How does one determine the 'feel' of performance then? We can lietrally see a progress bar 'progresses' faster, boot-up time shorter or web browsing more responsive. Nevertheless, guess it's not as 'obvious' as having something prettier, cooler and more pleasing to the eye.

@KW: Exactly, because in my experience of UI, you have to hit users square between the eyes with a ten-pound lump hammer for them to register that something has changed. Applications loading more quickly holds no immediate interest for them; they are still 'waiting for something to happen'. But if, when it does, and it suddenly has the wow! factor, they will think it was money well spent.

It's about time they completely get rid of that Windows for Workgroups 3.1 file open dialog! It still pops up when you try to install a new font in Vista.

For me, polish is important and the bulkiness keeps me away. That calc looks great!

If they did that (on all apps) on vista I'd have switched.

I'm easy I guess...

"Don't bother improving your product unless it results in visible changes the user can see, find, and hopefully appreciate."
pfff rubbish.
The first thing I do with a new instance of an OS is remove the crud such as visual styles. I want things fast not beautiful, does a performance increase result in what you call "visible changes"?
Are you trying to suggest that ever iteration of an application should require the users to learn how to reuse it????

on the other hand, many people stick with IE6 because MS changed the UI too much in IE7. If they made the transition to IE7 less painful by sticking to the old interface (but with tabs), IE6 wouldn't still have a market share of 60% and the lives of web developers would be much, much easier.

People won't upgrade when there's no visible change, but people won't upgrade either when they need to re-learn too many things!

Ps. The new calculator is looks a lot like the Mac Calculator with some buttons in awkward places (AND and OR should be next to each other!):

www.pixelbart.nl/files/calculator_xp_vs_windows7_vs_osx_leopard.png

Contrary to your opinion, not only visual changes are required, but also keeping known conventions.
Vista included many changes of how the OS reacted and had a too high learning curve.

For me, windows 7 is vista relaunched - it still has the same learning curve, and unless proven otherwise, the same limitations of having a resources hungry OS.

windows 7 is Vista relaunched

Vista calculator is clearly diferent from XP calculator. In XP I can do 1440 * 900 - ( 1280 * 1024) without crashing the calculator

"The innards of Calc - the arithmetic engine - was completely thrown away and rewritten from scratch."

He's kidding, right?

A calculator's internal is a trivial Programming 101 task. And the calculators which have been included for years in Gnome, KDE and MacOSX (which also has the awesome 3D graphing app) have run circles around it. And probably still do.

It's still no match to speedcrunch. Won't use.

But in general I guess that users are less interested into a new look. What they want to have is that damn thing running (as easy and fast as possible).

How about this statement:
"Visitors to this blog are not a good representation of Windows users in general"
So if we use an ultra geeky mentality (like me) to judge an OS, the outcome is rather skewed away from reality.

Calculator and Paint are updated. Paint has a nice Office 2007-like ribbon. Notepad still the same.

For notepad, it's particularly annoying. A decent software developer could write notepad by himself in under a week, and that includes unit tests. Ditto Wordpad. In fact, in some ways Wordpad is easier. Just plop an RTF Textbox on a form, and most of it is done for you already.

I haven't checked the font installer to see if it's still ugly.

Did they fix the dos prompt or do I still have to right click to paste? I hate right clicking to paste...

I agree with pixelbart, that making too many changes to the UI is a major pain point with users.

I don't like Vista because it took away the interface for the way I did almost everything in XP and previous versions of Windows. They moved things and took away easy routs to get to certain configuration options.

It felt like I was using an operating system designed and polished by non-Windows users. It was more foreign to me than many of the Linux Distributions I have tried over the years.

Freecell looks all pretty now too.

I tried the beta and liked it, still feels like vista but with lots of fit and finish.

The Task Manager update is also very nice with all the new graphing for disk usage and some more process information

> I saw a screenshot a few days ago that made me think Windows 7 Beta might actually be worth checking out.

If the calc screenshot is what motivated you to check out Windows 7 Beta - I'm very worried about you! :)

"And with Calc, that's exactly what happened: Massive technical improvements. No visual improvement. And nobody noticed."

There are plenty of people who only care about visual improvement. There are plenty of us who only care about technical improvements. To please both types of people, you would need to improve both the technical AND visual attributes.

"It's evidence that Microsoft is going to pay attention to the visible parts of the operating system this time around."

Did you not see all the transparent effects in Vista?? Perhaps calc didn't get a visual overhaul, but Vista itself had PLENTY of visible "upgrades". The problem is that it lacked any USEFUL non-visible upgrades. UAC and DRM were not features people wanted to use. So while it might have pleased some of the visual crowd, it did nothing for the techies.

@foo:
'does a performance increase result in what you call "visible changes"?'

Yes, it does.

That calc ui is very web2.0. Guess that's why users want these days, everything to look like a Mac?

I get a much better calculator if I rotate my iPhone.

It's worth noting (for those that haven't tried the new Win 7 Calc) that the above screen shot is of Calc in "Programmer Mode." There's also Standard, Scientific, and Statistics modes.

Would've been nice to have a graphing mode, oh well.

I would want to switch to win7 just because of that new calculator :-D

Dead on Jeff

The main issues is that windows is a developer universe so people think in functions rather than in experiences.

As I normally say it's not the "what" but the "how" that's important.

A button is not just a button that is defined by the function that sits behind the click, it's also the actual visual appearance of the button before the click. It's part of the experience.

The comments here have gotten really awful ever since that Unfinished Game post (maybe before, and I wasn't paying close attention).

Here's a newsflash for all of you:

1. Users do notice performance, but on a subconscious level. Users of unresponsive applications will become more frustrated with small problems.

2. Nobody except the most pretentious of nerds actually turns off visual styles and effects anymore. With modern hardware, the idea that this measurably improves performance is pure superstition.

3. IE6 doesn't have a market share of anywhere CLOSE to 60%. It's already under 20%, with IE7 hovering around 50%. Turns out that (gasp!) the UI change was actually an improvement for the vast majority of people, sort of like Office 2007.

4. A calculator's internal engine is only a trivial CS101 class if you are still taking CS101. If you actually bothered to read the post, you would understand why it was a non-trivial task for the Windows Calc.

5. Windows 7 is Windows 7. Repeating over and over that it is "Vista relaunched" does not make it so.

@Shane It did _alot_ for the techies, the vista failure made them discover mac.

"The Task Manager update is also very nice with all the new graphing for disk usage and some more process information"

It's there since Vista.

I think MS had to go for a compromise - if they also tried to change system's visuals more than just to show off new infrastructure code (see wddm and aero), they'd risk some even more problems and release delays. They've had time to stabilize the infrastructure and now they're going to take advantage of it, whether it's aero (aero shake, x-ray window view, better taskbar thumbnails) or the improved security (simplifying UAC and making the world a better place because of so many more apps running with low privileges now).

