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Windows 8 Roundup
There has been no shortage of Windows 8 news today. MrSeb writes: "Earlier this morning, at the Build Windows conference in Anaheim, California, Microsoft made it patently clear that 'To the cloud!' is not merely a throwaway phrase: it is the entire future of the company. Every single one of Microsoft's services, platforms, and form factors will now begin its hasty, leave-no-prisoners-behind transition to the always-on, internet-connected cloud." netbuzz pointed out that even the famous Blue Screen of Death will get a new look. Lastly mikejuk writes: "While everyone else is looking at the surface detail of Windows 8 there are some deep changes going on. Perhaps the biggest is that Metro now provides an alternative environment that doesn't use the age old Win32 API. This means no more overlapping windows — yes Metro really does take the windows out of Windows."
and I thought Microsoft was irrelevant before.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
We're really spamming the Windows 8 articles recently. Yeah no thanks, Windows 7 works just fine. It's the new XP - didn't you know?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
So we're back to Windows 1.0 with no overlapping windows? How am I suppose to quickly look at two open applications? or drag and drop items?
Unless there's a Deinstall Ballmer button, Win8 is dead.
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It feels like M$ hail mary pass to carry their installed base of developers over to the windows phone and to tablets,. There is very little here for traditional applications.
It looks increasingly like Windows 7 will be the last version of Windows I ever have to use.
>> Your PC ran into a problem that it couldn't handle, and now it needs to restart.
Your software caused a giant fuck-up; don't try to blame the hardware.
If only these 'clouds' or 'cloud services' actually had effective redundancy like they claim to and we didn't have so many 'clear sky' moments where they go down.
"Are we really ready for a world where the devices we use for most of our waking hours can communicate behind our backs?"
We're in that world now thanks to Windows. Our devices ALREADY communicate behind our backs. Trouble is, they are communicating with the criminals in Russia...
Two computers, surely? Otherwise the single application will spread across both screens.
Let's remember to turn off the hologram projectors so the simulation doesn't escape and create evil droids, ok?
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So here's what everyone is hearing in the Windows world about Win8: "We're changing Windows. A lot. It's gonna look completely different. It's gonna act completely different. A lot of the things you do today probably need to be thought about differently".
Here's how IT management is interpreting that: "We might completely break Windows again. A lot. It's gonna confuse users. It's gonna make them less productive. Don't even think about using this product in a business environment without considering all of the extra support they're going to need."
Guess what? Based on what I've already seen, there's no way I'm even bringing this product into our environment for even a test basis until it's been out for over a year. If we're gonna have to completely retrain users how to do something, we're going to consider other things. That new Motorola Bionic with it's full screen dock and keyboard is looking more and more like something I want to own.
----- obSig
If only these 'clouds' or 'cloud services' actually had effective redundancy like they claim to and we didn't have so many 'clear sky' moments where they go down.
Oh, come on, it's not like all the big Clouds got hacked this past weekend ... like Google and Amazon ... .... oh ... wait ...
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Not always the hardware itself, sometimes the driver, but I'd say 90% or more of the BSODs I see at work are related to hardware. Very rare that it is purely a software issue.
"Are we really ready for a world where the devices we use for most of our waking hours can communicate behind our backs?"
We're in that world now thanks to Windows. Our devices ALREADY communicate behind our backs. Trouble is, they are communicating with the criminals in Russia...
Mine work for China.
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http://i.imgur.com/vd2WA.jpg
Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
Cloud computing is the wave of the future. The idea of using a desktop PC as a primary computing device is increasingly becoming an anachronism. The wave of the future is ubiquitous computing capability not tied to one specific device. For instance, being able to listen to a song in your car on the way home from work, your phone while you walk to the mail box and through your home entertainment system when you walk in the door, with all the systems seamlessly interacting with each other so you never miss a beat.
Obviously this won't happen with Windows 8 but at least it's step in the right direction.
Is anyone actually stopping to say - "hang on a minute, what do people actually use?"
The hype of "the valley" would have us believe that everyone was sitting with a tablet with everything in the cloud.
The reality I see around me everyday is that everyone is sitting with a desktop/monitor/keyboard and is using a wide variety of local software. Not only are they doing that because it is "what has been", but also they are doing it because it is "what is required".
