I write this sitting in my parents' dining room, using their computer. It's a good computer: i3 processor, 3GB of RAM so it shouldn't be slacking.
Why am I using it? My Dad has a rather good collection of CDs that I want to add to my own digital library (using Google Play Music - check it out if you like being able to access your collection from anywhere in the world) so I went to copy them and add them. Here we go.
Dear Windows 7,
I am writing to tell you that I do not like you, and the various array of needless complexities that make you so damnably difficult to use. You may believe after reading my letter that I don't give you enough credit, Mr 7, and that I am biased towards a (what you might consider) more complex, or less user-friendly way of doing things. You may also find that I am angry not specifically at you, but at the various organisations who create applications to be used within you. Unfortunately it would take too long to enumerate each of these fools individually, so I'll instead just use you as an umbrella term for these people.
You are a pretty thing, Mr 7, there's no denying that. The way your transparent borders and animations work are subtle but delightful. As a user of Linux-based systems on a daily basis, I am very much in favour of eye-candy. Making my computing experience look good is something that I enjoy doing, and you did the work for me and came up with something beautiful. For an operating system that one pays in excess of £50 for, one's workflow is (or should be) just as good, if not better than an operating that is completely free and does not have a multi-million pound corporation filled with designers behind it. And I'd say that you've more or less hit that on the nose.
A quick shout-out to Apple here as well: iTunes 11 is considerably better than I first gave it credit for and feels much less bloated and slow than previous iterations.
Sadly Mr Windows 7, the praise ends here. In trying to achieve my task of copying some CDs and then uploading the files to a cloud storage service, you took so woefully long to do this, and were so incredulously obtuse about it that I am forced to be relieved that I only use you for gaming any more. Let me tell you what happened...
Not wishing to confuse and disorder my Dad's own music library and so forth, I created a guest user account with which to achieve my goals. In this process I decided too to try to use Windows-only products, approaching the situation as a new user on a clean installation.
Logging out of my Dad's account (which took longer that it ought to because Spotify demands that it stays open at all times and delays the shutting down process considerably), I accidentally turned the computer off because for whatever reason, you don't assume that I want to log out of one the three users on the computer, no. You assume that I want to shut down the machine and go through the lengthy process of switching it on again - despite the computer's high(ish) spec, for some reason you deem it acceptable to take more than 30 seconds to boot up.
I log into the guest account and I am greeted by a fresh (and almost) blank desktop. Only a couple of icons are there: iTunes and the recycle bin. The taskbar along the bottom has Internet Explorer, My Documents, the Welcome Centre and Windows Media Player. Delighted at how easily you've presented me with the tools that I need, Windows, I click the icons for Internet and Media Player.
The machine whirs and the Internet appears (my, how much Internet Explorer has come along). I minimise the window and wait for your media player to open. I am shortly greeted by a dialogue asking me if I would like to set it up with the default settings. I find this a little baffling, as surely it was set up already when the user was created? But no matter, I allow you to do your thing and insert my CD into the drive.
I wait.
And a bit more.
Nothing happens.
Confused, I search for your menu but come up blank. Finally realising that I have to right-click to access the menu that had for whatever reason been hidden, I navigate to the "play" section only to see that the "Play CD/DVD/VCD" option is unclickably greyed out. Confused, I seek the almighty knowledge of Google (but I correct myself: you want me to use Bing! don't you, Mr 7?). But when I summon up the Internet from its minimised state, I find that I am greeted by nothing but blank pages and error messages. It seems that a number of add-ons want to be enabled, and that three (yes, three) distinct toolbars are vying for my attention under the address bar. I can only assume that all this desperation to grab my attention first has caused the application to crash. I take it back, Internet Explorer: you may have received a makeover, but underneath you're still ugly as sin.
Forced to kill the process rather than just exiting the Internet (because apparently being able to close a crashing program in the normal way would be too easy), I am struck that as a guest user I shouldn't really be allowed access to the processes that are running, much less killing them. In any event, I restart Internet Explorer, and the same thing happens, only this time I am able to tell a few of the add-ons that I don't want them, and cast their dejected forms back to the pits that spawned them. I repeat my previous actions: click the exit button, no joy. Open up the task manager (I still remember the Ctrl+Shift+Esc combination! Do I get some credit for that, Mr 7?), find iexplorer.exe and end it like a bitch.
After three more attempts, after which I have gone no further than being able to type the address of my preferred cloud storage site, and it crashing in the loading process, I give up on Internet Explorer and try to find Google Chrome. I know it's on the computer, since I've used it on my Dad's account. But no, it would seem to have been installed at the user-level, as opposed to a system-level. Being unable to access an alternative browser, and unable to download an alternative because of the shortcomings of your default browser, Windows, I am forced to think that you just don't want people to use you. Perhaps you just want to sit there and look pretty, and make no contribution to anybody's work?
