Re: The next OS after Windows 7 goes the way of the Vista Dodo-bird.


Facts: Average World Income -- $7000 http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2007/10/07/average_earnings_worldwide/
Average World IQ -- 90-100 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations

Problem: Microsoft is too smart for their own good, despite previous fiscal returns.

Soultion: Windows Midnight -- your next OS

The How-To:

1. The MS Midnight OS will cost $100
2. The OS itself will be a black box (read only) and not visible to the user, the internet,the network or Microsoft Updates.
3. The user, the internet, the network and MS Updates will only see a Virtual OS.
4. Upon install, MS Midnight will install its' black box copy of the OS and then a Virtual copy of the OS.
5. The Black box OS will be inviolable. (read only).
6. The Virtual OS will be just that; a Virtual OS that is the only portion visible to the user, internet, network or MS Updates.
7. The Virtual OS will, initially copy the Black Box portion of the OS...aka...driver cache, .dll, .ocx, .exe etc files
8. The Virtual OS will have only three Icons on the screen/desktop. Preferences, Save Today and Delete Today.
9. The Preferences button will replace the Control panel, Tweak UI, the services snap in, My computer....etc.
10. The Preferences button will open a window that has nothing but checkboxes and sentences that the average IQ can comprehend.
11. The Preferences button will have selections suchs as:
[] Adjust Desktop Appearence
[] Adjust Screensaver
[] Adjust Services
[] Add or Remove Users
[] Adjust Power Settings
[] Connect to the Internet
[] Connect this computer to one or more Computers
[] Setup Windows Explorer
[] Setup my Firewall
[] Add or Remove Programs
[] Open Registry Editor
[] Adjust my Pagefile
[] Open Group Policy Editor
[] Open System Tools (provide defragmentor, partitoning tool, and true system information...for those over the phone help Mom calls)
[] Setup my Taskbar
[] Monitor my hardware
[] Open Device Manager
[] Setup File Sharing
[] Setup Parental Controls
[] Setup my Desktop Widgets
[] Save todays changes as a Profile --- VERY IMPORTANT!
[] Connect to my XBox
[] Choose and setup my Browser
[] Restore my Computer to Original Install (this of course will require wiping the Virtual OS and w/e infections or stupidity it contains...no more MERGE)
[] Get applications from Microsoft

......well, you get the idea. ALL settings for all things possible to adjust, from the casual user to the wants and desires of the enthusiast. Currently, settings are placed in far too many locations, thus frustrating both the casual and the experienced user. There is no logical reason for this. Granted Preferences Window will be a huge list, but ALL people are quite familiar with large lists. Having them all in ONE location, will win their hearts.

a. A check mark placed in any selection will open a Wizard. The Wizard will explain each option so that an average IQ user can comprehend.
b. Dangerous settings will be denoted by RED.
c. Non dangerous settings denoted by GREEN.
12. The Save Today and the Delete Today buttons should be obvious even to high IQ MS employees. One saves the days changes, the other removes them.


The reasons you will make this OS, Windows Midnight, are many and few. First the name Midnight denotes a sea-change OS. Second, the reason for the invisible to the user etc., Black Box, should also be obvious. No more irreversible infections, no need to defragment the Black Box. MS already offers
this solution, but in two or three parts. This is silly.
What the world wants from MS is an affordable, easy to use OS that does NOT require searching MS's website for unintelligible answers to simple problems they face daily. All options under the Preferences Button should be OFF by default as should the internet connection. MS consistently makes assumptions of what users will want or desire and are wrong in those assumtions at least 75-90% of the time. MS is great, they are NOT omnicient.

Now I'm sure I can hear the marketing dept. fainting in the background. Not to worry I've considered them also. The Black Box portion of the OS will occasionly need to be updated to add newer driver files etc., for the person who bought the OS 2 years after you released it. Simply sell at all major online and retail locations; Service pack CD's for $5 that can access the Black Box portion of the OS. With the price of an average computer in the $500-$1500 range, a $350-$400 OS is a surefire way to encourage Linux Devs to create a graphical rather than command line interface and put MS in the breadline.
The reason Vista and soon....Windows 7 are not going to win over the masses, is that they require much too long a learning curve and cost too much.
They are really still just Windows XP with fancy clothes. I signed up and beta tested Windows 7 and even I can see XP underneath. The demand is there, all MS needs to do is fill it. So instead of selling 20 million copies of Vista at $400, you sell 200 million copies of Windows Midnight.....even a marketing dept. guru should be able to see the sense of that. Word spreads on the internet too fast for even Steve Balmers antics to overcome. In todays world you can't BS even MOST of the people all of the time lol.

Windows Midnight has to shut down in under 10 seconds and cold boot in under 40 seconds, even on an AMD 3400! It must also configure local networks without the user having to know what their gateway is, what the IP of the other computers are etc. The days of needing to reformat a HD are long gone, and the only reason it is still necessary at times is because MS still has no Black Box copy of the original install.

