Windows wishlist?
 

It's been a time of negativity towards MS's new software - the rubbish IE upgrade, the boring new name of Longhorn, the constant pruning of features. . .

So here's a thread devoted to a more uplifting theme: What functionality would *you* like to see in the next version of Windows?

My personal wishlist:

1. Customizeable taskbars - C'mon, guys, you've had "Start" in that button for a decade! We *know* that little button is where all the functionality is, we don't need to be reminded the whole time. Let us change the button!
   
   More than that, let us *customise* the menus and taskbars. I don't use taskbars at all with Linux, but on my XP machine at work, I want two - one top and one bottom. One to show me all the windows that are open, and one to have the quick-start icons, the main menus, the clock, etc.
   
   And I want more than *one* button on my task bars, so I can have more than one menu. That way I don't have to navigate through a whole tree of options the whole time. Like logging off: Why does such a common task need to pop up a new window with multiple options? Because one menu just *isn't* enough! So let us have more menus and taskbars!
   
2. A real, proper, working "kill" function. When my Ogg player at work locks up, it takes 2-3 minutes for it to finally close down, during which the whole machine chugs along like molasses. I want a kill button up on the top right corner of a Window along with the maximise/minimise/close combo. I want a "kill" option in the right-click menu brought up by the taskbar item. And when I say "Kill this process", I don't want you to try and talk it into closing nicely, tell me about how killing might mean loss of data, or do any other negotiating. When I say "Kill this window", I just want it to *die* *right now* *no hesitations* *no warnings* and *no excuses*!
   
3. Linked to the "kill" idea in some ways: When I tell you "safely disconnect the USB disk", just disconnect the damn thingI *know* it's not in use any more, don't try telling me it's not! I don't appreciate having to navigate to that tiny, little button in the taskbar *twice* instead of *once*
   
4. Virtual screens. For crying out loud, I had these ten years ago on my 386! Surely in this age of Pentiums and graphics cards, you can create a halfway decent multi-screen function? One that doesn't suck like the one you can download for XP?
   
5. Menus that pop up where the mouse is. Mohammed might have to go to the mountain, by why does my mouse have to go across the screen to the Start menu? When I press the Windows-logo button on my keyboard on FVWM, the menu pops up right under my cursor. Either move the menu to the mouse, or have the mouse warp temporarily to the menu. Same with the Alt-Space menu for window controls

I think that's it for now. Who's next? :)

6. Something to stop the autodestruction of windows that force evrybody to reinstall it evry 6 month or year !
7. A good command line tool
8. Be able to run differents GUI when we open session
9. Secure firewall
10 More games
11 Be able to have multiples desktops
12 Be able to change window decorations
13 A working task manager !
14 FIX ALL SECURITY BUGS AND BUGS
15 Open source / GNU/GPL
16 Change author owner to Free Software Fondation
17 Rename it to Windoze

#7 is already on its way, I gather. . .

Wow! We have the converse of "why doesn't Linux work like Windows?". We seem to be in Bizarro world or something :)

Hi and welcome to Bizarro LQ :D

Multiple workspaces! I like how in Linux I can have several apps open in different workspaces and none of them have to be hidden.

I agree with XavierP: this reads like a posting from a Windoze newbie might! It's almost surreal!
I've already had my rant, so I'll refrain. :)

Meh. I was bored ;)

My Windows wishlist?

1. No registry! Replace it with plain old text configuration files, that can be easily copied/moved/written to/manipulated. For compatability's sake, these text files are created and manipulated through the existing registry manipulation API.

2. Open up the NTFS file system format. This will help pure Windows users because digital video cameras won't be saddled with FAT32's file size limitations. It will make large thumbdrives, portable drives, and digital camera media generally more reliable and efficient, also.

3. Package management. Like Debian.

4. Easy ways to do a lot of "really cool" stuff (which are currently hard/impossible to do with any OS). Stuff like:

4A. Simple backup of current OS/data/applications to LiveCD

4B. Easy support for multiple user interfaces per computer. That is, you hook up multiple monitors/keyboards/mice/audio to a single computer and it looks like multiple independent computers to the users. Ideally, you can even share a screen--multiple keyboards/mice per screen (split screen or "shared").

4C. Easy support for install straight to network drive. You should be able to install the OS onto a diskless workstation just as easily as a traditional install.

4D. Out-of-box support for shared computing resources over the LAN. With gigabit LAN, it's much faster to swap to/from another computer's RAM than it is to swap to/from a local drive. Also, shifting threads from one computer to another can be very fast.

4E. Out-of-box support for robust "RAID" across network drives. There should be a nebulous "LAN" shared virtual drive which consumes free space in any allowed partitions on all computers on the LAN. This file system has a theoretical maximum size of the sum of all free space on all LAN drives plus free RAM. However, in practice the consumed space is much lower and there are many duplicate files and parity files. The redundant nature allows robustness in case one or more computers goes down. A computer which is manually shut down can gracefully upload any files which aren't already backed up on the LAN.

4F. Transparent caching of optical media. When you insert a CD or DVD into any drive on the LAN, it is copied to the virtual drive in the background. From then on, this disk can be accessed just like it was inserted into a local drive, until it is unloaded for space purposes. You can even boot from any cached CDs/DVDs over the LAN. With this sort of disc caching, an entire LAN only needs one or two optical drives.

Boredom has lead me to do much worse.

This is like "Why isn't Linux like Windows", only backwards...

anyways...

1. Fewer background proccesses (seriously, CTRL-ALT-DELETE, proccesses tab, and you have 20+ programs running in background, all baout 4 of wich are optional...)

2. Better disk managment
2a. Better defrag tool
2b. Better partitioning tool

3. Baility to relocate the "unmovable" files into one part of the hdd so that they aren't spread over 1/3 the disk

4. Tech support. MS charges 200.00 US if the tech guy has to get up to look in a book...

5. IDE for building programs to come with the OS for free. Not everyone wants to download Cygwin and Crimson Editor, and fewer want to buy a 150.00 peice of software made by MS.

6. Better program restrictions. i.e., require root access to run programs in the background (help with any spyware/adware problems)

7. A command line terminal

8. A start-up log that is visible. Nothing worse then not knowing how your being screwed over.

I don't know if anyone said that already, but Windows XP can have multiple workspaces. You can achieve that by either downloading MS Windows XP Powertoys or by using Nvidia drivers if you have that card, indeed ^_^.

You can tweak a lot in WinXP with those Powertoys... not as much as Linux, but still, I think Windows should be shipped with Power Toys by default.

M$ philosophy is that people who use their OS generally have about as much know how about computers as a money does, and hence it does everything for them. Puting Powertoys in by default would be like giving an ape a shotgun. They don't think people that don't work for them are smart enough to be able to have that much skill. I'm suprised they put something like that out. Its almost as funny as the Windows Linux they are making (and no, I'm not joking. Look it up)

Here's my Windows wishlist:

1. Stop "helping" me. Seriously -- I don't want or need all the automatic crap. Let me decide when I need help.

2. Allow me to permanently stop Excel from dropping leading zeroes in numeric fields. In other words STOP "HELPING" ME. I don't want it or need it, and because my job frequently involves working with SSN's and zipcodes, both of which can start with zeroes, I don't want Excel to do me the "favor" of dropping the zeroes. Bottom line -- an application should NEVER change the source data unless the user instructs the app to do so. Excel violates this rule, and thus is a harmful, damaging product. It's equivalent to your word processor deciding that the last name of "O'Donnell" was actually just "Donnell". This is unacceptable -- there is no justification for the app to change the data. This is plain bad, no two ways about it. You can tell Excel to not drop leading zeroes by manually importing the file and going field by field to declare things as Text fields (which is a big hassle) but you cannot globally set Excel to stop dropping leading zeroes. This is just poor software design. -- J.W.

Heh, I didn't know that. Thanks Megaman! :)

Edit: "PowerToys will only work with US-English regional settings" << Great :(

Hmmm, I'm pretty sure I saw a friend of mine using WinXP in Swedish with Powertoys. I'd give a shot either way if I was you ^_^