Yesterday night I wanted to help a friend to get online through my Wireless-LAN. She got a brand new Windows Vista notebook. After half an hour or more we still didn’t get that PC thing online.
Besides: this notebook (like pretty much all PC-notebooks that I know) got a switch!! for turning Wireless-LAN on and off, which I find…let’s say…we’re still 21st century, or is it 19th century?
So it was hard to connect to this network with Windows XP already and I thought that it would probably be somewhat easier with Vista…well, I was oh so wrong. I even managed to actually connect to the network and got an IP and all that stuff that’s needed. But for Windows, this doesn’t seem like a reason to be “online”. The Internet Explorer kept saying it was still working offline, and when trying to connect it opened the dial up window. There was no way I could find to tell this “thing” to use the existing Wireless-LAN connection that it already established.
I really have no idea what’s up there in redmond, but I really felt lost there. I don’t know about the average PC user with zero or less knowledge of a computer, but how can an operating system be SO difficult to use? The windows that I saw during the setup were full of text and hints that I felt really uncomfortable. In my eyes there was little to no usability there.
Not being able to connect to the Wireless-LAN mad me actually feel kinda stupid. How can such a huge company like Microsoft create an operating system that makes the user feel stupid? This should be easy to use, cause EVERYONE! is working with the operating system almost every time. I don’t know why people still keep buying windows computers, probably cause they don’t know there’s something else. If they have to use a PC cause there’re applications that are PC-only, I’m really sorry for you guys.
Karsten