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Then you go in and stop the task. Apps are only allowed certain background functionality. It's reserved for always-on stuff like VOIP, Music, and IM, or for things like notifications. You can control which apps can push notifications via a central notification control area in PC settings. For the other tasks like Music and VOIP, it's your job to end the call or stop music playback.

See the following resources for more implementation specific information:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=27411
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsappdev/archive/2012/05/24/being-productive-in-the-background-background-tasks.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsappdev/archive/2012/05/16/being-productive-when-your-app-is-offscreen.aspx?wa=wsignin1.0
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsappdev/archive/2012/04/10/managing-app-lifecycle-so-your-apps-feel-quot-always-alive-quot.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/11/08/building-a-power-smart-general-purpose-windows.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/11/02/updating-live-tiles-without-draining-your-battery.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/04/17/reclaiming-memory-from-metro-style-apps.aspx

Then you go in and stop the task. Apps are only allowed certain background functionality. It's reserved for always-on stuff like VOIP, Music, and IM, or for things like notifications. You can control which apps can push notifications via a central notification control area in PC settings. For the other tasks like Music and VOIP, it's your job to end the call or stop music playback.

See the following resources for more implementation specific information:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=27411
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsappdev/archive/2012/05/24/being-productive-in-the-background-background-tasks.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsappdev/archive/2012/05/16/being-productive-when-your-app-is-offscreen.aspx?wa=wsignin1.0
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsappdev/archive/2012/04/10/managing-app-lifecycle-so-your-apps-feel-quot-always-alive-quot.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/11/08/building-a-power-smart-general-purpose-windows.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/11/02/updating-live-tiles-without-draining-your-battery.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/04/17/reclaiming-memory-from-metro-style-apps.aspx

Then you go in and stop the task. Apps are only allowed certain background functionality. It's reserved for always-on stuff like VOIP, Music, and IM, or for things like notifications. You can control which apps can push notifications via a central notification control area in PC settings. For the other tasks like Music and VOIP, it's your job to end the call or stop music playback.

See the following resources for more implementation specific information:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=27411
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsappdev/archive/2012/05/24/being-productive-in-the-background-background-tasks.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsappdev/archive/2012/05/16/being-productive-when-your-app-is-offscreen.aspx?wa=wsignin1.0
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsappdev/archive/2012/04/10/managing-app-lifecycle-so-your-apps-feel-quot-always-alive-quot.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/11/08/building-a-power-smart-general-purpose-windows.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/11/02/updating-live-tiles-without-draining-your-battery.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/04/17/reclaiming-memory-from-metro-style-apps.aspx

Then you go in and stop the task. Apps are only allowed certain background functionality. It's reserved for always-on stuff like VOIP, Music, and IM, or for things like notifications. You can control which apps can push notifications via a central notification control area in PC settings. For the other tasks like Music and VOIP, it's your job to end the call or stop music playback.

See the following resources for more implementation specific information:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=27411
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsappdev/archive/2012/05/24/being-productive-in-the-background-background-tasks.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsappdev/archive/2012/05/16/being-productive-when-your-app-is-offscreen.aspx?wa=wsignin1.0
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsappdev/archive/2012/04/10/managing-app-lifecycle-so-your-apps-feel-quot-always-alive-quot.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/11/08/building-a-power-smart-general-purpose-windows.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/11/02/updating-live-tiles-without-draining-your-battery.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/04/17/reclaiming-memory-from-metro-style-apps.aspx

Then again, it might not be overclocking after all.

More relevantly, Microsoft has access to an enormous wealth of data about hardware failures from Windows Error Reporting. This paper has some fascinating data in it:

- Machines with at least 30 days of accumulated CPU time over an 8 month period had a 1 in 190 chance of crashing due to a CPU subsystem fault
- Machines that crashed once had a probability of 1 in 3.3 of crashing a second time
- The probability of a hard disk failure in the first 5 days of uptime is 1 in 470
- Once you've had one hard disk failure, the probability of a second failure is 1 in 3.4
- Once you've had two failures, the probability of a third failure is 1 in 1.9

Conclusion: When you get a hard disk failure, replace the drive immediately.

Microsoft found similar impossible bugs when overclocking was involved.

Wrong again.

From http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsstore/archive/2012/07/20/making-money-with-your-apps-through-the-windows-store.aspx [msdn.com]

You're comparing a large, established, successful app store with hundreds of thousands of apps to a fledgling MS store with 20,000 apps. Apples to Oranges. Come back when the stores are comparable. Nothing yet indicates MS' model is even successful, much less better than Apple's. Companies that get a late start often try to attract business by offering their services at a loss or under some other unsustainable system with a plan to alter said system in the future.

For example, this wouldn't happen on Windows Store.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fasterforward/2011/02/apple_bans_sony_e-reader_app_a.html

The correct quote would be "hasn't happened yet". Windows store is just starting. Give it time and their shenanigans will too.

Sorry, but Apple apologists like you need to come up with a better defense of Apple than trying to muddy up things by saying "everyone else is doing it". They're simply not.

Effectively he was just saying "you don't know what you're talking about" concerning app store business models. Your post does nothing to refute that.

Or even a server. In spite of your low /. id#, that made me laugh.

Windows 8, Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 HPC are all essentially the same OS. GUI aside, so is WP8.

That's one set of services that run from your phone onto top-25 caliber supercomputer clusters. WP8 aside, you can write one program and have that binary run, without recompiling or any code changes, on Windows 8 and a top-tier compute cluster. Hell, pay a few tens of thousands of dollars and you can take your app from your desktop and run it on an Azure compute cluster scaled nearly as high as your money will go.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2012/11/13/windows-azure-benchmarks-show-top-performance-for-big-compute.aspx

Might find that informative.

No. It isn't. The only people who think that are those that have an axe to grind with Apple.

a) Pretty much every other app store out there has the same deal and, more importantly

No, stop playing the "poor Apple" card.

This is about in-app purchases like Netflix subscriptions, ebook stores etc. Not 30% cut of apps.

Wrong - it's about the 30% cut. What in-app purchases does office have again?

Seriously, the only people who still bring this up (and mod it "Insightful" on /.) are those who are utterly ignorant of reality and just want to gripe about Apple (while ignoring all the other app stores operating under the same terms)

Wrong again.

From http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsstore/archive/2012/07/20/making-money-with-your-apps-through-the-windows-store.aspx [msdn.com]

I see nothing there that says that MS will not take their 30/20% cut. What I do see is allowing third party payment processors. I'd guess, based on the fact that the statement includes original payment for the app itself, that you wind up registering your payment processor through MS, and MS continues to take their cut. How else would they know (or care) if the payment provider is PCI compliant?

For example, this wouldn't happen on Windows Store.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fasterforward/2011/02/apple_bans_sony_e-reader_app_a.html

http://www.tuaw.com/2011/02/21/apple-rejects-readability-due-to-subscription-policy-where-wi/

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/retailing/article/48130-apple-forces-e-tailers-to-remove-in-app-links-kobo-to-offer-html5-browser-ereader.html

This wouldn't have happened on the Windows Store and probably not on Play Store as well(you can always sell an APK directly for sideloading or use one of the 3rd party stores on Android).

Sorry, but Apple apologists like you need to come up with a better defense of Apple than trying to muddy up things by saying "everyone else is doing it". They're simply not.

You make a grand statement for a store that's been up just a couple of months. No one knows what MS will or won't do with their store. What we do know is that MS's store makes Apple's App Store look like an open garden in comparison. So this entire set of "examples" are merely a red herring with a healthy dose of speculation and a set of blinders.

A number of apps seem to have.

From http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2012/11/27/microsoft-we-have-sold-40-million-windows-8-licenses-thus-far/

Microsoft also informed TNW that a number of Windows 8 applications have crested the $25,000 revenue mark. It is at that threshold that applications pay only a 20% cut to Microsoft, and not the normal 30% fee

Also, see
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/kevinash/archive/2012/10/31/my-windows-8-app-approaching-100-000-downloads.aspx

No. It isn't. The only people who think that are those that have an axe to grind with Apple.

a) Pretty much every other app store out there has the same deal and, more importantly

No, stop playing the "poor Apple" card.

This is about in-app purchases like Netflix subscriptions, ebook stores etc. Not 30% cut of apps.

Seriously, the only people who still bring this up (and mod it "Insightful" on /.) are those who are utterly ignorant of reality and just want to gripe about Apple (while ignoring all the other app stores operating under the same terms)

Wrong again.

From http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsstore/archive/2012/07/20/making-money-with-your-apps-through-the-windows-store.aspx [msdn.com]

Using your own billing system

Your app and service may already depend on a particular transaction provider or benefit from ties to other lines of business. Your customers want the trust and efficiency of a familiar, trusted transaction experience. You can use your own transaction provider within your app to provide the experience your customers expect.

If you are not using the Windows Store as your transaction provider, you will want to make sure that your app meets all of the certification requirements such as: Identifying the transaction provider to the user during purchase confirmation Prompt the user for authentication before processing the transaction Your payment processor must meet the current PCI Data Security Standard

For example, this wouldn't happen on Windows Store.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fasterforward/2011/02/apple_bans_sony_e-reader_app_a.html

http://www.tuaw.com/2011/02/21/apple-rejects-readability-due-to-subscription-policy-where-wi/

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/retailing/article/48130-apple-forces-e-tailers-to-remove-in-app-links-kobo-to-offer-html5-browser-ereader.html

This wouldn't have happened on the Windows Store and probably not on Play Store as well(you can always sell an APK directly for sideloading or use one of the 3rd party stores on Android).

Sorry, but Apple apologists like you need to come up with a better defense of Apple than trying to muddy up things by saying "everyone else is doing it". They're simply not.

This is about in-app subscriptions. Microsoft, unlike Apple does not mandate that you need to use their in-app purchasing model. The Kindle app on Windows 8/WP8 would be allowed to sell books in app or link to the Kindle's site. On iOS, Kindle was forced to remove even a link to the Kindle site.

From http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsstore/archive/2012/07/20/making-money-with-your-apps-through-the-windows-store.aspx

Using your own billing system

Your app and service may already depend on a particular transaction provider or benefit from ties to other lines of business. Your customers want the trust and efficiency of a familiar, trusted transaction experience. You can use your own transaction provider within your app to provide the experience your customers expect.

