Tâm Speaks: Why Windows 95 Sucks by Viêt-Tâm Luu, creator of Why Windows 95 Sucks --------------------------------------------------------------------------- About Why Windows 95 Sucks... It was over two years before the actual release of Windows 95, then known as ``Chicago'', that Microsoft started promoting it, promising it to be almost the best thing since sliced bread. Back then, it was due to be released in a matter of months, so the then-moderate hype was not necessarily undue. However, problems cropped up and a continual cycle of delays began, that would last two years. Even so, Microsoft continued promoting Chicago as the ``latest and greatest'', issuing a release date, then pushing it back, issuing another release date, and then delaying it again. Chicago earned the infamous classification of ``vaporware'', i.e. software due out ``Real Soon Now'' whose release date continually ``evaporates'', if you will. Beta copies started appearing. Then, a ``Final Beta'' version; then another, and then another... That each beta release was not so ``final'' as it claimed to be indicated major problems in Microsoft's development works. Finally, in mid-1995 things were at a critical point. Each rumor of what was now Windows 95 caused Microsoft stocks prices to drop, and so it was decided that August 24 would be the final, and this time really final, release date. It did not matter that Windows 95 wasn't actually ready for release, and one programmer at Microsoft acknowledged to me, personally, that the product was still full of bugs. Competitors for Windows 95's potential market, such as IBM and Apple, were beginning to seriously threaten Microsoft's plans. And so, to compensate for this, began the utter deluge of hype in the month or two preceding Windows 95's release. A billion dollars spent on advertising. One cannot help but wonder if a small fraction of this wouldn't have been better spent working more bugs out of the software. Microsoft made Windows 95 look as if it were something that would, overnight, change our lives, fundamentally and drastically alter the way we use computers. And consumers, for the most part, swallowed it all, hook, line and sinker. Let's face it: advertising sells. Now, a few sensible individuals saw the question that all this hype begged: if Windows 95 was such a good product, why did Microsoft need a billion dollars to promote it? The only logical conclusion, of course, was that Windows 95 was not a good product, and this became clearly evident as people bought and tried the software and flooded Microsoft's technical support lines with reports of problems. Nevertheless, the hype raged on. At this point I asked myself, ``Are people being told both sides of the story? Do people know that there are other choices than to buy into Microsoft's dream of monopolizing the software market?'' Out of the answer to those questions was born Why Windows 95 Sucks. The name, though a bit extreme perhaps, was coined to catch people's attention; after all, with all the noise, one has no choice but to shout to be heard. It was actually inspired from another Web page, Why AOL Sucks. At the time of writing, almost 3000 people have visited WW95S. If thanks to WW95S a single one of them has stopped to think twice about purchasing Windows 95, or, who knows, decided against buying Windows 95, then Why Windows 95 Sucks has achieved its purpose. Therein lies the goal of WW95S: to counter Microsoft's attempt (through hype) to drown out criticism of their product; to invite critical thinking about Windows 95, and about the quality of software and the ethics (or lack thereof) of the software industry; to provoke reactions for or against Windows 95, and in doing that forcing people to look at Microsoft's attitude with respect to quality versus profit. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Windows and I... When I first saw Windows, version 2.0, I was thrilled. Finally, a graphical interface for PC compatibles! It was then that I bought into the Windows dream, without hesitation. Come Windows 3.0 and 3.1, I was impressed. Proportional fonts and a sculpted 3D look! Cooperative multitasking? Sure, why not? And programs that I made had great look and feel, without the huge amounts of code that it took to make a user interface ``from scratch'' under plain DOS. After several years, however, a realization began to dawn on me: that it was not normal for me to have to reboot several times per day, for programs to irrecoverably crash the system, for me to save my work every other minute or so for fear of having my software come crashing down on me at any time. I began looking for alternatives. About two years ago I installed OS/2 2.11, and a year later, Warp. This was my choice, and I do not want to try to force it upon others. Though I cannot honestly say that things have always run perfectly smoothly