A short while ago, I read this from Alex Yumashev’s Jitbit blog:

I just overheard this conversation between two developers at a co-working site:

“I plan [on] creating a prototype for my new XXXX application, whatcha think it should be – a web-app, or a desktop app?”

The answer was:

“90% of your users are idiots who won’t be able to tell the difference”

I think I just found my answer to the ultimate question of life universe and everything and it’s not “42″.

It’s “90% of your users are idiots”.

Now thats a questionable term to describe your customers. I don’t think 90% of my users are idiots. But. That’s the way to think of your users when making design decisions and building your interface.

Jitbit Blog

And he’s very right.

Thinking about some of the largest and most successful software developments, this rule applies – not that 90% of the users of these systems are idiots, but more that they are designed to accommodative for 90% of their users being idiots .

Think about the operating systems environment, in which Mac OS X and the Windows series of operating systems are by far the most popular on the desktop. Both of these systems are developed to heavily guide the user through any process or task that he or she wishes to complete, metaphorically holding the users hand throughout each step.

The mobile market is the same. Up until very recently, iOS (the Apple operating system powering the iPad and iPhone) was very far in the lead in terms of sales and end-user popularity. Android has only recently, in the past few months starting competing well with iOS. iOS is simple. In my opinion, too simple, but people like it and use it, on a huge scale. 90% of users are idiots. As Android has got more and more user-friendly, it has increased in popularity amongst end-users, along with the ever increasing push from non-Apple phone and tablet manufacturers to use Android.

Both user interface and structural application decisions can often benefit from thinking that 90% of your users are idiots.

1. Should I implement feature X in either A or B way? Whichever is easier for those 90%.
2. Should I design the user interface to promote feature A or B most promotion? Whichever is most appropriate for those 90%.
3. Do I design this icon that triggers feature X to represent concept A or concept B? Whichever will make the most sense to those 90% of users.
4. Should I document this little used and/or somewhat obvious feature? Of course – 90% of your users are idiots.

The experts among us do not necessary need or want to be guided though every step of a process with our hands held all the time. Some of us just want to dig into plain text config files and command line interfaces. The developers and the computing enthusiasts, we’re the remaining 10%.

I’m not a Windows user primarily. The vast majority of time my computers and laptop boot into Linux, specifically Ubuntu, as of recent. However, I do have several of my machines set-up with both Ubuntu and Windows 7.

One of my major gripes with Windows, which has always been there, is that after a clean reinstall, you have no programs of any real use installed at all. In comparison, a clean install of Ubuntu gives you a graphics editor, photo manager, fully featured e-mail client, personal information management suite and a full office suite. Of course, you now get the Ubuntu Software Centre, which lets you install find and install full size applications with the same ease as using the iPhone App store or Android Marketplace.

Windows has none of this. A brand spanking new Windows install does very little for productivity without a few essential apps installed.

Usually this involves the labourious task of:

1. Manually searching for and/or heading to the website of the program you want to download
2. Finding the current version/build to download, starting the download and waiting for the download to complete
3. Running the installer and waiting for its completion
4. Repeat steps 1 – 3 for every program you wish to install

Recently, I’ve discovered Ninite, which is a fantastic website/program which lets you cut down the above procedure (which could possible take hours) to a quick procedure that takes a few minutes at most. This is how you’d do the above, with Ninite.

1. Go to https://ninite.com/ and select the programs you want to install.
2. Download the installer it generates
3. Run the installer and wait for its completion.

And then you’re done! No repetition, as Ninite cleverly puts the installation of many, many possible programs behind a single simplistic installer.

It supports installation for the most popular web browsers, messaging applications, media players, imaging programs, document editors/viewers, security software (such as anti-virus and anti-malware software), plug-ins (such as Flash and Java), file sharing applications, general utilities and even certain developer/administration tools.

Basically, after every (annoying) reinstall of Windows that I have to do, the first place I’m heading is to Ninite’s website.

As a final note, I’m really hoping they add official graphics drivers to their list of automatically installed items. That would be very useful for a lot of people I know. Suggesting new apps is a feature they offer right at the bottom of the Ninite website.

The ‘C:’ device represents the very small, primary internal flash memory present on the phone. The secondary storage device, usually ‘D:’ or ‘E:’ is much larger (in my case 32GB), but unfortunately not everything can be installed to the mass storage. For those applications that truly need to be installed on the primary drive, they can use a great deal of the limited space.

