Tablet UML News

Tablet UML News http://tabletumlnews.powerblogs.com/ News and commentary from Martin L. Shoemaker, author of Tablet UML en-us 2007-02-22T03:02+00:00 Generosity above and beyond the call! http://tabletumlnews.powerblogs.com/posts/1172115554.shtml I am so, so very touched.... Martin L. Shoemaker 2007-02-22T03:02+00:00
My good friend John Hopkins, current president of GANG, is as big a fan of the Apollo program as I am. We can trade Apollo stories all night. And John has been making me envious the last few meetings with tales of Virtual LM: A Pictorial Essay of the Engineering and Construction of the Apollo Lunar Module. I'm too pragmatic: I can never really picture myself as one of the Apollo astronauts. But the engineers of the program, those folks I can empathize with. My favorite episode of From the Earth to the Moon tells the story of the team who built the LMs. Well, this book is full of incredibly detailed design sketches and notes for the LM, as well as stories from the design and construction. And the bonus CD includes lots of photographs of LM test units, as well as operations manuals and checklists for the LM. It's a true delight.

Tonight, after my presentation at GANG, John gave me a copy of Virtual LM. So I wanted to take this opportunity to thank him publicly. This is truly a book I'll treasure.

I'll let you know when the slides and sample code for my presentation are up at the GANG site. I would post them on my site tonight; but I've got something else to occupy my time right now, thank you very much. (And thank John very much!)]]> Windows Vista Ultimate on a Gateway CX200X Tablet PC, Day 3 http://tabletumlnews.powerblogs.com/posts/1169931349.shtml Settling in now. Already starting to take Vista for granted, and noticing fewer differences. That's a good thing, in my opinion: technology should just be there, not demand you to think... Martin L. Shoemaker 2007-01-27T21:01+00:00
A lot of little things that didn't seem to work before are now working. A lot of my task notification icons seemed to disappear under XP. No, not hide, using the hide feature. They were just gone: the power icon, the volume control, the safely remove hardware icon, and some custom icons I had installed. Sometimes I could make them appear by activating them in their respective Control Panel applets; but then, in no time at all, they would be gone again. It wasn't annoying enough for me to spend time hunting down a fix, but it was annoyong. Now they're all there, right where I expect them. I'm learning to rely on them again. That's a good thing.

To go with the theme of discoverability: search functions in Vista are drastically expanded. I mentioned that it was hard to find admin tools that had moved again; but the easy way to find anything is just go to the Start menu and select Search. I type in Computer Management, for example, and it pulls up related items, including the Computer Management icon. I double-click it, and there it is! Now I could get to it a lot faster if I knew where it was; but I can certainly find it faster with Search than by hunting through all the different places settings might hide.

I'm looking at downloadable gadgets for the Side Bar. So far, I haven't found any must-haves; but I can see where some people could find some of them useful. One, for example, is an eBay auction watcher, which can alert you when bidding happens on auctions you're watching. Another is a prayer-time calculator for Muslims, which can be a complex calculation. There are lots and lots of different news headline gadgets for general news or specific fields. There are game gadgets and joke gadgets. There's a piano gadget. There are a bunch of different radio gadgets. And more, and more, and more!

The Down Side

Just as I'm starting to take the features for granted, I'm starting to get used to the limitations, and so notice them less.

Probably the biggest problem I'm having right now is that under XP, I had a very full, very complex Programs menu. It ran to three columns, even with stuff organized into folders as much as made sense. Well, under Vista, those all became one long, dense, scrolling column. That means almost anything I need requires scrolling. I need to find a way to split it into columns.]]> Office 2007 on a Gateway CX200X Tablet PC, Day 1 http://tabletumlnews.powerblogs.com/posts/1169912131.shtml Goodbye, Acrobat! There's a downloadable free add-in that allows you to save documents as PDF files. I'll try it a few times; and if I can trust it, Acrobat... Martin L. Shoemaker 2007-01-27T16:01+00:00 Goodbye, Acrobat! There's a downloadable free add-in that allows you to save documents as PDF files. I'll try it a few times; and if I can trust it, Acrobat Writer is gone!

