Bring back Microsoft Bob, the Edsel of desktop applications! Your comment about a launcher reminded me, Maxim ... There was a shareware add-on for Windows, back in my 3.11 days, called "RIPbar" ... effectively a launchbar you could configure very neatly yourself. Looked a little like the launchbar Windows created for MS Office. I liked it, and it helped me keep my desktop very tidy, but it was abandoned at about the time Windows moved from 16-bit to 32-bit processing. The taskbar in Windows functions similarly today, but isn't customized as easily and gets cluttered quickly.
I'd also change Windows' default behavior when you delete something (this reminds me of Arthur C. Clarke: "You've just issued a command which I'm about to execute, Dave. Are you SURE you want me to do that?"). As long as you can recover deleted files from the Recycle Bin, such messages only prompt needless keystrokes. Likewise with almost every other Windows error message, most of which give the end user no actionable information. But my fundamental problem with Redmond is an economic one (another important interaction). I've paid good money for five or six MS operating systems, patched the hell out of them until they were abandoned by their maker, and settled finally on Debian Linux -- which cost me little more than a long download. The occasional configuration headaches with Linux and the Gnome desktop are nothing to compare to Microsoft's bottomless security risks (Fred Langa, Tom Coyote and others have noted for about two decades now that Windows ships with most ports open by default, an invitation to hackers that I've been forced to fix every time I reinstalled or reconfigured). ... Grumble grumble ... Had to ask, didn't you? /back to lurk mode ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=27853 ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
