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Fortune just rated Microsoft one of the best 100 companies to work for.

According to Forbes, Microsoft is the 42nd best company to work for, the 11th best for a large company.

Microsoft is also one of 14 companies that pays 100% Healthcare.

“The software king offers what may be the most generous health-insurance plan in America. The premium is zero, with no deductible. And it's the first U.S. corporation to pay for therapy for dependents who are autistic. “

I never thought I'd see this day!!! So long Comcast and big silly cable co. I will be able to tune DirecTV directly in Windows Media Center. Unbelievable. It will also work with XBOX 360.

Will have to live with crappy Comcast DVR for a bit longer, but this is excellent news.

My Comcast DVR is such a bad product I don’t even know where to begin. The day I can buy this, I will drive this DVR box down to the comcast office and drop kick it back to them.

I really can’t wait. Latley my DVR has decided that it will only randomly play some of my recordings, cutting some off at 40 min, or 1 min, or just plane stutter for some of the others.

Vista + this ATI Gizmo will be heaven.

I broke down and got the Sony Vaio TX. I should have it in about a week. I got the VGN-TX630P/B but before doing so I looked long and hard at the Fujitsu P7120 which is a revision to the P7000 and has many more changes than you might expect. It was a tough call, and here are some of the facts:

• Both laptops have LED backlight displays, the first of their kind. This means they use much less power, can have thinner cases, and are brighter.
• The Sony’s Screen is 11.1 inch 1366 x 768 while the Fujitsu’s is 10.6 inch 1280 x 768.
• I believe the Sony’s keyboard is a tad larger (90% of a full size keyboard).
• Both laptops employ the same 1.2 GHZ Intel ULV processor and use DDR2 memory
• Both laptops have 1.8 inch 4200 rpm 60GB drives
• The Sony has EDGE support (at > $40 a month I doubt I will ever use it, pluse EDGE is slow compared to EVDO).
• The Sony claims 7h standard battery life, the Fujitsu needs the extended battery to get close to this.
• The Sony is thinner and lighter (2.7 lbs vs 3.2 lbs)
• The Fujitsu will obviously have less crapware installed by default, with is the big bummer about the Sony. I know I will need to flatten it first thing.
• The Fujitsu has NO FAN, and is completley passivley cooled.
• The Fujitsu has a modular drive bay allowing for another battery.
• The Fujitsu has an array microphone

Both were about the same price, but in the end the Sony edged out the Fujitsu due to the larger screen, higher resolution and better battery life and EDGE support that I may use. However I was VERY tempted by the fact that the Fujitsu has no Fan, making it totally silent… tempting.

Anyway, I’m looking forward for my new gadget.

Since 1999 I’ve done my taxes using TurboTax. I tried TaxCut one year (back in 2000 or so) and compared the results from both programs. TaxCut never asked me what I owed on my previous year’s state tax return, and as such never deducted it from my federal income. When I inquired about this via TaxCut tech support they informed that their software did not in fact support this “feature”. Holey smokes, I returned it for a refund in a jiffee.

Well 6 versions of TurboTax later I wonder if I am missing something. Well today in the mail I got a free shrinkwrapped copy of TaxCut. I guess I will try again this year and see if the software is any better. Clever folks, this is a good way to get me to try it.

Last year, I really appreciated the ability of TurboTax to automatically download my W2 from Microsoft. Saved my time and the possibility of making mistakes. I hope TaxCut can do this as well.

Sometimes I am awestruck by our software. Why here I am sitting at my computer. I just updated someone’s contact info using Outlook. I’m connected via RPC/HTTP which means I don’t have to RAS into work. 15 minutes from now, my cell phone will sync to exchange and automatically get this updated information. I don’t have to do jack. I could just have easily done this from an internet cafe by logging into Outlook Web Access. I never ever think about my phone being updated, or my Outlook Address Book being updated (or task list and calendar for that matter). True piece of mind, which is almost zen like.

This kind of stuff is no easy feat. Took a few release of some heavy hitting software… sometimes we just take this stuff for granted. I wish everyone that had a cell phone could have this experience. I hope we bring this functionality to consumers soon.

I often joke with people that the reason I’ll never leave Microsoft is that I can’t live without these kind of features. Can’t live without having an IT department that lets me pretty much do whatever I want to my PC. Or a release share that has every single product we’ve ever made, and others that have versions that won’t be out for years… an opportunity to help shape products I don’t even work on.

Microsoft is heaven for a geek.

I started working at Microsoft. Just as a data point, the “strike price” for my first option grant was $31.7250 (split adjusted). Today, the stock is trading around $26. At 7 years, there are two notable events:

• You start to accrue 4 weeks of vacation per year
• Your first stock option grant expires

So long option grant #1, I barely knew you . What are the chances the stock will shoot up 5 bucks in the next few hours so I can sell my grant?

On a more serious note, has the company really done so little in the last 7 years that the stock price warrants being down 19%? Will 2006 be the year MSFT rebounds? I sure hope so.

Anyway, it’s been a great 7 years. I look forward to the next few! Microsoft has been great to me over the years.

