Microsoft, Here’s The Top 17 Ways To Screw Up Your Next Windows OS
Windows Vista was a right step towards screwing up Microsoft customers. But why stop there? Why not take Windows 7 a step further and make it even more annoying? If Microsoft is wondering how to mess up the next Windows OS, look no farther than the list below:
1. Take the UAC up a notch: “An unidentified program wants access to your computer. Are you sure you want to grant access?” Yes, of course, I do, but please stop bugging me for the hundredth time already. Maybe the UAC in Windows 7 would prompt before you turn off the PC. “Are you sure you want to do that? You might have unsaved documents that might be lost.”
2. Return of The Blue Screen of Death: I miss my old pal, the Blue Screen of Death (aka BSOD), from the Windows 98 and 2000 era. It just had an uncanny knack of appearing whenever I finished an important word document or beat a difficult boss-monster at the end of a game. And right before I clicked the save button, hey presto, it’s the BSOD. Where are you old friend?
3. Rip off the Mac OS and Steve Jobs: Hmmm…. Is there a striking similarity between Vista and the fancy Mac OS? I don’t mean to suggest anything here, but why does every “new” Windows feature appears in the Mac first and then a dumbed-down version gets ported to the Windows world? Let’s see Apple’s Time Machine backup feature in Windows 7. It would sure save me the trouble of shooting myself in the foot after I accidentally deleted 3.49 GB worth of irreplaceable data, hard-earned game saves and my priceless baby photos. 🙂
4. Don’t make any real improvements: Just apply a fancy new “skin” with out-of-this world system requirements and go on touting how super cool the new Windows is, or how Windows 7 is the most advanced version of Windows yet. Does the new Windows 7 screenshots look familiar to, umm, I don’t know, the version of Windows we are using right now?
5. Make Windows 7 Super Ultimate: Windows Vista Ultimate was a real cash cow. Make a rip-off of Ultimate and market the new Super Ultimate, with promised features such as a further “advanced” look, pointless bloated softwares and exclusive patches that supposedly fixes what should have worked from Day 1. Make a Windows 7 Ultra Home Basic and sell it for $59.99 at retail just so you can say that Windows 7 doesn’t cost a fortune, it’s available for only 59 bucks! Have 8 other pointless versions of Windows just to confuse your customers.
6. Force your users to upgrade: Threaten to cut-off all retail versions of Vista and XP. If that doesn’t work, warn your consumers that you will drop support of your buggy OS and leave users in the face of countless security holes. Previous customers are sure to take note. And when everyone jumps the wagon, announce that you will continue to support the previous versions in an effort to milk out the last drops of profit.
7. Show adverts on the start menu, on the booting screen and on a prominent section of the desktop: Xbox Live users already know it. We have to pay 5 bucks a month just to be able to view ads. Don’t limit yourself, Microsoft. Integrate those ads in Windows 7, especially at the booting screen. It already takes a long time to boot into Windows and your advertisers will be very happy at the return on investment they’re generating.
8. Ship a buggy OS and then a Service Pack that actually fixes it: Wow, did you know that the Vista SP1 doesn’t do, wait for it, anything? Next time, make Windows 7 really buggy from the ground up, with frequent crashes and horrendously slow performance. Just when the riots get out of hand, and personal lives are at stake, deliver a 2 GB service pack that actually delivers! Windows customers will heave a sigh of relief, believing that Microsoft actually made something that works.
9. Up the hype: Spend millions of ad dollars over hyping the next windows and get the steam rolling. And just before a month of the release date, announce that Windows 7 has been postponed for no good reason. Wait till you actually deliver and head to forums and sneer at the gripes of countless users who took the bait and made the switch on Day 1.
10. Make Windows 7 available on a subscription basis: That would ease off the burden of paying $500 for a crappy piece of software up-front. What users won’t realize is the fact that 7 dollars a month will translate into much more than 500 bucks in the course of our lifetime.
11. As ‘ol grandpa used to say: If you can’t beat ’em, buy ’em. While talks with Yahoo are going nowhere, but one thing is for certain. Internet Explorer is nothing compared to Firefox. You are loosing the browser market share, and fast. Why not spend your bottomless bank account and buy yourself the rights to Firefox? That way you can port it to IE and make it even more crappier by the time IEfox 8 is slated for release.
12. Ship before it’s ready: Have no sort of driver support whatsoever on the first day of release. Play the finger game, point the blame to manufacturers and say they didn’t have their products ready in time for your release date, while the actual fault lies with your underlying code.
13. Make XP slower, deliberately: Just so that real-life benchmarks can prove Windows 7 is actually faster than XP and Vista.
14. Mess up the sleep and hibernation functions: Greet users with a message saying that a fatal error had occurred while the PC was hibernating and all previous data has been lost in the process. Find new ways to screw up the shut-down process, such as a serious crash whenever anyone presses the red shut-down button. Recolor it to yellow, just to warn users to expect the unexpected. They’ll thank you later on.
