This image says a lot about Windows. I got it while trying to accomplish something at work today, due to no prompting of my own.

1. Notice that the “no” option is grayed out. What the hell am I supposed to do here? I wound up hiding the thing as low as I could on the screen, because you also can’t minimize it.
2. I have no clue what this update was. It installed some new code, presumably from Microsoft, that I know nothing about. Hell, it could have been a worm, you really have no way to tell. Probably an update to their automatic updates backend.
3. This update, no matter how minor, requires a full reboot. Why haven’t they learned over the past… oh, 20 years… that reboots are not only painful but completely unnecessary for 99% of updates? It’s not like they’re updating the Windows kernel; that only happens once every… oh, 20 years.

I’m not a complete Microsoft hater, not in any way – it just seems to me that they learn lessons slowly. They don’t need to learn any faster because they provide the unique solution that most home users need. They could be even better off (and I mean this constructively) if they’d just learn a few simple lessons from Unix-land (and I don’t mean stealing another TCP stack.)