Whether you love or hate Microsoft, you can’t deny the tech
giant’s presence in the IT industry. From security concerns to product releases
to competition with Google and open source software, Microsoft continues to
make news headlines daily. Perhaps it’s the IT community’s love/hate relationship
with Microsoft that makes water-cooler and discussion forums about the company
buzz with such fervor. That’s exactly what happened when TechRepublic’s Trivia Geek
posted the following prompt in the Discussion Center: “In ten words or less,
complete the following sentence: ‘I really wish Microsoft would…’”
In true community form, many TechRepublic
members played along. Some of them played by the rules (sticking to “10 words
or less”) while others were compelled to say exactly what they wanted to say
without following the word count restriction. First, let’s take a look at some
of the responses of TechRepublic members who played
by the rules. A few of them also included longer explanations, which they
appended to the end of their original quotes.
In 10 words or less… “I really wish
Microsoft would…
- …build
a super-lean version of Vista for old PCs.” (The
Trivia Geek) – “Just once, I’d like to see a Windows release aimed
at the existing install base, rather than designed to force an upgrade to
bigger and better hardware.” - …build
in driver support for existing products.” (netadmin1@…)
– “Build in driver support for existing products of the previous 5
years.” - …figure out
how to boot the OS in 5 seconds.” (TaskMan!) – “If you had told me 20
years ago, when I was running a 4.77 MHz 2-floppy drive (no hard drive)
640KB RAM PC-XT with a 7.14 MHz Turbo Switch (Wow!) that we’d be running
stations now with multiple GHz CPUs and a typical 512 MB of memory and 120
GB of storage, and YET, we’d still have to wait 3 minutes for the darn
things to finish booting, — well, I would have said you were crazy. Silly
me.” - …release all
its software under the BSD license.” (apotheon) - …provide a
‘One User Option’” (Ol_Red) – “My current installation of WinXP
requires two ‘Administrator’ accounts, a ‘Default User’ account, and an
‘All Users’ account. I’m the one and only user. Why do I need all these
@#% files and/or shortcuts cluttering up my hard drive.” - …turn
everything OFF by default.” (RoyC-Qld) - …make Windows
OS more affordable!” (USBPort1) - …build a
world class ERP system.” (trevorhunter@…)
– “I really wish that Microsoft would build a world class ERP
system to compete with the likes of SAP and Oracle. Their serious entry
into this arena would encourage some real competition in what is currently
a stagnant field. Their customer focus would also be appreciated here. TCO
of ERP systems should also come down. - …go back to
Windows 95 and refine it.” (jardinière) - …patch the
OS without needing a reboot.” (mandrake64)
– “Most of my UNIX systems can sustain patches to filesets without needing a reboot/IPL. Many patches
can be applied without having to shut down any applications, even on a
production system. The first thing you get told when installing most
things on a Windows system is to save your work and exit all
applications.” - …stop using
the Registry for Application Settings.” (turbinepilot) - …demonstrate
an understanding of IT reality.” (sr10) - …provide more features for power users.”
(gbentley@…) - …shrink baby
shrink.” (rsalazar@…)
– “I just need a little user interface like my iPod.” - …stop putting
US IT workers out of work.” (aiguy@…) - …be considered as just another
business entity, looking for profits.”
(onbliss) - …focus on improving and securing its OS.”
(dr.lowenstine) - …release something worth using.” (Jaqui)
- …go ahead and
take over the world”. (DimBulb) - …make a
concurrent licensing model available for all their products.” (jon@…) - …put user data in a separate
volume.” (George Ou)
– Editor’s note: While this
blog post wasn’t included in the TR discussion, it answered the prompt
perfectly. TechRepublic’s George Ou asks Jim Allchin why
Microsoft can’t change the default location of “Documents and
Settings” to a data partition or data drive. No legacy applications
use “Documents and Settings” via absolute addressing, and
everything that uses relative addressing won’t be affected anyways.]
Here are a few of the TechRepublic
community responses from members who didn’t quite play by the rules. Obviously,
they had more to say while creating their Microsoft wish list.
In more than 10 words… “I really
wish Microsoft would…
-
…make replacement CD’s available at NO CHARGE
once you’ve purchased original software. (secretgeekygirl) -
…make an OS where one could easily find out, and
any given time, what apps are currently running (or loaded on start up), how to
get those apps that are not necessary to quit running and how to know which
apps are important and which are not.” (davideyoungmd@…) -
…make something that works the way that they claim
it will. (HAL
9000) – “I’m
so sick and tired of Undocumented Features what any other decent company would
call Faults that I find them very hard to live with.” -
…stop
branding new versions of the OS for every conceiveable
installation scenario (e.g. the almost dozen proposed Vista editions)” – (Daniel.Muzrall) -
…STOP
charging extortionate prices for software, when most free OS software is much
better.” (Username_Pending_Approval) -
…realize ‘Yes to all’ AND ‘No to all’ can BOTH be
choices.” (zaferus) – “Wouldn’t it be nice if they let you
easily replace 8 files missing out of 2,500 in a directory without CLI. While I
like CLI’s – try explaining them to the average user.
Would you like to overwrite existing files? Buttons: ‘Yes to all’ ****AND**** ‘No
to all’ So simple and obvious – must be why they
missed it – they were too busy working on ‘Microsoft Bob’.” -
…get
rid of the backwards compatibility all the way back to the days of DOS 1.0.
Keep Windows 2000 & XP compatibility, but I bet you could shrink the size
and resource requirements of Windows Vista by 2/3 if you did that.” (FirstPeter) -
…slip off the edge of the planet and give some
honest companies a go…” (Morleychuffer) -
…allow
students to download Microsoft Office 2003 Pro to their own PC for free.” (fastnfurious2k2@…)
As you can see, this Microsoft wish list is fairly lengthy, and it includes
some legitimate concerns as well as some blatant bashing. Did you see your
biggest Microsoft peeve on the list? Drop
by the forum to view all of the responses, discuss any comments that you
agree or disagree with, or even add your own Microsoft recommendations.
