A publicist named Madonna has been on my case for months now to write something about her client, a program called WindowBlinds that allows you to “completely control the look and feel of Microsoft Windows.”
It goes without saying that I’m all in favor of anything that improves Windows. And besides, how can I turn down a woman named Madonna?
WindowBlinds is a great little application. It doesn’t just let you change the way your windows look and how they behave, but it adds new functionality to them. In fact, if I didn’t know any better, I could be tricked into believing I was on a Macintosh.
I think WindowBlinds is a worthy launching pad for a discussion on what travelers want from a computer operating system. With just a few days before the long-awaited release of Windows 2000, Microsoft’s most expensive software development project, the question we’re all bound to ask ourselves is: Does this OS deliver what frequent travelers need?
PC Magazine would say “no.” Despite giving the new system a favorable rating, its reviewers observed that remote users upgrading from Windows 98 “should watch out for hardware and software incompatibilities.” Review Zone’s Nirudha Perera echoed the magazine’s complaint, detailing efforts to make a sound card work on Win2K.
But Windows guru Paul Thurrott might beg to differ. Windows 2000, he notes, surpasses Windows 98 for mobile users with “a host of power management and file synchronization features” that are simply unavailable in Windows 98. “For mobile users that meet the hardware requirements, Windows 2000 is impossible to beat,” he says.
(It’s important to note that this latest OS isn’t the successor to Windows 98, but to Windows NT. Unlike previous Windows versions, it isn’t based on the hopelessly outmoded DOS, and for most of us, that’s probably good news.)
I’m not quite ready to weigh in on Bill Gates’ latest masterpiece – I’d like to take the OS on the road after its official Feb. 17 launch before writing something substantive about it – but in the meantime, there are some things that can be said of Win2K.
First, it’s almost certainly an improvement from previous systems. And second, it’s probably not going to put a program like WindowBlinds out of business.
Why? Because try as hard as it might – and Microsoft did try hard – I’m certain that it didn’t develop anything as elegant, smart, intuitive or useful as the Macintosh operating system is or Linux one day will be. Road warriors will still need to patch their laptops together with programs like PCAnywhere or LapLink in order to find the connectivity and functionality that they want, and it appears that this latest system won’t change that.
On the other hand, I partially agree with Thurrott that even though Win2K may fall short of meeting travelers’ needs, it represents a significant upgrade over previous Microsoft products. Which is hardly a concession, considering how much effort Gates and company put into this project.
What do travelers want from an operating system? That’s a more complicated question to which I’m not sure there’s one correct answer. After all, no two road warriors are exactly the same, and neither are their OS needs.
However, I think some generalizations can be made:
Less is more. And here’s where Windows 2000 gets it wrong for the jet set. The minimum system requirements are 133 MHz or higher Pentium-compatible CPU with 64 megabytes of RAM recommended minimum and 2 GB hard disk with a minimum of 650 MB of free space. Can you say “memory hog”? Looking at these system requirements is almost enough to make me believe that Microsoft is getting paid off by the likes of Intel and Dell to boost computer sales. Doesn’t the software developer know that there are still a lot of users out there who are schlepping around older, slower portables, and that this so-called innovation will force them to upgrade?
Connections are critical. Look, some of the functionality that’s being added to the OS is wonderful. Win2K is more stable and software updates don’t require you to reboot the computer time and again. But as far as I can tell, this new product isn’t going to vastly simplify the process of connecting to another network through a phone line or high-speed connection. Show me an OS that eliminates the 15 minutes of fidgeting, reconfiguring and tweaking when I plug my portable in at a hotel, and I’ll show you an OS made with the business traveler in mind. But Microsoft wasn’t thinking about us when it released this year’s system – it was probably thinking about what it usually thinks about: its bottom line.
Patches? We don’t need no stinkin’ patches. Microsoft’s philosophy of releasing a buggy system and then coming out with subsequent “patches” that fix the flaw is so annoying to the traveler – I mean, where do you go for a patch when you’re on the road in Uzbekistan? – that I’m sure many of you will postpone your upgrade to Win2K indefinitely. Can’t blame you. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect any software developer to release the perfect product the first time. But Microsoft is the only company I know of that publishes subsequent updates that are actually worse than the previous ones. For example, the second release of Windows 98 made networking more tedious than the first. Note to Bill: Patches are supposed to improve the OS!
Hardware compatibility is not an option. And this scares me the most about the early buzz on Windows 2000. The reports that the system doesn’t play well with peripherals is enough to make me stick with my tried-and-true copy of Windows 98 until after the antitrust affair is over, by which time the source code for Win2K will most likely be made open. I get a lot of e-mails from network administrator types who claim they’re the only ones who can rightfully use the term “mission critical” when pontificating about computer operating systems. Well, I’ve got news for them – when you’re traveling with a laptop, everything becomes mission critical, including whether your peripherals can communicate with your PC or not. A system that doesn’t address that need is a no-no for the frequent traveler.
All of which brings us back to WindowBlinds, which triggered this whole debate about Microsoft. I see the little program as a litmus test of sorts. We use it because we don’t want to be reminded of Window’s inadequacies. We wish we weren’t using Windows when we download WindowBlinds.
The day people stop buying software that covers Microsoft’s blemishes is the day that Bill Gates will finally get it. It’s the day we’ll finally have an OS that works for us, the road warriors of the world.
Christopher Elliott is the author of Scammed: How to Save Your Money and Find Better Service in a World of Schemes, Swindles, and Shady Deals. Critics have called it “eye-opening” and “inspiring” — it’ll “grab your attention and won’t let go.” Order your copy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or iTunes.
Elliott is consumer advocate 
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