tannoy blog
All Boots Are Size 11, Sir

I feel Microsoft’s flaw with Windows is they believe one size fits all, then half back out from it. Each version of Windows has one standardised interface. That has many advantages, especially the ability to go from one machine to another and just start using it. But they half back out from it with lots of options so the poor end user who doesn’t know his arse from his elbow can get completely confused by a machine with different settings. And, for techies like me, there aren’t nearly enough settings. At the very least, the CTRL–ALT–DEL Task Manager should have an option to revert settings, so they can quickly get out of an unintended mess. Most applications would need to be informed of and take notice of such changes, so they can manage the changes properly too.

But it would be better to provide a number of alternative shells. That way they can keep the waste–of–time crap for air–heads who find pretty animations showing the menus appearing to be more important than the menus themselves. And for people with something between their ears, there could be a shell that gets rid of even the possibility of such empty–headed crap, so we can get on with work, so we know that if we do have to install some software that tries to add in such nonsense, that software gets gored in its logical goolies (hello Real). A menu that appears instantly, instead of going to a damned application to read an icon that I just don’t want to see because all I want to do is run an application, would be so wonderful…