If you are not using the Windows Store as your transaction provider, you will want to make sure that your app meets all of the certification requirements such as: Identifying the transaction provider to the user during purchase confirmation Prompt the user for authentication before processing the transaction Your payment processor must meet the current PCI Data Security Standard

So, Microsoft is not being a hypocrite here while Apple is trying to install a toll on every bought on an iOS device, even if you stop using the iDevice after a month and use the service on other devices, Apple wants 30% of the entire subscription. Guess which company gets a free pass on HN while criticism is piled on which company even while developer freedom is compromised before our very eyes. Everyone raised hell when MS proposed Palladium but when Apple implemented the Palladium spec to the letter the same journalists were stepping over each other to praise the iDevices. Same here, misinformation is being spread about the 30% cut by Apple afficionados to blame Microsoft while another facet of developer freedom is lost.

All VLC donators should withhold their money until VLC's devs can prove they no longer wish to legitimize Windows 8's closed "ecosystem" and radically wrong "Modern" UI. They should wait until the devs can agree to skip this version (and instead improve support and integration with earlier Windowses as needed until 9 arrives). Even one dollar will convince MS that people think 8 is some "necessary evil" and keep them from immediately apologizing for that dreck.

It's one thing to, say, force programs (by default UAC settings) to save docs and settings away from the Program Files folders (which should've been the norm anyway), as Vista and 7 do; it's another to drop the Start button to make people want to buy a whole new computer with an inherently less-precise touch interface, or ban freely-developed programs outright (on Windows RT, at least) to force programmers to pay for admission to the API and app store. There are other (larger?) problems, but those alone require us to send a friendly reminder that developers (developers developers...) within and without MS made prior Windowses usable in the first place, and that we have not authorized career marketers to fuck up what could've been a decent OS.

Here you go: the guy who wrote the .NET system explaining just why they are slow - in detail, lots of detail.

Performance in particular is detailed near the end, find "Performance and Trends" if you can't cope with the first half:

However, there is a serious long term performance problem with exceptions and this must be factored into your decision.

Consider some of the things that happen when you throw an exception:

        Grab a stack trace by interpreting metadata emitted by the compiler to guide our stack unwind.
        Run through a chain of handlers up the stack, calling each handler twice.
        Compensate for mismatches between SEH, C++ and managed exceptions.
        Allocate a managed Exception instance and run its constructor. Most likely, this involves looking up resources for the various error messages.
        Probably take a trip through the OS kernel. Often take a hardware exception.
        Notify any attached debuggers, profilers, vectored exception handlers and other interested parties.

This is light years away from returning a -1 from your function call. Exceptions are inherently non-local, and if there's an obvious and enduring trend for today's architectures, it's that you must remain local for good performance.

So let's say that Microsoft promised a market of X users.
Okay, great. Let's assume that for right now, X is 41 million.

Let's assume that of that market, (just for numbers) 1 million is using Surface tablets. So that's a market of 41 million WinRT API/Modern UI/Store devices. Got it. Limit yourself to the ARM devices only: You cut out 40 million possible users. Users like me, who'd actually purchase the game if they could even without a touch screen computer. (I wanted to play this on my laptop....)

Awesome. So you're stuck with 2.4% of the market of clients that could run your product, and you make 52 euros.
What if the same rate of people bought your product if you made it available to 100% of the market?
52 / x = 2.4 / 100 .... x ~= 2080

So by the act of clicking a SIMPLE CHECK MARK they could have potentially tapped this market. --- http://blogs.msdn.com/cfs-filesystemfile.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-30-15-metablogapi/2112.image111_5F00_551F8980.png --- (yes, it's really that easy)

On windows 8, when you're coding for arm on an x86/x64 machine. your IDE and compiler and simulator are all executing x86/x64 code. You cross compile for testing on ARM device or for distribution. You get x86/x64/arm all at once. There are no code changes to make / porting to do. Limiting it to ARM devices only is a CHOICE of the developer.

Microsoft's design is that I should be able to install the same app on my tablet or my laptop or my desktop if I so choose. The developer blames Microsoft for not having an option that says "you can only download/use the metro app on tablet formfactor devices" and/or a way to enforce this restriction . The developer has a contract that says they can make this game for only tablet formfactor devices(for some awful reason). So to bypass this, they compiled it for ARM only to comply with their supposed restrictions.

They could have increased potential revenue by an insane amount. Instead they locked out 97.6% of the market.

Of course, some apps may be too heavy to execute on ARM so they will not be compiled on that platform, so won't be visible. However, There's no real justifiable reason to not make the application you're targeting for ARM available on x86/x64 as well, except for arbitrary legal ones like this.

What happens if someone makes a low powered touch windows RT pc? the app can now be downloaded onto that and it's not a tablet formfactor device.... and this violates the developer's contract.... But wait! this means the app isn't available on the Surface Pro! ... which is a tablet formfactor device running the windows store! Oh my, developer, you're going to confuse and fragment the market even worse than the simple split between Windows RT and Windows 8 being merely Desktop App and beefy CPU issues.

From personal experience, Win8 + Start8 is pretty much the same as Win7, UI-wise. It even lets you disable all the hot corners and the charm bar, so you literally never see even the glimpse of Metro.

Other than that, well... everyone seems to agree that Win8 is indeed faster - how much does that apply to games is a matter of debate, but it's not any worse, at least. There are some other little bits that make it slightly more convenient, like the new file copy dialog, the "one level up" button in Explorer, or the ability to mount ISOs out of the box. If you get Pro, there's also Hyper-V. Some features are more hypothetical at this point, but may become more important later - e.g. Direct3D 11.1.

