Is it just me, or is Windows going backwards?

[rbrandon]

Originally posted by: Nebben

Originally posted by: AnonymouseUser

Originally posted by: rbrandon
People post asinine comments about how XP sucks, but never take the time to learn how to change the things they don't like.

Apparently (to those who actually read the original post) Nebben knows how to turn these things off. His complaint was that he has to do these things since the OS is designed to be usable by idiots (and to help maintain that idiot status, but I digress). There isn't an easy, preconfigured setup he can choose to install instead of the default "I don't know the difference between an internet and a mouse" setup.

Good God, if I have to hear one more complaint about "Micro$oft is teh sUk, SP2 st0l3 my megahurtz', my heads gonna explode.

So why did you click on the thread if you didn't want to hear it? The title was a dead giveaway.

Thanks for replying for me. 😉

I have XP as streamlined as possible, but I don't understand the design logic behind making an OS that requires you to change hundreds of settings to get it to run fast. Win98 had things left to be desired, but those things WERE NOT pretty buttons and animations for Windows Explorer. Those new features were added for a reason, and I suspect it's $$$.

And WinXP is not "the greatest operating system of all time", to whoever said that. You're nuts. It IS pretty stable, I am glad they've achieved that, but it is not efficient and it is not streamlined, or even very streamlineable.

Tell me, if XP is the best OS ever, why does it seem to have more security holes than anything in history? Are the lowlives that design worms and spyware just getting better?

MS seems to take the approach that even if their current project isn't complete in terms of stability, speed, efficiency, and security, if that magic number of a few years is reached it's time to release a new one with some NEW bugs. And that's what my post was about. I hate their design approach in that sense, but I have little choice if I want access to every program I want to use. Unless I start running Windows emulators on Linux or something.

Windows is too bloated? Delete all the $NTSP folders. There only there if you need to roll back patches, which you shouldnt be doing anyway unless one of them breaks something. SP2 takes up too much space? Learn to read, it gives you the option whether or not to archive files. Don't. System Restore taking up too much space? Turn it off you really think you don't need it. Still not enough space? Suck it up and buy a bigger harddrive, they're cheap.

Where does SP2 give me the option to not back up 600MB of files? Please enlighten me.

I have ordered a new HD, but that's just it -- why did I have to?



And then there's Windows Media Player...

Heres the thing:

You dont HAVE to streamline anything else outside of what we've been over. Did you SERIOUSLY sit there and pick and choose what services to turn off? Theres no need to do that, there isnt much of a performance gain there, contrary to what QuackViper says, besides all you would be doing is crippling your OS, you're not taking any bloat out that way.

Security, and while where on it, SP2:


SP2 gives you the option to ARCHIVE or NOT ARCHIVE the files that is upgrades. Its the step before SP2 downloads its files. Its there in plain English.

Tell me, since SP2 came out, how many vulnerabilities were found. Two, maybe three? Sounds like Swiss cheese to me. :roll: Security is the responsibility of the person sitting in the chair believe it or not. Ignore it, and you'll get exactly what you deserve believe it or not. You put an unprotected box out there, and its like leaving the door open to your house and leaving, then wondering why you've been robbed. It your fault, end of story. Turn on the firewall, tighten your security policy, don't run as an admin all the time, crank the security setting on IE, disable it, forget it, switch to firefox and never look back except for visiting windows update once a month.

Thats all there is to it, you've just locked down your box, and it took all of 5 minutes..


Think you can handle it?

 

[hopejr]

Nebben: The reason why Windows seems to have so many security holes is because hackers and virus writers actually target it. The reason for this is because it is the most used OS in the world. The reason why MS releases buggy software is because bugs are sooo darn hard to find!! They use a life-cycle model called "Build and Stabilize". The idea behind it is release it, let users find bugs, fix, patch. It starts in the Alpha stage of the development and by the time it is released to the public, most of the really obvious and dangerous bugs/holes/etc are found and fixed. Ever wonder why the build count on Windows is so high? That's why. Build and Stabilize is an excellent life-cycle model IMHO. However, Windows is not my favourite OS. It's my second favourite (Mac OS X is the most favourite).

To the person who said "Windows > any OS", I beg to differ. There are a number of things to look at: what do you need, what your preferences are, etc. Also, have you used anything other than Windows for a period of more than a couple of months, solidly, getting to know the other OS's before actually making such a judgment? You may have, I don't know. But I have, and I've made my decision. My whole analysis of it can be seen in this thread.

jo1: there was essentially a Windows 98 Third Edition. It is called Windows Me and Microsoft screwed it up so much that they moved everything over to NT. There's no way without wasting time, money, and effort (all important factors of a software project) to build off Windows Me and get a decent OS.

 

[Nebben]

SP2 gives you the option to ARCHIVE or NOT ARCHIVE the files that is upgrades. Its the step before SP2 downloads its files. Its there in plain English.

I just installed SP2 yesterday, and I do not remember that option. I may have missed it. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt... sorry, and ignore that comment.

