Discussion on:

10 MORE technologies that are just plain broken

You say its an inefficient use of space and lame. Really? Have you actually used a windows phone? I would say that the design is actually very efficient and far better than the mess that you can create on an android phone. Windows 8 on a touch device is fantastically easy to use as well. Whether it is suited to mouse and keyboard is another matter...

nice one, but for me a phone (no matter if it has Android or Windows Mobile installed) is designed to....ringing and answering calls

Yes yes, your new shiny phone is very pretty. The issue is being forced to use the Windows 8 touch interface on Desktop devices which may or may not include touch screens. On touch devices or even touch laptops, sure. On upright displays and work production systems.. we'll have to see how that plays out in practice still.

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No, I've used a Windows phone and gave it back for exactly the reasons he suggests. I've done the same with Windows 8 on my laptop - installed, then uninstalled. The author of the article is correct. Windows 8 UI is broken by design. That's the reason that Windows 8 isn't selling and Windows Phone is still lagging behind Android and iPhone.

I've been using the "Modern UI" on my WP7.5 for just about two years now and like it better than both the iPhone and the Andriod. It's different and everyone I show it to remarks how fast it is compared to their phones.
As far as Windows 8 goes, it's different, but it has not caused me any issues yet. If you are running it on a desktop or laptop, then it will be easier to use with a scroll mouse. You can navigate the start screen and all list simply by rolling the wheel on you mouse, it's that easy.

What's more important? the data, or the interface that presents it?

Seems microsoft learnt nothing with their Windows XP MCE offering - where the UI would consume 75% of available real estate, leaving a corner for the actual media; to me, the Win 8 start "panel" feels the same way - and intrusive.

I've been using W8 since the first preview on both touch and desktop. So have my wife and daughter. It's different but it works very well and we all like it. I would like to see Office in the new interface; everything I've used in it has been an improvement once you get used to the various touch gestures. Remember W95 and getting the hang of that? It was far worse than W8.
Luddites beware.

It was easy to get the hang of, since I had already been using a Mac for years. (Of course, I had to break the habit of trying to use features that M$ didn't copy from A$$le...)

I installed the Win8 preview in a virtual machine, and I didn't care for it very much. But considering that I still customize my XP installs to classic, and Win7 installs to be as classic like as possible, I admit I am probably not the target consumer for M$. I use many different computers and I try to make my profiles on them as similar as possible. I am a creature of habit, and when I click the start button and see the "new XP" style start menu, I lose my train of thought. I put that puppy right back to classic!

Something I really liked with the classic Mac OS is that updates didn't remove features and functions, only added to them. I could integrate the new features and new shortcuts to make my computer more functional for me. They didn't just change the UI and say, "Use this! It's better!" (Well, now they do, but I don't buy A$$le anything any more. [cough] Galaxy Note running Android [cough])

My work computer is Windows7, and I like many of the UI features in 7, especially the windows snapping to the sides and top. I love that and use it constantly! I want to take the parts of the new UI and add them to the parts of the old UI I like, and have a custom UI that works for me. By eliminating the classic start menu in Win7, and eliminating the start menu completely in Win8, (and removing menus in Office,) M$ is annoying me to no end by taking my choices away and trying to make me do the same old thing in new and unfamiliar ways.

My computer! My choice! Do not dictate how I should set up my work environment. Give me all the options and let me decide what works best for me.

PS I would love to try a Surface or Windows Phone, but no one I know owns one, or has even seen one. Metro might work great on them, but at this rate, I will never know. M$ might as well be selling unicorns.

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates both copied their "windows paradigm" from Xerox PARC - it was part of the Star System there. The same paradigm was copied by MIT for Xwindows in UNIX.

design for Windows from Apple while doing some contract work for them way back when in the 1980s.

... MS, Atari, Commodore, PS (Personal System from IBM), Amiga 1000, all copied Apple (first Lisa and later Macintosh). (If you are old enough to remember). In fact the first usable OS MS sold was Windows 3.0 and 3.1 in 1993.
When the Lisa hitted the market in 1984 and Macintosh in the begining of 1985 there were not any Windows.
MS made at the last part of 1985 a graphical shell almost like the DOS-shell but resembling MACintosh that was called Windows 1.0, but only to apear in the scene like Commodore GEOs, Amiga 1000, Atari 520, etc.
In fact Amiga 1000 hitted the market before Windows 1.0 even when in Commodore they had to develop the hardware and the software.

I have used Windows phone, iPhone and Android. I really do not care for a Windows phone at all, and considering their market share, most feel the same way.

Sure you can make an iPhone or Android horrible too, but by in large that does not happen from the manufacturer.

Windows 8 on the desktop (no touch screen) is horrid! You can't treat a 23" screen the same way you treat a 4" screen, you just can't! And you certainly shouldn't!!!

The Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 UIs are a superb exercise in UI design. I find them fast and productive, which is why I have installed W8 on all four of my machines, have a Surface and a WP8. Most of the complaints I've heard from people appear to be repeats of other opinions from people who haven't actually used it in anger.

Productivity is what W8 is all about.

In my experience, and according to everyone I have talked to productivity suffers with Windows 8. If you like Windows 8 on a phone and tablet, I can understand that (I don't, but that is personal preference). But Windows 8 on a desktop is a horrid experience. You can't treat a 23" monitor and full keyboard / mouse like you treat a small mobile device like a 4"phone (with no keyboard / mouse) or a 10" tablet (that may have a keyboard). They are different, have different uses, and require different interfaces.

When I am on a desktop I don't want to have to move my hands from the keyboard to the mouse, let alone to a screen. Maybe if the screen were embedded in my desk (and I got rid of the keyboard and mouse) it would be ok. But Windows 8 on the desktop causes all kinds of productivity problems. Testing in one environment I consult for has definitively proved that.

I agree that it would be horrible as a desktop and server (but great for anything with a touch screen)... but I guess we will see how popular windows 8 server will actually be

of a Windows operating system as Win 8 now, even when it gets wiped off a Dell etc to install Linux or Win 7.

...are that the screen should be about one metre from the eyes, when your job mainly involves computer use, to prevent eye strain.

Touch screens are not very helpful, even if your arms are a metre long.

I can't imagine using a computer with my screen one meter (approx. 39 inches) away from me. Maybe 24 to 28 inches (.6 to .7 meter) -- that is a more normal distance from a desktop screen. Of course your tablet and smartphone users are even closer to the screen! Talk about hard on the eyes ...

If you don't want to use "touch" on Windows 8, use your mouse. It works just as well. (Sometimes better.)

Further, just because metro interface is there doesn't mean you have to use it. I login in the mornings and spend my entire workday on the desktop. When I go home, I use "Metro" for non-work related stuff.

Windows 8 gives you the best of both worlds and you use the tools you want.

I agree that metro icons are too big on a 24"+ 1920x1080 screen but on a 11" to 14" notebook / tablet screen, it is perfect.

the Classic look and one with the touch-screen look and capability, and let the people decide which they want when they buy or install.

just beyond arm's length with the middle of the monitor set at the same level as your eyes - - to use a Win 8 screen you have to be a hand's width under arms length, and have to reach up all the time to use it as a touch screen device.

man oh man, Win 8 on desktop monitors is going to cause shoulder and sore arms issues that will make the old carpal tunnel and RSI issues seem like nothing.

Win 8 on phone or a tablet, OK, maybe on a notebook, but NEVER on a desktop monitor, it's asking for health issues and is no where as efficient as a mouse and keyboard on a menu driven system for general business work.

is with elderly newbies or visual impaired. One of my buddies that isn't able to see very well, can't wait to order his Samsung series 7 all-in-one with a 27" touch screen with Win8. My dearly departed mother was never able to master a mouse at all. I see where this is actually pretty common - we were TV and video game babies - we have brains wired differently than the previous generation.

Also, when I was working with children in the non-profit arena, we had great success using full sized desktop monitors with touch capability. This is a very narrow market of course.

I can see the advantage of that specific use and he should consider, very hard, to have a special desk or desk add on made with it installed at a30 to 45 degree angle from horizontal so he can work on it with the screen at or below his sternum so he doesn't get arm and shoulder issues lifting his arms to work the screen.

The touch screen is the desktop itself.

nt

I've never used a smartphone of any type (and I won't until data plans become a thing of the past), so I will not comment on the phone interfaces. Just from the comments here it is obvious they are a highly subjective topic. To each his own and all that.

What I will comment on is my desktop experience with Win8. On the good side, when you're in the desktop mode, Win8 is better than Win7 in many ways. If I could turn off the so-called "Modern" interface, I would probably switch, but MS won't let me go there. More's the pity..

Unfortunately the negatives far outweigh the pluses. As many have pointed out all over the web, the Modern interface is an inane choice for the desktop user. It is unintuitive and downright awkward. If you use a mix of desktop and Modern apps, you are forced to contend with that maddening switching back and forth. Makes me feel like one of my kids has the TV remote. Quite frankly, I would not use "Win8" and "productivity" in the same sentence unless it was in the negative. I bought Win8 Pro for $40 and I'm thinking I paid too much. At least it came with downgrade rights, so I'm looking at it like I got Win7 Pro for $40, which is a good deal.

When I was viewing some new laptops in Staples with Windows 8, the sales person demonstrated how it was possible to get rid of all the ugly blocks and use the start menu and desktop as normal. But you're saying that can't be turned off? I would be interested in hearing more on that.

