New post on Legal IT Professionals

My new post is up on Legal IT Professionals – Microsoft SharePoint and Developers Conferences Wrap-up Part 1

Off to PDC09

Really looking forward to the Microsoft Professional Developers’ Conference in LA this week – except for the getting up at 4 AM to get to the airport tomorrow!

There are a number of areas I am exciting about for the conference. On Monday I am in an all day workshop on Software in the Energy Economy which should be very interesting given a number of projects I am involved in lately regarding energy management systems and systainability support.

At the conference proper, other than the keynotes, there are a fair number of session I have put in my schedule related to Azure – still very much interested in cloud computing, even though I have had little time to look at it.

I am also planning to attend a number of sessions on Workflow Foundation 4.0, even though it will not be available in SharePoint 2010 (at least initially).

Then there are a number of sessions I want to go to just out of personal interest – those involving Silverlight, touch and multitouch applications, and many others. As always, far more things I want to learn than I could possibly have time for!

While there is some great content around SharePoint 2010, I will probably not focus on that since I got a lot of good SharePoint information at SPC09 a few weeks back.

I am hoping do more blogging from PDC than I did at SPC – not hard since I did not blog at all from SPC! Damn twittier took all of my time!

Guardian: “Microsoft beats Apple to the Tablet”. Really?

I hate to point this out, but contrary to what the Apple fanboys would have you believe, Microsoft beat Apple to the Tablet 7 years ago lol – they just f***ed up the marketing (as always).

As always, Apple loses the time-to-market battle, but will no doubt win the fanboy opinion battle. A few months a from now, the notoriously anti-Microsoft media will be proclaiming how brilliant Apple is for “inventing” the Tablet. 

Guardian: “Microsoft beats Apple to the Tablet”. Really? « Sharing the truth one thread at a time

What’s Wrong with SharePoint?

So, I am watching Twitter updates go by (as I always do, even on a Saturday night), including my search that shows me all the tweets with “sharepoint” in them. As anyone knows who watches any amount of SharePoint commentary go by, there is a fairly constant flow of comments of the “SharePoint sucks” variety.

So this evening this led me to ask the question “What is wrong with SharePoint?” No, I do not mean I want a list of every nit picking, annoying little defect – every platform has defects and annoyances. I also do not want to know why SharePoint is note good for everything – no platform is good for everything. I also do not give a crap if your opinion is “it comes from Microsoft therefore it MUST suck” – it that is as deep as your analysis can go, well, you’re a moron.

What I want to see from SOMEONE is an intelligent, well thought out description of why SharePoint sucks. Why is it a bad choice for anything? Why should you perform an exorcism on all servers running any version of SharePoint?

I did a web search (notice I did not say “google” – contrary to popular usage, google is not a verb) for “what is wrong with SharePoint?” The only relevant results I found on either Google or Bing were written in 2005 or before, and hence are not particularly relevant at this point. For example, the post Five Things Wrong with SharePoint from back in 2005 tries to talk about what is actually wrong  with SharePoint. Even though I disagree with a lot of what it says, I will not refute it since it is so old.

So – if SharePoint is so bad…if all the otherwise intelligent people implementing solutions over SharePoint are wrong – where the heck are the statements as to what is wrong with it. So tell me – WHAT IS WRONG WITH SHAREPOINT? I really want to know, and to share it with others.

Why consumers won’t buy tablets – CNN.com

 Why consumers won’t buy tablets – CNN.com

Ok – so this guy really doesn’t get it (not surprising – there are few tech columnists out there who grasp anything that is not already mainstream). Then, hardly anyone else gets it, either. The one things he does have right in the whole article is that tablets are too expensive – but this is, of course, driven by the fact that they have never caught on enough to drive the prices down.

However, he also makes the statement “…you need a keyboard for doing real work…” This is entirely, utterly incorrect. The problem is, you do need a keyboard to do any real work only if you insist on working the same way you do on a device that has a keyboard.

Later, he says “…a Netbook like a $200 Acer Aspire One offers a better bet: it has a real keyboard, its own storage, and you can take it on the road and do real work on it, like a notebook computer or a Netbook.” Other than the keyboard statement, this is utter rubbish. A tablet has comparable storage to a laptop. And as for taking it on the road and doing real work – a tablet works better in a meeting room, on an airplane (where there is rarely room to open your laptop anymore), and my table gives me 7-9 hours of battery life. And if you are using the table as a tablet, the keyboard becomes irrelevant.

Later, he says “…you’ll probably be able to plug a keyboard into any of these yet-to-be-released tablets…” – get with it, I have been using tablets with support for USB and/or Bluetooth keyboards since 2002, and they are the same keyboards you use with your desktop, so nothing special to buy.

Working on a tablet is a different user experience, and requires a different way of working – a way of working which seems more natural if you are used to working with paper and pen. In order for a tablet to be effective, one has to get used to working with handwriting again, and get away from on-screen typing, and also away from converting handwriting to text all the time.

