Vista makes Tech support harder!!!

S

steve sonsino

Vista makes Tech support harder!!! And it starts with the start button!
See image>>
http://www.istartedsomething.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/taskbars.jpg


Win98
Tech support> Press start button
Caller> Done

WinXP
Tech support> Press start button
Caller> Done

WinVista
Tech support> Press the start button.
Caller> What start button?
Tech support> THE start button!!! Ohh... yes you have Vista, they removed
the word start so its a start button but it doesnt say "start" anymore...
Press the round button thingy on the bottom left corner of your screen that
is called an orb or perl.

Caller> I dont see a perl anywhere!

Tech support>Its called a perl but its not really like a perl, Its the round
thing with the microsoft flag !!!

Caller>I dont see no flag either!

Tech support>It IS a FLAG I TELL YOU! It just doesnt look like it anymore
because Microsoft changed the design into a square thingy with 4 colors,
red, yellow, green and blue! THEY CALL IT ORB or PERL, JUST PRESS WHATEVER
YOUR SEE THATS ROUND! AAAAAAARGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

Caller> This Vista is TOTAL nonsense and you are yelling to me for no
reason!!! Can I return vista and get XP?
 
C

carl feredeck

You assume too much... what if its a new user?

I can navigate windows with blindfolds and without a mouse... but not
everyone is like that.


Rick Rogers said:
Yep, after all how could it possibly be assumed that after 12 years of
usage that any home use would not know the location of the start button?

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com
Click to expand...
 
A

Adam Albright

Yep, after all how could it possibly be assumed that after 12 years of usage
that any home use would not know the location of the start button?
Click to expand...

I wonder what Einstein at Microsoft decided you should press Start to
shutdown the system. That's like sticking a phone up your ass and
yelling HELLO, HELLO is anybody there?
 
A

Andrew McLaren

steve sonsino said:
Vista makes Tech support harder!!! And it starts with the start button!
Click to expand...

Well, having worked in support for 20+ years, I can tell you the new Start
Button in Vista is the very LEAST of the issues surrounding Product Support,
in the early 21st century.

I suspect this post is just an attempt to criticise something -
*anything!* - about Vista, as part of a general Vista-bashing exercise. My
advice: don't bother; there are enough genuine problems in Vista, we don't
need to go making up new ones with speculative problems we haven't actually
encountered. Spend a day or two answering questions in this forum, and
you'll have enough real problems to complain about; gripes about
hypothetical Start Button issues will be long since fogotten ...

FWIW, the new Start button "pearl" did not emerge from an anonymous,
faceless, child-eating Microsoft. It was largely the design of a person,
Jenny Lam: a designed in Microsoft's User Experience department:
http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=161254

Whether it was approved purely on aesthetic grounds, or whether it was also
subjected to any kind of usability studies, I dunno. FWIW, Jenny
subsequently left Microsoft in March. She followed ex-MSFT design guy Hillel
Cooperman to a small, independent Seattle-based design company; see
http://www.istartedsomething.com/20070403/jenny-joins-jacksonfish/

Let's have some critique of Vista, by all means. But let's make it real,
genuine, useful critique; not fatuous pissing-in-the-wind about imaginary
complaints. Especially which can't/won't be fixed.

Just my 2 cents :)
 
S

steve sonsino

do you know who designed the vista start menu ?


Andrew McLaren said:
Well, having worked in support for 20+ years, I can tell you the new Start
Button in Vista is the very LEAST of the issues surrounding Product
Support, in the early 21st century.

I suspect this post is just an attempt to criticise something -
*anything!* - about Vista, as part of a general Vista-bashing exercise. My
advice: don't bother; there are enough genuine problems in Vista, we don't
need to go making up new ones with speculative problems we haven't
actually encountered. Spend a day or two answering questions in this
forum, and you'll have enough real problems to complain about; gripes
about hypothetical Start Button issues will be long since fogotten ...

FWIW, the new Start button "pearl" did not emerge from an anonymous,
faceless, child-eating Microsoft. It was largely the design of a person,
Jenny Lam: a designed in Microsoft's User Experience department:
http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=161254

Whether it was approved purely on aesthetic grounds, or whether it was
also subjected to any kind of usability studies, I dunno. FWIW, Jenny
subsequently left Microsoft in March. She followed ex-MSFT design guy
Hillel Cooperman to a small, independent Seattle-based design company; see
http://www.istartedsomething.com/20070403/jenny-joins-jacksonfish/

Let's have some critique of Vista, by all means. But let's make it real,
genuine, useful critique; not fatuous pissing-in-the-wind about imaginary
complaints. Especially which can't/won't be fixed.

