CISSP vs. GSEC

You’d think certain things would come second nature to a major OS — things
like network connection handling or returning to full functionality when
coming out of standby. Well, with Windows XP these things haven’t quite
happened yet.

I connect to a lot of network shares and FTP sites in my line of work, and
while doing so yesterday I had an epiphany —
Windows sucks horribly at both. Sure, if you happen to connect when
the resource is working perfectly and there’s nothing wrong with the
network, you have a decent chance of success. But if you make the mistake of
trying to connect to a resource that has issues, or while the network is
acting funky…

For anyone who doesn’t have experience with this, let me tell you what
happens. You get the hourglass cursor of death and you lose all control of
the explorer window you’re working in. All of it. It’s gone. The window just
freezes. This could go on for minutes, hours, or days, by the way. And I
understand — I really do. It’s only been 10 %&@#*! years since
Windows 95 came out, so I can’t expect Microsoft, a company with mere
billions to spend on R&D, to to be able to hash this out just
yet. Oh, and god forbid you do the logical thing and close the window. What
happens then?

Explorer.exe eats itself. Yeah, that’s over a decade of Windows
development being raped by an unresponsive network resource. It
makes me sad.

Look, I’m a novice when it comes to programming, but I do understand a key
concept called exception handling. It basically means anticipating bad
things happening and perparing for them. An example of bad exception
handling would be a person who tries to buy an ice cream cone, finds out the
store is closed, and commits Sepuku in a fit of frustration. That’s not a
good way to handle a lack of ice cream, and restarting the GUI is not a good
way to handle someone clicking the close button in an explorer window.

Then you have the standby and hibernate functions. They’re pretty standard —
you are in the middle of something and want to stop for a bit and resume
your work later without completely shuting down. Unfortunately, in Windows I
find it actually saves time if you just go ahead and restart the damn
computer. Opening your laptop’s screen only to find that your apps are
laughing at you is not my idea of a good time.

So here’s the thing — I’m actually an MCSE and I do like a lot of what XP
offers. I am not upset about these things because they existed; I’m upset
because they still exist. It’s been 10 years guys…can we have windows
not freeze when network resources aren’t available? Can we get a standby
function that works properly? Apple/OS X figured it out on the first try.
I’m left wondering why is this stuff is still a problem for Microsoft’s
flagship OS.

Anyway, until they can get it all sorted I’m going to have to recommend
OS X
for the desktop. Windows just doesn’t seem ready for the bigtime yet. But
who knows, another 10 years and they might have it all ironed out. I hear
they’re getting
tabbed browsing
and virtual folders in 2006.