PCs still suck

Okay so I probably shouldn't be writing that as a title considering who I work for, but I had a rather frustrating weekend IT session. Since I work at Microsoft, all of my family and friends expect me to answer any obscure computer problem they might have.  I wonder if doctors have this same problem?

I had 3 separate "support" calls this weekend:

  1. My wife informed me that Win32 was not working on our laptop.
  2. My in-laws told me that they couldn't see themselves when talking to us through video conferencing (and hence we couldn't see them either)
  3. Our laptop was consistently blue-screening (separate issue from the first) during video conferencing.

All 3 of these problems would not be diagnosable by say my wife. In fact one of them was only fixable because of the specific knowledge I have from working here.

PC's still aren't ready or usable by home consumers. At least not without a lot of hand holding and support. How come we haven't fixed this yet? Why do PCs have to be so techie? Okay I know why, but the reasons/excuses seem shortsighted to me.

What if we had an OS where all drivers were controlled/written by the vendor. What if the whole OS allowed but a single app to run at a time? And what if you had to control it with say, a game controller, instead of a keyboard and a mouse?

I think for Christmas next year I'm buying everybody an X-box with live and a camera.

Now if only X-box live would come with a browser.