Why Windows 7 Will Be Better Than Vista

See Dick Crash

At its current pre-beta milestone, Windows 7 self-diagnoses and treats a variety of common ills, along the lines of the troubleshooting wizards scattered throughout Vista. What's different in Windows 7 is that the troubleshooters are scripted in PowerShell, making them modifiable and extensible by IT staff. When a user calls the help desk with a more complicated problem, instead of asking the user what they did in order to try to replicate the problem, a client-side activity recorder accumulates UI actions and screen shots at relevant intervals, so they can be shown to an admin or a help desk staffer.

When asked, a user can't retrospectively report the steps that led to a failure. So don't ask. Have them do it again, record it (not watch it via Remote Assistance), study the telemetry, and you'll know. When you find a solution, you can push fixes out in the form of registry patches, replacement code, or global policy changes. Microsoft somehow discovered that fixing what's broken once you figure out what it is happens to be an IT pain point.

Outrage over Microsoft's analysis of user behavior is senseless. Every move you make on the Web is tracked in excruciating detail. Commercial sites use analysis of statistics and usage patterns to change their design and to personalize presentation to target specific groups. There, telemetry is not opt-in and the data gathered is far from anonymous. It's the cost of opening your browser, and if that data weren't collected and analyzed, Amazon, Google, and InfoWorld.com couldn't change as your needs do.