has it really great because even people who aren't customers complain!

The only thing that annoys me is the silly "microsoft sucks" or "when will you get a real browser" or "make everything free" responses.

Someone doesn't need to agree with me for me to respect them and their opinion!

And that's a respectable opinion to have. Thanks for reminding us of that.

From what I've seen so far though, this site has some of the best MindShare of any forum I've been a member of. I'd hate to see it tainted by having gomers
running round saying "M$ sucks!" while not providing anything of use to the community whatsoever.

Still, everyone wins when level-heads prevail. A well thoughout, even if opposing, point of view is a key ingredient to any forum with any life in it.

Coffeehouse - How to easily make Windows free: Idea?

Shawn — Sat, 17 Apr 2004 00:45:29 GMT

lars wrote:

Disregarding the obvious economical aspect: just consider the security nightmare with all the old obsolete windows installations connected to the net. Yikes!

Good thinking. Disregarding all other extremely viable reasons, this one is enough alone for them to keep it under wraps.