December 1, 2006
Vista's Many Turnoffs
Microsoft's new OS has a surprising answer to the question, How many geeks does it take to shut down a computer?
by Catherine Holahan
How many ways should you be able to shut off a laptop? How about nine? Microsoft's long-awaited Vista operating system, launched for business customers on Nov. 30, includes that many options, according to programmers familiar with the software. That's two shortcut icons and a shut-down menu with a full seven options.
The sheer absurdity of all the choices has some techies chortling — and others astounded that the software giant could come out with something so unwieldy after years of development. Critics say that Vista, for all its capabilities, could end up being too complex for the average consumer. After all, how many features do you need for the computer equivalent of a light switch? "I'm sure there's a whole team of (user interface) designers, programmers, and testers who worked very hard on the OFF button in Windows Vista," writes Joel Spolsky, a New York software developer, on his blog, "but seriously, is this the best you could come up with?"
Debate over the issue has gained momentum on the Net in recent days, as a growing circle of people weigh in with their opinions. One big reason is the participation of a person who says he worked as a programmer for Microsoft on the shut-off feature. Moishe Lettvin, who now works at rival Google, described in online postings the inner workings of the development process at Microsoft. He says that the involvement of dozens of people, operating in too many teams, led to what he calls "the lowest common denominator." Microsoft executives were not available to comment for this story. However, its supporters point out that each menu option — switch user, log off, lock, restart, sleep, hibernate, and shut down — does do something slightly different. "Restart," for example, shuts off and then immediately reboots the computer. "Sleep," on the other hand, puts the computer in a lower power state, saving battery juice while enabling the user to quickly resume activity. That's different from "hibernate," which saves work before, essentially, shutting down.
Still, Spolsky, author of the Joel on Software book and blog of the same title, takes Microsoft to task for poor design. The company, he maintains, should have copied a page out of rival Apple's book and made Vista's user interface more streamlined and intuitive. Instead of burdening the user with too many choices, the computer should detect how long it has been neglected and select the optimal state automatically, says Spolsky. "There are always good reasons to have sleep and good reasons to have hibernate, but most people—they just don't care about these things," says Spolsky, who is now the chief executive of Fog Creek Software, a software company that designs IT solutions such as bug-tracking systems. "But Microsoft has a specific way of designing software where they never want to eliminate an option that users have had in the past. They always want you to have 37 different flavors." ...
http://www.businessweek.com/print/technology/content/dec2006/tc20061201_625122.htm 
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