15. Make networking impossible with previous Windows: Here is yet another way to coax users into upgrading. Vista is notoriously known for not seeing XP-based PCs on the same network. Bring this functionality to Windows 7. Make it impossible to add XP, Vista, Mac and Linux to the network. Everyone should be using what you tell them to use, ie. Windows 7. Exploit your monopoly powers.
16. Take activation to the next step: Games like BioShock and Mass Effect does this well. Make your users activate Windows every time they login to the internet. If they don’t, pester them with annoying WGA notifications of how important it is to activate and warn them that they might be using a counterfeited Windows. Make the service highly unreliable with a high rate of false positives to add more insult to injury. Ban the Windows product key if a user tries to install Windows for the third time since each previous attempt to install Windows 7 made the PC highly unstable.
17. Stop putting out a new Windows: Yes, I said it. Because we’re all happily using Windows XP.
Well, that’s it folks. Hope Microsoft takes note and doesn’t screw up Windows 7 ;-). I’m really looking forward to it.
Did I Miss Something?
Did I miss something that you would like to add? Well sound off in the comments section below. If nobody replies, at least you can expect a (somewhat) witty response from me :-).
Recommended Reading
What If God Himself Made The Next Windows OS?
Updates
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Jul 6th, 2008 at 5:48 pm
Suck my schmuck
Jul 6th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
I could think of a thousand more reasons.
Like…
1. Buy Apple. Then you won’t have to steal other people’s ideas!
2. Screw up the PC so it loads everything half-ass when the Hard Drive has only 50GB Memory out of the 250GB you gave us.
3. Just go to Yahoo Answers before you buy it.
Jul 6th, 2008 at 6:49 pm
You forgot Windows 8, to be released 2 months after Windows 7, Windows 9, to be released 2 months after Windows 8, and so on…
Jul 6th, 2008 at 9:25 pm
One thing you forgot to mention is that Windows 7 should be incompatable with ALL Software purchased before Windows’ Release date. Let’s take it a step further and forget to send out demo versions of the kernel to software publishers. Let them guess how Win7 works!
Jul 7th, 2008 at 5:43 am
“7. Show adverts on the start menu, on the booting screen and on a prominent section of the desktop: Xbox Live users already know it. We have to pay 5 bucks a month just to be able to view ads. Don’t limit yourself, Microsoft. Integrate those ads in Windows 7, especially at the booting screen. It already takes a long time to boot into Windows and your advertisers will be very happy at the return on investment they’re generating.”
dude ur dumb ppl dont have to pay to adverts r free we pay for online games douch….
seems like ur just trying to find random reasons to hate ms. if u hate ms then go to some crappier os.
Jul 7th, 2008 at 8:05 am
@ PooDung
Well, I don’t have anything witty to say to you :P. But thanks for stopping by.
Jul 7th, 2008 at 8:06 am
@ 911 Gaming
I was thinking about adding the buy Apple/Mac thing. But then I realized that a flame war would soon ensue and I would be caught up at the wrong end of it. 😉
Jul 7th, 2008 at 8:08 am
@ Anonymous
No I didn’t, I just don’t want the apocalypse of Windows clones hitting store shelves.
Jul 7th, 2008 at 8:09 am
@ Madt Bassturdt
What he said.
Jul 7th, 2008 at 8:19 am
@ af
Dude, this dumb article is sarcasm (pun intended). And I won’t be paying to get ads delivered on my 360 dashboard. Everybody hates MS, just do a search in Google.
I was wondering when this article might get out of hand. 😉
Jul 10th, 2008 at 11:43 am
If you hate Windows so much, why don’t you go back to DOS? Have fun with your ANCIENT 2D games, and quit wasting people’s time with useless pages like this. If you can make a better OS, GO DO IT. I personally have had less problems with Vista than ANY other OS I’ve run, and I’ve run them ALL. I’m sure Win7 will be a decent OS, just like Vista is.
Jul 10th, 2008 at 11:49 am
@ Satisfied User
Sigh, Sarcasm isn’t your friend, huh?
Jul 10th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
@Satisfied User
People hate Windows for the value of the software. If Windows Vista were cheaper (say, $150-$200) and they released only 1 version at launch that was just as great (you have to admit; the price is outrageous to upgrade from XP to Vista), I think we would all be okay with it.
But really, when they give all their own products SPs that just make them worse and slower, and you think to your self “I need Vista, my computer that I got 2 years ago is extremely slow,” and you end up wasting your money on a new computer, buying Vista, and having a god awful time with the Customer Service. It makes you think…”damn, I should’ve bought a Mac. Its got all the features this does, I’m just too much of a stubborn prick to open up my eyes and try something new.” And the average consumer is not very happy about the product.
That’s what I’ve been thinking about for quite a while. Switching.
But I won’t, until Microsoft understands that they need to stand and deliver. Which will probably be Windows 7. I’ve forgiven Windows once, but one more screw up, and I’ll switch to a Mac like that [this is where I snap].
I switched from Xbox[1] to PS3 like that , after you totally left me in the dust for 2 years. Its not that hard for me to switch.
