On Sat, 26 Jul 2008 18:07:00 +0100, Mike Harrison
merida.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>According to my spies Geep of (No Spam) writes
>>In message
, Lydia Dustbin
>>blueyonder.co.uk> writes>>>"Bear"
gmail.com> wrote in message
>>>news:MPG.22f03717e2ce59989dc8@news.individual.de...>>>>
>>>> You poor sod - MS apps are the best thing about MS.
>>>> --
>>>You are a very aggressive bear, aren;t you? I agree with Geep. Microsoft
>>>stuff suffers from software bloat. Too, too large by a long chalk. Just
>>>because a thing can be implemented in the software itshouldn;t mean that it
>>>'has' to be implemented and everyone has to install it.
>>
>>Wasn't it Gates himself who said something about ninety five per cent
>>of his customers only using five per cent of a program's features? I
>>start to wonder, why bother with the other ninety five per cent of the
>>features, then.
>>
>Everybody's 5%% is probably ever so slightly different from everybody
>else's 5%%. The well-documented perils of trying to please everybody all
>of the time.
>
>>> I know you can prune
>>>a lot of programs, but not prune them half enough, I think.
>>
>>What I strongly dislike is the software deciding what it thinks is best
>>for me. Oh, and having defaults that are invariably not what I would
>>have chosen.
>
>It's a no-win situation. You only have to look at wish-lists on share-
>or free- ware developers websites. If you were to put in everything that
>everybody wanted there would be nothing -but- huge bloated programs out
>there. And the more cunning little things a program does, the harder it
>would be to find defaults that don't piss somebody off somewhere in
>punter-land.
One of the most useful programs that I've seen in the work environment
is InfoSelect.
It started life as a DOS program, and by the time I first saw it with
a Windows GUI it was at version 3.1
Some people found it a bit awkward because you had to type certain
letters on the keyboard to get its functions running rather than click
on buttons with a mouse, but us enjynears didn't find that to be a
chore.
It's ideal for operations engineering logs, as you can search for any
string e.g. machine type, serial number, fault description ... and it
will return results in reverse chronological order by default.
You can change the sorting order at the press of a key.
All entries are automatically time and date stamped when they are
created.
AFAAI the maintenance department at a Very Large Company which I used
to work for is still using v3.1 which they got as shareware from a
cover disk.
I've recommended it to every company that I've worked for since, who
have serious problems with logging using emails, Excel spreadsheeets
and (this one worked best) an A4 page-to-view diary.
Unfortunately, InfoSelect has had to move with the times, and try to
compete with Micro$oft Outlook (which is total pants), so the current
version is packed with useless features, and costs hundreds of
dollars.
A plethora of small programs which do what exactly you want are far
better than one big program which tries to do absolutely everything
that anybody could ever possibly want.
Unfortunately, more and more young programmers have been brought up
using Micro$oft products, and the idea of writing programs which
aren't tied to the Windows Registry is practically unthinkable :-(
Even Eudora and Agent have fallen foul of the misconception that files
ought to be saved in "Documents and Settings".
Bah!
--
Humbug