Tell me, since SP2 came out, how many vulnerabilities were found. Two, maybe three? Sounds like Swiss cheese to me. Security is the responsibility of the person sitting in the chair believe it or not. Ignore it, and you'll get exactly what you deserve believe it or not. You put an unprotected box out there, and its like leaving the door open to your house and leaving, then wondering why you've been robbed. It your fault, end of story. Turn on the firewall, tighten your security policy, don't run as an admin all the time, crank the security setting on IE, disable it, forget it, switch to firefox and never look back except for visiting windows update once a month.

The same thing was said when SP1 was released. Give it a little time.

I have taken every security precaution I am aware of, and I do run FireFox, but that's just the thing... why is the browser that is INTEGRATED with the operating system TOTALLY VULNERABLE?

Do you work for Microsoft? If not, why are you so inspired to defend them? You and I both know that IE has huge, huge holes in it and that is what they should be working on.

I don't hate MS, I think Windows is a decent OS, but I also think that they are focusing on the wrong things and that is what my complaint is about. I was venting because I installed a Service Pack and had to, once again, disable a bunch of crap to make it run smoothly and not behave as if a 3-year-old was operating the computer.

From a standpoint of profit, MS is going in the right direction -- they're making their OS more and more idiot-usable by the minute.

From a standpoint of stability and speed, they are going backwards. Just because hardware is more powerful every day does not mean that you can ignore efficiency and make a fat, bloated operating system and say "People can just upgrade, stuff is cheap now!"

Unless, of course, you're a member of the corporate capitalist club.

 

[Nebben]

Originally posted by: hopejr
Nebben: The reason why Windows seems to have so many security holes is because hackers and virus writers actually target it. The reason for this is because it is the most used OS in the world. The reason why MS releases buggy software is because bugs are sooo darn hard to find!! They use a life-cycle model called "Build and Stabilize". The idea behind it is release it, let users find bugs, fix, patch. It starts in the Alpha stage of the development and by the time it is released to the public, most of the really obvious and dangerous bugs/holes/etc are found and fixed. Ever wonder why the build count on Windows is so high? That's why. Build and Stabilize is an excellent life-cycle model IMHO. However, Windows is not my favourite OS. It's my second favourite (Mac OS X is the most favourite).

To the person who said "Windows > any OS", I beg to differ. There are a number of things to look at: what do you need, what your preferences are, etc. Also, have you used anything other than Windows for a period of more than a couple of months, solidly, getting to know the other OS's before actually making such a judgment? You may have, I don't know. But I have, and I've made my decision. My whole analysis of it can be seen in this thread.

jo1: there was essentially a Windows 98 Third Edition. It is called Windows Me and Microsoft screwed it up so much that they moved everything over to NT. There's no way without wasting time, money, and effort (all important factors of a software project) to build off Windows Me and get a decent OS.

My only complaints with XP security are concerning Internet Explorer. You simply cannot use IE and be confident in your computer's security. That is a problem, since IE is integrated with the operating system.

I like the stability of XP, I like many of the features added that have to do with memory management (although I dislike the way they assume you're going to use every possible feature, though the majority of users don't use a multitude of them).

I just wish they didn't spend so much of their energy on these stupid wizards that show up every time you update something. Seriously, is it that hard to just learn how to change options without something saying "What would you like to do today?"

 

[hopejr]

lol, I hear you. I just installed firefox on all the PC's in my house just yesterday after finding a hole in IE by accident. FF stops users from accessing sites on certain ports that could be potentially malicious, whereas IE doesn't. I found this when investigating some spam that turned out to be Cross-site scripting hidden in a message to do with a Bank that I've never heard of before. When I copied the url (in hex, that accesses port 87 of some server) and closed my session so my cookie couldn't be stolen, FF stopped me and displayed a message saying something to the effect of "Denying access to this page for security reasons", but IE still went along and accessed it anyway. With noobs in my family who would click on XSS links, or browse pages containing XSS, I found installing FF an necessity. I hate IE.
I'm also sick of those stupid wizards. XP Pro has less of them than XP Home tho 😛. BTW, Linux is getting more of them now.

 

[alm4rr]

I think Xp SP2 has been the best MS os so far

it just took a couple years to "refine" 😉

<-- has it to classic and disabled eye candy

 

[DnetMHZ]

Originally posted by: jo1

Originally posted by: Nebben
Windows 98 was never complete and they just jumped onto a whole new project of making everything look cute and pretty for the new computer buyers rather than fixing their product and making it more stable and secure.

i :heart: 98

but where is 98te? (98 third edition)

It's called Windows ME

How did that one treat ya?

 

[rbrandon]

Originally posted by: Nebben

Originally posted by: hopejr
Nebben: The reason why Windows seems to have so many security holes is because hackers and virus writers actually target it. The reason for this is because it is the most used OS in the world. The reason why MS releases buggy software is because bugs are sooo darn hard to find!! They use a life-cycle model called "Build and Stabilize". The idea behind it is release it, let users find bugs, fix, patch. It starts in the Alpha stage of the development and by the time it is released to the public, most of the really obvious and dangerous bugs/holes/etc are found and fixed. Ever wonder why the build count on Windows is so high? That's why. Build and Stabilize is an excellent life-cycle model IMHO. However, Windows is not my favourite OS. It's my second favourite (Mac OS X is the most favourite).