Is all this hype added to everything just to shift very large margin tablets and sell OSs? Was the netbook (a product that according to "the valley" is dead) so harmful that it's concept (low margins, fully functional, low requirements) had to be eliminated?
Funny how companies keep eating the retraining costs, while claiming those same training costs are the reason they don't deploy Linux desktops.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Because Microsoft is changing the default behaviour in the new product. And the new default behaviour will be LESS effective for the users of the traditional Windows systems (desktops and laptops).
Here's an idea. Why not leave the DEFAULT behaviour as it is already and add a new OPTION to change it to the tablet-friendly format for those who want it that way?
The world squeals at the deliverance of Metro. [cue banjo]
So .... they're taking all their prisoners with them?
Someone needs to go to idiom school.
What's Windows?
SNAP!
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Dell will like that.
Again. Because Microsoft is changing the default behaviour in the new product. And the new default behaviour will be LESS effective for the users of the traditional Windows systems (desktops and laptops).
So you say. Maybe you're right. Maybe Microsoft got it wrong all those years ago when it dropped that interface style with the early versions of Windows.
Wait...I think I may have figured out the answer to my own question.
I just realized that Slashdot's logo no longer has the tag line "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters".
I'm not sure when that tagline disappeared, but I guess it wasn't for no reason.
-Mike
I haven't seen any comments on security. Does WS8 improve security?
I have two things:
1 - Given Microsoft's track record for abject failure in the innovation department, does anyone really believe any of this hype?
2 - Does anyone else think trying to be two things at once will just be one hot mess? Unlike Apple who does iOS very well, and OS X very well, this seems to be doomed to trying to be two things at once, while simply sucking at both. I think Apple dabbled with the concept with Lion but quickly realized that when I'm using a desktop, I want a desktop OS, not a 27" iPad.
Would have been nice to explain WTH Metro is in the summary, or provide an inline link to it.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Ars Technica did a review of Windows 8 by using explorer.exe and tried to use it as a regular PC running Word. Results are mentioned here
http://saveie6.com/
Regarding the new improved BSOD: "After expressing emoticon-style sadness"
Windows catches up with 1980's mac.
Well, I guess it's a start.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Shouldn't that be "CRASH!"?
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Well I guess it's time to get my head around something new :)
http://www.gibby.net.au
I'm at the BUILD conference, and my impression is that Windows 8 will be very competitive. The re-imagining effort is sweeping, and touches everything from the back end to Consumer devices. The big news is that HTML 5 is now a "native" programming platform for the client UI. There are two JS libraries, a pure JS library that implements the new Metro look-and-feel (WinJS), and a Windows/JS bridge library that exposes the Windows API (and hence the Windows-controlled hardware such as the camera) in Javascript (WinRT). Tooling improvements include terrific new debugging scenarios and a major upgrade to Expression Blend to be able to edit HTML/CSS as well as XAML.
Basically, MS has taken the best ideas of the web development world, and leveraged them to massively improve the development experience for their next OS. If I wanted to write Windows-specific apps, Win8 is a huge improvement. It's an open question, however, whether people want to write Windows-specific apps as opposed to web-centric apps. Even then, Win8 will definitely shorten and simplify the transition from a web app to a Windows app.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Not that I use Windows for anything than gaming, and even there it sucks.
Windows sucks for gaming?
It's a messaging problem. People don't like change. Hopefully the company sticks with "you'll get over it."
Help stamp out iliturcy.
As we saw with Vista, people are going to buy it by the metric boatload regardless. In fact, many are on software assurance and contractually obligated to do so. It's an even-number release, so the people who would skip it are going to, and install the next release instead. No matter what on release day almost every PC on earth is going to come with a paid license for it, want it or not, even if the software actually installed is something else. This version is about getting the throwaway version out of the way. Why should they care at all about what's in it? It could be a blank disk and move 200M units. If it's even worse than Windows ME, what are you going to do - not buy it? Good luck with that.
