Windows 7. Seriously?

I am a power user of Windows. I like to fly around windows explorer and applications, and I do not want to take time to find where I'm going. I want things to be where I want them to be, and I want to be able to access them quickly. Here's where Windows 7 was supposed to make life easier.

Taskbar icons that can be reordered! Woot! That is wonderful, right?

Wrong.

I must insult the team at Microsoft that architected / designed / implemented this. It's as if their brains were on hold while they did this.

I've opened IE and Chrome. How difficult or important is it for me that IE be before or after Chrome. In all honesty, I can see the icon and quickly access the one I want. Windows 7 allows you to reorder them. Very nice.

I've opened three Chrome applications. They all have the same icon. I must read the name of each one, or look at the thumbnail more clearly to see which instance I want. Wouldn't it be nice if I could reorder those? Yes, that would be wonderful. But alas, Microsoft has deemed the reordering of instances of an application impossible!

Is there anyone who designed this who understands what they are doing?

This situation is most frustrating when working on multiple projects. I have a folder called 'hdl' under multiple projects. I work on multiple projects at once. I keep the 'hdl' folder open on each project at the same time. With Windows XP, I could interleave my 'hdl' folders on the taskbar, with my 'gvim' instances. So I would have on the taskbar:
'hdl' 'gvim' 'hdl' 'gvim'
The first 'hdl' and 'gvim' belong to project A, and the second 'hdl' and 'gvim' belong to project B.
Of course in Windows XP I had to create this arrangement manually. That is why I was looking forward to Windows 7.

In Windows 7, I can't create this arrangement. I would've happily given up on this requirement if at least I could order the instances. But I can't. Even if you choose to 'not combine' taskbar instances, they are still forcibly grouped together without the ability to reorder the instances.

For the first time since Windows came out, I have been forced to use an after-market application to enable me to work efficiently. Since I would encourage Microsoft to fix this, for those who are interested, it is called "7 Taskbar Tweaker".

I would much prefer to use Window's jump lists, and thumbnail previews, and all that jazz. But I can't because I can't reorder the thumbnails.

Allow thumbnails to be reordered!
Allow application instances to not be grouped together!
Perhaps even make it possible to detach an instance (like Chrome does with tabs).

mattress shopping - what's it really like?

While it's fresh in my mind, let me tell you the story of how I bought a mattress.

Went around to a couple shops and finally found a mattress that I wanted. This mattress was sold at Sleep Train, Mattress Discounters, and an online retailer called Slumberland (which I discovered later after searching). Sleep Train and Mattress Discounters both offer to beat any price by 5% and that includes internet pricing as long as they ship to California. The mattress I chose is the Stearns & Foster Eureka Springs Luxury Plush Queen size. This is what happened. I asked Chuck at Sleep Train how much the mattress costs. He immediately took 10% off the price of $1800 to bring it down to $1620. I then told him I was going to go to Sleep Train to see what they could offer. Chuck then took me into his confidence by honestly telling me that Mattress Discounters and Sleep Train are owned by the same person. Wow! He is so honest! Chuck then said that I should go to Sleep Train where they will match the price of $1620, take another 5% off, and give me a much better return policy and higher level service. I was amazed at how honest Chuck was, and I was sold right there. Chuck even said he would call Sleep Train so they could split the commission. Everything made so much sense, Chuck wasn't giving away his sale, he was just looking out for me, his customer. I immediately went to Sleep Train where I spoke with Bob (the manager) and I set up the purchase.

I was happy with the purchase, which at that point totaled, $1539 + tax = $1685. I also agreed to buy a water proof mattress pad costing $50. I also wanted the better frame, adding an additional $70. Total was $1539 + $120 + tax = $1816 I felt that Chuck from Mattress Discounters was very honest, and I got an excellent deal from Sleep Train b/c of him. Then I searched for better online pricing, and the lowest price I found was on Slumberland selling the mattress for $1300. I called Bob at Sleep Train and he immediately agreed to lower the price of the mattress to $1300 (but then explained that the box spring which was sold to me for $200 would now have to be raised to its regular price of $250 now that I was price matching just the mattress). That saved me about $60 bringing the total to $1485 + $120 + tax = $1757. Once again I was happy. They had matched the price and I was getting a good deal.

I went home, saw my flatmate, and then became depressed about the whole purchase. You see, my flatmate informed me that I should be aiming for a 40-50% markdown on the price. He described his shopping experience for a mattress, and it was amazing and depressing at the same time. Lucky that since Sleep Train offers a 100 day price guarantee, and a 100 day return policy, I knew I could go back and ask for more money off or ask for my deposit to be refunded.