To the person who said "Windows > any OS", I beg to differ. There are a number of things to look at: what do you need, what your preferences are, etc. Also, have you used anything other than Windows for a period of more than a couple of months, solidly, getting to know the other OS's before actually making such a judgment? You may have, I don't know. But I have, and I've made my decision. My whole analysis of it can be seen in this thread.

jo1: there was essentially a Windows 98 Third Edition. It is called Windows Me and Microsoft screwed it up so much that they moved everything over to NT. There's no way without wasting time, money, and effort (all important factors of a software project) to build off Windows Me and get a decent OS.

My only complaints with XP security are concerning Internet Explorer. You simply cannot use IE and be confident in your computer's security. That is a problem, since IE is integrated with the operating system.

I like the stability of XP, I like many of the features added that have to do with memory management (although I dislike the way they assume you're going to use every possible feature, though the majority of users don't use a multitude of them).

I just wish they didn't spend so much of their energy on these stupid wizards that show up every time you update something. Seriously, is it that hard to just learn how to change options without something saying "What would you like to do today?"

I've used IE for years, all the way back to Windows 98, it was my main browser. Was it swiss cheese? Yes, I can't deny that. However, IE has had the capabilities to cut out 90 percent of the bullshit since IE 5.5 came out. Lock down the internet zone in the options menu. Set it to its highest setting, and say goodbye to ActiveX and all of those shell:// exploits. Its not that hard. Getting rid of the other 10% is up to the user. Be smart about the sites you visit, don't click on any bullshit popup that says you have worms/spyware/virii (which hasnt been a problem since sp2).


A system will be as secure as you make it, end of story.

 

[drag]

A system will be as secure as you make it, end of story.

Sure, but if you can't take a sows ear and turn it into a silk purse no matter how hard you try. WinXP SP2 is definately a step in the right direction, but Microsoft has about 10,000 more steps to go before they reach were most other OSes are now.

Security is still a problem with SP2.
SP2 just fixed known problems. Currently there are several unpatchable security flaws with Internet Explorer, even with a fully patched WinXP with SP2 you can still get screwed over by using IE if your unlucky. Setting the security settings on "high" for "internet zone" you can avoid some of them, but it's not a real solution.

Also if your using W2k, or forbid Win9x, your S.O.L. for the majority of fixes that are included with SP2, Microsoft says that many of the fixes are only aviable for people using WinXP.

So if your using W2k the only way to patch your systems is to spend 100 dollars or so on a upgrade license to WinXP.



vunerability

Albert Puigsech Galicia has discovered a vulnerability in Microsoft Internet Explorer, which can be exploited by malicious people to conduct FTP command injection attacks.

The vulnerability is caused due to insufficient input validation of FTP URIs. This can be exploited by e.g. a malicious website to inject arbitrary FTP commands in a FTP session using a specially crafted pathname containing "%0A" characters.

The vulnerability has been confirmed on a fully patched system with Internet Explorer 6.0 and Microsoft Windows 2000 SP4 / XP SP2.

vunerability 2

cyber flash has discovered a vulnerability in Microsoft Internet Explorer, which can be exploited by malicious people to trick users into downloading malicious files.

The vulnerability is caused due to Internet Explorer using the file extension from the URL's filename when saving images with the "Save Picture As" command and also strips the last file extension if multiple file extensions exist. This can be exploited by a malicious web site to cause a valid image with malicious, embedded script code to be saved with an arbitrary file extension.

Successful exploitation may allow a malicious web site to trick users into downloading e.g. a malicious HTML Application (.hta) masqueraded as a valid image. However, exploitation requires that the option "Hide extension for known file types" is enabled (default setting).

The vulnerability has been confirmed on a fully patched system with Internet Explorer 6.0 and Microsoft Windows XP SP2.

vunerabiltiy 3

cyber flash has discovered two vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer, which can be exploited by malicious people to bypass a security feature in Microsoft Windows XP SP2 and trick users into downloading malicious files.

1) Microsoft Windows XP SP2 has a security feature, which warns users when opening downloaded files of certain types. The problem is that if the downloaded file was sent with a specially crafted "Content-Location" HTTP header or referenced using a specially crafted URL, then in some situations, no security warning will be displayed when the file is opened.

2) An error when saving some documents using the Javascript function "execCommand()" can be exploited to spoof the file extension in the "Save HTML Document" dialog.

Successful exploitation requires that the option "Hide extension for known file types" is enabled (default setting).

A combination of vulnerabilities 1 and 2 can be exploited by a malicious web site to trick a user into downloading a malicious executable file masqueraded as a HTML document.

The vulnerabilities have been confirmed on a fully patched system with Internet Explorer 6.0 and Microsoft Windows XP SP2.

Solution:
Disable Active Scripting support and the "Hide extension for known file types" option.

vunerability 4

Description:
http-equiv has discovered two vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer, which can be exploited by malicious people to compromise a user's system, link to local resources, conduct cross-site scripting and bypass a security feature in Microsoft Windows XP SP2.

1) Insufficient validation of drag and drop events from the "Internet" zone to local resources for valid images or media files with embedded HTML code. This can be exploited by e.g. a malicious web site to plant arbitrary HTML documents on a user's system, which may allow execution of arbitrary script code in the "Local Computer" zone.

