The over-capacity of the modern CPU has to be made more aware of the user, and the user should find interaction with the machine to be a relationship, not a chore.
After 20 years of speed and capacity improvements, the computer just doesn't seem any brighter or smarter than it used to. And that needs to change. [Thomas Krul in "Generating The Next-Generation Graphical User Interface" via Rajesh Jain via Slashdot]
Krul makes some excellent observations, but does not offer any concrete answers. Linux desktop environments will never really succeed in the mainstream copying Windows. (...which copied Apple which copied Xerox, but that's besides the point.) Instead they should seize the opportunity to so something different and give users a reason to switch that they see and feel in how they interact.
With my recent experiences reviving an archaeic 6 year old Pentium laptop to provide some basic utility, I've been pondering if we don't need to do a complete rethink of our desktops and application design.
Recently I tried out OpenOffice I couldn't help but be a bit disappointed. While I was impressed and commend that community's effort and dedication, OpenOffice (and I assume Sun's commercial version StarOffice) tries to clone Microsoft Office too much. I'm ready to give Office, but not because its free and not because its Microsoft. The fact of the matter is many of the features in Word, Excel and Powerpoint are rarely used by most of us. Their existence only weighs down the application and distract the user. I recall working with WordPerfect 5.1 and Lotus 123 a decade ago and in comparison to MS Office today offers me little additional functional value. These where apps that came on a couple of floppy(!) disks and ran on 386 processors with 4MB of RAM. (My Blackberry wireless PDA has about the same power now.)
Take the word processor for instance. What I want is a simple lightweight version that provides me just the basics. (Back to WordPerfect 5.1 here again.) It would utilize XML document formats and be network-aware to integrating with Internet services. This would be distinct from MS Office. The simplicity and focus of the app would be reason to switch.
It would be interesting to see the result of interaction testing if users where left to compare WordPerfect 5.1 and the latest version of Word and comment on their experiences.
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