Now I started to search a lot more for pricing. Here's the thing, the Eureka Springs mattress is sold under so many names. In order for retail stores to make sure you can't try out a mattress in their store, and then order it online, many mattress manufacturers sell the same mattress under a slew of names. For example, the Eureka Springs is the same as the Kimberly, Raven Hill, Hearthstone, Ferndale, Fiona, Kearsley, Monet Garden, Elgin Court, Rosalie, Montgomery Place, and Deacon Ridge. (I haven't confirmed each of these, but this is what http://lowestpricefurniture.com lists on their ad for the Raven Hill.) Once I realized this, I started searching even more. I finally found a great deal on http://www.gotomattress.com/ offering the Kimberly Luxury Plush Queen mattress for $1349 without tax! They also give a free gift and of course free shipping. I compared specs that I saw on Slumberland with those on GoToMattress, and they were identical! I was flabbergasted! And angry, hurt, upset, embarrassed, and all sorts of other feelings. After all, I was just sold this same mattress at an original markup of almost $300. And above that, I went to a different Sleep Train, showed them the advertisement, at which point they lowered the price by 5% to $1282, gave me the mattress pad like the advertisement gave, removed the tax, and saved me over $400 from my last price at Sleep Train. I also found that Mattress Discounters was willing to match Sleep Train's price, and instead of lowering it, they were willing to upgrade the frame. I went back to Sleep Train and they also agreed to give me the upgraded Queen Instamatic frame.

All in all, I saved around $475 from what I had originally felt was a good deal on a mattress. I finally feel like it's a decent price since Mattress Discounters was very hesitant about lowering the price another 5%, but preferred to throw in an upgraded frame instead.

This experience has taught me that mattresses are marked up by at least 90%, that mattress salesmen have no problem charging such inflated prices, and that they are smarter than me when it comes to making me feel like I've made a good purchase. Watch out, and be very wary of salesmen when buying a mattress. If you cannot get the specs for a mattress in order to compare, you shouldn't buy the mattress. Also remember to shop around. Each drop of 5% means you can go from store to store matching prices to finally get a decent price on a mattress. DO NOT TELL THEM exactly which store. I can tell you for sure that Mattress Discounters and Sleep Train will send each other emails to stop you from price matching between their stores. If they ever offer to split commissions, it is because you are paying a very high price on your mattress, and you should continue price matching with other locations.

Good luck mattress shopping.

AT&T's 3G coverage viewer - LIES!

So I get calls dropped about a block from my apartment, and I lose all 3G coverage in the same area. It's about a three block radius of my home. The AT&T map shows the strongest 3G data coverage for where i live, and the strongest Voice service too. It's very misleading, and AT&T should be required to report accurate coverage on their website. I've submitted many coverage dropouts in my area using AT&T's iPhone tool, and i even got a text message a couple months ago that they're putting a new tower in my area within 90 days. That hasn't happened yet, of that i'm sure since i still have no 3g, and calls are still dropped. So to my sense, they know there's a coverage loss here, and yet the maps don't reflect this.

Bad AT&T

iPhone GPS sucked until they replaced my faulty iPhone

I bought an iPhone 3GS a few months ago and I was very pleased to see how well it performed, and how smooth and responsive it was. I then downloaded AT&T Navigator to start using GPS. It sucked! I then downloaded Motion-X GPS Drive. It sucked too!

I couldn't figure it out. New iPhone and GPS is just horrendous. I thought perhaps it had to do with where the iPhone was in the car. Perhaps this is just how the iPhone GPS is. I didn't know.

A few days ago, the final straw was that my iPhone couldn't pick up GPS for ten minutes as I was sitting in the passenger seat on my way to NYC. Didn't make any difference where I was holding the iPhone, it just couldn't get a signal.

I decided this was a good sign that the iPhone was broken. I then compared my iPhone's GPS signal, using Motion-X GPS Lite, side-by-side with my sister-in-law's iPhone 3GS. Yup! It was confirmed, I had a faulty iPhone.

I hit the Apple store today, and Apple kindly replaced my iPhone with what appears to be a new iPhone. I restored my iPhone through iTunes, and my GPS has been working wonderfully since then.

I am much happier with my iPhone...

HTC Hero (Sprint) vs IPhone 3GS

After landing in the US at the end of September (2009), I have been waiting for October 11 in order to purchase an HTC Hero through Sprint. Yesterday I attempted to do this. This is how it went.

The Hero has 4 buttons and a central trackball/button on its front. These buttons are the current application menu button, the home screen button, the search window button, and the back button. The central ball is a track-pad like button.

The first task was to browse the net. I immediately attempted to open Google's search page. I clicked on the web and typed the address in.

Once Google's search results came in I attempted to zoom in. As a note zoom in isn't supported on mobile websites. I didn't know this. What came as a shock was that it allowed a kind of zoom out and then bounce back. This to me was unnatural, and made me think perhaps that my zoom in motion was wrong. If zoom isn't supported on a mobile site then disable zoom completely.

Google provides many results. I clicked the first. I then changed my mind and clicked the second but at this point the browser was busy and couldn't respond to my new choice. So it's still loading the first page and this is not going fast. The page loaded finally.

