Re: What Vista Should Do

Hi,

First, the busy cursor does not give any indication of how long you're
going to wait. When an app crashes, the busy cursor is there
indefinitely. But I guess yes, there's nothing the software can tell how
long something's gonna take.

But other than that, I guess this is just the limitation of software and
computing, "unpredictability"...

.... at least with my Hi-Fi I could always tell the speaker will go up
instantly when I turn up the volume knob...

Regards

--
Nicholas...

"Overclock Your Life, Then The World"
"Homer J. Simpson" <root@127.0.0.1> wrote in message
news:uEuxKYtPGHA.4976@TK2MSFTNGP11.phx.gbl...
>> - Get rid of the Busy cursors if you want people to feel Vista is
>> responsive (there's a psychology problem with the busy cursor believe
>> it or not...)
>
> What do you suggest as an alternative? I'd rather have a busy cursor
> and know I have to wait than not have a busy cursor at all but have no
> idea why an application isn't responding. The busy cursor serves its
> purpose; it's there to tell people there's no point clicking like it's
> going out of style--nothing else. Or, by "get rid of the Busy
> cursors", are you really suggesting to not make anyone wait for
> anything, ever? (good luck with that...)
>
>> - Use a progress bar to show how long it will take to open a program
>> instead of a busy cursor which you never know will end.
>
> There are already way too many programs out there that have a progress
> bar that goes from 0 to 100%, but do it repeatedly--so in the end, you
> still have no idea how long an operation's going to take. A progress
> bar is useless if not used properly.
>
> It's up to individual developers to properly determine the number of
> operations that still need to be completed in their software and
> update their progress bars accordingly. The OS itself has no idea
> what steps a program has to go through to be fully loaded and
> operational--it's a lot more than just transfering the binary data in
> an EXE into memory.
>
> Nick, don't get me wrong, I'm not rejecting these ideas as silly, I'm
> just saying that to properly implement them, it's gonna take efforts
> from more than just Microsoft. Strictly speaking, both ideas quoted
> above have nothing to do with the OS itself. The OS doesn't decide
> when to use a Busy cursor; individual applications do. The OS doesn't
> (and can't) intelligently update a progress bar when it's loading some
> application. The problem lies with third-party developers.
>
> OTOH, granted, the problem does lie with Microsoft when you see this
> behavior in Microsoft applications, but my point is, none of it has to
> do with the underlying OS--it's up to the individual applications.
> Hence IMNSHO these points don't belong in a "What Vista Should Do"
> thread at all, as it's not up to the OS to fix to begin with...
>
>> Maintanence:
>>
>> - *CLEAN* uninstalls with Windows Installer, not leaving junk in the
>> Program Files, system32, Local Settings, Application Data, Registry,
>> etc
>
> Lots of efforts by lots of different people have been put into this
> over the course of many years. The reality is that there are too many
> "what-if"s, "what-do-we-do-with"s, and
> "how-do-we-not-break-these-when"s.
>
> If I may go on a tangent--I do agree that the problem's been
> compounded by Microsoft in recent years by introducing (in an effort
> to streamline?) folders like Local Settings, Application Data,
> Documents and Settings, My Documents--and it looks like whatever
> consistency there is in that respect between 2000 and XP is being
> broken in Vista... >:-( Thing is, unless you want to break existing
> applications and start over with a clean slate, we have to live with
> the problem. Third-parties cannot make assumptions or organize their
> files in any predetermined fashion if there is no consistency within
> the OS itself...
>
>> Finally:
>>
>> Integrate all the utilities into one, there's too many for a normal
>> person to remember what and where they are. Look at the reality
>> situation:
>>
>> Check Disk
>> Defragmenter
>> Disk Cleanup
>> Backup
>> System Restore
>> Windows Defender
>>
>> That's just insane. Why can't they just make it into one Windows
>> OneCare (Not Live) and let the user click once and leave it do all
>> the hard and dirty work. If MS wants money that's fine, just sell
>> subscriptions for Windows OneCare *Live* that will *add* anti-virus
>> and reg-cleaner. But for the rest of us, we want INTEGRATION.
>
> That sounds an awful lot like MMC snapins that sorta worked with
> Win2K. Unfortunately from what I'm seeing in the CTPs, it doesn't
> really look like this is happening...I could be wrong though--I've
> only spent an hour at the most (so far) with that confused mess that
> is 5308.
>