I’ve always wondered why I find it so hard for me to review tasks on my Outlook Task list. The view looks so busy to me when say compared to a web page. On the other hand, I have no problem looking at a task list on say Backpack or OneNote which is presented like any other web pages (font:Verdana, size:10pt).

Given that Outlook is infinitely customizable I set out to try and fix this. It took a few minutes, but now I have a view that looks just like a web page. You can do Customize Current View and set all the fonts to Verdana 10pt and remove the horrible grid lines. As you can see below, the After pic is easier to glance at. I also changed the By Category view to look like this. The large font gives you more white space (easier on the eyes) and removing the gridlines just takes away unnecessary stuff.

Before

After

Adobe has some really great PDFs on digital photography and “processing” photos with Photoshop CS.

I especially liked the downloadable action for converting color to black & white.

Trina found a great restaurant review site for San Fran folks:

We just found this site today:

sfsurvey.com.

It seems like a great site so far, and could come in really handy in the future :)

San Francisco Restaurant Reviews

My Dell D610 is just too dammed big and heavy. I am drooling over this. I can’t believe I would consider another Sony, but who else makes something that:

• Is Under 3 lbs
• Has a 1366 x 768 resolution 11.1 inch screen
• Gets 4 – 7.5 hours battery with the standard battery
• Has EDGE/Wifi
• Has a 90% Keyboard and a great trackpad
• Is slim, small and sexy

I’m thinking of getting the VGN-TX610P/B and upgrading the RAM to 1.5 GB myself (Sony charges 100% the cost of RAM from a third party). I get a 10% discount through Microsoft EPP Program and free Ground Shipping (which makes the price tag a bit more tolerable).

The downside is that I won’t get Aero Glass with Vista, but I suspect I won’t care that much.

I’m putting up my PSP for sale on ebay. I absolutely LOVE the device but I just don’t use it enough to justify keeping it around. You see I am waay to lazy to transcode TV onto the thing, and I haven’t really found any games that I really want to pick up and start playing when I have a few spare moments.

The reason that I have a PSP, other than the sheer coolness of the device, is that I sometimes panic that I will run out of stuff to do (like on a plane etc). So I lug the thing around with me all the time in my bag. In the past few months it’s traveled around the world and I’ve only used it once. I just don’t like the games that much. The one game that I do like (Untold Legends) I can’t pick up and play for a few moments cause I can never remember what I was doing the last time I played (it’s a role playing game).

Anyway, I am selling it + my 1GB Memory Stick and 3 games on ebay.

Oh, there is another reason I am selling it. I bought a Gameboy Micro. When I saw how small that thing is, and how inexpensive the games are I plunked down the $89.99 bucks for one and bought Zelda, Donkey Kong and Super Mario Brothers 3. Simply awesome as I love those games. The device is so small and takes so little space I can carry it around anywhere. For my needs, it’s a much better device than the PSP. I can just play for 5 min and do a few levels of Super Mario Brothers . The sad thing is, I still suck at that game .

You can see the difference in size between the PSP and the Micro here.

I think one of the most amazing stories of 2005 will be that of the Sony Rootkit. I think it’s a huge win for blogging and independent reporting. Mark documented the issue from start to finish and really had an impact as a blogger. Congrats to him for being so diligent and for the first Sony settlement only a few months after Mark first reported the issue.

“I’m proud to announce that a major step forward in the legal phase of Sony's rootkit: Scott Kamber and Sony have filed a proposed settlement for the national class-action suit brought by Scott. While I didn’t participate directly in the negotiations, I’m serving as an expert for Scott and provided input on the terms, which I think are a significant victory for the consumer.”

Mark's Sysinternals Blog: Sony Settles.

Some of you may recall that I’ve blogged a bit here and there about Backpack, which is sort of a personal WiKi etc. My Wife and I use it as our personal dashboard for domestic chores and notes that we need to share. To find out how Backpack can relate to Getting Things Done I’d recommend reading Backpack and GTD on the What's the next action blog.

While I’d love to use OneNote for this type of thing, Backpack is pretty rich and allows access from anywhere including mobile devices. For that reason it wins for this sort of thing.

Another good site to check out is Remember The Milk. There are some things I prefer about Remember the Milk like being able to assign tasks to different people, but it doesn’t have any real notes support for dashboard type information.

Over at the excellent Thinking Faster blog, there is a post on Meetings which I found interesting. I often ponder about how work days at Microsoft are fairly broken. Between email and meetings it’s amazing that I can actually do any work. If I go to meetings, I get behind on mail. If I am not behind on mail I am behind on work or late for a meeting. Invariably everyone in the meeting is doing mail so that they don’t get behind on mail.

We’ve tried some things at work like meeting free Tues/Wed for the development team, but I don’t think it works very well.

“I find myself saying this more and more, as my calendar becomes more and more crowded with events, meetings and conversations put there by other people.  Don't get me wrong, there are good reasons for meetings, but I feel like my work life is becoming secondary to my meeting life.

Getting a meeting request used to be a sign that you were somebody.  Someone wanted your opinion on a matter of great urgency for the firm.  Now it seems that the email CC: phenomena has migrated from email to meetings:  the basic rule of thumb - invite everyone to every meeting.  It's a wonder anything gets done during "normal" working hours.”

Thinking Faster: Do we really need to meet?