Just my 2 cents :)
Click to expand...
 
J

Jon

Adam Albright said:
I wonder what Einstein at Microsoft decided you should press Start to
shutdown the system. That's like sticking a phone up your ass and
yelling HELLO, HELLO is anybody there?
Click to expand...


That was the justification for changing it (at least ostensibly), although
I don't see any semantic ambiguities about starting (or initiating) a
shutdown process.

That said, I prefer it simply because it looks better.
 
L

Lang Murphy

Andrew McLaren said:
Well, having worked in support for 20+ years, I can tell you the new Start
Button in Vista is the very LEAST of the issues surrounding Product
Support, in the early 21st century.

I suspect this post is just an attempt to criticise something -
*anything!* - about Vista, as part of a general Vista-bashing exercise. My
advice: don't bother; there are enough genuine problems in Vista, we don't
need to go making up new ones with speculative problems we haven't
actually encountered. Spend a day or two answering questions in this
forum, and you'll have enough real problems to complain about; gripes
about hypothetical Start Button issues will be long since fogotten ...

FWIW, the new Start button "pearl" did not emerge from an anonymous,
faceless, child-eating Microsoft. It was largely the design of a person,
Jenny Lam: a designed in Microsoft's User Experience department:
http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=161254

Whether it was approved purely on aesthetic grounds, or whether it was
also subjected to any kind of usability studies, I dunno. FWIW, Jenny
subsequently left Microsoft in March. She followed ex-MSFT design guy
Hillel Cooperman to a small, independent Seattle-based design company; see
http://www.istartedsomething.com/20070403/jenny-joins-jacksonfish/

Let's have some critique of Vista, by all means. But let's make it real,
genuine, useful critique; not fatuous pissing-in-the-wind about imaginary
complaints. Especially which can't/won't be fixed.

Just my 2 cents :)
Click to expand...


Andrew,

Good post. Thanks!

Lang
 
A

Andrew McLaren

do you know who designed the vista start menu ?

Do you mean the general Chicago-style Start menu? Or the specifc Vista
incarnation, with the vertically stacked options, instead of fly-out menus?

Actually, I can't put a name to an individual designer for either. I used to
suspect the original Windows 95 Start menu was a ripoff^H^H^H inspired by HP
OpenVue. But informal conversations with Microsoft folks indicated that, no:
it was just part of the computer UI zeitgeist at the time, and resembled
(and was in turn, copied by) many other systems of the period. I guess the
specific Vista incarnation was developed in the Windows MSX team.

Microsoft's design decisions are often based on solid empirical testing.
Intuitive perceptions of what's good and bad in UI, do not necessarily have
much significance. It can be hard to refute a UI designer who's holding a
sheath of usability lab results, when all you have is a gut feel you don't
like the new UI. Likewise, UI design is a complex science with a large body
of scientific and professional research and literature (see for example
http://sigchi.org). We can, and should, criticise specific aspects of
Microsoft's UI decisions (and I do! I do!); but it helps even when
criticising, to recognise their decisions probably weren't naive ones.

FWIW I hated the new Vista Start menu when it first appeared, now I don't
even think about it; even when flipping back and forth between Vista nd
Server 2003 and XP machines, all day long (not to mention Solaris and Linux
machines, too).
 
X

xfile

Microsoft's design decisions are often based on solid empirical testing.
Intuitive perceptions of what's good and bad in UI, do not necessarily
have much significance.
Click to expand...

In theory, it is, but in practice, it's not necessary the case especially in
a large corporation in which everything can boil down to politics, although
I don't know if this is always the case in MS.

Take a simple example from the new IE7 and one will know it contradicts to
all known UI desgin - search box.

If one uses any web site (Google, MSN or any other) for search, you will
find the search box will be located right in the middle or on the left side
of the page. Why? Those two locations fit into the most convient "eye
movements" when people are reading books or screens - Yes, based on
scientific reasearches coducted "decades" ago. Many web designers don't
know that but follow the norms except there are scientific reasons for why
norms have been developed.

But where does IE 7 put it? On the top right corner (and also removed
customization option) so one is forced to turn his/her head to right and
move eyes to that corner in order to type words into search box. The same
thing goes for moving your mouse to toolbars and so on. This kind of design
is the most counter-productive if it is based on scientific researches.

Things like this happened a lot in recent MS products. Well, I'd like to
believe that they "still" do it on "solid empirical testing" but evidences
suggested otherwise.

