[Technical] Notebooks for New Staff - DET needs to help

[Clark, Ian C]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: tech-bounces at edulists.com.au 
> [mailto:tech-bounces at edulists.com.au] On Behalf Of Jim Maunder
> I've spent over 25 years developing my intuition for using 
> 'pooters, and none of them are intrinsically 'intuitive' IMHO!

Yes Jim, more than most areas of IT, judgement of a GUI is subjective
... look at the wars that used to rage between GNOME and KDE (for
reasons as much ideological as ergonomic).

Windows NT had no graphical interface when it was written as a server
operating system in C. Its creator Dave Cutler is the equivalent of say,
Linus Torvalds with Linux. Only grumpier - Bill Gates was too scared to
talk to him, let alone give him orders. 

Now, one thing Cutler really hates is GUIs. The familiar C++ shell is
really an afterthought, put on by other people who thought that NT (now
XP and 2003) could replace 95 as a *desktop* operating system.

You can experiment on a test machine with changing the "Shell" key at
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon
from Explorer.exe to something else ... I suppose you could try IE
itself, or the endless supply of alternative shells such as Litestep,
Blackbox, Astonshell that most people don't take seriously. Heck, if you
install Cygwin, you can run KDE.

Check all the doco that comes with a shell, though - you won't be able
to ask Dave Cutler for help with it! :-)

Cheers,
Clarky


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