I am a Technician, and I hate Windows 7!

Posted on February 19th, 2010 by John Allen

john_allen_background.jpgFollowing on from my “Devalued Skill Base” blog, that hoped to put all us “Silver Technicians” back in the running, I would like to raise a blog regarding the over ‘Dumbing Down’ of Windows and scaling up of windows graphics.

Since the start of Windows I have seen a gradual dumbing down of the OS, to a pictographic hunt for and click-on environment that often takes twice as long to find what you are looking for and takes twice as much space to load as previous version.

No doubt Microsoft (probably) asked home and end users what they wanted, but did they actually ask of us any Technicians? Yes, of course it is great that we now get real problems to deal with, and not just the “Have you turned it off and on again?” ones. People’s knowledge of the self-fix solutions is getting better, but as they say “A little knowledge is dangerous.” However, as a Techie having to go through menu after menu to get to where you want to be is so frustrating.

After phoning a help desk regarding setting up a broadband connection, I had to speak to 5 different support guys before I found anyone that could navigate around Windows 7. In fact, the first four support people were working from XP and Vista prompts and couldn’t find what they were looking for, and so just gave up. So why does Microsoft have to complicate / change what was working well before? Is it to protect their own Certified qualifications that we all need to have? Do we really need this extra over-simplification of Windows and the hiding of the things you need too see?

As many Users out there are getting more knowledgeable, and use the Self-Help Fixes and Wizards. So why does Microsoft hide the very thing you are looking for in a multi layer screens, that relies so heavily on random pictographics? Really, the Windows OS does need to be smaller and clearer, but that doesn’t seem to of happened. When Windows looks and works more like an application than an OS (as it does now), system resources suffer, giving us slower and slower PCs.

I wouldn’t mind so much, if Windows did everything I wanted it to do out of the box, but even with the super big Vista loading up at 12-16Gb, we still had to load codec, Flash Player etc to get it to run what we wanted. Wouldn’t a smaller Windows OS have been better? A version that you decided what you loaded on it or not, depending on your usage or needs, a thin end version, totally user customisable, without all the dross that Microsoft insist we have and hardly ever use, and no more silly graphics whizzing around the screen and bloody Nag screens.

The more I use Windows now, the more I like Linux! It runs from a single DVD, it has all the codec, media players, apps and bits I need… Without the Dross and runs so Fast, I wish Widows did!

in reference to: IT blog: I am a Technician, and I hate Windows 7! « theitblogjobboard (view on Google Sidewiki)