Some recently IT Pro stuff i learned

Microsoft Outlook 2010 x64 & Windows Mobile Device Center

Ok, since the Outlook Team is part of the Office Department and the Windows Mobile Device Center Team is part of the Windows Team. It’s no wonder that actually the synchronization of your Smart Phone won’t work when running Outlook 2010 x64.

The Error Message is somewhat confusing telling you:

“There is no default E-Mail Program…”

Well i tried all the nasty tricks. RegEdit, Repair, Even some lines of code. Which finally pointed me to the real Error. Guess what you find a lot of articles at TechNet (very foolish one), (better but still not the right one [By the way there is no repair in Office 2010 from the Office Menus]) on this Issue. But with a configuration: Windows 7 + Office 2010 + Windows Mobile Device Center everything x64 and a HTC Touch Pro 2 you have no chance getting the thing synchronized. So i uninstalled the 64bit Version of Outlook and tried it again with a 32bit Version of Office. Wait is it really that easy. Have you ever uninstalled Office 2010 in order to install Office 2010. Well sounds like a 10 Minute issue right. Yes, but did you know that a lot of people use the Outlook Connector to get their Hotmail stuff. And there are also the Office Lab Plug-in. And since the Office installer don’t like any previous versions of Office installed. You have to kick every Plug-in and Add-on out by hand. Good for you if you know which guys in your Control Panel are Office related. But then … Tada! - Everything's fine now.

So which PM is responsible for that? I really like to know. Perhaps it’s the same guy how did the TFS Installation process once.

A definition of Multitouch

According to Wikipedia a Multitouch Device is:

Multi-touch is an enhancement to touchscreen technology, which provides the user with the ability to apply multiple finger gestures simultaneously onto the electronic visual display to send complex commands to the device.

And since no one defined multiple the most hardware resellers uses two finger support to promote their Hardware as Multitouch. If you are working on a Multitouch Software you should keep that in mind. Otherwise you have frustrated customers and even more frustrated developers dealing with this customers. But MSI said it’s a Multitouch. Yeah, because more than one finger is multi but still just dual. Lesson i learned: Read the Specs and go test that hardware. And tell your customers on your webpage what you mean by Multitouch support. But speaking of Multitouch.

Every Notebook can do Multitouch

A lot of guys looked at me with big eyes when i browse through the web on my notebook. Reactions: “What? Oh you mean that two/three finger gestures i use. Nothing special - found an article recently on some Website with a link to a Synaptics driver.” Yes you can use that. And in most cases even you’re old notebooks can do multitouch. Brings me back to the question: “What is Multitouch?” Pherhaps we’ll find out someday. In the meanwhile: No you can not use the Microsoft Touchpack with the Synaptics driver.