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Mac Pro + Exchange + Entourage = WTF

Earler today, after 48h uptime and a few hours running in the background, an attempt to quit Microsoft Entourage generated this crafty riddle (disguised as a dialog box) requesting my immediate action:

WTF, or am I simply asking too much from my software?

What type of changes do you make that linger around until you finally decide / need to restart (which for us Mac Pro desktop users is about once a week excluding program installation(s)) whereby completely kill all running apps? After all, I wouldn't want to lose any precious settings .. but the $1m question is WHICH ONES?

I'm a semi-normal Entourage / Exchange / GTD practitioner, and my application of choice is open almost 24/7. I use it a lot. Sometimes I even make changes. You know, small things - public folder access permissions, task list management, etc. But wait, don't most changes either take effect immediately or force/ask a restart afterwords? I mean, when is the last time you changed the font size in Word / Pages / etc., it doesn't immediately show up and you think 'Oh gosh, I completely forgot, it'll execute later .. my application keeps its own priority list.'? Uh, no.

Dear Entourage: If you're so ninja-ly programmed to suspend the exit command, letting me know that I'm in danger of losing some changes, why not give me some clue as to which ones exactly are in jeopardy? Or even how about hinting at the age of the 'original' settings. Thanks.

What's the most humorous error message you've come across lately?

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Andy Ruff
Jan 30, 2007 11:24

Actually that error dialog is owned by the OS, not Entourage. Changes in Entourage prefs and data do take place immediately, so whatever brought about this dialog was something triggered in the OS that felt like you needed to be presented with this dialog, outside of Entourage's control.

In fact, before today, I'd never heard of this dialog. A quick search of the web shows it happens with a variety of applications, though I've yet to find a good discussion of why it is presented.

Bharath Kumar
Jan 30, 2007 18:26

I frequently get this same error for Newsfire.

Eli
Jan 31, 2007 0:57

Thanks for the feedback - glad to see I'm not the only one who finds this odd ;)

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Tuesday, January 30, 2007 3:29 - 3 Comments

Earler today, after 48h uptime and a few hours running in the background, an attempt to quit Microsoft Entourage generated this crafty riddle (disguised as a dialog box) requesting my immediate action: WTF, or am I simply asking too much from my software? What type of changes do you make that linger around until [...]

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