I’ve written here a few times about Windows Vista, I think it’s pretty damn terrible. I really haven’t had *anything* positive to say about it. It offers nothing substantial over XP but needs twice the system resources, and really serves no need except Microsoft’s (namely, to increase OS revenue and let Bill get that additional ivory backscratcher he’s been eyeing). So clearly, I’d have to have withstood some form of brain damage to then go and spend more money on what is essentially more Vista. Something that offers little additional functionality, and probably requires even more resources.

And then I get this bit of good news in my inbox. If I decide to go with the slower, more DRM-shackled computing experience I can have that wonderful experience on not one but TWO PCs! What a dream. So I asked myself, do I have TWO PCs that I want to run slower and with poorer hardware support?

Well, as a matter of fact no… I think my computing experience is fine with XP and Ubuntu, really. I have Vista installed on one of my PCs — but I’m really not using it; it was something I got for free because of an upgrade program and I’ve really only made use of it when Halo 2 came out for the PC (and a tepid-tastic experience that was, really). I guess Redmond really doesn’t get the fact you’re really not going to make anyone optimistic about Vista, unless you pay them to sell it of course.

This wonderful offer did make me smirk a little, I have to admit. With all these “special offers” it’s becoming pretty clear that Vista retail is a flop and that Microsoft isn’t too far from the point where it’s going to consider giving it away, or even maybe paying people to use it — I have heard from trusted sources that Microsoft has some pretty hefty rewards for high-profile bloggers who move on from Windows to open-source solutions. Maybe the same phenomenon is about to hit the retail channels. That might have the distinct advantage of making Vista actually worth using. In any case it seems that bribing your user base must be more expensive than actually listening to what customers want, at least for the Redmond giant.

Obviously I’m not crazy about Vista. I think it’s largely uncalled for; to an advanced user Vista really doesn’t offer much over XP, but it does consume vastly more resources. To be honest no one should buy a Vista PC that doesn’t have 2 gigabytes of memory, and the tx1218 has only one out-of-the-box.  It runs the OS fine, but when you’re using a few apps (as you would in the real world) the performance quickly becomes dismal. This is especially true with a laptop because a laptop will have a smaller, slower hard disk than a desktop, so Vista’s constantly having to go to the swap file takes a serious hit on system performance.

Doubly bad is that the tx1218 is in fact a Tablet PC. For some reason the software that comes with those HP “Home” Tablet PCs seems to tie up quite a bit of  memory and CPU time. One thing I rather liked was the fingerprint reader, but the identity manager that uses the device seems to be constantly sniffing for a place where you have to authenticate yourself as a user. That ties up resources, as does the input manager for the touch screen.

Another factor is that the tx1218, as with all TPC, is very small and really wastes no space. Among other things this means that the hard disk’s heat isn’t properly diffused, so with all the swap file access the laptop quickly grows quite warm. It’s not a bad thing if you keep your office cold in the winter — it’s a little hand-warmer, in fact! — but it’s not so practical if you have your laptop, well, on your lap. You won’t get scorched or anything like that, but you definitely feel the warmth. That may be a plus for some people Also when you flip the screen to use your laptop as a tablet the hot side is always on the bottom (unless you register that you’re left-handed, presumably) so using the tablet when it’s leaning against a desk also results in your getting warmth in an area of the body where you might not want to have it.

But those reasons aren’t why I returned the tx1218.  I returned it because it started blue-screening on me. This started when I put it to sleep after watching a movie on it last night (it’s a great laptop for that purpose, by the way). I noticed that the PC wasn’t going to sleep and the hard drive was still plugging away after a few minutes, so I opened the display again and, after a few minutes, the blue screen appeared. I tried again after the restart, and the same thing happened. This morning I ran the software recovery disk, and after the installation was done this started happening again, twice.

The blue screen info hinted at a problem with the driver that detects the power state of the laptop. I found that interesting, because this is a laptop that’s built for Vista and its “foolproof” signed drivers. It’s (I believe) purposely made incompatible with existing PC drivers for common elements like the video card. Simply put you will not find the drivers you need to make this thing work in XP. And yet even THAT hardware seems to have driver problems. When I realized that I knew I was not going to be able to fix this, so I grabbed the box, found my receipt and went on my way back to Best Buy  — which, in Canada, has a decent returns policy, as does its sister store Future Shop (I like to give credit where credit is due).