"That calc ui is very web2.0. Guess that's why users want these days, everything to look like a Mac?"

That certainly doesn't look like a Mac at all. And that's one of the bigger problems with Vista: they tried to make it look too much like a Mac, but failed miserably. The Mac UI style is neither fisher-pricey nor visually cluttered like Vista's.

People don't move to Vista because XP is good enough and Vista is a disruptive upgrade. Today users want incremental upgrades, just look what Apple is preparing to to with Snow Leopard. Microsoft doesn't undestand this and instead gives them bling and pointless UI redesigns.

Of course none of this changes the fact that a calculator app that attempts to mimic a physical calculator, complete with graphical buttons that you click with a mouse, and a single line display is completely freakin' stupid to the core.

Give me bc anyday over that piece of crap.

I saw PalmSource learn this the very hard way. When they acquired Be, Inc. they spent three years working on a new OS called Palm OS 6. It that looked and behaved exactly like the previous Palm OS versions. Under the covers it was more advanced, powerful, consistent and stable. It had real memory management, threading, processes, and other features adopted from BeOS. And nobody wanted it.

The Palm OS Licensees (which were rapidly disappearing) didn't want it. End users didn't want it. PalmSource backpedaled and called it Palm OS Cobalt so it didn't seem like a direct replacement for the existing OS. In the end they spent three years developing a product that didn't appear on a single device.

During that time Palm, Inc. (the hardware half of the Palm family) was forced to do the innovating. They introduced Bluetooth libraries, soft input areas, better flash card support, and other tangible new features.

Palm recently announced it has developed <a href="http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/08/the-palm-pre/">the Palm Pre and webOS</a>. This is Palm giving PalmSource (now ACCESS) the final snubbing it deserves. Palm no longer uses Palm OS! When Palm developed a new OS, it made something that doesn't resemble the outdated Palm OS at all, and early reviews are quite positive.

I don't totally agree with this post. I do agree that all improvements should improve the end user's experience in some way, but I don't think that the improvement has to be directly related to the change or that the user has to be consciously aware of the improvement to appreciate it.

What about refactoring code to improve maintainability or reusability, for example? The user will probably not notice a change like this, but it could potentially give the user a better experience. Maybe the software will be released sooner or updates will get out faster. These types of changes aren't always worth making, but I think they certainly can be.

@Aaron G:

I googled for some stats and found out that IE's market share is around 75%, with 40% for IE7 and 35% for IE6. So I made a mistake in my previous post, but the real percentage still supports my point. Everyone I know who still uses IE6 does so because they find IE7's UI awkward to use, because it's very different from what they are used to. Maybe it's technically better and more streamlined, but most people don't care about streamlined user interfaces. Just look at the popularity of Hotmail and MySpace.

The main goal of IE7 should have been to stop people from using the awkward and insecure IE6. IE6 is the one and only browser used by people who just accept default software and don't bother to look further. The rest of us switched to Firefox/Opera a long time ago. So pulling people away from IE6 is a very difficult task, and is hampered by the revolutionary IE7 UI.

@myself "all improvements should improve the end user's experience"

Wow, how obvious. :P This line should've been "all changes should improve the end user's experience."

One shouldn't confuse "UI improvements" with "more eye-candy". Making things transparent and glide everywhere is very different to working on making things more intuitive and accessible with less clicks for common tasks and increased consistency between applications.

Unfortunately I haven't met a PC-based calculator app that allows typing in formulas/equations the way you write them. For me that was why the mighty Sharp EL-531GH may never be bettered. D.A.L. Direct Algebraic Logic may have been a silly name, but it was very useful.

http://www.voidware.com/calcs/el531p.htm

For me the batteries lasted about 5 years before I simply swapped them round and they lasted at least another 5 years. I think they still live. Though I haven't used it much in the last couple of years, so I may have taken out the batteries to prevent leakage.

lol...

is there someone at Microsoft or any Windows user able to differentiate between an Operating System, User Interface and an Application? I think not.

Fortunately I abandoned Windows 2 years ago.

Slightly on a tangent, from a support perspective, we discourage our customers from switching to Vista as our website solution does not work properly under Vista.

From a personal standpoint, I have yet to see a computer running Vista that did not have problems.

I'm getting pretty excited about Windows 7 myself - here's a preview of it:

http://xkcd.com/528/

:)

I'v been using Windows 7 for a couple days now and its waaaaaaaaay better than Vista. It boots faster and is snapper, then XP. Also they fixed UAC. It only took up about 5G of space and the iso was only 2G.
Plus I tried it in a VM with only 512ram and it ran fine.

I think they got it right this time. Can't wait until it comes out.

So, by this logic, Linux is dead?

@pixelbart:

Most people still using IE 6 either:

a) Have no clue how or why to upgrade to IE 7
b) Are on an old OS that doesn't support IE 7
c) Are working in a large org with an IT department that doesn't support upgrading to IE 7

Out of these three, the most IE 6 users are because of a combination of b) and c).

@fourstar:

"Applications loading more quickly holds no immediate interest for them; they are still 'waiting for something to happen'."

It really depends how much quicker the process runs. If a process-intensive task goes from 18 minutes to 17 minutes, users won't notice, since they've probably gone off to do something else anyway. But if the improvement is from 61 seconds to 1 second, people will notice. Even a change from 15 seconds to 5 seconds will be noticed. See Jakob Nielsen's article [http://www.useit.com/papers/responsetime.html] on the topic. It's a bit old, but people's reaction times probably haven't changed much over the last 3,000 years or so.

That screenshot doesn't inspire me with admiration for the fit and finish of Windows 7. There's a button that (apparently) *doesn't do anything*! The logical shifts have left on the left, right on the right (duh) but the rotates have left on the right and right on the left! They've interleaved shifts with bitwise operations for no imaginable reason! They've used the same (big, monospaced) font for showing bit positions as for the bits themselves! These are all little quibbly things, but what they show is that whoever implemented these things doesn't care about getting obvious things right. And: if I'm correctly interpreting the three different styles of button, the memory operations are disabled in programmer mode. That's pretty poor. And: why should square root be disabled, when division is allowed?

So yes, OK, I'm sure it's an improvement on the previous version. But there are a bunch of things that are wrong even though doing them right would have been just as easy, and a bunch of other things that are wrong even though doing then right wouldn't have been much harder. Fair enough, I guess, since the calculator isn't all that important a part of the system, but this is not the sort of thing that gives me confidence in the fit and finish of the system.

"... that for example computing 10.21 - 10.2 resulted in 0.0100000000000016. Today, Calc's internal computations are done with infinite precision for basic operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division) and 32 digits of precision for advanced operations (square root, transcendental operators). "

I wonder if M$ reinvented the wheel for this, or if they used GMP?

