Jeremy Wagstaff
I've been playing around with the new Windows Seven, and, like a lot of people, I've been pleasantly surprised. It's good. Not great, but good.
Of course, our standards have dropped so low that unless the operating system actually tripped up old ladies in the street, we'd be happy.
Vista taught us Windows users a thing or two.
Not least that we didn't actually need to upgrade when other people told us to upgrade.
Hell, some of us even downgraded. (Microsoft's claims that this actually contributed to the financial crisis are overblown.)
But the debacle that was Vista seems to have taught Microsoft a thing or two as well.
It took a while, of course. And hundreds of millions of dollars of bad advertising.
(I must confess I loved the Seinfeld ads, but the latest ones, where a wife vomits copiously after seeing what is in her husband's browser, could have been done a bit more, er, tastefully.)
No, Microsoft has learned that they needed to get back to basics.
That they needed to focus on what an operating system - they like calling it an operating environment - is.
Namely where people just want to get stuff done with minimal fuss, minimal learning, minimal crashes and, preferably, not too much visual ugliness.
When I suggested this to a Microsoft exec, he beamed.
"Exactement!" he said. (He's from Germany.)
The truth is Windows Seven is good because it doesn't get in your way.
It installs pretty painlessly, it runs pretty well and it shuts down speedily.
That's pretty much all we want from our computers these days.
A lot of this is sleight of hand, by the way. The computer seems to shut down more quickly because the screen goes dark, making you think it's all over.
But watch the hard drive light. It's still flashing. It only looks like it's closed down.
But hey! Who cares? Our computer's says it's shut down; we can go home.
I love things like the task bar - the bit on the bottom of your screen - which really does sort of mirror the tasks you do in a day. Icons give you some idea of what is going on without getting in your way.
They flash, but in a cool sort of "hi, when you're not busy I should probably update you on this" kind of way. You can pin programs you use a lot to the taskbar, and then pin documents you use a lot to those programs.
Move your mouse over the icons and you can see little miniatures of what you've got open in each program. I call it, because I like to give names to things, "ambient usefulness".
I like the way that the system tray no longer looks like the unholy clutter left after a five-year-old's birthday party.
In fact, it's now so low key it's monochromatic. Really. No color at all.
I like it.
And that most boring of utilities, the file manager (Microsoft calls it the Windows Explorer, not to be confused with Window Internet Explorer, the browser) .
I love the way you can group folders together into libraries in it, and you can find more or less anything, pretty easily.
There's even some tagging options which loyal readers will know I think is the future of computing.
My favorite feature of Seven, however, is the Windows Snapper.
It's probably got a better name, but it lets you look at two windows side by side, simply by dragging them to opposite sides of the screen.
Now you have two windows of equal size, letting you look at one while you're doing something in the other.
These are all basic, duh improvements that some poor third-party developer thought up and tried to sell as an add-on.
But I am glad that Microsoft has put them all under one hood.
And, it being Microsoft, Seven is less than perfect.
You'll be prodded toward some free downloads called Live, which are an apology for an email program, a photo gallery and a movie maker. (Don't bother.)
And, although Microsoft has been smart in giving us a free beta version to play with, come fall we'll have to remove the whole thing - and all our data - in order to install the final version. And pay more for it than we should.
I had kind of hoped that Microsoft would give the operating system away as a way of saying sorry to loyal Windows users, and to win back a few converts to Macs.
But no, expect to pay substantially more for this OS than Vista.
And, of course, it's no Mac. Macs are beautiful, do lovely things and reassure you constantly that the extra US$1,000 you paid out for it was money well spent.
A Windows computer will never do this. It will never, ever make you feel cool or desirable.
And while I'm sick of hunting around for other programs to improve my operating system, sorry, environment, I still think there's some life left in the (relatively open) world of Windows.
I may speak for a few people when I say: All I want is for things to work the way they should.
I want my operating system to look neither like it's put together by acne-afflicted propeller heads, nor by designer dudes in cool lofts called Jed.
And, in answer to that prayer, Windows Seven is about as close as we've gotten so far.
(c) 2009 Loose Wire Pte Ltd
This story cannot be reproduced without written permission from the writer. Jeremy Wagstaff is a commentator on technology and appears regularly on the BBC World Service. He can be found online at jeremywagstaff.com or via email at jeremy@loose-wire.com
