Posting Date: July 30, 2003

What Microsoft should do with all that cash -- "Yes, I think they should build a new operating system, as much from scratch as necessary to solve Windows's most intractable problem: It's not all that easy to use and really isn't getting any easier. It's also bloated with features and controls that most people never need, further weakening its ease of use."

Reader Comments...

Sounds like a bad idea to re-start from scratch. They've got a huge installed base, lots of legacy apps, and a huge advantage over everyone else. Plus, look what happened to Mozilla when they rewrote from scratch? It took 3+ years, and when it finally came out, was (and is) only used by a small minority (myself included).

Posted by: NotJakobNielsen on July 30, 2003 04:17 PM

Maybe it's unrealistic, but I miss the days when you just copied all files to a directory and BAM , that was it! Everything just ran - no installation program doing God knows what, no registry, etc. I think complexity is totally out of control.

Posted by: Ralph on July 31, 2003 07:28 AM

It was nice to be able to just copy everything to a directory, but that desn't scale very well to the siz of things like Microsoft Word, or AutoCAD, or any large application. And can you imagine how many more tech support calls there would be from people trying to uninstall a program "I removed all the files and directories, but I still see the program!" -- of course, they just forgot to remove the shortcut to the application.

Plus the fact that you'd have duplicate copies of shared libraries laying around all over the place!

Posted by: Eric Vitiello on August 1, 2003 01:31 AM

This seems like a great oppportunity for some smart, usability-oriented software company to commit suicide.

All they have to do is develop an operating system focused entirely on user tasks and ease of use for non-programmers and then hammer relentlessly on marketing it to non-techies. Spread the news by word of mouth, if necessary: "There's a computer that's actually easy to use and gives you what you need without a ton of bloated crap that slows down your system!"

Then, if it gets popular, Microsoft will demolish it and absorb all its best features to incorporate into Windows. The implementation will be second-rate, but it will still be a step up from where we are now.

Any volunteers? C'mon, take one for the team!

Posted by: Brian Curtis on August 1, 2003 08:12 AM

Subscribe to Webword.com
Receive the best free usability newsletter on the Internet.

URL: http://webword.com/weblog/