with OS/2, nevertheless my computer's reliability has overall increased greatly, and I have run it for weeks at a time without rebooting. With the release of Windows 95, I had already become disillusioned with Windows. Version 3.x had not delivered what I had expected or hoped it would, and this new version came short of what in my mind was needed for Windows to re-win my respect. Quite simply, I had run out of patience waiting for Microsoft to get things right, and having another choice, I took it. One more note: I have tried Windows 95. I tried it in its various beta releases, and I have the retail version installed at work in case I need to do compatibility testing with the software that I write. As a programmer, computer science student, and computer enthusiast in general, I am familiar with the inner workings of both Windows 95 and OS/2, and it is for this reason that I will not use Win95. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- It's Just An Operating System (Sort Of) and Not A Great One At That... Does Windows 95 deliver what it promises? I received a square cross-shaped (unfolded) pamphlet for Windows 95 from Microsoft. ``Start Being More Productive'', one panel of the pamphlet claimed. What, did they imply that I wasn't being productive before? ``Start Having More Fun''. What, did this mean that before Windows 95 my computer was just a boring piece of machinery meant for work and doing assignments only? Did it mean that I needed Windows 95 to have fun? Let's face it: what does Microsoft claim that Windows 95 will do for you, that Windows 3.x or other OS's won't? Applications. Let's see, what applications are available for Windows 95? It will run (most) older Windows 3.x (Win16) programs, but if you run a single one of them it will negate most of the advantages of Win95's ``32-bitness''. So you'll have to replace all those applications, and figure out how to live without all those perfect little shareware and freeware gems you installed, that haven't, and maybe won't be ported to Windows 95. Okay, so you'll need Win95-specific app's. Let's see, there's Microsoft Office for Win95 to fill most of your application needs. This includes a word processor, spreadsheet, database, and presentation graphics. So once installed, you'll be able to do word processing, spreadsheets, databases, and presentation graphics... how incredible! Hmm, funny how you could do all this equally well with Windows 3.x? Well, nevermind that... As for those app's you won't be able to replace yet, better to sit tight and not use them at all, and learn how to work around their absence, because they can still crash your system à la Windows 3.x. Most big companies are porting to Win95, but with the comparatively huge market of installed Win 3.x systems, don't expect their priorities to shift anytime soon. Hence, Windows 95 won't make you more productive. In fact, if you want to adhere to Microsoft's recommendations and run only Win32 apps, you may be less productive for a while. Fun. Meaning, of course, games. Programmers of entertainment hits such as DOOM tend to create code that will use every trick in the books to squeeze every last drop of performance out of your computer, and tend to avoid overhead-creating environments such as Windows. Few will make games specifically for Win95, because they would rather make a game that runs on nearly all PC's, than one that runs on the minority of PC's with Win95 installed. Under Windows 3.x, to run games usually involves shutting down Windows (or not starting it in the first place) and running the games in DOS. Because games tend to fiddle with hardware in weird ways, many of them won't run as part of a Win95 session. So, to run games ``under'' Windows 95, you'll have to shut down Win95 and run them in ``DOS compatibility mode''... Essentially, you'll be running games exactly the same way you ran them under Windows 3.x! More fun, how? Multitasking? Yes, but if you run a single ``old'' Windows 3.x program, then not really. Stability? Same problem. Improved look-and-feel? You'd better hope for one, with the extra 4-12 MB of RAM that you'll need to run it decently, and the extra ump-teen megabytes of extra space used on your hard drive. Long file names? Yes, well kind of, but the underlying file system is still the same one as the fragile and inefficient one that ran on IBM PC-XT's a dozen or so years ago. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ``New and Improved'': Improved, Maybe... New, Not! The main problem with Windows 95 is that it is a mix of some new code and much old code grafted together in a rather clumsy arrangement. Though the technical details of that arrangement are beyound the scope of this article, the problem is as follows: At times, in the course of a software's evolution, it is more practical, economical, and less complicated to ``make a break'' with the past, to re-write the whole thing from scratch. Even well-designed software will have components that become obsolete, and eventually a piece of software may change so much that it is no longer practical, if feasible, to modify a part of it without affecting existing parts in an adverse way. In other words, sometimes the ``maneuvers'', commonly called ``kludges'', required to get new code to work correctly with existing code, while retaining the advantages of that new code, become more costly than rewriting that old code completely. When Microsoft wrote Windows NT, it spent about 100 million dollars to re-write Windows ``from the ground up'', if you will pardon the cliché. This may seem like a lot, but it is only one-tenth of the advertising budget for Windows 95, and it produced an operating system that is recognized as solid, stable, and reliable. Why Microsoft did not take this approach with Windows 95 baffles me. Perhaps it is because, as they claim, Win95 is just a ``transition'' to ``Cairo'', the next version of WinNT. There have also been contradicting rumors that Microsoft claims to scrap NT, so it is difficult to say. Anyhow, ``new'' features were grafted on to Windows 95. However, critics of the software remain unimpressed by these new features, because though they are new to Windows, they are hardly innovative in the personal computing world. For example, Plug-and-Play (``PnP''). Plug-and-Play is nothing new to users of Macintosh systems, who have had this ``feature'' for almost a decade and take it almost for granted. In Windows 95, PnP support is spotty at best; it will work with many popular new hardware, but if your hardware isn't the latest, or it is a bit obscure, the game becomes ``Plug-and-Pray''. Furthermore, PnP is not something one can live without. For people like me, who update and upgrade their computer systems component-by-component, once every few months, it would reduce installation and compatibility hassles, to be sure. However, many PC users buy a computer system with everything pre-installed, use it until it is obsolete, and then buy a whole new system. In many companies, technicians take care of upgrading computers and installing both hardware and software, and they are the ones who need PnP the least. Long filenames. The very term implies that filenames are normally necessarily ``short'', i.e. follow DOS's infamous ``8.3'' doctrine. This limitation is a relic from the earliest days of personal computers, when disk space was so precious that not even a few hundred bytes could be spared for storing a ``long'' filename. 8.3 filenames are a problem basically unique to the DOS world; even my old Apple II clone supported longer filenames. Unix and Mac users find the whole notion ridiculous, as they should. Windows 95 ``fixes'' the 8.3-format filename problem. Well, sort of, but not quite. Instead of redesigning or introducing a new ``file system'', the way in which files are physically and logically stored on a drive, Microsoft chose to add long filenames ``on top of'' the existing archaic FAT (File Allocation Table) file system. Again, a kludge for the dubious sake of backward compatibility. Multitasking, i.e. true pre-emptive multitasking. OS/2 and Windows NT had it built-in from the start. Unix had it even earlier still. Amiga users, with the Amiga 1000 -- a Motorola 68000 CPU (same as on the first Mac's) and a measly 256KB or RAM, had it with the wholly remarkable AmigaOS. Multitasking is another thing that should nowadays be taken for granted, not touted as a ``feature''. Under Windows 95, it is fragile at best, and unreliable when compared to the aforementioned systems. Improved look-and-feel. Yes, improved looks, and improved feel. Improved, of course, with respect to Windows 3.x. How amazing. Object-orientedness. In Windows 95, this is covered under ``improved look-and-feel''. The object-orientedness, or object orientation, if you will, only goes as deep as the interface. Below that, there is effectively no object orientation, unlike the Mac's which, again, has had true object orientation for as long as anybody can remember, and OS/2 which has had it for several years (since version 2.1). --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Conclusion To be fair, Windows 95 is an improvement over Windows 3.x. It might have impressed me, had it come two or three years earlier. But I'm not the first to say that it doesn't go nearly far enough in updating the architecture of the world's most widely-used environment/operating system. Simply put: with Windows 95, Microsoft renovates (Windows) but fails to innovate. They have incorporated ages-old technology into a package that they are attempting to sell as ``revolutionary''. Actually, though, evolution or revolution, whatever the case may be, happened long ago, and left Microsoft's dinosaur, Windows, behind.