Once the page was open I had to scroll up and down to paginate. This didn't feel extremely smooth, but of course it worked. At this point I started to open new pages, and go back and forth. This was very confusing. I sometimes had to use the menu button, and sometimes had to use the back button. Not a very good experience. I couldn't figure out if there was a browser forward button.

I now want to navigate to a new page. How to get to an address bar. Not very intuitive. I figure it out using either the menu button, or perhaps the back button to start a new search.

Now I have to modify the text. If I want to just change a few letters of the text box then I have to navigate around the text box using the track-ball. Horrific! It doesn't allow a continuous motion, you must keep pushing it to move it a few spaces at a time. Big negative for functionality.

It's important to be able to use the landscape view while browsing. I tried this. I found it's response time for detecting landscape vs portrait position lagged quite a bit. Sometimes it didn't seem to figure it out at all.

I must've used the Hero for at least an hour in the Sprint store. I was very disappointed. It wasn't responsive, and it didn't have the uniformity in the UI that I expected. I walked away realizing that the HTC Hero isn't ready.

After this experience I went on to try out an IPhone 3GS.

The IPhone has a single menu button on its front. This button brings you to the main menu. All other functionality is provided via the application using the touchscreen. This enables each application to give you the exact buttons you need and only when you need them.

I started on the IPhone by browsing to Google. The IPhone immediately brings up an address bar and the favorites menu. I liked this very much since Google was one of the first pages listed. I click on Google. I do a search.

I test zoom in. Doesn't work. I test zoom out. Doesn't work. I guess the IPhone also doesn't support zoom on a mobile page. I'm happy to say that IPhone's response was uniform - both zoom in and zoom out do nothing.

I click on a result and then decide to click on another one. The IPhone has no problem with this and immediately begins loading the second link I clicked. The page is now loading and seems to come up pretty fast.

The page is up and I begin to paginate. Feels very responsive and smooth. Zooming works well too. Now I'm going to open a new page. There are a few ways to do this and they are all pretty natural. I scroll up to the top of the page and I have the address bar and the Google search box. I can both load a new page directly or start a new search. There are also 4 buttons that the IPhone puts at the bottom of the screen of the browser screen. Back and forth buttons, bookmarks, and a browser window select button. I love the back and forth as they work well and as one would expect. The window select button allows a new browser window to be created or deleted and allows you to choose which window to view. Very simple in its use.

I now want to put a new address in or perhaps modify the text. Very simple to understand. You can double click on the text and it selects it, a single click brings up a select all like menu. There are little notches that you can move around for selecting parts of words. This is simple. I start to modify the text and I can easily browse to a new page.

Portrait versus landscape view. The IPhone can also detect this and it does it seamlessly. There is an expected delay of about 1.5 seconds which is uniform all around.

-----

The IPhone made me very happy when compared with the Hero. A much more user friendly experience, higher performance and responsiveness, and overall a superior product.

There are a lot of advantages to buying an HTC Hero. It's run on an open source system, it enables you to use any application you want. Sprint will sell you full insurance for the Hero, while AT&T and Apple will not insure the IPhone. For me the decision was all about how it felt to use. Simply stated - the IPhone is a smoother more fun phone to use, albeit more expensive (both the purchase price, contract rates, and long-term usage due to application costs). Perhaps in a year there will be an Android powered phone with the power to unseat the IPhone, but it's definitely not the HTC Hero.

My experience using the HTC Hero is what so firmly convinced me to buy an IPhone. That said, everyone has their own taste, and my decision is based on what I need in a phone.

(I purposefully omitted a number of functions and abilities that were either explained to me in the Apple store or I discovered later. This is not a tutorial on use but rather a step-by-step history of my impressions of the two phones.)

Ortho K - No more glasses??

So there are many names for this which all mean the same thing. Contact lenses that you wear while you sleep which affect the shape of your cornea and give you back that great vision that you remember as a child. No surgery involved, but you must wear the lenses at night forever!!! I've been trying to find out where to get these lenses in Israel, and I have not yet succeeded. I believe Optic Halperin might have it at some as yet unknown location, and possibly some place called Optic Shavit or Shaviv in Givataim. It involves about a week to a month's worth of visits to the optometrist, and they have to give you different lenses each time until your eyes get stable, and then you stick with the same pair. You must clean the lenses properly since you won't notice if they're uncomfortable when you sleep and you could damage your eyes otherwise. Here's to the hope of finding a good place in Tel Aviv to do this for me, and to the hope of being able to see the world without glasses again! PS the price is around 4000 shekel from what I understand.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corneal_Refractive_Therapy

Peace out,

Brezel - Is it a bagel or a pretzel?

Wandering around today I stumbled upon a new brezel shop.
Brezel:

It combines the good taste of a pretzel with something filling on the inside to make a good mid-day snack or light lunch. They are very tasty and are offered with a variety of meats and or cheeses. They also offer baguettes if a pretzel sized sandwich just isn't enough. The baguettes are made of the same dough as the brezels so you get the same good taste.



They can be found at 165 Dizengoff St. Tel Aviv Israel (near Ben Gurion St.).

Enjoy