OPINION
OPINION
As much as they would like you to think that it was, Windoze is NOT an operating system, it is a poorly written 'shell', a front end, a flashy gimmicky metaphor (to use their word).
"But what about its multitasking facilities?" I hear you ask, well since, for better of for worse the Intel chip is in charge of all that, so you cannot give them any real credit there.
So, what do I have against this pretty interface? Well, besides the facts that it is poorly written, bug-ridden, and a complete rip off of the Mac OS, I have this to say:
Windoze, is, by it's own claim to fame, a 'Graphical User Interface'. You would think therefore that, someone on the Windoze team, might have had an idea, of how to actually program graphics on a PC... No way.
To take a simple example. The windoze screen saver could be programmed very easily to scroll a message from right to left on the PCs screen. Very nice, simple and lets face it, EVERY store in EVERY town thought so too, and had 10 PCs all scrolling away...
The result, to a M/C graphics programmer was enough to make you cry. No matter what the message was, the scrolling was a jerky, messy, and rather pathetic affair. Now the PC can do scrolling, and it can do it very, very well indeed, all you have to do is to be able to program the video card, not too much to ask? Too much for them clearly...
But it gets worse, the graphics ALWAYS jerked, even on lovely machines... and yet, with the addition of barely 4 lines of Machine Code, code which checks for the vertical retrace of the screen before printing, ANY of the machines could have printed it up! My 186 could have done it! You could scroll text just by plotting 50 bytes in the loop, but Oh, no the screen saver had to reprint the whole text...
What I am trying to say is that, the vertical retrace code, is one of the most basic functions you'll ever learn in any PC Graphics book, but Oh, no, timesliceing must be operational, even when it is not being used! Madness! Utter madness!
Ok, so thats just a screen saver, but, I am saying that the whole program seemed to have no idea just where is was running. If you want to write a PC program you MUST base it around what the PC can do... you can't just write generic code and hope that it will be OK on the PC because it won't. A "Graphical User Interface", suggests that, yes, you *are* going to spend some of the computers processing power on making things look pretty, but windoze takes this power, and then wastes it!
My next example is even simpler. When you move a window, only the outline moves, the window and contents are only updated when you release the mouse key, (NT excepted). You can program my 486 to do that! You can have 32 windows all randomly moving around the screen overlapping where necessary! Why can't windoze? Why? Because its code is too poor, and its programmers had little idea just how the computer actually worked.
Windoze now claims to be an operating system. Where is its batch language? I still use DOS for many tasks, why? Because, I can type in two letters, and the computer will just process away for the next 10 minutes... You have to rely on shareware to provide a batch language for Windoze itself. Even the recorder is now on the way out.
Windoze is based on a fundamental misconception, that the mouse is a useful tool for doing work other than graphics. It is not. I can sit here clicking my mouse away for the next 4 hours, but work only starts when the keyboard is used. Mice are great for mindless web surfing, but there their usefulness ends, and their capacity for time wasting begins. Help the novice? Well, in my experience they are NOT always very intuitive devices and do require some time for people to learn, and so, in fact do contribute to 'technofear'.
A shell should make loading programs easier... The program 'launcher' was dreadful, it was very slow and irritating to use, and ruined the whole 'desktop metaphor' anyway, by becoming a sub-desktop, full of sub-desktops.. not like any office equipment I know. It took the new release for windoze to implement an efficient method of lauching applications, and even then alternative right click menu scheme we had all changed to anyway was faster. It finally took the internet to bring forth a badly needed new 'metaphor' for Windoze to steal.
The last few snipes at Windoze are just my own personal gripes: I have always hated DOUBLE clicking on things and found it to be definitely non-intuitive for learners, and what about the right button? How come it wasn't used earlier? The last complaint is about the new Windoze keyboard. It has an extra key, between ALT and CNTRL, I know they think they rule the world, but they don't and, while they may not like to admit it, the best games have never come from them. These game all use the CONTROL and ALT it is just as much a standard now, as CONTROL-C etc. Why they decided they needed a new key in the first place, I don't know, and why they decided to put it between Control and Alt, I'll never know, maybe it was specifically to make me MAD!
|
michelle writes: Comments: Congratulations to James RE this story. Microsoft sucks big time! Warning to cyber-folk don't waste your money getting any form of Microsoft certification (opinion of this commentor) and RE the Microsoft keyboards what a waste of space and so slow for those of us with fast fingers - used to drive me crazy because the keyboard just would not keep up, must say though that we actually got a reply from the PR dept of Microsoft that in their opinion there was nothing wrong with that model natural pro. RE the DOUBLE clicking agree with James, what's with it anyway and when teaching beginners the double click thing can be quite slow in sinking in... and folks don't forget your right click! BUT ...if you want speed though forget the mouse as James suggests and go for keyboard commands (be brave try it)! |
Please tell me what you thought...
|
A page from James David Chapman's website.
Located at: http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~jchap/ Site mirrored here at: http://www.j.chap.btinternet.co.uk |
|
|
This page last updated:
My rating for the page: 
|