Microsoft, Here’s The Top 17 Ways To Screw Up Your Next Windows OS

Windows Vista was a right step towards screwing up Microsoft customers. But why stop there? Why not take Windows 7 a step further and make it even more annoying? If Microsoft is wondering how to mess up the next Windows OS, look no farther than the list below:

1. Take the UAC up a notch: “An unidentified program wants access to your computer. Are you sure you want to grant access?” Yes, of course, I do, but please stop bugging me for the hundredth time already. Maybe the UAC in Windows 7 would prompt before you turn off the PC. “Are you sure you want to do that? You might have unsaved documents that might be lost.”

2. Return of The Blue Screen of Death: I miss my old pal, the Blue Screen of Death (aka BSOD), from the Windows 98 and 2000 era. It just had an uncanny knack of appearing whenever I finished an important word document or beat a difficult boss-monster at the end of a game. And right before I clicked the save button, hey presto, it’s the BSOD. Where are you old friend?

3. Rip off the Mac OS and Steve Jobs: Hmmm…. Is there a striking similarity between Vista and the fancy Mac OS? I don’t mean to suggest anything here, but why does every “new” Windows feature appears in the Mac first and then a dumbed-down version gets ported to the Windows world? Let’s see Apple’s Time Machine backup feature in Windows 7. It would sure save me the trouble of shooting myself in the foot after I accidentally deleted 3.49 GB worth of irreplaceable data, hard-earned game saves and my priceless baby photos.

4. Don’t make any real improvements: Just apply a fancy new “skin” with out-of-this world system requirements and go on touting how super cool the new Windows is, or how Windows 7 is the most advanced version of Windows yet. Does the new Windows 7 screenshots look familiar to, umm, I don’t know, the version of Windows we are using right now?

5. Make Windows 7 Super Ultimate: Windows Vista Ultimate was a real cash cow. Make a rip-off of Ultimate and market the new Super Ultimate, with promised features such as a further “advanced” look, pointless bloated softwares and exclusive patches that supposedly fixes what should have worked from Day 1. Make a Windows 7 Ultra Home Basic and sell it for $59.99 at retail just so you can say that Windows 7 doesn’t cost a fortune, it’s available for only 59 bucks! Have 8 other pointless versions of Windows just to confuse your customers.

6. Force your users to upgrade: Threaten to cut-off all retail versions of Vista and XP. If that doesn’t work, warn your consumers that you will drop support of your buggy OS and leave users in the face of countless security holes. Previous customers are sure to take note. And when everyone jumps the wagon, announce that you will continue to support the previous versions in an effort to milk out the last drops of profit.

7.  Show adverts on the start menu, on the booting screen and on a prominent section of the desktop: Xbox Live users already know it. We have to pay 5 bucks a month just to be able to view ads. Don’t limit yourself, Microsoft. Integrate those ads in Windows 7, especially at the booting screen. It already takes a long time to boot into Windows and your advertisers will be very happy at the return on investment they’re generating.

8. Ship a buggy OS and then a Service Pack that actually fixes it: Wow, did you know that the Vista SP1 doesn’t do, wait for it, anything? Next time, make Windows 7 really buggy from the ground up, with frequent crashes and horrendously slow performance. Just when the riots get out of hand, and personal lives are at stake, deliver a 2 GB service pack that actually delivers! Windows customers will heave a sigh of relief, believing that Microsoft actually made something that works.

9. Up the hype: Spend millions of ad dollars over hyping the next windows and get the steam rolling. And just before a month of the release date, announce that Windows 7 has been postponed for no good reason. Wait till you actually deliver and head to forums and sneer at the gripes of countless users who took the bait and made the switch on Day 1.

10. Make Windows 7 available on a subscription basis: That would ease off the burden of paying $500 for a crappy piece of software up-front. What users won’t realize is the fact that 7 dollars a month will translate into much more than 500 bucks in the course of our lifetime.

11. As ‘ol grandpa used to say: If you can’t beat ‘em, buy ‘em. While talks with Yahoo are going nowhere, but one thing is for certain. Internet Explorer is nothing compared to Firefox. You are loosing the browser market share, and fast. Why not spend your bottomless bank account and buy yourself the rights to Firefox? That way you can port it to IE and make it even more crappier by the time IEfox 8 is slated for release.

12. Ship before it’s ready: Have no sort of driver support whatsoever on the first day of release. Play the finger game, point the blame to manufacturers and say they didn’t have their products ready in time for your release date, while the actual fault lies with your underlying code.

13. Make XP slower, deliberately: Just so that real-life benchmarks can prove Windows 7 is actually faster than XP and Vista.

14. Mess up the sleep and hibernation functions: Greet users with a message saying that a fatal error had occurred while the PC was hibernating and all previous data has been lost in the process. Find new ways to screw up the shut-down process, such as a serious crash whenever anyone presses the red shut-down button. Recolor it to yellow, just to warn users to expect the unexpected. They’ll thank you later on.

15. Make networking impossible with previous Windows: Here is yet another way to coax users into upgrading. Vista is notoriously known for not seeing XP-based PCs on the same network. Bring this functionality to Windows 7. Make it impossible to add XP, Vista, Mac and Linux to the network. Everyone should be using what you tell them to use, ie. Windows 7. Exploit your monopoly powers.

16. Take activation to the next step: Games like BioShock and Mass Effect does this well. Make your users activate Windows every time they login to the internet. If they don’t, pester them with annoying WGA notifications of how important it is to activate and warn them that they might be using a counterfeited Windows. Make the service highly unreliable with a high rate of false positives to add more insult to injury. Ban the Windows product key if a user tries to install Windows for the third time since each previous attempt to install Windows 7 made the PC highly unstable.

17. Stop putting out a new Windows: Yes, I said it. Because we’re all happily using Windows XP.

Well, that’s it folks. Hope Microsoft takes note and doesn’t screw up Windows 7 ;-). I’m really looking forward to it.

Did I Miss Something?

Did I miss something that you would like to add? Well sound off in the comments section below. If nobody replies, at least you can expect a (somewhat) witty response from me :-).

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