Why corporate IT must be destroyed
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A while back one of the muckety-mucks in our corporate IT sent an email saying we were now required to switch to the new Outlook. My experience since then is that the new Outlook was written by an amoeba swimming in cheap tequila :mad:. You can't arrange the message list like you want. The date format in the list is obnoxiously cute (last week, yesterday afternoon, just in time for tea,...). The folder list can't be ordered except alphabetically. Links in emails can only be created. Clicking on them does nothing. When composing a message you can't edit a link you created. You can't start the new Outlook automatically. The actual executable can't be run via a shortcut in the Startup group, which means you have to start it manually Every. :elephant:ing. Time. You. Log. In. I just found out they back-pedaled on the requirement: "Use the new Teams and the old Outlook". Grrr...
Software Zen:
delete this; -
A while back one of the muckety-mucks in our corporate IT sent an email saying we were now required to switch to the new Outlook. My experience since then is that the new Outlook was written by an amoeba swimming in cheap tequila :mad:. You can't arrange the message list like you want. The date format in the list is obnoxiously cute (last week, yesterday afternoon, just in time for tea,...). The folder list can't be ordered except alphabetically. Links in emails can only be created. Clicking on them does nothing. When composing a message you can't edit a link you created. You can't start the new Outlook automatically. The actual executable can't be run via a shortcut in the Startup group, which means you have to start it manually Every. :elephant:ing. Time. You. Log. In. I just found out they back-pedaled on the requirement: "Use the new Teams and the old Outlook". Grrr...
Software Zen:
delete this;My experience is that pretty much anything corporate must be destroyed. HR, CTO offices, most of Legal and CFO offices, half of the executive management... Corporatum dicasteria delenda sunt!
Robust Services Core | Software Techniques for Lemmings | Articles
The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. -
A while back one of the muckety-mucks in our corporate IT sent an email saying we were now required to switch to the new Outlook. My experience since then is that the new Outlook was written by an amoeba swimming in cheap tequila :mad:. You can't arrange the message list like you want. The date format in the list is obnoxiously cute (last week, yesterday afternoon, just in time for tea,...). The folder list can't be ordered except alphabetically. Links in emails can only be created. Clicking on them does nothing. When composing a message you can't edit a link you created. You can't start the new Outlook automatically. The actual executable can't be run via a shortcut in the Startup group, which means you have to start it manually Every. :elephant:ing. Time. You. Log. In. I just found out they back-pedaled on the requirement: "Use the new Teams and the old Outlook". Grrr...
Software Zen:
delete this; -
A while back one of the muckety-mucks in our corporate IT sent an email saying we were now required to switch to the new Outlook. My experience since then is that the new Outlook was written by an amoeba swimming in cheap tequila :mad:. You can't arrange the message list like you want. The date format in the list is obnoxiously cute (last week, yesterday afternoon, just in time for tea,...). The folder list can't be ordered except alphabetically. Links in emails can only be created. Clicking on them does nothing. When composing a message you can't edit a link you created. You can't start the new Outlook automatically. The actual executable can't be run via a shortcut in the Startup group, which means you have to start it manually Every. :elephant:ing. Time. You. Log. In. I just found out they back-pedaled on the requirement: "Use the new Teams and the old Outlook". Grrr...
Software Zen:
delete this;Long time Outlook (new) user here. Yeah, it is simplified. But at least quick and it displays HTML mails and does not route you to IE 11 to show them. - The folder list is not even alphabetically ordered but Favorites is your place to arrange - Links: definitively working for me. Corporate IT thing? - You can edit the link just like in for ex. Excel, select it and press the same button you have used to add it, the same edit box will appear pre-filled with previous data - It is a Windows 8+ style modern application, it runs in the background. I get new mail notifications without running it, sometimes more than I would like to get. Search it in the applications and services list, click once, choose Special settings and will see it. If not, then Corporate IT thing? All places backtranslated from Hungarian so maybe worded a bit different in the English Outlook/Windows settings.
