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Another Windows 8 Pre-Beta Surfaces
angry tapir writes "While Microsoft has not announced the release date of its follow-up to Windows 7, an early pre-beta version of Windows 8 (although its official name has not been confirmed) has surfaced on the Internet, the second version to appear within a month. It is the second milestone release that has showed up on the Internet this month. Users of this Windows 8 software have said it features a Ribbon-based user-interface, similar to the one used in recent editions of Microsoft Office. This specific milestone build also has software for a Webcam, a new task manager, a PDF reader and an immersive browser." "Surfacings" like this tell me that Microsoft sees the value in crowdsourced opinion gathering far more than they're sometimes given credit for.
Finally you get to know what those svchosts are actually doing.
Great another vector. *fingers crossed* I hope they're sandboxing.
new user-interface is a bad idea and may slow down users moving to windows 8.
Some places are still stuck on XP and are moving to 7 now and now 8 is on the way with a new GUI?
also what software / hardware that works in XP / 7 will windows 8 not work with?
Users of this Windows 8 software have said it features a Ribbon-based user-interface, similar to the one used in recent editions of Microsoft Office.
Overheard at Microsoft: "Hey guys, you know that ribbon interface that everybody hated? How about we put it everywhere in the system?"
What's next, will they bring back Bob and Clippy as well?
Circumcision is child abuse.
A built-in PDF reader, eh? Should I feel sorrier for Adobe's devs, so incompetent that Microsoft felt the need to step in and provide a PDF reader built by grown-ups, or for Microsoft's XPS team, who have so failed to set the world on fire with XPS that Microsoft felt the need to step in and provide a PDF reader?
#1 reason I'm trying to avoid using MS Office.
Microsoft says Give us more money to fix the bugs in Windows 7. It's called Windows 8.
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
>a Ribbon-based user-interface, similar to the one used in recent editions of Microsoft Office.
>software for a Webcam,
>a new task manager,
>a PDF reader
>an immersive browser.
Gotta wonder why Microsoft aren't selling XP any more, 'cause this is THE BEST possible advert they could ever make.
I'm actually interested in seeing how well the ARM version handles. Will it actually be able to run quickly on hardware usually much weaker than the average PC? Only one way to find out.
No thanks, mine just needs to browse the web.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
"Surfacings" like this tell me that Microsoft sees the value in crowdsourced opinion gathering far more than they're sometimes given credit for.
Yeah, they like to listen to what everyone has to say, then they listen to the most vocal, stupidest fucking idiots, and inocrporate their preferences into the final releases, with as many bugs as possible left in tact.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
I misread the summary as implying that the "leaking" was a milestone. Makes one wonder about the project plan: item 1: put some stuff in; item 2: leak it and gauge response; item 3: emphasise the things people hated about the leaked version...
Think "Windows 365"
In the good old days you got rants like the holy fire of whatever god you think is the coolest rained down on the world.
These are the most pathetic Microsoft bashes I've ever read.
Not even an M$ so far. WTF?
is there some reason we can't just call it an Alpha?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
"Surfacings" like this tell me that Microsoft sees the value in crowdsourced opinion gathering far more than they're sometimes given credit for.
So if I was to e.g. raise a question about, oh say, the fact that since Vista I can no longer edit multiple folders' security attributes, then they would listen? Or if, say, it turned out that on the flagship version of this new OS, fax configuration could be corrupt out-of-the-box, then they would fix it?
They may gather some feedback on the colour scheme, but MS is certainly not going to start listening to their customers.
I don't understand why Slashdot posts Windows articles anymore. All you get is flaming by "geeks" who can switch from Windows to Linux and adapt to entirely different UIs and desktop paradigms, yet consistently flame the ribbon interface despite the fact my non-geek fiance was capable of making the transition from Office 2003 -> 2007 within a few minutes.
Very few people on Slashdot have any objectivity and can see improvements for what they are. You don't come here for quality discussion on Microsoft stuff, which I feel is a damn shame. There are a lot of intelligent people around here who are able to contribute to some deep and thoughtful discussions, but anything about Microsoft and the 2-minute hate starts.