Gets your start button back, and you can make it skip straight to the desktop on booting.
Customisable start menu.
Shut down and restart on the start screen and/or desktop.
Free.
http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/

Even without it (and why would you be without it?) you can put the desktop tile top left of your start screen and expend the huge effort and delay of hitting Enter or Return when you start up, to get to the desktop.

I really can't see what all the fuss, not to mention venom, is about with people's reaction to Win 8. If you don't like how it is 'out of the box' you can tweak it.

" If I could turn off the so-called "Modern" interface, I would probably switch, but MS won't let me go there. More's the pity.."

Its very easy and free. Just install Classic Shell for Windows 8 and voila ...

and having the live icons is distracting and bad for the productivity.
If at the begining the peolpe sees it ugly and not cool, in a few years how will the people see it like?

gug, if they had an easy way to adjust the icon sizes Win 8 may be usable for anything OTHER than a phone or a small tablet.

Therein lies the problem with the "hybrid" Windows-8 UI. It may be very well suited for touch-centric devices; but, it offer little or nothing over what is available in Windows-7 for mouse/keyboard centric laptops and desktops. As for the much touted speed in booting up, just how important is that after the initial start-up at the beginning of the office work day?

It's not exactly surprising that the author thinks the Windows 8 UI is lame, he's a long time "avid promoter/user of the Linux OS". That's like asking a long time Windows admin what they think of Mac or Linux.

Since when is a Windows using admin a "long time" admin?? Sorry, Windows is a Johnny-Come-Lately to the admin/server scene and a mighty poor contribution as well. Which is another point made by the author.

If the author were biased he would not have listed Gnome 3 (a linux desktop option). or LibreOffice (an alternative Open Source Office Suite that can run on Windows or Linux). Believe me I could easily come up with 20 things about Microsoft products that are just plain broken.

What is obvious, and not all that surprising, is that you are a Microsoft Fan Boi.

It may be fantastic for users of smartphones and tablets, but seriously we don't do the same things on a notebook or desktop with a true keyboard and mouse (or touchpad), and on large screeens for precise works, having to work with the finger to leave traces on the surface is really not fine.

On a large display it is also VERY unfriendly. We should always be given the choice for NOT using it, and even if finger apps don't necessarily need a keyboard or mouse all the time, we still want to use our keyboard and mouse (for example to type something to search, instead of sliding/scrolling a long list of panes to see what we want, and can select and find MUCH more rapidly by just typing a few characters.

I really HATE the new tiled menu. It is unnecessarily slow. I also HATE the Windows 8 Applications store that does not include ANY search option (even if we have a finger only interface, there should exist a search option that pops up a tile with a search form, where we can type some characters on a touch screen, or just with the keyboard, if we have one installed and connected, and a preference allows us to use it by default instead of on the touch screen).

And yes the new UI is just a waste of space : we want to be able display much more on a larger screen, this is NOT a smartphone ! The UI should then be adaptive to display more tiles at once, and more GUI feature without having to scroll many tiles on long distances (with a mouse, the current UI requires MUCH more moves)

For an excellent tiled interface, look at the Google app store for Chrome/Chromium or for Android. Or at the App store from Apple. Or at the App store for Firefox. But for Windows, this is really LAME.

Even if we have a desktop available, all what is in the tiled menu should be also available in a classic Start menu.

Beside this, I really like the new Task manager which is more informative and rich in new features (... and NOT based on the new tiled interface !). It fits perfectly on a desktop or notebook screen (but people using touch screens on tablets or smartphones won't like it, they should have another more usable application).

But DO I REALLY NEED Windows 8 for just the new Task manager on my desktop or notebook, or even with a tablet connected to a keyboard (including the Microsoft Space tablet) when I really hate this ugly tiled interface ? No. I want to be able to disable it completely.

Additionally the new tiled interface is horribly bogous : apps are constantly crashing, even the simplest ones like the Free card games like Freecell or the Deminor (which also require now to register an XBOX Games account !). As these games in this interface are extremely slow to start, and crashing constantly, this just demonstrates that the tiled interface is just completely untested.

Microsoft has completely forgotten to test this interface, both technically (they crash and we return to the menu instantly), or in their performance (they are DAMN SLOW to launch !!!), or in usability.

An horrible design is also the need to click in a small corner of the screen to activate a side menu. When you have multiple displays and the mouse going from one display to the other (such as a TV), it is difficult to position precisely on this corner : the menu does not appear. Even with a finger on a touch screen, the active corner area ir really small. It is also not intuitive at all as nothing indicates that this corner is active (even if there's MUCH space to display at least an icon on any desktop or notebook display which are designed now for supporting HDTV resolutions).

All this design is stupid. I'll keep Windows 7, and I really don't need Windows 8, not even on a tablet (Android tablets are perfectly usable and will support connecting an USB keyboard and mouse without problem, and being able to use it as much as possible if it's connected, instead of the virtual on-screen keyboard which takes an huge space on screen) ! May be Microsoft will improve Windows 8 on the tablets, but for now Windows 8 fits ONLY the small screens of smartphones and nothing else.

For this reason, I just won't name this OS "Windows 8" but I'll lay down the 8 digit into "Windows Infinity" with the intended meaning "Windows Unfinished" !!!

I'll wait for "Windows Neuf" ('neuf" in French means "new" or "freshly built" ; it also means "nine", i.e. Windows 9). This won't happen before 2015. I easily predict the same future for Windows 8, as what already happened to Windows 3.1 (we had to wait for Windows for Workgroup 3.11), then to Windows 95 (we had to wait for Windows 98, Windows 98SE was just a minor update), then to Wndows NT 3.x (we had to wait for Windows NT 4 or Windows 2000), then to Windows ME (we had to wait for Windows XP) then to Windows Vista (we had to wait for Windows 7).

Microsoft NEVER learns ! Every 2 major versions of Windows is a COMPLETE failure, but just an early (and overpriced) beta version of the next OS (that Microsoft wants you to pay again to upgrade ! Microsoft IS COMPLETELY UNABLE to produce a new OS every 3 years, it just sends a new "major" version just to finance the continued development of another OS 3 years later.

Don't trust Microsoft for its software lifetime plan, its real schedule is ONLY a new OS every 6 years (plus 1 year for the first major service pack). Don't buy anything from the intermediate OS (never complete enough to be used on a prodessional desktop or notebook, or by content creators, but only by disinformed people).

Most of this thread has been about the Modern UI (ne Metro), which is loved by some and hated by more, many of whom have never actually used Windows 8. I have intelligent but not computer-savvy clients who found Android more trouble to learn than it was worth and switched to Windows Phone, which they had no trouble with. Modern UI is a defensible platform for full screen apps. If it fails it will be due to developers of iOS and Android apps not expecting enough customers to justify supporting Windows, not because it's a bad platform.

What seems to be lost in the screaming about Windows 8 is Modern UI is an addition to Windows that takes nothing away. What's now called Desktop looks a lot like Windows 7 and runs almost all applications that run on 7 and Vista and many that run on XP and 2000. Desktop is not being deprecated, programs that run on it are being updated, and new programs are being created for it.

and that reduces productivity and annoys people to go through that crap when MS could simply have given you an option on which to start with like they did with XP or Classic desktop in Win XP.

I've found on Windows 7 I often hit Start and then type the name of an application in the Search programs and files field, which is no different from the Windows 8 Search charm. Yes, Microsoft could have made it an option, but not doing so is so minor that I'm amazed at the amount of vitriol blasted at so small a problem. Lots more time has been devoted to blasting this minor issue than it takes to download a third party Start button. It's time to move on.

an app on a daily basis, you're the only person I know who does it. Most just have a tiny, itty, bitty, little icon on the desktop they click on for stuff they use on a regular basis, for other stuff they don't use often they open the menu, and have it in one or two clicks.

The main bitch, from many, is it's a major change with NO option to let people slide in easy. It's also a direct charge at a consumer focused OS for hand held consumer devices with a total disregard for the corporate and productivity market and the general home user.

There's a clear difference between "broken" and "don't like" but this article simply mixes the two. It's also wrong to describe an obvious or intuitively "normal" condition of commercial affairs - competition between would-be suppliers - as a broken state. I don't think it's broken at all and has brought us wonders over the years, (Without Wintel would there be an internet? It's a bit like having telephony but no telephones I suppose? The internet could not have been hosted on IBM 360/370 technology; it needed the wildfire nature of the personal computer.)
Things that are "broken" that concern me are things like synchronisation between the various device types - PCs, Macs, Tablets and phones - that just isn't there. The inability of operating system software or programmes to look at what is already on the intended host device and sort themselves out acordingly at installation time. The determination of software writers to ask questions at instal time that for most people are just unanswerable. (How about "POP3, IMAP or Exchange?")
And then there's Microsoft Office and its inability to view Microsoft Documents. And that's been a problem through 2 or 3 product iterations now.
PS WTF is GNOME?

If you don't know what GNOME is you have you really shouldn't compare UI's since you have yet to experience GNOME. You probably haven't touched KDE, XFCE, or CDE for that matter. Try them all. Then you'll understand why he says that windows 8 UI is broken. Also he only talks about Windows 8 UI not the other Windows platforms. Your defence of windows is admirable but you really need to read.

Good synchronisation technology does exist... it's called Google.. My phone, mac, windows pc's all share the same data and use SSO. The API allows complete access to your data from any point. Take a look at the google API for gmail, instant upload, social and OAuth. Very extensible, easy to use, and cross platform(available for all types of languages per platform) which gives you greater freedom of platform choice. Google renders the operating environment irrelevant.

