this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2024
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A friend shared a post from someone else that was talking about this article. I've quoted the text from that post below:

This is a 1996 guide on how to help someone use a computer. It's strikingly resonant with 'how to be a parent', or really 'how to help anyone with anything'. A nice example of "the universal within the particular"

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (9 children)

I'm finding it difficult to help at work as I stopped using Windows years ago.

The search function fails to find basic menus or programs, I'd have an easier time using Windows XP. I'm sure part of it is I'm forgetting things and not up to date with changes but when typing "printer" does not give a useful result either it's as shit as I hear it is out of the box from M$ or it has been crippled by work's OEM.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago (5 children)

I use VoidTools Everything for searching. It's absolutely lightning fast and super powerful.

The built in Windows search is such garbage

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (3 children)

That's because it doesn't do what we want. Who goes "download 7zip" in the start menu? People typically use it to find their installed software and by default (is it even able to change?) it searched the bloody internet. And it's slow. Why?

Mac and Linux I just get what I want in an instant. Windows is just a data collection engine for Microsoft these days.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

You can disable (today, anyway) the internet search, and it gets wildly more useful after that. I wonder if it's trying to be two things: searching your computer like it should, and for the less computer literate it's "help me"

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

That's pretty much exactly it. Windows as a whole is now catering to the lowest common denominator. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, especially as more and more of the world population are adopting computers (or being required to adopt them, for work). But in trying to make things easier for beginners they're damaging some of the tools that we experts are used to. It's a give-and-take sort of situation, and I'm not as livid about it as some professionals seem to be, but the fact remains that Windows is situating itself to be used by... idiots sounds rude, so we'll say "beginners". Folks that don't know where or how to find what they're looking for. Web search in the start menu, and Cortana-now-Copilot are two prime examples of that - tools that "nobody" really needed in Windows but that help someone who has absolutely zero idea what they're doing get things done, even if poorly or inefficiently.

I'm not upset at their attempt to add accessibility to Windows, but I do wish they wouldn't make their existing product worse in the attempt.

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