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Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

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Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#91

Post by jeieo9nkfkr »

enitihas wrote: post #18

Bill was doing a fantastic job here, but it is a bit too sad to see how most of the executives in the mail show much less concern for the company's and customer's goals, and more concerns on who should own the problem. I think this is a bit too common in any corporate environment.

This is not a fantastic job, IMO

He’s complaining like he’s a user not trying to fix the dysfunctional communication directly.

The CEO should own making sure ownership is clear and minimizing opportunities for such problematic outcomes in the first place.

To me this reads like Bill wasn’t paying attention to his company until 2003. Sounds like they were poorly supervised and made a sprawling mess before he seemed interested in wondering what they were all up to.

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#92

Post by rnd0 »

riffraff wrote: post #88
partiallypro wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still to this day people view Windows through the lense of XP experiences. I always wonder how much damage that era did. People claimed to "love" XP, but they are all rose tinted in memory. Everyone hated XP until SP2 and SP3. The Security Center was something everyone hated too. But yeah, some things it did really well, but others not so much. 10 is so much better than people give it credit for, and yes there are st…

People loved XP coming from '98 which was way more prone to crash, BSOD, data losses etc, from what I recall.

I think it's a mix of both? I "loved" XP once two things happened: I got a computer with more than 256mb of ram, and I installed SP2. After that it ran really well and yes, so much better than Windows 98 did.

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#93

Post by basch »

shireboy wrote: post #77

funny as I'm reading this I'm installing a bunch of dev apps using chocolatey. "choco install visualstudiocode -y" and it's done. I'm kind of surprised MS doesn't have an official way to do this, but it's better than MSDN dev downloads was back in the day. Or (shudder) the big binder of MSDN CDs.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/nuget/what-is-nuget

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NuGet

you can Register-PackageSource and then Install-Package which is basically what Chocolatey is.

In fact, to install chocolatey on your computer you can run "Install-Package -Name Chocolatey"

"Set-PackageSource -Name chocolatey -ProviderName chocolatey" makes Install-Package more useful, at which point you dont need chocolatey installed, as youve already added it as a repo that Install-Package can access. "Install-PackageProvider Chocolatey" also works. I find it all a little confusing which is which but oh well.

I suppose its up to you which is more pleasant to type "choco install xx -y" or "Install-Package -Name xx"

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#95

Post by tinus_hn »

riffraff wrote: post #88
partiallypro wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still to this day people view Windows through the lense of XP experiences. I always wonder how much damage that era did. People claimed to "love" XP, but they are all rose tinted in memory. Everyone hated XP until SP2 and SP3. The Security Center was something everyone hated too. But yeah, some things it did really well, but others not so much. 10 is so much better than people give it credit for, and yes there are st…

People loved XP coming from '98 which was way more prone to crash, BSOD, data losses etc, from what I recall.

Don’t forget Windows ME which was truly a turd in a class of its own.

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#96

Post by DenseComet »

linuseouyt wrote: post #59
stephenr wrote: post #20

I very rarely use Windows now (at the time this happened I was working with it M-F doing support) - I’m not convinced it’s any better now is it? I downloaded an “IETester” image from Microsoft to confirm behaviour of a clients site from a Windows PC - it literally spent more time installing updates and rebooting than I did either downloading the entire vm image file or actually testing the thing I wanted to test. How…

I have an Ubuntu dedicated server. I reboot it every Sunday, yet there is rarely a week where on Friday I don't see this when SSHing in due to auto-updates: 0 packages can be updated. 0 updates are security updates. *** System restart required *** Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS Linux ubuntu 4.15.0-34-generic #37-Ubuntu SMP Mon Aug 27 15:21:48 UTC 2018 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Try out Ubuntu Livepatch. It can update the kernel without reboots, which is likely the cause of the message.

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#97

Post by pas »

8sleef wrote: post #76
TimTheTinker wrote: post #52

The early 2000's were a period of especially low usability for Microsoft's products. At the time, I had a roommate who was a die-hard Windows user. Over several years, I tried to convince him to switch to Mac OS X, with examples like: (a) Just drag/drop a PDF to a printer spool window, and it will print; (b) to install an app, usually you just have to drag it to the Applications folder; to uninstall it, simply drag i…

Windows 7 with its constant mandatory automatic updates did it for me... Windows, never again, and I switched happily to Ubuntu.

Chrome and Firefox auto updates too. But those are fast, done in the background and they don't require reboots.

Windows is still terrible at this.

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#98

Post by pas »

mrgreenfur wrote: post #36
cfors wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was my takeaway too. Too much talking about doing at big corporate companies, and not enough actual doing. Drives me up a wall.

But isn't it the exec's job to make sure there are people aligned to problems worth solving? Yelling about problems does nothing without staffing and accountability.

Just blindly handing off problems has no added value.

No, if the CEO tasks an executive with something that guy/gal should responsibly* think about the task, analyze it, break it down, and hand off "smaller" chunks to underlings.

And smaller could even mean a lot more detailed but with better scoping. Fixed budget, concrete goals, etc.

* - said exec should/must ask the CEO about the priority of this task, what other tasks will be demoted, is it possible, do they have enough budget, resources, timeframe, etc.

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#99

Post by belltaco »

jeieo9nkfkr wrote: post #91
enitihas wrote: post #18

Bill was doing a fantastic job here, but it is a bit too sad to see how most of the executives in the mail show much less concern for the company's and customer's goals, and more concerns on who should own the problem. I think this is a bit too common in any corporate environment.

This is not a fantastic job, IMO He’s complaining like he’s a user not trying to fix the dysfunctional communication directly. The CEO should own making sure ownership is clear and minimizing opportunities for such problematic outcomes in the first place. To me this reads like Bill wasn’t paying attention to his company until 2003. Sounds like they were poorly supervised and made a sprawling mess before he seemed int…

He wasn't the CEO.

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#100

Post by jeieo9nkfkr »

belltaco wrote: post #99
jeieo9nkfkr wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not a fantastic job, IMO He’s complaining like he’s a user not trying to fix the dysfunctional communication directly. The CEO should own making sure ownership is clear and minimizing opportunities for such problematic outcomes in the first place. To me this reads like Bill wasn’t paying attention to his company until 2003. Sounds like they were poorly supervised and made a sprawling mess before he seemed int…

He wasn't the CEO.

When he sent the email. Who was CEO when the sprawling mess he was complaining about was planned and implemented?
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