Please note I am not talking about A specific google platform such as android, I am talking about googles cloud technology, services, and API.

"Things that are "broken" that concern me are things like synchronisation between the various device types..."
Interestingly, many years ago, when I first started using a Palm Tungsten device, synchronization with my desktop was truely plug and play- what was on my computer matched what was on my Palm, no matter which device had been updated. True, I was synchronizing a single device with a desktop, but this takes us back to one of the original Unix concepts- a program should do only one thing, but do it very well.
Operating systems, desktops, office suites, synchronizing applications- all are taking the Swiss Army Knife approach- you keep adding more and more "tools", none of which is really optimized for its intended purpose, until one winds up with a totally unwieldy and useless product.
With regards to printing, I have no problem adding new printers to my system using CUPS (drivers are built in to the kernel). I have solved the printer hardware reliability issue by switching from HP printers to Canon printers- Canon gives me 4-5 times the life between equipment failure as the equivalent HP models...

That is always the right one to take. UNIX is the KISS method for development.. it's like classes in a program... make it do one thing and avoid over complicating your class. I have ran into this where a class explodes into an unmaintainable MESS! you end up starting from scratch..

You cannot be serious. Windows ME was buggy as hell and an unfinished product that was simply unusable. You can certainly compare ME to Vista in that sense.
But Win8 is fast and works very well. The Metro UI itself is a matter of taste, but still, it does work. You don't like it, that's a different issue. It is not a broken technology. There is a difference between a broken and a frustrating technology. The latter will not affect users the same way as it will mostly be a matter of habits and usage. For example I personally think the Metro UI works very well in a dual-screen environment, so it suits me.

and talking about broken technologies, i couldn't send a comment from firefox, i had to use IE. Now THAT'S lame...

Couldn't send it where? Here to TR? I've used FF to reach TR for years and through multiple versions. Did you get any error messages?

Why do you even have IE? I deleted the iexplore.exe at the first chance I got... Plus your FF got to be broken, TE works really well with FF and Adblock plus.

because i need to be able to test on different browser. Like it or not, IE still has an important market share!
Mind you, i'm on FF 18, maybe that's why it doesnt work...

You mean the largest market share

...it's not like most people actually *chose* IE. Most don't realise there are choices, any more than with OSes.

My FF 17.0.1 just told me I'm completely up-to-date.

Are you using the Beta?

I notice they have beta 3 for version 18 now. Every once and a while either FF or my version of Chrome(Dragon) refuses to update and I have to download the new final release version(not candidate) from File Hippo's update checker - it has never let me down so far. I wonder what is wrong with the update channel at Mozilla? Just thinking out loud - sorry!

Just sayin'

And that relates to the whole X-platform issue.

Comment sent from FF.

IE, with properly kept updates and maintence, as with any of the browsers or O.S.'s is still the best functioning browser; reguardless, of how old the hardware technology. As a repair tech I have seen and used most browsers (not including win 8 or IE10 yet

according to the w3c statistics... google chrome leads the pack with a 1.2% margin over Internet Explorer.. not to mention it's faster, thread safe, and it's API is 100% more extensible the explorer. I won't even get into security.

On the web development side it's javascript console is fantastic.

The browser might be, but it slows the computer down to dog speeds.

You forgot ram wh0re

The Navy installs IE7 and Netscape Navigator, and you cannot update it or install different browsers. (And I had TR and ZDNet issues with IE7)
"You makes do with whats you got."

nt

I run into that now and then as well. It is definitely irritating. Typically one of my privacy add-ons is the culprit. Try disabling AdBlock, Ghostery, etc, and see which one, if any, lets it start working. When you figure out which one, either whitelist the site, give up on posting comments there, or use a different browser.

I found a while back, that "HHTPS Everywhere" blocks CNET.

However, I think the reason may have been the use of NoScript. If I temporarily accept all scripts, I can now send. It may also have been a clagged up Windows 7/64. Now upgraded to 8 and all connections working better.

While here - it seems strange to me that Jack thinks that some businesses can't afford MS Office. How much does an OEM Office cost compared to a $50,000 per year salary? Half of f all! It might be true in the developing world, but in most of those countries they get fake versions.

the best dag nabbed browser I've used bar none! Opens and loads pages like a FLASH! I'm finally seeing web work the way it was supposed to be.

I like Comodo's EULA better than Google's and it has some security enhancements as well.

If Office was the only thing that needed to be purchased; but at that cost (as well as the constant upgrades) to all of the other overhead costs, and that cost can make a great dent in your profit margin, (if any). And if you are an individual entrepeneur, add that cost to house payment, car payment, food for self and family, medical care and medical insurance for self and family, then bonding, hardware and upgrades, software (such as Visual Studio, SQL Server, Oracle, (although developer's licenses on these are much cheaper than production they add up,) ink/toner, pens, paper, envelopes, stamps, ISP, telephone, well you can see where this is going. Why pay for something every three years that only has a negative impact on your productivity. (Most common complaint about Office beginning with Office 2007; "I don't know how to do all the stuff I've been doing just fine for 10 years." In my case it took me three years to find the help button. And then I found it was useless if you did not have an internet connection.)

Firefox 17.0.1 on Linux and was easy and works well.
Sometimes the broken tech is in the mental programs of the person. Or maybe it is Windows the brokenone where it is installed the Firefox, or maybe ...

Do you have NoScript installed? That add-on is guaranteed to prevent you from rating comments OR commenting yourself, as there are several domains (5) in use on this site, and java script is running.

forces you to sit wrong and use your arms wrong to use it on a touch screen on the desktop. Take away the touch screen and you lose the entire incentive to use it at all.

ALL the apps running in the Metro interface are DAMN SLOW to start, and they crash constantly (and don't blame the hardware for failures in their drivers, this is plain wrong because apps running on the desktop do not crash, even the most complex ones with lots of graphic features).
Metro is horribly bogous ! You can't say it "works very well", this is plain wrong !

I cannot tell you how many times I sit here thinking... why on Earth is this computer not printing, why on Earth is this printer breaking again, why is it printing every page except the last one so I have to unplug it from power so it can reset its memory?!?!? Printing is older than I am but is still such a broken technology, at least in the work place.

It seems like over the past few years printers have gotten worse. They don't seem to last as long (remember the Laserjet 4/4+ series workhorse?)
I thought USB connections were supposed to "improve" printing? At least with parallel ports it didn't lose connection to the pc for no apparent reason. Yes the cables were thick but they did seem to be more reliable. I'm also tired of installing printer driver updates when it was working fine for a few months and then all of a sudden decides to stop printing/print odd characters/etc.

wrong time and the operating system not recognising it again. I have no issues with USB connected printer on Linux, and I've been using it since fifteen years.

Ernest, my (very old) WinXP box often loses either the All-in-one printer or the WiFi (admittedly the latter is more common) when I have too many hard drives plugged in copying too many files. I suspect it's either a memory issue or a USB power issue. It's never bothered me enough to find out which.
The fact that the box came with eight USB ports one of which is shared by four memory card reading drives would lead me to believe it's more than likely a power issue.
I know, I should buy a better box. I'm working on it.
[Edited to correct the spelling of Mr. Deadly's name. Sorry.]

previous owner claimed the USB no longer worked and had been going faulty for several months as it kept turning off on him after a few hours. I loaded Zorin OS Linux on it and have been using it for five weeks with the USB working perfectly all along. After two weeks I replaced the PS2 keyboard and mouse (yes, it's that old) with USB ones, never an issue.

The printer I have is an old Minolta colour laser which originally hooked up to Windows with a USB cable. Since then I've hooked it up to six different variants of Linux after I couldn't get Win XP drivers for it. Yes, it's that old too.

I suspect a lot of the issues with USB devices are not the hardware, but poor quality USB controls in the software or the the device drivers. I often have people telling me a certain USB device is now faulty, but it works perfectly when I hook it up to one of my Linux systems, regardless of the hardware age.

Mind you, if your Windows OS has controllers for earlier levels of USB I'd not be surprised to find it's having trouble working with later levels of USB devices or even recognising them.

I stuck with Windows because my employer liked it for reasons best known to themselves. I have loaded and used *nices on this and other boxen but only to play with and to learn from. Now I'm retired I could use any OS I like, even one of the weird ones, but I just can't summon up the will to bother fiddling with my present box any more. I might, someday, buy a better one.
And you're right, and it is a good suggestion, the drivers and controller-ware might be updateable. I might even think about that.
Thank you.

the fact that XP can only address so much memory space(32 bit). Just say'n.

That would explain why it happens [mostly] when running more than one copying/moving operation of many small and huge files. Keeping track of all the housekeeping junk Windows uses in the background can't be easy.
Yet another excuse for an upgrade. Thank you.

That happens not to be the case. I've had plenety of instances when the USB connection gets lost and the plug has to be removed and re-inserted.

and it will often have problems detecting some devices if they're just unplugged and re-plugged in without going through the full removal process.

Laser cheapie printer. I have it USB to a print server in my wifi gateway device; and I never have any problems with it. As for all these All-in-one printers, I was amazed they got them to work at all. HP has really gone down hill though! I don't think they know how to write a driver anymore.

I just installed one o a new Windows 7 64bit laptop last week.

