My first job in tech was on an ISP helpdesk starting in 1999. The most common setup for our customers was: Windows 98 or 95, Internet Explorer and Outlook Expre

My first job in tech was on an ISP helpdesk starting in 1999. The most common setup for our customers was: Windows 98 or 95, Internet Explorer and Outlook Express. It became unofficial but conventional practice for most of the staff, that after you'd spent enough time trying to help a customer get Outlook Express working without success, to recommend they install Eudora. It wasn't pretty, but it just worked. Eudora was a perfect example of a product that did one thing but did it right. Whilst Microsoft was building Windows, IE and OE to be deeply integrated with one-another, Eudora just sat there minding its own business, doing a really great job of handling your mail. I still think about this now when building products. It's so often tempting to think the answer to your product problem is to add more features or integrate it with some other app or system. But I always have Eudora as a reminder of the value of doing just one thing but doing it really well.