I learned this way back when Tablet PCs first came out (I have been using a tablet pretty much continuously since 2002). When I got my first tablet, I soon realized that I  could not use it the same way I did a “normal” computer. So, I tried a little experiment. I got rid of all of my computers except the tablet. For six months, I used the tablet exclusively. Honestly, it was really, really painful at first. Then, I gradually learned to do things in ways which made sense on the tablet – and many of these new approaches were much more natural than working with a keyboard and mouse. What did I learn? Here are a few examples:

• Handwriting is a slow way to create large documents – typing is much faster (even for me)
• Creating large documents with a pen may be slow, but marking up someone else’s document is great
• It is more effective to leave most of your handwriting as handwriting
• Dictating documents and presentations was quite effective (even more so on my later tablets than on my first)
• When dictating documents, you have to stop think of correcting and formatting as you go (a BAD habit to begin with). Just dump your ideas out as fast as possible, knowing that you are going to go back and edit and format later.
• Brainstorming tools are great

I also use the Tablet to read ebooks (in standard formats, rather than proprietary formats) so I do not have to blow several hundred dollars on a Kindle that does nothing but display ebooks.

Think back to the days before we used computers for everything. When you were working on a document, would you typically start at a typewriter? Or would you start with a notebook, or a pad of paper, collecting notes and ideas, creating outlines, and even writing drafts? Then you would take all of that and create the final document.

Think of the tablet the same way. using tools which are tablet-aware (such as Microsoft OneNote, MindJet Mind Manager, and others), use the tablet as you would you pad of paper. Make notes, scribble ideas, brainstorm, create outlines. Even better, you can even clip notes form online sources and collect them together as part of the process. Then after you have done all of your intellectual work, you can do the final stage – typing up the results.

Note that I admit that there are something for which a keyboard is needed. Creating and editing any significant documents requires a keyboard. Does that mean I consider my tablet “just an accessory” to my main computer? Not at all. Most of the tablets available today are convertible, and hence have a keyboard available – giving you the best of both worlds. In my case, I use a slate table – but I also have a stand for it, and a Bluetooth keyboard (I can use my tablet on its stand at my desk, with a wireless keyboard, mouse, and network – then grab it, go to a meeting – come back and set it down and I am good to go).

About the only reason I have other computers is that I spend a considerable amount of my time doing development, and my tablet does not have the computing power, memory, or screen size to be an effective development machine.

The biggest barrier to acceptance of the Tablet PC form factor in the consumer market is indeed price (and price to power ratio). In addition, as I have said before, the Tablet PC has been marketing cluster$!&% by Microsoft from day one. This is a shame, because with a good marketing campaign, and a little bit of evangelism, tablets really cold become a dominant form factor.

PS – Others with no clue:

http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2009/08/tablets-are-toys-not-mainstream-machines.php

Here they claim “It’s because you can’t work on a tablet. You can’t get things done without a decent working keyboard”. I beg to differ, and might even go so far as to say the author is full of crap.

These are the same kinds of people who said consumers would never want computers in their homes, and that nobody wanted a GUI interface.

PPS – I am also in the process of looking for a Tablet for my daughter, who is starting university in September. I a looking strongly at the HP TouchSmart TX2 series – they seem to be pretty well configured and priced reasonably in the $1000 (Canadian) range. More than a NetBook for sure, but not much more than a comparably configured laptop.

Linus: "Microsoft Hatred Is a Disease"

Linus: "Microsoft Hatred Is a Disease"

This is a great quote from Linus.

I have been arguing this for a long time – and also that the vitriolic rhetoric from obsessive MS haters hurts the the open source movement far more than Microsoft ever could.

Google throws weight behind antitrust case against Microsoft – what a load of crap

Reading the article Google throws weight behind antitrust case against Microsoft - what a load of crap (not the article, the subject of the article).

I am so sick of companies whining on the one hand about how they cannot compete with “big bad Microsoft”, and yet claiming everything MS does is crap. If their products are crap, build something better and knock them off. MS products too complex? Too expensive? Then build something simpler and cheaper and be disruptive.

But to hear a large company with the market share Google has whine about Microsoft is comical to the point of silliness. Why should a company not be allowed to bundle its own browser with its platform? How many Linux distributions bundle Firefox? I could see there being a complaint if MS tried to stop you from installing running another browser, but they do not. And many people do. If you want to displace the pre-installed IE browser, build a better browser, market it well, and knock MS out of first place.

But don’t waste the taxpayer’s money by trying to get the courts and government to do your job for you!

Interesting stats

It is kind of funny to me that the most popular post I have written (based on the number of hits, anyway) is one on Vista from well over a year ago. It is even more interesting that the hit rate on this post has gone up over time.

Of course, it is fairly easy to draw hits – just use any combination of Microsoft, Vista, sucks, etc. in your tags!

Apple Marketing and Political Mud-slinging

I was wathing one of Apple’s “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” commercials last night, and noticed how much Apple’s marketing campaign resembles the mindless mud-slinging which permeates the political campaign process. I cannot remember the last time any of these commercials actually mentioned anything good about the Mac, or even mentioned anything about the Mac’s capabilities.

I am sorry, but saying “you should buy my product because XYZ sucks” is a pretty lazy marketing campaign – especially from an organization that pretends to be innovative.

Does Vista Suck if it is Not Vista?

Interesting post over on Ars Technica – Microsoft does a blind test with Windows XP users, telling them that they are testing a new OS. It is really just Vista. And the overwhelming majority are impressed.

As I have said frequently before – Vista’s problems are (for the most part) not technical – they are marketing and perception. It reminds me of a term from (I think) Tom Peters in Thriving on Chaos – “relative percieved product quality”. It is not the true qualty that drives consumers, it is all about perception.