So why should they put even five minutes' thought into what it could be? That would be a waste.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
You can have any number of apps open; a simple swipe from top edge reveals them in a floating bar -- touch the one you want. Honestly, aren't you over-reacting? This is not fundamentally different from how Windows launches apps today, except that the UI now bleeds to the full edge of the screen -- no chrome -- so you need one finger-swipe to show the tiles at the start. Big deal. It's very touch-friendly, and the edge-to-edge UI makes everything look like a magazine, beautiful and functional.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Windows 8, Windows Server, Windows Phone 7, Xbox, Bing, and Office, and each of their corollary utilities and tools, will all become “continuous services” — services that fully leverage Windows Azure and Live to provide a new level of context- and position-aware computing.
Additionally, with the new Bing(TM) services leveraging the groundbreaking Azure(tm) Cloud Computing Platform-- the CCP-- you can utilize your core capabilities in a paradigm shifting manner that leads to brand new intra-platform synergies.
Windows 8-- because I have no idea WTF I just said.
Buzzword Bingo veteran Davide Marney brings us this contemporary rendition of word salad without mentioning any of our three Buzzkills "vertical cloud synergy." Congratulations Davide! Please step up and claim your prize: a free download of Windows 8 Developer Preview (applause)
Help stamp out iliturcy.
How many posts are we going to see about Windows 8 on Slashdot?
This is blowing my mind.
How is this "news that matters"?
Well it's a major shakeup for the most dominant operating system in consumer computing with a focus on serious expansion into the tablet space. So for most people involved in technology these significant changes to Windows do matter, whether you're using it, supporting it, writing applications for it or working with a platform that could capitalize on people's natural urge to resist drastic change. But of course you could just avoid these stories if it's not something that interests you or matters to you, though given the volume of comments it clearly matters to plenty of people.
That and the ability to support arbitrary functions of arbitrary hardware is where it first came from. Back in the NT days, nearly the entire graphics layer got put in the kernel to speed things up. These days they've managed to move more things in to user space, there are a number of kinds of drivers that are mostly either mostly user mode with a bit of a shim in the kernel, or entirely user mode and they talk to the hardware via something like a class driver in the kernel. It's helped a lot, but you can still have problems.
This is not only because there are still plenty of kernel mode drivers, but because hardware can go nuts on the system. All PCIe (and PCI) devices have DMA which means the whole memory of the system is fair game for them. So if they go apeshit they can break the computer. Even that aside if they went really apeshit they could just flood the bus with noise or something like that and cause a hard lock.
With things like IOMMU this will probably get a little better in the future, but I doubt it'll ever go the route that high end, RTOS type stuff does for performance reasons.
As it stands the situation is much better than it used to be. For example I recently got a new graphics card that was defective. It would crash under 3D load (acted like a thermal issue). Didn't BSOD or hard lock teh system though, the driver could reboot the card and continue on. Would crash the 3D app, but the system survived.
Still though, drivers account for most BSODs I see. IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL is the one I see all the time which more or less means "A driver was written incorrectly and tried to do something it can't." More specifically, it means a process that was running at an elevated IRQ level, which drivers do (that's how they get control of the system), tried to touch pagable memory which isn't allowed.
Ultimately there's only so much you can do with regards to hardware and driver faults if you want a high performing OS. Even in the case of a full microkernel RTOS situation like QNX, you still have to jump through some various hoops to have a hardware setup where a failure doesn't take the system down. Worth it for communications satellites, not worth it for a desktop.
In Bill Gates' book "The Road Ahead" he describes the fall of Wang
computers; the company 'Zigged instead of Zagged' (...IRC...??)
Anyway, for those who wish to get actual *WORK* done with the new
OS, the whole thing is a complete disaster. The UI designers at MS
have managed to make the most non-productive interface in history.
Everything about the interface reeks of linear thinking.
It's in the cloud alright.
To put it all as succinctly as possible; My phone is a phone,
I don't need a desktop interface that acts like a phone/PDA.
This is Microsofts 'WangZig'.
I feel sad that they didn't find some way of trying to unify the desktop and Metro. Sure, space can be limited for some apps, but other apps which are small in size may be able to run on a phone and desktop with little or no change.
However, as a C# developer the below looks interesting from this site: http://www.infoq.com/news/2011/09/WinRT-API
C#/VB: The end of P/Invoke
Calling native functions from .NET usually involves building up structures and manipulating pointers. Under WinRT all APIs are exposed as objects that C# and VB can consume directly. This puts .NET developers on level footing with C++ developers.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
I understand what you're saying, but I guess I don't really see it as a major shakeup.
