I have been running Windows 7 on my computer for a month now and have enjoyed the experience.  Now I admint to being a bit of an operating system junky and like such things but as a computing environment, Windows 7 is a nice and overdue upgrade.  There is a night and day difference between Vista and Windows 7.  Check out the Wall Streets Journal review for additional comments and a great review.

I have been spending a little more time reading my favorite paper, The Wall Street Journal and came across this little jewel of an article on Microsoft Outlook.  "How to Tweak Outlook Email to work for You" is worth a read.  There are great tips on searching your mountain of email, color coding emal to make it stand out as well as calendar tips.  This article also looks ahead to Outlook 2010 due out next year.  Take a couple minutes, learn something new.  What do you have to lose, maybe a little less time reading mindless emails.

One of my favorite "tricks" is when a client calls in for a help desk issue, I will sometimes be at my desk and establish a remote control session to their computer and filx the issue on the first call.  I love it when the client on the other end of the phone is amazed that they can see what I am doing and their computer is "possessed" and that their issue is taken care of immediately.  I also like it because I don't have a support ticket queued up waiting for me to get back to it.  Just one of the benefits of the technology available and leveraging it to provide a better user experience.

A client called our help desk because they were having problem loading a software update.The error referred to an unknown acct number and told me to enable cookies.  Upon checking the cookie settings I sent an email with the error to the software vendor explaining that we repeatedly got the error and what to try next.  The e-mail response back was priceless.  The help desk said do what the error messages says to do and check your cookies.  I tossed mine!  I called the technical support desk, reported my issue and they put me in touch with the "right" technician who took another hour to resolve the issue that had nothing to do with cookies.

 

This support response is now on my "Wall of Shame" as one of the most useless support replies I have recieved in a long time.  But there is a lesson here for me and my crack team.  If you ever receive such a useless reply to a support request by email, phone, in person or carrier pigeon from Tobey Consulting, let me know and I will buy you lunch for our absured reply.

 

Kevin