There's more of that discoverability principle at work. The biggest change is the Ribbon:

Essentially, they've converted all of the old menus and toolbars into tool pallettes, with icons and previews to help the user understand what options are available. The menus appear as tabs, which are a very common UI metaphor on the Web these days and so should be comfortable to a lot of users. Now with a lot of Windows apps, I consider myself very much an expert, and so discoverability doesn't help me much; but even though I'm very good with Office, the suite has so many features that I can never remember where to find them all. There's just too much in there. So I'm liking the Ribbon. It's a lot easier to find the reference and review features, for example; and I've found some that may be new, but I may simply never have been able to find before.

I haven't had a chance to use it yet, but the exclusion dictionary sounds like the end results of what I discussed here.

OneNote now supports hyperlinks.

The OneNote search function now does text recognition and searching within embedded pictures!

The OneNote UI has been reorganized. It seems like the major goal has been to increase the space available for notes.

I'm not familiar with Groove yet. It looks like a tool for easy document collaboration. Since I'm a one-man shop, and since most people I know don't have Groove, it will be a while before I find a use for this.

The Down Side

With more discoverability comes more move-it-itis. In traditional Windows apps, the box/button in the upper right opens a simple system menu: Restore, Move, Size, Minimize, Maximize, Restore, Close. Oh, programmers could always add to those; but we seldom did, because it's not a very common place for users to look. In fact, I'll bet most users never even know there's a menu up there. Well, in Office 2007, it has been replaced with the Office Button. And guess where File Open, Save, Print, etc., and the Most Recently Used File list are hidden? Yep, on a button that experienced Windows users might never notice. If it weren't for the fact that they changed the appearance, I would've never looked there. They also moved Save, Undo, and Redo into a customizable Quick Access Toolbar next to the Office Button.

The Ribbon could be used more consistently. OneNote and Outlook don't have it, for example. Now arguably they don't need it, since they're less complex. But if I were the product manager for an integrated suite like this, I would want a more consistent UI.

There's a lot of space wasted on the Ribbon. My Gateway CX200X only goes up to 1280x768, so vertical space is limited. Now you can minimize the Ribbon, but it's a little tricky. You'll be tempted to right-click on the tool pallette, and nothing will happen. Instead, you have to right-click on the tab strip to get a context menu, which includes the minimize command.

The activation mechanism is annoying. Oh, I don't begrudge Microsoft the basic idea of activation. What bugs me is that I have to separately activate each of the optional components: OneNote, Project, etc. They don't get automatically activated when you activate the suite. And even that wouldn't have bugged me, except that when I wanted to download the PDF/XPS AddIn, the site wanted to validate that I had Genuine Windows and legitimate activations for every Office product that would use the AddIn. And to activate these optional components, I had to open each one and go through with the activation dialogs. Just a lot of time spent in Panera when I wanted to get on the road.]]> Windows Vista Ultimate on a Gateway CX200X Tablet PC, Day 2 http://tabletumlnews.powerblogs.com/posts/1169857530.shtml I'm liking how Vista handles WiFi hotspots. When it sees a new hotspot, it asks you how you want it treated: Home, Office, or Public. It then sets security settings appropriately.... Martin L. Shoemaker 2007-01-27T01:01+00:00
Did I say the window switcher was merely pretty? Maybe it is, but I'm starting to rely on it. Being able to see the screens makes it just a little easier to find the right one.

Oh, and on that note: the thumbnails in ALT+TAB and the taskbar are dynamic. As the window redraws, so do the thumbnails. Way cool!

I'm starting to get used to the Windows Sidebar, a little pop-up overlay that can show various gadgets. By default, it includes a clock and an RSS headline reader. This will make me use RSS a lot more! It also has a "sticky notes" Gadget that you can add, as well as a calendar and some others. And you can download more gadgets. And of course, we .NET programmers can write our own!

