Microsoft Windows 10 - DISNEYLAND OR CANDY STORE IN A MINEFIELD??

Imagine designing an attractive, cool theme park like Disneyland to attract millions of eager, excited tourists or laying out a dreamland of candy stalls for children, all set in a minefield. I am sure we would all agree it would be a cruel thing to do. You see something attractive and head towards it and suddenly without your realizing it, BOOM!! you have stepped upon a mine and have been blown up.

I recently upgraded to a personal computer running Microsoft Windows 10. It was one my young college going son had been using for a few years, while I stuck to an older machine. The generation gap between our machines was like much like between ourselves.

This newer operating system looked delightfully enticing, attractive, seem to have so many cool features - it sounded like a treat. It’s like a kid going to a candy store with an overwhelming array of attractive looking candy displayed, each beckoning to be tried. Some were familiar and some new. I was excited and looking forward to it.

I used the new machine setting up my own applications for a business idea. I noted it was using both the Wi-Fi and Ethernet connection at home, connected to a modem on my phone line. I decided to turn off the WIFI and use only the Ethernet connection from the Network and Internet Settings Page. The PC was sent into 'Airplane' mode somehow- I suppose the clever new OS decided that airplanes these days might have an Ethernet connection on board (perhaps they do for first class passengers, a cable at their seat... I don't know.) Anyways, I decided to turn back the Wi-Fi ON, through the Network and Internet Settings Page. It briefly showed the switch turning ON and then automatically turned itself OFF in a few seconds!  I was wondering if something was wrong. I went to the Airplane Mode setting on the setting page to see if I could turn it OFF. It would not let me. The whole thing had been disabled because the Wi-Fi was OFF! I could not figure out what was preventing me from turning the Wi-Fi back on. Repeated attempts with my admin privilege on the machine failed without any explanation or discernable reason. The Wi-Fi would be shown momentarily ON then turn OFF by itself!! 

I wondered if something was wrong with the modem, or the network adapters on my PC. I checked that the home Wi-Fi modem did indeed work for other devices at home. Then I ran the Windows diagnostics for the network adapters for Wi-Fi and my Ethernet on the PC. Windows said everything was working fine, with repeated attempts. It asked if it could find a problem resolution Online. I said fine, it tried but could not. It then offered a suggestion to reset the network adapters on my PC to their original settings to see if the problem would go away. It seemed a logical and reasonable approach. So, I went ahead despite a couple of cautionary dialog boxes coming up. I had no other choice that I could see. Resetting the network adapters and then rebooting caused the machine to start up and show an error soon after I signed in, saying the WindowsSocket initialization had failed. Then came a warning that the system would shut down in 1 minute and sure enough it did. Thus, there is an endless loop of the machine rebooting and becoming unusable. I called up the manufacturer of the PC and they worked patiently with me over the phone for over an hour and decided that the hardware was fine and that I should go back to installing the original Windows 7 operating system that it came with! My son had upgraded to Windows 10 during the free upgrade period!

I tried Microsoft support forum and feedback and got a suggestion to try and get an ISO disk or get a bootable USB stick to boot up to, try and repair the system. Trying that failed! There was one other option left - to reinstall Windows 10 and lose all the apps that had been installed since the original purchase of the machine. The personal files and folders we had created would be saved but the apps and their data would all be lost.  I went ahead with that and surely enough the machine was made usable again. 

 It was with great frustration that I found out later that I could have turned ON Wi-Fi with a shortcut Keystroke - a function FN + F2 key... That turned ON Wi-Fi and the Airplane mode OFF. something I could not do from the Network and Internet Settings Page!! This is so counter-intuitive.

 I would imagine with all the new fancy AI, Cortana, supposedly smart assistants popping up all over the place, all the time, even when one never asked for them or wanted them, something would have popped up and asked "Hey! I see you are trying to turn Wi-Fi ON from the Airplane mode.  You cannot do it this way for the following reason. Do you want me to help? You can do it this way."  

Isn't there a simple way to help one get their desired task done or tell them authoritatively and conclusively, why it CANNOT be done, with all the hype about an intelligent system? Is there a way to prevent a user from getting the system into a horrible state doing something that seems logical and reasonable? 

This seems just another case of poorly design or a lack of design for a clear, simple user interaction with a machine. It is like setting up a lot of fancy, alluring candy stalls in a minefield. One 'wrong' move and you are blown up.

This is particularly embarrassing for me as a former test engineer for Microsoft, talking up the company and its products to a son who grew up with Google, Apple, Facebook and the companies considered 'cool' by the next generation. He rightly points to a user sympathetic and empathetic design culture in the features of Google and Apple products! I wish Microsoft made a commitment to do the same. It is high time. 

I grew up and worked at a time when the people were in awe with technology to the point that if the system failed due to some action on their part, they felt stupid and lacking knowledge of how this complicated computer worked. They blamed themselves or felt ashamed that they did not know the gory details of how the system worked and why it failed. That is no longer acceptable. People want to move and get their work done. They want the system to understand them and not the other way around. They rightly resent being made to needlessly understand the intricacies of a poorly designed computer system. They don’t want to work in a minefield, much less visit it and wander around for pleasure.

Clear The Minefield Microsoft!

Copyright © Kannan Narayanamurthy 2018

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