Probably not judging by the arbitrary restriction of 32 digits... No brainer I guess.

>That calc ui is very web2.0. Guess that's why users want these days, everything to look like a Mac?

What are talking about? How does it look "very web 2.0"?

I'm not sure the Chen post is quite right. Whatever "massive" improvements calc had in Vista it still pretty much did the same things as far as an everyday usage scenario is concerned. Users should not be expected to notice underlying changes that should have been right in the first place!

What the Win 7 calc does is add real world functions like gas mileage, wages, time duration and so on. That users notice and with good reason. It makes itself more useful not just more technically capable. Plus the template feature makes it easy to add new functions. You could do this in unix calculators of course but programming the calculator usually required using your own or another person's shell script.

The damn problem with Windows' interface isn't the fact that the UI for Calc wasn't updated for years. It's just another example of the sloppiness that goes into Windows fit and finish.

I don't really care too much about cool looking interfaces, but it is nice to know that everything works the same way and looks like it belongs together. When half of the dialog boxes still present a Windows 3.1 view of your computer, and the other half present a Windows 95 view of the world. When half of the Windows look one way and the other half the other way. When the whole OS looks like it was tossed together from part in the bargain bin, it affects the user's experience of the OS.

Much of the Macintosh Finder code is pre-Mac OS X! Yet, Apple makes sure it looks and acts the same as the rest of the OS. They even have added improvements to it to make it a bit more useful. Only in the next OS release will the Finder be updated with all new OS X code.

If you ever look in the auto magazines, the biggest complaint against GM isn't the dependability of their cars, or their technological backwardness, it's their dashboard. The cheap plastic look, the poor fit and finish, the poor arrangement of gauges, and the fact that the dashboard still the same as the dash that was in the disco era models color consumer's perception of the car.

Now, it isn't that Toyota uses exotic woods in their dashboards, and I doubt that Toyota spends a lot more than GM in design and execution of their dash, but the better quality of Toyota dashboards gives the perception that Toyota simply cares more about their cars' quality than GM does. After all, when you buy a car, you spend more time looking at the dash than the outside.

The funny thing is that Windows spends a heck of a lot more than Apple does in usability labs, has almost 100 times more programming resources, and yet for some strange reason, Apple still does a better job with fit and finish. Maybe this hasn't been Microsoft's high point. Maybe Microsoft gets so into various trends like Areo without thinking about the big picture.

I have an application on my iPod Touch called Air Sharing. It allows you to upload and download documents to your iPod Touch or iPhone, and uses WebDAV.

There are directions on Linux, Mac, and Windows. The directions for Mac is two step (Go to the Sharing menu, and type in the URL displayed in Air Sharing). Linux is similarly short although separate directions are given for Gnome and KDE.

Windows is another story, It's a ten step series of instructions from opening the Start Menu to warning you that Vista might ask you for your password and name multiple times. Oh, yes I said "Vista". There are separate directions for Windows XP starting with "Patching Windows XP".

It isn't about whether user's notice or don't notice changes, its the idea that fit and finish colors a user's perception about quality. How long does it take to put a more colorful "Windows Vista" look to the Calculator? It probably is a simpler job than rewriting the whole guts, so why not simply slap on a new look while you're at it?

Damn, I don't give a hoot who steals what from who, but Microsoft should at least steal one thing from Apple's playbook: UI determines how a user interacts with the application, and it isn't about flash as much as consistency. In fact, Apple toned down the Aqua UI because it was too colorful and flashy. But, when Apple did tone down the UI to make it less splashy and more friendly, they did it across the board.

I have a lot of complaints about Windows, but underneath it is a damn solid OS. However, the UI is sloppy and poorly thought out.

To me linux never made sense on the desktop. It makes more sense on the server end. Especially if you start a company and the application needs to scale to a lot of servers.

> Much of the Macintosh Finder code is pre-Mac OS X! Yet, Apple makes sure it looks and acts the same as the rest of the OS. They even have added improvements to it to make it a bit more useful. Only in the next OS release will the Finder be updated with all new OS X code.

Actually, the Finder was completely rewritten for Mac OS X. I think you're mixing up Carbon with Cocoa. The Finder is written in Carbon, which is a holdover for applications that arn't written in Cocoa (object-orentiated objective-c API).

I guess I don't really get why increasing the precision of the Calculator is some massive improvement that should have impressed users. In circumstances where I care about that kind of precision, I don't want to be using that crappy little app that imitates a physical calculator for no real reason. I want a proper command line tool, with visible history and the easy ability to call back and edit previous calculations.

So, I'm one of those programmers who late last year got a MacBook Pro instead of a laptop with Vista. My second day using it I accidentally discovered how to summon the calculator app with a single keystroke. (For those who don't know -- F12 or fn-F4 summons a simple calculator, the current weather and a five day forecast, a clock, and a calendar.) Maybe there's a way of doing that on Windows, too, but I've never learned it in 18 years of daily Windows work. For my money, even though the Mac calculator is very basic, that ease of access to it is worth far more than the missing functions. If I need something more powerful, there are a wealth of Unix tools sitting at my (always open) terminal prompt.

<strong>hi</strong>

Honestly, who cares if they rewrote the calc "engine"? I don't. I'd vastly prefer if they added some additional basic functionality, like perhaps a graphing calculator mode. As an added bonus, Apple has had this function for 15 years, and Microsoft always likes to copy Apple on everything.

Vista was and is a turd sandwich. Doing things like removing the ability to go up a level in the Windows Explorer with a standard shortcut (up-arrow, and no, clicking on the tiny folder names isn't a good substitute) and button (backspace) -- *which is quite possibly the most common folder navigation one uses besides going down into a folder* -- is just hideous UI design. You simply don't want to take a common operation and remove it (backspace was changed to Back, which is not what you want half the time) or make it harder to use.

Common operations should be the easiest to use.

Maybe it's because I've jumped around so much, but I've owned several macs and PCs over the last 5 years, when I switched to Vista, I had no trouble migrating from XP/OSX to it.

I think having a mindset that you dislike something because it's different or got bad reviews is a sure-fire way to make sure you don't have a good overall experience.

I'm not partial to any OS, I've used them all and appreciate them all. I currently use Vista because I'm doing .NET, it's the most appropriate tool, and no I don't have "OS-Envy", I just use the tool I feel would suit me best at any given time.

I loaded it on an IBM T40 and was impressed. Lots to like...

Jeff, I too am a fan of HFI (one class away from my cert!). But I think you've missed the point of that particular button.

The idea isn't to make sure that every updated feature or performance improvement is bubbled-up to the UI layer (yuck), but that features ought not be hidden or difficult to find. They should be exactly where the user expects them to be.

That said, I continue to applaud you for bringing usability concepts to the unwashed developer masses. :P

If I don't buy it, I don't know the new functions are there. Why doesn't Microsoft just update XP all the way? There is nothing wrong with XP except that Microsoft needs a new name for the os (Vista) and bundle it into a nice box that consumers can grab.

Choosing an OS based on the look of its calculator app is like choosing a wife based on the look of her tits.

Has Vista Notepad fixed that bug where, if you save a file, the cursor jumps and sometimes the text rewraps but it doesn't repaint?

I know it's still there in Vista. I've given up on Notepad for even the simplest editing, because I can't even hit ctrl-S and keep typing, or select some text and delete it.

> if the user can't find it, the function's not there

I believe this was in large part the premise behind the (expensive) development of the RibbonX thingie in Office 2007 - non-power users were complaining that apps didn't do stuff that in fact they did, if the user only dug deep enough.

'Course, they managed to alienate just about every power user on the planet (way to piss off your best evangelists, MS) but we'll just have to put that one down to collateral damage, I guess.

Ho hum.

You are SO wrong on this one Jeff. The title if not anything else.
To contradict your title, let me give an example:

Google changes their algorithms constantly...Small and very very important changes - many many tweaks, day in and day out....And yet, there is absolutely *NO* change in their UI....and yet people NOTCIE. They notice that Google is better than any other search.

What do you propose of this? Your titles draw attention but, the content is barely worth a glance.

Problem with the Windows 7 calculator is that, at least to me, shades of blue doesn't really help the eye get a quick idea of which button to press.

Compare to the iPhone calculator for example which instantly guides your eyes. http://images.apple.com/ca/iphone/features/images/supp_calculator20080609.jpg

Oh well.

Actually, my point was that in spite of all the people who say "Stop wasting your time fiddling with the UI and do something REAL for a change", when you actually follow their advice, they fail to notice. So I agree with you: Technically dead-on and totally irrelevant.

Unless you change the UI, people won't believe you deserve to bump your major revision number.

I'mm running the Windows 7 beta (64bit) on this laptop, and the results so far are quite astounding. There are obvious performance improvements (it does a full restart in under 40 seconds) and the interface changes, although a bit odd at first, really work out for the best.

And yes, the fact that paint, wordpad, calculator, and notepad have seen dramatic improvements is quite neat. No, the won't replace office or a proper dev IDE, but they're actually easy to use and full-featured enough to not suck if that's all you have.

Overall, I'm quite impressed. The system is actually easy to use, and doesn't really get in your way unless you're installing things, *as it should have been from the beginning*.

*Edit and @Kate: Notepad looks completely unchanged in the Beta, so no telling. I haven't had it glitch out yet, but it seems random, so who knows?

The *vast* majority of pc users are not programmers - so they'll bite with a new GUI abalaz so long as Windows 7 do not constrain them with "weird" software protections.

"Real" improvements, as opposed to UI improvements, will pay off. The calculator improvement doesn't qualify as real improvement, since most people won't notice any difference. Improve something significant under the UI and they still might not notice, but they'll like the software better.

Also, I refuse to get excited over Windows 7 based on an early beta. For all I know, Microsoft slanted the beta for marketing purposes; it wouldn't be the first time a software company has put future products in an unduly favorable light. Let's see what Microsoft does with the finished product.

@foo
"The first thing I do with a new instance of an OS is remove the crud such as visual styles. I want things fast not beautiful"

Wow, you're hardcore. Why don't you go further and talk about how you only browse using Lynx, and how you use Emacs and Vi?

In the 21st century, there are machines capable of delivering performance and aesthetics.

@OgleThorpe

"Problem with the Windows 7 calculator is that, at least to me, shades of blue doesn't really help the eye get a quick idea of which button to press.

Compare to the iPhone calculator for example which instantly guides your eyes. http://images.apple.com/ca/iphone/features/images/supp_calculator20080609.jpg

Oh well."

I was ready to call you a fanboy, but I'll admit; that is a nice-looking calculator.

Let's see, on one half of the argument is aesthetics and usability, on the other it's functionality and performance.

When dealing with aesthetics and usability, you really have to remember the subjective nature of it.

Example: I believe Office 2k7 and the whole "Ribbon" idea to be a great step forward for usability in programs. Office 2k7 actually offers a fantastic usability experience to me, I would quickly throw 2k3 under the bus right now if I could get a license for 2k7 at work strictly on the UI enhancements alone.

Another example: My grandfather has been on XP for over 5 years, he's in his mid 70's and he recently bought a new computer with Vista...he absolutely hates it (he dreaded learning something so foreign and new before he touched it).

Not only that, but he bought a program that gives free upgrades, and he uses a version of the program that is at least 4-6 years behind the current build and not even supported by the developers anymore, simply because he is used to the UI. He doesn't outright refuse to learn a new UI, he just doesn't have the patience for the time it might take him.

It's important to remember the human element when arguing usability and design, even the best put together holy grail of UI's couldn't save it from a persons subjective preferences.

Maybe the biggest problem isn't the usability or ideas of freshness and newness, maybe, just maybe, it's that the vast majority of computer users feel just as they grasp one technology, a new standard is introduced. I can see how it would be intimidating to people who didn't have a good feel for it already.

Vista was not a technical failure as much as it was a human (and branding) failure on the part of Microsoft. They introduced Vista and treated us very badly: no drivers, not backward compatable, go call your software vendor if your favorite program doesn't work, and so on. It was Mr. Customer's problem that he couldn't use Vista, not Microsoft's. Now Vista as a brand that is associated with the worst of customer care: vendor hubris and the arrogance to put Microsoft first before the consumer.

Yaay another mac/windows/linux debate! The internet needs another one thanks for all the great debate, it's been thrilling to see everyone saying the same thing you all read in other threads.

I guarantee there are hundreds of engineers at microsoft silently screaming, "The under-the-hood changes and cleanup of Vista are what enabled us to make a lot of the Windows 7 user-visible changes so quickly."

Yeah, the DRM is awesome.

And it only eats up about 15% of your CPU for nothing.

Vista is ALL eye-candy and almost NO significant changes to anything.

I'd say that if it's all UI change or all hidden code changes, you're sure to have people wondering. MS Should have learned by now that you must do both with an upgrade or people feel cheated.

e.g.

All backend with no front end means you fixed some bugs and why do I pay to fix bugs?

All front end with no features means you spiffed up the same interface, but you better hope you made my life easier and it's not just some glossy whiz-bang crap that I'm going to want to turn off because after 10 minutes windows that have accurate shadows and accelerate within the laws of physics don't impress me.

It's not that everything has to be a visible change. But users do wonder what all the fuss is about when all they see is some mac-like visual effects applied to some windows and another complete rewrite of Office and the silly ribbon. How many millions of PR did Vista take? Spend more developers.