I am not trying to bash Vista but simply pointing out that what should have
happened doesn't necessary will alway happen in a large corporation. What
really counts is what are presented.

My two cents.
 
A

Andrew McLaren

Yep, I agree. There are lots of bad UI design decisions in Microsoft
products; and I suspect that some carefully made plans and designs get
overturned at the last minute by managerial fiat. I was just suggesting we
should assume the naive case.
 
X

xfile

Yes, I also agree with you. Everything considered, it still has one of the
easiest to use UI compared with other "alternatives" especially those for
geeks.

Unfortunately, it's a one-way street, people want easier and easier and
simpler and simpler and it's a neverending challege for product designers.
I don't know about others but my cristisms are maily based on wanting it to
be even better :)
 
C

Christopher R. Lee

Andrew McLaren said:
Well, having worked in support for 20+ years, I can tell you the new Start
Button in Vista is the very LEAST of the issues surrounding Product
Support, in the early 21st century.

I suspect this post is just an attempt to criticise something -
*anything!* - about Vista, as part of a general Vista-bashing exercise. My
advice: don't bother; there are enough genuine problems in Vista, we don't
need to go making up new ones with speculative problems we haven't
actually encountered. Spend a day or two answering questions in this
forum, and you'll have enough real problems to complain about; gripes
about hypothetical Start Button issues will be long since fogotten ...
Click to expand...

- - - - - - - - -

I can understand your frustration at this sort of question*.

However, users need to vent their frustration somehow, bearing in mind the
major insoluble problems of expensive and incompatible hardware and
software. It's a conspiracy, as they say in sporting circles.

Cordialement

* There are plenty stupid things to niggle about at this sort of level. For
example, Program Files is renamed 'Programmes' (in French) in the explorer.
It's worse than aliased filenames in UNIX. How am I supposed to find my way
around?

- - - - - - - - - -
[snip]
 
A

Andrew McLaren

Christopher R. Lee said:
* There are plenty stupid things to niggle about at this sort of level.
For example, Program Files is renamed 'Programmes' (in French) in the
explorer. It's worse than aliased filenames in UNIX. How am I supposed to
find my way
Click to expand...

Heh, don't get me started on Internationalisation Issues in Vista! :)

For years, English speakers have had to put up with Americanisms like
"Colors" in Windows. But Vista has introduced a whole swag of new solecisms:
Personalize (personalise)
Network Center (Network Centre)
Welcome Center (welcome centre)
Sync Center (sync centre)
Organize (organise)
Optimize (optimise)
... etc ..
I think it's all part of a plan to make our children ready for American
"Free-Trade Agreements", whereby Australia will become the 52nd State of the
US (or more likely a dependent colony, like Puerto Rico).
 
A

Adam Albright

Heh, don't get me started on Internationalisation Issues in Vista! :)
Click to expand...

Funny story...

Jay Leno of the Tonight Show recently related an experience he had. He
was in Europe, somewhere in the UK I think, saying he went into a
fancy restaurant for breakfast. Jay tells the waiter he wants six
pancakes, a fairly typical American breakfast.

The waiter looks at him kind of odd and confirms you said you want SIX
pancakes sir?

Jay say yes, six pancakes please. Shortly after the chef sticks his
head out of the kitchen and yells out sir, you want SIX pancakes for
breakfast?

Jay now getting a little annoyed yells back, yes, six pancakes
wondering what the waiter and now chef finds so odd about his order.

He waits, and waits and almost a hour goes by and still no breakfast
so Jay is getting a little upset everybody but him has already been
served breakfast.

Finally the waiter comes and gives Jay his breakfast, six pan cakes.

Jay, confused asks why did you bring me six pound cakes?

Pound cakes sir? We call them pan cakes, that's what you ordered.
That's why I asked you if you're sure you wanted six of them and after
all it takes awhile to bake a pan cake.

What Jay wanted of course was pancakes, known as flapjacks or griddle
cakes in the UK.

Don't get me started on how the British maul the language. ;-)
 

Ask a Question

Want to reply to this thread or ask your own question?

You'll need to choose a username for the site, which only take a couple of moments. After that, you can post your question and our members will help you out.

Ask a Question

Similar Threads

From Windows 95 to Windows Vista SP1 RC1 - the Evolution of the Start Button 2
story if windows.. now the golden era of MS has ended 43
More Tech Support Humour... 5
Charging for support when SYSTEM DOWN 16
Vista: The PC Enthusiasts worst nightmare. 13
Valentines letter to my vista 5
Where can i find genuine free tech support??...(off topic post......sorry) 19
WIN key and poor functionality of Vista 2

Top