This vulnerability is a variant of:
SA12321

NOTE: Microsoft Windows XP SP2 does not allow Active Scripting in the "Local Computer" zone.

2) A security site / zone restriction error, where an embedded HTML Help control on e.g. a malicious web site references a specially crafted index (.hhk) file, can execute local HTML documents or inject arbitrary script code in context of a previous loaded document using a malicious javascript URI handler.

Successful exploitation may allow execution of arbitrary HTML and script code in a user's browser session in context of arbitrary sites, or execution of local programs with parameters from the "Local Computer" zone using a HTML Help shortcut.

NOTE: This will also bypass the "Local Computer" zone lockdown security feature in SP2.

It is also possible to execute local HTML documents using the "Related Topics" command of the HTML Help control.

The two vulnerabilities in combination with an inappropriate behaviour where the ActiveX Data Object (ADO) model can write arbitrary files can be exploited to compromise a user's system. This has been confirmed on a fully patched system with Internet Explorer 6.0 and Microsoft Windows XP SP2.

Solution:
1) The vendor recommends that the "Drag and drop or copy and paste files" option is disabled.
2) Set security level to high for the "Internet" zone.

vunerability 5
vunerability 6

Those are from Secunia, the following are from Security Focus and many of them are the same as above. But not all of them.

vunerability one
vunerability two
vunerability three
vunerability four
vunerability five
vunerability six (notice that this affects more then just IE, but Firefox/Mozilla has released fixes, but Microsoft has not)
vunerability seven
vunerability eight
vunerability nine
vunerability ten
vunerability eleven
vunerability twelve


Now Security Focus isn't as high quality sometimes as Secunia, but they often get things that Secunia misses. Some people using Windows will be invunerable to many of these, lots more are going to affect you if your using Windows 2000 versus Windows XP SP2, however if your using Windows XP SP1 MS refuses to backport fixes they make for SP2 to SP1 so your better off using Win2k vs WinXP SP1a.

Just upgrade to SP2, disable activeX completely, and set security for internet zone on high and keep it there.

To keep yourself safe the easiest thing to do is simply to not use IE. Firefox in comparision only has a couple vunerabilities and they have a better track record for fixing problems. Or use Mozilla, OR use Opera, Or use anything other then IE, or MyIE, or any modified IE.

That's my advice. My better advice is to simply not use Windows, but that's not a option for lots of people because you can't play your games. (vunerabilities I listed I tried to keep to up to date versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0, but be sure to check them one by one. Not all of them are realy serious and can be ignore. A few are very serious.)

Also take what is listed above with a grain of salt. It's very hard for people to keep accurate track of vunerabilities in IE, and there is a lot of guesswork. Also I didn't bother reading all the way thru all of them.

To browse and find these things yourself there are several websites you can go to.

One is the open source vunerability database
This one is nice, it offers a RSS feed (which I subscribe too) and even offers free database hooks so that you can create third party tools like security auditing tools that can reference them for free. Also usefull for creating statistics and analyzing vunerability patterns for research.

For instance today there is some security warnings for people running BattleFeild 1942 servers, and yesterday I noticed a whole slew of problems with Apple's OS X operating system confirmed.

Secunia is nice and they have high standards and pretty little graphs and do-dads to impress executives.

Security Focus probably has the quickest and newest information. Be sure to read thru relevent ones, lots of times they are not 100% confirmed before posting them.

for linux/FreeBSD users this is nice For keeping a eye on problems and issues. There packetstorm

Knowledge = power.



Now if you don't use Internet Explorer, use a virus scanner, use Adaware/Spybot, use a seperate firewall, and keep your system religiously up to date, then Windows XP can be a resonably secure operating system.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: rbrandon
People post asinine comments about how XP sucks, but never take the time to learn how to change the things they don't like.

Don't like the Fisher Price look? Change it to Windows Classic. Still too slow? Right click my computer, properties, advanced, perfomance, set windows for best performance. Eye candy gone, have a nice day.

OK, here's a good one - how do I get the GUI to obey standard features/commands? Meaning, somehow Win XP SP1 "forgets" the nominal window size, and always makes it such that "restore" and "maximize" are actually the same window size, only the state of the button changes. Also, the "minimize" button fails to work. Clicking it does nothing. I have to bring up the default "desktop" icon on the quicklaunch toolbar, and click it, and it force-minimizes everything. Heaven help me if I'm running a maximized window with topmost-z-order set, like a media player, that causes me to hide the taskbar. I'll never be able to get back!

I'm guessing that this is all tied into the new, but IMHO *broken* feature of XP, that it keeps a backup bitmap of the apps visible window "bits", but for some reason lags behind and causes interference with standard system-level frame-window control widgets like "minimize","maximize", and "restore".

Yes, I have things set to the older-style, "standard" UI, not the Fisher-Price look. (Did MS have to pay royalties to the toy company for that one???)

Originally posted by: rbrandon
Now before you kill me by saying your hardware if blazing fast, let me tell you i had almost the same exact setup as you: Athlon XP 1700+, 768 megs of ram, and a 40 gig HD. Guess what, two years ago called, it wants its hardware back.

