If he made it to eventually be broadcast on TV, he may have made the mouse cursor black to make it more readable on a light background. Those are the silly things ya gotta do for broadcast graphics.
Instead of pushing for integration, Adobe's practice after all these years remains one of focusing on consistency of interface design between their apps and ensuring good interoperability between most of their products. They seem to copy features between applications every major release, but that's because a lot of people don't consider under-the-hood stability fixes to be particularly exciting and need a new and shiny something that might be immediately useful to them to justify the upgrade expence.
ERm okay. Photoshop's stability over the years has been excellent. Of course they wouldn't upgrade based on stability alone, there's little to improve. Meanwhile, they're looking at problems their customers constantly face, and they include new tools to solve them.
"If such a feature winds up being to your benefit: great. You get some time shaved off your work. But now think about all the extra features you *don't* use, and how much bigger and complicated their presence might make the application."
At that point we're getting into the competence of the developer. You can cram too many features into software and make it suck. You can include too few features into software and make it suck. In the end it's about work-flow. If your app is missing critical tools, throwing another app into the mix is only a band-aid solution at best. Forcing your users to jump through that many hoops is no better than having an unstable app or a confusing UI. The result is you end up presenting them with a brand new UI to complete a simple task, an exchange of files, a lack of efficiency caused by loss of context, and whatever problems that new app brings to the table are now brought up with the one you're using now. You've eliminated one problem and created several more. This just isn't a philosophy that can be applied to all software everywhere.
Look, you might be able to pry a crate open with the other end of a clawhammer, but it's a hell of a lot less effective than a crowbar: you're going to break a heavier sweat because you've got less leverage, the prying end is the wrong shape, and you're probably going to bust the crate to pieces with the hammer; use the right tool and you're done in a shorter amount of time, have exerted a hell of a lot loss effort, and you can reuse the crate.
That's an extreme example. I have a battery powered drill that also has bits for turning screws. That's more akin to what we're talking about, here. It'd be a pain in the ass to have to buy a seperate device just to get a Phillips head.
This whole Swiss Army Knife approach for *complex applications* needs to be nipped in the bud, and that's in both proprietary and free solutions. Anything less is accepting the approach simply because of precedent and ignoring evidence to the contrary.
In a simplistic view I could hop on board to what you're saying. But in this context, I couldn't disagree with you more. The ability to draw in GIMP or Photoshop lends itself to more sophisticated tools elsewhere in the app. This is one of the reasons that Photoshop is so powerful. Every release of Photoshop brings it that much closer to merging PS, Illustrator, and After Effects. No, Photoshop will never replace After Effects, but the extra abilities gained from combining some of its stronger compositing elements make it invaluable. Take CS2, for example. It comes with a feature called "Smart Objects". You can take a collection of Layers and non-destructively combine them into one. You can clone that new Layer as many times as you want whilst distorting it, rotating it, scaling it, etc. If you scale it down then scale it back up, it re-draws the original group of Layers into that new parameter. For example, you could make a high resolution image of a Leaf. Make it a Smart Object. Clone it around at different scales etc. Then you can go back into the original Leaf layer(s) and edit it again. Once you're done, it'll propogate the changes to the rest of the instances in the image.
Now if that doesn't make sense, well I apologize for not being clearer. The point is that CS2 took one of the strongest features of AE and made it available to Photoshop users. The results are astounding. It didn't take my studio long to adopt that techinque and reap the rewards of it. In theory, I could have taken After Effects and done the same thing. Only I'd spend a LOT of time flipping back and forth between both apps and invent Rube Goldbergian techniques to keep everything in sync. Then I wouldn't have all the fancy schmancy tools I have in Photoshop at my disposal in AE. Adobe brought this workflow into play and now I've got a far more robust package than I had with CS1. Nipping this in the bud would also put a dent in my productivity.
Since I have benefitted greatly from this approach I hope you understand I respectfully disagree.
