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_NationsProblem: 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 icon_pointl.gif--- 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.
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