Some PC concepts you wish would be here now

[JoeyP]

Here's a few PC concepts that are long overdue for an overhaul IMHO. Got any to add?

Kill the concept of drives, partitions, and drive letters.
It has long been my belief that storage should be transparent. You should be able to store and retrieve data without trying to figure out which "drive" it is on. Adding more capacity should be as simple as adding a new drive, just like adding more memory, and let the OS take it from there. RAID touches on this to some extent.

Long file names with unlimited characters, and extensions.
I am blown away by the fact that Windows 7 still has the 8.3 file names under the hood. Long file names still have restricted characters, a restriction long overdue IMHO. And are we really still using 3 characters to tie a file to an application?

User and data portability.
Maybe this will be in the near future, but all my data should be accessible to me anywhere and any time. I should be able to walk up to someone's machine, be recognized, and have access to my data and workstation...securely. I get tired of putting my pictures on a thumb drive, or uploading (duplicating!) them to a site and then sending a link or remembering passwords.

Seamless presentations.
I want to be able to walk into a room with my laptop, press a button, and have the projector show my screen or presentation. Every place I go, you have to find the right cable, switch the projector source, fiddle with resolutions, etc. This should be much easier.

This shouldn't be interpreted as a gripe session or a rant. But is it too difficult to focus some of the innovation on usability, rather than more cores and bigger storage?

 

[DSF]

Kill the concept of drives, partitions, and drive letters.
It has long been my belief that storage should be transparent. You should be able to store and retrieve data without trying to figure out which "drive" it is on. Adding more capacity should be as simple as adding a new drive, just like adding more memory, and let the OS take it from there. RAID touches on this to some extent.

What about users who have a relatively small, fast drive for applications and a larger, slower drive for storage? Or people who want to make sure that particular data goes to a certain drive that they may move between machines?

Personally, I don't really want my OS deciding where to store my files.

 

[Smoblikat]

Here's a few PC concepts that are long overdue for an overhaul IMHO. Got any to add?

Kill the concept of drives, partitions, and drive letters.
It has long been my belief that storage should be transparent. You should be able to store and retrieve data without trying to figure out which "drive" it is on. Adding more capacity should be as simple as adding a new drive, just like adding more memory, and let the OS take it from there. RAID touches on this to some extent.

Long file names with unlimited characters, and extensions.
I am blown away by the fact that Windows 7 still has the 8.3 file names under the hood. Long file names still have restricted characters, a restriction long overdue IMHO. And are we really still using 3 characters to tie a file to an application?

User and data portability.
Maybe this will be in the near future, but all my data should be accessible to me anywhere and any time. I should be able to walk up to someone's machine, be recognized, and have access to my data and workstation...securely. I get tired of putting my pictures on a thumb drive, or uploading (duplicating!) them to a site and then sending a link or remembering passwords.

Seamless presentations.
I want to be able to walk into a room with my laptop, press a button, and have the projector show my screen or presentation. Every place I go, you have to find the right cable, switch the projector source, fiddle with resolutions, etc. This should be much easier.

This shouldn't be interpreted as a gripe session or a rant. But is it too difficult to focus some of the innovation on usability, rather than more cores and bigger storage?

1. How is this even possible? I have my data drive which I want kept seperate from my other drives due to formatting it to install windows, im not sure how drive letters are a problem unless you are installing/booting to the drive.
2. I agree
3. skynet/Anyone could hack it, ill keep myself to myself thank you very much.
4. Yup

 

[JoeyP]

1. How is this even possible? I have my data drive which I want kept seperate from my other drives due to formatting it to install windows, im not sure how drive letters are a problem unless you are installing/booting to the drive.

My point is you shouldn't have to worry about those factors. I think tablets are going in the right direction, where the data and applications are Just There.

 

[r3dsh1ft]

Personal Computer.... Give me a back massage... "Yes Master!"
Personal Computer... Give me a drink..."Yes Master!"
Personal Computer... Go in the kitchen and make me a sandwich "Yes Master!"

Some people would like to call me a male chauvinist pig, I prefer to call myself a futurist.

