Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary, 10th Edition
Most people, myself included, tend to think that innovation will improve things. In computer engineering, that might mean you could do things more easily or do new things with your computer, or that you computer would run faster.
About 5 months ago, I bought a new computer. It came with Windows Vista installed on it. Based on everything I had read and heard, I was lukewarm about getting Vista. Initially, I was under whelmed with Vista, but didn't see anything really bad about it. Since that time, I have become less impressed with Vista the more I use it. In particular, the system utilities are a definite step down from their counterparts in XP and their "User Account Control" that is designed to protect the system is SO annoying that I eventually turned it off (the only choice other than incredibly annoying).
As I was installing software on my new system, I had problems with Microsoft Office 2000, specifically with Word. So I decided that I'd break down and buy a new version and bought Office 2007. After suffering with Office 2007 for more than 2 months, I went back to Office 2000.
Microsoft likes to say that people, like me, who think that they have really done a bad job on their new software are against innovation. I think that they are being fatuous and supercilious--although that's nothing new for Microsoft.
Let's look at the "innovations" in Vista. As near as I can tell, the biggest thing is a slightly slicker user interface with translucent window borders. For this, they had to take years and disrupt millions of users?!? A programmer I knew years ago said that whenever a new Unix system programmer was introduced to the system, he would rewrite the terminal driver. I have the feeling that Microsoft gave in to a bunch of programmers who said essentially that they could do a much better job than the guys who wrote XP if they could start from scratch. In my opinion, they failed. Let's look at some specifics.
Windows Explorer:
They tried to make Windows Explorer be smart about what kind of files are in the directory and display things that are appropriate for that kind of directory. Unfortunately, it seems to guess wrong most of the time.
In some kind of cruel joke, Microsoft decided to include a "Favorite Links" area above the "Folders." There does not seem to be a way to get rid of it, which would allow more "Folders" to be seen. Nor does there seem to be any way to change the "Favorite Links" that are displayed. My question is who's favorite links are they. Certainly not mine--except for "Documents." Congratulations Microsoft. You got one of six of my favorites.
Although there is an option to make a directory style apply to all folders and subfolders, it doesn't seem to work and Windows Explorer applies its settings in place of the ones I tell it to use.
I'm sure that a fair amount of time went into rewriting a basic facility that worked well in XP. If there were some innovative new features, I'm sure it would have been easier to add them to the existing code than to rebuild the utility from scratch.
Disk Defragmenter:
The defragmenter in XP would analyze a disk or partition and tell the user how much fragmentation there was. It also had a cute and somewhat useless display to show the user it was working. It also attempted to give the user a clue about how far along it was in the process. The defragmenter is Vista is much simpler. It tells the user nothing except that "performance can be improved by defragmenting the disk". I tried running the defragmenter. I let it run for more than 24 hours and it was still cranking away with no indication of how much more there was for it to do. I never did discover if the defragmenter was working on both of my disks or only worked on one at a time.
I'm sure that a fair amount of time went into rewriting this tool that worked well in XP. If there were some innovative new features, I'm sure it would have been easier to add them to the existing code than to rebuild the utility from scratch.
User Account Controls:
This is really a new feature and had some potential. Unfortunately, the developers make this so intrusive that it becomes tempting to shut it off (the only option). A large number of programs that I run on a regular basis cause the UAC to warn me that the program is dangerous and insist that I explicitly allow the program to run. That's great--once. I have not found any way to tell the program that a particular program is ok and it doesn't have to ask me every time I run it.
Power Options:
When I was setting my system up, I installed Avast!, the anti-virus software I use. Avast! has an option to run a scan at boot time. Running a virus scan on a system takes a long time. It seems that some design genius decided that the monitor shutdown features of the Power Options should be applied before Vista was fully up. So after about 20 minutes, the screen went blank. Unfortunately, they didn't include the code that caused the monitor to come on again if a key was pressed. It took a while to figure out that this is what was happening and I believe that shutting power down in the middle of my first attempted scan damaged the system--which I think led to Word 2000 not working correctly. When I figured out what was happening, I restored Vista and started installing my software on a clean system.
Windows Mail:
Since Outlook 2000 won't work in Vista, I was forced into using Windows Mail. This is a poor substitute for Outlook Express found in XP.
Initiating a new mail message takes about 15 seconds. If I turn off automatic address completion, the message window is immediately available for use, but that's a major loss. XP was much faster in this regard.
I use more than one email address. The new Windows Mail program only allows one to send a new message from the default email address. In Outlook Express XP, I could choose the address the mail was sent from.
If these are innovations, they seem like bad innovations.
There's more I could write about Vista and its utilities, but I want to move on to Office 2007.
Office 2007:
As I mentioned in my comments on "Power Options," I decided to try to solve my problems with Word by buying a new copy of Office. I bought Office Home and Student 2007. The Vista problems didn't go away until I reinstalled Vista, but I had already opened the package so decided to keep it.
The "ribbon":
Since most laptop computers are now wide screen and the ribbon takes up a fair amount of vertical space across the top of the window (reducing the available space for the document in the more limited dimension), I started looking for a way to move it to the side (where there is a lot of unused space). I discovered that the ribbon could not be moved.
I tend to operate my computer from the keyboard as much as possible. I had shoulder problems a number of years that were exacerbated by using the mouse a lot. I also find using the keyboard faster and surer than using the mouse. The ribbon pretty much forces the user to use the mouse. If you happen to remember the entire keystroke sequence for a command in Office 2003, you can use the keyboard; otherwise, you must use the mouse.
I spoke with someone who works at Microsoft who told me that after about 6 weeks people decide they really like the ribbon. After fighting with it for about 10 weeks, I went back to Office 2000. Unfortunately, Outlook doesn't work under Vista so I was forced to use Vista's poor quality Mail and Calendar programs.
I tend to think of innovations as providing more, not fewer, options for users and making things better not worse.
The next thing I noticed was that the title bar on all of the windows stated something to the effect of Not for Commercial Use. My first reaction was that was really chintzy! My second reaction was that if Microsoft was going to put that on the software, they should warn users before they purchased the product that would be the case.
If you are ever tempted to defend an idea that people don't like, be careful about claiming the detractors are opposed to innovation. You might find yourself laughed at.
1 comment:
I switched to a commercial defragger since i felt i had no control over what the built in was doing.
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