So the moral of the story is the same old calc and other very visible tools makes the OS look like someone just slapped a coat of paint on that old rusting K-Car. It doesn't matter if you overhauled the suspension either, the car is still a rusting pile of junk, and people will complain until you remove the rust.

They can claim notpad has been changed as much as they want. The windows 7 version still has the bug where you can't view the statusbar while you have wordwrap activated :p

Well maybe I'm unusual, but Vista definitely had dramatic performance changes for me. Under XP my RAID array was giving me 200MB/s sustained, under Vista is only does that for the first ~500MB, after that it drops to less that 100MB/s. But to compensate it kills GUI responsiveness and the wonderful "do you want to dump aero" dialog pops up. I've given up choosing "no, and never ask me again" because it has no effect. Backing up my PC is no longer a background task, while I'm doing that I might as well not use the computer. I can also really see the disk caching in Vista - it takes a couple of minutes after the backup finishes for GUI responsiveness to improve, and the disk keeps thrashing during that time.

Here's hoping that 7 is better.

Btw: The Windows 7 calculator works perfectly fine under windows vista - it's abit of a act to replace it though (need to take over ownership of system32 directory and give yourself the rights to replace the files). Only thing i kinda miss is the ability to use floats in the "programmer" mode - would be nice to see the ieee bitfield of them :)

There's a failure in the post: infinite precision only works for the real basic ops (add, subtract, multiply), but not for division...

I wonder how 1/7 is calculated to infinite precision by this calculator.

I don't get it, there is a new and **great** windows calculator for a while now,

Microsoft Calculator Plus
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=32b0d059-b53a-4dc9-8265-da47f157c091&displaylang=en

I have been using it for at least 2 years now

XP's version of Notepad was much improved on 98.
Crtl+S would save a file. Simple, but very useful.

Sorry, it can be possible if you store your values as fractions internally. But at least you can't display the result ;). It's a bit late.

Jeff,

You've been had. First they rebuild the calculator engine from the ground up and no one notices because the UI is exactly the same, in fact people complain about the lack of change. This time, they reorganize the buttons and make them prettier, without changing anything functional about the applet and you write an entire blog about how Win 7 is "to die for" because of a stinking calculator.

The funny thing is I just bought new batteries for my legacy scientific calculator because I was getting tired of Start -> All Programs -> Accessories (wait) -> Calculator and wanted "instant on" instead.

"Don't bother improving your product unless it results in visible changes"

Bullshit !
This sounds like:

"Don't make quality software. Make software that sells."

@Jim: "The funny thing is I just bought new batteries for my legacy scientific calculator because I was getting tired of Start -> All Programs -> Accessories (wait) -> Calculator and wanted "instant on" instead."

Yeah. I mean, we are living in a decade where gigahertz computing has finally arrived, and yet our damn start menu's are slower than they were on 66Mhz 486s.

Is it really too much to ask to have a start menu that doesn't need to re-index its folder every time you go to it?

And that's why I hit windows-R "calc" to run calculator instead. =)

Hey Jeff. Kudos on the blog (first comment, I think).

It boggles my small mind to think about just how much MS have to keep a track of in Windows. Sure, they've made idiotic decisions and stupid mistakes. But I'm still using Windows, and the sheer number of "little" things like Calc, I'm just .. boggled.

My point is, it must be hard to manage between fixing the VISIBLE and the INVISIBLE on the multitude of elements within Windows. Both of which need to happen.

Cheers!

powercalc is better. And no shitsta required.

@foo
"The first thing I do with a new instance of an OS is remove the crud such as visual styles. I want things fast not beautiful"

Exactly! I want my machine to be fast and I want the OS and the desktop environment unbloated, unobtrusive and functional.
That being said, I want whatever utilities provided with the OS to be a feature rich, to perform well and to foster my productivity and creativity.
I am glad to see the functions of the included utilities like calculator finally enhanced
(and not dumbed down) because Vista was a miserable disappointment in that regard,
especially with Desktop Search as I gripped about in Exploring Vista's Advanced Search
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000731.html

I am amazed that there has not been more of an outcry about Vista.
I can't help but use the term 'horror' when talking about Vista
and a constant feeling of frustration when using it.

Soon after I started using Vista I wrote up a list of pros and cons.
It had less than a page of pro's (more like ho-hums') and around four pages of cons.
A year later I had probably added one or two minor pros,
and many more cons; some so serious that I was unable to
actually do things (I.e. one of the final straws was
I.E. unable to download a multigigabyte file
from my colleague's FTP site, it repeatedly truncated the file with no
message of failure, it downloaded fine with XP IE6).

I am shocked that some people actually say they 'love' Vista.
Have they been blinded by by Aero?
Do they actually do anything in Vista except use Office? (another set of horrors, IMHO)

I put up with Vista for over a year until I dumped it for XP and no frustration.

As a programmer, I consider myself rather computer savy,
but relating my poor experience with Vista
makes me sound like a Luddite or worse, a curmudgeon. I hate that.
I take solace in the fact that about %90 of the people I have talked about Vista also hate it.
Let us hope MicroSoft has taken their head out of the sand
and Windows 7 embodies an apology (not to mention a steep upgrade discount).

"Of course none of this changes the fact that a calculator app that attempts to mimic a physical calculator, complete with graphical buttons that you click with a mouse, and a single line display is completely freakin' stupid to the core.

Give me bc anyday over that piece of crap.
SteveC on January 12, 2009 06:50 AM "

Indeed.
On a PC there is room for more editing space than just one line, and it already has a keyboard.

And why the hell do we need to re-enter the whole formula when changing one parameter????!!!!

They should add a free form editor that allows you to type shit like:
a=2
b=a+3
b*a+2

However, a panel (that can be hidden) with function buttons is still useful because people don't want to search the help file for the correct function names.

IF YOU THINK THAT THIS GUI MAKEOVER IS MORE USEFUL THAN THE FUNCTIONAL IMPROVEMENTS PROPOSED HERE THEN YOU'RE AN IDIOT.

In fact I prefer the old calc because the buttons are much easier to see.

Microsoft still does not know how to make life easier. Here I am with a 2GHz programmable computing device and still no editable input field in calc. INSANE!

Windows 7 is sweet sweet sweet. You should check it out.

You can't make everyone happy. Some want more beautiful UI. Others more functionality and some both. The trick is to find a good balance. If you're awesome, you can do a lot in both areas (Apple does this)

A bunch of people will always complain.. no matter what you do.

Windows comes with a calculator your grandmother can use.
If you really want you can get free the power calc from microsoft at their website.

The classic calculator that exists at least since windows 98 is fine for 90% of the people.

You know, if Windows 7 lives up to its initial promise, and makes itself more friendly for a unix user, I might not shun windows so much. Still, you can't beat linux for the easy availablity of plenty of quality software :)

> I saw a screenshot a few days ago that
> made me think Windows 7 Beta might actually
> be worth checking out.