Now if I could just summon up the initiative to find the documentation so I can change the device language settings from German back to English

printing can be fixed - it just takes money. People think "good" printing should be free because Windows and UNIX include "printing" at no charge

and yes, I do work for a company that sells print management solutions

Not even on the subject of network printing or print management, if I have a device connected to my PC and properly installed it should work. And every disc should have a "Drivers Only" install option instaed of multiple programs which must be installed in order to get the drivers installed just so I can print a document.

Office compatibility is an issue because of competition, and the fact that different offerings want to give new features and capabilities, that don't necessarily breed interoperability. Also your comments on Windows 8 lack any actual logic aside from regurgitating generally non-insightful cynicism that is rampant on the topic already. Your solution to single sign-on is to give up?

Please don't ever bother to submit an application to me.

Microsoft has chosen for YEARS to make their file formats proprietary (even after claiming that they were open). Microsoft's changing the interface every couple of years is just insane. Our office still uses Word Perfect because every file all the way back to Word Perfect 5 can be opened and edited by any version of Word Perfect (Currently 15). The interface hasn't changed that much either, though features are routinely added.

As for Windows 8, I have yet to find a single person that likes it (in person). The fact that you are required to get a Windows Live account to do anything tells it all. The interface is clearly designed for a small touch screen not a large multi monitor setup with Multitasking users.

Microsoft instead of embracing what PC's have to offer over tablets is driving people to tablets. And why not, if you are going to be stuck with a tablet interface on a computer save the bucks and use a tablet for everything.

With your attitude who would want to submit an application to you?

Is Word Perfect still being sold ?

Owned by Corel. The latest Office Suite sells for a couple of hundred dollars USA.
There's a website, findable using www.dogpile.com or www.mamma.com or your favourite search engine. [Other Search Engines Are Available.]

great things with video software too - I think they will be a contender again( I hope - because MS needs the competition)

I think the writer must be having a bad day. For example I find Gnome 3 not bad at all, and easier to deal with than the current state of Win 8, but that one will certainly be improved too.
I agree that solid-state drives are better, but until they become more byte-price competitive, I will stick with mechanical ones.
All technologies can be improved, and will eventually be replaced by something better or cheaper. What's new?

So far as I know, the magnetic domains in HD's are permanent, or as near as makes no difference. Once stored, data resides there forever. SSD's, as I understand it, decay. The charges used to store bits die away and the bits are lost. Data on SSD's is temporary.
Or am I out of date with the current state of the art?
I know the mechanics of HD's don't last forever if they are used, but the data doesn't decay if they are taken offline. Is that right?

I don't know but with hard drives that are going bad, they make noise. That is my only fear about SSDs, along with their cost.
PATA Drives seem to last. I had some WD 30gb and 40gb that can still run.

I have some pre-2000 13GB drives [physically huge and power-hungry] which I think have dead files on them. They haven't been accessed for at least five years, probably longer. I'm off to see if they still work.
More later...
[Edit later] : Well, *that* was a great success, he says with bitter sarcasm. It seems I don't have a computer old enough to install the drivers for the drives. The company that made them has told Microsoft that updated drivers are unlikely.
Even the wife's MacBook doesn't recognise the drive.
They worked fine with WinME but XP and W7 dislike ancient machinery.
I suppose I *could* play more, fiddle with compatibility modes, even boot a WinME VM, but the effort far exceeds the reward.
Maybe when I get the new machine?

If critical tracks go bad on the platter, you can end up losing everything - sometimes without warning.

Over time, HDD drivers will fail (mechanically) and all of you data can be lost. Sure there are dis recovery services but that are very expensive and notoriously unreliable at recovering mission-critical data. Typical MTBF (mean time between failure) for HDD is about 50,000 hours or (divided by 8,766 hours per year) 5.7 years or 24/7 operation. HDDs are mechanical devices and often enough, after several years of 24/7 operation, a perfectly functional HDD will fail from simply being powered down and then powered back up again. It's a crap shoot.

On the other hand, an SSD drive has a MTBF of around 250,000 hours - or 28.52 years!

There is no IT technology invented 28 years ago that has recoverable data on it - not because the data is bad but because there or no interfaces which will work with it today!

The reality is that no matter what storage technology you use, you need to back-up mission-critical data and you should not expect your PC or any of its components to remain reliable much beyond five years. Over longer periods of time, your important data needs to be move to newer technology if you want to keep it forever accessible.

Secure Boot is a bad idea simply because it helps protect 99.9% of the Windows user base while making it more difficult for the remaining 0.1% to install another operating system.

really, only 0.1% dual boot? 99.9% of you gotta catch up to the times so the only problem you have is why can't I run OSX on my PC

So having to dual boot is catching up to the times? Yes, I have a laptop that dual boots Windows 7 and 8 but is that the direction for future computing? Making things more complicated for the average user? Please go back and continue trying to install OSX on your PC. Hint give Apple a call and see if they will help you (LOL)

Dual booting windows 7 and windows 8 to me is hardly a dual boot... let's be serious you can do anything you want with 7 as u can do with 8 and vice verca. I am talking about linux/windows dual boot so you can do things you can't do with both of them. As for installing OSX on a PC I have done it many times... is it legal? Ask apple hahaha ... Why not add XP and vista to your boot, while you're at it, Windows 95!

I though people used virtual machines instead.

as long as you don't need all your hardware focused on one OS... I can think of a few reasons dual booting is better then using VM's mostly depending on how much power you need to give the guest OS's. Sometimes I want all my power focused on one OS vm's do not allow that

Dual boot is better than Virtual machines- applications running in a virtual machine are noticably slower than when run on their native OS...

I develop s/w and keeping projects in separate VMs saves me soooo much trouble.

It also allows me to use hardware that won't play with W7, or windows generally, at the same time as using h/w that is windows only. And that's nuthin' compared with what I do with it at home...

you know how to implement them Chaz -

Coming from a helpdesky area, and sometimes supporting people who want their boxen to "just work", I would have thought that anything that protects 99.9% of users was a *brilliant* innovation and a complete success. The oddballs [me included] who like to fiddle can *always* find a way around anything. The extra work just makes it more fun.

to another operating system for any reason. especially when they buy it as a used system a few years down the track.

Though even then it might be possible to wipe everything and install BeOS or something even more amusing.
Though, as you suggest, even that might not be possible on some boxen. I'm sure for example I'd never get Win8 to run on my DVD recorder. Maybe it could be fun trying.

Almost everything mentioned in this article works when professional and educated people are operating them. If you start reducing to the lowest common denominator most people are not capable of walking across the room successfully. If these technologies are broken, I would submit the thing that is most broken is your training program. Hardware breaks, printers, hard drives? Seriously? A fact of life that EVERYTHING breaks, even LEDs burn out ... sometimes in a matter of minutes???
This is why you have techs and administrators. To make certain that when (not if) things break, normal operation can be restored efficiently.

Once again the "writers" of Tech Republic are put behind the 8-ball and force to release an article, it doesnt matter how bad it is or if it even makes sence. Just have an article to release. Also the more controversial the better. Also, let me just add that EVERYTHING breaks. Cars, computers, houses, plans, ideas. If your looking for something that never breaks, you need to live in Utopia.

Better luck next time buddy.

The problem with this post is that the vast majority of computer users are not tech savvy. The drive by the main providers (Microsoft and Apple and most others) are trying to make computing as simple to use as white goods and cannot achieve this. Hence all the problems with "broken software and systems". It is unrealistic to to blame training as there are essentially no training programmes for the general public whereas, in businesses, there should be some form of training programmes and often aren't.

And that subject line is a little ambiguous.
Apple stores run one-to-one training for new users. It costs but it's far cheaper than bricking a two-thousand dollar Mac. Some larger retail stores also have tutorials. And in UKland the Government has "computer literacy" schemes. I have no idea how good those are.
But your point about treating IT tech as a white good is very valid. We *should* be able to just buy kit, plug it into the mains and start surfing, printing and VOIPing. Macs get close to that, sometimes but Wintel boxen are often more problematic [which gave me a fairly good living for thirty-odd years]. So long as you do nothing innovative or weird Wintel boxen *can* "just work" and they are getting very much better at it but even W8 can take a bit of fiddling to get working perfectly.
What many people want is a box of tech as mature as a TV or telephone, what they often get is a quirky Model T with strange control interfaces.
Give it another forty years and computer tech will be as reliable, accessible and easy-to-use as motor cars. Maybe more so.
We're only three decades or so into mass IT use. We should be pleased with how far we've come.
And, yes, pushing for better.

tell it like it is, although a bit extreme, all very valid points.
You know when "they" get all technology perfectly working and synchronized, people like us IT folk won't be needed anymore either....

Kids with their gadgets and widgets these days. BAH! Are there no workhouses?

HA!

"Are there no workhouses?"
Not yet.
Give them time. The lackwits driving the "austerity measures" will eventually think about that one. They've so far tried almost every other dead, obsolete, proven not to work idiocy they remember from "The Good Old Days".
No, I'm not afraid of discussing the idea here. The chances of our esteemed leaders being able to find this forum are smaller than the smallest infinitesimal. We're not giving them ideas.
Look for "experimental" workhouse "pilot schemes" in about 2014.

Agreed - on the MS aspect - why is it after all these years the three main apps still are not consistent between each other; eg, handling comments, revisions, why can I not have the auto fields in PowerPoint like I have in Word, etc.

Also I would prefer to break up the monolithic apps - have a much more modular approach - like a table tool that can have the layout features of Word with the calcs, filtering from Excel and put it in a Slide in PowerPoint, etc. It would make things more consistent, smaller more flexible apps and even add in 3rd party replacement modules - remember the in-line spell checkers from years ago?

