Best and Worst Microsoft Products?

Tony Austin
Monday, 13 October 2008 14:47

Opinion and Analysis

As just one example, after four decades in the IT industry I'm very particular and have a real dislike of backward steps. See for my rant at The "Do no harm" principle and the pile of relevant links that I've assembled at Design and Usability.

When Microsoft designed the user interface of Internet Explorer 7, I reckon they did no more than a passable job, possibly due to focusing too much security enhancements. One thing I particularly hate is its retrograde lack of configurability -- you can't move things around or tailor the toolbars as much as you could with IE6.

Another thing that was in IE7 Beta 7 and unforgivably removed thereafter is the ability found in IE5 and IE6 to use the Ctrl key in conjunction with the mouse scroll wheel to adjust text size, resulting in the inability to increase the size of tiny fonts in many third-party products, and even some of Microsoft's very own interfaces, such the Management Console (MMC) used for all sorts of administrative functions.

Once you've upgraded to the IE7 rendering engine you're stuck with unalterable text sizes in such applications, too bad if your eyesight can't cope, and obviously the IE Team had little thought or concern about this important omission.

Other browsers already had better features before the release of IE7 offered a quite superior user experience, with tons of nice features and excellent configurability, tabbed browsing where you have multiple rows of tabs and optionally on the bottom of the screen, and lots more.  Firefox, Avant Browser, Maxthon Browser, Enigma Browser and Opera are some of IE7's main contenders that I use regularly.

Some of these I use due to very particular aspects of their behavior that, purely by trial and error over the years, I've found really useful. For example, Enigma best controls Internet Banking popup windows, displaying them at full size inside the main Enigma window, instead of at some reduced size somewhere else on one of my four monitors!

In view of the mess the IE Team made of major aspects of IE7's interface, I shudder to think what sort of dog's breakfast they've dreamt up for IE8 (Beta 1 of which is already available here but so far I've built up neither the courage nor the energy reserve to try it out).

Another completely different aspect is that of Microsoft hardware. They are only a minor player: no mainframes, communication controllers, and the like. But lots of small peripherals, such as mice and keyboards, plus some odds and ends (game consoles, etc).

I happened to be extremely impressed by the original Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer laser mouse, and still use a few of them. What a pleasure to use after the earlier generation of mice with mechanical sensors (the ball that stopped working smoothly after picking up grime and dust).

My current favorite is the Microsoft Natural Wireless Laser Mouse, which I find really is as comfortable to hold and use as its designers intended. I'm sure that its "natural" arm/wrist positioning effect has eliminated the RSI pain that I used to suffer.

Microsoft will be with us for a long time to come, so a bit of public feedback provided by iTWire readers just might have a bit of influence on their product development and services. Here's your chance to chime in. Little things, big things, have your say.

Hey, what about that animated paperclip they once forced upon us: did you like it or hate it?

After I finished writing the above, I came across Worst Windows flaws of the past decade which is quite apposite to my quest, and should give you a few extra ideas?

So, what has Microsoft done well, and what has been abysmal? Little things, big things? Use the iTWire comments system to have your say.