HCI commentary

I can relate to that one!

I normally find acrobat crashes and takes all my open pdfs with it. Fortunately I browse a substaintial amount of these files using Firefox which means I simply have to hit refresh - which isn't that frustrating. Upgrading to Firefox has eliminated IEs continous crashing and supports tabbed browsing (which I can no longer life without). Another worthwhile tip is <crtl> + <alt> + <del>, kill explorer and then create a new instance... this sometimes saves the system from falling over.
 

Does Windows really remember open Explorer windows when it crashes? I thought that only happened if you had some open as you did a 'nice' restart... I could be wrong, however. Also I'm not sure how processor- or memory-efficient it would be for Windows to remember everything that was going on all the time. Bearing in mind crashes are unexpected, Windows will have to keep a regular check on what's open. Also bearing in mind that a crash doesn't usually come from nowhere, it'll be brought on by something, and that something may well be you opening a new IE window or PDF instance. If the check isn't regular enough then it may not catch this new thing you opened. Or if the thing you opened crashes the computer every time (rather than just a seemingly random one-off, an example I can think of is maybe embedded Java on a web page and your JVM is broken or something) and Windows DID remember it, then it's just going to crash your computer on restart. Then people will start to curse Windows' "remember what I was doing" features :)
In regards to the memory inefficiency I was talking about, you have the problem of what SHOULD Windows remember? Sure you can say "I just want it to remember my PDFs, Word files and IE windows." Then someone will come along and say "Umm... I like to view things in Excel, add that too." So now should Windows have a list of things to monitor or just monitor everything? What about apps that you don't need it to remember like some random utility that sits in the tray. What about something like Winamp? The currently playing song is a bit like an open document, the currently loaded play list, too. Maybe applications can enrol themselves on a watch list as they start? Then you have the problem that the application should monitor itself, Windows shouldn't monitor it. Windows should have a kind of "monitor me" interface that applications plug into, but the apps should monitor themselves as each one has different things to remember. With IE and Word and Acrobat it'll be currently loaded files, with Winamp it's similar but different enough not to be on a general Windows-controlled thing. Should IE remember its history per window, too?

There's a lot it needs to do. Maybe it should just save all memory (paged and unpaged) to disk every few seconds like a constant hibernate? Then you get processor and memory inefficiency.

I think it would if it could, but for now it just can't. Very good thought though, I know I recently had the same dilemma and it was extremely annoying. Oh well.

Alex Russell.
 

@Alex,

Hibernate can manage something along these lines (although its not something I user).
 

If it's anything like my Mac at home, it's Endnote that causes the crashes. Which is a pity, cos it's otherwise a good program.....
 

whats needed is a way of actually saving the state of the desktop and being able to choose what you want to do. I often end up doing multiple things at once but would prefer some segmentation, I achieve this with my laptop with windows xp in hibenate mode and linux then i use windows when in the middle of researching of writting and linux for other tasks, hibenation is great but imagine being able to save the status of a current working desktop, which you can flick between and is restoreable that would be pritty neat. having loged on you can choose rejoin a session such as company accounts/reserach/web browsing
 

the comment above about the problems of restoring a system state that led to a crash in the first place is a good point. I think that a great leap in usability could be achieved by simply being able to choose specific applications that will re-open files & documents when the machine next restarts. I'd be happy with IE, Word, and Adobe Reader just opening up from where I left them. this would give a continuous workflow. a simple option to start in 'safe mode' ie not do the restore, could be offered at log-in, thus avoiding any potential problems with actual documents being the cause of system crashes (yes, Word docs can do this). the only problem now is that most of the PDFs I open are from online delivery sources, and thus have no permament URL, they only exist in my temp directory. no guarantee they'll be there on the next restart...
 

Does History function in IE remember pages you visit ? If it worked, i'd prefer to have this thing in other applications as well (may just remember paths of last files open).

** HCI - Reservior **
 

I feel your pain! Another thing that annoys me about IE, is that it supposely resumes downloads, except it only does so some of the time. Surely such a simple feature is not beyond the brains at Microsoft?