The User Experiences Of The Future 230
Patrick Griffin writes "The way that we interact with technology is almost as important as what that technology does. Productivity has been improved greatly over the years as we've adapted ourselves and our tools to technological tasks. Just the same, the UI experience of most hardware and software often leaves novice users out in the cold. The site 'Smashing Magazine' has put together a presentation of 'some of the outstanding recent developments in the field of user experience design. Most techniques seem very futuristic, and are extremely impressive. Keep in mind: they might become ubiquitous over the next years.'"
Re:Most Notable Difference... (Score:3, Informative)
I ran Ubuntu on my notebook, next to FreeBSD and Windows XP. For responsiveness, it typically ran like this: FreeBSD/KDE > Windows > Kbuntu or Ubuntu >> Windows while virus scan was running.
Given that it usually isn't in windows, the last entry is required.
I wouldn't give the majority of users FreeBSD. There's MacOS, but my experiences with it (dual core Core2 cpu'ed machine), doesn't lead me to belive it is any faster than a Windows machine (then again, I usually turn off the fade in/out of menus in windows, which is the biggest delay in the UI I've found).
Basically, while I agree with your point in the case of Vista being the worst, the problem seems to persist throughout most operating systems that a normal user could use.
Even going back to my old K6-III machine (circa 1999, fairly high-end), Ubuntu doesn't perform significantly faster than XP. MacOS X on a circa '99 G3 Apple (also fairly high end model)? OK, I'll grant that as a bit faster than either above option.
I guess the point is, Windows isn't the only OS that is making things that are bloated and inefficient. Everyone is doing it, it seems, and if we want a fix, we have to look at EVERYONE.
Re:Not sure 3D is always the best (Score:3, Informative)
Then we can further complicate the question: suppose that you die due to reasons unrelated to teleportation. And you last used a teleporter about a year back, but the teleporter saved your "pattern"-- so your grieving loved ones are able to "recreate" you, exactly as you were when you came out the teleporter-- the only difference is that you'd be confused as to how a year had passed since you'd gone in, and everyone else has memories of you during that time that you didn't experience. Is that you? Or not?
Well, there was that one TNG episode where Scotty put himself into statis by loading himself into the transporter buffer of a crashed starship. Also, it's apparently a good way to keep coffee fresh, which I suppose is incredibly important because it's not like you can just replicate yourself a cup whenever you want.
What I don't get is why they never replicated people by "transporting" them from the buffer more than once.
Re:Not sure 3D is always the best (Score:3, Informative)