Captain Support and Outlook.com…

 

This morning I was called because my mom’s email wasn’t working. As usual, no clear explanation of the issue was available. This sounds like a job for Captain Support!  The problem turned out to be Microsoft had switched her from the Hotmail interface to the Outlook.com interface. A quick explanation of the new interface and she bravely decided to stick with it, rather than switching back to the original Hotmail interface. I’m sure Captain Support will be needed a few times in the coming days… 🙂

I’ve mentioned before, I think the Outlook.com interface is probably the neatest looking web mail interface around now. I prefer the look of it to Gmail. The problem is I am so invested in the Google ecosystem I couldn’t switch even if I wanted too. The real issue here is I’m not a normal user. There are a lot of users out there like my mom who are completely stumped by the slightest change to the interface. At one point my mom said she felt like getting rid of the computer. To someone like me that seems like an extreme reaction, but for her the computer had become unusable.

What’s she going to think when she gets Windows 8? 🙂

On that subject, a couple of people in the office are now using Windows 8 at home and it’s not proving too bad. One of the guys is running it native. One is using Classic Shell. Not surprisingly, they spend most of their time in the desktop pain, trying to avoid the interface formerly known as Metro. Resistance is futile…

Cheers

Tim…

Author: Tim...

DBA, Developer, Author, Trainer.