Don't Disable Error Reports
To the Editor:
Re your advice about removing highlighting in the Windows XP
Start menu (Q&A, Sept. 30): I work on Watson, the Windows error
reporting feature. Your advice was entirely correct: Properties,
click click, etc. But I don't think it's what the person really
wanted.
By disabling Watson, nothing really changes from the user's point
of view. The programs still crash, and you still get a dialog box
saying so. It's not the Watson dialog box offering to report the
problem; it's the old-school dialog. You get a box, you have to
click, there's no avoiding it.
What the user really wants is for the programs to stop crashing
in the first place. To get that, you need to keep Watson enabled,
and click on the Send button. We use the data, we really do! We're
fixing bugs!
You might on occasion get a response telling you about a new
version (with bug fixes) or a workaround. If you don't click on
Send, you surely won't.
Kirk Glerum
Redmond, Wash.
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