"Cheap and light still do not mean flimsy. Again, all of the adjectives you need to really say a cheap plastic device is also flimsy are not present in the article - creaky, twisty, and so forth."
Heh. They didn't need to use all those words since they used the word cheap!
"See, here's the part that you anti-Sony folk always seem to miss if someone does not recoil in horror at the mention of the demon-spawn Sony."
I'm not anti-Sony.
"The hatred of Sony has disabled that logical left side of your brain where all rational thought takes place, leaving nly room for imagined slights from Sony against your ancestors and/or pet."
I don't hate Sony.
"I personally like the 360 controller a lot. Wrap your warped mind around that concept."
Actually I like it, too. Speaking of wrapping warped minds around concepts, not everybody who sees a bad news for Sony is a Sony hater. I'm not going to say "weee! It's got a battery indicator! That's totally awesome!" just to convince you that I'm not sitting here with a Sony voodooo doll riddled with pins.
Anyway, back on topic: You're wrong. Sorry. Zonk may be one to pick and choose what he posts based on his views, but you picked the wrong battle to fight. Actually, I think you just posted before clicking on Page 2 and now you feel you've got to defend it to death. Labeling me anti-Sony might make it easy to dismiss my arguments, but it doesn't undo your goofs.
Have a good night, and thanks for the entertaining debate! Heh.
Why does everyone want to use GIMP to draw with, given that it's a bitch and a half to do so, and the developers refuse to add it in? I suspect the answer is "because you can in photoshop!" Is inkscape really that bad?
"Because you can in Photoshop!" is synonymous with "I'm more productive in Photoshop." I am not a 'painter' in Photoshop, but I use the paint brushes on a daily basis to generate textures. If I had to run out to another app just to paint a mask, not only would I lose a great deal of time, but I'd also lose all the benefits that Photoshop provides for me. Paintbrushes can be used for darned near anything. Inkscape could be the best drawing app in the world, it'd still be a huge PITA to not have those features integrated into GIMP.
Answers like "use a drawing app!" only hurt the users, especially when it's been proven to work so well in Photoshop.
"Ask any Gimp developer why this is such a bitch and they'll tell you something like: The Gimp is an image manipulation program, not a drawing program, go use Inkscape or something if you want to draw circles."
That's the sort of answer that, if used frequently, could kill OSS. If the aim is to replace commercial software with 'free' software, then the 'customer is always right' motto still applies.
" It's that you have to twist the crap out of the machine to get it to happen."
In the videos I saw, it didn't take much to make it happen. That was from the early run of the machines, though. As I said, Sony did something to them to alleviate that problem. So, yes, it's a myth that it's a common problem. I'm just disputing the bit that it was ever a problem at all.
"Some cameras are described as "plasticy" even with very firm bodies if it's only plastic used in the construction."
Okay. However, they combined it with cheap and light. What other connotation besides 'flimsy' did they mean?
"Yes, that's what they said, as you quoted. Heh. Heh. Heh."
Heh.
"It does lend credence to my somewhat less negative reading of the "we don't really like it all that much.". I guess you couldn't follow the logical connection, but then your inability to read attentivley or make infrences from written text is evident in your ill-thought reply."
Mmm hmm. Yeah. I might be bothered by this comment if not for the weak attempt to twist the words of the authors all under the guise of Zonk being anti-Sony. "But they liked the battery level indicator on the controller! They should be singing the praises of it!" Puh-leeze. Sony under-delivered. I'm sorry Zonk didn't sugarcoat the story in your favor.
"Which of the words above (or in any part you quoted, or in the article yourself) is "Flimsy"? "Plasticy" does not mean "Flimsy"."
What other property, besides flimsy'ness, would the term 'plasticy' describe?
"I didn't say they liked it wholly, just that they basically thought it was about the same as the PS2 controller - which they also found flawed."
They didn't like it wholly? Heh.
Instead of duplicating that, we'll take a look at one last thing - possibly the most controversial aspect of the PS3: the controller. Prepare to be shocked though: we don't really like it all that much.
