Dumb Notification
by Karthi
I am trying to get familiar with Win 7 on my newly resurrected work laptop. It is taking time to get at ease due to some badly made software. The software in question is the utility by Intel and it’s notification system. It is supposed to save power or enhance performances as the need may be.
The utility comes with ‘In your face’ kind of notification window, that cannot be closed, minimized or sent to background. It stays on for more ~5 minutes (I wonder what kind of actions takes that long to complete) right in the middle of the screen and preventing you from doing anything. This notification just derails the current thought process and increases the frustration levels to new high. The software gives no option to disable notifications. A good design will enable users to decide the level of notification that they wish to see.
Here is peek on how the software manages to increase the performances. It asks me to close the utility ‘Increase Performance’. Now this is pure commonsense, but unfortunately it doesn’t have anything similar for saving power. Also it notifies that I can restart these applications after, which makes wonder what is hidden secrete sauce?