Mynd Hed
Holy blue on a popo!
Personal computers have been around for something like a quarter century now. There are certain things that should be old hat by now, but for some reason they're not. Things that should just WORK, but for whatever reason they don't. I'm not talking about things like security; security is a complicated problem, and the good folks at Norton and McAfee are in a constant arms race with all the bad guys out there, so while I don't like it, it makes SENSE that things like antivirus and firewalls aren't perfect yet.
But you take something like networking. People have wanted their computers to talk to each other for just about as long as there have been computers small enough to fit into one room. A little while back I was trying to get file and printer sharing working again between my computer and my girlfriend's after she reinstalled Windows. This should not be a complicated procedure; we both have relatively new computers, so there aren't any legacy issues at play. We're running essentially the same operating system (XP SP2; mine Pro, hers Home). We should be able to plug in, enable file and printer sharing on our respective machines, and go, right?
Yeah, right. Our machines couldn't even see each other until we joined the same workgroup-- there's no reason that should be an issue, but it was. After that I could find her computer, but any attempt to actually get into her shared files made my comp hang for a couple minutes, then give me some crap error message telling me I didn't have permission (PERMISSION? The computer's owner is in the same room, asking me why I can't get her files from her!) and that I should consult my network administrator (it's two !@#$ computers in a bedroom! What's to administrate?)
Turned out I had to install some networking protocol that Microsoft doesn't even officially support any more. If I knew my way around Windows any less well than I do, I probably never would've figured it out, and we'd still be burning CDs and sneakernetting them five feet. In this day and age, there's NO reason why it needs to be this complicated, not to mention slow, laggy, and otherwise unpleasant.
Speaking of slow and laggy, whatever happened to Windows' Add or Remove Programs dealie? It used to work just fine; it did exactly what it was supposed to: give you one place where you could uninstall anything that you didn't want any more. But starting right around Windows 2000, it started taking longer and longer to load the list of programs, and sometimes it would arbitrarily decide not to let you uninstall something, or leave the entry in the list even after a program was uninstalled, or just generally act slow and glitchy as hell. When did generating a list of programs and letting you get rid of them suddenly become such a problem? Especially when third-party tools like CCleaner and Zsoft Uninstaller do it with no problem at all. Can Microsoft really be that much worse at manipulating its own OS?
Or take the Blue Screen of Death. Now, I'm not saying computers should never crash. Computers are complicated machines with dozens of hardware components and in some cases hundreds of software components, often designed by as many companies. Inevitably, something's going to go wrong. Fine.
But when something DOES go wrong, would it kill Microsoft to make an error message that actually tells you what that is, instead of spitting out a bunch of arcane code? So I jot down the gibberish and Google it and get, by way of a solution: more gibberish. The thing is, relatively speaking, I'm pretty good with computers. So if I can't even begin to make heads or tails of this stuff, something's wrong.
I mean, instead of all that mumbo jumbo, would it be so hard for the BSoD to tell me, "It's a driver problem, you might want to try reinstalling some drivers," or, "One of your memory sticks is faulty, kid, you'd better hope it's still under warranty," instead of a bunch of "Page_Fault_In_NonSpooled_Arse_Duck 0x000TYniner" crap?
Or is that really too much to ask?
But you take something like networking. People have wanted their computers to talk to each other for just about as long as there have been computers small enough to fit into one room. A little while back I was trying to get file and printer sharing working again between my computer and my girlfriend's after she reinstalled Windows. This should not be a complicated procedure; we both have relatively new computers, so there aren't any legacy issues at play. We're running essentially the same operating system (XP SP2; mine Pro, hers Home). We should be able to plug in, enable file and printer sharing on our respective machines, and go, right?
Yeah, right. Our machines couldn't even see each other until we joined the same workgroup-- there's no reason that should be an issue, but it was. After that I could find her computer, but any attempt to actually get into her shared files made my comp hang for a couple minutes, then give me some crap error message telling me I didn't have permission (PERMISSION? The computer's owner is in the same room, asking me why I can't get her files from her!) and that I should consult my network administrator (it's two !@#$ computers in a bedroom! What's to administrate?)
Turned out I had to install some networking protocol that Microsoft doesn't even officially support any more. If I knew my way around Windows any less well than I do, I probably never would've figured it out, and we'd still be burning CDs and sneakernetting them five feet. In this day and age, there's NO reason why it needs to be this complicated, not to mention slow, laggy, and otherwise unpleasant.
Speaking of slow and laggy, whatever happened to Windows' Add or Remove Programs dealie? It used to work just fine; it did exactly what it was supposed to: give you one place where you could uninstall anything that you didn't want any more. But starting right around Windows 2000, it started taking longer and longer to load the list of programs, and sometimes it would arbitrarily decide not to let you uninstall something, or leave the entry in the list even after a program was uninstalled, or just generally act slow and glitchy as hell. When did generating a list of programs and letting you get rid of them suddenly become such a problem? Especially when third-party tools like CCleaner and Zsoft Uninstaller do it with no problem at all. Can Microsoft really be that much worse at manipulating its own OS?
Or take the Blue Screen of Death. Now, I'm not saying computers should never crash. Computers are complicated machines with dozens of hardware components and in some cases hundreds of software components, often designed by as many companies. Inevitably, something's going to go wrong. Fine.
But when something DOES go wrong, would it kill Microsoft to make an error message that actually tells you what that is, instead of spitting out a bunch of arcane code? So I jot down the gibberish and Google it and get, by way of a solution: more gibberish. The thing is, relatively speaking, I'm pretty good with computers. So if I can't even begin to make heads or tails of this stuff, something's wrong.
I mean, instead of all that mumbo jumbo, would it be so hard for the BSoD to tell me, "It's a driver problem, you might want to try reinstalling some drivers," or, "One of your memory sticks is faulty, kid, you'd better hope it's still under warranty," instead of a bunch of "Page_Fault_In_NonSpooled_Arse_Duck 0x000TYniner" crap?
Or is that really too much to ask?