I’m guessing it was a hardware problem — basically I had bought a defective laptop. This kinda bugs me. This is the second time I have to return HP goods to the shop because of a hardware malfunction. Granted, one of them was an open-box floor demo, but still it made me think that either I’m extremely unlucky with buying PCs or that HP has a seriously quality assurance problem. It’s worrisome to think this, however, because HP provides computers for a very large number of people and institutions. It makes me wonder how many people buy a computer at a store like that, having trust in the brand, only to find that they’ve bought a dud a couple of weeks down the line. And how many places like banks and government offices are running with computers that aren’t reliable. And what that lack of reliability could mean in terms of security issues.

My system is quicker than baseball’s. Two strikes and you’re out. So, HP is off my list of computers to buy in the future.  Also any computer that’s “made for Vista”. The fact is that because of its new foundation Vista really is unfixable once it starts breaking, and it’s really not good value for the resources it requires, even if you get the license for “free” with a (cost-adjusted) new PC. I’m someone who enjoys installing Linux on PCs, but reinstalling Vista really isn’t as much fun. It also takes much longer (hours sometimes, depending on your hardware) and it’s not nearly as customizeable.

As for its “great new features” — UAC, Aero, the new connection manager, the new certificates interface and the explorer improvements — I give them a resounding “meh”. UAC in particular was pretty much a waste of development time. Power users like myself won’t use it because people like me are paranoid and use one or more filesystem protection system already; and novice users (who are still administrators by default!) will be utterly confused by it and just end up approving every request UAC sends them. I didn’t use Aero at all because I had set my user experience parameters to “best performance” in the hope that that would cause my Tablet PC to spring to life and become responsive (it didn’t). The new certificates interface is actually causing companies to tell their employees they can’t use Vista to access their certificate-enabled wireless networks (incorrectly by the way, I resolved the issue in two minutes at my employer’s facilities) and the connection manager seems like just a way to annoy users by its new interface, which is just one more step in the way of you changing the parameters you want to change.

And DirectX10? If I wanted it that much I would have bought an Xbox 360. That’s a hell of a lot less bothersome than running Vista. We PC gamers sadly have to get used to the idea that we’re second class citizens in the games, er, game now. Just look at the Unreal Tournament 3 interface. It’s lifted straight off a console, and it “works” poorly on the PC as an interface. You just don’t get the sort of enhanced, customizeable experience that you got with the Unreal Tournament games of years gone by. And that, unfortunately, seems to be the future of PC gaming — waiting for ports of console games, sometimes poorly-coded (GTA San Andreas was a real bugfest on the PC), and with no real advantage over the console versions aside from the more versatile keyboard-and-mouse controller setup. From a gamer’s POV the games get to the consoles faster (usually), and the console will usually get a more-thoroughly-tested product. So even DX10, Vista’s party piece, ultimately doesn’t justify it.

Throw in often-reported reports of device driver problems and you pretty much come to see Vista as a great answer to a question nobody was asking. Unless that question was “how can Microsoft make more money from Windows licensing”. And I’m pretty damn sure no end user was asking THAT question.

The way a Vista computer gets restored is by a two-step process:

1. Windows Vista is installed off the CD
2. The manufacturer then has Vista run an installer which runs until all the devices on the PC are installed.
3. Every time an installer needs a restart, the computer restarts, and the installer picks up where it left off.
4. Your PC will restart. And restart. And restart.

This will go on for hours, and the hard disk is spinning the whole time. What this means is that the computer is on, you see your desktop, but if you try and actually use your computer by starting an application the computer is so slow and unresponsive it’s not useable. All you see is an item in your taskbar that shows the name of the installer.

This is where it gets funny. It’s the File Based Installer Graphical User Interface Manager. But that would be too long for an application name, so they used acronyms. As a result the installer application is called “FBI Gui Manager”.

So your computer is on but you can’t really use it, and that seems because of a program called “FBI Gui Manager”; you can’t stop this application, and to top it off it doesn’t have an interface, so if you click on it you don’t see a window. You hear your hard drive working constantly, and if you have a laptop you notice that it’s grown hot, and the fan is constantly running at maximum flow as well. And it literally runs for hours. Take this situation, add a user who’s a bit paranoid, combine with the relatively-recent attention to the whole “warrantless wiretapping” stories that have been coming out of the United States, and you have the potential to make a lot of your users very uncomfortable indeed!

