My Computer

[Andreas Hartmetz]

Am Sonntag 25 November 2007 16:05:03 schrieb Stephan Kulow:
> Am Sonntag 25 November 2007 schrieb Allen Winter:
> > Potential Bikeshedding Alert!
> >
> > kickoff has a page called "My Computer".
> >
> > Can we please change that string?
> > Pretty please with sugar on top?
> >
> > Possibilities:
> > Bookmarks
> > Places
> > Fred
> > Foo
> > Goo
> > Narf
> > Zoit!
> > System
> > Ethel
> > <insert another option here>
>
> I suggest you do usability tests with these and figure if they
> get equally good results we got when testing with My Computer
>

How do usability tests compensate for the fact that everybody already knows 
Windows? I assume that it's impossible to compensate for that, so if we 
*only* followed tests with the average computer user we might end up with 
KWindows.
Usability tests are probably a lot more useful if you only present options 
that are not similar to Windows.
If we have to "steal" (which is nothing to be ashamed about here) let's please 
steal from the best, and the best don't include Windows most of the time.

Places sounds good to me.
And "My Computer" really sounds silly, and it's wrong, too. Just imagine a 
fancy coffee machine saying "My coffee machine" in the display, a car 
saying "My car" on its data display thing, a stereo saying "My stereo"...
It's really really silly and Microsoft came up with that crap in an initiative 
to make the computer more "friendly" and "personal"(*). The same initiative 
that brought the stupid dog in XP which which presents you a choice to search 
for "files", "documents", "music"(**), or "printers/shares/people". Or 
something.

Now I also want to make clear that I appreciate that Suse did actual tests, 
and I like Kickoff and use it.

(*) Great approach, make the computer more friendly by writing "friendly 
computer" on it. Windows is the only technical product I know that tries to 
do this.
(**) and it does not even search for torrents! :o

> Greetings, Stephan