Microsoft patents Operating System Shutdown

http://www.conceivablytech.com/2530/products/microsoft-patents-operating-system-shutdown/

by ferostar • 16 years ago

32 13 16 years ago

sprout• 16 years ago

Specifically they're patenting graceful shutdown of a graphical windowing environment, with a series of prompts to ask the user if they are sure that they want to terminate processes that cannot be gracefully stopped.

All of it seems blindingly obvious, but then it also doesn't look like a claim against any non-Windows OS would last 10 seconds in a court, as there are a ton of clearly Windows-specific claims.

terinjokes• 16 years ago

Actually, I read the patent differently. They seem to be claiming that a series of prompts is slow to the user, and that they've invented a more efficient and faster system.

1) Non-GUI applications (or applications without a window) should be terminated automatically 2) Applications with a top window can veto, but when they do the other applications are removed from the screen, so that the user can focus on the application veto-ing. 3) Users can be presented with a "Shut Down Now" button, to force the shutdown, ignoring any application vetoes.

Also, remember the description is not part of the patent, only the claims section is. As far as I see, the claims are OS-agnostic.

ithkuil• 16 years ago

I don't see that differently from what other graphical OS do; of course there are minor differences but both macosx and gnome (didn't check other linux GUIs) have something similar.

I'm not saying that they didn't copy it from windows, but I think the features were there before microsoft filed this patent (2005).

kenjackson• 16 years ago

It does seem obvious. Can anyone point to the first OS to do this, enumerate processes that won't shut down and give the user the ability to do so?

It would be somewhat remarkable if this never was done until 2005.

whyme• 16 years ago

That's all right. Using my Mac I rarely have to anyway... and really wonder if I even need to.

bigfudge• 16 years ago

Admittedly the parent post is somewhat fanboyish, but it's true that the macbook (and imac) sleep functions are light years ahead of most PC laptops. They sleep very quickly on closing the lid, and resume fast too... I've never found sleep to be as effective on Dells given to me by work.

walkon• 16 years ago

Avoiding reboots in definitely preferred. I've heard very good things about Mac's sleep speeds, but I have a home built PC and Lenovo ThinkPad that do ok. They take around 5-10 seconds to go from in or out of sleep which is fast enough that I don't think about it and I usually only reboot to install Microsoft Updates, which is a different story.

Calamitous• 16 years ago

So did they file this patent, or were they awarded this patent? I'm not familiar enough with patent terminology to tease this info out of the article.

lanstein• 16 years ago

Awarded. Link: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sec...

mattmanser2• 16 years ago

Pity that they're incapable of actually implementing this properly.

mattmanser2• 16 years ago

Sod the d/vs, they really have utterly failed at implementing this properly.

In win7 on shutdown on various different computers I constantly get empty dialogs saying "waiting for the following windows to close:"

With an entirely empty dialog...

The actual offending programs are Outlook and Steam. But MS programmers screwed up the implementation of this patent.

Just another example of a patent being worth jack without implementation.

joeybaker• 16 years ago

As a patent on a process instead of on an actual product, how does this kind of patent tend to fare in the courts?

mootothemax• 16 years ago

The flowchart seems to describe the current Windows 7 shutdown sequence. As much as I hate to say it: if this is so obvious, why hasn't any other operating system implemented it?

Microsoft patents Operating System Shutdown

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