Word and Excel etc. are legacy junk, held back by lost source code and fragile code, however much Ribbon fart you dress them up in; I really can't be bothered with PowerPoint. Example MS Office fubars includes modal dialogs * which lock all open Word documents, and the pathetic inability to have two separate Excel spreadsheet windows open and visible at the same time; yes even in the Ribbon version of Office !

* Haven't these MS Office developer cretins heard of multi-threaded code and concurrency? Many other developers sure have and produce even small applications using it!

LibreOffice may have some bugs in it but the GUI does support concurrency and has some features which shame MS Office. I've had no choice but to use LibreOffice on occasion, because I really do need to work on more than one visible spreadsheet at a time!

Some people cannot afford them but because of an entitlement mentality feel they should be free.

I totally agree. Not wanting to pay and not being able to pay are two separate things. We find money to spend on so many other things, but software that we use to work productively should be free...

I rely on Office at work and at home. But at home I have felt no need to update past Office 97, which does everything I need it to do. Therefore I won't spend many hundreds of dollars merely to get the latest and greatest. (I hate what was done to Office since 2007 so i will never get anything more recent than 2003. I don't care what kind of bells and whistles they offer. I don't need bells and whistles, I need a spreadsheet, a word processor and a small DB. Anything else is a waste of space and money.)

I don't feel the need to constantly upgrade my home software, but then i don't have to justify my salary at home and impress the upper management that keeping me around is worthwhile.

try running MSO 97 or MSO 2003 on Win 7 - it don't work right.

Libre Office. Unlike Microsoft office, Libre Office will not be incompatible with the old file formats.

not long ago when I used to have to use Open Office to get anything to view; it was way easier than going to the MS site to download all those darned converters . Surprisingly after I got Vista x64, I've never had to go to the MS site to get a "converter" for office documents again. I just use the crapware Works that came with the PC myself. I do recommend Libre now, for many of my clients who are having difficulties. I can't remember if it runs on a Mac - maybe on the old RISC architecture?

Get your Monday morning bitch session out of the way? Just because a technology is inefficient, does not mean it is broken. Just because it looks different or behaves different, does not mean it is broken. Justbecause you do not like it, does not mean it is broken. I do not like Windows 8, but it is suprisingly solid. Every OS has exploits (fan boys go away, this discussion is not for you) it is just a matter of how much time people want to spend looking for them. MS is an easy target. Apple has been getting more exploit love lately, think it might have something to do with popularity? Printers have sucked since they first came out. Boo hoo, necessary evil. Think about it this way, if everything worked as it was supposed to, the first time, unemployment would be at 97.7% instead of 7.7%. Flame on. Not checking responses anyway.

I pretty much agree with everything although I do not use Exchange so I can't say anything for that. I also know that we wouldn't move forward if everyone stuck to one way of doing things so keep thinking you know better while developers keep trying to break the mold The future is beautiful!

My biggest complaint is with Outlook. Why do all my calendars have to be in the same time zone? I travel 80% of the time and my clients are not all in the same time zone. I need calendars that correspond my clients' time zones, not my home time zone.

This is a perfectly valid (if contencious) list of broken things. PC's and other devices should long ago have become like stereo systems, I do not need a degree in Engineering to work my stereo. Its input is standardised and works everywhere. It is long overdue that the software business was taken away from mega-corporations and based on a collective standards model, and when software does not comply it is banned.
In this environment Microsoft/Apple/Unix et al would all work together because they have to. Their revenues would still accrue from user taste (as with all electronics) and I wouldn't have to know 4 different desktop languages and write web sites with 4 different browsers scripts in them. It is long overdue that simple competition driven development was kicked into touch in the PC device world and the sooner the better. Until then everything will continue to suck at one level or another.

Regards

While I can certainly get on board with a number of these, I can honestly say that I can't remember the last time I had a serious printer problems ... and we're talking years, not months. I print virtually and physically on a range of different printers, and the only issues I ever seem to have are the inevitable running out of media. Curious.

Ha! I get a call from my mom once a week... "WHY DOESN'T MY PRINTER WORK"... Most of the time she just has to turn it off and on again

I had no problems with my desk jet 812, but the HP 1210 "All In One" was a major pain. Print jobs always hanging up. Whenever you needed a print job done quickly, then it would take 15 minutes to print each page. When you had all the time in the world then the whole print job would kick out in seconds.

However the new Kodak Office Hero has been mostly great except when for some reason the print cartridge holder died on a virtually new machine. Once that was replaced we've not had any problems. At work the HP Laser Jet 5 was a major pain until it was finally replaced with the HP laser jet 3015.

The only systems we've had to print from have been various editions of Windows so we've have not had issues with the new machines regarding cross-platform work. However, is it just me or has anyone else notice that ink/toner seems to go faster in the newer machines?

You might want to add Adobe Acrobat Reader, Adobe Flash And JAVA. They have an up date at least twice a week. Its a royal pain in the a**.

The aritcle title caught my attention. I thought it might be a list of technical issues that don't function the way they are supposed to, and the problem they cause users. This list sounds like a list of items that may or may not be broken, and seems to exists only to highlight the author's personal preferences/gripes.

I hate Windows 8's UI I installed win 8 spent 11 hours
Relearning How to get ware I wonted to go, I have bad eye Site
And Very dry Skin And Most Touch Devices Do not Respond
To my Dry Fingers very well The Apps Look good On cell phones Not on my desktop The start Menu Is a must And why After Spending A lot of money for a very fast desktop would i wont windows striped down for sell phone apps, I like The eye candy In win 7 in Win 8 to much has been striped away yes Win 8 has some new very smart tools that's about it but looks a kids toy.

if you use your phone as a phone (as I do tpp) and not as a computer (as I don't either), why did you purchase a W8 device? You can get a cheap flip phone from Wal-mart for less than $50.

From his comment, I would guess that he has only used other peoples smart phones, and that his exposure to Windows 8 is via a laptop.

I have been put off from buying a new laptop because of the Windows 8 UI. I hope to find some devices on clearance with Windows 7, (like we were able to do with Windows XP for a time.)

nt

Interesting. All you can get Down Under are the more advanced units?

on or two stores in the bigger capital cities that will offer something cheaper. Nearly all the phones here are sold via shops linked to the networks and they all try to sell you the latest and fanciest phones with phones plans. The sales staff get a might upset when you ask for something cheap you can buy outright as they get less commission.

Here you can by standard cell phones at the Dollar stores, at the drug stores, and even at the supper markets. Of course every Walmart and Target, will carry a wide selection. The various phone stores are having trouble competing with all the other places to get phone and usually will have no more than one or two customers. There will usually be more in the business of selling plans because they can't compete on phones.

not everyone else in the world has the same access to everything they have in the way of goods or services for sale or hire. The USA has over 300 million people, Australia has bout 21 million people over a landmass that's very much the same. We don't get the range of products that you do, especially in gear that's fully imported.

We are at the point of the "instant on" machines. I realize the storage capacity issue is still a bit of a problem, but if you have a desktop unit there's tons of space inside the box going unused with the advent of terrabyte hard drives. Why not a burnable EEPROM OS? I know M$ is sending updates almost weekly but if you mirrored the OS on a hard drive and then 'burned' the latest into some sort of fast ROM you'd have "instant on".

I have an old digital camera that takes several second to save a picture and a new one that does it almost instantly so the memory chip technology seems to have come a long way in a couple of years. I'd gladly add twenty or thirty seconds to an update for the instant on ability.

I would add user specific data to the instant on as well so that as soon as I log on I'm up.

You know? Those seven and ten inch tablets that come on instantly you press the button?

You want somethin' that does a bit more than that, you have to wait for it to start up.

Growing up you would walk in the door turn on the TV, go to the kitchen and fix a snack and still be back in front of the set to watch "Dark Shadows." When they upgraded Black and White TVs to instant on then the color ones still took time. Now everything no matter how capable is instant on. I look forward to the advance of OS and hardware technology to match the advance of TVs in this respect.

Wow, someone had a bad weekend. I agree with some that are actually broken, printers being #1. A lot of the others are a matter of taste (Windows 8), and not being broken. A lot of research was done for Win8, so just because you hate it does not mean everyone else does. The system works fine so far, no major bugs like ME that basically destroyed computers upon install. My wife tried out the Surface last week and thought it was the greatest thing ever (and she loved she could go to desktop UI if she felt the need), and she usually HATES new technology. Seriously, bad article, just call it 10 things I hate, not 10 broken tech.

Surely Oracle should be at number 1. It produces the most bloated, ugly, inefficient, non-standard UI software on the market. The databases are always huge and ridiculously difficult to get running correctly, In 100% of the projects I've worked on in the last 15 years where Oracle DB's were used, they were always the source of any performance and stability problems. It made no difference whether they were installed by Oracle engineers or in-house DBA's. The Windows machines running SQL were always far more stable and easier to install and tune.
Java is just hideous, with updates every time you boot. When I need to download Java to a new machine, I always end up on some download page with 8000 different flavours of Java to select from.

I HATE printers...period...end of story

Basically, this is the downside of what you get with a free enterprise system. Not that I am against it, its just what you get. Let get even simpler that what you have listed:

Cell phones: Why don't they all use the same plug to charge them? The chargers all do the same exact thing.

Oil Filters: There is absolutely no reason that there cannot be about three oil filters that will work in all the automobiles and trucks we use. This would really reduce inventory for auto parts stores and the price per filter, since they would make so many of the same.

