No ability to make RAM drives

In DOS era it was so easy to make a RAM drive by loading RAMDRIVE.SYS using DEVICE or DEVICEHIGH command in the CONFIG.SYS file. Now when RAM is incredibly fast and cheap, there is no ability to make RAM drive without 3rd party software. Why?

To-do for Microsoft:

• Windows 7 should have built-in ability to make RAM drives

No IPX/SPX protocol

Why was the IPX/SPX protocol removed from Windows Vista and Windows 7?















Yes, I know that TCP/IP replaced it, but you still need the IPX/SPX protocol, if you want to play old DOS games in LAN.

To-do for Microsoft:

• Bring the IPX/SPX protocol back.

16-bit applications do not work

EDIT: 16-bit applications will work under Windows XP Mode in 64-bit Windows 7! Thank you, Microsoft!
16-bit applications do not work in 64-bit Windows. I copied edit.com and edlin.exe from 32-bit Windows 7 Beta 1's system32 folder to the system32 folder of 64-bit Windows 7 Beta 1.















I got these messages every time:

The version of this file is not compatible with the version of Windows you're running. Check your computer's system information to see whether you need an x86 (32-bit) or x64 (64-bit) version of the program, and then contact the software publisher.

The limiting factor is probably the x86-64 CPU architecture which do not allow to run 16-bit, 32-bit and 64-bit simultaneously in 64-bit OS. Still, it is possible to use VMware Server/Player or VirtualPC to run 16-bit OSes (like DOS and Windows 3.1) in 64-bit Windows.

To-do for Microsoft:

• For 64-bit Windows 7: Integrate virtualization/emulation of 16-bit software. Just double-clicking the 16-bit application should start it. Keep it simple.


• Keep the 16-bit legacy software (edit.com, edlin.exe, etc.)

No custom install

There seems to be no custom install in Windows 7 Beta 1. There was no custom install in Windows Vista either. It seems that they are not going to (re)introduce the custom install in Windows 7.

Why should one has to install e.g. printer drivers (~800 megabytes), if one does not even have a printer!?

To-do for Microsoft:

• Introduce four installation modes:
  a) Minimum installation (installs just the bare minimum of Windows 7)
  b) Normal installation (installs the most useful stuff for a basic user)
  c) Full installation (installs everything including legacy software)
  d) Custom installation (user can choose what to install)
  

32-bit and 64-bit versions, one disc

Both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows 7 could easily fit in one dual-layered DVD disc. I have seen no plans to integrate the 32-bit and 64-bit setups. Why should one have to buy twice the Windows to be able to install and use both versions? It makes no sense to me.

To-do for Microsoft:

• Integrate the 32-bit and 64-bit Windows 7 setups into one DVD disc.


• Setup should ask which version to install. The default choice should be (of course) the 64-bit Windows.

SAPI speakers for all the Windows languages

Windows 7's SAPI speakers do not speak all the Windows languages, e.g. Finnish. Afterall, there have been Finnish speech synthesizers for at least 20 years by now (e.g. MikroPuhe). Why not to license that technology from the 3rd parties and implement in Windows 7?

To-do for Microsoft:

• License the speech synthesis technology from 3rd parties or invent them yourselves so that Windows speaks all the Windows languages.

Speech Recognition for all the Windows languages

Windows 7 Speech Recognition does not understand all the Windows languages, e.g. Finnish. At least, there have been Finnish speech recognition software for Windows at least 10 years by now (e.g. Philips FreeSpeech Viva). Why not to license that technology from the 3rd parties and implement in Windows 7?

To-do for Microsoft:

• License the speech recognition technology from 3rd parties or invent them yourselves so that Speech Recognition understands all the Windows languages.

Seconds and Swatch Internet Time are missing

The taskbar clock is still not user-changeable enough. For example, one cannot enable seconds or Swatch Internet Time.

To-do for Microsoft:

• Make it possible for a user to enable seconds and Swatch Internet Time display on the Taskbar.

runas is not behaving like Ubuntu's sudo

Please, correct me, if I am wrong, but shouldn't runas behave just like the sudo command in Ubuntu? Well, it isn't. sudo will ask the root password; runas just shows "the man page".

Why this is so difficult to use compared to the sudo command? Actually, I have never got this little command to work the way I expect it to work. Again: Correct me, if I am wrong. Maybe I have just misunderstood the whole thing.

Many Unicode glyphs are missing

Many Unicode glyphs are missing from Windows 7's fonts. Unicode 5.1 has 100,713 characters. Unicode 5.2 will have even more! According to this, Arial Unicode MS has "only" 38,917 characters! Even worse: You have to buy Microsoft Office to get the Arial Unicode MS font legally!

