Flash,
I haven’t the time or energy to rebut every assertion you’ve made in your message. However, there are easy and mostly explocit/implicit functionality in W10 for nearly
every ‘deficiency’ you’ve made assertions about.
One big factor in utilizing them is having some regular familiarity with the W10 environment, experience is the best teacher when learning to use
any tool effectively. However, one interesting aspect of gaining familiarity with
any tool is the
experience itself; the user begins to conceptualize solutions for any job in terms of
the tools they are familiar with. Someone with only a hammer will think of performing tasks with only that hammer. The same goes for the working environments in the operating systems we regularly work with.
Long after Windows became popular, there were still many thousands of die-hard ‘purists’ around who thought that DOS was the only useful operating system for computers,
and insisted on using the DOS environment until it was all but phased out of of active use. Many people still continue to use newer 3rd party implementations of DOS today; most of these because the older main applications they need will not work
in Windows, or Linux without a lot of additions in order to accommodate the older application’s functionality. (I’m sure you know of a few.) –
And it is a genuine shame that IBM purchased and buried the first versions of XYWrite for the Windows GUI.
In any case, this is the holiday time. Sincerest best wishes to everyone for this holiday season and here’s hoping that the coming New Year will be a better one for everyone.
(Maybe with one ‘great’ exception.)
Phil White
Sent from Mail for Windows 10
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Philip,
Yes, of course there is a multiple-file rename function in DOS, but
does the Win10 Explorer have this functionality? Given that, as you
say, many people these days aren't familiar with a CLI (e.g. Unix,
Linux, Cisco, XyWrite, etc.), they won't feel comfortable with DOS
either. So of what use is the multiple-file rename function in DOS to
them? See my point?
Let me give you some examples of a lack of basic functionality in
Windows, all iterations. First: directory synchronization. I take
digital photographs, literally thousands every month. They are
downloaded from the camera chip to a harddisc, whence they get
distributed to various systems for retouching (Photoshop) and
embedding in layout programs (PageMaker/InDesign) running on four
different computers. The default camera file name format IMG-xxxx.jpg
is useless to me; multiple-file renaming is absolutely basic to what I
do, daily.
Furthermore, I frequently need to compare directories and files, and I
do not always want the newest iteration of any given file; sometimes I
need to roll back to a previous version of a photograph or a layout. I
need to compare directories, to see two panels showing the same
directory on two different (possibly networked) machines, and to see
highlighted in color all differences in files/directories. I need to
see dates and sizes and when last modified. _Then_ I need to have
granular control over which files get moved from one directory to
another, over-writes confirmed or not, not simply taking the newest
iteration and over-writing the older ones. Does Windows offer this
functionality out of the box? No. Why not? They've had 30 years to
work on this kind of basic, grunt-work, ground-floor, _elementary_
file management functionality, and they've muffed it. Total Commander
had this decades ago (see screenshot).
The Win10 control panel is a disaster, certainly no improvement over
previous Windows iterations. Have you counted how many clicks are
required to modify the network adapter's IP address? Eleven. That's
assuming one finds the path on the first try. And yes, I do have to
modify it when I travel to a customer's place of business.
Can I save multiple network adapter profiles with different IP
address/subnet mask/dns server settings, and simply one-click a
profile to apply one or another set of IP configs? No. I have to
manually reconfigure the settings every time I move the computer to a
different, often recurring, (e.g. customer) environment. MS has had 30
years to get this sort of basic, ground-floor functionality up and
running, and they muffed it. Mac had this decades ago.
What does Win10 offer me instead? _Tiles._ Annoying little animations
sending me continuous updates about stocks I do not own, needlessly
chatting up my network and cluttering my desktop. There is a tile
called MS-Solitaire Collection (card games). Mine is a _work station_,
I earn a living on my computers, I don't want or need games; this is
what tells me that MS has still not graduated from the Win95
gaming-platform it started out as.
So why do I use Windows? Two reasons: first, because MS's gigantic
market share has a huge pull on software design and not every app that
I need runs (or runs well) in non-MS environments. Second, the
companies to which I sell my finished work mostly run MS systems and
require MS-compatible file formats. I use it because, in some
instances, I have no better alternative, not because I like it. I use
Mac OSX because I _like_ it. That is a significant difference in user
perspective, don't you think?
My fundamental gripe about Windows is that I do not want _more_
features, I want _better_ ones. I want elementary file management
control, I want elementary network adapter control, and I do not want
to have click a dozen buttons in an ever more-byzantine maze of
panels-within-panels to get control over these things. Feel free to
relay my comments to Redmond, if you think they will listen.
Yours sincerely,
Flash
professional writer
published author
XyWrite-because-I-loathe-MS-Word user
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