Saturday, March 31, 2007
Stupidity from a different direction
This post won't be quite like the usual fare. Instead, this is going to deal with the frustration of trying to work with software that works in a frustrating manner. In this case, I'm talking about Windows Vista.
Previous versions of Windows back to Windows 98 have reported connection errors in basically the same way. You try connecting, and for some reason it doesn't work out, so you get an error, find out why it failed, and correct the problem. However, Vista works a bit different.
Let's say I'm trying to establish a dialup connection, but I have forgotten to plug the phone cord into the modem. I create my dialup connection from the Network and Sharing Center and hit connect. Unsurprisingly, it fails. Windows lets me know that it didn't work, but doesn't say why. It does, however, have an option to diagnose the problem. OK! I click on that... and find out that Windows can't tell why it didn't work.
Great.
If you create a shortcut to that connection and place it on the desktop, or if you go to the screen that lets you "manage" your connections and connect from there, you'd get error 680, indicating that there was no dial tone. If you go to the Network and Sharing Center or use the Start menu's 'Connect to' button, you don't. This struck me as odd.
And what if you need to get the error and can't retry with a shortcut for some reason? Well, I found a way, but it's ridiculous. You can click Start, then Search, then type in 'event', it'll find the Event Viewer, open that, doubleclick on Windows Logs, then Applications, and check the log for anything with a level of "Error" and a source of "RasClient". The only other way to get to Event Viewer that I could find was to open Windows help, search for event viewer, and use the link there to open it.
Seriously? How awkward is that? Why would you setup your system so that it generates an error but doesn't report it?
Anyway, the point is that it's not always the user's fault. Sometimes the software that they're using is confusing or crappy. So far, every time I've been in a position to recommend which version of Windows an individual uses, I've recommended XP, and to hold off on Vista for about a year. Vista's got a lot of good going for it, but I think it's a bit more intimidating to get used to, and its Control Panel has a silly number of layers to get to anything in its standard view, which makes my job more difficult. I hope that in time it'll get a bit easier to use.
Previous versions of Windows back to Windows 98 have reported connection errors in basically the same way. You try connecting, and for some reason it doesn't work out, so you get an error, find out why it failed, and correct the problem. However, Vista works a bit different.
Let's say I'm trying to establish a dialup connection, but I have forgotten to plug the phone cord into the modem. I create my dialup connection from the Network and Sharing Center and hit connect. Unsurprisingly, it fails. Windows lets me know that it didn't work, but doesn't say why. It does, however, have an option to diagnose the problem. OK! I click on that... and find out that Windows can't tell why it didn't work.
Great.
If you create a shortcut to that connection and place it on the desktop, or if you go to the screen that lets you "manage" your connections and connect from there, you'd get error 680, indicating that there was no dial tone. If you go to the Network and Sharing Center or use the Start menu's 'Connect to' button, you don't. This struck me as odd.
And what if you need to get the error and can't retry with a shortcut for some reason? Well, I found a way, but it's ridiculous. You can click Start, then Search, then type in 'event', it'll find the Event Viewer, open that, doubleclick on Windows Logs, then Applications, and check the log for anything with a level of "Error" and a source of "RasClient". The only other way to get to Event Viewer that I could find was to open Windows help, search for event viewer, and use the link there to open it.
Seriously? How awkward is that? Why would you setup your system so that it generates an error but doesn't report it?
Anyway, the point is that it's not always the user's fault. Sometimes the software that they're using is confusing or crappy. So far, every time I've been in a position to recommend which version of Windows an individual uses, I've recommended XP, and to hold off on Vista for about a year. Vista's got a lot of good going for it, but I think it's a bit more intimidating to get used to, and its Control Panel has a silly number of layers to get to anything in its standard view, which makes my job more difficult. I hope that in time it'll get a bit easier to use.
# posted by Terry @ 11:21 AM 