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Gary Wheeler wrote:
the new Teams
I had a Teams meeting just this morning. When given the option to start in the Teams App or Continue in the Browser, I thought to myself 'Surely after a year, this is now fixed.' and chose the Teams App. :doh: :sigh: :confused:Nope! What a pile of crap! X| (or maybe I didn't get the update yet?)
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse "Hope is contagious"
kmoorevs wrote:
Continue in the Browser
I've already expressed several times my profound disdain to the guys who came up with the idea that a browser can be used for something else than browsing the Internet.
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kmoorevs wrote:
Continue in the Browser
I've already expressed several times my profound disdain to the guys who came up with the idea that a browser can be used for something else than browsing the Internet.
There is one major reason: Browsers tend to have the highest update frequency of all your software. FOSS communities come up with new image, audio and video formats so frequently that the only presentation software able to keep up with all the new formats are the browsers. 20-30 years ago, before MP3 and its successors became dominant, lots of programmers, with highly varying real understanding of audio, tried their hand in making their own compressors. It was like every second sound clip you downloaded would require you to download a new (co)dec as well. I remember once counting some 30 different (co)decs (not counting alternate (co)decs for the same format on my PC. Some audio players would, when presented with a format for which it had no (co)dec would start an automatic search on the internet for one to download. I don't think this is common nowadays - at least I see few references to where to download new codecs. But if you have an updated browser (and it is difficult to stop automatic browser updates!), you can be reasonably sure that it can handle the newest variants from the FOSS community. Often, you can use your browser to read/present the file in one format, and then save it in a more traditional format. (At least for photo formats - I am not sure of audio/video formats.) I regularly use browsers for that purpose. Yes, I think it is silly, but the main silliness lies in the continuous stream of new media formats. Usually you can skip 4 out of every 5 new and revolutionary better formats (or new versions of old formats), and yet you may have problems with guessing if a sound/video has been compressed with the old or the new technology.
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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kmoorevs wrote:
Continue in the Browser
I've already expressed several times my profound disdain to the guys who came up with the idea that a browser can be used for something else than browsing the Internet.
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There is one major reason: Browsers tend to have the highest update frequency of all your software. FOSS communities come up with new image, audio and video formats so frequently that the only presentation software able to keep up with all the new formats are the browsers. 20-30 years ago, before MP3 and its successors became dominant, lots of programmers, with highly varying real understanding of audio, tried their hand in making their own compressors. It was like every second sound clip you downloaded would require you to download a new (co)dec as well. I remember once counting some 30 different (co)decs (not counting alternate (co)decs for the same format on my PC. Some audio players would, when presented with a format for which it had no (co)dec would start an automatic search on the internet for one to download. I don't think this is common nowadays - at least I see few references to where to download new codecs. But if you have an updated browser (and it is difficult to stop automatic browser updates!), you can be reasonably sure that it can handle the newest variants from the FOSS community. Often, you can use your browser to read/present the file in one format, and then save it in a more traditional format. (At least for photo formats - I am not sure of audio/video formats.) I regularly use browsers for that purpose. Yes, I think it is silly, but the main silliness lies in the continuous stream of new media formats. Usually you can skip 4 out of every 5 new and revolutionary better formats (or new versions of old formats), and yet you may have problems with guessing if a sound/video has been compressed with the old or the new technology.
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
Enabling editing possibilities in browser is unsecure and can only be a crippled functionality due to performance. MSOffice in a browser is a POS idea. But let's assume some people are fine with a POS toolchain, because from their perspective, it is manageable and they like to use slow and crippled functionalities - Fine for them. Then do not force ME to use this POS tool chain and give me the possibility to not have to click every freaking time on "I want to ignore your POS browser editing and use the tools I have been using for the last half century and which are better an doing your job than your POS version in the browser". I truly HATE UIs forcing things on me, this is not UX, this is not 2024.
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Browsers have come a long way from simple browsing. Netscape was probably the last one that had that as its end goal. I have been running all my email accounts in Chrome for years, and find it far superior to Outlook, Thunderbird etc.
