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Vox Pop: What default settings would you change?
Merlin Mann | Aug 21 2007
As I am wont to do, I was thinking out loud on Twitter this morning.
I'm convinced that, for better or worse, a lot of computer-related habits come straight out of using the default settings. For example a stock Mail.app install checks your email every 5 minutes (I reset mine to 'Manual') and, without interdiction, Apple's mail program will also create all your new messages as "Rich Text" (Nuh uh. Mine? 'Plain Text'). And then, in some cases, even if you want to do things differently, you have to swim upstream to do so. In the case above, I can't set iCal or gCal's default to anything but 1 hour (any more than I can autoset multiple alarms1). God only knows what poor John Gruber would give to have Mail.app more easily let people quit top-posting. The Question to You:What default settings would you love to change in popular applications? Taken a step further, what excellent habits could be taught to users by looking at defaults as something beyond familiarity and day one ease-of-use? Could the aggressive use of smart or personalized defaults create a generation of short-meeting-makers and intersperse-responders? 68 Comments
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 Outlook is a major part...Submitted by Ralph (not verified) on August 21, 2007 - 6:19am.
Outlook is a major part of my corporate live. I would change the following default settings: * Meeting notification which is set to 15 min - this is far too long before a meeting so most people snooze it. * All day meeting requests: set to 18 hours - same annoyance as above * Notification - I turned it off completely as it distracts me too much - I also don't like to be in a meeting seeing which emails others receive Also: Plenty of "Don't show this message again" pop-ups - no, I don't want to see them. I also don't want to see the "Tip of the day" message, unless I look for it. So much for now :) » POSTED IN:
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