Well screw you. I log out, into my Dad's account and reinstall Google Chrome at a system level (which is not immediately obvious as to the method, apparently Google don't trust Windows users to get it right...) and then log back into the guest account.
At this stage, Mr 7, I've lost my rag with you and just go to use iTunes instead. After another inexplicable "set-up" screen and a rather lengthy installation process (wasn't iTunes already installed) I finally get to the stage of being able to copy CDs into the library. Hurrah.
Part way through this process, several things tell me that they require updates - Java, AVG, Adobe Acrobat Reader and iTunes amongst them. I allow the updates, and then endure each app telling me individually that the computer requires a reboot for each update to work. WHY? WHY? Updating a media player shouldn't require the computer to have to go through a damned reboot! This, Windows, is not the fault of these third party applications. I am more than certain that this is your fault. I don't know how, I don't know why. But I imagine that each of these companies would rather that their users didn't have to reboot after every tiny update. Just sayin'.
Finally, the process of ripping CDs is finished. Here again, I compliment Apple on doing a stunning job. These CDs, I'm fairly sure, aren't even available to buy any more, and it still comes up with the track listing, and all the relevant details. Bravo!
My final problem then, Windows. Browsing through the guest account's folder is apparently very difficult. First of all, to get to a view of each subfolder, rather than just a list of 4 libraries (I understand what you're trying to achieve here, but really. Let's dispense with it and just let people view their home folder, shall we?) I have to go through the start menu, rather than just click the icon you so graciously gave me on the taskbar.
Next, and this is probably more Apple's fault that yours, I have to go through a rather foolish amount of folders to actually get to the mp3s: My Music > iTunes > iTunes Media > Music or something of that nature. I'm writing this part on a separate machine so I can't be certain. But rest assured that the folder structure was needlessly complex, especially for something that is a user's personal data. It should be as simple or as complex as the user requires.
Basically, Windows... You suck the big one. Upon my return to my Ubuntu machine, I can undergo the same process and be done in a matter of minutes, whereas you forced me to take more than an hour to copy 4 CDs, Mr 7. That is unforgivable.
So take care, Mr Windows 7, and I wish you all the success in the world. I hope that your race to the bottom to make your user experience as simple as you can doesn't backfire on you.
Yours sincerely,
A recently validated Linux user.
Why am I using it? My Dad has a rather good collection of CDs that I want to add to my own digital library (using Google Play Music - check it out if you like being able to access your collection from anywhere in the world) so I went to copy them and add them. Here we go.
Dear Windows 7,
I am writing to tell you that I do not like you, and the various array of needless complexities that make you so damnably difficult to use. You may believe after reading my letter that I don't give you enough credit, Mr 7, and that I am biased towards a (what you might consider) more complex, or less user-friendly way of doing things. You may also find that I am angry not specifically at you, but at the various organisations who create applications to be used within you. Unfortunately it would take too long to enumerate each of these fools individually, so I'll instead just use you as an umbrella term for these people.
You are a pretty thing, Mr 7, there's no denying that. The way your transparent borders and animations work are subtle but delightful. As a user of Linux-based systems on a daily basis, I am very much in favour of eye-candy. Making my computing experience look good is something that I enjoy doing, and you did the work for me and came up with something beautiful. For an operating system that one pays in excess of £50 for, one's workflow is (or should be) just as good, if not better than an operating that is completely free and does not have a multi-million pound corporation filled with designers behind it. And I'd say that you've more or less hit that on the nose.
A quick shout-out to Apple here as well: iTunes 11 is considerably better than I first gave it credit for and feels much less bloated and slow than previous iterations.
Sadly Mr Windows 7, the praise ends here. In trying to achieve my task of copying some CDs and then uploading the files to a cloud storage service, you took so woefully long to do this, and were so incredulously obtuse about it that I am forced to be relieved that I only use you for gaming any more. Let me tell you what happened...
Not wishing to confuse and disorder my Dad's own music library and so forth, I created a guest user account with which to achieve my goals. In this process I decided too to try to use Windows-only products, approaching the situation as a new user on a clean installation.
Logging out of my Dad's account (which took longer that it ought to because Spotify demands that it stays open at all times and delays the shutting down process considerably), I accidentally turned the computer off because for whatever reason, you don't assume that I want to log out of one the three users on the computer, no. You assume that I want to shut down the machine and go through the lengthy process of switching it on again - despite the computer's high(ish) spec, for some reason you deem it acceptable to take more than 30 seconds to boot up.