I dare you to check out Leopard's Calculator. Tell me what you think.

I meditate often to identify the negative patterns in my thoughts & behavior. I can then formulate a strategy to prevent them or overcome them. One aspect of negativity in my spiritual life that I haven't been able to overcome? My daily negative experience with Vista. Vista doesn't pass the spirituality test; let's hope the next operating system does. If the operating system you make is a daily source of negativity for users, you need to improve the operating system and eliminate that negativity.

In my meditation earlier this morning, I was cycling through my thoughts. Where am I angry, where am I depressed, upset, etc. And there it was, as it is every day: Vista.

I can hear the criticism already. DON'T improve unless it's visual!?! OMG Jeff has gone CRAZY!

However, I understand your point. Users generally won't notice that the product has changed unless they can SEE the improvements. This is in the general sense. It's not entirely valid for those users (such as the readership here) that rely on software being updated in small ways to either improve the experience by eliminating bugs, or changing behaviour in such a way that makes a program easier and more powerful.

So in that sense - if you want your users to appreciate the improvements you've made, update the UI accordingly.

Maybe I'm just old-school - but I don't replace something until it has out lived its usefulness.

I don't replace my car until the cost of future repairs starts to mount (or the reliability drops) - which normally means a 10 year cycle between purchase and trade in.

But hardware doesn't wear out quite the same way...

I don't replace my computer until technology has moved on a couple of steps - normally I upgrade every 3 years or so (standard depreciation for computers by my tax system).

As for software - hystorically an upgrade was almost mandatory to use the latest gadgets and software. I have followed every MS DOS and Windows version from DOS 1 and Windows 3.1. I followed every upgrade (yes - I went down the Windows ME road block). I even went through NT and then to XP. But I stopped at XP and never went to Vista. Why? None of my hardware would work on it, and Vista didn't offer enough for me to warrant throwing out the hardware and buying new stuff. Every other version of DOS and Windows had some degree of backwards compatiblity to software and hardware (unless you had lotus and tried to upgrade DOS... MS were more blatent in those days).

Yes I will move on to Windows 7 - probably next year. But the point is that Microsoft were their own worst enemy with Vista. They over hyped it (even the name was over hype) and then cut their own throats due to software and hardware incompatibilities. And as for "look and feel"/Polish - I'd rather be using my Mac Book Air with Leopard OS.

The overall tone of people who can't resist saying things like 'I switch to Mac two years ago' or 'Thanks god I use Linux' is really annoying.

I agree that unless you present your changes in something that that users can see, nobody will notice. Some people take Jeff statement to the extreme, drawing conclusions such as "Don't make quality software. Make software that sells.", while I guess what Jeff trying to say is, "even if you make some change and improvement under the hood, make sure it has some visual cues so the user will notice and appreciate it"

I guess it all boils down to one of Bill Gates most famous quotes...

'If can't make something good, atleast make it look good.'

A bit ironical though....

@Eric
Try the PowerToy Calculator, one of the XP Powertoys.

I wish calc also supported expressions and user-defined functions.

I kind of agree that Vista is not all that bad as it sounds. I am really impressed wit the speech recognisation, the new look and feel of Vista is cool,and UAC is nice to have. Vista is not as bad as Windows ME. Starting with DOS, with which I was very happy to be very honest, playing hours of all those lovely game wolf, doom,strike commander etc, wasn't that much fan of windows 3.1 or windows 3.11, then came windows 95 release 1, which was really cool, ran on my 8 mb machine, then Windows NT server 4.0, then Windows 2000. Windows ME that was so unstable, oops forgot about Windows 98, not much fan of it either. Windows 2000 was really cool, then moved on to Windows XP with which I was very very very happy, but with Vista just happy, the only complain that I see with Vista is it won't support my old games, still have to figure out a way to make them work. Till this day I would prefer DOS, it was great and still is great plain and simple. After reading about Windows 7, it looks impressive, and have to wait to upgrade to Windows 7. I fell that Vista is Windows XP make over with few things added, it is not as easy to use as Windows XP, but still it is good, I like to use Windows without mouse, so I find interacting with Windows Vista start menu a bit easy, all I do is type in the name of the program, and press enter, though it took some time to get used to it, but it cool. More than any thing else the speech recognisation was best for me, now I just insert the CD and say the name of the game, and the game lauches for me. At times when I get lazy or bored I blog with Windows Live Writer using the speech recognisation, it take a while but its fun. To search for files I use the cmd and use the good old DIR fucntion to find my files, the search in Windows XP was very cool. I hope Windows 7, is not jsut a make over for Vista, and hope Microsoft keep goods things of XP and few good things of Vista, and make sure that the OS is fast and is not memory hungry, and more secure and robust.

Your headline was a perfect hook.

Your good at hooks, but this one happened to say a lot with a little and do its job.

>It's evidence that Microsoft is going to pay attention to the visible >parts of the operating system this time around.

I think that should say _invisible_, otherwise this post doesn't make much sense in reaching a conclusion. 'MicroSofties' like Chen always think they're being criticized just because of the monopoly position of MS, that actually comes over a bit childish. "I find it ironic when people complain that Calc and Notepad haven't changed. ... In fact, the complaints just keep coming. "Look at Calc, same as it always was."" Who the hell is criticizing Vista because of calc anyway?

btw. I see they (re)moved the degrees to radians functionality though, nice.

I thought the crappy apps were there just for testing.

L.

Well, but I think that might trigger rollout too many change in once to user, that are cases that one minor change on GUI require a lot of backend change, which possible break other thing but we are not awared.

The Windows Calculator sums up Microsoft's attitude to software ...

...It did not change for years, they rewrote the back end (but this did not actually fix all the common bugs) now it has a new interface (which appears to be a copy of the MacOS version)

There are many many calculator apps around for most operating systems and all of them are better than the supplied Calc application, Why? does Microsoft not employ some of the best and highest paid software engineers in the world? .... the only noticeable improved application that comes with Windows is Paint (Paint.NET) which was not written by Microsoft at all ..!

Oh I remember the single best addition they put in notepad (I think it was from the 9x to the 2K version, not sure)...

control-s is save.

No, it didn't have that before. Yes, all the other apps did. Standard shortcut. Except in the most trivial app of all: notepad. I was always contol-s-ing and refreshing to no avail... no longer!

I think this is very similar to a famous quote from Linus Torvalds on a GNOME mailing list.
"Linus' law (nr 76 of 271):
'Don't claim to have a config option, if you don't actually have the UI to change it'"
https://lists.linux-foundation.org/pipermail/desktop_architects/2007-February/002338.html

(side note: no im not a linux fanboy, I just like the quote and thought it fits here)

@Jim:

Don't put quotes around "to die for" if nobody else actually said that. It wasn't even remotely like what he said.