And I don't disagree that it seems to matter to plenty of people. I'm just making the point that it didn't use to matter to many in the slashdot audience. I'm still of the school of thought that to use the word "Microsoft" or "Windows" in the same sentence as "technology" is a sacrilege.
But, I'll drop it.
Right - but I don't want to reach up and touch my desktop monitor? I get that this is a great boon for tablets. No problem. :) It's just that in the developer preview, it's also forced onto desktop users. I've said several times- I'll gladly eat my words when the beta comes out if they've made more logical decisions for desktop users. But the keynote speeches indicating that desktop users should be interacting with their screen more, and that we'll have to "change the way we use Windows" suggest an unpleasant enforcement of said interface on desktop users.
"The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
Used to be, windows would only take down your machine. Now, when word crashes, it can take down a whole cluster. Ain't progress grand?
To the old timers, Microsoft used to equal Windows 95, Windows ME, clippy, Bob, data-access technology of the moment, having to reboot every time you change a basic system setting or update anything, registry nightmares, DLL hell, god-awful web browsers that couldn't properly render a well formed HTML document, office macro viruses, SQL worms, OSes that got slower with each service pack or major release, etc...
To the younguns, Microsoft equals having fun playing Madden on their Xbox, and viewing the world through the default MSN page that came on their computer.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Since when do slashdot readers care about "Windoze"?
Since it stopped being a blog for a bunch of Linux geeks. Sometime, oh, about 10 years ago?
You must be positively ancient here.
Not that I use Windows for anything than gaming, and even there it sucks.
Windows sucks for gaming?
If you had an alternative, you'd know for sure...but for now its pretty much all there is...and that in itself sucks.
This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
Windows is SLOW. Even XP. I switched from Linux to XP a few years back.
After finding that XP continually freezes for seconds at a time every time you do I/O (eg. copy files, or anything involving a CD/DVD), I bought Vista.
I actually found vista to be ok, but it was a memory hog and superfetch killed my hard drive. So once windows 7 was released I upgraded yet again...all good so far.
Windows is a mess but things do work ok.
Then one day I decided to try Linux again - so I installed it on a separate partition and was blown away by how fast it was. Having not used Linux for the better part of a year, I had forgotten just how quick it was.
It booted faster, logged in faster, files copied faster, programs opened faster - it was just incredible.
It was enough for me to switch back to linux. I still use windows occasionally...but not to the same extent I used to.
And now I own a mac...so its a whole new world again...so far I'm enjoying it. The window management is lacking but on the whole its pretty nice to use.
This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
The article linked from TFA has got quite a few things regarding WinRT wrong. Point by point:
Windows Run Time, WinRT- a C++ object-oriented API.
It's not a C++ API. It's a COM-based API/ABI that can be accessed from any language that knows what a raw function pointer is. It's relatively easier to do that from C++, because COM vtables map nicely to C++ vtables. But WinRT ABI itself is intentionally designed to be projected to different languages, adapting along the way. C++ has its own projection, but so do .NET and JS.
Applications can choose to use either the old Win32 API or the new WinRT but not both.
Wrong. You can use Win32 APIs in Metro apps - some of them are not available (largely because they are pointless in the sandbox, or deal with the old UI concepts), but some are. If you open windows header files - "windows.h" and friends - they now have blocks of code that look like this:
Desktop partition is what's available to non-Metro apps running on the classic desktop. App partition is what's available to Metro apps.
Furthermore, classic apps can actually use WinRT (while retaining full access to Win32 APIs). Not all of WinRT will work - specifically, most of UI stuff won't - but huge chunks of WinRT are not UI-related and are accessible. Examples include I/O and networking libraries, XML parser, XSLT engine, new device and multimedia APIs etc.
Of course WinRT is delivered to the programmer via XAML (or HTML)
WinRT is not "delivered via XAML", and most definitely not "via HTML". WinRT includes a UI library (Windows.UI.* namespaces), which allow you to use XAML as a declarative markup language for your UI (but you don't have to, strictly speaking). This is what is normally used by Metro C++ and .NET apps. JS apps don't use WinRT for UI at all - they use HTML5/CSS3, rendered by chromeless IE. They do get access to non-UI parts of WinRT, but they don't have to use it, and in any case it's completely orthogonal to their (HTML5) UI.