Did I mention that Aero is pretty? Honestly, I never thought pretty was a feature; but I keep noticing little ways in which the pretty also conveys information (like the dynamic thumbnails above).

I'm still trying to get used to Pen Flicks, the new Tablet feature that lets you scroll and navigate with flicks of the pen. So far, I'm a lousy flick hitter. (All the fencers just groaned at a bad pun that the rest of you missed.) That's not good, because a failed flick hit can select and possibly drag text. I have to decide whether flicks are worth my trouble or not. They might be good in Web browsing, but not in editable fields.

There are new games: Chess, and also Purble Place, a kids game that looks amusing.

There's a new "printer": XPS, a portable document format, sorta like PDF but not. I look forward to this getting widely adopted, because I think every version of Adobe Acrobat Writer I've ever paid good money for ($500!) has sucked. When enough places start supporting XPS, I can stop paying Adobe money for such awful junk. Heck, if Kinko's would just start supporting it, I could probably uninstall Acrobat Writer now, since most of my Acrobat files are for printing at Kinko's. Update: There's a PDF writer in Office 2007! Goodbye, Acrobat Writer!

The Tablet PC Input Panel (TIP) and the TIP button have new looks. No big change there, just more prettiness. But the TIP now docks along the screen edge, with just an edge showing, so it's more discoverable for new users.

There seems to be a lot of thought given to discoverabiliy: a lot of things that experts could always do are now more readily available to regular users. But that also takes us to today's edition of...

The Down Side

It's not like Microsoft just discovered this idea of discoverability. In every version of Windows, they have tried to make the powerful, useful tools more available to more users. But this has also meant that they suffer from a severe case of move-it-itis: the tendency to move stuff to where the experts can no longer find it, since they already "know" where to look but are wrong in the new version. This has been especially true for administrative tools, which seem to have migrated into and out of Control Panel and Administrative Tools and machine administration and various menus more or less at random. Well, Vista has plenty of move-it-itis. Once again, I've had to learn all over again how to find and modify user accounts. Once more, I've had to learn all over again where to change screen settings. But it's more than that:

My Pictures and My Music are no longer under My Documents. In fact, My Documents is now just called "Documents", and "Music" and "Pictures" appear at the same hierarchical "level" as "Documents".

The Games folder has also moved to the same hierarchical "level" as "Documents".

The Start menu has been reorganized in lots of little ways.

There's more move-it-itis; but ironically, I'm still discovering it.

Some apps will shut down that pretty Aero interface. For instance, I'm still using JASC Paint Shop Pro 9, because I haven't had the money for 10 yet. (Maybe they're up to 11 now?) Well, whenever I start PSP, Aero politely shuts down, and tells me why; and then when I close PSP, it restarts. (For those who don't know, Paint Shop Pro is a $100 competitor to the far more expensive PhotoShop. I find it as powerful as PhotoShop and easier to use, at one-sixth the price. The only thing PhotoShop has going for it as far as I can tell is a Mac version. How quaint.)

If anyone can help me on this one, I'll be eternally grateful. My Gateway CX200X, like many Tablet PCs and laptops, has a touchpad. In this case, it's a Synaptics touchpad. And it has a feature some people seem to like, but I hate: if you tap it, you're tapping the mouse button. I just do too many random finger movements as I think, and end up with way too many extraneous taps. I turned it off under XP, and was happy. Well, so far, I have turned it off half a dozen times under Vista, and it just keeps coming back.

Tap.

Tap. Tap.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Taptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptap.

ARRRRRGGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!]]> Windows Vista Ultimate on a Gateway CX200X Tablet PC, Day 1 http://tabletumlnews.powerblogs.com/posts/1169768337.shtml Pretty... Martin L. Shoemaker 2007-01-26T00:01+00:00
Now I'm always the first one to say that pretty doesn't matter, function does. But still: Aero is an exceptionally pretty user interface. My Gateway looks like a whole new machine. And I'm loving the window switcher, which is absolutely nothing but unnecessary prettiness:

You click a button, and up pops a "stacked" view of your open windows — including your desktop. Click on a window, and it pops to the top.

Now does that do anything you couldn't do with good old ALT+TAB? Nope. It just does it in a very pretty fashion. Of course, that also takes more machine and video power, and a little more time, so some people will just turn it off. Fine. But still, it's pretty.

Then again, good old ALT+TAB has also gotten something of a facelift:

The windows now appear as thumbnail sketches of the actual window contents. This is pretty, but more: it can make it easier to choose between different windows of the same type, by looking at the thumbnail contents.

And even the task bar is prettied up:

When you hover over a task bar item, a thumbnail appears to remind you what its contents are.

I've also seen a lot more security features, and a lot more visible ones. There's a lot more here, and I'm still learning. I'll post more as I learn it. But now it's time for...

The Down Side

Honestly, there wasn't much. I had to remove some printer drivers, and my old version of MacAfee. It took a long time. But the biggest headache I had was this:

If you log into your machine as Administrator — a bad habit that a lot of us have — be ready for Vista to disable your Administrator account. Working under the Administrator account has a lot of risks, and Microsoft is now strongly discouraging it. In my case, the upgrade removed my Administrator account, while leaving me with two accounts to which I had granted Administrator privileges. The problem is, I couldn't remember the password for either of those accounts, and all of my vital data was locked up under Administrator! I remembered the password eventually, and found the trick for enabling the Administrator account. But for a while there, I was afraid I would have to restore the old image, set new passwords, and install again.

And that reminds me of the most important Vista upgrade advice: make a complete disk image first! Symantec Ghost did the trick for me.]]> A lesson in marketing http://tabletumlnews.powerblogs.com/posts/1168389601.shtml In a complete lack of political correctness, they're called "booth babes": women with model-quality looks, hired to stand in your trade show booth and draw attention to your products that might... Martin L. Shoemaker 2007-01-10T01:01+00:00

But somehow, Sharp missed the point...

]]> Public Service Announcement: Beware of WiFi Evil Twins! http://tabletumlnews.powerblogs.com/posts/1163342650.shtml OK, this may be old news to some of you; and it's obvious, once you think about it. But it's news to me, so I want to pass it along.... Martin L. Shoemaker 2006-11-12T17:11+00:00
The topic is WiFi Evil Twins. What's a WiFi Evil Twin, you ask? That's when some thief goes to a public WiFi hotspot area and sets up a new public WiFi network with the same or similar name, in hopes of getting people to sign in through his WiFi instead of the public one. Then he can attempt to upload viruses, record traffic, capture credit card information, etc. Usually he uses a stronger antenna, so that you're more likely to find his network than the legitimate network.

There are variations on this. One might be called the Evil One: he doesn't duplicate the existing network, he just creates a new network. As this interview with Anne P. Mitchell, Esq. (Professor of Internet Law at Lincoln Law School of San Jose, and the President and CEO of the Institute for Spam and Internet Public Policy) explains:

Anne: Yes. Just last week I was sitting in my local Starbucks, where they offer wifi hotspots from T-Mobile. In order to log into a T-Mobile hotspot, you must have an account with T-Mobile, for which you must pay.

Even though I don't use the T-Mobile hotspots, I always check (with my laptop) to see what wifi hotspots are available at any given location because, well, that's part of my beat.

Sure enough, users at that Starbucks who opened their laptops and searched for a local wifi Internet connection were presented with the option of "T-Mobile Hotspot," as they should be, but were also presented with a second option, called "Free Wifi from Team WiFi," which I am 99% certain was an evil twin (and indeed Starbucks confirmed that there was no special offer going on which would have otherwise explained that second hotspot).