"And of course you left off the text where they were pretty happy they could read battery life at the press of a button, but then you just couldn't bring yourself to say anything positive about SOny, could you?"
That wasn't the topic. That's just a snide retort on your part to save face.
"Nowhere in the article did it say the Sixaxis was "flimsy" or in fact "poorly designed"
Instead of duplicating that, we'll take a look at one last thing - possibly the most controversial aspect of the PS3: the controller. Prepare to be shocked though: we don't really like it all that much. True enough, you can go along with Phil Harrison's proclamation that it's already the industry-standard controller amongst umpteen-million gamers around the globe, but, arguably, that doesn't make it the best. Personally, we can't help but feel that the SIXAXIS (as it's now known) has been sadly neglected when viewed alongside the rest of the PS3. Compared to Microsoft's uber-comfortable Xbox 360 pad, the SIXAXIS feels cheap, plasticky, uncomfortable and disconcertingly light - almost as if it's going to fly out of your hands during those more extreme gaming moments.
Well, technically you're right. It's cheap and plasticky, not flimsy or poorly designed. Whatever.
"I wonder if Slashdot purposely tries to select negative PS3 stories..."
Slashdot? They're posted everywhere.
I wouldn't complain anyway. I find it very interesting that Sony spontaneously decided to lower the Japan launch price. I wonder why they'd do something crazy like that?;)
"As soon as any method becomes popular enough to be useful, spammers will move in. Sure, you could use IM, but spammers are there already. You could set your IM client to only accept messages from known users, but you might as well go back to email and set up a whitelist."
a. I'd love to have that whitelist right now.
b. I've been using ICQ and Yahoo for years. I've recieved one SPAM in the last two years. I don't know what's being done to keep the SPAM down, but man I appreciate it. (I'm using Trillian, if that matters.)
YMMV, but I prefer using ICQ to correspond with people.
"Let's get to the very root of this problem: spammers can send as much email as they want, with very little penalty in cost."
In my humble opinion, the main problem is that anybody can send a message to anybody else. It's too open. Too many servers configured differently. No standard white/black list, etc. I'm curious what would happen if it was decided to completely scrap email as it is today and start it from scratch. My guess is they'd borrow ideas brought to us by instant messaging. Contact lists, invites, authorizations, etc.
"While one of the basic strengths of Wikipedia is its updatability, I would question the point of storing all the articles offline."
To be fair, there's a plethora of historical data on Wikipedia that probably won't be touched much over the next year or so. Personally, one of the reasons I want a Treo is so I can hit Wikipedia from time to time. But if I could download a version of it today and update it once a year or so, I'm confident it'd be worthwhile even though it's not up to date.
"Why, pray tell, would you want to download music, ripped into a lossy format by some unknown encoder, that you already own on CD?"
I'm not the guy you responded to, but I wanted to chime in on this. I downloaded a lot of music I had CDs for instead of ripping it for a couple of reasons.
1.) I was able to just queue up the various songs I had an immediate interest in. I didn't have to wade through a stack of CDs, get them ripped, etc. (That and often my CD collection was split between home and work.)
2.) I was too f'n lazy to go find a good encoder and learn how to use it. This relates to point 1, it was easier to just type in the name of the song and have it come down when it's ready.
3.) This is only anecdotal experience, but rarely have I downloaded a crappily encoded song. In that event, I just found a different source. I'm not as sensitive to the quality of encoding as some people.
I have no idea if the 60% argument is supportable, I'm not trying to. I'm just pointing out that not everybody wants to bother with running a huge stack of CDs through their machine.
I think this is going to change dramatically in the coming future. First off, all internal applications (Like unwrapping) in a 3d app can be put into an internal "Sub monitor" so those aren't a problem. With Z-Brush and Modo offering such high quality 3d paint tools I think we're going to see painting on the mesh far more common, resulting in more single monitor applications. The current situation of multiple applications being required is slowly disintegrating.
