skriptd

skriptd presents: Unzipping with Windows Vista

One of the nice things about the folks down at Redmond is just how far they went to improve the usability of their new operating system. Whereas in XP you had to first click the “Start” button to shutdown your computer (how intuitive is that!?!), you now have that pesky function removed completely from untrained eyes – yes, that wonderful little symbol we’ve all come to understand means “Power” now simply means “Standby… sort of”.

Another of the benefits contributing to the $400USD price tag of Vista is the immensely improved security. Our new safety-conscious operating system will not try anything without first getting you – the informed user – to agree. Want to add or remove hardware? “Windows needs your permission to continue”. Installing software? “An unidentified program wants access to your computer”. Need to adjust the height of your seat? By all means, go ahead! If you want a system that makes its own decisions, look elsewhere. If you want a system that will give you the authority and respect you deserve… well… you’ll end up clicking a lot anyway.

But do you want to know where Vista really shines? It’s in the mundane. The everyday tasks that, when strung together, probably make up most of our productive time. Take for example, the relatively common experience of unzipping a compressed file. Let’s say… a 46 Mb zip file, unzipped on a 3.4 GHz Pentium D with roughly a gig of RAM.

I mean… why do they even have the progress bar?

A picture paints a thousand words, so here’s 18000 frames x 1000 words = an 18 million word video essay on usability. (Full video, 41Mb). NB: You may need this codec to view the AVI.

Or, a slightly fuzzy version: