I will also paste them here to make others know… and to collect some comments from readers of Web Review.

• Command line (cmd.exe) is the same since Windows XP (or 2000). It should be nice see some improvement. For example, there isn’t no hotkey for paste text in the clipboard: you’re obliged to right-click and select “paste” from the drop down box.
• When I try to create an homegroup, Windows says that it can be created only on home network… but my network is still flagged as “home”.
• “Parent folder” button in Windows Explorer is missing!
• Generally, mouse wheel click close a tab: the same action on applications in the application bar opens a new window of the app clicked, this appears as strange to the final user. It should be better if wheel click CLOSE the application.
• I tought about a new feature: it would be nice if Windows give us a restart option to “skip entering password on next boot” (e.g. keeping a key pressed while clicking on “restart”).I keep my desktop password-protected, but sometimes I need to reboot it to complete some operations (e.g. the installation of an antivirus and its initial complete scan, etc.) and I’d like to go away and then return to find my desktop ready to operate. Activating a one-time “no-password-boot” mode would fill this need.
• Linux (Gnome) users are able to use their mouse wheel to adjust main sound volume when the pointer is above the speaker icon in the systray. In Windows 7 you can do the same thing, but only after clicking the icon itself. Can we have the same behavior on Windows 7? This is very comfortable.
• “Recent documents” option, as seen in Windows XP, was very useful. Now the same feature is spread in other parts of the OS, but it would be nice to restore also the old one: Start menu is huge, there will be place also for it.
• The ability to natively mount a SSH filesystem as drive would be a great feature to add for web developers (and in general for people that works with Linux systems), in addiction of FTP mount (that is already present). Linux users are able to do this from mists of time, but other systems seem to ignore SSH protocol. It would be also an important feature by comparison with Mac, that also needs additional applications to do this.
• Windows Internet Explorer is slowly loosing the Browser war. Please – a least – replace Trident with another render engine. There are open source platforms as Gecko or Webkit that work like a charm… why continue to waste time and money to mantain a proprietary solution that is worse than them… while web developers from all over the World curse Microsoft?
• Right-click on the desktop now allows access only to “screen resoluton” and “personalize” control panels. It would be better to restore the old, single “screen properties” (maybe with an enhanced or easier layout), to get every option about the screen and the monitor.
• NEW: Live TV playback from a DVB-T USB Key connected to my desktop is fine on the monitor, but it’s deinterlaced to 25fps (half rate) when watching it streamed to my Xbox 360 extender.

… and now a couple of “personal problems”

• I’ve a Dell SP2009W Monitor, with integrated webcam and microphone. The Webcam works very well with Vista drivers, but mic don’t: it is listed in recording devices as “Microphone Array” (Monitor Webcam), but if I try to set it up as default recording device and configure it, Windows 7 says:
  “The Wizard could not start – Make sure your audio hardware is working properly and check your audio configuration in the Audio Devices and Sound Themes control panel.”
• Printers and file sharing doesn’t work with a Mac Mini connected to my LAN.
  [PROBLEM SOLVED!] See first comment in http://www.raneri.it/blog/eng/index.php/2009/01/15/avast-antivirus-causes-bsod-on-windows-7-beta/
  Network Error Windows cannot access \\MAC-MINI
  Check the spelling of the name. Otherwise, there might be a problem with your network. To try to identify and resolve network problems, click Diagnose.
  Error code: 0×80070035
  The network path was not found.
  

Long answer:
Do you know that e-mail comes from the early ’70s?

One upon a time… only militar people – and then univerities – had access to the Internet (aka ARPANET), and nobody thought that one day anyone will connect to each other with one, unique, world-wide network, without fines. So e-mail protocol was understandably invented without any protection to prevent sending unwanted informations.

Today I can open my notebook, start my e-mail client, type a random e-mail address like bob@aol.com (sorry Bob, I bet you’re resigned) and send him anything I want. It can be an electronic postcard, a joke, an abuse, or simply a spam e-mail.
There’s nothing that can stop me, and I can send 1, 100, 1.000.000.000 of these e-mails (for the last example… maybe with an automatic software). The controls on what I’m sending it’s done when the e-mail are already sent, and there’s no “institutional” systems that prevent my spam to reach its target: only spam filters are able to block it, only a fraction of second before it reaches the recipient’s inbox folder.

The results are under the eyes of everyone: the load of spam in our inbox folder is variable and it’s bound to the performance of the spam filter of our provider (some better, some worse), and it never reaches zero. This is normal: spam filters are based on euristic and experimental methods; they are based on spam lists, “bad” words filtering, manual reports by users… but all of these methods are intended to mitigate the problem, are not able to resolv it, because it’s impossible to fix spam on a system that it’s born when spam didn’t exist.

