Bill Gates Epic Letter on Windows Usability

Are you annoyed by Windows XP usability? That you have not heard of Bill Gates. In the published internal correspondence of Microsoft there is one fantastic letter of Bill Gates, which is impossible not to quote. It is dated January 15, 2003, but some things still have not lost their relevance. In general, a letter is more like a malicious posting on a Windows hater's blog, rather than a message from the founding father of Microsoft.

From: Bill Gates
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 10:05 AM
To: Jim Allchin
Cc: Chris Jones (WINDOWS); Bharat Shah (NT); Joe Peterson; Will poole; Brian Valentine; Anoop Gupta (RESEARCH)
Subject: Windows Usability Systematic degradation flame

I’m a little disappointed with how Windows’s usability is deteriorating and that the group’s managers do not deal with these issues.
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Let me tell you about my own experiences yesterday. I decided to download Moviemaker and buy the Digital Plus package ... so I went to Microsoft.com. There is a software download section, and I headed there.

From five times I was not able to open the download page due to timeouts. From the sixth time, after an eight-second delay, it still loaded. The site is so slow that it is impossible to use it.

The required software was not in the list of the five most popular downloads, so I expanded the list to fifty.

This list is completely confusing. Compared with some names, even the folder name C: \ Documents and Settings \ billg \ My Documents \ My Pictures seems clear and understandable. Some things are not filtered by the system ... and many other strange things.

I tried to limit the list to “Media” only. Still no Moviemaker. I typed a “movie” in the search. Nothing. I typed a “movie maker”. Nothing.

After that, I gave up and sent a letter to Amir with the question: where is the Moviemaker download page? Does it even exist?

They told me that using the download section to upload something is not exactly what is expected of the user. Like, you need to go to the home page of the site and start the main search on the site for the keywords “movie maker” (not “moviemaker”!).

I tried. The site is touchingly suspended, but after six seconds the page is loaded. I was one hundred percent sure that now I would see a button to download what I needed.

In practice, the result was more like a puzzle. I was told to go to the Windows Update site and make a series of spells there.

It totally got me off track. Why should I go somewhere else and run a system scan to download Moviemaker?

Still, I went to the Windows Update section. The system decided that I should download a bunch of system elements. Not once, but several times I saw strange dialog boxes. Can't Windows Update find a common language with Windows?

Then I launched the scan. It took some time and I was informed that for me it is critically important to download 17 MB of any garbage.

And this after I was informed that we are doing delta patches, but instead of offering 6 elements that were described in the most TERRIBLE possible way, I had to download 17 MB.

I still started the download, which passed quickly. Then it wanted to do the installation. The process took six minutes and the computer was so slow at that time that I could not use it at all for other tasks at that time.

What the hell was he doing these six minutes? Some kind of madness. This is after the download has been completed.

Then the system told me to restart the computer. Why should I do this? I reboot every night - why should I reboot right now?

But I still did a reboot, because she insisted on it. Of course, this meant completely losing the current state of open windows in Outlook.

So, I returned to the system and was sent to Windows Update again. I have already forgotten why I went there, because I only needed Moviemaker.

So, I went back to Microsoft.com and studied the instructions. I had to click on a link called “WindowsXP”. Why do this? Does Windows Update really not know that I work under Windows XP?

What did press this button lead to? I got a bunch of unnecessary things, so many that among them was definitely a Moviemaker.

So, I went to download. It passed quickly, but the installation again took many minutes. It's amazing how slow it works.

At some point, a message popped up that I needed to download Windows Media Series 9.

So, I decided to do it. This time I had dialogues with buttons like “Open” or “Save”. No instructions or help on what to do. And I had no idea what to do.

The download was quick, and the installation took 7 minutes for this program alone.

Well, I thought that now I have a Moviemaker. I went to the "Add / Remove Programs" menu to see this.

He was not there.

What was there? All sorts of garbage, including the Microsoft Autoupdate Exclusive test suite, the Microsoft Autoupdate Reboot test suite, and the Microsoft Autoupdate test suite 1, the Microsoft Autoupdate test suite 2, the Microsoft Autoupdate test suite 3.

Someone decided to litter the only part of Windows that could be used? The file system is no longer usable. The registry is unusable. The list of programs remained the only normal place, but now he has been beaten.

But that was only the beginning. Later, I saw things like “Windows XP Hotfix, see Q329048 for more information”. What is Q329048? What are these patches doing here? Some patches are simply called “Q810655” instead of saying “see Q329048 for more information. ”

This is an absolute mess.

Moviemaker was not present at all.

So I left hope to get Moviemaker and decided to download the Digital Plus Package.

I was informed that I must enter a bunch of information about myself.

I entered all this, but the system decided that I was sealed somewhere and I had to enter everything anew. Of course, almost everything I typed before disappeared.

I tried to type correctly five times and it erased everything every time, and I typed again.

So after more than an hour of insanity, clogging up my list of programs, intimidation and the conviction that Microsoft.com is a terrible site, I never received Moviemaker or the Plus Package.

The lack of attention to usability issues that I saw just shook me. I used to think that we had reached the bottom with the usability of the Windows Network or the messages I received when trying to use 802.11 (have you liked the root certificate message yet?).

When I truly get to use all of these things, I’m sure I’ll write additional reviews.