Michael Linenberger's Blog

Jan 24, 2016

Paul Thurrott gives a much deserved rant against Microsoft (link below) for the ongoing Surface Book and Surface 4 issues. As you may know, in early November I bought and immediately returned two high-end Surface Books in a row, due to serious crashing issues in both. This was at least a month or two after their initial release, and I didn’t want to wait many more months for more fixes.

Well, here we are three months after that, and tons of issues remain unfixed, according to Paul. So I am glad I made those returns and did not try to wait this out. Due to the long duration of the issues, and the total silence from Microsoft about them, Paul has dubbed the whole thing Surfacegate. Here is his link:

https://www.thurrott.com/mobile/microsoft-surface/64095/welcome-to-surfacegate

Of course, to be fair, many Surface Book and Surface 4 owners are perfectly happy—either because they don’t have any issues on their particular unit, or they are willing to put up with them. And as I noted in my article, many non-Surface computers running the new Skylake architecture and Windows 10, are also having similar issues.

But that said, I think the attention is warranted. You’d think Microsoft would have either have delayed release or fixed these things by now.

Michael

Jan 22, 2016

As I’ve warned, the Next Gen laptops (those running the new Intel Skylake processor) continue to evolve quickly with lots of new models coming out. Here are some more, starting with a new low cost Asus.

A few years ago I had a 13-inch Asus ZenBook, and I liked it a lot: it was remarkably thin and light for its time, and fairly powerful. Well, Asus has just released the SkyLake version of their budget ZenBook UX305, and it is at a pretty good price: $699 for 8GB and 256GB. But it lacks a few things, like keyboard back lighting, and these days other laptops are just as thin and light. But still, at its price it’s a contender, and I’ve long held that 13-inch is the sweet spot for a lightweight productivity laptop.

What’s the deal on a Skylake processor? The main advantage of this new (late 2015) processor is that its built-in graphics is ton better than previous built in graphic processors. Also, its low-voltage version runs at even lower energy levels than before, so you get longer battery life (or a thinner/lighter laptop with same battery life).

Here is a review of the Asus and comparison with other laptops, from PC World

And another list of 2016 laptops:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2854456/laptop-computers/the-best-pc-laptops-of-the-year.html

Michael

Jan 5, 2015

Out of the box, Windows 10 comes with some power settings that, depending on your usage habits, probably should be changed. These may be especially important if you are using a Windows tablet, but they are also useful for laptops, and they all have to do with hibernation and sleep.

Hibernation vs. Sleep

I know most of you are aware of the differences between hibernation and sleep on a computer. But if not, here’s the story. Hibernation shuts power use off completely—zero battery drain—and stores the state of your computer in the hard drive. That way when you start the computer again, even months later, it starts much faster than a fresh boot of the computer, so it’s up in about thirty seconds. But that’s still much slower than using sleep. Sleep stores the state of your computer in RAM, and so resumes much faster; you’ll be up and running in two to five seconds in some cases. However, sleep uses a fair amount of battery power. So it makes sense to decide which of these you want to use and when. The default settings are, in my opinion, not ideal for most usage cases.

The Changes

The following four settings changes are the ones I recommend you change in Windows 10, especially if you are using a Windows tablet.  The first one is a bit complicated, but they are much easier after that. Continue reading →

Jan 4, 2016

Almost one month ago I posted an article about my touch-and-go experiences with Windows 10 laptops—specifically about laptops using the brand-new Intel Skylake chip architecture. In that article I’d stated that my favorite laptop of the four was the Dell XPS 15, but I had to return it because it was having a blue screen crash several times a day. And I had returned two Surface Books because they were crashing consistently when going into or out of sleep. The only new Windows 10 Skylake laptop that didn’t crash regularly was the Lenovo Yoga 900, and so it became my laptop of choice for a while.

So here’s some good news. I seem to have fixed the Dell XPS 15. Thanks to the incredibly generous return period that Best Buy offered over the holidays, I had time to try different repair approaches before actually returning it. I traced the crash down to a driver issue that got introduced during one of the automatic Windows updates. I updated the driver, and all is well now in the Dell XPS 15.  Continue reading →

Dec 30, 2015 (updated May 30, 2017)

[A Video version of this article has been added for paid MYN Outlook Video Training subscribers, see the new Lesson 26 here (login required)]

Windows Desktop Outlook has an Inbox feature called Compact Layout that can help you better scan your list of Inbox mail. You’ll know it is active in the Inbox when the Inbox list view shows two lines for each email item, as I show here:

[Update: 5/30/2017: Microsoft just auto-updated Outlook 2016 so that the headers in the above figure are no longer there. The header section in Compact Layout now looks as in the figure below (the part inside the Red box is what is new). This does not change anything in this article, but a number of people have commented recently on this change. I see no way to go back to the older header design. It looks like Microsoft is trying to match the layout with the online version of Outlook].