 

[SMOGZINN]

Kill the concept of drives, partitions, and drive letters.

As others have said drive letters and the ability to control where data resides is not something we really want to go away. New technology should expand on our abilities, not take them away.

I think that what you really want is already on it's way. We just need to go further with it. Libraries in Windows 7 is a good start, but we need to add more metadata to files and allow automatic sorting and searching based on that metadata. This would allow for you to see one storage device, but still take control of it when needed. Tag clouds are a good example of how this can be done.

We, as computer users, are starting to have more data then we can keep track of. We are spending more and more time organizing that data just so we can keep it useful. I think that a major effort needs to be made on the operating system level to make data organization easier because I think we are slowly losing the fight against data organization.

Look at Evernote, that is the next step in data organization. But even it needs work.

Seamless presentations.

This is already here, it is just going to take some time for the current technology to be adapted.

 

[JoeyP]

What about users who have a relatively small, fast drive for applications and a larger, slower drive for storage? Or people who want to make sure that particular data goes to a certain drive that they may move between machines?

Personally, I don't really want my OS deciding where to store my files.

Your "drives" would be a pool. The OS would decide based on your usage and drive speeds/capacities what files to put where, and possibly move them if your usage patterns change over time.

And moving data between machines should be transparent as well, or maybe even unnecessary.

 

[JoeyP]

I think that what you really want is already on it's way. We just need to go further with it. Libraries in Windows 7 is a good start, but we need to add more metadata to files and allow automatic sorting and searching based on that metadata. This would allow for you to see one storage device, but still take control of it when needed. Tag clouds are a good example of how this can be done.

We, as computer users, are starting to have more data then we can keep track of. We are spending more and more time organizing that data just so we can keep it useful. I think that a major effort needs to be made on the operating system level to make data organization easier because I think we are slowly losing the fight against data organization.

Look at Evernote, that is the next step in data organization. But even it needs work.

We're getting close to where our data can be stored (or at least indexed) by a legit database. The concept of "folders" and "drives" and "shortcuts" for organizing files is clumsy and doesn't scale.

It might even be possible to get away from the concept of files themselves if you give it enough thought.

 

[lakedude]

Your "drives" would be a pool. The OS would decide based on your usage and drive speeds/capacities what files to put where, and possibly move them if your usage patterns change over time.

And moving data between machines should be transparent as well, or maybe even unnecessary.

1) I've got a Solaris box that combines 6 1TB drives into a 4TB ZFS pool of usable space with the ability to lose any 2 out of 6 of the drives and keep trucking.

2) Windows 8 has been rumored to include just the sort of drive pooling you are talking about.

 

[JasonCoder]

I am blown away by the fact that Windows 7 still has the 8.3 file names under the hood. Long file names still have restricted characters, a restriction long overdue IMHO. And are we really still using 3 characters to tie a file to an application?

lolwut?

Isn't that FAT32 and backward compatibility with 16 bit apps? Nothing to stop you from having a paragraph for a file name in Windows 7.

 

[Cerb]

Here's a few PC concepts that are long overdue for an overhaul IMHO. Got any to add?

Kill the concept of drives, partitions, and drive letters.
It has long been my belief that storage should be transparent. You should be able to store and retrieve data without trying to figure out which "drive" it is on. Adding more capacity should be as simple as adding a new drive, just like adding more memory, and let the OS take it from there. RAID touches on this to some extent.

This has already been done. In fact, it was figured out mostly by the 70s. However, what about when a drive goes bad? JBOD arrays are rather weak, in that area, and single-drive sizes got big enough fast enough that most people do not need to have such arrays. The technology for that level of abstraction has been there for years, but normal people will only get more confused by it, and techie people want more information. For RAID, better RAID is on its way to basically every platform, thanks to a kick in the butt from ZFS.

Drive letters are a Windows backwards-compatibility issue, not a PC problem. A PC running some *n*x won't have them. Even nicer, you can browse your devices by the volume label, so you can do things like label your new USB stick "8GB thumb drive", and it will show as some variation of that ("8GB_THUMB_DRIVE", maybe), so you can easily know what you're browsing to, and the location will be the same the next time you plug it in.

