I’m a Microsoft fanboy. People who know me, know that.
However, let me tell you about stuff that has happened to me over the last week …
Outlook did something stupid last week…
I could not see the “content/body” of my emails. Just the “from address” and “subject line”. I could not see the “body” of the emails in the preview pane or when I just double-clicked it to open it. ONLY when I clicked on Reply or Forward would the actual body of the email show up in the “quoted” text area. So the data was still there. Just not being displayed in one view but was shown in another.
Not a very nice way to read emails, you will agree.
While all this was going on, I somehow got hooked on to gmail (Thanks, Mangu!) with their feature for 3rd part email inboxes (basically, I could use gmail as a web-based Outlook and read my company emails in there!)
It has been so effortless and smooth, that I have not bothered to open Outlook in the last 4 days. I use Gmail, GCalendar (which I sync with my Nokia E63) and other Google stuff!
I also have had my sights on an Android phone for a few months now.
I am still using Windows Live Writer to write this blog post. Win 7 as my primary OS. Office 2010 as my favourite application suite.
What does this mean? Microsoft needs to make more killer products that WORK for the average user. Anything they make that is not simply 100% great, will move people away from them.
Also, this mean that it is *not* difficult to make easy to use products with the right features. Especially for a large organisation that supposedly hires very “smart” people.