« Is PCW pro-Mac.... | Main | Wood you believe it? »
Touchy OS
Working in IT support, I meet a lot of IT users and an overwhelming majority of them have just one wish for their PC: they want it to go faster.
A few years ago things were different, the requests were more about wishing Windows could do this or that, but since XP it's all been about speed and efficiency. Why then is Microsoft talking about touch-screen technology being integral to the forthcoming Windows 7? Have they learned nothing from Vista?
Windows does what we need it to. Improvements should be focused on getting it leaner and faster, not bolting on ever more features that few will use. Is the Asus Eee PC not proof enough that small and lean is the way forward?
I don't buy a computer to play with the operating system, I buy it to run the programs I need on it. All an operating system should provide is a pleasant and easy to use interface to access those programs while behind the scenes it gets on with the business of running the computer quietly and without fuss.
Surely by version seven Microsoft should have found a way to do this, but I suppose if they did, how would they make people buy the next version?
I can't help but think that Microsoft is scraping the barrel with touch screen; it's clearly essential for a handheld device but these, by their very nature, are at your fingertips.
Desktops however, are very different; who wants to be leaning across their desk all day smearing fingerprints over a new touch screen that they didn't want to buy in the first place?
Touch-screen technology may be useful for some, but surely it should be added on by those who need it, not forced onto everyone into the ever bloating Windows. So as it reaches middle-age, it looks like Windows isn't just susceptible to viruses but to middle-age spread too.
Jake Dovey
In response to the comment regarding touch screens being a step too far and seen as middle aged spread for Windows and perhaps suffering a little of the latter myself I may be unduly biased, but I think it really is time that the IT industry made a leap forward. The iPhone iterface is the first 'small step for mankind' - it's how people work, Microsofts surface technology is nothing new in terms of hardware technology, but a vision of how people want to interact with IT.
Working in an industry that supplies business software to all levels of end users, I see a vast array of skills and know without a doubt that the touch screen / highly visualised interfaces will resolve an awful lot of issues in business - reduce training costs, reduce implementation costs and even on a sad but true fact, if it looks good, the owner of a business may buy it.
There may be ups and downs in terms of performance, but hasn't there always been? In the long run, it will be worth it and in 10 years when I'm cursing the holographic images floating around my living room perhaps I may even be heard saying "I remember that good old OS called Vista".
Posted by Matt Woodhouse | September 25, 2008 11:19 PM