There is also no more need for P/invoke. As Win32 isn't being used there is nothing to invoke. There is no API lurking beneath the covers. So anything that you used to do via P/Invoke you will now have to find a way to do via WinRT.
You absolutely can P/Invoke from a .NET Metro app. For one thing, you can P/Invoke to call any of Win32 API functions that are available to Metro apps, as described earlier. Furthermore, you can write a C++ DLL (e.g. for perf), bundle it with your app, and call it from C# as usual via P/Invoke.
Now, in practice, you probably won't, for the simple reason that pretty much everything that a Metro app can do is covered by WinRT APIs. So why would you mess around with P/Invoke declarations when you already have an object-oriented API that can be used directly? Mixed C#/C++ scenarios are also better supported that way - you can make a private WinRT component DLL in C++, and reference it from C#. Your WinRT C++ classes automagically become visible as .NET classes, no P/Invoke declarations needed.
In fact, you could even go the other way around - write a WinRT component DLL in C#, and reference it from C++. And then both of those can be used in JS, so you can really mix all three if you want.
When you create a Page object with WinRT and run it then it expands to fill the entire screen real estate
By default, yes, but you can have two Metro apps run side by side.
If you want overlapping windows and dialog
I think it is actually good Microsoft is starting to experiment with their products. But, I believe this is actually a step in the wrong direction for the pc.
The thing is, Metro seems to be good for people who want to do mainly web surfing / email checking and the very occasional word document (if at all). The thing is, those people are moving away from the pc platform, as there are better alternatives out there. The chromebook or tablets/smartphones provide a much better alternative to the pc.
The rest of us, will most likely want a more classical approach to the desktop. Something that allows us to work with multiple windows easily. Something I always liked about Mac/Ubuntu is that you have multiple workspaces. It is a lot easier to work with those than multiple windows on one workspace. I think this is the direction to go.
Anyway, I will have to wait until Microsoft releases the OS until I can make a final opinion of it, even though I already decided that I will not be getting it. DirectX is really the only thing I need windows for (for playing games), therefore I also wont be getting Win8.
But how exactly does Windows suck for gaming? I don't see what's bad about it.
And I already like it more than iOS on the iPad.
Why?
I think it looks pretty good too. I think it'll be a good competitor to the iPad in a way Android has not managed (especially if on a tablet you'll only be able to use Metro).
But, I would hesitate to say which one was better currently. It's still quite a while away from shipping, one whole rev of iOS away (and Metro for that matter) to boot!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I am. Have you see my user number? :-)
So where is Bob?
Discontinued about 15 years ago.
I don't see a difference. I am sure I won't like it either.
When considering relevance, What is more telling that by almost midnight on the west coast, there are only 270 comments on a new operating system announcement by the largest operating system manufacturer.
Posted on my iPad.
POP!
and now for some useless lc text...
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Look you asshole, it's just a preview, everything will be fixed when it ships! :-P
Joke aside I totally agree with you. win7 went well (and not only moderately imo) because the market needed a fresh, stable and reliable desktop and because the masses just can't handle linux for varying reasons (let's just face that as a fact). I am not an expert on OS economics but I think the pushing of win8 is just some haste. It has been less than two years since win7 has become main version of windows on the market. Also I don't think that win8 does provide changes enough to justify a dedicated release. Yes it's nice to have a new UI paradigm for the desktop ( but xmonad is better ) but as I look close into it I can't but notice that half baked smell of a rushed product. What microsoft is effectively trying to do with metro is put their veil on web apps. Which is just wrong. I hate to say it but the whole ui could just be an extention to the gecko. That way microsoft could for once be actually compliant to some standards and have a competing interface in th os world.
just my 1c
-- no sig today
Hey who knows, perhaps Windows doesn't suck quite as much as you'd like it to.
throw new NoSignatureException();
Windows catches up with 1980's mac. Well, I guess it's a start -John air max shoes
WinRT requires Microsoft's C++/CLI extensions, which are compiled into the executable.