I'm having trouble imagining that completely taking over. Apps like ZBrush have a tendancy to not include critical features that other apps like Photoshop have. As a result, there's a lot of specialization, thus requiring multiple apps open at the same time. Maybe I'm being short-sighted, but I have a difficult time imagining these tasks suddenly becoming part of the host 3D app.
" Our "work space" is minuscule even with a 23" screen. I would say 23" is a minimum not a maximum."
I've never really paid attention to the number of inches. For me, it's always been about the pixels. I have a 24" at work and it supports 1920 by 1200. I have a second monitor that does 1600 by 1200. The 2D guys upstairs use the Apple monitor because it is in the neighborhood of 2,000 pixels wide. I don't think it's the size so much, just the res. But I'm focusing mainly on the type of work we do.
As a user of a large screen I do think Microsoft and Apple need to add a new feature to OSX and Windows. The half Maximize. There should be two extra buttons on the opposite top side: [Maximize Right][Maximize Left]. The two buttons would quickly resize the window to take up half the screen.
Windows has 'tile windows', but I doubt that would help ya as much as you'd like it to. Heh.:)
I just wanted to chime in because I think you've got two of them reversed. Where I work, the 3D guys have two monitors and the 2D guys have 30" single monitors. The reason for this is that a 3D app requires having several other apps open. For example, I typically have Photoshop open on one monitor while I have Maya open in the other. I need to be able to get back and forth between them without a lot of minimizing/maximizing. The 2D guys have 30" monitors (Apple, btw.) that run at a very high resolution so they can see all of the pixels they possibly can while they're painting. (It's not uncommon for their paintings to be several thousand pixels wide.) In their case, they rarely have to have more than one app open. I'm more productive with the two smaller monitors and the other department's more productive with the ginormous screen.
Heh yep. I was surprised, too. There was DLL with OL in the name that disappeared.
"I guess it's all a matter of opinion. From what I remember of the last version I tried, the UI appeared to have changed quite a bit."
Yes, it's a little daunting at first. The color scheme is different and they added a couple of buttons to categorize teh various options. In that respect, yes, it's different. In my case, I went from OL2K to OL2K3. Big change, right? I looked at the screen for a moment, realized that it was actually the same, I just needed to click on Mail to get started. From there, I've had no trouble adapting to it. Although I've just read further in your post.. I think we're in agreement about that. I just wanted to chime in because the UI changes in Outlook were nowhere near as troublesome as say Photoshop or Opera over the years. It looked different at first but essentially it's the same.
"Outlook has changed considerably more than Express has in the same time period, in my opinion."
Agreed. OLE has definitely stagnated. Although... I cannot say OL2K3 is really showing much improvement either. Heh. I still wonder if Microsoft just changed the color scheme so ppl'd see the screenshots and think they need to upgrade.
Slashdot Mirror
If he made it to eventually be broadcast on TV, he may have made the mouse cursor black to make it more readable on a light background. Those are the silly things ya gotta do for broadcast graphics.
ERm okay. Photoshop's stability over the years has been excellent. Of course they wouldn't upgrade based on stability alone, there's little to improve. Meanwhile, they're looking at problems their customers constantly face, and they include new tools to solve them.
At that point we're getting into the competence of the developer. You can cram too many features into software and make it suck. You can include too few features into software and make it suck. In the end it's about work-flow. If your app is missing critical tools, throwing another app into the mix is only a band-aid solution at best. Forcing your users to jump through that many hoops is no better than having an unstable app or a confusing UI. The result is you end up presenting them with a brand new UI to complete a simple task, an exchange of files, a lack of efficiency caused by loss of context, and whatever problems that new app brings to the table are now brought up with the one you're using now. You've eliminated one problem and created several more. This just isn't a philosophy that can be applied to all software everywhere.
That's an extreme example. I have a battery powered drill that also has bits for turning screws. That's more akin to what we're talking about, here. It'd be a pain in the ass to have to buy a seperate device just to get a Phillips head.
In a simplistic view I could hop on board to what you're saying. But in this context, I couldn't disagree with you more. The ability to draw in GIMP or Photoshop lends itself to more sophisticated tools elsewhere in the app. This is one of the reasons that Photoshop is so powerful. Every release of Photoshop brings it that much closer to merging PS, Illustrator, and After Effects. No, Photoshop will never replace After Effects, but the extra abilities gained from combining some of its stronger compositing elements make it invaluable. Take CS2, for example. It comes with a feature called "Smart Objects". You can take a collection of Layers and non-destructively combine them into one. You can clone that new Layer as many times as you want whilst distorting it, rotating it, scaling it, etc. If you scale it down then scale it back up, it re-draws the original group of Layers into that new parameter. For example, you could make a high resolution image of a Leaf. Make it a Smart Object. Clone it around at different scales etc. Then you can go back into the original Leaf layer(s) and edit it again. Once you're done, it'll propogate the changes to the rest of the instances in the image.
Now if that doesn't make sense, well I apologize for not being clearer. The point is that CS2 took one of the strongest features of AE and made it available to Photoshop users. The results are astounding. It didn't take my studio long to adopt that techinque and reap the rewards of it. In theory, I could have taken After Effects and done the same thing. Only I'd spend a LOT of time flipping back and forth between both apps and invent Rube Goldbergian techniques to keep everything in sync. Then I wouldn't have all the fancy schmancy tools I have in Photoshop at my disposal in AE. Adobe brought this workflow into play and now I've got a far more robust package than I had with CS1. Nipping this in the bud would also put a dent in my productivity.
Since I have benefitted greatly from this approach I hope you understand I respectfully disagree.
"Cheap and light still do not mean flimsy. Again, all of the adjectives you need to really say a cheap plastic device is also flimsy are not present in the article - creaky, twisty, and so forth."
Heh. They didn't need to use all those words since they used the word cheap!
"See, here's the part that you anti-Sony folk always seem to miss if someone does not recoil in horror at the mention of the demon-spawn Sony."
I'm not anti-Sony.
"The hatred of Sony has disabled that logical left side of your brain where all rational thought takes place, leaving nly room for imagined slights from Sony against your ancestors and/or pet."
I don't hate Sony.
"I personally like the 360 controller a lot. Wrap your warped mind around that concept."
Actually I like it, too. Speaking of wrapping warped minds around concepts, not everybody who sees a bad news for Sony is a Sony hater. I'm not going to say "weee! It's got a battery indicator! That's totally awesome!" just to convince you that I'm not sitting here with a Sony voodooo doll riddled with pins.
Anyway, back on topic: You're wrong. Sorry. Zonk may be one to pick and choose what he posts based on his views, but you picked the wrong battle to fight. Actually, I think you just posted before clicking on Page 2 and now you feel you've got to defend it to death. Labeling me anti-Sony might make it easy to dismiss my arguments, but it doesn't undo your goofs.
Have a good night, and thanks for the entertaining debate! Heh.
"Because you can in Photoshop!" is synonymous with "I'm more productive in Photoshop." I am not a 'painter' in Photoshop, but I use the paint brushes on a daily basis to generate textures. If I had to run out to another app just to paint a mask, not only would I lose a great deal of time, but I'd also lose all the benefits that Photoshop provides for me. Paintbrushes can be used for darned near anything. Inkscape could be the best drawing app in the world, it'd still be a huge PITA to not have those features integrated into GIMP.
Answers like "use a drawing app!" only hurt the users, especially when it's been proven to work so well in Photoshop.
"Ask any Gimp developer why this is such a bitch and they'll tell you something like: The Gimp is an image manipulation program, not a drawing program, go use Inkscape or something if you want to draw circles."
That's the sort of answer that, if used frequently, could kill OSS. If the aim is to replace commercial software with 'free' software, then the 'customer is always right' motto still applies.
" It's that you have to twist the crap out of the machine to get it to happen."