On the other hand, there are also some changes that you may dislike, such as e.g. Ribbon in Explorer, or the fact that you'll have to pay extra to get Windows Media Center and DVD playback.

All in all, if the total cost of Win8 upgrade + Start8 + Media Pack is less than Win7 upgrade, I don't see any reason to not take advantage of that.

It would have to invert control, generally asyncIO requires callbacks. Then once you get into that realm you have to worry about the stack and automatic variables not being scope in the callback. It wouldnt be simple.

Well, of course, so you lift any variables on the stack into the heap, same as you do for closures. It actually is simple enough - it's effectively rewriting in continuation-passing style, except that you do the transformation at certain specific points (where async calls happen), not at every point you can. And we know how to transform to CPS pretty well. In a language with closures (which C# has), you just rewrite the remainder of the method as a closure. It's a bit more tricky when async call is, say, in the middle of a loop, since then you'll need to translate the loop into a state machine, but it's all doable.

Also, as already noted, this transformation is already implemented in C#, with the only difference from what I described being that it requires the programmer to explicitly mark points where there is an async call that should be rewritten. It would be trivial to change that to always rewrite for any call that is async.

The windows 7 desktops I got from Acer for my wife and daughter didn't even come with recovery discs, they highly recommended you make one yourself... I think I have like 4 or 5 DVDs for each box. Unbelievable.

I don't know about recovery DVDs, but a recovery partition is mandatory for any hardware certified for Windows 8, due to the presence of the aforementioned "Reset" feature.

So, I'm wondering if you can't do the same with Windows 8 - remove the crapware, clean the registry (if possible), then make recovery discs based on that configuration. Anybody know?

Again, I don't know about DVDs, but you can update the "Reset" image (search for recimg.exe in that post).

In my opinion both high and low level languages will remain relevant for the foreseeable future, especially given that Murphy's law does not work any more, at least regarding the performance. Current renaissance of native languages is probably related to ever-increasing complexity of software built from too many pieces, which makes it harder to reliably control program behavior and introduces multiple points of failure.

As things developed in those languages being a pain, I've never had that experience at all. I just like being able to use the software on any platform I want.

Well... try running a Java program on Raspberry Pi or a .NET 4.0 program under Linux... Granted, those are exotic examples, but generally my experience with Java/Python programs under Windows is troublesome (since I'm not a Java/Python developer I don't have up-to-date runtimes and tend to run into rough edges), and the same applies to .NET programs under Linux.

Anyway, I agree that we better stop here before we go deeper into discussion of each other's anecdotal evidence.

P.S. Compilers are still less efficient than humans (PDF) (because of their genericity, TANSTAAFL).

Mod parent way up.

CSS3 prefixes are something that's added to a CSS property if support for the final standard isn't complete, so you end up with things like

border-radius: 15px;
-moz-border-radius: 15px;
-ms-border-radius: 15px;
-o-border-radius: 15px;
-webkit-border-radius: 15px;

Vendor prefixes are something that's done by every vendor for testing. That includes Microsoft. Here's a page from MSDN with a Microsoft representative explaining that:

As you may know, all browsers have a set of CSS features that are either considered a vendor extension (e.g. -ms-interpolation-mode), are partial implementations of properties that are fully defined in the CSS specifications, or are implementation of properties that exist in the CSS specifications, but aren’t completely defined. According to the CSS 2.1 Specification, any of the properties that fall under the categories listed previously must have a vendor specific prefix, such as '-ms-' for Microsoft, '-moz-' for Mozilla, '-o-' for Opera, and so on.

As part of our plan to reach full CSS 2.1 compliance with Internet Explorer 8, we have decided to place all properties that fulfill one of the following conditions behind the '-ms-' prefix:

If the property is a Microsoft extension (not defined in a CSS specification/module)
If the property is part of a CSS specification or module that hasn’t received Candidate Recommendation status from the W3C
If the property is a partial implementation of a property that is defined in a CSS specification or module
This change applies to the following properties, and therefore they should all be prefixed with '-ms-' when writing pages for Internet Explorer 8 (please note that if Internet Explorer 8 users are viewing your site in Compatibility View, they will see your page exactly as it would have been rendered in Internet Explorer 7, and in that case the prefix is neither needed nor acknowledged by the parser):

If a site designer doesn't code things correctly by also including the CSS property *without* vendor-specific prefixes that's a problem with the quality of the site designer and not with Safari.

Replying to this post instead of the AC below so you get the email. Here is a presentation where the UX guy goes through the design process of the ribbon. It's been a few years but I remember it being really informative.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2012/10/17/ie10-on-windows-7-available-in-november.aspx/

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A rumour?
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2012/10/17/ie10-on-windows-7-available-in-november.aspx/
It was always going to be available for Windows 7.

Here are some very interesting, compelling reasons to switch to Clang:

http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/GoingNative/GoingNative-2012/Clang-Defending-C-from-Murphy-s-Million-Monkeys

Apparent abandonment of .net - Not a supported framework for metro, winphone, winRT.

.NET is a supported framework for Win8/WinRT, as well as all incarnations of Windows Phone (in fact, for WP, you have to use it for UI layer).

