If you love Windows XP, you’ll hate Windows 7
My colleague Jason Perlow has been playing with Windows 7, and he hates it. The sad thing is, all the things he hates are improvements, in my opinion, which just goes to show that you really can’t please everyone. But what’s sad to see is that every setting Jason describes as broken is in fact easily customizable so it works the way he wants it.
The crux of Jason’s complaint is simple: “I learned how to use Windows in 1998. Don’t change a thing.” Here’s his main argument in a nutshell:
I find it difficult to believe that Windows 7 was created to be easier to use than Vista — if anything, they’ve introduced a number of UI changes that make the system much harder to navigate, particularly if you’ve never used Vista and are going direct to Windows 7 from Windows XP, which is the path that many users will experience.
Yes, there’s a learning curve. And if you insist on using those techniques you learned back in the last millennium with software that was designed differently, you will be frustrated. But I believe that an open-minded XP user who actually takes a few minutes to learn how the new UI works will be more productive very quickly. The secret is breaking old habits and developing new ones. Let’s take all three of Jason’s examples and work through them.
