5 very basic things Windows 7 still isn't any good at

Thanks for writing this...

It's important that we contrast the positives of W7. M$ isn't perfect, but they should aim to be.

An often overlooked feature of quality software is 'ergonomics'. If it takes 3 clicks to change the time in W7, that's 2 clicks too many.

As far as the .zip files are concerned, I would imagine that M$ assumes that if you're someone who cares about the speed of extracting a .zip file, then you probably already have the app to do so.

Lastly, I agree with the Network Connections. I cannot imagine how a Company like M$ would ever take a step backwards in terms of usability, but M$ did it. Please bring back 'right-click to network connections', just as we had in XP.

God that missing "connect to" menu almost drove me insane trying to find my wireless and wired connections. Finally found it by double clicking the network icon on the task menu, then going to "Manage my network connections".... way too much work just to disable connections...

as far as I could tell, all the "repair" button did in XP was release and renew. While I'm not sure what more it does, I hope it does more than just that. I was typically disappointed with what the "repair" button did.

about setting the clock:
i think it was the most annoying thing, that until 2007, windows did not feature a calendar: when doubleclicking in windows xp, you were not presented such a thing, but only the settings dialog for setting the clock. thus, when without administration rights, you weren't allowed to open. so any normal user looking for a simple "wait, what day is the 3rd of october"-calendar didn't have access.
thus i can't go with you on this one, sorry ;)

Honestly, how many times a day do you change the time???

I've only changed it ONCE, when I got my computer and set the time for the very first time.

So, asking for a one-click solution for this is, in my opinion, absurd. 3 clicks is fine. It's not like it's the most difficult thing in the world, just right-click -> adjust date and time or left-click -> change date and time.

I for some godforsaken reason need to adjust my clock in Vista at least every few weeks, or it gets a few minutes behind.
I have no idea why. This happened when i had online syncing activated, and still happens when I have it deactivated. It wouldn't be a huge deal, except i use media centre for my tv viewing and PVR-ing, and when the time is off by a few minutes it gets annoying.

What's this about needing to go through the networking and Sharing center? I thought in Win7 all the networks are listed at the system tray icon?

While vista sucked on it's launch date. I actually much prefer it to xp nowadays. XP is outdated by at least 3 years. XP is also too loose with the administrative controls. Vista with sp1 is plenty good enough. It has much better administration and user profiles that make much more sense. My only beef with vista is that it's hard to find the network adapter window. That one got a little too buried in my and others opinions.

I know windows 7 will be better than vista, and i am heavily glad about this. I'm a pretty hardcore linux user. So i'll just say this. For users, use what you know how to use and stick with it. For IT technical support, use what you know how to use and stick with it, but you're going to feel pretty fucking dumb when you have to fix a macintosh or a linux machine and you don't know how to do it because you didn't give yourself enough exposure to the other ose's that are widly used. GD, it's not hard to administer linux at all. Same with osx.

Oh well, lost profits for the IT personnel who are assholes to clients who have macs and linux machines and refuse to work for them. Quite simply, the IT personnel, or anybody who says they're good at computers and only uses windows and has never used anything else is full of ****.

All stemming from my opinion that the modern day computer user has gotten dumber. Windows vista and windows 7 will whip them back into shape.

Yeah - those all bug me as well - there's still time for them to fix it - let's hope someone who can fix this stuff reads this page soon

None of those things compares to the horribly broken file copy process that's been around since Win 95. I think everyone has experienced copying some files only to have the whole copy process fail because ONE file is in use! Why can't they fix this???

Yeah, copying files totally got slower in vista. Idk why, it's way slower than copying files in xp. I take it windows 7 is no different? Idk why the file copying had to get slower.

Man! WTF are you talking about with this crap? Windows 7 isn't even finished yet!

How about handling and especially installing of fonts?

I didn't play with Windows 7 yet, but i haven't yet read anything that addresses this. It seems font installation hasn't changed since windows 3.11

This is horrible for people into graphics design.

Have you tried backing up your useful fonts? Have you tried installing a newer font version only to have windows throw and error, and stop the rest of your font installation?

I read in several places that the more fonts you have the slower windows starts because it pre-loads the font files at setup. Does this still make sense in 2008?

