The Mojave Experiment....FudBuster #2

I got side tracked this week and wanted to look into this.
The Mojave experiment as Microsoft called it was an interesting idea.
For those not in the know,
100 people off the street, so to speak, were shown a "new" Microsoft OS after some questions about how they viewed Vista. Of course what they saw was Vista.
And low and behold, eye candy makes them decide to go with Vista.

Because in Microsoft's world, it's all about Eye Candy.Even if it takes sometime to produce it.

In the real world, well at least the business world, it's about business, expenses, revenue, ROI, and a million other things, but because software looks good? Nope.
It should integrate well with other software, yes.
It should run on multiple solutions, from Macs to Linux to windows to PDA's, phones, sunglasses(hey a guy can dream), blackberries and evidently nowadays on your refrigerator, dish washer and other appliances. Oh and a coffee table, thank you Microsoft.
Fahrenheit 451's author, Ray Bradbury would be either ecstatic to hear this or ashamed.
So you should go buy and use Vista because it looks good.
I use Vista. And aside from a few VPN clients rarely have problems. Ok recent times were Microsoft updates to Vista, so maybe I have some issues on occassion.

But really no worse than my XP machines after updates break all my mailto options and other security settings.

So where am I going with this? Easy, the UI sucks label on Lotus has to stop.
If you are in a company still using R5,6 or even 7, go yell at your IT staff or CIO who is paying Lotus big money to get updates and they shoulsd install them and use it.
I can show you in 5 minutes of a web conference everything you are missing!

Can your Outlook allow windows to float on their own?
Can your Outlook you so desire stop opening a ton of windows just because you are trying to do a simple task?
Why doesn't your Outlook do name lookups properly? My biggest gripe with Outlook 2003 at least.
Wouldn't you liek to not have a full AD directory all the time?

I can show you in a side by side demonstration that if nothing was branded you could not tell them apart, Mr. CEO.

BUT if you have a mixed environment of Lotus and Exchange shame on you! Spending twice the amount of money to get what you already pay for from Lotus, just because of a UI? Butthat's another post, past and future for another day.

Vista Insecurity from yesterday's MS FAM

From the Seattle Times

Microsoft's annual financial analysts meeting, referred to as FAM, typically covers the breadth of the world's largest software maker.

Bill Veghte, Microsoft senior vice president of Online Services and the Windows Business Group, talked about Windows Vista and the improvements in the product and its adoption in the past year.

On security, for example, Windows Vista is 62 percent more secure than Windows XP SP2, he said.

Thanks, Bill. How comforting to know there is no secure operating system from Microsoft yet. Shame about all that money spent on it.

Vista has 50% fewer security vulnerabilities than XP? LOL!

hmm, so less is better, agreed, but still nowehere near ZERO!
In case you forgot the history, here is one example, from the NY Times.

In a mix of online and print material(Online July 8, print July14), J. Nicholas Hoover points out, with the help of Brad Brooks(no relation to me), VP of Windows Consumer marketing that "We broke a lot of things" when discussing Microsoft Vista.

And we should be happy that the safest most secure version ever to be released by Redmond, has:
"According to Microsoft, Windows Vista had fewer than half the security vulnerabilities Windows XP had in its first year. Brooks even made a bold claim that Windows Vista was the most secure commercial operating system ever in its first year of release, and said "you don't hear Apple saying that," though he didn't lay out the evidence for that claim. "

So now Microsoft has turned around their inability to write secure code and make it sound like that is a good thing?

Think Brad needs some reassigning or a promotion, depending on how you view this info.

Resolved Mailto issue, what a pain in the neck

I use Vista, which is not so simple to fix as Xp was in IE.
In Vista you click on Default Programs from the Start Menu, then Set your default programs and see if Notes is listed, mine is not(but I run R3-R8 so not surprising it can be confused).
Then check Set Program Access and Computer Defaults to see if Notes is listed as an option, click it if it is.
In my case this still did not work..
The answer was/is:
Go to this page and get his tool.
http://www.nirsoft.net/articles/mailto_bug.html

You can follow the steps, but in Vista I had to go into the registry and look for in the
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Outlook.URL.mailto\shell\open\command
and change it to your notes.exe location and add the ending. mine is c:\lotus\notes8\notes.exe -defini %1

There are other entries ie: rss and mail inks and all which you may need to fix as well, but this will get the email working again.

EDITED UPDATED 3/20/2008
Jospeh thanks for this information for Thunderbird people too!

Also, my key for Lookout was
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Microsoft.Outlook.URL.mailto\shell\open\command
Not
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Outlook.URL.mailto\shell\open\command

And the full entries from that lovely program you pointed me to were:

Microsoft Outlook.Url.Mailto Enabled URL:MailTo Protocol C:\PROGRA~1\MI1933~1\OFFICE11\OUTLOOK.EXE -c IPM.Note /m "%1" Microsoft Office Outlook Microsoft Corporation

Notes Enabled URL:Notes Protocol C:\Program Files\lotus\notes\notes.exe -defini %1 IBM Lotus Notes/Domino IBM Corp

Thunderbird.Url.mailto Enabled Thunderbird URL "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird\thunderbird.exe" -osint -compose "%1" Thunderbird Mozilla Corporation