Except for some details, I really REALLY like Windows. Really what I'm liking is computing, and Windows is a big part of that because I selected Windows instead of Linux.

Over the years there have been some changes: So, we have new hardware, some HUGELY important new communications standards, a huge effort on computer security, etc., and it is crucial that Windows has kept up with the changes. I like that. And I like that I can still run my favorite old programs: Since I do all I can with plain text, my most heavily used program is my favorite text editor KEDIT. And I really like hierarchical file systems so really REALLY like Microsoft's NTFS (new technology file system) and do a lot of tree walking, searching, copying, deleting, etc.

But Microsoft went for an unstated philosophy of a graphical user interface (GUI) where (a) there is a metaphor of direct manipulation of desktop objects and (b) commands and operations are to be learned by experimentation without documentation. I can see some utility there, otherwise I still like command lines because the documentation tends to be better, it is more clear just what is going on, and I can script, automate some of the operations.

And I get to write software, e.g., in .NET, ASP.NET, ADO.NET for my Web site startup and whatever else seems worthwhile. So far, I like .NET. I do wish Microsoft had explained, just explained in simple text, just what the heck .NET CORE was. By now I've come to a guess that .NET CORE is irrelevant to me and I should f'get about it -- would have been nice to have had some EXPLANATION.

For the future of GUIs, that seems to be just Web pages, i.e., HTML.

For me, the above is the view of Windows I find most important. For the future, I hope that Microsoft does not mess up that view. To have me a happier customer, Microsoft should concentrate on one word, DOCUMENTATION.

I can understand that Microsoft has some middle managers who want to add things to Windows or change Windows to improve it. Now, for changes such as I mentioned above, SURE. Otherwise, please sit down: Each new version of Windows I find to be, in one word, a pain. The changes are not improvements but PAINS. E.g., with the old version of Windows, after hundreds of hours of work I finally learned and documented for myself how to get routine things done. Then with the changes, I have to invest many more hours just to be able to continue to get routine things done and for no gains at all. Sorry Microsoft middle manager: To me you are like TV producers, what they try for, I don't like; what I like, they don't try for.

E.g., as far as I can tell from a command line window

Examples:

> runas /noprofile /user:mymachine\administrator cmd

is wrong. Just wrong. It doesn't work. First, set aside that from this "example" can't tell what is a constant and what is a variable. So, try all possible combinations. Second, still, nothing works. Nothing. Go for 1, 2, 3 hours trying everything. Did I mention, nothing works? This is grotesquely bad computing. Just awful. Want to make things better, fix things like that.

But it's worse: Go out on the Internet and can find lots of documentation of that command. Some of the documentation has lots of double quote marks. Nothing worked. Hours; nothing worked. We're talking mud wrestling here. Eventually I got the software to request my administrator password, but that was as far as it went.

This isn't my work. Yet my time, effort, energy are soaked up, repeatedly, over and over, by such system management mud wrestling documentation problems.

Eventually I guessed some of what was going on and found another path that did work. It's not fully clear just why that worked, but it did.

Documentation? I took some good notes, and apparently they are better than anything from Microsoft or readily available on the Internet.

The main bottleneck in my startup is the bad documentation that leads to wasted effort in this mud wrestling. What fraction of my effort goes to such stuff? Essentially 100% -- I can't get back to my real work due to a continuing list of such disasters. They are taking up ALL my time, just mud wrestling from bad documentation.

For Windows, Firefox, Acrobat, etc., sure, important security updates and otherwise I'll consider updates in functionality maybe twice a year, maybe once a year, or once each 2nd year. Except for security, bluntly and quite broadly I don't want your updates but will consider some, say, occasionally. As you force updates on me, I get TORQUED, become a VERY unhappy customer.

E.g., Adobe went too far, essentially taking over my PC, at startup, with updates I don't want, with popups, with "Do you want to ...", and yesterday I deleted everything from Adobe now "Dead to me.". Firefox will read a PDF (portable document format) file, at least the ones I want read, a little better than Acrobat. Adobe, with me, you went too far and BLEW IT.

I have big hopes for the future of computing for myself, Microsoft, the computer industry, the economy, and civilization, but I want do to my part, get on with it, and there is no room in that work for me to click "NO" tens of thousands of times to popup windows stopping my work until I answer some "Do you want to ...", and there is no excuse for the system management mud wrestling from bad documentation.

At one time Microsoft was very interested in "developers, developers, developers!!!". Well, I'm trying to be one. Then I hope to be a good customer for Windows Server and SQL Server. And on Windows XP and Windows 7 I got 100,000 lines of .NET code running apparently as intended. But now I've lost YEARS of time in system management mud wrestling from bad documentation.

I can't be a good customer of Windows Server if you have me stuck in a mud hole wasting time.