From Windows 95's Active Desktop to Vista's UAC, a loving tribute to the tools, technologies, and applets that drive us absolutely bonkers.
20. DriveSpace
In a day in which half a terabyte of hard disk costs $99, it's easy to forget that megabytes were once a rare and precious commodity, and disk-compression utilities felt slightly miraculous. Microsoft's DoubleSpace was introduced with DOS 6.0 in 1993; after a patent suit by competitor Stac Electronics, it was replaced with a non-infringing twin, DriveSpace, which was part of Windows 95. DriveSpace did indeed squeeze about twice the stuff onto a disk, but the risk was immense, since data recovery was much tougher if something went awry. Windows XP was the first version without DriveSpace support of any sort--by then, nobody noticed or cared.
19. Windows Movie Maker
Windows Me--which we declared the fourth worst product of all time--introduced Windows Movie Maker 1.0, Microsoft's answer to Apple's then-new iMovie video editor. You could say it was a tad bare bones: As we said in our original review, it didn't do titling or effects, offered a grand total of one transition effect, and could output video in only a proprietary format. Version 2.0, which came with Windows XP, was the first respectable one--although even it didn't live up to the Windows XP commercial it was featured in, which showed XP users flying Superman-style to the beat of Madonna's "Ray of Light." As for Windows Vista's Movie Maker 6.0, our biggest question is this: What happened to 3.0, 4.0, and 5.0?
18. Web TV for Windows
New versions of Windows always seem to come with at least one much-hyped feature which instantly sinks into obscurity. Windows 98 had the decidedly lackluster WebTV For Windows--which, confusingly didn't have much to do with Microsoft's WebTV set-top box. Instead, it let you watch the tube (via a tuner card) and peruse TV listings. It also offered interactive TV features through Intel's short-lived Intercast service. At the time, we said it was "slow and unstable, clashed with Windows 98's screen savers, and locked up regularly even when nothing else was running." Fun bonus: The software also introduced a security flaw that could allow hackers to take over your PC.
17. Shut Down
Some people gripe about how long Windows takes to boot up. Us, we're more aggravated by how long it takes to shut down--and how often it seems to just give up before it's completed the job. Microsoft says that shutting down works better in Vista, and it seems to--but we still get puzzled by the array of different ways to end a Windows session. (Here's a fascinating and revealing blog post by a former Microsoft developer who worked on Vista's Shut Down menu.)
16. Paint
Call this applet the Rip Van Winkle of Windows software. Paint has been bundled with Windows since version 1.0 back in 1985, and it's changed remarkably little over the decades. (That's the Windows 3.0 edition, known as Paintbrush, in the image above.) With Vista's real photo-related features living in a different app called Windows Photo Gallery, it seems a safe bet that Microsoft won't ever bring Paint into the new millennium. If you want a taste of what Paint should be in 2007, check out the superb free photo editor known as Paint.net.16. Paint
Call this applet the Rip Van Winkle of Windows software. Paint has been bundled with Windows since version 1.0 back in 1985, and it's changed remarkably little over the decades. (That's the Windows 3.0 edition, known as Paintbrush, in the image above.) With Vista's real photo-related features living in a different app called Windows Photo Gallery, it seems a safe bet that Microsoft won't ever bring Paint into the new millennium. If you want a taste of what Paint should be in 2007, check out the superb free photo editor known as Paint.net.
15. Windows Aero
Transparent Windows borders! That let you see the stuff beneath them! The Aero user interface, which Microsoft touted as one of the major breakthroughs in Windows Vista, are (mildly) cool when they work as advertised. But the upside of Aero seems tiny given the hardware oomph required: For PCs with less-than-potent graphics (including ones on sale today), Aero is a machine-choking headache. In fact, Vista sometimes decides on its own to turn off Aero without telling you. Don?t worry--you're really not missing much.
14. Active Desktop
You could make a case that Active Desktop (which originated as part of IE 4.0's Windows Desktop Update and became part of the OS with Windows 98) was a decent idea a decade too early. Part of the short-lived "push" fad of the mid-1990s, it piped Web content directly to your Windows wallpaper, where it would sit and auto-update itself. That's the same basic idea as current OS enhancers such as Yahoo Widget Engine, Apple's Dashboard, and, come to think of it, Vista's Gadgets. But in an era of slow PCs and even slower dial-up connections, Active Desktop was famous mostly for making Windows run like molasses.
13. Windows XP Search
It's kind of astonishing: Windows users had to wait nearly a quarter century, until Windows Vista, for an OS with really good search features. Windows XP Search may be the worst of all, with an interface that's as patronizing as it is sluggish and confusing. You search with the help of a talking dog who even Microsoft's own site says some people "loathe". PC World columnist Stephen Manes was so worried that this "bastard pup of Microsoft Bob" might make it into Vista that he started a write-in campaign to beseech Microsoft to euthanize the pooch; hundreds of readers sided with Steve.
12. The Microsoft Network
Never used the original version of MSN, which shipped with Windows 95? Consider yourself fortunate. Dating from the pre-Web days when AOL was the hottest thing online, MSN 1.0 tried to bring a Win 95-style interface to online services--forums, for instance, were shortcuts that sat inside desktop folders. But the whole thing was unintuitive, sparse on content, and excruciatingly slow (connection speeds initially topped out at 14.4-kbs). And by the time it debuted, it was already an anachronism, forcing Microsoft to reinvent MSN as an ISP and purveyor of Web services.
11. Windows Explorer
If your memory stretches back to the pre-Windows 95 age, you remember Windows' File Manager. You might even miss it--Windows Explorer, even in Vista, lacks some of the features File Manager had, such as the ability to use wildcards to filter a view down to documents of a certain type. Then there features that Explorer has always needed and never gotten, like the ability to print a list of the files in a folder. As often happens, a third party has done what Microsoft hasn't: VCOM's PowerDesk is a worthy utility that's exactly what File Manager should have evolved into.
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সম্প্রতি
কম্পিউটার নিরাপত্তা প্রতিষ্ঠান সফোস-এর গবেষকরা বলছেন, ইন্টারনেট দুনিয়ায়
সামান্য বানান ভুলেও বড়ো সড়ো বিপত্তি ঘটতে পারে। ইন্টারনেটে ঠিকানা লেখার
সময় সামান্য একটি ডট ভুল হলেও তথ্য ভুল ঠিকানায় চলে যেতে পারে। আর এমন
সুযোগ হাতিয়ে নিতে পারে সাইবার অপরাধীরা। খবর বিবিসি অনলাইন-এর।
সম্প্রতি
জার্মানির গবেষকরা দাবি করেছেন, তারা ‘কিসিং মোবাইল’ বা ‘চুমু ফোন’সহ
অনুভূতিবাহক একাধিক ফোন তৈরি করেছেন। গবেষকদের দাবি, নতুন এই মোবাইল ফোন যে
কোনো অনুভূতি এবং চুমুর মতো স্পর্শকাতর অনুভূতিও সঞ্চার করতে পারে। খবর
টাইমস অফ ইন্ডিয়া-এর।
সার্চ
জায়ান্ট গুগলের তৈরি অ্যান্ড্রয়েড অপারেটিং সিস্টেমের নতুন আরেকটি সংস্করণ
আসছে বলেই খবর চাউর হয়েছে। আগামী অক্টোবর বা নভেম্বর মাসে গুগলের আইসক্রিম
স্যান্ডউইচ অপারেটিং সিস্টেমটি বাজারে আসার কথা রয়েছে। খবর টেক
ক্রাঞ্চ-এর।
