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Whereas Larry started with a standard office layout and added a fancy-dancy desk chair, I have opted to modify the standard office layout by removing items. First, I got rid of the corner piece, which is a colossal waste of space due to its sheer size. All that space behind the keyboard and monitor serves only to collect dust. Out it goes. Inst...

One problem that I'm sure everybody has run into is what I'm going to call the "comp.unix.wizards" problem. People who have a problem with unix are looking for someone who can help them, and given the choice between a general questions group and a wizard group, they're obviously going to choose the wizards because that's where the smart people are!...

TechNet Magazine has picked me up as a columnist, and in their November/December 2005 issue they granted me the great honor of being on the back page. My opening salvo is an IT-ized version of one of my more popular early articles, but future issues will contain never-before-seen random musings on subjects of interest to IT professionals. And ...

When I saw Tim Sneath's description of the root cause for all the Windows Vista product key problems, I was amazed that the reason was something my readers tend to go completely ballistic over: Long file names. It so happens that one of the ISO mounting tools that people were using for installing Windows Vista doesn't support long file names! (A...

Michael Swanson announced last night that the arduous process of assembling the PDC 2005 DVD content is now complete and the results are now online. For free. For six months. You can choose a session and watch it via streaming video, or you can download the video itself for offline enjoyment (!). Michael also has links to the order form if...

When I discussed the behavior of Windows XP SP2's autoplay dialog, one person suggested making the CD autoplay configuration dialog more discoverable to solve the problem of people not knowing how to get back to the dialog to change the settings later. But what is the boundary between discoverability and annoying behavior? Windows&n...

I remarked earlier that the creative director for the PDC rummaged through our offices looking for stuff which was to be used in the opening PDC video to decorate a developer's cubicle. It all flashed by really quickly, but if you were paying attention, you might have been able to make out the following: One thing you won't find in the develo...

When performing usability tests, one of the standard tasks we give people is to install a game, and the game we usually use is The Puzzle Collection. (Yes, it's an old game, but continually updating the game makes it less valid to compare results from one year to the next.) One of the things that the game's Setup does that always confuses people...

I had taken yesterday off from work just to take a breather, but I stopped by the office in the morning to pick up my bicycle helmet. (How I managed to leave my bicycle helmet at the office is not important.) My office telephone rang and I answered it. As my colleague Ken described it later, "Ah, classic rookie mistake." The call was from an e...

Andrew Wharton from Groove has started writing about integrating the team and its product with Office. His opening salvo sets the stage and hooked me in for what looks to be an interesting glimpse into life in another division at Microsoft. (Something that is as mysterious to me as it is to you.) In the early days of the Windows division, there...