Thursday, January 01, 2009

You might not like Windows 7

An author of many Windows books, Ed Bott has an article about why you might not like Windows 7 (and Vista for that matter) if you are pretty much set in your ways. Some users don't like anything new, they want to use the exact same steps they learned back in 1998. Read the article here: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=630

People always ask me if there was some class I took a book I read to learn what I know about computers and Windows. The truth is that it just takes time. I have been using computers for a long time, from my first VIC-20 computer, through Apple IIs, and TRS-80s, and an IBM PCjr, and so on.

I also love to read instructions and manuals. Some peolpe like to just jump right in and and start messing with thing and figure things out by using them. I like to read about it, then use it. For example, this article that I pointed out above. Even though I don't have Windows 7 yet, I'm already reading about it. So by the time I actually do use it, I am familiar with a lot of the new features already.

That's probably why I found Vista so enjoyable; because I had already read about how it works and its features and how it is different. Some people just jump into using Vista and expect it to work just like XP or Windows 95. They don't realize all the new features that make things easier to use, and they get frustrated.

Should Microsoft have kept the interface to Vista and Windows 7 the same as XP or 95? Should they have had a XP or 95 mode so that all the old ways of doing things still worked? I think they might have been criticized for not making the new versions different enough. What do you think?

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