Hmm, that's pretty close to what I have now, XP1800, 768MB RAM, and 490GB of HD, with a R9200.

Originally posted by: rbrandon
Seems to me that the problem is between the keyboard, chair. and box.. Don't blame Microsoft for something thats not its fault.

You mean like standard Windows' widgets becoming non-functional? Or defragging a partition, that resides on a physical HD that I'm not currently using, but that still takes up nearly 100% CPU time and causes my USB mouse to lag and skip like you wouldn't believe? (W2K doesn't have this problem, btw, on the same hardware.)

XP (SP1 at least), is just as 'damn broke' as WinME was as compared to Win98se. XP is the epitome of bloat and MS consumerware, and "tweaks" that MS added to the otherwise stable and solid NT core, that cause serious system-level brokenness in many cases.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: Nebben
My only complaints with XP security are concerning Internet Explorer. You simply cannot use IE and be confident in your computer's security. That is a problem, since IE is integrated with the operating system.

I agree. What MS should do, is create a "special", specific, super-reduced-priviledges user acct, that runs IE *remotely*, via RDP protocol, on the local system. Essentially, running IE under a restricted account under Terminal Services on localhost. That way, no malware can attack the actual system or primary user account, while the app can still be displayed and interacted with on the desktop just like any other app. Per-app sandboxing, in effect. MS could do it if they really wanted to.

Originally posted by: Nebben
I just wish they didn't spend so much of their energy on these stupid wizards that show up every time you update something. Seriously, is it that hard to just learn how to change options without something saying "What would you like to do today?"

XP = annoyance-ware.

 

[hopejr]

I have to write a web-based app for my University. I brought up the subject of Wizards, and if that was preferred over one huge form. As soon as I said that, every said "A long huge form is much better. Those wizards drive us mad". The reason I asked the question in the first place was because Windows, and even OS X have Wizards/Setup Assistants and seem to push that they are the way to go (MS more than Apple tho). It seems users don't like wizards. I know I don't, and I much rather use the classic control panels instead of those dumb wizards, and Home Ed has more wizards than Pro, so I hate Home Ed more 😛

 

[kuljc]

Originally posted by: hopejr
I have to write a web-based app for my University. I brought up the subject of Wizards, and if that was preferred over one huge form. As soon as I said that, every said "A long huge form is much better. Those wizards drive us mad". The reason I asked the question in the first place was because Windows, and even OS X have Wizards/Setup Assistants and seem to push that they are the way to go (MS more than Apple tho). It seems users don't like wizards. I know I don't, and I much rather use the classic control panels instead of those dumb wizards, and Home Ed has more wizards than Pro, so I hate Home Ed more 😛

Agreed and is def true BUT!!! think about these OS companies right, they're trying to write a program for EVERYONE to use.

SO they have to consider the people who don't know anything, the people who know some and the people who know everything.

So for the 2nd and 3rd group, they'd prefer a forum b/c it'll explain the problem or whatever they're going to have to do. and they'll be able to get around to having windows the way they want.

the 1st group on the other hand, just needs and wants to know how to get it done. If it were setup for more experienced users then they (not knowing anything) wouldn't know how to revert it to a basic format. While the more expereienced users will.


That's why there are wizards, and for some reason all the stupid people like to go w/ windows "BECAUSE THEY'VE HEARD OF IT!" big whoop... So that's why there are more windows wizards than apple's.

 

[drag]

Lots of the time though a well intentioned wizard can lead to degraded usability even for very unknowledgable users.

For instance how many times does a user simply click thru a critical portion of a wizard? If they are a new user and don't have knowledge of the system how would they know what went wrong or why something doesn't work? Using wizards are very tempting but lots of wizards does not a good OS make. Definately very usefull in some situations, especially when you have some very complex configuration to do, but it is usually done in a fairly standard way, but it seems like in WinXP you have a "everything is a wizard" mentality and that's a move in the wrong direction.

 

[MrChad]

It seems as though there are multiple aspects of Windows that are being discussed here, but I'd like to address the issue of usability. I studied user interfaces for a full year in college. For those who aren't familiar with UI research, there are five basic tenets to designing effective user interfaces.

1. Speed
2. Accuracy
3. Learnability
4. Memorability
5. Preference

Many of Microsoft's changes in XP were implemented specifically to address these five areas. For instance, the default XP look and feel now incorporates contrast (green Start button against blue bar, red X button against blue bar) and increased size (Start button and Min, Max and Close buttons are larger) to improve the accuracy of the interface. This may seem silly to experienced users who are already proficient at manipulating the Windows GUI, but there's a great deal of research and testing to back this up. Of course, Classic mode is also offered as an option, because Preference can often outweigh the other four principles.

Microsoft invests a great deal of money in usability research and testing. Many of the changes to the Windows UI over the years are the result of these studies. I don't understand how people can say that the Windows UI is moving in the wrong direction. As users, we have a lot more ways of interacting with Windows with XP than we did with 95. Take the Start Menu for example. In XP I have two ways of displaying the Start Menu. I can choose if I want adaptive menus or not. I can enable or disable all sorts of different information displayed on the menu. Most importantly, I am given a choice. I can stick with the interface I know or learn something new.