Silverlight is not gone, really, it just got rewritten in native code and rebranded "XAML" (for Windows Store apps).

Only enterprise edition joined to a domain, o yea, people play games on company machines, educate yourself before making comments

Preparing PCs for sideloading apps on enterprise PCs

Currently, the Consumer Preview and Windows Server 8 Beta are classified as “enterprise sideloading enabled.” This means that when a PC is domain joined, it can be configured to accept non-Windows Store apps from their IT admin. Moving forward, this functionality to install non-Windows Store Metro style apps will be available for Windows 8 Enterprise Edition and Windows 8 Server editions.

On an enterprise sideloading enabled edition, the IT admins needs to verify:

        The PC is domain joined.
        The group policy is set to “Allow all trusted apps to install”.
        The app is signed by a CA that is trusted on the target PCs

I have almost no experience with multi-mon on OS X, although I've seen it used casually enough to know that it works fine in general. Of course, so do older versions of Windows. This isn't about whether it *works* but rather about how good the experience is.

I could list off the new stuff, but it's easier to just link to the source: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/05/21/enhancing-windows-8-for-multiple-monitors.aspx

Not every post favorable of Windows is Microsoft astroturfing, believe it or not (in case you're curious, I also have Linux installed on three of my four PCs, and it's the default OS on one of them).

The Ars Technica reviewer's complaint boils down to "even though MS has improved the ability to find the internal/shared corners of multiple monitors, it's still not perfect". Umm... that's a shame, I guess, but that doesn't mean that there isn't still a substantial improvement over Win7's multi-monitor handling. That review touches on almost none of the new stuff for multi-monitor directly; if I didn't already know what they were, I wouldn't have learned anything at all from that "review" except that MS has at least made some effort to let people find stuff on the corners of screens without the mouse wandering onto the next one over by accident. Even if it's not perfect, that would be an improvement on Win7 as well. Oh, and if you're going to link to a specific part of something to back up a claim, please actually link to the *correct* part. You wanted page 2, not page 5. Also, here's a bunch of info on the actual improvements: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/05/21/enhancing-windows-8-for-multiple-monitors.aspx

Somebody else posted a great link discussing the multi-mon improvements in Win8 above. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/05/21/enhancing-windows-8-for-multiple-monitors.aspx. Some video drivers try to implement these types of things themselves as additional user-space features, but it's really the kind of thing that should be handled by the OS (well, technically by the window manager and desktop environment).

It's not a "driver" thing, really, and I don't like this trend towards increasingly gigantic video drivers stuffed full of code that has nothing to do with the video driver's duties of interfacing between then OS and the video card, and controlling the behavior of the GPU. The "improved multi-monitor support" thing isn't a matter of supporting more monitors or anything like that; it's about making use of multiple monitors more productive and/or more pleasant.

This should explain it well enough: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/05/21/enhancing-windows-8-for-multiple-monitors.aspx

Thanks for the intel!

Couple of points:

Span desktop background across all monitors.
Multi-monitor taskbar

About. Damn. Time.

Launch and move Metro style apps to any monitor

I can already move programs from one screen to another. This is nothing new (more a step back, really, since "Metro apps" all default to full screen, thus reducing overall screen real estate)

Show a different desktop background on each monitor.
Multi-monitor slide show.

Okay, now that is a neat feature. Not really the most useful thing in the world, but hey, who said computing was all about productivity? Dickheads, that's who.


So, in other words, Windows 8 integrates all the reasons we love MultiMon and Ultramon into the OS.

As I said before: About. Damn. Time.

Storage Spaces sounds interesting to me. Basically, you can create a pool of disks and by using mirroring or parity you can have redundancy. The mirroring allows data to be backed up to 1 or more drives. The parity part is most interesting to me, because it sounds similar to Unraid for those that have heard of that. Could be nice to get extra storage space that is portable to any computer as long as it has Windows 8. (Not held down by certain hardware such as motherboard raid controller.) Here is the article from Microsoft on it.

That along with faster booting, better file copying interface (which still could use work in my opinion), better task manager, and some other things make me interested for sure. However, all the bad information I am hearing about the Metro interface has me hesitant. I will probably wait until service pack 1 to decide whether to pick it up. It sounds like a good OS if you aren't worried about the UI, though. Since UI is so important, I'm not sure why Microsoft didn't give the option to just use the classic interface. I guess they want to try and force people to accept the Metro interface.

This should explain it well enough: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/05/21/enhancing-windows-8-for-multiple-monitors.aspx

Ask them how well they score on The Joel Test (see also this post with some suggested updates). This won't necessarily teach you about how much legacy code they have floating around, but it's a useful barometer. Part of what favorably impressed me about the place I am working now is that the VP I talked to (1) knew what it was, and (2) knew how they scored.

Ask how refactoring is viewed, if time is scheduled for specific cleanups of known "code rot"; if at least it is possible to include refactoring of relevant code as part of building new features. A too loose policy (which I've never seen but I suppose is possible) could be as bad as not budgeting for it at all; either can produce "legacy" quality code. Intelligent refactoring is part of the cost of maintenance (code "taxes", even).

I don't know if its still true or not but that blog used to be run by Allchin

Well he sign his book and comments as Raymond Chen...

Put ME in charge of MSFT and in less than 5 years, hell i could probably do it in under 3, I'd turn that ship around and be labeled another Steve Jobs.