And indeed there are a few posts on blogs and question sites from users who are very scared that their computer is being infiltrated by the FBI, or a victim of spyware.

This strikes me as being just plain bad useability.

Now we’re used to this term being used to define the position of elements on a window, or the way one should build interactive elements of applications. So what is the link between this and the name of an application? Well, the first principle of useability, in a very broad sense, is that you should design with your user in mind. And HP really hasn’t followed this principle when it came to designing the user experience of restoring the computer on one’s computer.

In this case, while it is true that you have to be pretty paranoid (and unimaginative, it has to be said) to be made uncomfortable by having a program called “FBI Gui Manager” being in control of your PC, the name is evidently bad useability because it has made some of HP’s customers uncomfortable.

Moreover, there is absolutely no need for this program to have that name. What’s wrong with using the name “Installation Manager” or “HP Installation Manager”? Nothing, that’s what! It’s not difficult in any way to change the name of an installer, even in this age of Vista driver and application signing. This is not a small third-party garage software operation here, HP is a major OEM partner and I can’t imagine that they wouldn’t have a certain level of priority with Microsoft when it comes to software signing.

Now perhaps HP wants to use a name for this particular installer to differentiate it from older installers. There’s no reason whatsoever to do this of course, because those restore discs are supposed to be only installable on one specific model (or at least model family) of computer. The only thing a support rep should need to ask is what model the user has.

And frankly, there’s really no need to call the software project “File Base Installer” in the first place. This just has to be the most generic, and hence practically meaningless name I have ever seen in a software project. Apparently no one could be bothered to even remember the name of the company when it was time to give this program a name. As far as I know there is really only one installer in existence that ISN’T file-based, and that’s Java’s Web Start. All other installers get downloaded to your PC and executed from there, even if that process is somewhat obfuscated by the operating system. So as a distinguishing name for this installer application — one used by everyone who needs to reinstall the computer software using the official DVD — “File Based Installer” both fails to be useable in that it says almost nothing about the purpose of the application, and it risks making people uncomfortable because of its unfortunate initials (FBI).

This is not the first time that an abbreviation for the name of a piece of software causes some controversy. The most famous incident in the so-far-short history of computing was a Microsoft memory-resident that would alert you when MS had released a critical update for windows. Unwisely Microsoft decided to call it the Critical Update Notification Tool. I’ll leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out what’s wrong with this name. Now fortunately Microsoft did not name any software using the abbreviation of the name for this infamous piece of software, but enough people noticed that it became an embarassment for Redmond.

The lesson seems simple. Use a little common sense when you name a piece of software, and run the name by a few people. Have more eyes looking at the name and its various permutations, like abbreviations and acronyms.

So, in retrospect, it’s bad useability on many, many levels:

1. Vista’s installation procedure for OEMs is really not useable. I hope they’ve improved it since the time my recovery CD was initially published.
2. When you have a program that takes over your computer for several hours, it would be a good idea to give it an interface. At the very least you want to let the user know what’s happening. It’s not difficult and it’s not resource-intensive. It’s the way almost all proper installers run.
3. The application that runs the installer shows a rather unfortunate name in the taskbar.
4. The application has the wrong name altogether, which is the cause of #2. It’s too generic and redundant to be distinctive and useful.

The lesson here is that useability is a concept which really should be applied not only to the obvious parts of the computer experience, but to things like application names and the PC restoring process as well. The user doesn’t stop being a user while his computer is restoring, especially when the process lasts for several hours for some hard-to-imagine reason.

Edit: as it turns out the restoring process does not take quite as long as I think, although it will still take well over 1 hour. What happened is that on my initial try the restoring did not work properly, and as a result after it was done the computer went into a ridiculously long cycle of rebooting. How long? Well, I started restoring the PC at 8pm. At 1am I decided that this was just too damn long, so I shut down and started re-restoring, and by the time I saw the laptop again at 8am it had been restored properly. So, it looks like our File-Based Installer needs a little QA as well as better useability…