This means that you can't take your application's code, write a WinRT emulation layer and compile it for another platform. You also have to write a new compiler that understands Microsoft's C++ extensions.
This is just another attempt from Microsoft on vendor lock-in. Microsoft is notorious for taking a standard, and altering it a little in order to make it incompatible with the rest of the world. That's why we have WinMain (instead of 'main' for GUI processes), J++ instead of Java, C++/CLI instead of C++, and now WinRT/C++/CLI instead of standards-compliant C++.
The guys cannot just play along with the rest of the world.
I have trouble with VMWare, too. When the iso boots in ESXi 5.0, the machine inexplicably powers off.
I got it running in VirtualBox, though... and it's pretty horrible. It's not even intuitive as a smart phone interface, and is difficult to use even with a touchscreen. The fact that they're trying to turn the Desktop into a Smart Phone seems pretty ridiculous to me. I certainly can't see large corporations moving this way.
I do understand the reasoning though. The average 9 year old can use a smart phone, but probably not a computer. By unifying the interface between the phone and the computer, they're trying to create a smooth transition between phones and computers, which to them will hopefully spur sales of Windows Smart Phones for children. They'll try to convince parents that the Windows Phone is the better choice for their child because it is a seamless transition to the Desktop.
Shouldn't that be "CRASH!"?
If you insist.
We've had the ability to create "Metro-style" apps for years. We just always called them "maximized modal windows" before.
So if computing with maximized modal windows has been available for years, why wasn't everybody doing it before? Because desktop users hate them, that's why.
They may be convienent on platforms with little real-estate and gawky touch controls, but on a desktop they make no sense whatsoever, and frustrate the crap out of users. It's as if Microsoft has finally realized that shoehorning a desktop OS onto a cellphone (WinMo) doesn't work well (Yay!), so their latest idea is to instead wedge a cellphone OS onto a desktop PC (WTF?)
I guess using the right tool for the job on each (iow: keeping them different) isn't an option for some reason. Presumably, some non-technical reason, as iPhone and Android users with desktops seem to have little trouble with the idea.
So really I can buy Windows 8 and have the OS/2 (Metro for today) interface and run the Program Manager (Win7 Desktop for today) for older Windows apps? I have this sick feeling my stomach from all the mobile stuff.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
That seems unlikely. You guys never did "get it" and you never will. I guess that's what you get when you take some of the brightest minds on the planet and con them into playing Survivor: Redmond for all their adult lives - or until they get voted off.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
You're lucky your core applications sit in one nice contained window instead of dozens of modeless floating dialogs. Focus-follows-mouse would be pure hell for most graphics folks.
That wonderful continuous undeserved revenue generator.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
Brilliant marketing. Make a crappy operating system, but throw in some eye candy that everyone has to have.
2 camps of customers now - the ones that like it despite its flaws, and the ones who would never buy it.
Then fix all the bugs, but release it as a new OS. By that time hardware has caught up so the performance seems robust and snappy. 95 to 98, XP to XP SP2 (it took a while), Vista to 7.
W8 is the experimental failure that people will buy only because it comes on their computers, and W9 will be the one everyone else buys to upgrade their current computer. They get purchases from both camps, and continue to dominate the market.
I see an OEM setting, so they can pre-install the Tablet interface on a tablet, the PC interface on a PC, and the user can still change it.
I don't see anything to support all these conclusions people are jumping to.
Some companies never learn. You can't overdo it. Look at Apple - they had the chance to do everything on the Internet and in the beginning, iPhone apps were ONLY allowed on the Internet and have a local HTML5 storage unit. IT DIDN'T WORK. We can't and don't want to be permanently connected to the Internet. It's also the reason Google Apps is not taking off. We want to be able to continue working if we're somewhere else - in the middle of the woods even.
I do appreciate the efforts Apple and others (like some OpenOffice plugins) is making to make sharing and publishing materials easier, to synchronize faster and easier, to always have your music library or your photo's or your bookmarks available wherever you are in the world or when your house burns down or when your computer crashes. But I also would like to keep them on my hard drive so I can look at them and listen to music when I'm not connected.
