Archive for Software
February 19, 2008 at 12:13 pm
The “I switched to -insert operating system here-” article has become a common theme on blogs and social media websites. For a while there a few months ago, it seemed like a different “hey, look at me, I switched to Ubuntu” article landed on the frontpage of digg every other day.
After reading the latest one on digg, I’m struck by a great revelation: these articles don’t prove a damn thing. It’s like professing to the world that you prefer Coke to Pepsi, except masquerading the article as a legitimate technology piece. That being said, the article in question is an outlier in that it goes a bit into the logistics of the case in question, as opposed to being some guy talking about how his new OS choice has increased his fertility and helped him lose weight.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Ubuntu and respect anyone willing to take the time and effort to try new things. The world needs more people who are up to trying software alternatives. My beef is that the situation and opinion of other people shouldn’t influence your own. Yes, Ubuntu works for many people who like to talk about it a lot. But you may be different. Inversely, many more people are happy with Windows or OS X. More power to them.
My advice to anyone reading this is to try software alternatives and find the perfect setup for you. My view is that all of the world’s software is a giant, metaphysical toolbox in the sky. I can pick and choose between many different applications and frontends in order to finely tune my computer to my personal workflow and computing style.
Tags: Gripes, Operating Systems, Software
January 11, 2008 at 2:25 am
Most people will agree that one of the most annoying things about Windows Vista is how it prompts for confirmation before embarking on any task with the slightest semblance of administrativeness. For example, if you want to install a program or open up msconfig, it asks if you’re ABSOLUTELY SURE you want to do so.
Generally speaking, if you’re one of the people who finds this incredibly annoying, then you are fairly adept at computing. When Vista dumbly asks you if you really want to do something, you most likely know what you’re doing and don’t need to be arbitrarily warned of the profoundness of your potential actions.
That being said, this is an example of software being designed for the people who don’t know what they’re doing. Linda Luddite is going to come to a Vista confirmation prompt and only then become aware of how her subsequent actions can possibly negatively affect her future dealings with her computer.
Thinking globally, this is all well and fine. Computing systems should be designed to be fully usable by everyone, including those lacking finessed expertise. For years, many people have been afraid of technology mostly because of their inability to deal with and use it.
This usually isn’t their fault, though. The software industry has always been, to varying extents, plagued with confused menu systems and shoddy user interfaces. I blame this for my fathers pessimistic dislike of computers as a whole. His only experience with them has been with Windows, and thus he attributes computers to having to struggle to do what he wants.
However, for technologically-knowledgeable people this kind of thing does nothing but slow us down. We know what we’re doing, and we don’t want some bullshit popup to impare our ability to efficiently do it.
Often as user-friendliness increases, as does the tendency for software to talk down to the user. The key is the find the balance between toning things down for the computer-illiterate while maintaining full usability for the rest of us.
Tags: Gripes, Software
December 22, 2007 at 2:08 pm
Being back home for the holidays, I took it upon myself to update my parents’ Windows box. I leave Windows Update off so they don’t get inundated with bullshit update popups and opt instead toward periodic manual updates.
After using Ubuntu for three months, the Windows XP update system comes off as an absolute chore. It requires that you use Internet Explorer as opposed to Ubuntu’s native update manager. The update packages take much longer to download and install than those of Ubuntu (granted, they’re usually much larger). The overall experience is frustrating and not nearly as streamlined as it could be.
The icing on the cake was the driver that Windows Update suggested for the Radeon 9200 graphics card in my parents’ computer. I queued up all the suggested updates and went back to help set up the Christmas tree. After rebooting the computer, Windows booted in 800×600 with pixelly, distorted 8-bit color. In a nutshell, everything looked like shit, thanks to the POS driver that Windows Update suggested.
The problem wasn’t hard to fix. I got ATI’s latest driver from their website, installed, and rebooted to find everything back to the usable norm. What bothers me is that if a relatively computer-illiterate person encountered this problem after being told by Microsoft that their system was dandy and up-to-date, they would have been dead in the water.
Not everyone would know to go fetch a legit driver from their graphics card manufacturer’s website, let alone who their manufacturer is or even that the problem is with the graphics driver. Bottom line, one should design systems to be usable by those who are least proficient with them.
Tags: Gripes, Software
