2008-10-27

Why is Simple Hard to Find?

I would have liked to premiere my new Danish bank card this weekend in Odense but oh no: why should you be able to make a simple money transfer from a Swedish account to a Danish one within the same bank? Speaking to a gorgeous female clerk in the bank I became convinced that it was me who was the problem and if I wasn't the problem I should call customer support when using the net bank. But after getting several warnings and blank drop down lists in my net bank I suspect the problem has nothing to do with humans but with Danske Bank's programmers. After speaking with another nice gal from customer support the problem turned out to be 98% inferior programming/layout and 2% my fault (for not trying hard enough). Apparently there are two different ways to transfer money. One of them works and the other obviously does not.

Now I could have discussed program structures but I will choose not to embarrass myself trying to show off my non-existing programming skills. Instead I will make a Top 10 list of easy to use software:

  1. Vista. Don't be surprised. A three year old could use it, and it is impossible to wreck.
  2. Mozilla Firefox. Straight forward, fast and customizable. You won't need another browser (use the IE Tab to visit Internet Explorer specific pages)
  3. SpeedFan. Keep computer temperatures and HDD S.M.A.R.T values in check.
  4. ImgBurn. ISO images are still not natively supported in Vista. This is your saviour, and a straight forward CD/DVD burner.
  5. Photomatix 3.0 Pro. Import images. Merge. Tone map. Export. And now you've made your first HDR photo. As easy as it gets.
  6. GOM Player. Faster and more useful than Windows Media Player and better looking than VLC.
  7. Paint.NET. Simple, fast and great layout. Some prefer GIMP but Paint.NET feels easier to use.
  8. CCleaner. Get rid of junk files. Two clicks and the junk files are gone forever.
  9. Foobar2000. Despite its ridiculous name this is the music player every Windows user should use. Why has no one else thought of tabs for playlists? Great.
  10. Anything by Google. Google Search, Toolbar, Desktop, Gears, Gmail, Google Docs, Blogger, Picasa, Chrome, YouTube… Everything is simple, sleek and fast. Credits to the Google team for these amazing apps.

Congratulations to the software above, they make my day tolerable.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

where can you eat as much sushi as you like for 75kr! that's a fare price!