I’ve watched with interest the advertising campaign for Windows 7. Once again, I’m not one of the people who was asked to share what I wanted to see in my computer’s operating system before it was invented. If they had asked me, I probably wouldn’t have made the final cut of people who are proclaiming in commercials that they invented the program. I would have said, “I want it to be more like a Mac.”

I am not a Mac user now that I don’t occupy a desk at the EO. My home computer is a new one – a Christmas present from one of my children. It has Windows 7 and it is indeed more like the Mac operating system. It also appears to work better than earlier systems. However, what fascinates me with the campaign is the concept that regular people can give input into what their computer does or doesn’t do. Operating on that premise I have a few suggestions for those who develop e-mail programs, internet businesses and word programs.

First – and always foremost – would the makers of Word, Word Perfect, Works and all the other word processing programs figure out once and for all that Walla Walla really exists? If I blindly accepted spell-check, everything I write about the fine city to our north would be happening in Walla, Wash. C’mon folks. Stop being geographically challenged. At least allow us to teach our individual programs that it should always accept Walla Walla.

Community Editor Tammy Malgesini and I wish that all e-mail programs were compatible. The EO has Macs and I can’t tell you how many times people there have to translate the gibberish that results from setting something off in quote marks or italics. Random numbers, semi-colons, ampersands and other symbols come before and after each phrase.

It also bothers Tammy and me when e-mails are dated for some distant date in the future. My computer knows what day it is. Why can’t it date e-mail arrival instead of the sender?

Another pet peeve: When I order something on the internet, please tell me as part of the order where the warehouse that will ship it is located. If it’s coming from Hood River, I can use standard shipping while if it’s coming from Maine I might want to expedite it. As things stand now, you don’t know where something ships from until it has actually shipped – too late to upgrade to a faster method. (And before you write and tell me I should be shopping locally, I’d like to point out that nowhere in Pendleton is there a place that carries tall, size 6, straight leg, mid-rise jeans for under $25 or 32-by-32 men’s red and green plaid pants.)

I love search engines. However, I’d like to see an end to the use of the word “free” unless it’s totally and completely free. For example, when trying to find a person, a people-finder site might say there’s no charge, but that’s just to find out there are 35 people with that name in various places. To find out the phone numbers or addresses you need to pay. What’s so free about that?

I’d also like to have an option to view all e-mails as plain text in black and white. I know people spend a great deal of time creating stationary and using colored fonts, but I see better in black and white. Purple letters on green backgrounds tend to dance before my eyes.

Of course, I’m preaching to the choir here. Neither Microsoft nor Mac has asked me how to improve things to my liking. However, my Windows 7 does remind me of the Mac OS X that I used to enjoy at the newspaper. So, maybe I’ve begun to develop the other thing I want in a computer. I want it to read my mind.

“Home Front” by Terry Murry is published every other Sunday. She can be reached at tmmurry@hotmail.com. (Thanks to the other TM, Tammy Malgesini, for her help in nitpicking this week.)