I agree with drag's assessment of wizards. In many cases, the wizard paradigm helps simplify complex tasks by breaking them up into smaller, more manageable ones. This can be frustrating for advanced users, who often prefer a single screen where they can see and manipulate a large amount of configuration data. I hope that Microsoft begins offering "non-Wizard" configuration options for users who would rather operate that way.

One aspect of Microsoft usability that has always confused me is Office menus and toolbars. Microsoft encourages developers to use their common controls objects to maintain a consistent look and feel across applications. This is good design. But it seems like every new incarnation of Office unveils a new set of common controls, giving Office a different look and feel than other Windows applications. Even worse is the fact that Microsoft does not make these controls readily available to developers. I've never understood the logic behind this practice.

The Windows interface is lacking in a number of ways, but I believe that overall, the interface is improving and moving in a good direction.

 

[syconub]

I love wizards. Its like windows makes a wizard for everything. ex:how to set up internet connction, save a text document, install updates, turn off your computer, and logging off and onto windows.

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: Nebben Perhaps they could include a choice during the Windows setup: 'I have a clue, please don't throw annoying Wizards at me constantly' or 'I am an idiot. Please enable 50 different Wizards for every possible thing I could do to change my settings"

I'm too lazy to read the entire thread, but this part I agree with.
Somehow Windows XP Professional doesn't seem so professional with little cute dogs and all.
Seems more like the "Barbie Edition".

 

[dawks]

Its been said time and time again, if your having stability issues with XP its most likely due to a bad driver or a bad piece of hardware. 2K, XP and Server 2003 are very stable OS's.

As for speed issues, and having to disable a bunch of 'crap' to get your system to 'run smoothly' sounds like your just looking for something to bitch about. A default install of XPSP2 Integrated or even XP runs nicely, unless your using >192megs ram. Disabling a bunch of services doesnt really help much unless your often filling your ram up.

If you think Microsoft is moving in the wrong direction your going to have problems with most OS's from now on. The main idea behing most OS makers right now is to provide as many services with the OS by default. From your perspective, its only going to get worse. Longhorn for example, will probably make you explode from the looks of things.

Perhaps some of the Linux/Unix guys can name a minimalist OS that might suit you better?

 

[hopejr]

Originally posted by: Sunner

Originally posted by: Nebben Perhaps they could include a choice during the Windows setup: 'I have a clue, please don't throw annoying Wizards at me constantly' or 'I am an idiot. Please enable 50 different Wizards for every possible thing I could do to change my settings"

I'm too lazy to read the entire thread, but this part I agree with.
Somehow Windows XP Professional doesn't seem so professional with little cute dogs and all.
Seems more like the "Barbie Edition".

lol, i agree, but I also like what was said before by MrChad about the 5 areas of UI design. I never thought of it in that way before.

dawks: you made some good points there, esp about the minimalist linux distro. Well, those who don't like the look of windows, prolly won't like the look of OS X or some of the themes on X-Windows, so they may as well just use a CLI.
BTW, I like the Jade theme in Longhorn, and I also like the look of OS X 😛

 

[JB1592]

All of these reasons for all the extra wizards and crap make sense.

What doesn't is, as someone said, cutesy doggy animations in a professional OS, or why we can't have a version of Windows that doesn't include them (no, not that we can disable them in, that doesn't have them to begin with!).

I agree that we shouldn't expect XP to use Win95 levels of resources, after all drivers and everything else have gotten bigger as well as hardware adds new functions and features, but I'm also not really willing to take "ram is cheap, upgrade" as a reason to let them get away with using ten to twenty times as much! And tell me, seriously, what is the reason for XP using much more RAM on a fresh install than 2k? Don't tell me it's the new features and fixes and blah-blah. If I disable every non vital service that I possibly can on XP (right down to turning off the print spooler, only 4 or 5 services still running by the time I'm done, under SP1) it finally gets down to about the same memory usage as Win2k... but XP has been crippled to the point that there's practically nothing left, while I'm comparing it to 2k with everything still on! By the time I'm done 2k (SP4) actually has more features, functionality, and components running and it's still using just as much memory as a crippled XP, and the same drivers so there's no difference there. Overall functionality is pretty much the same, so what in the world is the huge difference? I mean, other than MS not making the same security patches available?

I have a serious question: How much RAM do OSX and/or Linux use while just sitting there? If it's comparable to what XP uses on a fresh install then I'll happily stop complaining.

Tell me, if all I do is word processing and internet browsing, why should I really need anything more than a PII? Because an up to date OS can't run on it? Come on! Hell, the computer my little brother still uses in his room for nothing but net, word, and instant messaging is only a Pentium 166MMX! Granted. it's pretty darn slow, but it works for his purposes. On the one hand, I suppose that in order to keep the hardware market moving it's probably good that MS does this as it keeps people that would otherwise be plenty happy with their current PC upgrading, but on the the other hand, it sure would be nice if we didn't need newer, faster hardware just to run less efficient software.

 

[drag]

I have a serious question: How much RAM do OSX and/or Linux use while just sitting there? If it's comparable to what XP uses on a fresh install then I'll happily stop complaining.

