eclectic-pencil LogiqueWerks blog

Bill Gates dreamed that all users would program with VisualBasic For Applications.

But this user is different: unlike most of Steve Ballmer’s customers, this user is a developer – and in the two languages of which Gates was ignorant in the 80′s: Smalltalk and Prolog.

So what can a user do after OneNote 2007 trashes OneNote 2003?

Build a better mousetrap. And market it.

Applications such as OneNote have a future in collaborative computing. But OneNote is not there yet. Not by a long shot. And Leo will not make it as a collaborative outliner without such a major re-write as to be a non-starter from the get-go. TreePad has had its shot.

OneNote is for GTD: Getting Things Done.

So evolve: use OneNote 2007 extensively while building its competitor. a product not married to MS Office and IE7+.

We might call it, I don’t know, EclecticPens

Many of us lamented the loss of the 99$ word processor in the MsWord-WordImperfect-AmiAmateur wars. But in the days of WordStar there were such products. I owned one which was excellent but was only bundled on Zenith computers. Remember Zenith PC’s? Bundle or die. And ignore antitrust – the DoJ didn’t even have PC’s.

Today there is TextPad and the free Crimson Editor. But I am betting they will not become web-collaborative any more than emacs or vim.

EclecticPens

I sing the praises of OneNote 2003 at every opportunity. The Hungarian hacker may have gone orbital with billions from bundling that never should have been allowed, but I was not bitter. Bill incites kids to play bridge instead of chess or GO; I was not angry. An Iranian/American tycoon goes orbital with telecom gains that may belong to stockholders. No one seems to notice. Personally, I am more interested in Trujillo and some bankers going to jail than Joe Nacchio. Oh, lying and misleading employees holding company stock is a strategy, not a crime. And the two banks were run by two brothers, if I recall.

So having praised OneNote 2007 I decided to upgrade my OneNote 2003. The upgrade path was not obvious so I decided to be cautious. First I would remove the trial version. As it was running a doubt crossed my mind, and I quickly copied ./My Notebook from My Documents to a backup drive. Nothing seemed amiss after the removal of OneNote 2007 Trial. Add or Remove Programs still had a Microsoft OneNote 2003 and my Startup menu still had my OneNote 2003 icon. So I clicked that icon. Now Big Bill tells me that he is re-installing OneNote 2003. Then he tells me that the SKU1A1.CAB cannot be found. The maroon.

Quote. Your Microsoft OneNote 2003 installation source has been corrupted or removed.

I hate, loathe and detest Microsoft. Not that info tech did not have arrogant companies before IBM wanted a DOS for the PC. But this one is special. IBM had customers. This one has users.

Oh I understand … that install/uninstall was only tested on VISTA … with 64-bit dual cores. Have I no shame, a 32-bit XP too timorous to be a pirate?

Piracy was what he feared. Not users, not Ricoh, not IBM, not USDJ. What, after all, can a user do?

[Update: someone from Microsoft later made this right. Thanks.]

When I returned to Minnesota for a break from Smalltalk in L.A. I could no longer recall why IE7 was set as my default browser. I immediately flipped to FX. I thought it might have been for vistasmalltalk.net

Then I went to check for an upgrade to my one worthwhile Microscoff application, the incomparable Office OneNote. Ka-boom! OneNote opens a page in Firefox and before I can even click the check for updates

Caveat emptor. But I refuse to diss the upgrade to OneNote 2007. If you love OneNote 2007 as I do, then pay the devil his due. But flip your default browser to IE7 while you do it …