Installing Outlook 2007 at the office

At the office the corporate standard is actually Thunderbird, not Outlook. There is no exchange server. Calendar functionality is from Corptime which is now Oracle Collaboration Server.

To preserve my sanity (and to sync with my i730) I run outlook using oracle's connector for outlook. Its not wonderful, and using it to do any more than viewing my calendar is a horrible (it will create duplicate meetings at the same time as the original meeeting with all the same people invited - randomly - if I try to accept or reject meetings). Email works well, and I just fire up the Corptime calendar tool (standalone application) to create and accept meetings. As a standalone connected calendar, the standalone application has some nice features.


So today I finally got around to installing Outlook 2007, a coworker has been running it for a month or so. I have been using it at home for some time, but since its now in full release it was time to leverage it for some real work (I received over 10,000 email messages at work - not counting spam, mass mailers, or vendor messages).

On installation I hit similar issues to Scott Hanselman . I followed the same debugging process he mentioned, and found the beta software to be "Compatibility Pack for the 2007 Office System (Beta)".


I removed it and the install went fine... until I launched Outlook, where I was greeted with this friendly message:




A hop, skip, and a jump through google had me try to run C:/program files/Microsoft Office/Office12/scanpst.exe against all the *.pst files involved in the upgrade (after backing them up again of course).

This allowed me to successfully launch Outlook, however there was only archive folders - it hadn't brought in my account settings. Before I could go to fix this, a dialog popped up to tell me it had detected a new email account and would I like to import it? I said sure, just for giggles :)

It then created connectivity to the imap server, and set me up with my inbox, sent items, and 60 (yes 60!) RSS Feeds folders (RSS Feeds1 ... RSS Feeds59).

There is no easy way that I am aware of to mass delete folders, so I manually deleted 59 of the RSS Feeds folders.

Note: start at the bottom of the list - it will auto select upwards, then Ctrl-D with the left hand, and a click with the right hand (cursor staying put over the "yes" button) seems to be the fastest I could achieve.

This left me with a pretty good inbox/archive situation, until I clicked calendar. Sweet no meetings! Wait, that can't be right.

Sure enough the import of the new account decided I had access to a standard IMAP server with no calendar component.

I then deleted the IMAP account via Tools->Accounts, and manually entered the oracle outlook connector information.

This seemed to work, however with in 1 minute Outlook stopped responding. Thanks to a well timed phone call, I even gave it more than 5 minutes to figure itself out. I was thinking it was trying to download my calendar - but according to this link I needed to reinstall the outlook connector.

I subsequently reinstalled the connector, to no avail. I then tried an older version, also to no avail. I even tried the Oracle Connector for Windows Mobile to try to pump calendar directly to my phone upon syncing.

At this point Outlook 2007 is working great for email, but no calendar for me. Turns out my coworker doesn't have calendar working either.

Home Computing Upgrades

2 weeks ago I upgraded my home PC to an AMD 64 X2 4600+ (dual core processor). This made a noticeable difference over my AMD Athlon 64 3600+, amazing really for an inexpensive drop in upgrade.

The difference was so significant I ordered the upgrade for Jess as well.

At the same time I finally became upgraded to a true dual-monitor solution at home, instead of just using Synergy between the desktop and the Sager 9860. I purchased a 22" Samsung widescreen, which I ended up trading Jess for. Jess was using a 19" and a 21.3 inch in dual monitor, but the 22" widescreen is almost exactly the same height as the 19". So I know have two 21.3" monitors running at 1600x1200. Its beautiful.

This past weekend Jess's processor arrived. The upgrade was nowhere near as smooth as mine. The biggest problem is the way the heatsink connects to the motherboard. After 4 hours of futzing with a very akward plugin location, fixing bent processor pins, and a slightly damaged heatsink clip her computer was up and running on the new processor.

From there I went about upgrading both machines to Vista. I tried going to x64 Vista, but I couldn't get a few things to work properly (sound, belkin N52, and Logitect g15 display). This was a much better experience than XP64, but I was concerned enough I quickly gave up and ran back to x86. The installs went very smoothly, though I am frustrated by the peripheral vendors lack of Vista drivers. All in all the upgrade went well on both computers and everything is working (as far as I know).

I am frustrated with the vendors Vista support - Vista's readiness to hit the market has been very well communicated by Microsoft and there has been plenty of time to work with Vista to be ready. Logitech for the g15 even says XP or Vista is required, yet there is no Vista support information or driver downloads (the XP drivers and software do work).

