Windows Weekly's back handed compliment to DOPUS

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Or perhaps we should call it, Paul Thurrott's, Whinging Weakly! Here is part of the transcript from this week's show filled with narcissistic negativity:

I'll just say anyone who's paid attention to Windows over the years will know that Microsoft has at different times talked about improving [00:07:30] the performance of file copy through File Explorer, right? Steven OVS was big on this. I think this was a Windows eight thing. It was one of those desktop features that was a big improvement for the day, but it was kind of lost because of all of the Touch first nonsense that everyone hated so much. But it was a big improvement because I've been having problems with File Explorer. I've started testing third party file managers, which I don't typically care about. And there's a thing called Directory Opus, which actually has been around [00:08:00] I think since the late 1980s. I used to use it on the Omega. So it's been around a while or it's some version of It has, it's an ugly app.

(00:08:08):
It's a desktop app, it's an old app. It's an old app. And I'll tell you something, and it doesn't matter if it's the beta version of the file explorer that I've been talking about, that was a problem or R T M version, which is what's happening on this computer. This thing transfers files somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 times the speed of File Explorer. And that's true whether you're going over the network or from [00:08:30] disc to disc. I'd like to understand, and this is a rhetorical question, why a third party file manager that frankly is one of the ugliest things I've ever seen in my life, can somehow work better than the beautiful but nonsense thing that Microsoft builds into Windows 11. It doesn't make sense to me.

Windows Weekly 844, Transcript (twit.tv)

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It goes to show how janky Windows is at file copying in general, where one program can be so much faster than another due mostly to quirks of APIs, buffer sizes, and similar low-level details. A decent OS would abstract away those details from application-level software, dealing with them once in the OS, and not force every developer to micromanage things or use undocumented or barely documented IOCTL stuff to speed things up (which can also slow things down on another system).

Other people can also find the exact opposite situation with the two programs. It's a lottery which method works best with which combination of hardware/drivers/network/antivirus/etc. There are several threads of people asking us to use File Explorer's copy mechanism instead of our own, which we'll be adding as an option soon, to let people use whichever works best on their setups.

Of course, there are other details, like whether timestamps and other metadata are copied, which can make a huge difference with small files. But, after accounting for those, the OS should be copying data as fast as the hardware can do it, yet only manages to do that in some cases, or when asked to do it in very particular ways.

The worst thing is that this affects much more than file copying. People only notice file copying performance because it tends to show you a speed indicator, but the issues with I/O speed in Windows affect all software reading and writing data from storage. Windows is often simply atrocious at doing this, the most basic part of its job as an operating system, and few seem to notice or care except when copying files. I'd argue that file copying matters least vs other I/O-bound tasks, because you can leave a file copy and do other things; delays when doing something interactive are far worse.

We get endless articles in the tech press every time Microsoft change an icon somewhere in Windows, but this gets overlooked. There are so few visible discussions about things like this, or how bad the Windows APIs and documentation have become (they're getting worse, not better), the fact Dark Mode still isn't even 25% complete in Windows (and a boolean light/dark switch is so lacking in ambition itself!), or how completely off-track Microsoft's priorities have been for the last 10 years. :slight_smile:

As for "ugly", I'll take that as a compliment. Opus can look pretty much how you want it to, but looks like a standard desktop app by default. Standard as in "before the last three failed, misguided UI frameworks from Microsoft focused on touch devices no one uses, which can't even render fonts properly, each abandoned after the other". :slight_smile:

(That said, it is a little ugly on Windows 11, because Windows 11's visual styles are so bad, to the point they harm usability with things like scrollbars and menus. Something we'll be offering a solution for soon...)

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Thought you might react!

The episode also discloses that a Windows reset from the cloud will take out all the advertising crap, and installing as English International will also avoid a lot of crap. He also points out an command line app called WINGET to make you own app installs after a reset.

Use the winget tool to install and manage applications | Microsoft Learn

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Did they already talk about Microsoft shipping literal malware/spyware spamvertising executables on to people's machines recently?

Makes me sad that only one antivirus vendor detects it. Just because it's made by Microsoft doesn't change what it is, which would be called malware if any other company did the same thing.

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Yes, they have been speaking about it for quite a while. They also pointed out that the Window's programmers were just children and weren't alive when MS released Windows 95.

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I'm not sure I understand the ugly point, does he not know you can customize DOPUS to look like anything you want?

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Sounds like he's drunk the metro kool-aid. Win32 desktop apps are "old", therefore "ugly" by definition.

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The default unaltered theme of DOpus is my all time favourite - it is simply functional and beautiful :smiley:

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I think that guy talked nothing but nonsense.

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one of the ugliest things I've ever seen in my life

While beauty is subjective, this statement is utterly ridiculous.

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Obviously, this person has never used an HP95LX palmtop using the original connectivity pack.
I remember I had it working on Windows Vista just for fun, but I haven't looked at it in many years.
A DOS PC Kermit Server was really my preferred transfer method as I could also do my HP48 Calculators with a better Calculator Kermit Client.

Here's a screen shot of the 95LX Filer from a PC that I grabbed from the internet.
It really isn't quite as bad as the photo, but almost !

Ugly ???
PTP02-02

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