jeudi, août 14, 2008

LotusNotes vs Sharepoint

One of my job related questions is: "How long am I going to (suffer from?) using LotusNotes everyday?". Here are some various feedbacks that I got when asking:

"SharePoint is fast becoming the next IBM Lotus Notes — and not in a good way. For years people implemented Lotus Notes databases like crazy, seeing them as the best way to store and share information. Now you hear more about moving all the content and data into SharePoint. But what’s the point if you are just going from one messy datastore into another?"

Move Over Lotus Notes, SharePoint is Filling Yer Shoes
Has anyone migrated from Sharepoint to LotusNotes?
What is the future of Lotus Notes?

My (temporary) conclusion is if you're using LotusNotes and a reasonable part of your co-worker is not overly dissatisfied working with it: keep using it.

mercredi, août 06, 2008

Have you ever had key repeats when using a keyboard?

If you ever had key repeats when using a keyboard, and if every other PC device works correctly, it's not always the fault of the keyboard...

Actually each PC devices has it's own very specific constraints.

For instance a mouse has to be very reactive and its USB interface has to sustain several hundreds of reports per seconds. But if one is missed, it is often not noticed otherwise (except when it is a mouse click missed).

A keyboard has "opposite" USB constraints. A fast typist usually does not type faster than 20 characters per seconds which translates to 40 reports per second (each key means a report that says key is pressed and another one saying key is released). But we don't want to lose any key.

Some USB hubs sustain some constraints better than others. some USB software drivers for other devices (video cards, etc...) sometimes put huge constraints on USB hubs and have side effects on other devices.

Usually, the best thing to do is to swap the USB port on which the keyboard is plugged, or if the keyboard is plugged on a USB hub, plug directly the keyboard on the root hub of the PC.