Richard MacCutchan wrote:
far superior to Outlook,
I disagree on this one, but this must truly be a matter of taste. I find online mail editors awful, even if they have improved a lot in the last decade. Especially gmail is for me totally unmanageable : as much as I like the Google environment, Gmail never made it to me, I must be to idiot to use it properly and understand the display logic. A browser should do what its name says : browse, maybe enable enough server actions to allow simple transactions. Using them for much elaborated tasks is nonsense to me, as they are not designed for. I am under the impression that there is a run to misuse browsers as much as possible ! What has been showed as an advantage by op, that browsers are always up-to-date since you have no hand on updates, is a big config management leak from my point of view.
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Richard MacCutchan wrote:
far superior to Outlook,
I disagree on this one, but this must truly be a matter of taste. I find online mail editors awful, even if they have improved a lot in the last decade. Especially gmail is for me totally unmanageable : as much as I like the Google environment, Gmail never made it to me, I must be to idiot to use it properly and understand the display logic. A browser should do what its name says : browse, maybe enable enough server actions to allow simple transactions. Using them for much elaborated tasks is nonsense to me, as they are not designed for. I am under the impression that there is a run to misuse browsers as much as possible ! What has been showed as an advantage by op, that browsers are always up-to-date since you have no hand on updates, is a big config management leak from my point of view.
Rage wrote:
but this must truly be a matter of taste
Well of course it is, discussion like this are always subjective.
Rage wrote:
A browser should do what its name says
The name has been a misnomer for years; browsers have been doing far more than simple browsing for a long time. whether you think that is a good or bad thing, is again, a matter of choice.
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Long time Outlook (new) user here. Yeah, it is simplified. But at least quick and it displays HTML mails and does not route you to IE 11 to show them. - The folder list is not even alphabetically ordered but Favorites is your place to arrange - Links: definitively working for me. Corporate IT thing? - You can edit the link just like in for ex. Excel, select it and press the same button you have used to add it, the same edit box will appear pre-filled with previous data - It is a Windows 8+ style modern application, it runs in the background. I get new mail notifications without running it, sometimes more than I would like to get. Search it in the applications and services list, click once, choose Special settings and will see it. If not, then Corporate IT thing? All places backtranslated from Hungarian so maybe worded a bit different in the English Outlook/Windows settings.
Peter Adam wrote:
The folder list is not even alphabetically ordered but Favorites is your place to arrange
I shouldn't have to replicate my folders under Favorites.
Peter Adam wrote:
Links: definitively working for me. Corporate IT thing?
They're not smart enough. Besides, why would disabling editing links be an issue?
Software Zen:
delete this; -
A while back one of the muckety-mucks in our corporate IT sent an email saying we were now required to switch to the new Outlook. My experience since then is that the new Outlook was written by an amoeba swimming in cheap tequila :mad:. You can't arrange the message list like you want. The date format in the list is obnoxiously cute (last week, yesterday afternoon, just in time for tea,...). The folder list can't be ordered except alphabetically. Links in emails can only be created. Clicking on them does nothing. When composing a message you can't edit a link you created. You can't start the new Outlook automatically. The actual executable can't be run via a shortcut in the Startup group, which means you have to start it manually Every. :elephant:ing. Time. You. Log. In. I just found out they back-pedaled on the requirement: "Use the new Teams and the old Outlook". Grrr...
Software Zen:
delete this;Outlook at it's **very best** (a long time ago) was a total disaster. I refuse outright to use it.
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kmoorevs wrote:
Continue in the Browser
I've already expressed several times my profound disdain to the guys who came up with the idea that a browser can be used for something else than browsing the Internet.
Quite a lot of the bacon I've brought home over the last 25 years has been paid for by apps I've created that run in browsers, and the performance and feature gap between those and locally installed apps has narrowed to almost nothing. Most of my internet "browsing" is accessing server-based browser apps to do my banking, shopping, social interactions, etc. App maintenance is so much easier to all concerned when users don't need to continuously download and install updates.