Networking: Mac has been doing this better that Microsoft ever since the Mac Plus came out. Microsoft networking is STILL not simple after 20 years, WHY???

I believe that in GB it has been mandated that all cell phones use the same plug. Now I dont want more government regulation any more than the next guy, but this seems to make sense to me.

Most of this doesn't make sense since every engine is different (even if they are all four stroke). But as for Microsoft networking not being simple.... Homegroups have fixed that I think. Although I am a tech so I can make anything work haha I like the idea of universal things but I think you say it right "I dont want more government regulations" It restricts ideas when you are stuck thinking in one way. The Bugatti Veyron would have never been made if every car and engine had to be a certain way so you can put the same oil filter on all of em what you wrote makes me think. Thanks!

...Microsoft appears to be OS-myopic... ever try to network Win7 Home Edition with *anything* else? like Mint? PITA... you cannot enable no-password login on the Windows machine. It appears that Microsoft feels that networking is not part of the usual home computing environment. And that it should remain so. :-/

i agree ....its broken....just installed it and spent 30 min looking for restart ...hate it ....it will go away faster than vista

So, uhm, you realize that when people reference "exchange logs" that they're not talking about the "johnny connected" .. "oops, johnny disconnected" type of log, right? When people talk about exchange logs they're talking about what is basically a database journal... which unix doesn't have a generic solution for, because unix doesn't have a standard transactional database.

... and I promise you that the mysql binlogs (a rough equivalent, and needed for point-in-time backups, just like the exchange logs) can devour space with the best of them...

Talking about a Linux interface that you don't like, and in the same article slamming Win 8 is like comparing avocados to pears. They are both fruit and some pears have the same shape and color as an avocado but they are entirely different. This article is a lame attempt to group together a bunch of software renditions, not "technologies" that the author finds annoying or not as good as he hoped. Win 8 is stable, easy to use, fully tested and ready for prime time. If you don't like the tiles UI on a desktop, don't use it. It's easy enough to switch to the Win 7 UI. Also, the ease of upgrading from Win 7 to Win 8 is a first for Microsoft, i.e., upgrading to a new version without any glitches, incompatibilities or driver problems. As for office suites, Open Office is free and friendly with Word documents. There are plenty of other choices of Word friendly software and plenty of apps that convert or read doc files. I have been in business (law office) for more years than the author has lived. Windows is the OS leader whether Apple or Linux lovers like it or not. If Win 8 becomes a historical misstep for Microsoft, at least it shows an effort to link mobile devices and desktops and servers all into one OS. In an age when there is nothing really revolutionary to develop in the software world, evolutionary changes have to be done with some artistic flair that separates the products of one company from another. That's capitalism. Methinks the author doth protest too much.

The vast majority of my wasted time due to IT is dealing with problems with printers, printer drivers, spoolers, on and on. A particular area of dismay is that when Epson the waste ink pads in their ink jet printers fill up, the user cannot replace them without dismantling the printer, and the cost of replacing them from an "Authorised" Epson repair shop exceeds the cost of a new ink jet printer. Hence we have a horrendously wasteful contribution to a rubbish dump. Why not a simple slip out slip in pad. It would slow ink jet sales, but every now and then we all need to think about the environment. Hard plastic cases and metal innards do not decompose.

I'm kinda aware of the problem, but I don't know much about the solution. I like the goals and apparent viability of CUPS (formerly Common UNIX Printing System), pretty much a no-brainer on Mac and *nix, and apparently supported "well enough" on Windows (my Win 7 boxen have no trouble printing to and from my Mac and Linux ones). Comments, please. Add a new Reply Thread for each proposed solution path, please.

Jim-MN

Fax just needs to go away, thats what Email, PDF, and Scanners are for.

When will calculators and numeric keypads arrange themselves in the same formation as telephone keypads? I know, as a blind person, I'm biased, but what possible advantage is there in having two different formats? It has to be the telephone layout which wins, the other seems to me to be counter-intuitive. I presume it's some historic thing like the qwerty

Very true... What is up with that lol

I believe the reason for the difference is usage. Telephone keypads use Numbers but they also represent letters 1 (Long Distance), 2 (ABC), 3 (DEF), 4(GHI) and so on.

The reason for this is way back in the day (like 60+ years ago) You would dial an exchange by it's name shortcut For instance you would dial "BR" (27) for BRoadway. then the rest of the number. So a number might be BR4-1234.

Of course math people setup the cash register and counting machines lowest value to the highest, hence 0 at the bottom, then 1, 2, 3, then 4, 5, 6...

I agree it would be nice to have consistency. Fortunately my VOIP system allows me to dial from my computer, so I am very accustomed to 123 at the bottom.

separate design groups who never spoke to each other. You forget that the telephone keypad grew out of the dial phone and when they assigned letters to that they started with the number 2 as it ran one through to zero in a right to left pattern as that was easier for people to use. Thus the phone pads run alphabetically while the calculator and computer keypads were set up with the most common used numbers at the bottom where they'd be easier to get at.

What is interesting is how hard it is to get a keyboard without a number pad now despite most people rarely using the number pad that much outside of an accounting area.

is used by more than accounting types. As a (semi-casual) gamer I've been having a rough time finding a good bluetooth keyboard with a number pad. I map all sorts of stuff to it since I mouse left-handed. It's real handy for that. I have yet to find an RF wireless keyboard or mouse that works farther than 3 feet away and that's too close to use with my large TV. Far Cry 3 is much more fun on large-screen from the couch 8 feet away.

spending a good part of that in financial administration. I just wish that they keyboard came like they originally did - keyboard with a separate number pad. Then we had them with a detachable number pad, which was good for the lefties as they put the pad on the other side. Today both are very rare.

I thought that the invention of the number key pad was the greatest invention since Wonder bread. I use it exclusively except when working on the laptop with that damn touch pad. Ever since I learned to type I have always rested my hands on the desk so that reaching the top row of keys is difficult. It is much easier for me to reach the number key pad.

And you are right about the telephone key pad and computer number key pads have different derivations. the computer key pad came from the calculator key pad which came from the old mechanical adding machines. The phone's design derived from the old dial (which we still use on our old style candlestick phone). No common design history. It's like asking why does a plane use a stick, a throttle lever, and rudder pedals while a car uses a wheel and accelerator pedals. (Interestingly enough the original cars used tillers like ships and accelerator levers.)

is to type text of various amounts and the next is to work with graphics manipulation software - thus the numbers rarely come into usage with me. Not enough usage for me to lose the extra more than a hand width of space on the desk for the number pad.

The dial phone never started assigning letters with the number 1. ABC have always been assigned to the number 2. (Here is a link to an image of a phone manufactured in the 1920's) http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/Model500Telephone1951.jpg

Hate to say it but when I grew up that is all there was, no 'tone' dialing. I used that very phone when I was young.
---

Also I am not an accountant, but I use a numeric keypad all the time. In fact I have a USB one for my laptop that doesn't have one built in. In fact most people I know will use the number pad rather than the numbers above the keys.

I agree 100% with Fidelista. Why do calculators and numeric kepads start at the bottom and work upwards? It makes no sense. Which came first, the calculator keypad or the telephone keypad? It would be interesting to know which switched the order and why.

Number keys pads were first developed when calculators started being used. The numbers 0, 1, 2, and 3, are used more often than any others, thus they were put at the bottom of the keypad where they were easy to find and use. At the time the phones were all dial style.

Phone keypads are the late comers to the situation, but they grew out of the telephone dials. Due to the simple mechanics of the situation, and again the higher use numbers being first, the number 1 was the one closest to the finger stop. As people tend to put things in order and they tend to move from left to right, the dial moved to the right, clockwise. Thus the numbers counted down in an anti-clockwise direction from 1 to 0. When they decided to incorporate letter as part of the system they assigned the letter in alphabetical order to the numbers in numeric order, thus number 2 and A, B, and C assigned to it and the rest progressed from there; the number 1 was left unassigned as it was already being used for other assigned tasks within the phone system. When they moved to using number pads on phones and not dials they set them up in alpha-numeric order with A, B, and C etc at the top and number 1 prior to number 2, and the rest coming along in order. At that time no one even thought about the two even being done the same way.

So, in short, no one SWITCHED the order as there was no interaction between the design teams. What happened was each was independently developed in different ways due to different use and design imperatives.

They were used on mechanical adding machines even before most phones used dials. You had to pick up and ask the operator to connect you. ("Hello Mabel, can you connect me with Drucker's General Store.")

nothing more to say....

i think writer did not used windows 8

I understand that the reason for different drivers for different printers is because different printers have different resolutions and different command sets. The command sets could be harmonized just as all modems worth considering use the Hayes standard command set. Resolutions could be harmonized because it's already been done for screens of differing resolutions. So why not have a single printer command set and a driver that can easily handle different resolutions? If 2 (or preferably more) major printer manufacturers got together and designed such a system, others would have to follow to be competitive, so come on Canon, Epson, HP, Brother, Kyocera, etc., who's going to make the first move?

Another Jack Wallen article mostly dissing Microsoft again. I've just given up reading them now. He could have a lot of useful stuff to say but he prefers to just roll out the same old MS bashing everytime. Oh and I bet his annual list of "Technologies that will be big new year" will contain the Linux desktop again, as usual, every year.

I really, really wish Techrepublic could find a Linux advocate who wasn't an MS hater and could provide some balanced coverage.