If you want a graphing calculator, or one with a free-form text field, there's the free Microsoft Power Calculator:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/Downloads/powertoys/Xppowertoys.mspx

"Why does Microsoft spend all its effort on making Windows 'look cool'? They should spend all their efforts on making technical improvements and just stop making visual improvements."

Ummmmm ... yeah ... when people were asking for technical improvements to Windows, I don't think they were talking about calc.

Good try, though.

I've been using all three OS'es for specific tasks:
Linux for rendering
Windows for gaming and svn (can't beat tortoise svn yet, I'm gui user)
OSX for creative purposes

And one thing I keep seeing is that although Microsoft has many more engineers... it just looks like they don't care, they've got a nice production pipeline, but internally they can't be bothered, it's just "a job" for them. Keeping the end user happy is designer X's job, not the coder's... I call it autism when a programmer just can't think about the fact that "people do no behave like computers, this includes you." and grows some appendages that let him tell the designers that they're making a mistake... the thing is, the bigger an organization, the longer it takes for new blood to get up in the organization, the longer it takes for "new stuff" to be accepted. After a while the grey areas contaminate the new blood and it's downhill from there.

After a while people get modeled by their environment:
http://gizmodo.com/365290/apple-campus-vs-microsoft-campus-one-visitors-ui-review

... I kinda got off topic a bit.

Your point is well taken. But the calculator is just plain ugly. And when you talk about notepad and paint, I think of Writeroom and Taskpaper apps and how www.hogbaysoftware.com (no I don't work for nor endorse them) has take two very simple apps and made them simpler, more elegant and improved the UI. Imagine improving the UI for notepad. Yep, it can be done!

So I am glad MS is looking at the pre-widget widgets and making some improvements, but seriously, is that calculator the "best UI" they could come up with. Utilitarian, yes, but these days that is not enough. People want zen simplicity or beauty. Can't MS get some gadget developers to put some focus on these poor little, still very relevant, apps?

Oh and while they are at it, can they update the dang hourglass metaphor, don't you think? And the CD icon is not in the 3-d smoothed style, a leftover from XP. And finally, is there a good reason to require both hands to fire up Windows as in ctrl-alt-del. And why, please tell me why, is that startup sequence the same sequence you use when forcing rogue apps to quit? How does that make sense? I have more pet peeves, but I'll keep them to myself.

Thanks for listening,
@jmacofearth

> Calculator and Notepad in 2001-era Windows XP with their 2007 Windows Vista equivalent
So, what's new in Windows Vista?
Arbitrary-precision arithmetic is a Windows XP feature.

> Nobody except the most pretentious of nerds actually turns off visual styles and effects anymore. With modern hardware, the idea that this measurably improves performance is pure superstition.

It doesn't improve computer's performances, it improves user's performances. That's ergonomic.
Seriously, did you ever used the Windows 98 menu animations? The menu unrolls. Eyes, inconsciously follows the text as it is unrolled, and that's quickly exhausting.
Use it five minutes and you'll see that it stresses your eyes and your brain.
Windows XP's transparency effect is much better. However, it's not perfect. Inconsciously, when a menu pops-up, you start reading items, or, at least, identifying the position of the item you want to click, with a weak visual clue. During the first 200 or 300 milliseconds, things are very blur, and that's exhausting for your brain. It's like reading in a dark room. With experience, things get better, as you start "pausing" your brain for the time the menu pops up in order to avoid this mental fatigue.
Consequently, even though the computers works at the same speed, the user don't. These small delays in user work are annoying because they are obstacles in the way of performing a given task. For example, assume you're told a phone number (stored in your working memory for 10 to 30 seconds), these mental pauses may make you forget the phone number while you're going to add it to your electronic phone book.

YOU may not suffer from these problems but I do.
My memory, reflexes and eyes are not that good, especially when working on long evenings, when I'm tired.
Animations give one good thing (I've never experienced but some of my friends have): It gives a clear visual clue where things happen.

@SuperKoKo you make an excellent point. I too disable useless effects in any program because they slow me down. I like interfaces to be crisp and quick. All those slow dissolves and swooshing in and out is no better than the beloved marquee in html. Neat once, annoying thereafter.

quote=Vista calculator is clearly diferent from XP calculator. In XP I can do 1440 * 900 - ( 1280 * 1024) without crashing the calculator

2606720. Done in vista 64bit. no crash. maybe some routine maintenance is in order for you?

Just another indication how low Microsoft has fallen - we now admire the efforts on the calculator.

Jeff, if you take a look at Windows Kernel, you will find that very little has changed since... Windows 95. Multitasking without memory protection is not worth very much. Windows 7 carries over same poorly implemented kernel. Proof for that is win32k.sys BSOD.

Whoever at Microsoft thinks that BSOD-way of handling errors in OS is a good idea (and they must think it is a good idea because it is still around in Windows 7), they have no concept of OS design and deserve their lunch being eaten by others.

What else is new in Windows 7? Do we now have a line counter in Notepad? It is about time that was added as well.

> Unfortunately I haven't met a PC-based calculator app that allows typing in formulas/equations the way you write them.

You should try SpeedCrunch! Portable to Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.
There's also Microsoft Power Calculator, part of the Microsoft Power Tools.

If you're a UNIX user: There's the bc command.

> For me the batteries lasted about 5 years before I simply swapped them round and they lasted at least another 5 years.
I didn't change the battery of my Sharp EL531-LH for 9 years and they're kicking!

> Choosing an OS based on the look of its calculator app is like choosing a wife based on the look of her tits.
Unfortunately, it's more common than you think.

> I wonder how 1/7 is calculated to infinite precision by this calculator.
Did you ever heard of fractionnal representation of numbers?
1/7 can be stored as two numbers: 1 (numerator) and 7 (denominator).
Fractions can be added, substracted, multiplied and divided, keeping the same representation.
When displaying the result, the number is converted to decimal representation, but the exact representation is kept in memory.

I don't understand what everyone is talking about. The calculator has not had a UI redesign. It's just been themed so it matches the new Windows look.

If they actually did a UI redesign, then it should result in a BETTER INTERFACE. Why would you ever change your interface if you are not going to improve it?

Let's look at the "new" interface: All of the buttons are the same size. The primary input buttons (numbers) are white, except for some strange blank key next to Mod. (Anyone know what that's for?) I think that key would be great if it was for Memory. It fills with whatever you've stored and then you click to add that value to the display.

How about having a keyboard-focused mode? Do many of the programmers here use the mouse to enter numbers on the keyboard? (If so, did you read this: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000825.html : ) When I use a calculator, I rarely use they mouse, but I never remember keyboard shortcuts for square root, memory, toggle negative, or several other complex functions (do they exist?). Having those easily accessible would be far more useful. Have an user-friendly way to store multiple numbers.

But instead, it just looks prettier. Garbage! I love pretty, but pretty without function is a waste of time.