In the videos I saw, it didn't take much to make it happen. That was from the early run of the machines, though. As I said, Sony did something to them to alleviate that problem. So, yes, it's a myth that it's a common problem. I'm just disputing the bit that it was ever a problem at all.
"Some cameras are described as "plasticy" even with very firm bodies if it's only plastic used in the construction."
Okay. However, they combined it with cheap and light. What other connotation besides 'flimsy' did they mean?
"Yes, that's what they said, as you quoted. Heh. Heh. Heh."
Heh.
"It does lend credence to my somewhat less negative reading of the "we don't really like it all that much.". I guess you couldn't follow the logical connection, but then your inability to read attentivley or make infrences from written text is evident in your ill-thought reply."
Mmm hmm. Yeah. I might be bothered by this comment if not for the weak attempt to twist the words of the authors all under the guise of Zonk being anti-Sony. "But they liked the battery level indicator on the controller! They should be singing the praises of it!" Puh-leeze. Sony under-delivered. I'm sorry Zonk didn't sugarcoat the story in your favor.
What other property, besides flimsy'ness, would the term 'plasticy' describe?
"I didn't say they liked it wholly, just that they basically thought it was about the same as the PS2 controller - which they also found flawed."
They didn't like it wholly? Heh.
"And of course you left off the text where they were pretty happy they could read battery life at the press of a button, but then you just couldn't bring yourself to say anything positive about SOny, could you?"
That wasn't the topic. That's just a snide retort on your part to save face.
"It is an early controller prototype."
Where does it say that?
"The PS3 they have won't even play DVDs. But don't let that stop a nice Sony bash Zonk, after all its all you've got going on in games.slashdot."
Um, yeah, it has slightly older firmware. That's hardly the same as rewinding it back in time to an earlier revision of the controller.
If Zonk's guilty of drawing absurd conclusions to support their agenda, then you are as well.
Well, technically you're right. It's cheap and plasticky, not flimsy or poorly designed. Whatever.
"I wonder if Slashdot purposely tries to select negative PS3 stories..."
;)
Slashdot? They're posted everywhere.
I wouldn't complain anyway. I find it very interesting that Sony spontaneously decided to lower the Japan launch price. I wonder why they'd do something crazy like that?
"...PSP UMDs come flying out like throwing stars during normal gameplay all the time..."
Actually, this was true. Sony tweaked the build of the machines before they made it outside of Japan. Google around, you'll find videos of it.
"my two kids + the fact that I'm a user of Linux for the former 13 years ==> linux is not a really effective form of birth control."
Heh. That's why I intentionally used the word 'powerful' instead of effective.
"what's a linux?"
A very powerful form of birth control.
"As soon as any method becomes popular enough to be useful, spammers will move in. Sure, you could use IM, but spammers are there already. You could set your IM client to only accept messages from known users, but you might as well go back to email and set up a whitelist."
a. I'd love to have that whitelist right now.
b. I've been using ICQ and Yahoo for years. I've recieved one SPAM in the last two years. I don't know what's being done to keep the SPAM down, but man I appreciate it. (I'm using Trillian, if that matters.)
YMMV, but I prefer using ICQ to correspond with people.
"Let's get to the very root of this problem: spammers can send as much email as they want, with very little penalty in cost."
In my humble opinion, the main problem is that anybody can send a message to anybody else. It's too open. Too many servers configured differently. No standard white/black list, etc. I'm curious what would happen if it was decided to completely scrap email as it is today and start it from scratch. My guess is they'd borrow ideas brought to us by instant messaging. Contact lists, invites, authorizations, etc.
"While one of the basic strengths of Wikipedia is its updatability, I would question the point of storing all the articles offline."
To be fair, there's a plethora of historical data on Wikipedia that probably won't be touched much over the next year or so. Personally, one of the reasons I want a Treo is so I can hit Wikipedia from time to time. But if I could download a version of it today and update it once a year or so, I'm confident it'd be worthwhile even though it's not up to date.
