Microsoft gets an earful on what users want in future Windows releases

[Chris]

In December 2006, Microsoft requested feedback from a select group of invitees regarding what they would like to see fixed, changed and/or added to future Windows builds. The Windows team got an earful: Nearly 800 new feature requests, another 560-plus change requests and almost 400 defects.

Among some of the more interesting items on the honed feedback-request list:

• Integrated antivirus
  
• Inclusion of a completely vector-based graphical-user interface
  
• Multi-session Remote Desktop
  
• Session-restore feature for Internet Explorer 7
  
• Capability for other Windows PCs to act as Media Center Extenders
  
• ISO/BIN system-image support
  
• Download manager for Internet Explorer
  
• Replace error ID number with plain language explanation
  

A number of the items on the list of 70 possible futures have to do with improving the fit and finish of Windows, such as allowing reordering of Taskbar Buttons, applying the Aero user-interface look and feel consistently throughout the operating system; and including more desktop themes.

Some of these seem rather unlikely — integrating antivirus comes to mind immediately, given past entanglements Microsoft has had with antitrust authorities. Anything else on this short list catch your attention?

More | Here

[-pops-]

What I would like to see with Windows is for it to get back to being an operating system rather than a hotchpotch collection of disparate add-ons that attempt to make Windows an "all things to all men" "Computer Experience".

What this does, in fact, is produce a behemoth of poor reliability containing bits of other manufacturers software (whether bought, borrowed or "tweaked") with the end result that none of it works as originally intended.

As an example of what I mean take the CD writing software in XP. Begged, borrowed or stolen from Roxio it contains only a few basic parts of the original - not even the best parts - and, at a time when DVD writing was becoming de rigueur, MS in their wisdom totally ignored it. The result was that many XP users continued to use Nero (or the full version of Roxio) because the MS effort just wouldn't do what they wanted. That's only one example - there are a number of others.

[andsome]

What I would like to see with Windows is for it to get back to being an operating system rather than a hotchpotch collection of disparate add-ons that attempt to make Windows an "all things to all men" "Computer Experience".

What this does, in fact, is produce a behemoth of poor reliability containing bits of other manufacturers software (whether bought, borrowed or "tweaked") with the end result that none of it works as originally intended.

As an example of what I mean take the CD writing software in XP. Begged, borrowed or stolen from Roxio it contains only a few basic parts of the original - not even the best parts - and, at a time when DVD writing was becoming de rigueur, MS in their wisdom totally ignored it. The result was that many XP users continued to use Nero (or the full version of Roxio) because the MS effort just wouldn't do what they wanted. That's only one example - there are a number of others.

Here here. :D

[eddacker]

The 'make IE7 more like FF' bits catch my eye (session-restore, dnld mgr). Especially after MS announced, before releasing IE7, that its users didn't use or want tabbed browsing.

<simpleton>eddacker</simpleton>