Submission details
Fix DOS looking screens in the Windows Installation, Boot Options, CHKDSK, etc.
It's 2008. Why am I looking at stuff that could have been put together on a IBM PCjr? The file loading screen is one of the first things you see when you install Windows, and it's terrible. OOBE? And, god forbid something goes wrong with Windows...you're immediately staring at 1988.
Look, I'm sure this is hard to fix, but I guarantee if any engineer tried to tell Steve Jobs OSX had to look like this, there would have had a short elevator ride in his future. It's fixable, and that's the level of commitment MS needs to have about the UX of its OS.
I don't have a copy for Win7, but from some screenshots it appears some progress has been made on some of these issues (the windows boot progress bar appears to be 24-bit+ color now, bravo). Just need to take it ALL the way.
High
Medium
Not fixed
Discussion (11 comments)
That's because it's loading the files to display pretty pictures.
Yeah, like alphanerd said, I think those are the loading bars that load the pretty loading bars, lol. Its the stuff that loads before the GUI loads. Even on Mac OS X and especially Linux, B/W text is used in place of the GUI in the initial loading process.
I'm sympathetic to the issue, but those issues don't mean it can't be done, it just means that better designers are needed.
To prove this point: Apple has a simple Apple logo screened dark gray/light gray with a little circle progress indicator. Very simple, very classy, and all grayscale.
The same goes for boot choices, etc. Apple has a very nice, clean boot options menu with drive icons. Windows is DOS looking text readout.
If they wanted to make this stuff look better, they could. It's been done by the guys in Cupertino, so let's not pretend we're talking about impossibilities.
Well, since you put it that way, I'll vote this up. Its not really a priority, but they should set aside a little time to update this I guess, to make the OS more modern and user friendly and tidy.
"level of commitment MS needs to have"
They just don't have it. Sorry. Next :)
This has nothing to do with DOS. It's called textmode.
-1 because users seldom see this stuff (if ever). BIOS, etc. looks the same.
"This has nothing to do with DOS. It's called textmode.
-1 because users seldom see this stuff (if ever). BIOS, etc. looks the same."
Note I said "DOS looking", not simply DOS. Not that it matters...from a UI perspective, if it looks like DOS, it might as well be DOS.
As for users seldom seeing it, that's simply not true. The "loading files" screen from setup is seldom seen, but how often do users have unexpected shutdowns, and see the "Select Startup Mode" screen? Pretty often in my experience. Then, if CHKDSK is required, you get to stare at that for quite a while.
Besides, details matter. Apple pays attention to this stuff for a reason.
Microsoft pays attention to this stuff as well. That's why they load a custom font...
But if I were Microsoft I wouldn't invest time in this. There are other things that should be fixed. Users should never have to run CHKDSK for example. Or have unexpected shutdowns.
The only way we wouldn't have to ever run Chkdsk is if we all move to solid state drives. :) But seriously, it shouldn't be that hard to put a pretty picture there and perhaps a Vista/7 style loading bar. Attention to detail really makes your product look good.
-1
Just load the damn OS don't waste processor time.
GRiNSER wrote on November 4, 2008, 2:52pm
Yay, you are right! Additionally they should get rid of all those screen flickering (Vista Taskforce has a nice article about it)