I WANT: my data in online storage for free or cheap as a backup, remote login and synchronization tool
I DO NOT WANT: my productivity to be affected when the service I WANT is not available or is slowed down for whatever reason
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
As a parent, I will not give a smart phone to a child, nor any phone for that matter until they're 16 or so.
As a parent, I will not let them on the computer much either; though I will introduce them to computers via a Linux-based OLPC when the time comes (usage time will be limited though in order to encourage them towards other activities).
They'll get enough computer use in their life time. No need to hasten it.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
I agree with you, the tablet market has found the way to the coffee table and to train/air travel time.
It is a coffee table niche product that is useful for browsing the web between commercials, catching up on TV shows past and other things.
I can only laugh when I see people using an ipad with a keyboard, stand and all... just to update their Facebook status (Hey, I am at the airport on my way to Panama city beach). At that point, what is so bad about a laptop.
I have a tablet and all I do is code for it, watch a movie, browse the web or get maps to where I go next.
It is a perfect in between device, not a laptop, nor a desktop.
Load New Commander (Y/N)?
I find linux to be a lot better at multitasking, specially with IO
Shouldn't that be "CRASH!"?
But does it blend?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
So a lack of 3rd-party plugins is a bad thing now MS are doing it (in Metro anyway)? These "web standards" do seem rather overrated I'll admit.
I love coming here and seeing how desperate anti-MS people can get; it really is amusing. Speaking of which, whatever happened to my good friend Twitter? He was something else; I made it on his "list" and everything...
throw new NoSignatureException();
Having loaded Windows 8 and played with it I hate Metro as much on a PC as I did on a phone. Why, when everyone else is going for better integrated apps and therefore use of screen space, would anyone purposely make everything they do waste space constantly. I buy larger and more monitors constantly chasing the dream of as much viewable space as possible, now Windows 8 will eat up 20% of that immediately with crap running off the edge of the screen and try to force me into single, full screen apps. Madness.
Probably that was said many times before, nothing new, so I must apologize. I think Microsoft needs to support two Windows - one for business, infrastructure use, and another for general consumer, tablet PC, etc. use. Now they are playing the same game but by two different rules. I think Windows XP is a great product. Because of its longevity, it is decently stable, predictable and manageable. Windows Vista, 7, and 8 looks to be chasing consumer world which I don't like. Not the consumer world, but the fact that Microsoft uses the same kit to conquer two essentially very different and incompatible worlds - one where frills, cool GUI, large button, Aero experience, you name it - rules and another where stability, predictability, manageability and all that boring stuff rules. They are fat enough to fight Google and Apple on consumer side. Surprisingly there is little to fight on business infrastructure side - they only need to make and maintain good and nicely developed product (like Windows XP :). It's pity that all attention is driven towards consumer market where I wouldn't say that Microsoft is the best. Microsoft does indeed have their loyal customers in business market, but they are not so interested to listen to them. At least that's what I feel.
You have no idea how much many of us are going to enjoy watching you guys squirm and flail about for the next two years. No doubt HP's early look at W8 had a lot to do with them deciding to opt out of selling Windows PCs. I can just barely imagine Leo Apothaker, having waited patiently through the show turning to the presenter and asking: "What else have you got? Is that it?" You guys have no idea what you've done. This is going to be delightful.
Twitter got tired of being stalked and mod-bombed by sockpuppets and left for greener pastures. I do believe you'll find him on techrights if you're really looking. A shame, that. I do believe he was one of slashdot's most prolific article submitters ever and the quality has gone downhill since.
You've got some gall to bring up standards. Why don't you go back and see if you can get W8 adopted as a standard by ISO.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Ah yes, indeed, I've been hearing about the prophesied downfall of Microsoft for as long as I've been hearing about Microsoft. No doubt any day now.
throw new NoSignatureException();
Enjoy the ride until you get voted off the island.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Not sure what the original poster meant - and that is probably who you're really directing this to...
but for me, Windows is slow. Compared to linux, even just general day-to-day use is much slower in windows than in Linux.
The problem is that other OS's like Linux and OSX are hampered by driver support etc - so there really isn't any decent comparison you could do.
