Why Microsoft Should Listen to John Dvorak

In an article dated 8/5/09 on PC Magazine.com , John C. Dvorak talks about the things that are causing the majority of large companies to at least hold off on upgrading to Windows 7, if they do it at all. He states that for many reasons, the computer industry needs Windows 7 to be a hit. It is not simply a Microsoft problem.

Far from being a Microsoft hater, as some would suspect, Dvorak gives really logical reasons why the problem has come about. He states that for a great many, the problem is the lack of an in-place upgrade path. By its insistence upon a level or inclined path, Microsoft makes many users unable to make the upgrade they want, in the manner they want. It ignores the fact that people want the easy path, both literally and figuratively.

Microsoft, by removing any path for an in-place upgrade for Windows XP users, has certainly shot itself in the foot, and perhaps both feet. When we see that Windows XP holds approximately 60% of the market currently, the lack of an easy path is plainly stupid. For Vista users, great ire is being generated by the lack of the slightly downward inclination of a path for the Vista Ultimate users that found out that Microsoft broke its word twice, discontinuing the Ultimate add-ins that were to continue to flow to the users of this grand and glorious version, and also finding that what existed was not really that ‘ultimate’ after all.

After that, Mr. Dvorak states that the largest impediment to the in-place upgrades, other than the whims of Microsoft, is the registry. Yes, that piece of binary difficulty that thwarts the casual user, aggravates the advanced user, and is a source of continuous joy for the professional software developer, who depends upon the tortuous journey with unrelated paths to protect software from being used in a manner not specified.

Mr. Dvorak has made similar claims in the past, but few people took him seriously. I think that has finally begun to change. The registry has frustrated enough people by now so that it is clear that this is something whose time not only has come and gone, but should never have been. The developer of the concept of the registry should be hung in effigy.

I’m not the only one who has groused about this—everyone complains about it. Yet Microsoft does nothing. Some attempts to move programs with the Registry entries intact have been developed, but with some programs it gets even more stupid, with data appearing in hidden directories in application data folders that shouldn’t even exist. To perfectly move an app, all this sort of miscellaneous junk has to be discovered somehow and also moved. It’s hopeless. Some attempts have been made to develop installation systems that will isolate the entire program within a container in such a way that it can be installed on either a computer without the Registry or even on a thumb drive. This is a step in the right direction, but vendors see it as an efficient architecture for piracy. You can’t win.

If anything will drive people to Linux, it will be this Registry-centric architecture of Windows. Linux does not use this concept, although some maniacs are promoting the idea for some unknown reason.

The idea of a registry is only truly bad for the average, law-abiding user because the people at Microsoft did nothing to force a containment of entries within a certain structure, so that the programs that have been developed to remove the grunge that is left behind can be a bit more efficient. They also did nothing to enforce the idea that programs should antiseptically remove all traces of themselves in the registry. This is, once again, Microsoft bowing to the wants of the software developers, to prevent piracy.

Because of these wants and needs, will we ever see a Windows without a registry? The sheer need for backwards compatibility would seem to say no.

Is it silly and stupid? Yes. Will it change? Probably not. Why not? People are basically lazy, and don’t want to complain enough to force Microsoft  to either repair the registry process of writing, and then removing upon deletion of the program, or start fresh, without it.

If enough people don’t switch to Windows 7, and stay with Windows XP, perhaps in 2014 Microsoft will be encouraged (forced) to make a version of Windows that puts on more than new clothes, as Vista and 7 have done, and drops the registry like a hot potato.

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The depressing thing about tennis is that no matter how good I get, I’ll never be as good as a wall.- Mitch Hedberg