Windows 8 Wishlist – What I Think Users Want in the Next Version of Windows

Windows 7 has been released to critical praise, but there are still some things I’d like Microsoft to tackle for their next Operating System. This article provides my top four wish list items for Windows 8 including:

Self-Healing Systems

Automatic Maintenance

Built in Security

Better Cloud Integration

There has been a great improvement in the last ten years in terms of the OS being able to attempt to “heal” itself, but I still think some work can be done. For example, let’s say your computer is unable to connect to your wireless router. The first thing I’d do is attempt a “repair” on the wireless adapter – why not automatically perform this operation if unable to connect? I’d like to see Windows 8 take on a more proactive role in attempting to resolve issues.

Again, much improvement has been made to simple maintenance routines in Windows over the years, but I’d like to see Windows perform more maintenance tasks in the background. For example, instead of only being able to schedule disk defragmentation (which Vista and Windows 7 does), I’d like to have the option for Windows to defragment on the fly. Another example would be for Windows to do a better job of cleaning up the registry– performing an automated cleanup of old registry entries similar to what the popular CCleaner program does.

Windows has had a built in Firewall since Windows XP, but why do we still need to download and install a separate Anti-malware application? Microsoft does offer Defender as a free download, but I’d like to see the next version of Windows include an anti-malware solution built in– with the ability to use a 3^rd party product of course– similar to how Microsoft handles other bundled tools such as Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player.

Microsoft really needs to step up it’s cloud platform services along with the integration of Windows. If they don’t, they will lose the OS war at some point to another cloud based provider such as Google. Microsoft has a lot of great cloud based services such as Mesh and Windows Live, but the integration with Windows is severely lacking. I think it’s feasible to think Microsoft could better integrate it’s Mesh service into Windows, providing for an always on, always available storage service. Backups could also be tied into the storage service allowing users to backup their data to Microsoft.

These are just a few of my wish list items for the next version of Windows – feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts!