One Care? Who Cares?

Okay, so I am trying OneCare. I installed it on Zarquon and Lintila. Microsoft is now responsible for virus and spyware detection on my pc - as well as giving me lots of annoying popups.

Amazing, isn't it? What's the best way to deal with pop-ups? By popping up frickin system messages! Give me a damn break. Microsoft could probably pay for the windows license if they sold advertising space on their firewall, backup, tuneup, desktopcleanup type messages.

Vista is just rife with annoying popups -built in-, but I'll talk about that later.

Here's my idea - I'm thinking about making a little potentiometer knob labeled one through ten that connects via USB to the computer. If I'm a dipshit and need MS to hold my hand through every little thing, or if I'm doing something REALLY tricky (like migrating SQL databases or migrating a mail storehouse from exchange 2000 to 2003) I turn the knob down to one. The computer prompts me with things like "You have chosen to delete this file, do you really want to delete it, like forever? Are you sure you don't just want me to stick it somewhere in case you decide you really do need it someday?"

Turn it all the way up to ten and you can make a little curlycue mouse gesture over the file and it just actually deletes it with no prompts, no recycle bin - you tell it what action to take and what file to take it on and it just does it.

One of my biggest beefs with MS is their usability. They bend over backwards to make sure anyone can walk up and use the PC - but this means time, valuable time, I have to spend configuring the machine. At least in Win9x and 2k you had SOME control over what features and applications were installed on you PC during windows setup, with XP it's set the time zone and tell me your name, but they are so wrapped up in "creating an experience" that they don't realize most of us just go in and reset the view defaults to 2000 standards!

Which brings me to my point about one care. I've put a lot of time effort and energy into protecting my home network and this workstation. I don't use the built in MS firewall for a reason - If the firewall is on the machine when someone attacks your firewall they are still attacking YOUR MACHINE... Spyware, virus, all kinds of things can poke holes in that. It's like using saran wrap for a condom - the logic is sound but the result is always messy.

Which brings me back to my point about One Care (again, sorry). If the ADMIN of the machine decides to disable an onboard service you need to be able to disable the alert from the multi function console. Because I have disabled the windows firewall my OneCare icon glows a steady RED - indicating a horrible problem, so long as I leave their, in my opinion, worthless firewall deactivated it will be red. Which means the system tray icon is USELESS because if one of the other features I AM depending on OneCare to provide should have a problem it does NOT change state and alert me to a problem.

Pretty simple, eh? But a perfect example of someone (usually marketing) directing developers to write code that works well if you're fully immersed in the microsoft "experience" but provides no flexibility for someone working 1 step outside their environment. I'm telling you guys, it's that mentality that will kill your product.

Remember all those single use banking and mainframe systems you were SOOOO happy to replace with flexible PC's? No, I'm guessing those guys are all retired. Okay, ditching the dinosaur and getting a pile of options in return is what MS did to get where it is? Who's providing that now?

I think MS would be much better served if they applied their resources to create applications that could be used on any PC without inter-dependency on other MS products. Developing to bring people back into your system and back into your system and back into your system instead of trying to co-exist with any other kind of system your user may be involved in does not WORK. Your consumers are paying big bucks for a twenty cent sliver of plastic and the potential of a tool set.

Give us a tool set the will work in any weather, any environment, any condition, not just in MicrosoftLand where the hills are rolling and green and the sky is blue and the taskbar and start menu are all bright happy colors. Sometimes it rains, sometimes it pours. Give me a tool I know I can turn to quickly and easily when I need it and I'll buy it and use it and make my users use it. Stop worrying about the "out of the box" experience and help us by building tools that are fantastic to use EVERY DAY.