According to Wikipedia:

Currently (August, 2008), no single "Unicode font" includes all the characters defined in the present revision of the ISO 10646 (Unicode) standard. In fact, it would be impossible to create such a font in any common font format, as Unicode includes over 100,000 characters, while no widely-used font format supports more than 65,535 glyphs. So while one could make a set of related fonts to cover all of Unicode, a single Unicode font is not possible at this time.

To-do for Microsoft:

• Windows 7 should have Unicode fonts with all the glyphs in Unicode 5.2.


• Update your font format so that it can handle well over 100,000 characters/glyphs!

No QuickView

Many documents/images/files cannot be viewed without installing 3rd party applications.

To-do for Microsoft:

• Bring back QuickView. It should be a minimalistic program to view various document and image formats. It should support at least: DjVu, pdf, ps (PostScript), eps, gif, jpeg, png, pcx, bmp, svg, txt, doc, raw, tiff, dvi, hlp, Microsoft Office formats and all the formats the QuickView 95/98 supported.

The new Finnish-Swedish multilingual keyboard layout is missing

Windows 7 Beta 1 does not seem to have the new Finnish-Swedish multilingual keyboard layout that is described in the standard SFS 5966.

An evaluation version of the layout for Windows XP SP2 is available here.

The layout specification can be found here. The layout is pictured here. More information can be found here and here.

To-do for Microsoft:

• Introduce the new Finnish-Swedish multilingual keyboard layout.

Windows uses words "kilobyte", "megabyte", "gigabyte", and "terabyte" incorrectly

In the following picture you can see my 320 gigabyte (GB) HDD with two partitions. According to Windows, its capacity is only 278,10 GB + 19,99 GB = 298,09 GB! In reality this "298,09 GB" is 298,09 GiB (gibibyte), which really is about 320 gigabytes. Confusing? Yes!

Windows Explorer should speak about kibibytes, mebibytes, gibibytes, and tebibytes instead of kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes and terabytes or it still could speak about kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes, and terabytes, if it shows the numbers correctly. Make this a user-changeable setting. There could be four different modes:
1. legacy mode: This mode uses the words kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte, and terabyte INCORRECTLY like today.
2. binary mode: This mode uses the words kibibyte, mebibyte, gibibyte, and tebibyte CORRECTLY.
3. decimal mode: This mode uses the words kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte, and terabyte CORRECTLY.
4. binary&decimal mode: This mode shows (CORRECTLY) both presentations at once. For example: "3 objects selected, size: 2.23 kibibytes, 2.28352 kilobytes".
The default mode should be 2, 3 or 4, not 1.

Old themes do not work

I have not found a way to enable the Windows 95 like look to Windows 7's windows. I copied an old look theme from Windows Vista and double-clicked the theme file in Windows 7. It changed some colors but the windows still use the glass-like Aero.

I know that the old look is still there buried somewhere, because after some failed update and restart my Windows 7 desktop looked like in these screenshoots.

Restarting the Windows 7 Beta 1 once again restored the Aero look.

Please, bring back the option to use the old themes (without Aero).
UPDATE: There is an Ease of Access Theme called Windows Classic, which brings back the old Windows 95 style windows.

Games missing

Some old games from the 3.0, 3.1, 3.11, 95, 98, ME, XP era are missing. At least: Hover!, Pinball, Reversi, Internet Reversi, Internet Hearts, InkBall. I can see no reason why they were removed.

To-do for Microsoft:

• Please, bring the old games back.


• I do not know if the Internet games will work, if the game servers are down, but if they won't work in that situation, introduce A.I. players.

No male voice

As you can see from the picture, there is only one voice in Windows 7: Microsoft Anna. That means that there is no male voice. Microsoft Anna sounds way more natural than Microsoft Sam did, but why not to make a natural male voice also?















Please, reintroduce a male voice either by making a new version or by bringing the old Microsoft Sam back. Both Anna and Sam can coexist.

No full screen mode for DOS/console programs

As was the situation with Windows Vista, the Windows 7's Display Driver Model (WDDM) does not support all DOS video modes and therefore DOS-based and Win32 console programs cannot run in full screen mode. For example, pressing Alt+Enter while running edit.com in the command line window gives a message

This system does not support fullscreen mode.

Please, fix this in the future versions of Windows 7. Full screen mode is always needed.

No week numbers in calendar

According to Wikipedia:

Weeks in a Gregorian calendar year can be numbered for each year. This style of numbering is commonly used (for example, by schools and businesses) in some European and Asian countries, but rare elsewhere.

Windows 7 Beta 1's calendar does not show week numbers as you can see from the picture.















Please, fix this in Beta 2. Maybe the week number showing should be a user-changeable setting, because probably not everybody wants to see them.