Features I wish operating systems had

[carbonmotion]

so the other day there i was writing my midterm paper, i was on page 15/26 when I realized that i had to go get a pop from the vending machine. now i was on the school's lab G5s and saved the document on the desktop... yes i know the computer wipes everything clean when you log out and stuff so i dragged the file from the desktop to the network space, locked the screen and proceeded to take a break. i got back and kept on typing... by the time i finished i was ready to save a gain by the keyboard stopped working and some back ground stuff crashed so i can't alt tab out of word. quickly while the mouse still worked i clicked save... the save a window came out but i can't type anything... so that got me thinking, wouldn't it be nice if operating systems remembered where the original file got moved to and the document in progress remained linked to the saved document? luckily i had a digital camera with me and was able to take screen shots of the lost pages before rebooting... no harm no foul, but still that would be a nice feature to have.

2ghz g5
1.5 gb RAM
10.3.9 with umich flavoring
using ms word 04
running mail preview and safari in the background at the time

 

[mad jew]

What app are you using?

 

[carbonmotion]

What app are you using?

MS Word 04 on Panther.3.9

 

[gwuMACaddict]

what... when my computer crashes (raaaaarely), word always remembers what i had typed...

 

[carbonmotion]

what... when my computer crashes (raaaaarely), word always remembers what i had typed...

the lab machines are reset/cleared when you reboot or logout b/c it runs with the school's kerbors networking thing

 

[mad jew]

Yeah, I'm the same as gwuMACaddict. I use Word a lot and it's only ever crashed on me once. I reopened it and it had kept all my changes.

I'm not sure if it helps, but if the keyboard isn't responding (for whatever reason) you can navigate to your old file with the mouse, click on it's name and press save and the new file will be saved over the old one.

 

[carbonmotion]

Yeah, I'm the same as gwuMACaddict. I use Word a lot and it's only ever crashed on me once. I reopened it and it had kept all my changes.

I'm not sure if it helps, but if the keyboard isn't responding (for whatever reason) you can navigate to your old file with the mouse, click on it's name and press save and the new file will be saved over the old one.

still it'd be a nice feature to have

 

[mad jew]

still it'd be a nice feature to have

Yeah, I know. I swear we used to be able to do it though. I've been looking through the Word preferences and can't find anything. I just remember seeing an option somewhere to have the Save dialogue box come up with a set folder (Documents for example) or the last place you saved to.

Also, if I save a file and keep it open, it continues to save to the same spot. I think I'm a little confused, sorry.

 

[Guntis]

Concrete info on file replacement

Currently when there are two files with the same finle name, OS tells me that there is older/newer file and would I like to replace it. I'd like to see more detailed info as in Windows - creation and modification dates and file size of both files. Is it so hard to give me this option?...
And when there are 2 identical folders, please, give me another button "Merge folder content", so I can add files from the source folder into destination, without deleting destination folder before moving source files and folders there...

 

[neocell]

Automatic Finding/Syncing/Deleting Feature

I think it would be cool for an operating system to have an automatic syncing system that when you add a new file to your HD it checks to see if there's any other files on your hard drive with the same name/metadata whatever, and ask if you'd like to: - transfer to the same folder, delete/replace, rename etc.
It shouldn't be too hard with the spotlight backbone already created, just a bit of tweaking. I have so many duplicate files as I have 2 home computers and 4 work computers as well as an usb key, and I have similar files, in various stages of progression, on all of them. Yeah I should be more organized but I think an option like this would be a cool addition to OSX