Europe is in the middle of the process of switch-off for terrestrial broadcasting (we’re passing from 20’s analogic standards to DVB-T in the next years), IPv6 is coming, Netscape is dead but we’re still sending e-mails to each other with the same ’70s protocol, without a definitive spam block system. Spam costs reaches 10 billion a year worldwide. Isn’t the time to take a decision and stop it?

If we decide tomorrow to switch off (it’s sufficient to make providers block, with an international concordance of the main industrialized countries, a couple of ports used by SMTP and POP3 servers to make the old e-mail system hard to use for anyone, and then improfitable for spammers) the current mail servers – worldwide – and to start a new system, costs will be huge… but with a current 10 billion a year we can think about it.

How the new e-mail system should be? It’s better that a real expert will answer this question (maybe we should ask Ray Tomlinson)… I can give you my idea, also to void CAPTCHAs, that are so boring and they aren’t the definitive solution:

A free registration to an international organization, paid by our taxes, that gives and revoke licenses (with login and password) and automatically monitors e-mail traffic of everyone (don’t scream about privacy, also the last tech employee of your provider can read your e-mail today and you’ll never know it). In the case of “strange” traffic (or in the case of complaint) it will block your e-mails and directly contact you to ask an explanation.

I bet this is enough to solve the problem forever. Anyway it’s only my idea, I hope someone else will post its suggestions.

“Dear Linux“,

I esteem you very much: since several years, you’re the only and real alternative to Microsoft Windows (and to Apple OS). A free alternative, the result of an intensive collaboration between thousands of international open source developers.

You’re already famous to be a wonderful server platform: Linux and Apache are spread and worldwide appreciated; the launch of the most recent distro’s (like Ubuntu, of course) demonstrated that Linux is ready to be a plausible desktop system.

BUT.

But after all those efforts, after every try to transform Linux to make it look like a “normal” operating system, for home use… there’s always something wrong.
Everytime I read debates on web forums between Windows and Linux users I ask to myself the reason why Linux developers don’t do that final step. Why don’t you want to change those (not many) details that prevent final users to approach this great operating system?

I made a list of 3 things to do… to make Linux become an easy desktop system. I’m sorry, I’m not a developer (I’m just able to code scripts for web pages).
Please do them for me. Please do them for us

1. Software installation
Linux OS installation is usually easy, at least like Windows (sometimes Linux is quicker!). How can it be possible that, if I want to install a new application that isn’t included by default (in Synaptic, etc…) I still have to type hard-to-remember commands?
Same discourse about editing repositories lists (do you call this “intuitive”?); I deliberately omit the hypothesis about self-compiling from sources.
I saw that (recently) there was some efforts in this way (Autopackage). It’s imperative to make this (or a similar one) the default installation platform for Linux desktop systems.
Stop waiting users to learn how to install Linux binaries, they will not do it. They’re only waiting to do double-click on an icon and to see a wizard.

2. System Setup
Yesterday I was playing with a new install of Kubuntu: in the control panel there is a lot of options: I can customize every small corner of my desktop, from the look of the windows to the number of virtual desktops.
Unfortunately, I can’t change resolution of the screen to 1440×900 (my monitor is a 16:10) because the res selector show me only 640×480, 800×600 and 1024×768. I had to change manually the config file of the Window manager to add this resolution… after a reboot it was perfect. Why it didn’t appear in the control panel?
Do you expect that a person without good general experience with computers will understand that he has to open a terminal window, type sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf, scroll to “Screen” section of the text file, add its custom resolution, save and reboot?
I remember that, when I had a CRT monitor, I spent about 45 minutes to search informations on the Internet about how to raise screen refresh from 60Hz to 85Hz. THIS is an important part of a good control panel, people need this: icons, colours and windows transparency can wait.
Any ordinary setting that an average user would want to change must be accessible by windows/buttons/sliders, using the mouse. Microsoft Windows does it, why Linux can’t?

3. Drivers
… see point 1. Newest Linux distributions are very good with hardware recognition: I installed Kubuntu on my home PC and it dectected more peripherals than Windows. But if a single device is not automatically recognized during first install, it’s the end.
Driver installation must be easy as installing an application in Windows: download a file from the web, double click on it and follow instructions.
In addiction: we know that Linux is penalized by hardware manufacturers, and often single developers release home-made drivers for devices that aren’t officially supported. It’s important to create a global repository of drivers on the Web, to let users save time and find the most part of their drivers in a single place.

You can say that I’m polemic. You can say also that I’m rude and ungrateful, but this isn’t the sense of my post. I wrote this open letter because I find ironic to have a so good and FREE operating system like Linux is, and to see it incomplete.
The features I talked about above are so easy to implement (for skiled persons like Linux developers are). Add them to Linux and I promise you that it will start its hyke to Windows monopoly.