I my opinion Raymond Chen should at least have been put in charge of Windows and maybe CEO instead of Mr Chair.
some random good post on that blog :
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2009/01/02/9265754.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2011/09/09/10208136.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2006/11/22/1122581.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2005/01/18/355177.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2003/10/17/55345.aspx

I don't know if its still true or not but that blog used to be run by Allchin

Well he sign his book and comments as Raymond Chen...

Put ME in charge of MSFT and in less than 5 years, hell i could probably do it in under 3, I'd turn that ship around and be labeled another Steve Jobs.

I my opinion Raymond Chen should at least have been put in charge of Windows and maybe CEO instead of Mr Chair.
some random good post on that blog :
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2009/01/02/9265754.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2011/09/09/10208136.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2006/11/22/1122581.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2005/01/18/355177.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2003/10/17/55345.aspx

I don't know if its still true or not but that blog used to be run by Allchin

Well he sign his book and comments as Raymond Chen...

Put ME in charge of MSFT and in less than 5 years, hell i could probably do it in under 3, I'd turn that ship around and be labeled another Steve Jobs.

I my opinion Raymond Chen should at least have been put in charge of Windows and maybe CEO instead of Mr Chair.
some random good post on that blog :
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2009/01/02/9265754.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2011/09/09/10208136.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2006/11/22/1122581.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2005/01/18/355177.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2003/10/17/55345.aspx

I don't know if its still true or not but that blog used to be run by Allchin

Well he sign his book and comments as Raymond Chen...

Put ME in charge of MSFT and in less than 5 years, hell i could probably do it in under 3, I'd turn that ship around and be labeled another Steve Jobs.

I my opinion Raymond Chen should at least have been put in charge of Windows and maybe CEO instead of Mr Chair.
some random good post on that blog :
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2009/01/02/9265754.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2011/09/09/10208136.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2006/11/22/1122581.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2005/01/18/355177.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2003/10/17/55345.aspx

I don't know if its still true or not but that blog used to be run by Allchin

Well he sign his book and comments as Raymond Chen...

Put ME in charge of MSFT and in less than 5 years, hell i could probably do it in under 3, I'd turn that ship around and be labeled another Steve Jobs.

I my opinion Raymond Chen should at least have been put in charge of Windows and maybe CEO instead of Mr Chair.
some random good post on that blog :
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2009/01/02/9265754.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2011/09/09/10208136.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2006/11/22/1122581.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2005/01/18/355177.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2003/10/17/55345.aspx

Binaries built on Win7 work on whatever platform you target them for, most certainly including XP

This is tongue in cheek, but I refer you to KB2517589:

On a computer that is running Windows 7 ... you recompile a Microsoft ActiveX Data Objects (ADO) application ... it does not run on ... earlier versions of Windows

And more seriously, for a time Visual Studio 2012 was never going to have support for Windows XP, never mind what value of WINVER and _WIN32_WINNT you set. They've reversed their stance, but have a look at what was written:

The C++ runtime and libraries that accompany Visual Studio 2012 contain dependencies on several Windows API functions that exist only on Windows Vista and higher versions of the OS. This means that applications built with Visual Studio 2012’s C++ compiler will fail to load and execute on Windows XP.

The workaround was going to be to use the Visual Studio 2010 toolchain from within Visual Studio 2012.

Your making sense like the guy from The Old New Thing blog at MSDN, stop it now !!!
Else, watch out for flying chair...

Very much disagree. The access patterns that swap has are exactly where SSDs excel. You paid extra for an SSD so things would go fast. In fact, a lot of write-once stuff is better on spinning disks (eg. media files which are accessed sequentially anyway).

Your wisdom comes from a time when SSD lifetimes were much worse. Nowadays, chances are the SSD will not be the first thing to go unless you specifically stress it. If you're limiting it to playing World of Warcraft and League of Legends (and a swap file), you are not stressing out an SSD. Only specialised enterprise-type uses are likely to hit that these days.

Having lots of RAM is good enough advice, though, and just as it hides the SSD vs. HDD speed difference in the swap file, it also hides the wear difference.

Since we're talking about Windows, here's Microsoft's analysis:

Should the pagefile be placed on SSDs?

Yes. Most pagefile operations are small random reads or larger sequential writes, both of which are types of operations that SSDs handle well.

In looking at telemetry data from thousands of traces and focusing on pagefile reads and writes, we find that
Pagefile.sys reads outnumber pagefile.sys writes by about 40 to 1,
Pagefile.sys read sizes are typically quite small, with 67% less than or equal to 4 KB, and 88% less than 16 KB.
Pagefile.sys writes are relatively large, with 62% greater than or equal to 128 KB and 45% being exactly 1 MB in size.
http://ask.slashdot.org/story/12/10/20/1324203/ask-slashdot-securing-a-windows-laptop-for-the-windows-newbie#
In fact, given typical pagefile reference patterns and the favorable performance characteristics SSDs have on those patterns, there are few files better than the pagefile to place on an SSD.

source: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/e7/archive/2009/05/05/support-and-q-a-for-solid-state-drives-and.aspx

You're wrong. Windows RT - and Surface (not Surface Pro) do have classic desktop. That's how they run Office, because Office RT is still a desktop app.

What you can't do on ARM is install your own desktop apps - you only have what's there out of the box. Explorer, desktop IE, PowerShell etc - the stock Windows app - and Office.

