Archive for category Software
Watching a random user use Vista
Posted by eric in Programming, Software on October 9, 2007
I was sitting in the library earlier today when I noticed someone sitting in front of me with her computer on. While laptops in the library are commonplace these days, what was especially interesting about her computer was that it was running Vista. So out of curiosity, I decided to watch Jane Doe for a few minutes to see what her experience with Vista was like (Yes I’m nosy, but this is for an educational experiment. 
And if you’re the person who I was watching, I apologize. Don’t worry, I was too far to see anything meaningful! 
).
Jane had a Sony laptop running Vista Premium. Let’s see what she was doing while I was watching:
1. Getting Connected
Shi Da (師大) has a wireless network across campus. The first thing I saw Jane do was try to get connected to the wireless network. She stayed on the wireless network dialog for a while (probably a good 2 minutes), which I’m guessing because the connection wasn’t connecting.
2. Media Player
After getting connected, she restored an already open Windows Media Player window which means she was listening to music. I noticed headphones on so that seemed like a valid assumption.
3. Messenger
Of course who doesn’t use IM these days? She popped open MSN messenger next to check on who’s online… well that was the original intention at least. The window stopped functioning during login and then the crashed dialog opened up showing the window had stopped functioning. I couldn’t see which option she clicked, but the progress bar started going afterwards.
4. Browser
Jane opened up an Internet Explorer window, but unfortunately this one also stopped functioning. She typed, clicked on the window without any response. Then the crashed dialog opened up showing the window stopped accepting input from the user. She clicked it and the progress bar started again.
5. Waiting
She went back to her studies while waiting for the close dialog to turn off. About 3 minutes later they finally closed. She opened up another browser window and this time no crashes. She typed in Facebook’s URL and started checking someone’s profile (couldn’t see from where I was sitting).
6. Torrents
She opened up another browser and this time opened up a torrent tracking site. She downloaded a torrent and started downloading some file (once again, couldn’t see exactly from where I was sitting).
7. Switching back and forth
For the next few minutes, Jane switched back from Facebook, to Media Player, torrent status, and back to Facebook.
8. Back to networking
About 5 minutes later, the browser stopped loading web pages. So she went back to the wireless network dialog to check on the network status. About 30 seconds later, the network was back up so she went back to Facebook.
At this point, I stopped watching as she was just browsing Facebook now.
One question comes into mind: did she use any of the “new” features of Vista? Absolutely not. Everything that I watched her do on her computer, XP could have handled perfectly if not better than the Vista equivalents. For example, the sidebar was left in the default state with the picture and clock gadget. The sidebar was left uncustomized and was just sitting there taking up screen real estate. Flip3D? Might as well not exist as she used the task bar to change windows.
So what did I learn from watching this random computer user using her computer running Vista for a couple of minutes? I learned that the flashy Vista or the new UI means nothing to the user. The user only wants to be able to accomplish a task: chat, read web sites, listen to music, …. While I learned this lesson previously through my past work experience, watching this random user today just reinforced this idea in my mind. I believe all software developers should watch a user use a computer before programming professionally. Of course I mean a “typical” user, not your project partner who’s hacking away at a bash script. 
Watching a user gives a lot of insight into how to design software for the user and not for the programmer.
The Vista VirtualStore
Since I will be traveling for the foreseeable future, I’ve recently transitioned my main machine to my new laptop: an Asus G1S.
One of the first things I normally do with a new system (2nd time for me because of this) is copy over all my news feeds. I use the awesome, free feed reader GreatNews. After installing the latest version and then copying over my existing feed database (GreatNews.ini and newsfeed.db), GN refused to recognize the updated files. Thinking this was a problem with GN didn’t solve the problem for me.
After digging around my backup files, I finally noticed what the problem was. Because Vista uses the universally-hated UAC, by default your admin account does not have permissions to write to the “C:\Program Files” folder. So what Vista does is shadow the folder to your “C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files” folder.
So looking up this folder under profile, I indeed found my INI and DB file in here with the out-of-the-box default file. After replacing these files with my backed up INI and DB file, GN is now able to load up all my existing feeds and settings.
The Failure of WGA and Vista
I’ve made it clear that I hate Vista in the past and the latest incident does not surprise me of all the blunders coming from up north lately. In this InfoWorld report, someone at Microsoft uploaded a bad patch onto the Windows Update servers, which in turn all Windows machines automatically downloaded and installed. Because of my recent move, my current main machine is now an Asus G1S which I recently bought that came with Vista preloaded. While I could have easily reformatted and reinstalled to XP or even Linux, I decided not to since the machine seemed to be working pretty well and I had other things I had to worry about. I even went as far as thinking Vista is finally usable now since I haven’t had any crashes while using the new laptop.
Unfortunately for me last week, I was hit with the WGA bug and Vista in turn reported that my copy was pirated. Having just bought the laptop which came with Vista pre-installed, of course that wasn’t the case. Windows refused to let me access my machine nor my files and the only thing I could do was enter in a “valid” product key or use Internet Explorer to browse the net for more information. At first I thought my machine had failed for some reason due to bad Asus software so I was desperately looking for hints at the Asus website. Only now did I find out this was Microsoft’s fault (should have known). Normally when this happens to me, I bust out my repair toolkit to try to fix the problem or at least backup my files. But unforunately for me since I’m currently traveling, I didn’t have access to all my system repair utilities. In the end, I gave up and reformatted and reinstalled the entire machine using the Asus system restore CD’s.
As a result of the system restore, I lost some blog posts that I was writing and some screenshots. Luckily I didn’t lose too much since the laptop was still pretty new. As a paying Microsoft consumer, we should not have to deal with this. As many people have preached, DRM such as WGA only makes it harder for legitimate users. Those who want to pirate stuff will always have a way. GG Microsoft.
On another note, having worked at a company that works closely with Microsoft, I know about all the hoops and red tape that are in place to prevent such things from happening. I’m surprised that Microsoft calls this an employee blunder and I think they’re just trying to find a scapegoat so the company overall doesn’t look bad to the public. I’m starting to think that all the stories of all the smart people leaving Microsoft for other companies are true.