If Microsoft actually put the right sort of features into their next iteration of Windows, rather than trying to make the OS 'fun', we might be a little happier than we were when Vista hit the shelves.
If they improve GUI responsiveness, that alone will convert many Vista refuseniks. Having the GPU 'do' the GUI is a monumentally good idea, but they need to eliminate all the latency that got introduced.
Let's have some cleverness introduced into the storage sub-system as well. SSD's are going mainstream, let's pave the way for them by not treating them as block-storage media with cylinders, heads and sectors (which is a carry-over from spinning disk storage). Having SSD's be forced into emulating spinning-disk media is ridiculous and wasteful. Even parking them behind SATA controllers is dumb. They should sit directly on the PCI Express bus.
Dump UAC as well, or turn it off by default. Home users are immune to it and will click on 'continue' or 'ok' without reading why they should or shouldn't click it. They just want to get on and use their PC, no matter the risk. Leave malware defence to the malware defence software industry. I'm not objecting to security layers in the OS, but not everyone needs it, wants it or benefits from it. I'd happily do without, sit behind a firewall and just reinstall if anything went wrong.
Fundamentally, and unfortunately, Windows is an OS designed for everyday use by the untrained public. Non-savvy people are expected to be able to transfer photo's from their camera to a DVD without understanding how this is achieved at even a high level of abstraction.
Windows has grown so far in the direction of dumb-user usability that it is now vitally impossible to capture full low-level control as a power-user. Previous posts have made comparison to AmigaOS. The allure of AmigaOS over Vista is that you can make an Amiga do absolutely anything, whether it was designed to do it, or not. Part, or all of AmigaOS can be patched, replaced or coopted in myriad different ways very trivially.
Of course, this leads to a completely untrusted platform, which creates its own set of problems for 3rd-party software support, DRM for multimedia content and a whole host of security holes.
Maybe there's middle-ground, yet to be explored, where us power-users will be happy, whilst dumb-users are still insulated from the inner-workings of their computer.
Meh. Who knows?
If they improve GUI responsiveness, that alone will convert many Vista refuseniks. Having the GPU 'do' the GUI is a monumentally good idea, but they need to eliminate all the latency that got introduced.
Let's have some cleverness introduced into the storage sub-system as well. SSD's are going mainstream, let's pave the way for them by not treating them as block-storage media with cylinders, heads and sectors (which is a carry-over from spinning disk storage). Having SSD's be forced into emulating spinning-disk media is ridiculous and wasteful. Even parking them behind SATA controllers is dumb. They should sit directly on the PCI Express bus.
Dump UAC as well, or turn it off by default. Home users are immune to it and will click on 'continue' or 'ok' without reading why they should or shouldn't click it. They just want to get on and use their PC, no matter the risk. Leave malware defence to the malware defence software industry. I'm not objecting to security layers in the OS, but not everyone needs it, wants it or benefits from it. I'd happily do without, sit behind a firewall and just reinstall if anything went wrong.
Fundamentally, and unfortunately, Windows is an OS designed for everyday use by the untrained public. Non-savvy people are expected to be able to transfer photo's from their camera to a DVD without understanding how this is achieved at even a high level of abstraction.
Windows has grown so far in the direction of dumb-user usability that it is now vitally impossible to capture full low-level control as a power-user. Previous posts have made comparison to AmigaOS. The allure of AmigaOS over Vista is that you can make an Amiga do absolutely anything, whether it was designed to do it, or not. Part, or all of AmigaOS can be patched, replaced or coopted in myriad different ways very trivially.
Of course, this leads to a completely untrusted platform, which creates its own set of problems for 3rd-party software support, DRM for multimedia content and a whole host of security holes.
Maybe there's middle-ground, yet to be explored, where us power-users will be happy, whilst dumb-users are still insulated from the inner-workings of their computer.
Meh. Who knows?