I know it's already too late but I want to get my comments in now regarding Microsoft's new OS, "Longhorn" aka "Vista".  So here is my wish list, take it as constructive criticism if you like…

1. Fix this whole copy/cut/paste/delete crap.  If I choose to copy a folder, and say one file about 3/4 the way through is locked for some reason, it breaks the entire process.  Why!!??  Why cant it simply resume/abort/retry copying?  Now I have to go find that file and start the entire copy process over again.

   1a. The whole "Yes to All" button.  Make it work or don't give us the option.  It seems that it is scoped at a folder level.  That is, if you hit "Yes to all" it will apply that decision to the current folder and its items.  It would seem this button should apply to the entire operation.

   1b. Threaded?!  Take advantage of faster machines with faster drives!  Here's an idea.  Take the top 3 HTTP/FTP download managers and simulate their behavior.  Have it run in "silent"/"end user" mode which emulates the current behavior and then allow us to turn on the full display if we like it.  Viewing all the current threads copying/moving each file, be able to pause/resume/delete/overwrite each action, etc.

  1c. If I'm deleting a file, which has a lock.  Don't you think it would be good to let us know exactly what has it locked?  Wouldn't that help us correct the issue much faster?  Give us the "Abort, Retry, Skip"/"Cancel, Retry, Continue" set of options or something.

2. The Shell.  Oh that nasty little shell.  How much I have resisted it over the years with replacements (http://weblogs.asp.net/rchartier/archive/2003/03/26/4298.aspx and http://weblogs.asp.net/rchartier/archive/2004/02/25/79930.aspx).  Microsoft please let your shell assimilate me!  All I ask for is .NET integration in some form (dogfood!?).  Be it plug-ins like the Google Desktop or some other fashion, I don't really care.  Just allow me to customize it and get it the point of being productive with it.  I know your current shell is really targeted to the casual end user who likes the idea of "Start"ing at the sample place to find things.  But what about us power-users (and beyond) that need more control over our environment.

Take a look at my blog these days.  The majority of the last posts are all related to improving my desktop experience using a competitor's product!  I don't want to have to use the Google desktop its just more crap to maintain.  You guys need to work with me here…

Lets hope that fancy SideBar makes it into production!!!  http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=95433
http://blogs.msdn.com/tims/archive/2004/08/20/217893.aspx

3. Make shell extensions much easier (IFilter?).  The whole COM Interop goop is a mess and very difficult to get to a solid working product in .NET

4. Don't worry so much about RSS, its cool and all but let the rest of the world take care of readers.  We need more aggregation and features that do not need to put into any sort of OS.

Here is some more ideas from others…

5. Network resources.  When navigating to a path,   \\shar\folder instead of \\share\folder I want to be able to hit a Stop button.  Instead of waiting for the process to simply time out on the bad computer name.

6. Right-Clicking.  Sometimes the right-click menu is slow to respond. In some cases when it does appear, it simply hides right away.  Now right clicking again causes a big delay.  Fix it!

5 Comments

• Crashr said Thursday, September 1, 2005 10:50:00 AM

  My wish to your 1a, is to have an option when copying of replying "No to all". This would allow me to sync subdirectories simply by copying everything and then saying NO to the message of file allready exists.

• Jerry Pisk said Thursday, September 1, 2005 12:58:00 PM

  My wish to your 1 is that you can merge directories. If you move a directory tree and one if the files is locked you end up with half of your files at the source, half at the target. Now when you try and move the rest the directory that exists in both will either not be moved (if you select No to overwrite) or you will lose the files you already moved (if you select Yes to overwrite). There just is no easy way to recover. Allowing directories to be merged - take the files from source directory and add them to the files that already exist in the target version of that directory - would solve the problem.
  
  Oh and stop trying to make IE the all in one browser, I use it to browse web sites and that's it, so please don't try to make it smarter and try to open a NetBIOS share on a LAN server that runs both (it will timeout after a terribly long period of trying to find the share).

• Rolf said Thursday, September 1, 2005 1:31:00 PM

  Just press [Shift]+No = No to all! (In Windows XP)

• Michal Chaniewski said Friday, September 2, 2005 5:29:00 AM

  Rolf said: Just press [Shift]+No = No to all! (In Windows XP)
  
  Yeah! Discoverability is the king!

• MuteThis said Thursday, September 29, 2005 6:47:00 AM

  I just thought of something else that I'd like... When I'm in My Documents, and I go up a folder, I'd like it to go to my profile directory not my desktop.