Seven Wishes for Windows 8
Photo by Christine Landis
There's much in that tip-list to like, though it gets pretty geeky. Still, in the spirit of fair play, I thought I’d lob seven modest tips back in their direction. Because Windows 7 doesn't exactly leave Apple's UI designers wondering "Why didn't I think of that?"
1. Unclean Installs A clean install (wipe your disk drive and start over with zero bits from your last operating system) might be a great idea for Redmond's engineers, and, compared to an awkward, complicated upgrade, go so much more s-m-o-o-t-h-l-y. No. I don’t want to spend days reinstalling everything, only to end up with a system that runs faster but has me running at 50% efficiency because my applications aren't set up to work they way they did before the new OS.
2. End the Dead Ends Can’t upgrade from XP to Windows 7? That is downright cynical. Even if an update-in-place isn't possible, it should be feasible to export settings and changed formats to an external format (USB drive, network drive or separate partition?) and merge those back in when Windows 7 is fresh-installed. Want to charge for that feature? Fine; it's worth it to some of us.
3. Extinguish the Undistinguished Desktop Think out of the box and give us another desktop design. We have lots of applications and their icons are just sitting still like checkers on a checkerboard. Aero previews are slick — sometimes even attractive. But beneath the veneer, starting, stopping and rearranging applications hasn't changed significantly since Windows 95. It's hardly worthwhile to have the desktop showing.
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