I wrote that on my phone. I do recall reading an MSDN blog that XNA was not supported but checking more carefully it seems that MS have said it is on WP8 as you say.

But it's a legacy API which will not be extended. And you can't have XNA applications in the Windows Store

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bobfamiliar/archive/2012/08/01/windows-8-xna-and-monogame-part-1-overview.aspx

Since Windows 8 is built on the strong foundation of Windows 7, any app built for Windows will run in the Windows 8 desktop environment. This includes apps based on XNA, Win32, .NET, WPF, Silverlight, etc.

Windows 8 also introduces a new type of app called a Modern UI Style App for developers that wish to make their app available in the Windows 8 Store, for free or for sale. Using Visual Studio 2012, you have a language choice of C++, XAML with C#, VB or C++, or HTML5/JS to create a Metro Style App.

Using the XNA Framework is not a choice for building a Metro Style App. Official Microsoft guidance on game development is documented here. The recommended way to build highly immersive games on Windows 8 is to use HTML5/JS, XAML/C#, XAML/VB or C++ and DirectX, all great choices. But if you have been developing with XNA and have an existing code base, your only option it would seem is running as a desktop app.

This is where MonoGame comes inâ¦

Now I'm sure you going to say this still fits in your "with some tweaks" clause. I'm not sure that is good enough to be honest. Did Win32 applications need "some tweaks" in the move from NT4 to Win2k to XP to Vista to Windows 7? Up to Vista introduced UAC they did not. Even untweaked you could right click on them and Run As Administrator in Vista.

Now look at the mess they've created in mobile. Even if WP7 applications all run on WP8 - and that is not something we know yet - the fact remains that Microsoft told people to rewrite all the C++ code in C# with WP7. And now with WP8 they're heavily hinting that if you want to use the new features you should be using WinRT from C++, not C#.

Also if you look at leaks of the WP8 SDK it doesn't contain XNA.

http://www.i-programmer.info/news/189-windows-phone/4559-windows-phone-8-sdk-leaked-no-javascript-apps.html

This seems to confirm the suspicions that, with WP8, Silverlight and XNA are no longer supported for future and on-going projects. This means that WP7.1 Silverlight/XNA apps are legacy apps Microsoft wants the way of the future to be WinRT, whether it is on the desktop or the mobile.

The best you can do is to use the upgrade option, but you cannot upgrade XNA based apps just WP7 Silverlight apps. For XNA apps all you can do is to continue to work on them as WP7.1 apps. Some of the XNA framework is available for use in your brand new WP8 app, however.

So maybe the old apps will run on WP8 but only in legacy mode and the APIs will not be extended. And MS are heavily promoting Direct X and C++ as the way to write new stuff.

It's still a mess.

It became cluttered, but the good side to having a monolithic control menu is if you're trying to find something you always know where to start (pun not intended) looking.

That's the charms menu now, not the start screen. Charms menu gives you search, share, devices, start, settings. Literally anything you want to do to manage your computer can be accessed there, sort of like the start menu, but they made the layout and controls more consistent and accessible no matter where you are in the OS.

Like I said, needs to be more intuitive if you're not gonna include a manual. Also: most end users don't even know the basic universal keyboard shortcuts (cut, copy, paste, select all, etc), so adding a huge number of keyboard shortcuts in place of clickable menus just doesn't cut it.

The shortcuts I mention are for power users and are in addition to the standard ways to find things. You obviously are looking for a faster way to work and there is one, but you also found the control panel on your own. A simple google search reveals the short cuts I mentioned, and anyone interested to know is just a search away.

Yes, and it seems to be the majority opinion.

I'm interested how you can gauge the majority opinion when Windows 8 hasn't even been released to the general public. Tech blogs like slashdot have certainly taken advantage of easily riled geeks who are set in their ways by publishing inflammatory articles, sure, but this hardly represents the majority opinion. Metro arguably was made with common users in mind, who in my experience so far appreciate the simplicity of the metro interface. But any assertion as to the opinion of the majority remains to be seen.

So did everyone else. Years ago when they were called widgets or gadgets....How are content-driven live tiles any different that the old widgets systems?

I've used widgets too, and they never quite lived up to their potential. For example, widgets were often stand alone applications, and did not launch a larger, more detailed app. For instance, my weather widget did not open up to a full fledged app, but simply linked to weather.com for more info. My stocks app and my news app likewise linked to websites. Further, there are classes of live tiles like games that really never had widget equivalents. For instance, if I play a game on Windows 8 and exit, I can see the state of the game on my start screen. I don't recall widgets having the ability to monitor the state of my games.

As for other advantages of live tiles: they conform to a strict API, which assures security and power management. Live tiles are only for metro apps, which are sandboxed and certified. They also only use CPU when you're viewing them and otherwise use low bandwidth and cpu for pushing notifications if enabled, with a centralized location for managing these notifications. This is in contrast to some widgets, which constantly suck CPU, bandwidth, and can be a security nightmare.

Can you work in an app and view a live tile at the same time -- without any extra mouse movements or keyboard shortcuts?