Now, notice a few things about this second, uninvited hotspot. First, it uses the term "free wifi." Who wouldn't want to use that, especially compared to the T-Mobile hotspot, where you have to pay?

Second, though, note the friendly and familiar sounding "Team WiFi." By using familiar terms for their evil twin, along with telling people it is free, they are making it very easy for an unsuspecting user to go ahead and click and connect to that evil twin. In fact, users may just think that it's a special offer from the T-Mobile Hotspot people.

Sure enough, Audri, this evil twin caught some people. As the gentleman who was sitting next to me got up to leave, after being on his computer for quite some time, I asked him whether he had logged in to the Internet while he was there.

When he said that he had, I asked him whether he was a T-Mobile user. "Oh no," he replied, "they have a free wifi hotspot set up here."

I advised him that it was almost certainly an evil twin, and that if he had done anything online while logged in through that "free" hotspot which might have compromised any sensitive information, he should take immediate measures to remedy the situation, such as changing any passwords he had sent while logged in.

And for me, this is more than just theory: I'm pretty sure I've met an Evil Twin in the wild. A hotel I've been staying at offers free WiFi (more and more of them do these days — it's a lot cheaper than stringing wires to the rooms). They have three WiFi hubs: "hotel name", "hotel name2", and "hotel name3" (names changed because I'm not sure I'm right yet). That's what the owner believes, anyway; but when I check for available networks, there's a fourth network, named "Hotel Name". And it has a stronger signal than any of the other hubs. What's more, when I connect to the other three hubs, they all give me the same IP address; but when I (carefully and briefly) connect to the fourth hub, it gives me a radically different IP address on an entirely different subnet.

So what should I do about it? That's troublesome. From the interview with Ms. Mitchell:

At this point your readers may be wondering why I didn't alert the authorities. And this is why user education is so very important.

There really was nobody for me to effectively alert. I could have called the police, but they would not have had the resources to even figure out where this evil twin was located, let alone to figure out who and how it was being done. The best thing I could do at that point was to let people know not to use that hotspot.

While I'm all for user education — that's why I'm telling you this — I'm not so complacent as Ms. Mitchell about informing the police. Michigan's Attorney General has made fighting Internet crime a priority, so I've informed their High Tech Crime Unit. It may be a waste of time; but if I don't try, I'll always worry that someone might be getting ripped off, and I didn't do anything to stop it.

Now back to the subject of user education: here are some things you can do to protect yourself.

When in doubt, don't do it. These scammers are good. This is how they make their living. If you don't feel comfortable trying to detect and outwit the scammers, then don't do anything at a WiFi hotspot. Certainly don't enter any passwords, credit card numbers, etc. Save that work for when you have a direct connection. I'm not saying you should never use WiFI; I'm saying that if you don't want to take the time to learn how to protect yourself, then you should never use WiFi.

Always download the latest security updates from Windows Update. Set up your machine to download the updates automatically. Don't tell me you're too busy. If you're too busy, then stay off WiFi. In fact, stay off the Internet, period. The scammers are working hard to find new victims, and you're volunteering to be one. And don't tell me that the updates "break" your machine. While I'll grant that's possible, it's most likely something you're doing wrong, and you need to fix. I've had automatic updates activated on all of my machines for years, and I've never had a problem.

Turn on your Windows firewall.

Download and install Windows Defender.

Install a good antivirus/Internet security package, such as McAfee or Symantec, and keep it up to date.

Install a spyware blocker like Ad-Aware or Spybot. In fact, install both of them. They're free, and they seem to complement each other well. And yes, Windows Defender and McAfee and Symantec all have adware/spyware blockers as well; but since each product has its own strengths and weaknesses, it can't hurt to have multiple layers of protection.