Windows 7 + Office 2010 is some of the best work MS has done in recent times, and very few people on Slashdot are willing to at least acknowledge this. If they did, perhaps things would be more civil around here. But no, instead the circle-jerk continues.
IE 6 was also an 'immersive' browser. It made me want to drown myself.
FTA:
"Microsoft declined to verify the authenticity of the milestone release. "
Dang! Genuine Advantage strikes again!
Anybody else remember it?
Your desktop background was a browser.
You had a side panel with "channels".
Web sites were supposed to continuously push feed to you, just like TV.
people didnt even migrate to windows 7. they didnt even feel the need to. why a new windows version ?
Read radical news here
"Users of this Windows 8 software have said it features a Ribbon-based user-interface, similar to the one used in recent editions of Microsoft Office."
The ribbon interface is patently nasty and offers absolutely no functional or even aesthetic improvement. It was a bad idea in office partly because it is awful and clunky to work with and partly because it completely broke UI consistency. Instead of fixing the office interface they are going to bring consistency by forcing this crappy new design onto the entire OS?
One of the things that continually pisses me off about every version of windows is that there is that the package manager sucks. They sorely need something like aptitude or I will never be able to use it for any serious purpose. Having a good package manager with support for 3rd parties to serve their own repositories would go a long way towards me not hating them. I've used Windows, I currently use Linux and Macintosh because of features like this that save time. OSX is only kind of convenient because you can use Homebrew or Macports or what have you, but being able to provision a machine quickly and without endlessly clicking 'Next' while installing software is priceless.
Ribbons? RIBBONS?
The most useless POS interface ever.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
For sure look at OSX they haven't changed the UI (except to add new features or effects) since at least 10.3 I wish they would just get it right and stick with it.
Or will it at least be able to read from (and maybe even write to) other file systems than FAT and NTFS?
File search feature in W7 does not work well on network drives, if at all. Workaround is to use virtual XP under W7 to get some work done.
Then - how often does one undo the automatic (by default) snap/all screen window hog feature in W7? Ridiculous!
Not sure who has those ideas? Maybe trying to cut into Apple's pie.
Just bought a WXP SP2 for Eur 15.-
The ribbon is a marked improvement over the old style file menus. People just didn't like it at first because it meant they needed to re-learn the locations of the commands they use. I'm having to relearn where to find certain things on the new Firefox GUI, but that doesn't make it bad.
If someone had been brought up using the ribbon, and you showed them an old-style menu, they'd think it was designed by amateurs. Where do you change settings.... edit>preferences, or tools>options? Find is under edit, not view? And print preview is under file, instead of view? Why is print a file command at all? And why is import, when paste is under edit? Come on, towards the end they were just cramming in new commands wherever they'd fit.
Windows 8 is going to suck so badly, and everyone is going to switch to Linux in 2012.
I'm not saying Apple never added features some people didn't like, but I can't really think of any as things that were "shoved down the users throats" to near-universal dislike.
What features did you have in mind?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Then - how often does one undo the automatic (by default) snap/all screen window hog feature in W7? Ridiculous!
Aero snap is one of my favorite features in Windows 7; I use it constantly. When I use XP, I'm constantly dragging my windows to the edge of the screen to no avail.
If you want to turn it off, just search for "snap." The first result should be "Turn off automatic window rearrangement," Just select it and click the check box.
Ostensibly, this will not be a major enhancement to Windows 7, so what will the actual version # be? 6.2?
new user-interface is a bad idea and may slow down users moving to windows 8.
Just what they'll move towards?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
That's why Windows Professional on ARM is so exciting to some (for app compat reasons) but the user experience with using a stylus on a Windows tablet still sucks balls if you ask the consumer buying public. To fix the UI, they've got to make the Windows Explorer shell touch friendly. They've spent a boat load of money on the ribbon, and the corpoate space is somewhat used to it, regardless of what many /. readers think of it. So, they're going to go with it.