There are no solutions, only trade-offs.
- Thomas SowellA day can really slip by when you're deliberately avoiding what you're supposed to do.
- Calvin (Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes) -
Quite a lot of the bacon I've brought home over the last 25 years has been paid for by apps I've created that run in browsers, and the performance and feature gap between those and locally installed apps has narrowed to almost nothing. Most of my internet "browsing" is accessing server-based browser apps to do my banking, shopping, social interactions, etc. App maintenance is so much easier to all concerned when users don't need to continuously download and install updates.
There are no solutions, only trade-offs.
- Thomas SowellA day can really slip by when you're deliberately avoiding what you're supposed to do.
- Calvin (Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes)TNCaver wrote:
Quite a lot of the bacon I've brought home over the last 25 years has been paid for by apps I've created that run in browsers
I never said it does not pay. But the fact it pays does not say it is good.
TNCaver wrote:
banking, shopping, social interactions
These are trivial transactions with a server. Do you design 3D models in your browser ? Do you create pivot tables in your browser ? Do you write long reports with pictures in your browser ? No. Why ? Because they are not designed for it.
TNCaver wrote:
App maintenance is so much easier to all concerned when users don't need to continuously download and install updates
Which lead to "lazy sw release" -> We do not need to deliver quality since we can update it anytime.
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A while back one of the muckety-mucks in our corporate IT sent an email saying we were now required to switch to the new Outlook. My experience since then is that the new Outlook was written by an amoeba swimming in cheap tequila :mad:. You can't arrange the message list like you want. The date format in the list is obnoxiously cute (last week, yesterday afternoon, just in time for tea,...). The folder list can't be ordered except alphabetically. Links in emails can only be created. Clicking on them does nothing. When composing a message you can't edit a link you created. You can't start the new Outlook automatically. The actual executable can't be run via a shortcut in the Startup group, which means you have to start it manually Every. :elephant:ing. Time. You. Log. In. I just found out they back-pedaled on the requirement: "Use the new Teams and the old Outlook". Grrr...
Software Zen:
delete this;Not to worry. The new Teams sucks, too. No more Contacts list in the chat, the only choice is to have them ordered by the latest active one. Unless you go through the hassle of "pinning" them. Cartoonish emojis are another "feature". You'll love it. :sigh:
Da Bomb
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A while back one of the muckety-mucks in our corporate IT sent an email saying we were now required to switch to the new Outlook. My experience since then is that the new Outlook was written by an amoeba swimming in cheap tequila :mad:. You can't arrange the message list like you want. The date format in the list is obnoxiously cute (last week, yesterday afternoon, just in time for tea,...). The folder list can't be ordered except alphabetically. Links in emails can only be created. Clicking on them does nothing. When composing a message you can't edit a link you created. You can't start the new Outlook automatically. The actual executable can't be run via a shortcut in the Startup group, which means you have to start it manually Every. :elephant:ing. Time. You. Log. In. I just found out they back-pedaled on the requirement: "Use the new Teams and the old Outlook". Grrr...
Software Zen:
delete this;I used it for about 10 minutes and went back to the old version. I didn't like several of the features, including when you change the message sort, with a message selected, it would re-sort and go to the top message. Not very helpful if I sort by sender and was trying to group messages from 'Paul'. I also don't need/want an email client that attempts to tell me important or unimportant. I can do that in about 3 seconds per email and I know I'm correct in my doing it.
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A while back one of the muckety-mucks in our corporate IT sent an email saying we were now required to switch to the new Outlook. My experience since then is that the new Outlook was written by an amoeba swimming in cheap tequila :mad:. You can't arrange the message list like you want. The date format in the list is obnoxiously cute (last week, yesterday afternoon, just in time for tea,...). The folder list can't be ordered except alphabetically. Links in emails can only be created. Clicking on them does nothing. When composing a message you can't edit a link you created. You can't start the new Outlook automatically. The actual executable can't be run via a shortcut in the Startup group, which means you have to start it manually Every. :elephant:ing. Time. You. Log. In. I just found out they back-pedaled on the requirement: "Use the new Teams and the old Outlook". Grrr...