Here are a few tips I discovered on how to help clear out the primary drive’s space. You’ll know if you need to do this if you are receiving constant reminders that your phone is out of space on drive ‘C:’.

1. Any applications previously installed on C: that could be installed on E: should be uninstalled and reinstalled on the larger storage device.
2. Install third party web browser, such as Opera Mobile, to the mass storage and then delete the ‘C:\System\Cache\’ folder belonging to the default Nokia web browser.
3. Change the default ‘Messaging’ storage to mass storage. To do this, open the messaging application and then go to Options > Settings > Other > ‘Memory In Use’.
4. Uninstall any of the uninstallable default applications and widgets that you do not use. I removed the ‘Facebook’ home screen widget and now just use the mobile web version of Facebook.
5. Make sure the Ovi Store is set to install to mass storage by default. To do this open the Ovi Store settings at Options > Account > Settings > Installation Preferences, within the Ovi Store application itself.
6. If you are using Nokia Messaging or Nokia Messaging for Exchange, delete and reconfigure your accounts and this will clear out a significant cache. Alternatively, if you do not mind, remove the Nokia Messaging application entirely and use a web-mail alternative (if possible).

In my case, removing Nokia Messaging was the most helpful. Anyone else had this problem, if so, how did you clear your N97′s main memory?

I’m quite highly anticipating the release of Google Chrome OS – Google’s net book and appliance cloud operating system. There are a few main reasons behind this.

Simplicity and Openness

Note that I combine the two here. It is very important that both software user friendliness is combined with the nature of free and open source software to prevent device and software simplification becoming a model for restricted development.

Apple do one of these well – simplicity. Apple products are almost always considered to be highly user-friendly and easy to use for all consumers, taking the iPhone and iPad as the latest examples within the consumer electronics market.

However, Apple has a very closed nature to their software models, especially with the iPhone and iPad, where all application acquisition is restricted to a specific Apple controlled ‘App. Store’ and all application developement is restricted to a Apple controlled SDK (software development kit) which is platforme restricted and incompatible with all platforms other than Apple’s own Mac OS X platform.

Promotion of Open Source Software

Since Google Chrome OS is to based upon a Linux kernel, and use many existing Linux systems, not only will this bring improvements to Linux operating systems as a whole due to Google’s code contributions, but additionally it will bring Linux and, more generally, open source software into the light.

The concepts of Linux and open source software are by no means yet the household names of Microsoft, Windows and Apple. Dependant on how Google Chrome OS is marketed by Google, this release could be a great boom for the promotion of Linux as a whole.

Zero Price Operating System

Since Google intends to release the operating system for free (zero price), it will likely also reduce the apparent worth of paid operating systems, such as the paid offerings by Microsoft (Windows) or Apple (Mac OS X). The increased use of web applications and the Internet to do many daily tasks makes Google Chrome OS perfect for the most common uses of computers today. For these tasks, alternative operating systems hold no significant advantages, whilst the advantages for Microsoft and Apple operating systems now lie specifically in the domain of platform restricted software packages, either in the desktop realm, such as Microsoft Office / Apple iWork or the server realm, such as Microsoft Exchange / Mac OS X server software packages.

Even then, with the growth of multi-platform, online productivity and collaboration tools, such as Google Docs, Google Calendar and Google Mail, these platform restricted ‘offline’ software packages may become redundant as more and more businesses and enterprises rely upon the Internet and cloud based applications and storage.

What do you think? Will Google Chrome OS be a boom for Linux, and will its competitors’ offerings be hurt significantly by its release?

If you wish, you can visit the official Wine website to get more details about this excellent free piece of software and download instructions.

• systeminfo | find “Up Time”
• net statistics server (Note that this command displays actually shows the last boot time from which the uptime can be calculated)
• Uptime (This command is not included in the operating system, but is an uptime utility provided by Microsoft)

Also, it is worth noting that Windows Server 2003 systems and above record their uptime in the System event log at midnight every night, as Event ID 6013. See the screenshot below from a Windows Server 2003 uptime event.

In Mac OS X, Linux, Unix and other Unix-like operating systems, simply enter the following command into any terminal and the current system load values and uptime will be displayed.

• uptime

In OpenVMS systems, the following command provides the system uptime.

• show system /noprocess

Hope this helps you find the uptime of your system regardless of the running operating system, be it Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Unix or any other system.

If you know uptime commands specific to any other operating systems not listed, please use the comments system and I will update this article accordingly. Of course, feel free to post your uptime(s) as well – a good bit of competition is always healthy!