It just occurred to me what is the most frustrating thing about the state of computers these days. We all know that Microsoft has stifled the progress that we would have had if they were not around by at least 10 years if not15 at this point. That is old news and rather like spilt milk.
We all know what a piece of junk DOS was and how every release of Windows seems to get bigger and klutzier without offering anything truly innovative. But I got to thinking about where we might be if they had not bullied, stifled, bought out and sat on the real innovations of the past 25 years.
What should our operating systems be doing in the year 2008?
They should be managing the hardware. I know, I know, that sounds so obvious and besides isn't that what they do now. After all, isn't windows our interface to the CPU, Hard Drives and Graphics cards?
Yes, it is but it pretends to do so much more. Windows pretends to be our software! We have allowed MS, in typical MS fashion, to bully its way into our applications. If you look at almost any piece of software, part of it is in the windows system directory, configs are in the registry and other pieces are in areas spread about on the main drive.
You can't change the bath water, the bath tub or the bathroom without destroying the baby.
So what's the answer? Applications (the few that are not MS) need to stop loading ANYTHING in the registry, Program Files or the Windows directory. Everything must be able to be loaded on a separate drive. USB or flash is a must.
Picture this:
"Oh no, my computer just crashed!!!!! Oh well, no big deal, I will just reload my OS and in the meantime I will take all of my applications and documents on my USB drive and plug it into my wife's (or kid's or secondary) computer and just keep on working. When the new OS is fresh and clean after a complete format and load with the latest OS, I will take all my stuff and go back to my other machine."
or picture this:
"I have to give my presentation to the group in Atlanta on Monday and I did all the work on my desktop - what to do? what to do?! (this guy talks to himself a lot). Oh, wait, no big deal, my whole presentation and all of the programs I need, are on a USB drive. I will take that, plug into one of their OS machines and presto!"
or this:
"Oh dear, I only have one license and between work, home and my laptop I will have to get two more licenses; I can't afford that! Oh, what am I thinking, I will just load it on my flash drive and plug it into my 3 different machines...."
This is not too far away from what Google is doing with their Google Apps. Can we take it one step more and get ALL of our applications and documents out of the OS and make computers what they should be - truly versatile? I don't necessarily like the idea of having all of my applications and documents in the "cloud" but some can be there and the rest can be on various portable storage devices (which I will backup often - I'm sure).
Hey, Google, what about a little bit of both? syncing applications and documents between my removable storage and the cloud?
280 Slides has a nice little cloud app. I put down some of my thoughts
