0x015

[EAMorical@aol.com]

Pete Here's my try on the orange questions.

>* being able to transparently encrypt data going to and from your
>computer via the network.
>* being able to transparently encrypt data stored on your computer
>["transparently" probably needs some help here]
>!['transparently' means that it's happening without the user's direct
>! intervention. That is, everything works the same way as it would if
>! there weren't encryption happening, and the user doesn't have to
>care.]

I assumed we want to fix 'transparently' in both questions. The only
thoughts I could come up with are changing 'transparently encrypt'
to 'encrypt in the background', or changing 'being able to transparently
encrypt' to 'Support for the encryption of'

>* prompt bugfixes
>[proposal to nuke this question. opinions?]
>![kimboo: by 'prompt bugfixes', I mean that when the people in charge
>! of the OS (or applications, I guess) get told about a bug, they
>! provide a bugfix for it in a short amount of time. I had assumed
>! that the actual patching of the bug would be automated. Nobody would
>! accept it if it weren't fully automated.]

Perhaps:
* Being able to obtain prompt bugfixes.

>* being able to automate certain administrative tasks (backups, defrags,
>virus scans, send/receive email via ISP after hours, update software
>database)

This question appears to contain two different ideas namely automating
certain tasks such as backup etc. and having certain tasks automatically
run at some preset time or schedule. Thus we could leave the question
very general such as
* Being able to automate administrative tasks.
or make two questions such as
* Being able to automate certain administrative tasks such as backups,
  defrags, virus scans, sending/receiving email via ISP, downloading
  software, and updating software databases.
The 'after hours' is awkward and why just on one.
* Being able to schedule certain administrative tasks such as backups,
  defrags, virus scans, sending/receiving email via ISP, downloading
  software, and updating software databases.
We could  also put several of the tasks into the Internet section.

>* being able to rapidly obtain a list of resources used by the system
>and hardware (IRQ's, DMA's, I/O ports, device names, chip type, speed,
>RAM present,
>     amount used by system, by processes, free, current  VRAM, max VRAM,
>average VRAM used)

Again this question appears to contain two different ideas namely installed
hardware and  system resources currently in use. Perhaps it could be
split into the following two questions:
* Being able to list the attributes of the installed hardware such as IRQ's,
  DMA's, I/O ports, device names, chip type, speed, and amount of RAM
  presert.
* Being able to track the current use of system resources such as memory
  used  by the system, memory used by the processes, free memory,
  maximum virtual memory, average virtual memory, and virtual memory
  currently in use.

>* getting a good measure of performance of the system (don't know if
>this is possible since all marks are relative to some extent)

Perhaps:
* Being able to measure system performance.

>* getting a list of all installed software, fixes, patches, version
>numbers, etc.

Perhaps:
* Being able to list installed software in terms of version number,
  patches or fixes.

>!* software brand reputation (good or bad)
>!* hardware brand reputation (good or bad)
>!  [was: brand reputation (good or bad)]
>  [was: corporate reputation]

Perhaps:
* How important is hardware brand reputation.
* How important is software brand reputation.

>Doug: want to write us some educational-software questions? I'd be
>happy to include them. Try to keep them kind of broad. Probably about
>three questions would be good:
>1.Availability of educational software 2.price issues 3.quality?
>brand-name companies? ability to read source code for it?
>what do you care about?

My problem with the above is why are we singling out education. Granted
education is important but I thought this was a general survey. We have
the general question 'availability of a wide variety of apps (commercial,
freeware?) '. We could replace 'commerical, freeware' with educational
etc. We could generate a set of questions for each major class of
software such as educational, we could have one set of questions and
ask what type (class) of software is important to you, we could have a
matrix or whatever.

Observation some questions start with a capital letter and some don't.
We should be consistant. Decide now change them as we get to them.

Bob