With default Outlook settings, this Compact Layout view is turned on automatically when your Outlook window is relatively narrow, which is good when using a tablet. And it is turned off automatically when your Outlook window is made wider, such as when on a larger-screen computer. But you can change when and how it shows, which I teach below.      Continue reading →

Dec 24, 2015

I know this is Christmas Eve and so if you are seeing this note today you might be thinking, Get a Life Michael! But I have a compassionate reason for writing this today. The reason is that many of you may be getting a small Windows tablet for Christmas (or for some other adjacent Holiday), and now are wondering how to use desktop Outlook on it in tablet mode. I am here to help.

The Advantages of Desktop Outlook

I much prefer using desktop Outlook on a tablet compared to the typical mobile Mail apps that come with tablets these days. I use a lot of the extra features that are included in desktop Outlook—ones not available in those mobile apps. Features like being able to assign categories to email, converting emails to tasks, and activating various custom settings. When I’m processing a day’s worth of email I need the greater power that a full copy of Outlook provides. However, the tiny size of the fonts and features in desktop Outlook can drive you back to the much weaker Windows Mail app.

Fixing the Tiny Fonts and Features

But you can fix that. There are number of settings you can make both in the Windows 10 OS and in desktop Outlook that will make desktop Outlook fully usable on a small windows tablet. I list those below.   Continue reading →

Dec 12, 2015

Another Surface problem has just “surfaced” for me. I’d been using a Surface 3 (not the Pro, rather, the little Surface tablet) for several months and I really liked it—much better than an iPad for most of what I do with a small tablet. Unfortunately, that nice little Surface 3 was one of the victims of the theft last month. Like my laptop, luckily it was locked and insured, so all is well on that front. But I wanted to replace it—I missed it—so I ordered another and it arrived 2 days ago.

But I am amazed and frustrated to say that the new one arrived defective! So this is getting ridiculous. Microsoft, what is up with your quality control? This is the third Surface in a row I’ve received that was virtually unusable on arrival (even after all OS updates). The other two were Surface Books that I wrote about here.

The specific problem on this Surface 3 was that there was a 2-inch by 3-inch band of screen near the left side of the display that was unresponsive to finger-touch (but it did react to pen contact). Even after all the OS updates, after rebooting many times, and after re-calibrating the screen, that part of the screen remained permanently unresponsive—it wouldn’t register taps, wouldn’t finger-drag, etc. I did a quick Internet search and a 2-month-old discussion came up on a Surface-dedicated forum about the very same problems on some units in the Surface Pro line. Continue reading →

Dec 9, 2015

As you know I mostly write about software, like Microsoft Outlook, and how to be productive with it. But periodically I write about computer hardware since that is what Outlook and other productivity software runs on. Recently I was forced to purchase a new laptop, and it gave me a chance to study the new computers coming out. Here is my assessment of a few of the latest next-gen laptop offerings, and the adventures I had finding one that works.

My take is that many of these brand-new, next-gen laptop designs, were released to the public before they were ready—they are full of bugs, some quite serious. But they are still amazing and you might be willing to take the risk. More details below. I hope reading this helps you if you are in the market for a new laptop.   Continue reading →

Dec 7, 2015

One way to look at the MYN system is to think of it as a process of getting control and letting go. You already know that the MYN task list gets you in control of work (and life) because it ensures you capture all incoming action requests and prevents them from dropping through the cracks.

The letting go part may be new to you. It comes from this: MYN forces you to de-prioritize things that don’t stack up against higher priorities—and that allows you to let go of those lower priority things. It forces de-prioritizing in three ways:

• First, due to FRESH prioritization you find that older things, as they lose energy, automatically drop down in your list where you are less likely to unnecessarily worry about them. Unless you take the effort (and commitment) to promote them back up to the top of your list, they appropriately drop out of sight (but you can still review them later if needed).
• Second, by having size limits on each urgency zone section in MYN, you are forced to draw the line and limit what you will focus on each day or week. You let go of the rest (until a lower priority review cycle kicks in).
• Third, by providing rules and tools in MYN to schedule when you review various levels of urgency, you lower the impact that the list has on you. You don’t over manage the list because you don’t review the wrong things at the wrong times.

It’s very important that you do let go of lower priority items, otherwise they clog up your task list and clog up your attention. They lead to an unnecessary feeling of overwhelm, and that feeling can corrupt your ability to focus clearly. You start working on anything that happens to be in front of you and eventually everything becomes a fire drill.

So embrace the letting go aspect of MYN. Follow the size rules and review rules, schedule tasks off your current list appropriately, and allow yourself to focus on a nice, compact, doable list.

Michael

Dec 4, 2015

In case you have forgotten, there are very specific rules on how many items you can have in each urgency zone in the MYN and 1MTD task list. Very simply they are: “Five, Twenty, and Unlimited.”

• In the Critical Now section you should have no more than Five items at any given time.
• In the Opportunity Now section you should have no more than Twenty items.
• And the Over the Horizon section has no limit. (But once it gets over about 75 visible items you should probably switch to Defer to Review using MYN.)

That’s it!

Michael