I still love my iPad, it's the perfect couch top. But no Flash and certain vertical market websites used within my business make it hard for my company to adopt them as a laptop replacement for some user groups. If MS can kill the stylus and make a touch UI on top of the Windows Explorer shell that doesn't suck, they could have something. The harder part will be wowing over the consumer market, which seems to be driving tablets to the workplace in the first place. It's all about getting a Windows tablet on ARM that people wil want... We'll see if Windows 8 is that product or not.
Your dog has been automated.
A new OS so soon after 7 is a bad idea. Companies are just adopting the moves to 7 but now your going to halt your business if they know 8 is right behind. Also, didn't they get into EU issues when they bundled software like IE and Media Player? Why would they think it is a good idea to add a PDF reader and webcam software. While I personally don't mind these optional install items some people apparently complain. If your mad make your software better so people will want to use it over the included.
That's all that matters
I have a 3200 x 1200 dual screen using multi-language new installs on different test environments (Job) and W7 Aero snap not just plain sucks, it interferes - bang! spreadsheet with one line snapped full screen and one has to fiddle to get it undone - I sure know how to turn it off and have done it x-times up to nausea in all kinds of languages. Every new install does it by default. I use virtual dimension with 20 desktops under W7 with multiple remote connections and Aero turned to nil. One runs XP to do network file searches by wildcards
- not a friend of this kind of eye candy at all...
If you love it, go to bed with it! Does not turn me on at all.
Why on earth, when screens are getting wider, do they keep using up more and more of the vertical real estate for mostly useless menus? Office's displayed work area has shrunk to where you can barely see a paragraph at a time because the screen is full of ribbons. Why not push that crap to one side of the screen and let the document occupy the full height of the screen? If they absolutely must put ribbons on the screen, why not make them autohide like the task bar?
If MS can kill the stylus and make a touch UI on top of the Windows Explorer shell that doesn't suck, they could have something.
The sad thing to me about that statement is you're probably right... I have a convertible tablet with a stylus now, and I love it. I use OneNote for note taking, and it's one of the only pieces of software that I use that I actually mostly like using. (I hate most software.) Take away the stylus and you take away most of the reason I have a tablet.
Quoting the article:
"Microsoft declined to verify the authenticity of the milestone release."
Dang! Genuine advantage strikes again!
yeah, they should stick to weaving textiles by hand, dammit.
By chance, did your great-grandfather happen to build horse-drawn carriages around the time Henry Ford introduced the Model T? It might go a long way to understanding your reluctance to accept change.
"What kind of music do pirates listen to?" -Paul Maud'dib
"Yeeeaaarrrrr n' Bee!!" -Stilgar, Leader of Sietch Tabr
I routinely search across network shares from windows 7. I haven't tried indexing across network shares (sounds painful), but you can certainly search for filenames. Are you just trolling or what?
zosxavius photography
I hate them all. Microsoft office, open office - I hate them all. The closest I came to liking one was abiword, and it is too buggy and crash prone for me. I almost always end up using gedit or something similar because I hate looking through all those goddamn menus for simple formatting commands.
HTML used to be such a simple markup language, and it would do about 90% of all anyone needed to do. A "word processor" that uses markup language without being so strict (html doesn't recognize cr/lf for example) would be ideal.
Is it really so hard to learn new menus? Yes. I've been using linux so long my last experience with windows was win2k. So I am utterly lost in Vista and 7. Friends still ask me about doing things in windows, and I have nothing to tell them except ask someone who uses windows, or use linux and I can help.
I think it interesting no one has actually seen a screencap of this here, yet everyone seems hung up on the "ribbon" business. I'm more puzzled by the "immersive browser." WTF is an "immersive browser?"
Apple is a joke marketed at the business community, while Windows remains the only viable choice. One reason Apple is such a pathetic joke in the workplace is their OS release calendar. With Apple you end up with a myriad of various OS X machines, all requiring a bevy of different print drivers, etc.
The Apple IT guy is a tortured sole who can't get anything right (save suggesting a switch to an appropriate, commercial-grade computer system).
