Worst. Interface. Ever.

The periods in the title are there for dramatic effect and do not accurately represent the author’s knowledge of English grammar.

The Safely Remove Hardware user interface in Windows XP and Vista needs to be re-designed. There, I’ve said it. Go forth and re-design, O ye architects of Windows.

If you want to safely remove a USB memory stick from your PC, the following steps are required:

1. Right-click the “Safely Remove Hardware” icon in the traybar and choose “Safely Remove Hardware” from the popup menu. 2 clicks.

2. Select the device you want to remove (though if there’s only one device in the list then it is already selected). 0 or 1 clicks.

3. Click the “Stop” button and then in the confirmation window click the “OK” button. 2 clicks.

4. In Vista, click the “OK” button that appears in the “This device can now be safely removed from the computer” message box. In XP, it’s optional, but you can click to hide the yellow popup notification bubble that appears above the traybar. I’m counting it as 1 click.

5. Click the “Close” button to close the “Safely Remove Hardware” window. 1 click.

Total of 6 or 7 mouse clicks!

This cumbersome interface causes users to skip the process and just pull out their USB memory stick from the PC when they think the system or application has finished using it.

Such users don’t realise* that just because the File Copy dialog says it’s finished copying doesn’t mean the operating system has finished writing to the device and that pulling out the stick may result in data loss.

* I’m Australian so am using British/Australian English spelling, much to the WordPress.com spellchecker’s horror.