So I’ve been drinking the Microsoft Koolaid in a big way lately. First I migrated from Firefox back to Internet Explorer, then I purchased a phone (Audiovox SMT5600) running Windows Mobile, then I installed Microsoft Exchange (to better sync with my phone of course), and now I am in the process of installing Microsoft CRM.
Now before you get in a huff and start to explain to me why Firefox/Thunderbird/Linux is better than the Microsoft version don’t bother. Microsoft has two things that these products don’t have now – and won’t have for a long time. The first is integration with productivity applications, i.e. Microsoft Office, Outlook, Exchange, CRM, Windows Mobile all work together exceptionably well. Outlook Web Access is a great thing to be able to “see” exactly what is in your Outlook and have changes sync across all of your platforms. The second is third party support, let’s face it Microsoft still dominates these verticals which means the majority of third party software is going to be written with Microsoft as the primary platform.
All that being said there are a few things that I miss from my old systems that I would love to see in the Microsoft version – and some things that I think would make the Microsoft software so much better from a users perspective. They are:
Internet Explorer
- Tabbed Browsing – because it just rocks.
- Direct Downloads to disk (bypassing cache) – I can’t tell you how annoying it is to download a 600MB ISO only that when it finishes it has to copy the file out of the IE cache to wherever you selected on the filesystem.
- Download Manager – again it just rocks, being able to have a single window with a list of all of your downloads is incredibly convenient.
Windows Mobile
- Resort contacts after syncing to phone (i.e. in Outlook I sort by Company Name (Lastname, Firstname) but on the phone I want just Lastname, Firstname).
- When I call a contact with an extension I would like the phone to prompt me to auto dial the extension.