Part of the reason why it has been quiet on the RibbonCustomizer front is that the mainboard of my main computer (a good old Gigabyte mainboard with an AMD 64) died after years of faithful service. Unfortunately, replacing my computer with a brand-new Core i7 based machine became a nightmare on its own.

Used to the American Newegg, I had to find out that its most similar German equivalent Alternate symbolizes the “Servicewüste” (service desert) Germany has often been described as. My mistake was that I ordered correctly as the company I am, instead of as a consumer, as I in retrospect should have done with that online seller of computer hardware: As a consumer ordering from an online seller in Germany, one enjoys a legal right of return for any reason (including not liking it/not wanting it anymore) within 2 weeks of receiving it. On the other hand, the German lawmaker assumed that corporations are more informed market participants than consumers and hence did not grant them a similar right. However, this has not stopped many companies from extending a similar right to corporate customers, even for purchases not made online. Alternate, however, is the exception with its call center personnel obviously trained on blaming the German lawmaker for not extending this right to corporations, instead of admitting that its their corporate policy of offering only the legally required minimum.

What happened to me? I ordered the individual parts for a new computer, built it together, turned it on and watched in horror as nothing would boot. More than a week of troubleshooting later, and at some point enough parts here for 3 new computers (all purchased either as consumer or from local companies with a better return policy), I finally had the new system booting and sent the faulty combination of parts back to Alternate. As it looks right now, I’ll be receiving working (and by now totally unnecessary) replacement parts back instead of being refunded my money.

Lessons learnt for me?

1. Never order from Alternate again
2. If ordering online, make sure the online seller offers an acceptable return policy to corporations and, if not, order as consumer and deal with the accounting implications of that later

The other part of why it has been quiet with RibbonCustomizer is that I have been spending time looking at the Office 2010 beta. As it has a built-in ribbon customization feature, I don’t know yet what exactly RibbonCustomizer’s support of Office 2010 will be. If you have any suggestions (and have used the beta), please leave me a comment!

I just got renewed as Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for OneNote for another year.
Due to my new job, I haven’t been very active recently. Hopefully, I will have more time going forward to be more active again!

Just a quick note that the forums are now integrated into the main layout of the website. See it for yourself: http://pschmid.net/office2007/forums

As usual, any feedback is appreciated.

Happy new year to everyone

2006 was an eventful year for me and this site. The best summary I can give is that this site went from 0 visitors to an average of 1,000 a day, my blog went from 0 readers to more than 200 and I became an MVP.

What can you expect from this site and myself in 2007?

• A new release of RibbonCustomizer, V0.9, that doesn’t use activation anymore will be out the latest by Tuesday. This is one release short of the next big one that will allow you to customize groups (adding/removing of individual commands). The next big one will be available early this year. After that, it’ll be up to you to tell me what you’d like to see when.
• Lots more content about customizing Office 2007, RibbonX and OneNote. January should be a busy month for that especially. Stay tuned!
• And much more…

Patrick Schmid

I have been rather quiet this month, mainly because I have kept myself busy with other things:

1. A new version of RibbonCustomizer, V0.9, is due out soon. It features quite a few changes (including the end of activation). You can read more about the upcoming changes and discuss them in my announcement post in my forums.
2. I’ve started a company. My company is called “pschmid.net Limited” and is a British private company limited by shares with registered office in London, but residence in Germany. Or in other words, this is a German company using a British corporate structure (possible due to the European Union). The company is so brand-new that I haven’t even received the certificate of incorporation yet (due in the mail tomorrow though). Once I get my documents, I’ll get started on all the formal German requirements for setting up a corporation (you can expect a future post about how start-up hostile Germany is….).
3. I have been working on a few upcoming RibbonX-related posts. There should be a lot of those in January.
4. And not to forget, I am on Christmas vacation and taking it slower