It is troubling to see Microsoft heading down this same, troubled path of rapid OS releases. Why? Likely they figure that everyone will be forced to adopt 7 soon to get the latest versions of IE, and they will need something to boost projections once 7 has penetrated.
MS is my choice because they are honest and upfront with their OS release schedules, print drivers can generally be made to work across their various OSes, and tools like backup and group policy (which Apple omits or changes too rapidly for sensible corporate IT policy to keep up with). If they seek to emulate Apple filth, it means that honest IT guys can look forward to Apple-like shops. Forget advancing organizational objectives: you'll be missing family dinner tonight to fiddle with the new OS's print spooler.
Can anyone recommend an alternative to this mess? If MS switches to an Apple-like careless release schedule (perhaps even complete with the eye rolling 'Wow, you're still running Vista???? No wonder why nothing we sold you works!!!!'), what are the alternatives for client and server OSes? I'd really welcome a debate now, rather than when I'm supporting mixed offices full of XP/Vista/7/8 machines. I like having a life. I know what supporting an office full of 10.4/10.5/10.6/10.7 feels like and I will not open myself up to that kind of needless, idiotic suffering.
Any suggestions?
You have to index and tweak what else have you to make it functional. It's a pain. The claim "greatly enhanced search features" is bull from a different reality.
look there:
http://helpdeskgeek.com/windows-7/windows-7-file-search-indexing-options/
search for "Windows 7 Search does not work with net" on that page and read on.
I've tried to get something similar to XP CTL-F, enter file name wildcard and transverse a network tree. W7 gives me all kinds of crap options - media files and what have you if you want to implement something similar. Clearly consumer oriented stuff.
My way on new installs is to get a virtual XP going and use it to search for files on networks - case closed.
Consider it trolling or religious war, I don't care.
If you are happy with what you use and have - go enjoy it!
MSoft has been left-handed in many ways - just look at updates - reboot happy upto the wazooo. My Linux does 1700+ download/updates without reboot so it's doable but apparently not of interest in other realities.
Windows 8? I find it so hard to care. No, really. Windows 7 has had a relatively quick adoption rate because it was perceived to be much better than the perceived-as-awful Vista. But a majority of corporate desktops are still on XP. In the same way that DirectX 11 has received tepid demand, I think people are tired of the pay-to-upgrade train. Is anyone genuinely excited about Windows 8? Honestly?
lololol
So does this mean that future versions of windows are going to be as difficult and cumbersome to use as present incarnations of office? I'm not looking forward to this.
You may now gaze upon my greatness.
You have to admit, your situation (3200 x 1200 dual screen) is pretty unusual. Most people live with a single monitor and lower resolution of 1280x1024 or 1680x1050. It is not a bad feature merely because it does not work well for you at the extreme ends of the resolution spectrum.
And you say you know how to turn this off, but you get sick of doing it so many times on your multi-language setup. Once again, that is not the usual way of using Windows for the majority of people. The average punter uses their stock Windows install for years until they screw up something and then go out and buy a new computer.
As for file searching... well you are right there. I have a Windows 98 system sitting next to me that I use for file searches because every version of Windows since 98/2000 has made file searching worse in some respect.
then they listen to the most vocal, stupidest fucking idiots,
They listen to slashdotters?
Never ending stream of "bestest windows evah!"
Can't the fuckers make one good windows and be happy with it, only providing updates to it. This shit is getting seriously tired. Oh wait, XP was it. But no, MS wants never ending stream of money so out goes XP and in comes yet another just-because release.
What's more, most people don't need windows for anything else than running programs on top of it. They don't give a fuck what windows is or does as long as their games, text editors and browsers work.
Pirate windows and every windows-only game and program you want to use. Don't reweard them with your money. Or better yet, don't use such programs to begin with.
Where can I download the VM image?
Tech sites should probably be ignoring win8 altogether. In accordance with Bill's law(1), win8 will be an abomination of an OS purchased only by those who have it forced upon them with a new computer.