As I am NOT an IT professional, nor do I run a home Server, I leave it to MS to extrapolate these suggestions to those OS's. Suffice it to say that if you don't wake up and smell the "demand" soon.....well I'm sure 3DFX will let you live with them. Oh......for god's sake write a Microsoft JAVA that works on all websites with all browsers. Sun Java is half malware as it is. Lastly, steal Linuxs' idea of Apt Get. Don't include all that Office, Excel, etc crap in your OS...for those that want it....they can simply download them from MS.
In short, create a complete but small fast OS, put ALL the users choices in ONE place, add a decent ZIP application and Photo application and then STOP! Leave the rest up to the consumer. These days I feel it's safe to say that there are more computers being used in the home than in the business world. It's high time MS took that into consideration.

All of this is already do-able...Dell sorta does it with their recovery partition, MS sort of does it with Virtual PC. The only thing left to do is combine them and totally isolate the Black Box version of the install...the Virtual version will show to the user as drive C: or w/e........so simple it scary......and ONLY the Virtual OS will interact with the hardware....aka....the Black box will be.....un-hack-able. You could even put the Black Box version of the install on a seperate HD or SSD that even the BIOS can only access ONCE.

Averaging world income and IQ was the indicator that this thread would fail

Actually its to make a point to MS......

A steep learning curve? I think i'll have a bigger problem learning your dumbed down imaginary os. I can damn dare to say 98% of computer users are familiar with windows, and wouldn't take much to adapt to an "upgrade". To the average consumer, they arn't going to know how much the OS cost anyway, they purchase it [b]WITH[b] the hardware. And guess why you can still see XP in windows 7 somewhere, it's because majority of windows users rely on the legacy codes to run 10 year old apps and peripherals with their brand new machines, and to support all the hardware that's out there in the wild, unlike apple where they dictate what works and what doesn't work on their OSs. Also a complete change just isn't logical, That's like telling a guy to use Windows Vista when he came outta a cave using DOS.

And why are you posting an email that you got on the internets?

P.S- Love your "Wiki facts". I can bet my life that the average world income is way way way below the mentioned $7000.

This post was edited by Eek on Feb 25 2009 12:45am

Its not an email genius its a copy of an email, that I wrote and sent to Redmond. Please get a clue :/

as for Wiki ......there were about 10 other sites reporting the same average annual world income +/- $100...I just picked the top one.

This post was edited by ghot on Feb 25 2009 12:53am

I'm sure Oc.net will have alot more to say.



So who's replying? You or redmond? Care to share the original email?

This post was edited by Eek on Feb 25 2009 01:02am

Which part of "I wrote and sent this email to Redmond" (....aka....that IS the original email, minus the header info of course) is too difficult for you to understand. Noone has responded yet, nor do I expect them to. But that doesn't change the fact that this is a GREAT idea for an OS....as not everyone is computer savvy, and simply redressing Windows XP Pro in new clothes, and then charging 300-400 dollars for it...is NOT a good solution. I have no problems with understanding new OS's...but I'm not the average user....nor are you. Almost everyone can afford at least some sort of computer nowadays and there is simply no reason for MS to continually move settings that are well know by millions of people, all over the place just to fool some into thinking they are buying a NEW OS.

Sure Vista and Windows 7 have much better memory benches.....but in every Futuremark overall bench they cant beat my lowly OC'd AMD 5000+ even when running the Intel I7.
Well they can beat it....but just barely. The I7 beat my 3DMark06 overall by a mere 700 points, running Vista. That's just dumb if you ask me. A $900 CPU on a $350 OS can't wipe the floor with a $89 CPU on an 8 year old OS.......something is wrong somewhere, and we all know where.....too much un-needed crap rolled into Vista. I can shut down in 11 seconds and cold boot to browser in 23 seconds.....and I have 7 slow -as* startup programs also.

This post was edited by ghot on Feb 25 2009 01:43am

Here....someone on another forum summed this up much better than I could......

"What you may want to do if you like this idea of isolating the operating system is to consider a move to a full microkernel rather than this half and half approach that Microsoft currently employs. Running more services, drivers, applications, etc. outside of kernelspace will make for a smaller footprint and isolate problems should they arise..."

Other than the fact your sentences are poorly structured and hard to read, I think I have gathered this.

You think your PC is the second fastest in the world?

http://service.futuremark.com/search/3dmarkvantage.action?product=3dmarkvantage.action&doSearch=true&page=first&receiver=%2Fajax%2Fsearchresult3dmarkvantage.action&preset=1&cpuId=&hasPPU=-100&cpuSpeedFrom=&cpuSpeedTo=&gpuId=&gpucorespeedFrom=&gpucorespeedTo=&gpumemoryspeedFrom=&gpumemoryspeedTo=&gpuMemory=-100&shadermodel=-100&cooperativeGpus=-100&graphicsdriver=3&operatingsystem=-100&filterDuplicates=false&newestminorversion=1&scoretype=1&scoreFrom=&scoreTo=&validity=0

IDK... I am missing yours...point it out?

This post was edited by decoppel on Feb 25 2009 07:43am

nice