No, but I never used Widgets in that way personally. I always used desktop peek to see widgets on my desktop, which hides my work. Although, I can dock a metro app on the side, which I do often with stocks. Alternatively, notifications can alert you of changes in a metro app while you're working,

1. You should specify a screen size when making statements like this.

My laptop screen is 1600x900. However, the start menu has roughly the same capacity no matter the screen size, since it doesn't scale up very well. This article has a comparison of visible items vs. resolution for start menu and start screen.

2. How many programs do you th

Then you haven't been following this very well. WOA is not full Windows, it does not have all the Win32 API, it does not have all the Windows features, in particular it only has the 'Metro' UI and not the UI of Windows 7*.

I have been following this well enough - certainly closer than you, since I'm well aware that Windows on ARM does have the classic desktop ("UI of Windows 7").

What it does is specifically preclude third-party programs from running on that desktop, by checking signatures in the binaries. So for you, yes, you cannot just recompile stuff, you have to rewrite them as Windows Store apps. Your claim about Win32 API is the same thing - yes, it is severely restricted, in Store apps. Not on the desktop.

So, yes, WoA comes with a desktop, complete with a taskbar etc; with Explorer, cmd.exe, PowerShell and desktop IE. And Office.

Much of Office is legacy assembler, probably not well understood even by MS.

And your source for that claim would be what, exactly?

Coincidentally, you might also want to come up with an explanation of how - if "much of Office is legacy assembler" - it has a native x64 version since Office 2010.

Fair enough - just trying to help (and also learn too @ the same time)...

I find it odd that a Linux did that, & here's why:

Linux is actually SUPERIOR with hosts files!

Man... that's right, I said it (superior to Windows, & in 2 respects):

---

1.) Linux HAS no faulty-with-large hosts files issues like Windows local DNS clientside cache service does (flakes out on big hosts files, as it loads into a statically sized cache structure afaik as the cause...)

2.) Linux STILL supports using the smallest, fastest blocking IP address there is -> 0

---

(1 byte long per record in hosts, rather than the 0.0.0.0 7 digit length one, which is more "compatible" with OS out there, but longer, & CERTAINLY better than the local loopback adapter address of 127.0.0.1 which can incur a "loopback" speed penalty IF the loopback's installed on Windows!)

* That latter one PISSED ME OFF, since I got a Senior MS VP (of the "Windows Client Performance Division" no less) to ADMIT I am correct on it... why?

Well... here's why:

REPORTED TO MICROSOFT by APK here ->

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/e7/archive/2009/02/25/feedback-and-engineering-windows-7.aspx?CommentPosted=true&PageIndex=3#comments

As well as here on www.slashdot.org to a Richard Russell who posts as FOREDECKER there (he is a senior VP at Microsoft and leader of the "Windows Client Performance Division" there) and he conceded my points on HOSTS files also:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1467692&cid=30384918

APK

P.S.=> What pissed me of is that NOBODY THERE did a DAMN THING to put it back into Windows, VISTA onwards (which VISTA used to be able to use it prior to MS "Patch Tuesday" 12/09/2008 iirc)... i.e.-> They promoted "bloat"!

I even inquired IF there was a security issue as to WHY it was done, but IF there was? Then, why does Linux STILL ALLOW 0 as a valid blocking IP Address then??

Windows 2000/XP/Server 2003 can still use 0 though as a valid "blocking IP address" though... how much of a diff. does it make, to ME, personally here?
---

Using 127.0.0.1 with my custom hosts file (1,845,285 blocking entries):

54, 544kb in size

Using 0.0.0.0 with my custom hosts file (1,845,285 blocking entries):

50,940kb in size

Using 0 with my custom hosts file (1,845,285 blocking entries):

40,127kb in size

---

See my point? There's NO WAY AROUND IT, even if the OS reads by "blocks" at the diskdriver device level or filesystem logical level:

Programs that use hosts (DNS clienside cache OR the IP stack prior to caching is even worse) STILL have to parse the file interior, & LARGER FILES TAKE LONGER, period...

... apk

Just yesterday I installed the final version of Windows 8 from DreamSpark to a netbook just for fun. The result? It actually ran smooth, but none of the Metro apps could be run due to the 1024x600 resolution. Not a big loss, but I was slightly surprised that they actually completely skipped us netbook-connoisseurs.

If you want to read the public rationale for this decision, it's here. TL;DR version:

"Looking at the data about devices in the marketplace today, we see that only 1.2% of active Windows 7 users have screens with a resolution of less than 1024x768."

Which is not unexpected, given that vast majority of low-cost netbooks run XP.

Could you please list ONE big improvement?

You wrote lots of words, but no examples.

Well, I don't know what is important to you, but 3 improvements are:

- Multi-screen support is very significantly improved.

- It boots, sleeps and resumes much faster.

- It has built in refresh and reset functionality to non-destructive get installations back to good/original state without having to reinstall.

Could you please list ONE big improvement?

You wrote lots of words, but no examples.

Well, I don't know what is important to you, but 3 improvements are:

- Multi-screen support is very significantly improved.

- It boots, sleeps and resumes much faster.

- It has built in refresh and reset functionality to non-destructive get installations back to good/original state without having to reinstall.

Could you please list ONE big improvement?

You wrote lots of words, but no examples.

Well, I don't know what is important to you, but 3 improvements are:

- Multi-screen support is very significantly improved.

- It boots, sleeps and resumes much faster.

- It has built in refresh and reset functionality to non-destructive get installations back to good/original state without having to reinstall.