Outlook 2007 Gadgets

As I’ve stated before I am a huge fan of the Vista Operating System and Outlook 2007. One thing I like in Vista is the Sidebar and one thing I like in Outlook 2007 is the To-Do Bar. Now there is a best of both worlds and you can put parts of your To-Do Bar on the Sidebar!

The Outlook Appointments Gadget lets you put 3-5 of your upcoming appointments right on the sidebar, so even if Outlook is hidden you can see your upcoming appointments. Similarly the Outlook Tasks Gadget lets you put the task list from the To-Do Bar into your sidebar. It it slightly confusing since it is more than just your Tasks; it also displays emails you’ve flagged for follow up as well, just like on the To-Do Bar. To save space I have mine configured to show 3 appointments and only items I’ve marked as due Today.

I have wanted a way to float the To-Do Bar since it goes away unless you are on the Outlook Today page, but this is the next best thing. Better actually since it can just live on my sidebar instead of taking up more desktop space.

Links: Outlook Upcoming Appointments Gadget and Outlook Tasks Gadget via Microsoft Office Outlook Team Blog

too many versions

I am a huge fan of the Microsoft Vista OS. However I think that they made a mistake in releasing too many versions of Vista. I think they should have kept it at three, like they did with XP. That wasn’t too confusing. Now people want to sue Microsoft because they were confused by what “Vista Capable” meant (link to article).

As a general rule you should never run a computer at the published minimum specs anyway. But the fact that “capable” machines weren’t able to run anything but the basic version of Vista was never a good thing. People would just see the sticker and expect to get a super computer for a few hundred bucks. I think the lawsuit is frivolous and without merit, but since everyone loves to hate Microsoft it might actually proceed. I hope it doesn’t.

However, I’m sure the general confusion among the populous is why Vista gets so many bad reviews and why people seem to be afraid of it or hate it. If Microsoft mandated that computer hardware had to be realistic for good performance then I think people would have less to complain about. That is one area where Apple shines. They don’t let their OS get put on some crap hardware that is under-powered and unstable so they look better. I wonder if a lot of the bad press does come from people running lower end computers?

Google Reader

I had avoided using Google Reader for a very long time. The first few times I tried it I just didn’t like it, although I honestly don’t remember why. However, since I have been using Google’s other services I thought it would be worth giving it another try.

The interface is very clean and simple as any Google product is. Setting up feeds was very easy and I like the ability to organize my feeds into folders, something my old reader did not do very nicely.

I simply love RSS in general and Google Reader is certainly working well for me now.