Quake III operating system

Imagine the scene -- you've just booted up .. and you're in a long corridor. You can wander into different rooms (directorys). On the walls in each of these rooms are a load of cool looking, but currently blank TV screens.

Files are positioned in these rooms. A crate with the word 'CV.doc' on it. A Barrel with the word 'Family Photo' scrawled into it.

You can pick up any of the objects in the room -- and shove them in a slot underneath any of the TV screens on the wall. The screen flickers. Inside that screen you see MS Word displaying your CV. Clicking on that window allows you to edit your CV. When finished -- the TV screen on the wall dies - the file clunks out of the slot under the graphical TV and on to the floor.

You can pick the barrel (file) up and take it to a different room. Rename it using a 'virtual welder'. Or grab a shotgun and blow the £%^% out of the file -- in which case it gets deleted (after exploding satisfyingly).

The complex tasks we're used to -- such as wrestling with network connection settings so the bugger will work is now replaced with an 'end of level baddie'. A swarming mass of RJ45 leads and modems which you must dispose of using rail guns, plasma cannons and the like as he screams manically words at you such as 'DLL error' and 'Unable to establish connection'.

Virus attack? You see the virus as a morphing green 'blob monster' you can choose to take out yourself, or send in 'Norton' .. represented on screen as a crack-commando unit armed with AK47s and grenades -- just watch the fireworks!

System messages, rather then being relayed to you in a boring old 2D window .. an old clever looking professor runs up to you in the corridor and proceeds to tell you about them in a wild, erratic voice before running away down a corridor laughing like a mad fool.

Hours of fun, and you ain't even booted a game yet!