I log into the guest account and I am greeted by a fresh (and almost) blank desktop. Only a couple of icons are there: iTunes and the recycle bin. The taskbar along the bottom has Internet Explorer, My Documents, the Welcome Centre and Windows Media Player. Delighted at how easily you've presented me with the tools that I need, Windows, I click the icons for Internet and Media Player.
The machine whirs and the Internet appears (my, how much Internet Explorer has come along). I minimise the window and wait for your media player to open. I am shortly greeted by a dialogue asking me if I would like to set it up with the default settings. I find this a little baffling, as surely it was set up already when the user was created? But no matter, I allow you to do your thing and insert my CD into the drive.
I wait.
And a bit more.
Nothing happens.
Confused, I search for your menu but come up blank. Finally realising that I have to right-click to access the menu that had for whatever reason been hidden, I navigate to the "play" section only to see that the "Play CD/DVD/VCD" option is unclickably greyed out. Confused, I seek the almighty knowledge of Google (but I correct myself: you want me to use Bing! don't you, Mr 7?). But when I summon up the Internet from its minimised state, I find that I am greeted by nothing but blank pages and error messages. It seems that a number of add-ons want to be enabled, and that three (yes, three) distinct toolbars are vying for my attention under the address bar. I can only assume that all this desperation to grab my attention first has caused the application to crash. I take it back, Internet Explorer: you may have received a makeover, but underneath you're still ugly as sin.
Forced to kill the process rather than just exiting the Internet (because apparently being able to close a crashing program in the normal way would be too easy), I am struck that as a guest user I shouldn't really be allowed access to the processes that are running, much less killing them. In any event, I restart Internet Explorer, and the same thing happens, only this time I am able to tell a few of the add-ons that I don't want them, and cast their dejected forms back to the pits that spawned them. I repeat my previous actions: click the exit button, no joy. Open up the task manager (I still remember the Ctrl+Shift+Esc combination! Do I get some credit for that, Mr 7?), find iexplorer.exe and end it like a bitch.
After three more attempts, after which I have gone no further than being able to type the address of my preferred cloud storage site, and it crashing in the loading process, I give up on Internet Explorer and try to find Google Chrome. I know it's on the computer, since I've used it on my Dad's account. But no, it would seem to have been installed at the user-level, as opposed to a system-level. Being unable to access an alternative browser, and unable to download an alternative because of the shortcomings of your default browser, Windows, I am forced to think that you just don't want people to use you. Perhaps you just want to sit there and look pretty, and make no contribution to anybody's work?
Well screw you. I log out, into my Dad's account and reinstall Google Chrome at a system level (which is not immediately obvious as to the method, apparently Google don't trust Windows users to get it right...) and then log back into the guest account.
At this stage, Mr 7, I've lost my rag with you and just go to use iTunes instead. After another inexplicable "set-up" screen and a rather lengthy installation process (wasn't iTunes already installed) I finally get to the stage of being able to copy CDs into the library. Hurrah.
Part way through this process, several things tell me that they require updates - Java, AVG, Adobe Acrobat Reader and iTunes amongst them. I allow the updates, and then endure each app telling me individually that the computer requires a reboot for each update to work. WHY? WHY? Updating a media player shouldn't require the computer to have to go through a damned reboot! This, Windows, is not the fault of these third party applications. I am more than certain that this is your fault. I don't know how, I don't know why. But I imagine that each of these companies would rather that their users didn't have to reboot after every tiny update. Just sayin'.
Finally, the process of ripping CDs is finished. Here again, I compliment Apple on doing a stunning job. These CDs, I'm fairly sure, aren't even available to buy any more, and it still comes up with the track listing, and all the relevant details. Bravo!
My final problem then, Windows. Browsing through the guest account's folder is apparently very difficult. First of all, to get to a view of each subfolder, rather than just a list of 4 libraries (I understand what you're trying to achieve here, but really. Let's dispense with it and just let people view their home folder, shall we?) I have to go through the start menu, rather than just click the icon you so graciously gave me on the taskbar.
Next, and this is probably more Apple's fault that yours, I have to go through a rather foolish amount of folders to actually get to the mp3s: My Music > iTunes > iTunes Media > Music or something of that nature. I'm writing this part on a separate machine so I can't be certain. But rest assured that the folder structure was needlessly complex, especially for something that is a user's personal data. It should be as simple or as complex as the user requires.
Basically, Windows... You suck the big one. Upon my return to my Ubuntu machine, I can undergo the same process and be done in a matter of minutes, whereas you forced me to take more than an hour to copy 4 CDs, Mr 7. That is unforgivable.
So take care, Mr Windows 7, and I wish you all the success in the world. I hope that your race to the bottom to make your user experience as simple as you can doesn't backfire on you.
Yours sincerely,
A recently validated Linux user.
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