(1) Bill's Law:
Every 2nd iteration of the Windows operating system will be so terrible as to be nigh unusable.
Bill's law is a pattern which surfaces as a side effect of Microsoft's business strategy. Rather than properly beta-test and develop an OS, Microsoft releases first a beta version of that OS as a full-fledged operating system. They then receive copious feedback regarding their awful OS which is incorporated into the actual release of that OS as a new iteration of the software. The cycle then repeats.
The set of major windows OS iterations (last decade) as Evidence: ...]
[... win98SE=) -> winMillenium=( -> winXP =) -> winVista =( -> win7=)
I'm going to go against the obvious grain here, where all the scathing comments earn obligatory karma.
I think the move to Metro looks promising. If they can clean up the visual design, it will be a very striking UI.
I think the tablet UI might have a lot of potential as it represents a break away from trying to shoehorn the Windows desktop onto a form factor that doesn't match.
I also wouldn't be surprised to see this performing quite well on the tablet hardware slated for mid-2011. They've given demos of Win7 on ARM running quite smoothly, and Qualcomm has already announced their next Snapdragon, which is supposed to be (relatively) blisteringly fast.
Finally, IE's new graphics acceleration should match quite well with tablet hardware, so I expect the sluggishness to disappear.
All in all, I'm actually pretty optimistic it'll be a pretty great Windows release. I think with Win7, they've ironed out a lot of crap in the Vista underpinnings and are spending a lot less time fixing and more time implementing new things.
Have at it.
M1 and M2 were leaked everywhere and writers admitted with no shame that they had downloaded "from the usual places" in order to run and test. Reviewers from major mags that would crush bloggers over using part of an article (or even deep linking, in some cases) post stuff about software they've downloaded without permission. Why doesn't anyone seem to care? If I downloaded a leaked game or something, it would be a big deal. As a publisher for a large mag, I certainly wouldn't take the chance of publishing knowingly and obviously infringing material.
Put identity in the browser.
Why do i have the feeling this is just a pre alpha concept that needs tons of work before it will even be considered for use? If Microsoft had enormous problems getting Vista out the door and had to ditch almost all improvements on the way id sure would like to know what has happened with their arcane build process that makes it possible to do radical stuff like this within a five year timespan.
I hereby predict that Duke Nukem Forever will be released before Windows 8.
HTTP/1.1 400
I've been waiting YEARS for this feature.
Guest post by Mary-Jo Enderle
I have seen the future: Windows $NEXT_VERSION Milestone $MOCKUP.
I tried it on a low-end laptop with four Core 2 Duo chips and only 8 gig of memory, and trust me: $NEXT_VERSION is shaping up to be one heck of a product.
WordPad and Paint have seen major overhauls to their user interfaces. Forget the freetards and their "distros" full of all sorts of useless shovelware like "FireFox" and "OpenOffice" and, haha, "GIMP"! — the bundled software with Windows $NEXT_VERSION is clear, simple, sparse and to-the-point. The much-loved Ribbon user interface from Office $HATED_VERSION is now part of WordPad and Paint!
The controversial Digital Rights Management system in $CURRENT_VERSION has been worked over, with user-downloadable "tilt bits," which you can configure to your own liking. It'll require every user to supply a blood sample for DNA analysis, and the beta nearly took my finger off, but of course that's only if you want to play premium content. The Blu-Ray of Battlefield Earth was unbelievable on this operating system.
A public beta should be released by the end of this year. There's just no way that Steve "Trains Run On Time" Ballmer will miss the Christmas deadline. The final release should leave the midnight queues on $CURRENT_VERSION release day — the street riots, the water cannons, the rubber bullets — in the shade.
I am so excited about $NEXT_VERSION of Windows. It will go beyond just solving all of the problems with $CURRENT_VERSION, it will be an entirely new paradigm. Forget about security problems, those are all fixed in $NEXT_VERSION. And they're finally ridding themselves of $ANCIENT_LEGACY_STUFF.
Also, there'll be $DATABASE_FILESYSTEM. It'll be awesome!
