"Calculating time remaining..." - my vote for Most Worthless Vista Dialog 2006

Ok, this one is pretty annoying.

It pops-up even when the operation should be instantaneous (like deleting a
single file from your hard drive), which seems to make the operation
significantly slower than it should be.

I goes from annoying to worthless, though, by not telling you anything even
when it would be handy: I just copied a large file to a server, and it
didn't say anything other than "calculating time remaining" for the entire
15 minutes that it took to copy.

XP's wildly varying and innacurate estimates were much better than this!

<getting off soapbox>

> I just copied a large file to a server, and it
> didn't say anything other than "calculating time remaining" for the entire
> 15 minutes that it took to copy.

Yes, had that too. Pretty useless...

My favorite is when it pops up and obscures a confirmation dialog which
makes you think it's doing something when in fact the operation has stopped
because it's waiting on a response from you.

"Oscar Fowler" <oscar@justified.com> wrote in message
news:51102E2D-7CA5-4E99-969E-3FD7ECA2798B@microsoft.com...
> Ok, this one is pretty annoying.
>
> It pops-up even when the operation should be instantaneous (like deleting
> a single file from your hard drive), which seems to make the operation
> significantly slower than it should be.
>
> I goes from annoying to worthless, though, by not telling you anything
> even when it would be handy: I just copied a large file to a server, and
> it didn't say anything other than "calculating time remaining" for the
> entire 15 minutes that it took to copy.
>
> XP's wildly varying and innacurate estimates were much better than this!
>
> <getting off soapbox>
>
>
>

If you click the "More Info" button you'll notice that it knows how much
data needs to be transferred, it also knows the transfer rate. How can it
not know the remaining time? Oh, sorry, its STOOPID!

"Oscar Fowler" <oscar@justified.com> wrote in message
news:51102E2D-7CA5-4E99-969E-3FD7ECA2798B@microsoft.com...
> Ok, this one is pretty annoying.
>
> It pops-up even when the operation should be instantaneous (like deleting
> a single file from your hard drive), which seems to make the operation
> significantly slower than it should be.
>
> I goes from annoying to worthless, though, by not telling you anything
> even when it would be handy: I just copied a large file to a server, and
> it didn't say anything other than "calculating time remaining" for the
> entire 15 minutes that it took to copy.
>
> XP's wildly varying and innacurate estimates were much better than this!
>
> <getting off soapbox>
>
>
>

Yeah, I noticed that after posting the message, too. "Uh... you know... if
you take THAT and divide it by THIS, you'll get..." Maybe they just didn't
want users getting too lazy and dependent on their computers.

It's not a total waste of a dialog, though - they do seem to have spent some
quality time getting the little 3D-ish animation looking nice...

Here's to SP1!!


"Stuart" <no@thanks.com> wrote in message
news:1BD47662-ADF3-4C1C-B8B1-1D996E008EE1@microsoft.com...
> If you click the "More Info" button you'll notice that it knows how much
> data needs to be transferred, it also knows the transfer rate. How can it
> not know the remaining time? Oh, sorry, its STOOPID!

"Oscar Fowler" <oscar@justified.com> wrote in message
news:52FC7A50-A698-43D5-A2AA-5CEFEB2C6DB3@microsoft.com...

Your name sounds familiar. Do you know (or at least used to work with in
the 80s) a woman by the name of Frankie Brown? Creating data tapes of
various booklets that were then printed?

Mike

Sorry, not me. The only data tapes I was creating in the 80's were
cassettes for my Atari 800...

=)

"Mike" <no@where.man> wrote in message
news:6FD78B85-1132-4E5C-A7E0-A806C837DA1E@microsoft.com...
> Your name sounds familiar. Do you know (or at least used to work with in
> the 80s) a woman by the name of Frankie Brown? Creating data tapes of
> various booklets that were then printed?
>
> Mike