Tags: Musings, Vista
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4/7/2007 4:01:43 AM #
Except that I've had people who've used windows for years suddenly forget how to uninstall software on XP. I think it matters a lot less for the low end users who NEVER freakin remember in the first place than those few of us who will adjust quick enough once we find the new spot. That said, changing the wording did create a lot of pointless angst, however short term. I can understand why they changed it to "remove a program" in the new control panel (who ever used it to install a program? No one.), but the old style control panel is just labeled "programs and features". Actually, scratch that. I know EXACTLY why they did it. Pre vista, I have never found the new style control panel to be useful - in fact, it has been a flat out impediment to getting anything done, so even before turning off that dang "click" noise, I change the control panel mode first (hey, gotta, to get to the sounds control applet, or it would be second). Now, the old style control panel doesn't work wortha crud in Vista, mainly because they have deliberately sabotaged the heck out of it and added a bit more descriptive language with search capabilites to the new style. It is all about driving feature adoption. If you can't make people use the new feature, and can't stand the backlash of removing the old feature, just make the old feature too hard to use any more.
C Johnson
4/7/2007 4:18:31 AM #
LOL! Priceless.
Steve Trefethen
4/7/2007 10:06:19 AM #
This demonstrates how hard it is to do anything right for software manufacturers. Go to the control panel and start typing 'add or remove programs' in the search box. The item is first in the list after typing only the 'a'. Searching the control panel works really great imho.
Giel
4/7/2007 11:06:57 AM #
Giel -> yes, they've managed to make the "new style" control panel, introduced in XP finally work, and all they had to do was add in search, a boat load of search terms and sabotage the heck out of the old control panel which just plain worked without the search. I've found that there are now a few things you just plain can't do without using the new style and search thanks to all the vista changes.
4/8/2007 4:21:18 AM #
Giel, Looks to me like the search box ain't cutting it. I got nearly a dozen more searches like what's mentioned here today and my site certainly isn't the only place to find this information. I'd say MS has a usability issue here that they failed to identify. FWIW, the thought of using the search box never even crossed my mind since the icon I've used for more than a decade should have been there IMO. One thing I neglected to mention was that a bunch of these queries where used more than once. The list includes 32 different searches over two days for just my blog and I imagine that's just going to scale up as more Vista users come online.
4/8/2007 11:09:56 AM #
> "FWIW, the thought of using the search box never even crossed my mind" That's the strange thing. They could of course have kept the old icon. But then again, this Vista search thing was part of the hype at Vista launch time, it's on a lot of windows in Vista, it actually finds a lot of things.... And there's of course the Windows Help to find a solution. It's funny that despite all these efforts the users can't solve this problem themselves and post a question on a forum (they can find that themselves for some reason and wait for two days until there's an answer....... There's a similar issue with the missing "Run" item from the Start menu. But the Start menu now also has a search box which finds Run easily (and also regedit, notepad, Delphi etc.) Not that I'm more clever: I've been browsing through the Windows Explorer in the Start menu for ten years until last year, when my brother showed me you can right-click the Start button and click Explore
4/8/2007 11:14:27 AM #
Correction: "I've been browsing through the Start menu looking for Windows Explorer for ten years until last year, ...."
4/9/2007 7:50:31 PM #
Giel, What exactly would you type to find this icon in the Control Panel? I've pretty much exhausted all the things I thought would work from both the Start menu and the Control Panel and never found "Programs and Features". FWIW, I was able to find the topic in the online help by searching for "remove program". IOW, I really don't think search helps at all with this problem.
4/12/2007 8:38:06 AM #
Steve, I think you've switched the control panel to classic view. I gave it a try and it can't find much indeed. In the non-classis view it's impossible to not find it. "remove", 'Uninstall" or "programs" all work.
4/12/2007 9:23:41 AM #
Giel, Yeah, I mentioned that in my original "Add/Remove programs". I switched to classic because I was having trouble finding things! If you ask me, it's a bit of a mess. What will they do if they change views again? Call them New, Classic and Ancient?
4/12/2007 10:36:48 AM #
The thing about searching for OS features (programs, settings etc) is, that once you have found it, you usually can't tell how to get there the second time. You have to do the same search again... Dunno, it's annoying. I want it to tell me where it is, and i want this place to be logical. Vista is a true disappointment.
steve
2/3/2008 1:07:27 AM #
Once again Windows programers show their incompetence with idiotic changes just like this. Microsoft has earned contempt by users worldwide and the only reason they get away with it is the monopoly Gates established. If they had any real competition Microsoft programmers wouild be in the unemployment line.
R Suzuki
2/3/2008 5:32:53 AM #
Hi R Suzuki, If I had to guess I'd say this probably had absolutely nothing to do with Windows developers and everything to do with Program Management. I can't imagine why any programmer would desire to make this sort of change though I can easily see a PM or group of PM's lobby for something like this believing it was part of some overall "strategic vision" and simply had to be made just like moishelettvin.blogspot.com/.../...wn-crapfest.html">this was.
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