It realy depends and it's hard to compar Linux vs Windows. Linux does very heavy cache, it's very agressive in it's memory usage. If you have 1gig of ram it will do everything it can to keep the entire gig of ram in use.

For instance I run a full-on Gnome desktop on my systems, this is comparable to WinXP in terms of functionality, images, and eye candy. In my Debian desktop I have a 2400+ AMD with a gig of RAM. Say I go from cold boot to running a Mozilla browser and a e-mail client I would have about 265-300megs of RAM used up.

So that's all the services enabled at start up and the startup routine + gnome desktop and a couple apps. It will keep everything in RAM it can and only flush parts of it out due to running out of empty space or extreme old age. Services I would have running in the background include a music server (just plays music from playlists irregardless of what is going on in the GUI enviroment), Mysql database server/Mythtv backend, ftp server, Apache server, OpenSSH server, and a couple other things I forget about.

Normal usage with dozens of apps going is around 500-600 megs of ram. But one thing I do is running multiple X servers on my desktop (that is more then one "desktop" or GUI enviroment at once). I use 2 and one would be running Gnome and have dual monitors, but the other would be running OpenBox and only be on one monitor. That way I can start up a game full screen on the one monitor and be able to switch back to dual screen when ever I want and still have programs open.

I usually leave firefox open, and a few terminals. Maybe a word proccessor if I am working on a paper or whatnot. It has no problem making room for games like Doom3 and Ut2004 which easily use half a gig of RAM. Usually unless I have firefox running on a page with a big Flash animation or am watching a movie or anything that uses CPU time, then I don't get a noticable performance hit vs shutting everything down and just playing games.

Although I do have to keep a eye out for programs that don't shut down properly. Mplayer is a great media player but for some reason it has a bad habit of not closing cleanly.

On my Laptop I have 386megs of RAM and I run a full Gnome desktop. Often I will have dozens of virtual desktops running with lots of programs and I've never noticed it dipping into the swap partition.

There are things to watch out for definately. Linux is RAM sensitive to performance. The more RAM you have the better.

For isntance you have KDE and Gnome enviroments. With in each respective enviroment you have a great deal of shared code and libraries. In Linux most everything has dependancies, and this is a pain at first becuase to install any one program you have to install sometimes dozens of different libraries and supporting programs. (Intellegent package handling tools like apt-get and yum will help you out though)

But it has a advantage that all the code is shared between Gnome apps. I have GTK+ libraries for instance and each program that uses them doesn't have to load it's own version into memory, it just uses shares memory space with many other programs.

But if you run a bunch of Gnome + KDE apps you can easily double your memory footprint because it has to load bunches of KDE stuff + bunches of Gnome stuff.

many people just decide to forgo the Gnome/KDE-style desktop envirometn completely. To them all that stuff is unnessicary and go with a minimalist setup using just a Window manager for minimal/efficient functionality.

Over time Linux has gotten a bit faster, I feel. Programs get streamlined, excess functionality gets removed and libraries are improved on. As time goes on and newer and newer versions get updated your memory usage needs will increase, but it's not going to be anything nearly as drastic as what can happen to Windows.

OS X has definately got faster, even on older machines. People report good performance feel when upgrading from 10.1 to 10.3 (3 generations of OS X.), as well as a increase in stability and features.


Linux requirements (my opinion entirely, for decent performance/good results):
basic small server (or command line only workstation, with little gui): 200-400mhz, 64megs of RAM. 4gigs disk space (for OS + user space + server space).
minimal functionality workstation: 600-800mhz 128megs of ram (256 will have good impact), 5-10 gigs of disk space.
normal "minimalist" desktop: 1ghz, 256-512 megs of RAM
Modern full functional desktop enviroment: 1.5ghz, 512+ megs of ram.
Full high-performance workstation: Dual CPU's, 2ghz+, 1-4gigs of ram.

WinXP does a decent job at keeping the footprint small. Linux is generally more memory hungry, but resource requirements do not generally creep up as it does with WinXP as it ages.

 

[hopejr]

I think I've said this somewhere before, I run Windows Server 2k3 on my Pentium 2 350MHz, and it has only 192MB RAM. It is quite fast, probably because it doesn't have a lot of bloat in it.
OS X uses memory in a similar way to Linux. It caches a hell of a lot, to give an extra performance boost. When more programs are run, the caching is decreased a bit. The only time I see a performance hit is when I'm running more than one Java based app. I only have 256MB RAM in my iBook G4, and I usually have Finder, Safari (with multiple tabs open), Mail, iCal, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Entourage, MSN Messenger, iTunes, Terminal, plus services such as Apache, JRun (for ColdFusion), VNC Server, and MySQL. I very rarely see the spinning beach ball, but as soon as I open Eclipse (which is Java based - note that JRun is too, and so this would be a second Java app running) everything starts to lag. So I close off most of my programs until only Finder, Safari and the services for Apache, JRun, and MySQL are running, and it's still chugging. I either close Eclipse or stop JRun, and then everything is ok again. I sometimes have Activity Monitor running with a memory usage pie graph in the Dock, so that I can see usage. Very rarely is there any green on it (free memory), suggesting that OS X uses all the memory that is available to it, but it does this to boost performance with it's caching, and when it needs more memory to run more programs, it releases some of the cached memory for it. I'm quite happy with the performance of Panther, and some of the things I do with it, I wouldn't do with Windows XP on a computer with similar specs (I would with Win2k3 tho).

