Oh yes, I'm the great pretender

'Infinity is where you transfer from one parallel line to another' and 'time heals all non-fatal wounds' are two of my favourite sayings - and 'the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train'.

This last one is from the ex-Labour Chancellor Dennis Healy, but the first two come from Minims, a small book of essentially daft sayings.

Another one I like is 'the more things change, the more they stay insane'.

It was this last one that sprang to mind as I played with Release Candidate 2 of Windows 98. Please don't be too jealous that I get these behind-the-scene glimpses of the business.

I am a computer industry columnist and therefore I have access to lots of major computer industry secrets - it comes with the job and, of course, I am sworn to secrecy.

I, for example, know where those files that you thought were on your hard disk went. As I'm sure you'll understand, I can't say where they are, but let us say they are at a better place, where the rides are free and they don't have to queue.

So, I have been using Windows 98 for a couple of months, and here is the problem: it looks just like Windows 95. Not a little like. Not even it reminds me of. But it looks exactly like Windows 95, which is very confusing.

Most of us have grown up with the massive leaps that went on between the releases of Windows. Windows 2 to Windows 3 (is this the same program?); Windows 3 to Windows 3.1 (okay, not a major change but what happens if I click here?); and then Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 (run for your lives, it has mutated into something we don't understand).

But Windows 95 to Windows 98 - nothing, nada, do you get my drift? So, how are we going to know that we have upgraded to a new system?

There are no obvious clues, no telltale signs that someone looking over your shoulder would notice and say: 'Hey what's that?' And you have to reply in that rather smug voice: 'Oh, it's Windows 98, haven't you seen it yet?'

And what are the Macintosh users going to do when they can't point to something new in Windows and say: 'Oh, we've had that for years.'

We will now have to look to NT 5 to introduce some sort of change or inconsistency. We don't want much, just something different that will have punters scratching their heads.

It's a worrying trend: producing a front end that you'll understand if you've used the previous version. But what will happen if all software is like this? What will the computer press write about? What will happen to all those help books? Does Microsoft know what it's doing? It's going to wreck everything we have worked for.

As my little book says: 'It is difficult to repair a watch while falling from an aeroplane.' And there is no arguing with that.

Chris Long is a freelance IT journalist.