Software Zen:
delete this;Gary Wheeler wrote:
The actual executable can't be run via a shortcut in the Startup group,
I just had to check this out. I'm not sure why the Startup folder might be handled differently, but I just created a shortcut to the EXE on my Desktop folder, and double-clicking it started the app just fine. If shortcuts located in the Startup folder perform the same action, I would have to assume it would work. (I have tons of stuff loaded right now and this is not a good time for me to log out/back in just to verify this)... I found the path to the EXE by right-clicking on olk.exe in Task Manager's Details tab, and selecting Open File Location. The EXE is in a folder that contains the version number in its path, so I would assume sooner or later the shortcut is gonna get broken, but that's an easy fix.
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TNCaver wrote:
Quite a lot of the bacon I've brought home over the last 25 years has been paid for by apps I've created that run in browsers
I never said it does not pay. But the fact it pays does not say it is good.
TNCaver wrote:
banking, shopping, social interactions
These are trivial transactions with a server. Do you design 3D models in your browser ? Do you create pivot tables in your browser ? Do you write long reports with pictures in your browser ? No. Why ? Because they are not designed for it.
TNCaver wrote:
App maintenance is so much easier to all concerned when users don't need to continuously download and install updates
Which lead to "lazy sw release" -> We do not need to deliver quality since we can update it anytime.
Rage wrote:
But the fact it pays does not say it is good.
And your opinion that it isn't good because it's a browser app is non sequitur.
Rage wrote:
These are trivial transactions with a server.
But they are a helluvalot more complex than just "browsing the internet."
Rage wrote:
Do you design 3D models in your browser ?
I haven't but there are some out there that do this very well.
Rage wrote:
We do not need to deliver quality since we can update it anytime.
Another non-sequitur. What a silly claim. Where the app runs has nothing to do with its quality.
There are no solutions, only trade-offs.
- Thomas SowellA day can really slip by when you're deliberately avoiding what you're supposed to do.
- Calvin (Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes) -
A while back one of the muckety-mucks in our corporate IT sent an email saying we were now required to switch to the new Outlook. My experience since then is that the new Outlook was written by an amoeba swimming in cheap tequila :mad:. You can't arrange the message list like you want. The date format in the list is obnoxiously cute (last week, yesterday afternoon, just in time for tea,...). The folder list can't be ordered except alphabetically. Links in emails can only be created. Clicking on them does nothing. When composing a message you can't edit a link you created. You can't start the new Outlook automatically. The actual executable can't be run via a shortcut in the Startup group, which means you have to start it manually Every. :elephant:ing. Time. You. Log. In. I just found out they back-pedaled on the requirement: "Use the new Teams and the old Outlook". Grrr...
Software Zen:
delete this;there was an old saying, "nobody got fired buying from IBM." Then it got changed to Microsoft. I do not think it's reasonable to have outlawed napalm, and I believe cluster munitions have their purpose.
Charlie Gilley “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759 Has never been more appropriate.
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Ron Anders wrote:
The IT dept won't do anything like that without direction to do so from their overlords
Our corporate IT department has a medieval attitude and treat the serfs with the disdain we deserve. This continues despite numerous internal management shuffles and 'workforce adjustments'.
Ron Anders wrote:
MickySoft is responsible for our collective misery
It's clear that the new Outlook suffers from a lack of forethought and coherent design. Fundamental features for an email/calendar/collaboration application are either missing or half-baked. Obviously these issues are Microsoft's.
Software Zen:
delete this;How can you talk about coherence when it's about a Microsoft product ? Microsoft is doing it's best to loose it's customers, eh well I mean those who are not in adoration of Microsoft, and that's a lot of people :(. Every day I loose faith in Microsoft, looks like all brilliant people jumped out of the ship.
Gilles Plante