And moving data between machines should be transparent as well, or maybe even unnecessary.

Internet speeds are not fast enough for that, yet, and may not be for decades.

Long file names with unlimited characters, and extensions.
I am blown away by the fact that Windows 7 still has the 8.3 file names under the hood. Long file names still have restricted characters, a restriction long overdue IMHO. And are we really still using 3 characters to tie a file to an application?

Windows software backwards-compatibility. You can disable 8.3, and have had the ability to do so for several Windows versions, now. It's just that nobody really cares that the filesystem is doing one more small operation when naming a file; yet they do care when their pet application, that uses old as dirt code, breaks. Extensions are, also, a Windows history issue, though still hiding them today by default in the FM is something somebody needs to get a good punch in the face for.

User and data portability.
Maybe this will be in the near future, but all my data should be accessible to me anywhere and any time. I should be able to walk up to someone's machine, be recognized, and have access to my data and workstation...securely. I get tired of putting my pictures on a thumb drive, or uploading (duplicating!) them to a site and then sending a link or remembering passwords.

Microsoft makes you pay big bucks for this. It can be done several different ways with a Windows Domain, or you can go all out and use virtual hosted desktops (VHD), using voice, facial recognition, smart cards, finger prints, etc., for ID. It exists, and is commonly used, in business and government environments. Generally, your files get put on a shared drive or folder, that's not on the local computer. IoW, for now, it exists, and works pretty well, but requires additional $$$.

Seamless presentations.
I want to be able to walk into a room with my laptop, press a button, and have the projector show my screen or presentation. Every place I go, you have to find the right cable, switch the projector source, fiddle with resolutions, etc. This should be much easier.

This one you've got. VGA, component, composite, S-video, DVI (some of which aren't compatible with other DVIs), HDMI, DP, mini-DP, mini-DVI, mini-HDMI... D: It's getting better, but I fear we'll have even more new crap to deal with by the time current standards finally get well-supported.

It might even be possible to get away from the concept of files themselves if you give it enough thought.

No, it won't be. A better abstraction does not exist. A file as we have it in a computer is a good abstraction for what have been called files for a very long time, well before the computer existed. Organization could use a revamp, but defining a finite sequential range of bytes as a distinct file is not something that we should move away from. That abstraction is already quite flexible, and allowing files to merge in a non-hierarchical manner would get very confusing, very fast.

 

[mfenn]

Kill the concept of drives, partitions, and drive letters.
It has long been my belief that storage should be transparent. You should be able to store and retrieve data without trying to figure out which "drive" it is on. Adding more capacity should be as simple as adding a new drive, just like adding more memory, and let the OS take it from there. RAID touches on this to some extent.

This exists if you're using a real operating system. It's called logical volume management. Linux has LVM2 to do the basics and btrfs is getting there, whereas BSD and Solaris have ZFS (which is more than just a volume manager, but I digress).

Long file names with unlimited characters, and extensions.
I am blown away by the fact that Windows 7 still has the 8.3 file names under the hood. Long file names still have restricted characters, a restriction long overdue IMHO. And are we really still using 3 characters to tie a file to an application?

Again, this exists if you use a real operating system. There's no limit on what characters you use either, you can put non-printing ASCII or Unicode code points in if you're really that crazy.

User and data portability.
Maybe this will be in the near future, but all my data should be accessible to me anywhere and any time. I should be able to walk up to someone's machine, be recognized, and have access to my data and workstation...securely. I get tired of putting my pictures on a thumb drive, or uploading (duplicating!) them to a site and then sending a link or remembering passwords.

This exists, it's called Dropbox.

Seamless presentations.
I want to be able to walk into a room with my laptop, press a button, and have the projector show my screen or presentation. Every place I go, you have to find the right cable, switch the projector source, fiddle with resolutions, etc. This should be much easier.

OK, you have a point here.

So, long story short, broaden your horizons a bit and you'll see that many of the things that you're wishing for already exist in one form or another.