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: MrChad
Microsoft invests a great deal of money in usability research and testing. Many of the changes to the Windows UI over the years are the result of these studies.

Obviously then, MS has been paying the wrong people for their opinions. 🙁

Originally posted by: MrChad
I don't understand how people can say that the Windows UI is moving in the wrong direction.

I think that you left the word "completely" out of that sentence somewhere.

Originally posted by: MrChad
As users, we have a lot more ways of interacting with Windows with XP than we did with 95. Take the Start Menu for example. In XP I have two ways of displaying the Start Menu. I can choose if I want adaptive menus or not. I can enable or disable all sorts of different information displayed on the menu. Most importantly, I am given a choice. I can stick with the interface I know or learn something new.

Thank goodness that the UI can at least be reduced to a facsimile of the older-style interface. Things like auto-hiding of systray icons due to less use, and also auto-hiding of start-menu entries, and automatic, seemingly-random, re-arrangement of the open application windows shown in the taskbar, all go directly against the well-known principle of "muscle memory", and are therefore to be avoided. They make using the computer much more difficult than it needs to be. The only thing they do is to "dumb down" the interface, for those users that might get "confused" by so many icons and things. The same types of users who only know how to click on their name/icon at the welcome screen, click the Start-Shutdown icon, and double-click the "blue E for Internet" icon, and that's all. The vast majority of at least minimally-experienced users have advanced beyond that.

You know what's truely ironic? Back in the days of Win 3.1 and then Win95, OEMs used to customized the entire user shell, to provide a "unique and differentiated market experience". MS put the cabosh on those, in an attempt to regain total control over the user's desktop, and of course icon placement of IE and MSN, among other things. But before they used their underhanded monopolistic power to unethically manipulate the market, other companies were offering "simplified" user-interfaces, some with new paradigms and concepts, and some of them really weren't half-bad. Most of them also offered an "advanced" button to hide the custom OEM user shell and switch to the standard Windows' one. MS could learn from those efforts, instead of choosing to "dumb down" the default interface for all of their users. As usual, MS is 3-5 years late to the party.

Originally posted by: MrChad
One aspect of Microsoft usability that has always confused me is Office menus and toolbars. Microsoft encourages developers to use their common controls objects to maintain a consistent look and feel across applications. This is good design. But it seems like every new incarnation of Office unveils a new set of common controls, giving Office a different look and feel than other Windows applications. Even worse is the fact that Microsoft does not make these controls readily available to developers. I've never understood the logic behind this practice.

Uhm, propriety? Don't forget, "MS Office" is standard office fare, and if they didn't change the Office UI every major version, where would the ancilliary revenue streams for companies that do things like specialize in Office UI training for workers, come from? MS is just "churning" the market, and pumping their product-based economic ecosystem along. MS has always been one to dictate standards to ISVs for "Windows look and feel" and related certifications, and then turn around and violate those guidelines themselves, when it suits them.

Originally posted by: MrChad
The Windows interface is lacking in a number of ways, but I believe that overall, the interface is improving and moving in a good direction.

One might ask why it has to constantly change, and "evolve", and why don't they just completely de-couple the actual abstract UI widgets from the display/presentation layer, and let users/ISVs customize/swap them at will? (Ok, WindowBlinds and StarDock do something like that, as does MS's own Themes service, etc. - but they still don't openly let users create new themes, do they? Don't they have to patch the system binaries just to get non-MS ones to load? Why all the control-freakery? Why not let users run their own systems, as they want to? Can you imagine a world, where most clothing were one-size-fits-all, or one-style-fits-all, just simply because the mfg dictates it so? What a bizarre world to live in. Then again, we have Windows...)

 

[hopejr]

her companies were offering "simplified" user-interfaces, some with new paradigms and concepts, and some of them really weren't half-bad. Most of them also offered an "advanced" button to hide the custom OEM user shell and switch to the standard Windows' one.

I made something like that back in 2000. It was quite good (but I could do better now, except that there's no place for such a thing anymore).

 

[wchou]

Originally posted by: Nebben
How about providing the option to NOT store these backups?

That's what is 'sloppy'. You can disable System Restore, or lessen the space it uses, but you have no option (to my knowledge) to control the WU backups.

Considering reverting a major update like a Service Pack doesn't even work half the time, I'd prefer to not waste almost a gig of space on a backup.

Windows 95 used like 10MB of RAM in itself. WinXP uses a hundred or two MB. For what? Some of it is useful features, yes, but the bulk of it is junk. I have no problem with all of the features being available, but I'd like it if I had some choice as to whether or not I want to waste 100+ MB of RAM on junk I don't use.

win95 uses like 4mb of ram which is the minimum requirement.. it would take about 1-2 sec to bootup unlike 30sec to a min on a 1ghz machine. 🙂
95 has driver issues, crashes a lot but it slow as hell too.
windows is not going backward, it is going forward... requiring faster processor to accomodate its extra feature not found anywhere else. 😀