I Think I’ll Change My Mind

about the Windows 7 transition. I certainly won’t be among the first to adopt the revisions of Windows 7, unless Microsoft allows the Windows 95 Start Menu behavior to be enabled.

On the other hand, I may move to it sooner than the breakage of one of my pieces of hardware if, as has happened before, someone comes along and fixes the absolutely hosed behavior of Windows that Microsoft is moving to (Many cite the way the system is faster than Vista, and I agree, but that speed is lost when one tries to accomplish certain tasks, and cannot find where the selections to carry out the tasks are – and the time spent looking is greater than any gains in speed. It is therefore not a wash.)

I can imagine a utility, sold for about $25-$30 that puts the old Windows 95 menu system back, and maybe another that puts the inanity of the Control Panel back to a position of sanity.

I never know how many people reading this are below the age of remembrance for certain things in the Microsoft hall-of shame, so if I make references you don’t understand, leave a comment and I’ll try to explain. For those who remember some of the problems with the Windows 3.x interface, you might also remember (vaguely, it took me a few seconds to think what the name of the company was) Plannet Crafters (no typo there).

Plannet Crafters was a little company in Georgia that put out a utility called Plug-In for Windows, which ameliorated, or completely eliminated many of the annoyances of Windows 3.x. It cost very little, and did so much. It was something I showed to every single customer whose system I set up. It was that helpful!

While many small things are available to fix minor annoyances with Windows 95, Windows 98, 98SE, Me, 2000, and XP, there just was never anything like this available, because those versions of Windows did not screw the pooch in the basic interface the way that Vista and now 7 does. There are changes available for the Explorer, or replacements for it ( a complete cottage industry has grown out of Microsoft’s inability to realize that many tasks can be done with a decent file manager that works with text), changes for the way icons can completely engulf the task bar, and even changes available to show the clock in the start menu throbber, instead of the word Start.

This means that, possibly even as I write this, some enterprising fellow, as disgusted with the lack of a workable menu system in 7 as I am, is already working on a ‘drop in’ to restore the working of what everyone and their mother who uses Windows is used to.

So, being the optimist that I am, I send out thoughts of this possibility to everyone, and hope that I am right, with a coding project for this purpose occurring right this minute.

The only other thing I’d like to send out is this: Does anyone know someone who was ever involved in a Microsoft usability test? The company ostensibly has put lots of efforts into these changes, but I just don’t think that it has occurred.   These usability testers could be as scarce as the watchers used by Nielsen for their ratings. In each case, the actual existence of these people certainly seems apocryphal. Well, perhaps if the ‘volunteers’ came from Ward B.

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Television has brought back murder into the home - where it belongs.Alfred Hitchcock