... but number one on his list was a linux desktop GNOME 3. If he wasn't being balanced, that would have not been there.

I think he is pretty well balanced in his coverage. Windows has a LOT of issues that most just turn a blind eye too. The concerns about Windows 8 on a Desktop are certainly valid. I have tried multiple times to use Windows 8 on a desktop and for serious users it just falls flat. For recreational use it may be ok. I use a computer for my living, about 15-17 hours a day, and I don't like it at all, despite having used it (preview and final release for more than 3 months.

Office has been a problem for years. I have one shop that uses Word Perfect and several that use Open Office ... All have problems interfacing with Microsoft at some point and there really isn't a good reason for it.

Anyone who has ever managed exchange knows it is a nightmare. There are other solutions out there which are far superior to Exchange. Novell's Groupwise for example, is far cheaper has about 98% of the features and can even be used with Outlook so that the end user doesn't even have to know the difference.

Secure boot is nothing more than a last ditch effort to avoid people dumping Windows for Linux. Especially with the Windows 8 interface and Steam working on a Linux platform for gamers.

Maybe if you weren't a rabid Microsoft Fan Boy you would see that Microsoft's products (as with most products) have issues that should be addressed. Jack's list seems pretty spot on to me.

TR is chock full of the M$ fan boys, and they love to spout off anytime anyone has anything bad to say about ANY Microsoft product.

Printers are bad enough, but usually I can find a pilot to install one, but scanners are something else. The very thought of Twain almost gives me nightmares. How many customers have a scanner that they don't use very often - "its almost new, it can be obsolete!!" but for which we can never find a pilot to make them work on Vista or 7- especially on 64bit.
Alternatively they use it all the time and can't be without it, and they don't want to change because it works just the way they want, they know how to do what they need.

No mention of Project Management?

As I understand it, solid state 'discs' have similar reliability to traditional spinning hard discs because, whereas moving parts do wear out and break down, so do solid state storage devices because they have a limited number of write cycles before failure. Add to this the need for complex software to ensure that every byte of an SSD gets a similar number of write cycles and the reduced security of an SSD - even after formatting some SSDs still contain accessible information - and I prefer the traditional hard drive, not forgetting the cost per gigabyte. OSs should be in EEPROM, not on a hard drive, so that the OS doesn't need 'loading' as it can run where it is in the EEPROM, thus seriously reducing the need for SSDs. And when it comes to moving parts, do you own a car? Is it reliable? How many moving parts does it contain??? I have a 22 year old Toyota that's still running well and has been totally reliable in the 9 years I've owned it. I think that says a lot for the reliability of moving parts - does anyone own a 22 year old computer that's still in daily use and totally reliable?

This comment about Windows security being broken just smacks of old fashioned thinking to me. In fact, not one of Microsoft's products feature in Kaspersky's recent list of products with vulnerabilities, which suggests that Microsoft have got a far better handle on this than most others. If Windows security is fundamentally flawed, then surely you are saying that all security is flawed since all code can have vulnerabilities in it - and regularly do - but Microsoft I would say have done a better job of recognising this and dealing with it.
So I'd be interested in knowing which company/product has a security solution that isn't fundamentally flawed according to your definitions.
http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2012/11/02/microsofts-security-team-is-killing-it-not-one-product-on-kasperskys-top-10-vulnerabilities-list/

My Monday morning gripe is my HP printer telling me my ink cartridge is passed its expiry date. Is it going to turn into a pumpkin? I just refilled it so shut up and use it. I'm not going to let HP rip me off by buying new cartridges.

As far using it goes I'm happy with the performance, It works very well.
Also every Linux flavor I used so far has no problem with this printer. ( So far) lol.

That's where all the unnecessary bloatware comes from.

Instead, connect the printer and turn it on. Let Windows see if it can find drivers on the web first. If that doesn't work and the system asks you for drivers, see if you can find a 'Drivers' folder on the printer CD / DVD. Only if you strike out there should you lower yourself to running the DVD's installaiton. Make sure you select a 'Custom' installation and disable as many 'features' as possible.

... usually find the best driver matches for most any device and, if they don't, a quick trip to the vendor's support web page will usually turn up the right driver for your OS. If no such driver exists, then it is time to by a new peripheral from a vendor who supports your OS.

...but i have *never* had the Windows driver wizard *ever* find a driver for *anything* on the web, EVER. Not Win7, not XP, not 98se... trying to install a printer in anything but Linux is a Massive PITA ... yes, i said Linux. Average install time in Mint for my hp colour laser 4650 is 4 seconds (time it takes to get the drivers from the repository). Windows *any* flavour (well, not 8 - not going there)? Without the disks... 22 minutes, much of which is trying to remember what the bloody printer was named so WinX can find it.... and IP address doesn't suffice.

For example, I connected a brand new HP P3015 to a W7 box just this morning. It happily scampered out to the web and dragged back the drivers in about three minutes. I had the CD just in case, but threw it out unused.

However, if you're referring to network printers, then no, I've never had an Windows server find the drivers for those either.

I said the exact same thing about Windows 8 being another Windows Me. Furthermore I bet computer sales go down this year because most people do not want Windows 8. I tired it and uninstalled it.

nuf said!

I love it, people cannot use something so they blame the product and say they hate it.
Maybe you're just not good with new technologies, thought about that?
If it took someone 30 minutes to understand how to restart win8, then get yourself a mac or a vtech.

I wholeheartedly agree with the list.
One additional thought on UI:
The game players have to much influence. One of the original provisions of a Common User Interface (CUI by IBM OS/2) was that a user needs to look at items and know their status and expect a certain action. If a button is dimmed, it means that function is not available at this time. Nowadays one has to hover with a mouse over the button to see if it lights up and is available. Confusing and time wasting, just because someone likes these stupid optical effects. This just one example of many that make operations less efficient and cause errors.

To whatever extent "Windows Security" still is an issue, it isn't only a Windows problem. The problem more stems from an approach that treats system attributes like security, performance and robustness as something you can retrofit to a deployed system. It just does not work like that. I think Bill Gates (no less) stated it best: "Secure in concept; secure by design; secure by construction; secure by default." If only the software world could run with that.

You are right on target! i encounter these events daily when servicing my customer computers. I admint many of the flaws generate revenue for me but I would prefer spending time on other tasks that are revenue genereating that fixing what was broken from the beginning. Another reason I prefer my Linux stations is no MS garbage!

Every time you write to an SSD, you damage it. It WILL eventually fail (though it might be quite some time after the computer has become obsolete). I have eight-year old hard drives in my old computer that are running fine.

My new machine has an SSD as its OS disk (and for those pieces of software that programs insist on installing on C:). I have, however, made sure that "everything else" -- including e-mail and browser temp files -- are on a hard drive. The hard drive comprises two 2TB disks arranged in a RAID 5 configuration. I will eventually start backing IT up, as well.

We definitely use CD/DVDs exclusively in the military because the DoD prohibits the use of flash drives. So I don't see them as going away anytime soon.

CSS was a great idea in theory, separate the content from the look, that is a great idea. But
the implementation is horrible. CSS is much more difficult to use than tables and cannot even do some of the things tables can do. What's worse is that due to the convoluted inheritance, it is very difficult to troubleshoot and debug all but the most basic CSS pages, and of course web designers seem to only write the most complicated CSS pages.

nt

know that the non cross-platform technology problems and issues with drivers is created solely by Microsoft for their profit and then Apple copied them on part of it. Back in the early 1990s the relevant International Standards body developed a set of International Standard Command Sets (ISCS) to allow total cross-platform operation of all hardware and software. For a very brief moment in time we had that, then Microsoft deliberately dumped the ISCS and walked away from it during the development of Windows 95 and NT 4. Apple saw this and did the same to a lesser extent. To make matters worse Microsoft pressured some hardware companies into making hardware with the Windows commands built in so they wouldn't need drivers to work with that version of Windows but need drivers for Unix or Linux or any other version of Windows not using that specific command set.

If all the hardware and software companies designed to the ISCS everything would just attach and work and there would be no need for different divers for different operating systems at all.

This fix above would also fix a lot of the issues with your complaint about Office packages.

Now I have to admit I've NOT used every odd little feature available in Word, Excel, or Access but have used them extensively over more than 20 years, starting with Word in DOS. I've also used other packages like Lotus etc too. I currently use Libre Office and switched from Microsoft Word back in 2003 when I found MSO 2003 would NOT properly open older MS Word documents while Open Office did. I write a lot of stories in a formatted layout like a 6 x 9 inch book and a number of styles. This means what I hit one button to create a print ready PDF when I finish. I do not, and never have had much use for Macros over the years and have not found a feature in MS Word that I regularly use now or have used much in the past that is NOT in Libre Office Writer or Calc, including the word art stuff. So I don't know what features you think are missing from Libre Office.

Gnome and the Windows 8 GUI are a clear case of the developers deciding they know better about what the users want than the users - ie very bigheads and egos.

Windows security in Win 7 etc are a clear case, common with Microsoft, of trying to bolt onto the system something that should have been built in at the start and doesn't bolt on well or work if only bolted on.

Secure Boot is another after the fact attempt , but this one is aimed at vendor lock-in to stop you using other people's software once it's on and working. It's not, and never was, really aimed at providing any user security, so why the surprise at its failure to do so?

Single point of entry, well we all saw how bad an idea this was with the way Microsoft keep embedding applications into the operating system kernel - the GUI and the browser etc. Since it seems to work for them, according to some people, why shouldn't it work for everything else? Except few saw it didn't really work for Microsoft.