Gaming performance seems slightly reduced, however I'm expecting Nvidia will be releasing new drivers that will be more optimal for Vista. Additionally while not too slow, upgrades for my Geforce 7800GT and Jess's Geforce 7600GT are likely on the not to distant horizon.

Useful Links

Prototype is a robust javascript library for doing nifty effects. I am using it in my site redesign (which I realize is taking forever), however there is very poor documentation. That is, until now.

Why Media Center (included in Vista Home Premium) is the killer app.

Also from Coding Horror, "The Economics of Bandwidth" is a good read. I always use a train or truck full of hard drives to explain latency, but this is interesting to describe cost of transfer.

A teaser about Taglocity has me curious...

Luncene.NET 2.0 Final is released.

This looks interesting: Wfetch not sure how it differs from Fiddler though...

Free Fonts - lots of them

Fundamental Computer Investigation Guide For Windows SysInternals Microsoft TechNet

Windows Mobile Device Center 6 Now Vista ready.

Time to laugh: The Vista Upgrade Decision Flowchart

.NET links - openWYSIWYG and Cheat sheets

Found these 2 good links:

openWYSIWYG - rich editor for the web (similar to FreeTextbox)
.NET Cheat Sheets - handy cheat sheets for working with .NET

Experiences with Vista and my Sager 9860

I promised a while ago to write up my vista/Sager 9860 experience so here it is:

I first installed Vista Beta 2 on the Sager, I was warned by the compatibility check that the sound card would not work. Vista installed fine, and after a small fight with the video card drivers I had a nicely functioning machine (though with no sound). Trying to watch video would fail as it said there was no sound device.

I lived with Beta 2 for a while - I quite like VISTA! Lots of really nicely thought out features (and a few usability rough edges).

I then wiped the machine and installed the RTM. No compatibility warnings this time, but in the end still no sound.

I then begun digging into the net for drivers. I did finally find the Realtek drivers and after multiple installs of them and finding old versions and trying that I finally found a release note from Realtek stating that it would only work with version "c" of my motherboard and later. I have version "a". They were clear that no work would be done to get versions older than revision "c" to work with Vista.

Disheartened and wanting sound I decided to try Windows Media Center Edition. Not as slick as Vista but I don't have a media center machine and the sager has a built in tv tuner and remote. Install went flawless, and soon I had sound!

However, getting into Media Center it couldn't see my tv tuner. So I dug into the net again and soon found out that my tv tuner was not compatible with Media Center (until a later version of the 9860....) . I'm staying here OS wise for now - I can use the tv tuner software to record video, and Media center to play it back, I just can't use Media Center to watch TV or record TV.

Moral of the story: the Sager 9860 I bought I never intended to use as a media center, and Vista wasn't out. Its a few years old now so I can't be that upset that I'm not able to repurpose it the way I intended. And buying the first revision of a motherboard (which I knew I was doing at the time) is a risky proposition.

Oh well. Time to install Vista on my desktop :)

"Sounds" like a cup of coffee

We all know sound can effect you. Just think about jumping out of your seat in a horror movie, an effect that is usually acheived by a tense musical selection ending in a sudden drastic rise in tone, and usually some sort of flash on screen.

This is basically the way this works. Stefanos Karagos has unleashed this MP3 on the world that he claims has about the same effect of energizing you as a cup of coffee.

I listened to the MP3 and it definitely is a interesting collection of sounds. I can certainly see how someone would feel more alert listening to the sound, but I found it made me slightly tense.

Very interesting concept to try out.

Industry and being labeled

I find it interesting, and sometimes even slightly annoying when sales people come in from vendors and immediately labeling my projects or constraints by the industry that we're in.

As in: "Well of course you will need feature X you are in the life sciences industry".

This type of statement makes sence of course if feature X is somehow related to the something industry specific. My annoyance comes in when feature X is version control, separation of duties, or support for a standard or specification such as WSRP or BPEL.

Of course I'm not talking about the odd comment but rather the vendor that relates everything I say to the industry. Regardless of the fact that I'm not talking about anything industry specific.

I do find it commical how some vendors sales people identify themselves first and foremost with the industry vertical they are responsible for, despite not knowing anything about the industry.

Sales guy: "Hi I'm Bob, I'm responsible for the health care and lifesciences customers in NY and NJ."

I always want to reply:
"Hi Bob, I'm Rob. I am an Associatte Director of a application development team. We don't care much for NY, and health care is taken care of my HMO. Life sciences? I'm not following. We do computer sciences around here if anything...."

Not supporting manufacturing or R&D means my team is abstracted from the true business. While we do handle the external facing sites and there is some specific rules around that we tend to be doing fairly straight forward development - not industry specific.