I wonder how $NEXT_VERSION will compare to $NEXT_NEXT_VERSION.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Adobe reader? Phht! Windows is crying out for native support for disc images. It's frustrating that it has no support for directly mounting ISO images, even though MSDN has been distributing them on and off for years.
I had to scroll back to the top and see what the article was about. What you said applies to EVERY new piece of software, especially an OS.
new user-interface is a bad idea and may slow down users moving to windows 8.
New interface pieces hard to learn...check.
Some places are still stuck on XP and are moving to 7 now and now 8 is on the way with a new GUI?
Some parts upgraded and others parts left the same...check
also what software / hardware that works in XP / 7 will windows 8 not work with?
New OS means old hardware may not work. need to buy something else new...check.
Make sure you save this post for reuse in the future for EVERY new piece of software. Saves time.
no comment
Every new install does it by default..
Damn you Micorsoft. You should default to random!
You sure it isn't "Corrupt (for your protection)? Cancel or Allow?"
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
thank you for that "search for snap" is the new Microsoft UI I find - type something into the search bar and hope you get the right link to properties :)
And the ribbon is a bad idea.
the trouble with that concept is that the Ribbon is even more tiny/fiddly than the old menus it replaces. Look at Word, see the big squares that contain the options, then look at the little corner piece that opens the 'advanced options'.
I can see a ribbon UI where each square is a start-point, click it to open a sub-ribbon of large finger-friendly squares, but that's not really the ribbon we all know and love. That's a boat load of huge buttons that expand in a cascade like .... a menu. It shows that a) nothing sensible ever goes out of fashion, b) the more things change, the more they stay the same :)
Is this another case of Redmond pre-anouncing product so as to disuade the consumers from bying a non-MS product?
This is making Linux and Mac much more appealing for my uses. I'm mostly on Mac these days, and use Linux when I run into licensing fud when Windows 7 needs to be re-installed due to hardware failure or a change in my setup.
Microsoft | Shoots Self | in foot
Kind of expected, don't you think?
Searching for filenames is not the be all and end all of searching though. I often want to search for specific content.
Even the XP search doesn't do this right without some kicking (by default it won't find anything in HTML or XML files for instance and you have to use a registry tweak to get it to treat them as files it can search for text in), and there are other annoyances that I forget right now. Basically if you are searching by name or by file data or size it works fine but searching for content is broken even with full indexing turned on.
The first thing I do on any new Windows setup is install Agent Ransack (http://www.mythicsoft.com/page.aspx?type=agentransack&page=home) which unlike the XP+ file search actually works and also has extra features like boolean search (files containing X and Y, and so on) that I find very useful from time to time.
My way on new installs is to get a virtual XP going and use it to search for files on networks - case closed.
A less heavy alternative is to install a 3rd party app like Agent Ransack (free, bit not OSS), then you don't have a whole VM running (or how-ever the vXP is implemented) just to be able to search properly.
Oh my, would it be asking too much for more widgets, too? How about even more candy-coated themes for my optical delight? These are the issues we should all be concerned about. F those nits like security, spying and speed, I just want to pay $100+ for a NEW* OS with more dynamic libraries I won't use or another insecure security center that further obfuscates the network components needed to fix my machine when Help & Support clarifies how the computer should indeed function without any solutions. I really, really, really hope they add more layers of security services so the crackers can be entertained for a couple months.
*NEW is their label, not mine...I'm guessing NT/XP/Vista SP8 would be less profitable.
Imagination drew in bold strokes, instantly serving hopes and fears, while knowledge advanced by slow increments...
Oh well, it is not so bad strategy from Microsoft to stop users migrating to competitors products.
Just invent new and "better" GUI and use existing dominant market position in Office products to "sell it" for Office users. Get companies to train workers for it and then no company will anymore switch later to LibreOffice/OpenOffice.org as it would cost more.
Then push same GUI to Windows what is easier migration as Office users have already learn the basics and are more easily to accept big change.
Then no more will any company switch from Windows to competitors (KDE SC, GNOME, Mac OS X) as they are totally different than what people have used.