Don't deal with Exchange at all, so I can't comment on that, and I suspect the moving parts items was just there to fill up numbers.

Who in the heck puts their Exchange logs on the C: drive ?

hmmm, I'm using firefox to post this.
IE is brokem as far as I'm concerned. I'm tired of my web page elements not displaying properly in IE when they look great in firefox and Chrome.

When its time to upgrade Acronis I will be looking for another backup solution.

I like the way it can purge older backups so the NAS account doesn't blow up when it hits the quota wall. However Acronis usually fails 7-15 days after a backup job was created and started. The error is some non-descript code that it not listed on their web site. In fact most of the errors it spews out cannot be found on the web site. Even their tech support can't find an explanation and keep asking users for logs only to never reply with a fix.

How is this code written? By multiple programmers from multiple countries that never talk to each other.

ACRONIS, YOUR PRODUCT FAILS TOO OFTEN AND WITH NO WAY OF FIXING AN ERROR LET ALONE FINDING OUT WHAT IT IS.

Office Suites
Well has been trying to do standards. Microsoft has no interest in open standards as that would remove most of the reason many people have to use MS software at all - ie it's in MSs interest that documents created in Word and Excel don't open 'properly' in anything else, hence people are more or less forced to keep buying MS software. Of course, the fact that they keep changing the formats in a non-backwards compatible way is merely development - it can't possibly be intended to make life awkward for people who run older versions (that's sarcasm for those who can't spot it).

Just how much MS fear open standards is evident from the effort they went to in buying votes on various national standards body to push through their own "open" standard. The BSI (British Standards Institute) comments on their proposal could be summarised as "croc of s**t", yes MS still bought enough votes for it to be passed.
All this to head off a proper open standard getting a good foothold and them being forced (by large customers) to support it.


Networks
Much the same thing. MS do not want open networks - they go to great lengths to lock everything down and make it as hard as possible to create interoperable devices. That was why they were found guilty by the EU Commission and forced to provide protocol documentation to third parties (notably the Samba team). Reading between the lines, that bit really hurt as it forced them to actually document stuff where it sounds like they didn't actually know themselves !

Apple are no better !

This extends to file systems as well. The only reason FAT is still alive is that there are only 2 filesystems (FAT and NTFS) supported by Windows. Apple only do NTFS read-only, and don't support anything else that's non Apple other than FAT. Hence all memory card, cameras etc come supporting FAT. Memory cards and disks can be reformatted, cameras etc are limited to what they support in firmware.


And printing.
Well there has in fact been a very successful system around for decades - it supports all sorts of printers with one unified driver, is supported by virtually all OSs (but not by many bits of software I've had the misfortune to deal with), and will work (with some limitations on using printer features) even if you don't have the right config file to hand. It's called Postscript and is at the heart of CUPS - but in my experience, MS are s**t at supporting it as again, it wasn't invented by them (well they actually had quite a spat with Adobe IIRC).
With just one generic driver, you can print to any Postscript printer - from an ink jet through to high end typesetters and multifunction copiers. All you need is one text file that describes the printer features, how to configure them, and what options to show the user.
Unfortunately, too many people want cheap rubbish, and they get what they deserve.

We will get rid of moving parts in computers when someone invents a way to move cooling air without a fan, and without having to ionize air (thereby making it conductive and attractive to dust particles) to make it move.

With a Zillion different distros? That looks quite broken to me if you say that different Office suites should work together...

I think this list is quite pointless anyway but along those lines pretty much everything is broken... but still works

the same sort of thing you're complaining about!! Hmm.

... versions of Windows Vista (Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, Ultimate). The other variants were all either OEM or Enterprise editions and each step up was a 100% compatible superset of the next step down.

With Linux, all distros may be similar but none are 100% interchangeable.

Not counting the OEM variants, what was officially released by Microsoft in the Windows Vista editions range for business and individual consumers were:

Starter - 32 bit only
Home Basic - 32 bit edition and 62 bit edition
Home Premium - 32 bit edition and 62 bit edition
Business - 32 bit edition and 62 bit edition
Enterprise - 32 bit edition and 62 bit edition
Ultimate - 32 bit edition and 62 bit edition
Business for embedded systems -
Ultimate for embedded systems -
Home Basic N - 32 bit edition and 62 bit edition
Home Basic K - 32 bit edition and 62 bit edition
Home Basic KN - 32 bit edition and 62 bit edition

Then you have the various specialised OEM versions.

With most of the Windows Vista systems you have do a clean install over the others if you want to change them.

Most of the software designed for other versions of Windows are not compatible with Windows Vista, or the reverse.

...........

Most packages and applications for one version of Linux will work on another, and I've had a lot of success in the past in installing one version of Linux over another while still carrying across a lot of personalised settings and data due to having the 'Home' directory in a separate partition.

On cross platform I even get networking issues between XP and Vista or 7. Network connections deadlock for a while when an XP machine is introduced. Linux or Macs don't cause that.

Network attached pcl seems to be the best hope for a printing standard

Number 2 is a lot about human nature. Separate systems often means separate password. More passwords means lost passwords, or worse, passwords written on post-it notes. There will always be single points of failure therefore IT professionals must find better ways to mitigate the risk. Especially for mission-critical systems.

Number 3 is unavoidable. It is not about system design, it is about the size of the target. Windows is no more or less vulnerable than Linux or MacOS X. Nevertheless, With 90% of desktops, worldwide, running Windows, and with a very large number of those being operated by end-users, you are correct that end-user education is a problem. You are also correct that tools like UAC simply frustrate users. It does not help that social networks train end-users to expect unsolicited e-mail from entities they are not familiar with. Further, unscrupulous vendors trick users into believing that their computer is infected when it is not so they can sell them some completely worthless piece of software.

The most vulnerable component of any full-featured OS (other than the end-user him/her self) is the buffer overflow. Operating Systems designers must not only think about how the OS is supposed to be but also how it might be used improperly used and to remove that possibility. As with any human endeavor, for every human who can figure out how to mitigate a vulnerability, there is another human who can find away to get around the mitigation. With such a large number of human users of widely varying experience level and awareness, Windows is just too easy a target.

Number 4 is simple to understand. No printer vendor can afford to have their printer be generic. A generic printed becomes a commodity printer and the end user will never shop by brand name if all printers were the same.

Don't believe me? Over the last two years, we have watched all the "generic" Android tablet vendors chase each other down to the $199 price-point and none of them are making a lot of money on their products. Meanwhile, Apple has stayed above the fray, keeping themselves firmly in the $499+ price range for the mainstream line. Even the iPad mini is perceived by many as overpriced but Apple will remain profitable thanks to their attention to detail. It remains to be seen if the Microsoft Surface can compete at Apple price-points.

Number 5. Yes, as with #4, this is about competitive advantage. The only real "standards" are the "de facto" standards defined when the majority of end-users pick one vendor.

Oddly, your number 7 is the very thing Microsoft is trying to do to address your concerns in Number 3. Users crave change until it changes something they like, then they hate it.

Number 8, same problem as 4 & 5. Interoperability defeats competitive advantage. We simply do not (nor would we want to) live in George Orwell's novel "1984".

Number 9 is strictly a matter or personal preference. Don't like it? Don't use it. Microsoft will change whatever it needs to in order to keep its core customers engaged.

Number 10. Because HDD devices cost about $0.10 per GB at retail. SSD devices cost about $1 per GB and SDD devices are still limited to about 256GB while HDD drives go up to 2TB,. For $100 you can get a 128GB SSD or a 1TB HDD. When the typical HDD outlives the PC you just bought, why would you spend ten times as much for SSD storage?

Ultimately, this are not broken technologies. They are trade-offs that end-users and vendors alike must choose in order to sell their products to a maximum number of people at the lowest cost. Apple's choices are different than Microsoft's and user's choices keep both companies profitable. What more can we ask for as consumers other than clear choices from multiple vendors.

Microsoft has recently deciding on a name for their "Metro" interface on Windows 8/Windows Phone. The result being "Windows Design Language". I suggest you check out these videos to really appreciate the process that Microsoft took when designing their new UI.

https://channel9.msdn.com/Series/Windows-Phone-Design-Bootcamp

A few years ago, Jason Hiner started putting his name in the 'From' field of a bunch of emails I get for being a subscriber. I thought that was a little narcissitic and self-important, but hey, if he wants to stroke his ego, let it be, as long as the content continues. Since that time, I've found less and less to read that's of interest to me at all, and it seems like we get more and more garbage like this. Newsflash... You know what's broken? The attitude of someone who's supposed to write informative articles that turns out whiny criticism at the easiest of targets. Microsoft bashing has been done to friggin death for so long that it's only funny because someone still thinks it's original. Printer bashing? Really? That was funny in Office Space 14 years ago. Great, they still don't work. Guess what, they'll never get any better. Deal with it.
And then we get these smug pinheads who have to prove how much smarter they are than the rest of us by talking about how much they know about XYZ operating system that 4 other people on the planet know about (WTF is GNOME?!). No one cares. We all have perfectly good reasons for using the OS's we do, and very few of us have the time or the inclination to work through a multi-year learning curve just to figure out how to print documents or watch movies from Ubuntu or UNIX or GNOME or whichever OS is apparently better than mine. I thought these pinheads were just chat forum posters, but apparently Jason Hiner, in his infinite wisdom, has decided their rants warrant a larger platform and lets this kind of drivel pass for journalism.