And how about some kind of font library management?

Just stick with XP, It's not possible to satisfy everyone's petty little needs such as yours.

@Article:
I think complaining for the sake of complaining is going on here:

Zip: To be honest, few people use zip now that I know of, .7z and .rar seem to be pretty well accepted standards in Windows now, and several similar .tar.gz, .tar.bz in *nix and Mac. Personally, the only time I have ever used the build in Windows "Zip" utility was to unzip the archive containing my new "archiving" software. I agree with you that it is totally rubbish, should be much simpler and a LOT faster, but nobody uses it, leave it there for emergencies but use somethng better.

FTP: I am not in a position to comment here, because personally I prefer to use command line tools for FTP, I know this is not everyones cup of tea so I can't tell you to go find yourself a command line FTP tool or visit the PuTTy website. I agree that FTP from within IE is pretty bad, but again, if i use a "GUI" I will go with one of the extensions for my chosen web browser (Firefox) namely FireFTP or similar.

Clock: I am quad booting 4 OS's (Win7, WinXP, Mac OSX86, Fedora 9) on the laptop I'm typing from, all with access to the clock and had no trouble so far, the one time I went into the Win7 clock to see what was there I agree I found it took a few more clicks and pages than normal to get to the importnt stuff but considering the addition of world clocks etc and security (the system clock is more importnat to security than people think) it seems to be ok. And i would much rather a click-click to show-hide the calendar than settings etc.

Network: Personally, I never find I need to use the repair connections, I roam with this laptop to almost a dozen networks regularly and havnt yet had to "diagnose" or "repair" a connection. I think this is geared more towards helpig the less knowledgable, personally I just disable and renable the adapter and works for my every time unless its the access point that is the problem.

I use personally a lot because this is of course just my opinion, I use all of the Major OS's (XP, Vista, 7, Linux, Mac OS) and I do have Vista Ultimate x64 (possibly the most problematic of them all) on my desktop system but have been working nicely with them all.

Windows 7 so far has produced only 2 problems for me:

With UAC disabled desktop gadgets do not work, the menu for them can't be opened, and they dont show on the desktop if already added. (Yes, a lot will argue i'm stupid for disabling it, but I'll stick with "i know what i'm doing")

Second, when switching power states, "balanced" and "power saver" Windows 7 disabled transparancy, brilliant, except, i can't set different themes for each, so if i set my colour saturation high with transparency on, to get the desired effect (more see through), my taskbar goes a horrible white when transparency is off, I can live with this, but not ideal being the perfectionist I am.

@6 Eli:

the "linux fanboy" you speak of, is most certainly not an eletist and is definately embarassing him/herself more than anything. As you say, it has no place here, it's not directly comparable to Windows in the sense we're speaking here and yes I do use it regularly myself. Personally, I'd say that in the linux world your "fanboy" would be considered a "noob", eletist linux users certainly don't use Ubuntu (in any form) it's just considered far too restrictive and "user friendly" for the kind of people that want to be using linux and really know what they are doing, the even more elite don't even use a GUI or window system so they most certainly wouldnt be here comparing it with the visual "glass" effects of Windows.

On the whole I'm so far very impressed with Windows 7, considering it is in Beta, it excels where Vista would crawl on this laptop of mine, and although I still prefer some parts of my Vista install that I have been running since release, I think Windows 7 has a lot of potential to be better, and where Microsoft doesnt get things right I feel I have the skills and drive to customise them (as with all the OSs I run) to do exactly what i need how I need it to.

Yes i am aware not everyone fits in this bracket and want a single OS that will do everything they want perfectly, but it's impossible to cater to everybody's desires, as a Computer Scientist and Electronic Engineer I can appreciate this, and as much as I would love to complain when my hard earned cash doesnt produce as fruitful results from the things I buy as i would wish, I just remember there is more to life, and more important things to worry about.

Well I agree with you TC and that is why I'm using Ubuntu or Mac OS X which are a lot better than Windows, but still I'm using Win XP for gaming. If Linux or Apple support gaming better than M$ does then I'd be glad to delete Windows from both my PC and Laptop.

Good luck with Windows 7 btw