Despite my advocating Ad-Aware and Spybot, be careful with "free" software. Software takes time to develop. Time is money. Although we programmers will often write code for fun or passion, the most common motivation is money. If someone's offering it to you for free, it's very likely because he hopes to make money somewhere else. In many cases, that's by selling ads through adware/spyware; but sometimes, it's by installing viruses and keyboard recorders to steal your banking information. If you're installing "free" software, make sure you trust the company or person that's providing it.

Change your WiFi settings to Paranoid (i.e., safe). This will involve several steps:
1. Open up your network connections by selecting Show All Connections from your Start menu:
2. When you see the Network Connections dialog, right-click your wireless connection and select Properties:
3. You should see the Wireless Network Connection Properties dialog:
  
  Switch to the Wireless Networks tab:
4. Click the Advanced button to open the Advanced wireless settings dialog:
  
  This lets you choose from three different ways to access WiFi networks:
  - Any available network (access point preferred). This means that you will connect either to wirless hubs or to other wireless computers, but you'll prefer wireless hubs.
  - Access point (infrastructure) networks only. This means that you will connect only to wirless hubs.
  - Computer-to-computer (ad-hoc) networks only. This means that you will connect only to other wireless computers.
  Unless you know you're intending to work with friends or coworkers and plan to meet somewhere without a WiFi network, it's always a bad idea to connect to other wireless computers. That's the easiest way to get viruses; and it's a very easy way to get hoodwinked by an Evil Twin: the scammer doesn't even have to set up a hub, just rename his computer to look like a network. The Paranoid setting here is Access point (infrastructure) networks only. Choose that one unless you're sure you have a reason not to.
  
  This dialog also has a check box: Automatically connect to non-preferred networks. For added Paranoia, make sure that box isn't checked.
  
  When you're done in this dialog, click Close. But don't close the Wireless Network Connection Properties dialog. You'll do more work there in the next step.
Next you want to disable automatic connection to all of your WiFi networks, or at least to most of them. Your home network is probably safe, as are those of your friends, and your office; but even in those places, if there are neighbors nearby, there's the chance of an Evil Twin. So the Paranoid (i.e., safe) approach is to only make manual connections. Now if you're like me, you probably already have a number of known Wireless connections; and if Evil Twins are as new to you as they are to me, then those are probably set up for automatic connection. So you'll need to switch those to manual, following these steps for each network:
1. In the Wireless Network Connection Properties dialog, select the network you would like to change:
  
  After you select the network, click Properties. You should see the Properties dialog for the selected network:
2. Select the Connection tab:
  
  Uncheck the box that says Connect when this network is in range, and then click OK.
  
  Repeat this for every wireless network. Then click OK in the Wireless Network Connection Properties dialog as well.
Once you've disabled automatic connection, you'll need to connect manually to any network. To do this, right-click the wireless network connection icon and select View Available Wireless Networks:

You'll see the Wireless Network Connection dialog:

Select the network you want to connect to, and click Connect.

While you're in the Wireless Network Connection dialog, search for Evil Twins. If you see two networks with the same name, one is probably an Evil Twin. If you see a network with a seductive name like "Free Wifi from Team WiFi," that's probably an Evil One. Here's a hint: Internet service isn't free. If a cafe or restaurant or hotel puts in WiFi service, it's because they're hoping it will bring them customers. And the only way it can bring them customers is if customers know about it. That means they'll advertise it with signs on the wall or the front door. If you don't see an advertisement for it, it's probably an Evil One. And if there's both a fee-based service like T-Mobile and a "free" service, the "free" service is almost conclusively an Evil One. When in doubt, ask the management. If they don't know about it — or they're clueless and say, "I don't know anything about the wireless" — assume it's an Evil One.

If you think you've found an Evil Twin or an Evil One, I disagree with Ms. Mitchell: inform your Attorney General. They get our tax follars to pursue cybercrime, but they can't be everywhere. If they don't know about the crime, they can't pursue it. Maybe nothing will come of it, and the criminals may keep commiting their crimes; but if no one does anything, then they will keep commiting their crimes. I understand why Ms. Mitchell would inform other patrons that they were at risk. Of course, it takes some chutzpah to start telling random strangers in a cafe that they're at risk; and worse, it may also upset the scammer, and he may take steps to shut you up. And even if you inform the management, it's possible that someone in management is the scammer. I think it's best to leave law enforcement to the law enforcement authorities. Tell your AG.

