Hi … my name is Steven Hodson and I am .. errr …. was an eye-candy junkie.

If there was a way to make Windows look cooler I just had to try it. From the early days of battleship gray to the blurred glass of Vista’s Aero I was always looking for those things that would set my desktop apart from the crowd. I’ve tried LiteStep, geoShell, DesktopX from before it was owned by Stardock. I’ve had more icon collections than I can shake a stick at so that my icons could be different. Yup if there was a way to make it look cool I have probably tried it at one time or another.

Over the past little while though, I have begin to seriously question this affliction and what I was really getting for all that time spent having cool sounds and even cooler graphics. Sure Vista made it a lot easier to have a something that looked nice and could give you that eye-candy fix but at what cost. Afterall all this eye-candy goodness has to come at some cost and not just to your pocketbook.

Then this morning I read a post on gapingvoid.com that referenced a post by Eric Karjaraluoto on ideasonideas.com titled Microsoft repositions to kick ass in which Eric provides a list of ideas on how Microsoft could take over the marketplace that it is losing to Apple and to a lesser extent Linux. While Hugh pointed to other area’s of Eric’s post the part that got me was #3:

3. Cut the crap

To do this, we have to start editing, and I mean the ugly, “red ink all over the place” editing that Ms. Hughes used to dish out when reviewing my twelfth grade essays. This is a system wide removal of clutter and noise. What the consumer primarily sees, however, is a clean and confident presentation. 

This means the implementation of a gutsy nomenclature for products that does away with anything wishy-washy like “Silverlight” or “Vista”. I’d even go so far as to disassociate the firm from its God-awful name that seems to be a strange reference to a small, limp penis.

This confidence would bring with it the end of corny stock imagery, nauseatingly uplifting theme music, meaningless glossy surfaces and swooshes of light in the operation’s advertising and design elements. Microsoft “blue” also gets the kibosh, replaced by black and grey. The message is clear: this company means business.

I imagine a company so emboldened by this position that they even start to release a single version of their operating system, instead of the traditional half-dozen (or so) flavors.

This whole line of thinking got me looking at my own system and realizing just how addicted I had become to the eye-candy that really wasn’t doing one thing to enhance my user experience. In fact I was beginning to think that it was doing exactly the opposite - all this eye-candy and cool sounds themes were degrading my user and workflow experience.

When you really think about it why do you need sounds for every single damn action that takes place on your computer. Isn’t the fact that the application window appeared enough of a notification - do you really need some sound to let you know that it has arrived, minimized, maximized or closed. Not to mention how it competes; often quite loudly, with your music playing at the same time.

Isn’t a better user experience the one where your applications respond with a snap rather than sluggish awakening as it puts its makeup on?

So I have decided it is time to see what life will be like without all the eye-candy obscuring my computing life. I have disabled all the sounds with the exception of new mail, I have turned of the Aero glassification along with turning off the Sidebar and disabling anything to do with the disaster they called DreamScene.

Yes it’s going to be tough given the number of years I’ve been and eye-candy junkie and yes I will miss some of the Sidebar type stuff but that can easily be replaced with better and sleeker programs. However I think the upside of having a more responsive machine and a cleaner look will more than offset the over-all cost of all that candy.

Listening to: Tiesto Feat Julie Thompson - Elements Of Life - Do You Feel Me

Conversation Tags: Vista, eye-candy, Windows