Two Slashes

I came across a video purportedly demonstrating some of the new features of Windows 7 that Microsoft’s been working on.  While this early in the development cycle, such videos should be met with questions and belief in deceptive and mockups of what people would WANT, I figured it was worth a few moments of my time to discuss it.

For your convenience, the video is embedded below:

Now that you’ve seen what we’re expected to be using in just a while, perhaps it’s time to point out that absolutely none of this is revolutionary or breathtaking, or even a big step up from what’s available now.  If anything, all they’ve done is take the hard work and brilliant ideas of others, and besmeerch them with an Arial Black Microsoft logo.

Windows Explorer
Browsing for files in a paned/tabbed system navigator is not even remotely new.  Konqueror, Dolphin, and countless other utilities have been doing this for ages.  And there are add-ins available for Windows XP.  Nothing new to see here.

FTP Locations
How many times around the track does it take for you to realize that this is a feature of Windows already?

Now, Microsoft:  Where would you like to go today?  Because I’d like to go somewhere where the featureset of your operating system isn’t yesterday’s news to everyone else.

…Wait, you seriously thought I was kidding?

Keyboard Shortcuts
This may be new to Windows users who don’t want to use remapping utilities, but other platforms have had this for a while.  The one I can think of off the top of my head is the K Desktop Environment, which is extremely lenient and flexible when it comes to setting things like this.  On the other hand, this is also one of those features that permits standardization to fly right out the window.  Just wait until Great Aunt Cecil remaps all the keys to Shutdown and wonders why the manual telling her Ctrl-P to Print instead powers off her machine.  Perhaps this should come with a safety warning.

Screen Animation & Capture
The video portion of this, if true, is at least a long time in coming.  But they’re only integrating the tools many people use and reuse daily (Camtasia, FRAPS, etc.), and I highly doubt they’re even going to consider it for use in anything more than a basic desktop capture (i.e. no games or really-hardware-accelerated functions).

Disk Usage Analyzer
Pardon me while I clear my throat here; to have the nerve of pushing this as new is pushing it.  It’s been done…a lot better and with a more helpful visualization than a pie chart.  (Anyone notice that smell?  Smells like burning pie to me…and I think it’s coming from the Redmond campus.)

Task Manager
The only thing new I see here is that someone’s finally harnessed the power of Netstat in a convenient graphical interface.  Though, they’re definitely a bit late in this respect.

Virtual Drive
Need I say more than, “Daemon Tools and Alcohol, noobified?”

Website, Blog, and Portal Designer
Excuse me, but why is there a copy of Expressions in my operating system?  Shouldn’t that be something extra?

Seriously now, I can’t wait until people actually start using that…you can tell who the inexperienced are by their use of one of a few dozen stock header images and designs that probably say “Microsoft” in more ways than there are calendar days in a year.

Coming Soon…

• Image Conversion – Image conversion.  We’re spending all our time and money on image conversion.  Because Grandma can’t use the software that came with her digital camera to do it.  Or because it’s a part of several other operating systems and work environments.  Take your pick, because either way it’s still lame to me.
• Document Conversion – I love how ‘document’can be so vague as to encompass anything and everything all at once.  Does this mean Windows might actually be able to open OpenOffice files?  Doubt it, unless you want to install the third-party filter.
• PDF Conversion – Wait, doesn’t this one smell like a royalty fee?  Has Adobe approved this?
• Password Manager – This one I can understand, but it’s also nothing new.  KDE has Wallet (which IE had something similar to), OS X and GNOME have keychains, and other password managers have their “acceptable alternative metaphor” to a Post-it note in a wallet.

I know I should be taking everything in that video with a grain of salt, but I can’t stand unoriginality in something like this.  Vista was just catchup for OS X (and a failed attempt at that, too…heh)…now it looks like Windows 7 is slated just to move Microsoft’s operating systems division into something resembling the early 2000s…most likely after 2011.  Oh well, at least it’ll give me more time to enjoy my eXPerience.