OK so I decided to try and eat a bit more healthily starting at the end of March. On March 31st I stopped eating chocolate and on April 10th I started again. April 10th and 11th just happened to be the dates that I was running a 2-day Microsoft Project course - my first one for a few years. Even with a bit of prep, Project always throws up the unexpected.
Are there any trainers out there who actually like training this product?
This was the top story in my RSS feed this morning. As someone who works for IBM and has spent the past 12 months trying to convert my colleagues to the Mac, I just had to smile at this one!
IBM’s Research Information Services division is investigating the possibility of moving a significant number of employees to Apple’s Macintosh platform according to a report acquired by RoughlyDrafted.
“In line with IBM’s external strategy of offering a true ‘Open Client’ that may be Windows, Linux or a Mac,” the document noted, “[Research Information Services] is focusing on providing an IBM application stack on multiple Operating Systems, rather than be confined to one or the other.”
The first phase of the pilot program was conducted between October 2007 and January 2008. During this phase, 24 MacBook Pros were distributed to researchers and used as the primary notebook, with the employees’ existing ThinkPads acting as backups if needed.
Of the 22 of 24 who responded, 18 said that the Mac offered a “better or best experience” compared to their existing computer, one rated it “equal or good,” and three said the Mac offered a “worse experience.” Seven reported having no or marginal prior knowledge of using Macs, while 15 reported having moderate or expert knowledge of the platform.
Later this year, the company that I work for will be upgrading to Vista/Office 2007. Earlier this year I produced a short video to show to my colleagues (we will be delivering the training), outlining the major differences between Outlook 2000 (the version currently used) and 2007.
Last year I wrote found a piece of VBA code (well I did find it but then adapted it so back to my original comment - I wrote a piece of VBA code) that split a Word mail merge output document (i.e. the one that is produced as a result of running a mail merge) into seperate files which could then be emailed to the recipients.
Well yesterday one of my colleagues asked me to dig out the code and apply it to his mail merge - and he’d make me a cup of his famous coffee if I could do it.
So 20 minutes later and with a few changes to the code, the job was done and I was sat back with a mug of steaming coffee.
And the code…You’ll find a downloadable zip file here.
“Excel.exe has generated an error” was the cry from the desk behind me. “I can’t open the file and it’ll take 2 days to get a restore”
Enter a knight in shining armour (or a least a shiny-screened MacBook). And what could Neo-Office (a FREE Office Suite) do that Excel couldn’t? Yes - it opened the supposedly corrupt Excel file. All that was missing was a few graphs - and they were easily re-creatable.
I’m not sure whether the young damsel in distress was more speechless about the recovery of her precious data or the shiny white laptop on my desk! Anyway, fact remains - Mac 1 PC 0.