Rants, Raves, and Ramblings

Fall is my favorite time of the year. That morbid Halloween atmosphere is descending on the world outside, and my commute is largely filled with Scratch Acid, Switchblade Symphony, and Pink Anvil. Most importantly, I’ll be hosting the annual Halloween Party at my new house; the first time since it’s inception that it’s been on a complete length of property. I’m very excited, and it couldn’t come at a better time: Halloween is on a Saturday this year, meaning it will undoubtedly go late and perhaps well into the next morning. It’s definitely given me something to look forward to.

And not only that; about a month after the Halloween Party, we’ll be hosting a LAN Party at Computer Renaissance, on Thanksgiving Eve. A month after that, and we follow it up with the year-end New Year’s Eve LAN Party. So between now and the end of the year, I’ve got something to look forward to.

And on the subject of things people are looking forward to, this Thursday marks the official release of the new Windows 7. Here are my thoughts on the matter:

Eh.

I don’t expect this one to be a complete failure like Vista, but I don’t expect it to be anything particularly exciting, either. After all, what really will Windows 7 offer you, as a general computer user, that you don’t already have? Will it make your computer run faster? Will it give you access to groundbreaking new technical features? Will the user experience be significantly more exciting than anything you’ve ever experienced before? I think the answer to all of these will be a resounding no.

It really seems that MS has completely lost it’s way as far as pioneering new tech – something they could have begrudgingly been credited with doing at one time. NT-based operating systems were the last really relevant thing I can recall them doing; everything since then has been an exercise in fixing things that didn’t need fixing, while largely ignoring the major things that did. Maybe it’s because Ballmer is at the helm now, but MS really seems to have lost its way. I’m not shedding any tears though.

I will say that I’ve played with 7 a little bit, and wasn’t terribly impressed. I wasn’t put off, either. It did seem punchier (more responsive) than Vista, and also seemed a lot less “busy” with the UI. It ran okay. But you have to remember, this is a totally new operating system; it should have something far more noteworthy to it than “its not as annoying as Vista.”

I think the notion that Windows 7 is essentially what Vista should have been is right. I also think the rumor that it should have been a service pack for Vista rather than a whole new OS is spot on. Nothing about this seems to be so revolutionary that it requires a whole new release, complete with a $120+ price tag.

You may be asking, “Well, smartass, what would you do to make a new OS worth the cost?” And I’ll tell you. But first, let’s frame the argument a little bit.

I think when you look at what makes an operating system desirable, you have three major areas to look at: functionality, interface, and features.

1. Functionality – The core of the OS lies in the kernel, which, among other things, handles all that nasty hardware code and ensures that all the fun stuff will function with minimal harassment from your PC. This is the solid foundation on which any OS is built, and it also happens to be the least glamorous and least marketable. At one time, it made sense to brag that your OS would work with just about any PC; nowadays, that sort of thing is just expected. Which is probably a good thing; but look at how MS dropped the ball on this with Vista. From what I understand, MS has done a much better job of working with hardware manufacturers ahead of time to ensure that W7 drivers will be ready and working properly. Still, you don’t get points for this: it’s expected, remember?There are also considerations like how your OS handles basic tasks like copying files that Microsoft still gets wrong. More on that later.
2. Interface – Ever since Mac OS X hit the scene and made eye candy a vehicle for selling their wares, Microsoft has tried to beat them at their own game, and has proceeded to do this…and fail miserably. Vista’s Aero fell far short of topping Aqua, IMO. More importantly, they lost where user interface really shines, which is in the ease of use. UAC was rightfully a fiasco that took the wind out of Vista’s sails; who seriously thought this was going to improve security and make for a better user experience? Listen: users are confused enough as it is, and if the OS can’t determine bad software from good, what makes you think the average user can? It seems like one of the basic strengths of Windows has historically been that it’s easy for idiots to use, but they seem to have completely forgotten about this fact when releasing Vista.Windows 7′s UI seems to be cleaner, with less clutter and unnecessary shininess than Vista. One big thing is that they’ve decided that text is no longer relevant in taskbar items, so tech support people better get used to describing icons in painstaking detail and hoping that the eyesight of their clientele is better than what it has been historically. I can see an argument for strictly icon-based taskbar items, but I don’t know that taskbar space has been that much of an issue for normal people. If you’re lacking taskbar space, you’re either running at some ridiculously low resolution or are just too lazy to close windows you don’t need anymore. But that’s neither here nor there I suppose…
3. Features – One of the reasons I consider XP/2000 to be “good” Microsoft OSes is because the wealth of features that came with them. System Restore, NTFS, Driver Rollback, RDP support…there were actually genuinely cool technologies that came with these things. After a few years, when a good deal of the major security failures were patched up and drivers were ubiquitous, I think XP hit a level of maturity not seen before (or since) in Windows operating systems. There were so many features that were actually useful to an end-user or a technician that I think those alone made it worth the fairly condescending Playskool theme.Now look at the jump from Windows 98 SE to Windows XP, then look at the jump from XP to Vista. There is no comparison to make; the features in Vista were practically nothing compared to the leap forward provided previously (I think, aside from Bitlocker, that nothing was even worth mentioning when it came to Vista features). I think 7 is going to be much the same way; I don’t see any features that jump out as being super-awesome. We’re still running on NTFS, so forget any ZFS-like file-system technology (and no, Volume Shadow Copy is nowhere near as cool as ZFS). A quick look at their features page shows us exactly why you NEED to get the new OS. This includes “HomeGroup”, which looks like a networking wizard that “takes the headache out of sharing files and printers on a home network.” If this is anything like previous attempts to make home networking understandable to the average Windows users, I have no faith in it’s abilities. Those networking wizards have always been seriously god-awful; I believe the one that came with XP required you to copy files to floppy disk and then take that over to all the other computers on your network and use those with the wizard on those PCs. And let’s not even get started on the New Connection wizard…

