It’s that dreadful time again: moving all my files to another laptop. As much as I am a WebOffice advocate, I have not yet made a complete transition the way Ismael did: I still have way too much junk on my harddisk.
Every step of this painful process is yet another argument to move to WebOffice. For example, after moving my entire Outlook.pst file, why on earth do have to manually recreate all email accounts, fix the messed up in box rules..etc? What a joke!
But the real pain is Plaxo. No matter what they claim, every move is a potential data disaster. Plaxo will insist on duplicating your Contact, Calendar..etc data – the only variety is whether you get duplicates on your machine or in the online version. The only way to avoid this mess is to disconnect your Outlook data from Plaxo, then manually connect again – which is what I did, downloading the latest version of Plaxo in the process. What a surprise! I have these cute little phone icons in all my contact records. Could it be a direct link to Skype?
Ahh, no such luck, it’s a click-to-connect using Jajah. There’s a lot of buzz about Jajah today, as they announced free calls. It’s really free – sort of .. as long as both parties are Jajah users. Sorry, that does not cut it for me. Inexpensive calls to non-members? Thanks, but nothing beats free. I’ll be quite happy to use the Skype toolbar for my free calls. But I am really unhappy with the way Plaxo populated my Outlook with this Jajaj junk. Plaxo is free (well, they have a premium option, which I tried and found useless, and getting a refund took CEO intervention – but that’s another story), so it’s OK for them to try to push additional services. But there is a line, and in IMHO that line is drawn at going beyond their own product. I own my Outlook file, and Plaxo should at a minimum ask me before pushing a third-party plugin into my Outlook file. But of course I am not entirely surprised, considering Plaxo’s long history of “attitude problems“.
Update (6/28): The Jajah buttons in Plaxo can be turned off via Plaxo > Preferences > Advanced > uncheck Show Click to Call Icons. Of course this should be an option offered at the time of installation, not something I discover after digging around.
Which begs the question – why stick with this pile of fetid poo? I took the long walk to Mac in March after 24 years on MSFT stuff. I’ve not regretted it and people are finally getting used to the fact I don’t do .doc .xls .ppt .mdb
Of course there’s a ramp – but it’s a lot less painful than re-installing all the Win stuff. And like Ismail, I’m fully online. Not the same mix as he but in the same ballpark.
So ironically, I’ve got the very choice that MSFT promises and I don’t mind paying for it when the need arises.
I am not sure I’ll switch to Mac (very well may…), but am definitely using more and more of the onlin stuff. The only remaining question is the huge amount of historical info I still have locally.
It took me 24 years to get the Mac vibe. In my case, a trashed hard disk sent me over the edge. Sometimes change has to be brutal. Did I lose anything? Sure – some history. Do I see it as a good thing these days? Yep. Sometimes it really is worth starting over as a green field. Would I go back to Win? I dunno. Sometimes it’s tempting given resistance among clients to accept HTML files. But I’m sticking to my guns. As the blog mantra goes…influence is built one person at a time. Woud I encourage folk to take a peek at today’s Macs? Sure – you’ve nothing to lose other than a bit of time. Is it right in all circumstances? No way.
Hi,
We have developed a Desktop phone buddy for Jajah, which will take the currently selected number in a windows application and dial the number using a hot key, plus redial and quick dial functionality.
Great in a business environment, like ours…
Download at http://www.jajahphonebuddy.com
please try out and give us feedback….