That said, I haven't used a really good calculator app. I often just open a python interpreter because at least then I can store several variables. But then again, I'm a programmer. Why should the "Programmer Mode" be useful for me : D

The Windows 7 calculator looks almost identical to the Mac OS X calculator. Nice.

Reminds me of Frank Zappa's lyric: "nobody gives a fuck if we're good musicians."

expectantly I installed windows 7 over the weekend; had a few breif moments of "i wonder what its got"; big anticlimax though; turns out its just a desktop, taskbar and start menu *sigh* - really should learn.

I'm not one of those people that say "Windows rips off Mac OS X" a lot, but with Windows 7, it's scary just how much they have 'borrowed'.

Several people have already commented on this new 'Programmer Calculator'. See for yourself: http://feelthefire.co.uk/calc-comparison.png

Then there's jump lists, mixing open app windows with shortcuts (running apps are even shown by a blue light) and so much more.

You'll be glad to know that the Start button in Windows 7 is finally infinitely tall.

> Jeff, if you take a look at Windows Kernel, you will find that very little has changed since... Windows 95.

The Windows Vista kernel is very very different from Windows 95 kernel.
It's a full 32-bits mostly platform-independent (Windows NT has supported IA-64, x86-64, x86, DEC Alpha, MIPS and even PowerPC, though only x86 and x86-64 are currently developed for Windows Vista) modular kernel (very remotely sibling to OS/2 1.x), with a small and versatile set of syscalls (the NT native API) used to implement several system API personnalities (Win32, POSIX, Windows 16 bits).

> Multitasking without memory protection is not worth very much.
Memory protection?
Do you mean non-shared user-space virtual memory spaces? Because, even Windows 95 did support that.
If you mean: Protection of memory of trusted processes against untrusted processes, then, Windows NT do support that, and, Windows Vista has advanced memory protection features (more powerful, then, for example, GNU/Linux ones).
If you mean: Access privileges for resources, including files, then, Windows Vista is very powerful, with fine-grained access control lists (more powerful than UNIX access modes).

Even compared to Windows XP, Windows Vista has lots of technical improvements:
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_features_new_to_Windows_Vista">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_features_new_to_Windows_Vista</a>
Rewritten audio stack and network stacks, transactional file system, data redirection and much more.

> Windows 7 carries over same poorly implemented kernel.
Windows 7 seems to carry the same kernel than Windows Vista, yes.

> Proof for that is win32k.sys BSOD.
Well, Windows Vista stability regressed compared to Windows XP, but, with its bugfixes, Windows 7 might be stable enough.
Oh, and even other OSes (such as GNU/Linux) experience kernel panics and system crashes sometimes (quite often when using ACPI or VBE), that's no proof that their kernel sucks.

> Users do notice performance, but on a subconscious level.

Back in '86, I was working on a C program running on PCs, and discovered a simple truth: If your app scrolls the screen faster than a user can hit the pgdn button, then it's fast; if it can't - even if only by a fraction - then it's slow. The line is that fine.

"Usability does not equal recreating real world paradigms in computer user interfaces" - Tuomo Valkonen

Having spent time as ... amongst other things ... an intranet manager, hardware control systems integrator and UI designer ...

The interface to something makes more difference to its functionality than any underlying functionality there might be - If the user does not make use of the functionality, because the interface is awkward or unclear, then the underlying functionality is meaningless, because it isn't being used anyway

In fact, Windows, MacOS, KDE, Gnome, any current interface and access structure paradigm you like is complete rubbish

There is no call for hierarchical data architecture, when what is required are semantic and meta-semantic information management - Even Vista seems to got that one sorted at last though, with its virtual folders

There is no call for a plethora of windows - Tabbed search/virtual-folders will do the job far better

There is no call for separate application windows - Take a look at the Star Office 5.1 desktop integration ... Flaky, at the time, I know ... but actually a step in the right direction, let down by the underlying flaws in the Active Desktop technology upon which it tried to base itself

There is no need for a physically reinforcing access structure - Taskbars, Start/Apple Menus, docks, wharfs etc. are all entirely inappropriate and, actually, a hindrance to effective workflow

If you want to see how access to application features *should* be done:

Linux: Enlightenment

Windows: Emerge Desktop

In both cases, simply configure the middle-click on the mouse to call up the main menu ... Then you have access to your applications, file-system and anything else you care to mention, wherever your mouse is, whenever you click - Far less trouble and restrictive than always having to mouse around to get at stuff because it's stuck somewhere where the mouse currently *isn't*

In fact, there is no need for applications or windows at all

What is required is a desktop that has browsing features embedded and a tab facility, combined with the middle mouse for access to functions

Instead of opening my Word document in Word, my web-browser, my video player, my audio player, my graphics app in seperate windows, I would open different 'documents' (i.e. different data sources) in different tabs

Instead of using Word to word process, Dreamweaver to develop websites, Vusual Studio to develop applications, Photoshop to create graphics ... and so on ... in whatever tab I were working in, I would right-click on a data object and along with the standard context menu options would appear the relevant, data-type specific, tools I needed, in the same tab and 'document' - Clicking on text would bring up word-processing tools ... clicking on a graphic object would bring up graphic manipulation tools ... and so forth ... all within the same 'document', in the same tab, right on the desktop

Application windows ... (indeed separate applications rather than function plugins to the OS) ... are an archaic anachronism

Taskbars, Start menus and suchlike are archaic anachronisms

File system hierarchies are an archaic anachronism

And before anyone gets all excited about the future of VR and fully immersive, 3D Minority Report interfacing, re-read the quote at the start of my reply

I've done a lot of work with touch-screen ... and other physical ... interface technologies ... And they're worse than the WIMP GUI! - If you think RSI from mousing around is bad, try spending all day reaching out to touch stuff at different points on the screen ... never mind reaching out to get hold of stuff, holding it up and angling it around, throwing it around the room and then having to reach out for it again

When it comes to day-to-day use, the interface *is* the operating system ... The rest of it is just technology - Just like the television *is* the CRT/LCD ... and the electronics that make it work completely meaningless when it comes to day-to-day use

Get the interface right and people will use it, no matter how poor the underlying technology : Get it wrong and it can be as technologically wonderful as you like, you've got no chance of uptake - This is why linux is *still* barely even a minority interest ... (people want one-click installation and configuration, not config files, dependencies and obscure commands with a thousand options)

Unfortunately, so far at least, no-one has ... and, if things continue the way they are going ... no-one *will*

If I can't make it look like windows 98, I'm not interested. >:3

So what? Most people are much better off with online calculators like those at www.calcResult.com

Simple , when you see the totally non logic position of the AND and OR buttons on a simple applet such as Calc , the tells you straight away what the rest of the OS is like . Get a Mac , you'll never go back.

Miky