Robert A. Heinlein once wrote: "Anything free is worth what you pay for it." My cynical addition is "If you're lucky." That "free" WiFi could end up costing you everything you've got in your bank account, and a whole lot more.

UPDATE: My lone commenter and fellow Duelist Epee Bill links to this more serious WiFi vulnerability. It's a WiFi driver flaw affecting laptops from Dell, HP, and Gateway, as well as other devices. Because it's driver-level code, it works at a privileged level in your system and can give a hacker complete control.

The catch is no one's distributing the fix through typical "push" channels. You have to know about it and go pull it down.
]]> Sorry, Microsoft, but it's not quite there yet. http://tabletumlnews.powerblogs.com/posts/1148684779.shtml Microsoft sent me some new software to try out, and to tell all the world how great it is. Unfortunately, when you ask for my opinion, you're going to get my... Martin L. Shoemaker 2006-05-26T23:05+00:00
The software they sent me was the new, 2006 edition of Microsoft MapPoint. I'm not sure why I got it. Maybe it's because I'm an MVP. Maybe it's because I've spoken with the MapPoint team at conferences, and raved about it.

And I have raved about it. MapPoint is an indispensable tool for trip planning. I'm very thrilled with it. And I'm even happier with the 2006 edition, for lots of little reasons. For one thing, it has lots of new map data, so it better reflects the roads I'm driving. In particular, it now includes Michigan route M-6, or what I like to call "The Wormhole" because it lets me get to far east or far west quadrants of the Grand Rapids area about half an hour faster. If i need to get from, say, Panera by the Woodland Mall (where I'm at right now) to Panera by the Rivertown Plaza (one of my other frequent Panera stops), it's faster to go east, then south to M-6, then west, and then north, than to just head west from here. The route may be more than twice as long, but the travel time will be shorter. (And to think, it only took them forty years to build that road...)

But there's one way where MapPoint falls short: it's a lousy single-person automobile navigation tool.

I've used it for multi-person navigation, where one person drives and the other navigates on the computer. It works great, especially if you hook it up to a GPS. But when I'm driving without a navigator, I can't stop and look at the computer. I once lost four hours in Chicago traffic because I couldn't read the map and drive at the same time. It's just not that helpful.

What I want is something like Hertz NeverLost. For $9 per day, it will almost guarantee you can't get lost. And while it's not perfect, it's darn good. And you don't have to read it as you drive: it talks to you.

So imagine my excitement when one of the new features promised with MapPoint 2006 was a talking GPS feature! I already had a GPS unit, so I plugged it in and took it on the road.

But now I have to say: Sorry, Microsoft, but it's not quite there yet.

Oh, it works pretty well, at a minimal level: as you drive, it tells you where your next turn will be, without you ever having to look at it. And it has one really nice feature: you can make it repeat the last command by tapping the space bar (which you can easily find without looking at the computer). NeverLost could use that feature.

But as soon as you veer from the planned course, it fails. It tells you "Off course", and that's it. You have to stop the car and create a brand new trip.

Whereas NeverLost... Ah, NeverLost... When you veer off course from the course that NeverLost planned for you, it gives you a little while to correct. See, GPS signals aren't perfect, and you might really be on course.

And then, once it recognizes that you really are off course, it recalculates the course for you automatically. And that's why it's so hard to get lost: even if you miss a turn, you're not lost. NeverLost will still find the way for you.

Sorry, Microsoft, but it's not quite there yet. MapPoint is programmable. I'll bet I could program it to do what I want. But that's not time I can spare (even though it sounds like fun). So NeverLost will still get my business for now.]]>