"Earth, Air, Fire, Water... What's the fifth one?"
Isn't that the one that forms Captain Planet's torso?
"Why, pray tell, would you want to download music, ripped into a lossy format by some unknown encoder, that you already own on CD?"
I'm not the guy you responded to, but I wanted to chime in on this. I downloaded a lot of music I had CDs for instead of ripping it for a couple of reasons.
1.) I was able to just queue up the various songs I had an immediate interest in. I didn't have to wade through a stack of CDs, get them ripped, etc. (That and often my CD collection was split between home and work.)
2.) I was too f'n lazy to go find a good encoder and learn how to use it. This relates to point 1, it was easier to just type in the name of the song and have it come down when it's ready.
3.) This is only anecdotal experience, but rarely have I downloaded a crappily encoded song. In that event, I just found a different source. I'm not as sensitive to the quality of encoding as some people.
I have no idea if the 60% argument is supportable, I'm not trying to. I'm just pointing out that not everybody wants to bother with running a huge stack of CDs through their machine.
"Doesn't this go against the terms of the antitrust settlement with the DOJ?"
So.. what.. Microsoft can't sell anything anymore?
"I think the company will be quite happy when all the readers at least buy something"
Are you implying that my pipe is inadequate?
"Jupiter has a zit!!!!"
I didn't think this would happen until the planet crossed into the constellation Herpes.
I'm having trouble imagining that completely taking over. Apps like ZBrush have a tendancy to not include critical features that other apps like Photoshop have. As a result, there's a lot of specialization, thus requiring multiple apps open at the same time. Maybe I'm being short-sighted, but I have a difficult time imagining these tasks suddenly becoming part of the host 3D app.
" Our "work space" is minuscule even with a 23" screen. I would say 23" is a minimum not a maximum."
I've never really paid attention to the number of inches. For me, it's always been about the pixels. I have a 24" at work and it supports 1920 by 1200. I have a second monitor that does 1600 by 1200. The 2D guys upstairs use the Apple monitor because it is in the neighborhood of 2,000 pixels wide. I don't think it's the size so much, just the res. But I'm focusing mainly on the type of work we do.
Windows has 'tile windows', but I doubt that would help ya as much as you'd like it to. Heh.
I just wanted to chime in because I think you've got two of them reversed. Where I work, the 3D guys have two monitors and the 2D guys have 30" single monitors. The reason for this is that a 3D app requires having several other apps open. For example, I typically have Photoshop open on one monitor while I have Maya open in the other. I need to be able to get back and forth between them without a lot of minimizing/maximizing. The 2D guys have 30" monitors (Apple, btw.) that run at a very high resolution so they can see all of the pixels they possibly can while they're painting. (It's not uncommon for their paintings to be several thousand pixels wide.) In their case, they rarely have to have more than one app open. I'm more productive with the two smaller monitors and the other department's more productive with the ginormous screen.
"You've managed to uninstall it?! :p"
Heh yep. I was surprised, too. There was DLL with OL in the name that disappeared.
"I guess it's all a matter of opinion. From what I remember of the last version I tried, the UI appeared to have changed quite a bit."
Yes, it's a little daunting at first. The color scheme is different and they added a couple of buttons to categorize teh various options. In that respect, yes, it's different. In my case, I went from OL2K to OL2K3. Big change, right? I looked at the screen for a moment, realized that it was actually the same, I just needed to click on Mail to get started. From there, I've had no trouble adapting to it. Although I've just read further in your post.. I think we're in agreement about that. I just wanted to chime in because the UI changes in Outlook were nowhere near as troublesome as say Photoshop or Opera over the years. It looked different at first but essentially it's the same.
"Outlook has changed considerably more than Express has in the same time period, in my opinion."
Agreed. OLE has definitely stagnated. Although... I cannot say OL2K3 is really showing much improvement either. Heh. I still wonder if Microsoft just changed the color scheme so ppl'd see the screenshots and think they need to upgrade.