I was just wondering...

  • Thread starter Thread starter Pop Rivet
  • Start date Start date
P

Pop Rivet

if any of the MVPs here might have a feeling for why MS
doesn't pay attention to what I consider the more useful
bells & whistles?
I was perusing the sys32 folder the other day, looking at
the DOS programs amongst the many hundreds of files there
(XP Pro) and that occurred to me.
I am about to purchase either PM or whatever to do some
partitioning work. I have NEVER done a restore that didn't
somehow leave at least a few difficult problems laying
around afterwards, so, since this isn't a disaster recovery,
I'm not anxious to go that route.
So, why hasn't MS yet put the capability to re-partition
without losing data? Like many other things, it would make
lots of sense for them to have included such a feature in
the OS. Fdisk is a logical place to add those capabilities,
IMO. Why leave it to 3rd parties? I have lots of other
examples, but this is the one currently in my scope.

Any thoughts?

Pop
 
Pop Rivet said:
if any of the MVPs here might have a feeling for why MS
doesn't pay attention to what I consider the more useful
bells & whistles?
I was perusing the sys32 folder the other day, looking at
the DOS programs amongst the many hundreds of files there
(XP Pro) and that occurred to me.
I am about to purchase either PM or whatever to do some
partitioning work. I have NEVER done a restore that didn't
somehow leave at least a few difficult problems laying
around afterwards, so, since this isn't a disaster recovery,
I'm not anxious to go that route.
So, why hasn't MS yet put the capability to re-partition
without losing data? Like many other things, it would make
lots of sense for them to have included such a feature in
the OS. Fdisk is a logical place to add those capabilities,
IMO. Why leave it to 3rd parties? I have lots of other
examples, but this is the one currently in my scope.

Any thoughts?

Pop
Click to expand...
MS gives the tools that the average user or a slightly better than average
user can use to do what is most often required. I think they very
deliberately leave the field open to 3rd parties to provide the more
advanced tools. MS already gets nailed by lawsuits triggered by other
vendors for providing "too much stuff" in its OS.
Billh
 
Pop said:
if any of the MVPs here might have a feeling for why MS
doesn't pay attention to what I consider the more useful
bells & whistles?
I was perusing the sys32 folder the other day, looking at
the DOS programs amongst the many hundreds of files there
(XP Pro) and that occurred to me.
I am about to purchase either PM or whatever to do some
partitioning work. I have NEVER done a restore that didn't
somehow leave at least a few difficult problems laying
around afterwards, so, since this isn't a disaster recovery,
I'm not anxious to go that route.
So, why hasn't MS yet put the capability to re-partition
without losing data? Like many other things, it would make
lots of sense for them to have included such a feature in
the OS. Fdisk is a logical place to add those capabilities,
IMO. Why leave it to 3rd parties? I have lots of other
examples, but this is the one currently in my scope.
Click to expand...

Not really an easy answer here. MS does look at what features it can add
to the OS. They do quite a bit of studies on what users want in the OS.
My guess is that this feature probably isn't a high demand item for the
typical PC owner. It is not that common that the average PC owner changes
their partition structure, or even knows that they can.

Then there are also the legal issues. MS has to be very aware of what the
include as part of the OS. How many times have they been sued now from
third party vendors claiming monopolistic or illegal activity for
including free add-ons as part of the OS (Internet Explorer, Windows Media
Player, and there are others)?

But I suspect in this specific instance it is customer demand more than
anything.

BTW, there are some free utilities and shareware utilities that can
non-destructively resize partitions. My favorite, not free but free for
30 day trial, is Bootit NG from www.bootitng.com. You don't have to
install it to use it's partitioning tool. Just create the floppy from the
file you download and boot with it. Cancel the install when it starts and
you will be taken to the screen where you can view/modify existing
partition data. This includes resize existing partitions without losing
data. Of course any time you do partition work you should back up your
important data just in case something goes wrong.
--
Tom Porterfield
MS-MVP MCE
http://support.telop.org

Please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup only.
 
It's just business - and the Justice department that prevents them from
doing that.

--
Regards:

Richard Urban

aka Crusty (-: Old B@stard :-)
 
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