   There are also “Jump Lists”, which look like a slightly modified context menu that includes personalized guesses at what you want to do. No use for that. “Snap”, which is a “quick (and fun) new way to resize open windows”…because I want resizing windows to be fun. Looks like we have full 64-bit support with 7, which I know my grandmother has been personally nagging me about…major selling point here.

So with these concepts and criticisms in mind, what would I do to make a new Windows OS worth the cost? Well, I’m not UI designer, or even a programmer, but as a SysAdmin, I have a few ideas from the front lines that I’m sure can be done without a terrible amount of hassle to a multi-billion dollar company.

• Fix the file copying code. I may be wrong, but I believe Windows 7 still uses the same basic code for copying files, which is terrible at handling multiple data streams (try copying two large folders at once – they both become extremely slow). Moreover, one corrupt file, and your entire copy procedure is over. This is especially shitty when you’re copying numerous levels of folders containing lots of files, and have no idea what files were copied and what ones weren’t before the copy finished. There is a third-party app called y-copy that keeps track of corrupted files but continues the copy procedure, so why can’t MS make their own version and tie it into the OS?
• Make customization of the interface more far-reaching and easier to do. I was amazed at how well WindowBlinds was able to completely change the appearance of Windows. The Themes feature of Windows has become a scarcely-populated feature; I hardly see anyone make them anymore, and when you try searching for them, you find yourself adrift in a see of malware and ugliness. Yet look at how many themes are made for Window Blinds, and how awesome some of them look. Why can’t Microsoft learn from this and code some kind of API that could handle radical customization like this? I think they’d single-handedly get rid of their need for designing UIs – something they have proven they suck at – by having communities develop them instead. I doubt it would cost as much, either.
• Create a repository-style way of installing and updating software. I think it would benefit users of Windows greatly if we had a single, unified, trusted interface for distributing software updates instead of letting the Adobe Reader, Java Runtime, and anti-virus program X all harass/confuse users constantly from the taskbar. What’s really keeping a malicious program from giving them exact same message (or one that looks enough like it) to trick a user into downloading a Conficker variant? I think it’d also go a long way if we made finding and installing free windows programs easier. Download.com is a mess these days, and trying to instruct a less-than-savvy user in finding and downloading free software is a nightmare. It’s far too easy to get led to sites that trick you into downloading malware, and I think having a software repository could go a long way to remedying this.

I have more, but I can’t think of them right now. I had a list somewhere…

Honestly, I’m way more excited about Google’s ChromeOS, since it seems way more like the kind of thing I’m talking about. I like Google’s track record with software design, since they usually incorporate a fair amount of technical capability with an easy, simple interface and . I know it’s going to be a free OS, but I hope they sell copies in Best Buy just so I can have a reason to buy software from a store again. God knows most of the software worth buying is sold online these days.