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On Fri, Apr 22, 2005 at 11:41:05AM +0100, Yoz Grahame wrote:
> That said, ObHate: The way that Windows alerts you to the need for a
> restart after performing a security update - and after you've chosen
> "Restart Later", decides that "Later" means in 10 minutes' time, and
> then 10 minutes after that, and *will not fucking leave you alone
> whatever you are doing*. (No, there is no "don't bother me again"
> option. There's only "Later")
I think I can top that. I was staying with some relatives the other week; it's a
Windows household. (I am one of the mythical happy Linux-on-the-desktop users
referred to earlier on this list, but using Windows doesn't bug me too much
when I have to.) The other day I got this message:
"Updating your computer is almost complete. Your computer needs to be
restarted for the updates to take effect. Windows will restart your computer
automatically in 5:00 minutes."
The time figure was counting down, and a progress bar was creeping up to
complete. Underneath it asked, "Do you want to restart your computer now?"
And offered two buttons, "Restart Now" and "Restart Later". So far so much
the situation you describe. Only in my case, the "Restart Later" button was
grayed out! So I had no choice but to drag the damn thing to the edge of the
screen - because it insisted on staying in front - and hurriedly closing
down all the stuff I was using. Thank fuck I do just about everything in a
remote screen session.
So let's count the hateworthy misfeatures:
1) Not giving you the "don't restart" option (Yoz's hate).
2) Picking an arbitrarily short time to allow the user to save their data
before forcibly restarting the machine.
3) Assuming that only the administrator user should be allowed to decide
that the machine should not be restarted [yet, see (1)].
3) Subsequently displaying a /completely wrong message/. It should have been
something like "Due to your administrator scheduling a software update, this
machine will automatically restart in five minutes.", wrong though the idea
of such a message may be.
4) Providing an option that is not actually an option - a disabled button.
And not giving /any/ explanation to the user at /all/ why it is like that,
probably leaving the average user in complete confusion.
I am at a loss to describe how annoyed this made me. HATE.
--
Earle Martin
http://downlode.org/
http://purl.oclc.org/net/earlemartin/
There's stuff above here
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