And some people say that dominant market position on Pre-installations for PC's is not bad thing when every new PC user is forced to have Windows if wanted pre-build desktop PC, Laptop or PC from local market. Rare places are anymore the small PC stores what used to do all PC's as custom build and always after the package listing they asked "Do you want Windows?"
Who cares about Windows 8? I thought you were always supposed to ignore every other iteration of Windows.
Win98 = Good, WinME = bad.
Win XP = Good, Win Vista = bad.
Win 7 = Good, Win 8 = bad?
That's probably when my employer will force me to use it. I work for a very large company, and I just got a new laptop this year (we get a new one every 3). It came with XP on it becuase it's the standard OS. Thank goodness they haven't moved to Win7 yet as the standard (I think they are skipping Vista all together.. *phew*)
The comments here really make much sense to me. It makes me a little sad because I like to keep up on technology. But in a way, kind of like when people yammer on about phone apps and Facebook, I am glad I ignore some technology out there. I'd much rather hear about the latest version of Linux coming on the horizon.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I haven't seen such intense hatred for anything since that asshole Clippy, and the general search I did seems to suggest something pretty innocuous in terms of what this ribbon is or does. I haven't used anything windows beyond XP. Can someone distill the hate down so that I may partake as well?
Linux user's response to Windows user complaining about CLI-heavy tasks on Linux: "You should stop being so lazy and learn how to do things through the CLI... it's not that hard."
The same Linux user upon hearing about more Ribbons in the Windows 8 UI: "WHY DOES MICROSOFT KEEP FORCING US TO INTERACT WITH OUR MACHINES IN NEW WAYS?!?!?!"
I'm thinking Microsoft just wants to put new systems out there till they get to X. Just putting it out there.
I'm always right, except when i'm not.
Aerosnap is great for me at home (single 24" widescreen monitor), where i can pin two full sized documents side by side. At work, though, it's a disaster. How exactly do you use areosnap to position two windows side by side in a dual monitor setup. The edge of the screen that bleeds into the second screen doesn't snap. Oh well, nice thought, MS, poor execution.
It's a UI change. The first thing Windows users catch from Linux users upon complaining about the CLI part of Linux is a comment about how they should adapt to it and how Windows is for the lazy. Now MS changes the UI and people have heart attacks.
How annoying is that? And yes, i know it can be disabled through modifying preferences, but that isn't available to anyone who doesn't know how to use the 'Defaults' command in Terminal. Not having a simple checkbox to disable this seems like shoving to me. Watching someone's icons bouncing uncontrollably during a meeting presentation embarrasses me as a mac user.
They've also taken away features to near-universal dislike: like the removal of the energy saver presets from the menu bar.
But that is all I can come up with.
If they ever take Spotlight away or build a walled garden for OS X (ala iOS) I will kill myself.
"Metro". Srsly?
Something to the effect of "we declare a system unhackable and the hackers find all the holes for us."
"Don't teach a man to fish, feed yourself. He's a grown man. Fishing's not that hard." - Ron Swanson
The backend will likely continue to have bugfixes to it (either that or they'll scrap everything and make another unuseable mess, like Vista, but assuming they don't). The UI will continue to get uglier and less useable, and once the OS is forced upon us... I'll continue to not use basically any part of it, the same way I run 7 at home now and don't ever have to see 95% of its UI. It's a sad day when I have to work to remove as much of the UI of an OS as possible because it stinks, but... that day has already arrived. So if their next release makes it even worse, who cares? I'm not using it anyway.
has anyone installed it? is it worth repartitioning my hard drive or plugging in an extra one to see what i will have to bear with next when i play games, i keep my pc booted into windows lately cos games are the only void passtime except dreaming that seem valid and i'm too lazy to reboot just to surf around. creativity is dead, it's all been reduced to anything you can do i can do better and the proof lies in making people admit, not in providing, no? yes? who cares? i do ... sometimes
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
You can use Windows Key + Left/Right to snap windows to the inner edges of dual monitors if I remember correctly.