Jul 11th, 2008 at 8:40 am
@ 911 Gaming
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
@ Satisfied User
That’s still to say not everybody hates Vista. I use it and I quite enjoy it.
Aug 2nd, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Good and really Funny Article – keep it going.
Sep 5th, 2008 at 7:10 am
make windows 7 better than all the rest!! 🙄
Sep 14th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
I wish I could threaten to switch to a Mac. But I’m a gamer-and XP kicks ass compared to the other OSs. I’m not about to play my games on Vista.
So I guess my threat is: “Every time you release a resource hogging OS that won’t let me play my games, I’ll reinstall a pirated copy of Windows XP! HA!”
Mar 24th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
Stop making little babies of the real windows. Can’t you keep to one only? As if buying genuine windows isn’t enough, please don’t force use to use genuine games on your OS, that sucks. A months ago i bought a laptop that has Vista on it, guess what it didn’t let me use my pen-dirve and i didn’t have any vista supported driver T_T but i could use that same pen-drive in the office PC with XP, lol WT* Do we have to get every single bits of drivers with any hardware we buy!!!!!!!!!!!???? Can’t they be auto detected and installed by the OS. We don’t want the looks of the new OS, we also need it to work just the way we want it to with less botheration. I am wasting my time commenting of crappy OS, so no thanks to Bill and Microsoft. 😯
oh and stop giving numbers and names we don’t need in OS names, we just need it to work and meet our demands.
Mar 30th, 2009 at 1:59 am
LOL good article. So true, even #13. And I too have recently reunited with good old long lost BSOD. Turns out new Dells will give BSOD when you try to downgrade from Vista to XP! You have to make a custom install cd to get it to work. Time to switch to Linux, I’m afraid.
Oct 23rd, 2009 at 6:10 pm
Dynamics is doing along some key criteria. ,
Jan 30th, 2010 at 6:39 pm
first of all i would rate this article …-10/10
why do some people cant accept the changes …i know microsoft is screwed ….but you should rilly praise it when something goes good….i hv been using windows 7 since 3months …and i find that thing a whole lot better than the ” oh so cool virus friendly xp” you are talking about ……you people find that 7 draws some 2 or 3 fps less than xp …and you go screaming “hey man ,this is shit !”
Jan 30th, 2010 at 7:45 pm
@Aziz, LOL, gud sed.
I have started using win 7 64 bit from Jan 30, 2010, so far so good.
I heard they’gonna release win 8 2011, so soon? 😕
Jan 31st, 2010 at 2:21 am
hey is win764 bit available in bd yet ?i have 6 gigs of ram and i really need to switch ….
Jan 31st, 2010 at 2:22 pm
@aziz
yeah,it’s available.Mine is Windows 7 64 bit Ultimate Edition !
Feb 1st, 2010 at 2:16 am
@Reza
It’s too early to talk about the next version of Windows. But yes, I’ve read that Microsoft won’t take long to release newer versions of Windows (like the time it took to jump from XP to Vista).
Feb 4th, 2010 at 4:31 am
1. UAC is a lame attempt at the UNIX privileges subsystem. Why UNIX-based systems (OS X) and lookalikes (Linux) are foolproof on the networking side is mostly due to restriced execution of binaries. Any and all kinds of foreign executables need permission to run, and in the event there is an automation in place to run them nevertheless, the only affected areas are those within the user’s “home”.
Lame or not, taking the UAC up a notch is something beneficial.
3. Windows 7 did rip off someone (or something), and that is KDE 4. But it’s still a good rip 🙂
11. Firefox is open-source. No entity can “buy” it.
Feb 4th, 2010 at 4:34 am
And I can’t help but wonder how many of the posters here have genuine Windows 7 🙄
Feb 4th, 2010 at 11:52 am
@Visitor
I can say that I’m on a genuine Windows 7 Home Premium (from Amazon). If you get the OEM version, it’s even cheaper.
Feb 8th, 2010 at 10:04 am
Dude, i’ve bin usin win 7 from its beta phases and it kicks ass compared to xp nd vista….Dont get me wrong, coz xp was lyk the water in the desert 4 MS, but windows 7 iis lyk the holy grail for windows fanatics nd for once, microsoft did not goof up….Congrats 2 microsoft!!
Feb 8th, 2010 at 1:03 pm
@Moontasir
I’ve been testing Win 7 64 bit since the RC (release candidate) days. It was so stable in beta that I used it as my main OS for 4 months or so. When I finally got Home Premium 64 bit, I hardly realized that I left the beta phase.
Feb 8th, 2010 at 2:17 pm
@The Gaming Wiz/Mushfiqur Rahman
I’m also using Win 7…& i can hardly say it’s better than Win Xp ! 😉
@Moontasir
hey bro,i just wanna say sorry to u…4 what just happened last night…
Feb 8th, 2010 at 2:20 pm
@sng425
Ah I remember the day Windows XP released. Remember it was so buggy? All the shops told me to stick with Win 98. But after SP2, Windows XP really took off.
Mar 21st, 2010 at 5:37 pm
Still all of us have ti admit that, Windows is the only OS gives us opportunity to have non console gaming.