The new user experience: Windows

March 31, 2006

I created a test user account in Windows XP to test out something. Here’s how the desktop looks at first login (click to zoom). Can you say “obnoxious”?

A cool thing for new users is that the desktop itself is reasonably clean of any program icons that you will invariably pile up over the lifetime of your user. However, there’s plenty of stuff that ensure you will have a rich and entertaining (or actually confusing as hell) desktop experience the first time you log on with a user…

• stuff crashing and displaying errors
• device drivers saying hi and offering to configure devices
• applications saying hi and displaying their “how to use/whats new/create account” dialogs. (The one featured here prominently is AppRocket, a cool “Spotlight for Windows” thing.)
• some security warnings from Microsoft’s recent security addons/antispyware things (“change X requires your approval”)
• Windows trying to make your life “easier” and opening a few of its interface components to offer “help” (Start menu open by default, “Take a tour” tooltip)

All in all a darn christmas tree. If I were my mom and seeing this then… I have no idea what I would do. Especially if my English skills weren’t that great and all the text would be pretty much pointless jabber.