Letters to Redmond
Reader Letters December 2012
Positive or Negative Outlook?
In his October Barney's Rubble column, Editor in Chief Doug Barney wrote about Microsoft replacing Hotmail with Outlook.com, and asked: "What's your Outlook.com experience?" Readers responded with mixed reviews:
The best thing about the Outlook.com page is the button that lets you switch back to the old Hotmail Web pages. Even if the Outlook.com pages worked well -- which, as Barney noted, they don't -- they're still flat-out ugly, hard to use and waste enormous amounts of screen space. I paid good money for the pixels on my display, and I don't want 90 percent of them white all the time. Fortunately, I use Office Outlook on my desktop and laptop and Windows 7 phone e-mail, so I rarely need to use the Web pages.
Richard Ault
Received via e-mail
I'm switching to Gmail. I absolutely hate Outlook.com.
Ginny Patton
Received via e-mail
My experience with Outlook.com was nothing but amazing! No longer do I feel like a Myspace designer created the UI. The performance is slick and responsive.
Anonymous
Posted online
Password Nightmares
Just in time for Halloween, SplashData released its annual list of the year's 25 worst passwords. Reporting on the list for Redmondmag.com, Associate Web Editor Chris Paoli asked: "Are you a password offender?" Readers replied, and offered password tips:
I suggest to our people that they use a sentence -- something like: mydogFid0,has4coldnose! It's easy to remember and could easily be modified to relate to the system or Web site on which it's used. The problem I run into is limitations on password length. Only eight characters for the bank? Give me a break!
Ed
Posted online
I have at least 10 passwords to maintain at work, and each one has different rules and limitations on their creation. You bet I've figured out how to reuse the same one with minor modifications for more than a year before I need to make a major change. But I still have to live with a 5-minute locked screensaver rule. Now I've got to figure out how to beat that. I should be spending my time on productive work.
John
Posted online
BlackBerry Blues
In a late-October Barney's Blog post, Doug Barney cited a recent article in The New York Times that claimed BlackBerry users feel left behind in comparison to iPhone and Android device users. A reader gives his opinion on the BlackBerry:
The BlackBerry is still the best tool for what it was intended to do: provide really secure Outlook on your belt. For other things, it's not so great. In some fields, where security is king, the BlackBerry is hard to replace, and it's going to hang in there for a while longer. When the consumerization of the smartphone came along, RIM just didn't keep up. I don't think the company is going to be able to get mindshare back with BlackBerry 10.
Karl Compton
Posted online
About the Author
This page is compiled by the editors of Redmond magazine from your letters. Write to us at [email protected] and if your letter is printed in the magazine, you'll be entered into a drawing for a free Redmond T-shirt.