Tuesday, July 9, 2013

Network Choices Windows

With Vista/Win7/8, you get the awful choice of Public/Work/Home for the *network* that you connect to.

Unfortunately, this is easily confusing to people who read "Public/Work/Home" for the *computer* that they're using. As in, the first thing that one might think about re: "Public" is that they want their computer to be *Public* (See me!) rather than private (I want to be hidden).

Frankly, I think this is a better question to ask... "You are on a new network. Do you want your computer to be Public (people can see and connect to your computer) or Private (people can't see your computer)." And that's about it.

It takes the ambiguity away ... I realize this argument can be presented in the other manner, but I'm writing this from a perspective of working with people who honestly don't understand computers in the way that I do, and if I, the computer guy, can comprehend this confusion on the users' behalf, I don't think it's an unreasonable position to state. A user who doesn't know the difference between a network and a computer can't be asked what to do on their network.


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