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What on earth were Microsoft thinking? Take the screenshot below. It is from an installation of Windows Server 2008. More specifically it is the window that pops up when you click on the icon that tells you that updates are available.

What is wrong with this picture? Well for a start it lists the updates that are available but it does not provide any details! There is a big blank area below the list where they could have included the details once you highlighted an update but no, instead you have to right click on an update and select ‘View Details’ which pops up another window!

I can only imagine it is the same for the nightmare that goes by the name of Windows Vista. Except with Vista you would probably have to click that damn UAC button 27 times first.

While I’m at it I may as well complain about the Windows Update tray notification icon itself. Remember on Windows XP, if there was an update available you would have a very prominent yellow shield icon with an exclamation mark in the middle? Well that rather intuitive icon has been replaced by this:

How on earth are you supposed to know what that is?

As an aside, Windows 2008 is actually quite a decent OS. As you can tell from the screenshots I have the Aero desktop enabled and I’m using it as a desktop OS rather than a server and it is incredibly fast. This has me puzzled also. How come Vista is like a three legged dog and 2008 is like a greyhound on steroids despite there being little between them technology wise! Whatever that ‘little’ is – it makes a lot of difference.

Last year I installed Vista Home Premium on the very same P.C. and it made me want to cry. 2008 seems to be quite decent and Half Life 2 runs as fast as it did on XP. In fact I have noticed little in the way of a performance hit compared to XP which is more than can be said for Vista.