 VMware design stupidity
Monday, 24 March 2008
Here’s proof that sometimes software designers make really, really stupid decisions.
Like a lot of other web development professionals who use Linux for their development environment but also need access to MS Windows applications, I run VMware Server to access the corporate MS Office applications, including email.
Using a feature called “snapshots”, VMware allows me to take a “snapshot” of everything that’s on my allocated hard drive partition, in case I want to restore my entire partition as some point in the future.
This is actually a good thing in principle, except the VMware designers have made two interface blunders, which have huge ramifications for users:
- The default setting for the software is to enable the “snapshots” feature.
- With a click of one button you can destroy everything you have on your hard drive partition.
- The software offers no undo facility, so the destruction is permanent.
At some point, some six months ago, I must have taken a snapshot by clicking on the little VMware clock icon with the sun on it. VMware just took a “snapshot” of all the software and data files I had, without asking if I was sure.
Fair enough, I have no problem with that.
A couple of days ago, while updating some documentation, I clumsily went a little too far “up” with the mouse pointer, and instead of clicking on a menu item in MS Word, I clicked the little VMware clock icon with the arrow on it instead. VMware just restored all the software and data files back to some six months ago, without asking if I was sure.
And I have a big problem with that because not only do I have to reinstall a bunch of software from scratch, I’ve also lost some documents which I had been working on that day.
Confirmation dialogs are meant to warn users about dangerous actions. While I admit that they don’t always work because users often form the habit of dismissing them, that is their purpose. When you have software which restores your whole system to some point back in time at the click of a single button, and when that software just allows you to destroy everything you currently have without confirmation of any kind, and when that software offers no way to undo the damage, then that software is stupid.
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