Working with only Microsoft products and services: Day 1

You might think moving from Apple products and OS X to Microsoft and Windows would be easy. It is not. The last 36 hours have been frustrating.

The Surface 2 device chosen for this experiment was unstable. It crashed three times. The latest crash saw it freeze with the screen broken up as shown in the picture.

That’s tragic, because I finally managed to get some useful work out of the tablet-cum-laptop. And I was already seeing how working exclusively with Microsoft and Windows could be productive.

The crashes can be directly blamed on Microsoft. But I didn’t have to install anything to get moving on my Apple-only week. I did need to install software on the Surface. And one app, WordPress, which strictly speaking is not an app, is web based and has no touch screen support making it hard work on a Surface.

The last post?

Another surprise, getting mail on the laptop proved harder than expected. The Windows 8 modern style Mail app does a fine job on the Surface 2. Likewise the Windows Phone 8 Mail app works flawlessly.

Things aren’t so good when using Windows 7. Normally when I use Windows 7 or Windows 8, I use Gmail in the Chrome browser. Routing this to the OS X and iOS 7 apps is easy enough using IMAP. But this exercise is about only using Microsoft's products and services.

Which means using Outlook 2013. This gets the job done but it was harder to get started and Outlook feels positively old fashioned after Gmail. While many readers might think desktop mail clients are a backwards step, I couldn’t see any way to finesse this using Outlook.com which – to my knowledge – doesn’t appear to support IMAP.

Overlooked Outlook

It’s years since I used Outlook, the 2013 version looks so much better than it was in previous generations. I like the integrated calendar, contacts and notes. And the social media links are useful. It may sound crazy, but I’m motivated to give the OS X Outlook app a fresh look when these experiments are over. Although it’s more likely I’ll never use a desktop mail client again.

Microsoft Word works so much better on a full laptop than on the Surface 2. To be fair that’s 90 percent to do with the Surface 2 Touch Cover keyboard. As Mark Lawrence points out this is something else I can’t fairly blame on Microsoft.

@billbennettnz Bootcamp != Microsoft’s fault. WordPress != Microsoft’s fault.Touch cover != Microsoft’s fault (could have chosen type cover)

— Mark Lawrence (@markl_nz) November 18, 2013

I’m less prepared to be forgiving about the frequent Internet Explorer 11 crashes I’ve been seeing all day. They constantly interrupt my work – make cloud apps a mockery. Sometimes it’s just the warning shown in the image below, which needs to be clicked away. Other times there’s a more serious crash. On the other hand, I haven’t needed to reboot Windows itself, which is a win.