Sunday, November 13, 2011

Reflections on Windows

I've been using Windows since about 1988, so that gives me about 23 years of experience. I began, as many others did, using a runtime version of Windows to power an application like PageMaker, Ventura Publisher, Excel or Word. I started using the full version sometime around Windows/286 or /386, versions optimized for then-leading edge CPUs. I know that Windows 3.0 was a mainstay for me, as were 3.1 and the wonderful 3.11 version for Workgroups. I remember attending promotional events at movie theaters in 1995 to obtain beta copies of Windows 95 and thinking that the world had changed, even if just a little bit.

My friend Jimmy Hooker once called Windows a "clown suit for DOS", and in the beginning it was a DOS app that was started by typing WIN at a C:\> prompt. In those days, others were developing DOS-compatible operating systems (chief being DR-DOS) that could run the fledgling Windows, so I'm sure that was motivation for Microsoft to glue together the OS and the GUI to create Windows 95. If you had that, you didn't need any other version of DOS (or Windows), and your computer booted up to a graphical desktop with start button, taskbar and clickable icons to run programs.

Simpler to install, run and repair, even if it did come on fourteen floppy diskettes.

Windows 98 was a refinement, and 98SE was the DOS/Windows perfected. I had a better time, explored more new frontiers, learned about networking and got more work done with 98SE than any prior DOS-based version. Keep in mind I had been using it for seven years already. 98SE was THAT good.

Millennium Edition was a strange animal, thought by many to have little if any reason for existence. It tried to hide its DOS underpinnings and made troubleshooting more challenging. I suppose in many ways it was pointing the way to what the future was to bring.

Windows NT started life in 1993 as version 3.1, because the current DOS version was at that stage, but it was built upon a sturdier base, an all new OS that was not based or derived from DOS. Some very talented folks came to Redmond and built this foundation that we still use today. They called it NT for New Technology, and it shared an arena with IBM's OS/2 (which had been co-developed by Microsoft). At that time I was writing training courseware for OS/2 and had the opportunity to run it every day, see it up close and personal, and I came to respect the divergence and stability it brought to a world of mostly DOS-based alternatives.

OS/2 was a wonderful product, but Microsoft marketed the heck out of Windows 3.0, 3.1, and Windows 95, and so OS/2 languished as hardware technologies continued to advance rapidly and device drivers were created for Windows first, and maybe OS/2 later. Many enterprises were built on the stability of OS/2 (like banks) and are still using it today. But Windows continued its metamorphosis from DOS to NT, and we got Windows 2000, a spectacularly capable platform for business and power user, alike. I loved Win2K, and I gained a whole new appreciation for the stability and speed that was promised in NT 3.1.

All of this leads to the release of what is still the longest-lived version of Windows in all its history - Windows XP.

During testing, I heard comments calling XP the Fisher-Price OS and other less-than-repeatable names, but it brought the stability of the business Windows to the mainstream user/consumer, and there would be no looking back. XP was so popular, that it's successor, Vista, was roundly criticized for slower performance, inconvenient security, compatibility and UI reorganization. My first thought was "Where is everything?" and in retrospect I see Vista as the departure that Microsoft needed to make to get Windows ready for the challenges that lay ahead.

Security issues have plagued the platform since its early days, mainly due to its DOS-based heritage. But the brilliant idea to make users operate at something less than administrative power was a turning point, just as activating the firewall in XP with a late service pack. Another plus for Vista was the User Account Control, or UAC, that alerted less-than administrative users when something was being installed or needed to change something within the system. UAC would have been a much better idea had it been designed into the foundation of the OS, and not grafted on as a service.

Windows 7 saw the same type refinements that XP had over 2000. It was a better version of Vista, and I originally liked to refer to it as Vista Second Edition. I continued to use XP and its 64-bit incarnation as my primary OS platforms until the first service pack for Windows 7 was offered.

I figured that with all those initial patches and security fixes baked into Win7 SP1, I could hit the ground running with a fully up-to-date Windows and take that new baby out for a REAL spin.

I had to relearn the interface, as many of the most easily discoverable features had changed locations and names, just as I had seen in my first encounters with Vista. But I persevered, learned as I went, and realized that the process of learning a new OS could actually be fun again, something I had not experienced in years. Windows 7 used an image based install method, as did Vista, very different from the XP and prior generations, which used a file based process. My tools and approaches that I had spent years honing and perfecting were no longer usable, and again I thought that this was not the way I wanted to go.

But I was wrong.

Even with the greater complexity of the installation customization process, even with the fact that my toolset would change almost completely, and even with the realization that this was a whole new world of Windows, I finally came to know that it was better, it was more capable, and it was, indeed, the way I wanted to go.

I have met some highly gifted and talented people online in the years I have been technically active. Some of them have shined lights for me on this new mysterious animal called Windows 7, and showed me that it does work, it can be better, and has the potential to take me and those who use it to the next level. I would say that without their insight and motivation, this would be a much different experience, working in the new Windows world.

And in September 2011, when the Developer Preview of Windows 8 was released, I did not hesitate (as I had for many years) to jump in with both feet and check it out on a daily, production basis. Yes, I had been having power management challenges in Win7 (bluescreen crashes after idle periods), and maybe that pushed me forward. I can say that my Windows 8 experience has been nothing short of wonderful. I am looking ahead once more to what the next generation of Windows can do for me, as well as what new methods and processes I can create to bring my decades of technical expertise to the next level. For myself, and those I support in the technical universe.

Thanks for reading. See you next time.