The problem with Windows for gaming is that it is also checking your email, checking for windows/office updates, and indexing your hard drive to make your files and emails searchable, and it also loves to sit there reading your hard drive for reasons I've never been able to figure out. I turn indexing and superfetch off - and I've never noticed any slowdown. Most of the time its faster because the hard drive isn't as busy, and its cache isn't full of crap.
One minute you're blazing along in some car game, and the next its going all choppy because Windows has decided to thrash your hard disk a bit. Its the most frustrating thing ever. I have a quad-core system with a fairly fast graphics card, but still gameplay is nowhere near as smooth as a console.
I'm not normally a fan of consoles for gaming - but if Windows wants to be great for games, it needs a special "game mode" you can boot into that doesn't do anything but games.
A multi-tasking general purpose OS is really not good for gaming. Or at least not the sort of games we normally refer to when we speak of gaming.
This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
The problem with Windows for gaming is that it is also checking your email
No, Windows is never checking your email, if you have an email client running then that is what is checking your email and that is absolutely no different on any other PC platform.
checking for windows/office updates
OSX also does this, as do most linux distros, but it's just pinging the update server and it's certainly not doing it at narrow intervals so it most definitely shouldn't affect you. However if it somehow is affecting you then turn automatic updates off.
and indexing your hard drive to make your files and emails searchable
Again, OSX does this too, it's not a Windows thing and on both OSes it can be turned off if necessary.
I turn indexing and superfetch off - and I've never noticed any slowdown.
Well there you go, but even with indexing left on i haven't noticed any issues in Windows 7 or with the Spotlight indexing in OSX.
Most of the time its faster because the hard drive isn't as busy, and its cache isn't full of crap.
What cache? Do you mean RAM? The only Windows cache i can really think of is superfetch, but that caches application data in unused RAM, as soon as that memory is needed it is overwritten but not persisted to disk so there is no performance penalty.
One minute you're blazing along in some car game, and the next its going all choppy because Windows has decided to thrash your hard disk a bit.
I don't think this is a Windows issue, I've never seen such an issue before unless I've been running a crapload of programs simultaneously and run out of ram so it decides to swap to disk, but obviously not a thing you generally would consider doing while gaming. This sort of unspecified issue is likely related to some other software.
I have a quad-core system with a fairly fast graphics card, but still gameplay is nowhere near as smooth as a console.
Really? My gaming PC is a pretty old dual core w/ 4GB RAM and an SLi setup and to this day gameplay on it is just as smooth, if not more so than my xbox or playstation.
I'm not normally a fan of consoles for gaming - but if Windows wants to be great for games, it needs a special "game mode" you can boot into that doesn't do anything but games.
You don't need a special game mode, if there are any services causing you grief with performance then turn them off. Start->Run->services.msc, but you really shouldn't need to do that, most are background services anyway.
A multi-tasking general purpose OS is really not good for gaming.
Of course a purpose-built machine is likely to be better than a general purpose one, but that hardly means a general purpose one 'sucks'. The simple answer is just don't multitask, if you want a dedicated gaming experience on your PC then don't have your email client running, or your virus scanner, or other applications, etc...
Personally i leave my email client open and often WMP playing to my stereo over the network as these don't appear to have any detrimental effect.
I'm not suggesting that OSX or Linux are better than Windows - more than any general-purpose multi-tasking OS is not suited to games.
Yes it can run games, and most of the time acceptably, but its a compromise.
The cache I referred to is the hard drive's own internal cache (usually 8+ MB these days).
When I mentioned I saw no slowdown after turning off indexing and superfetch, I was referring to there being no perceivable loss in the usual windows performance, since I dont use desktop search and as far as I'm concerned superfetch is only going to kill your hard drive sooner.
However, the choppiness during game-play still persists. I'm surprised that you dont experience it - it seems the only way that would be possible is to not run anything else at the same time. That would be a real pain for anyone who also uses their PC for other things (that require services etc that run in the background).
You mention the virus scanner - which is interesting because obviously you dont play online games, or even network games for that matter.
I'd like to believe you that your system is perfect, but I suspect the truth is that you're a lot less fussy than me. I've also been burned enough by Windows in the past that I refuse to use it if I can help it. Fortunately I'm not a gamer.
This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
Yes it can run games, and most of the time acceptably, but its a compromise.
It's only a compromise if you want it to be a compromise, you don't have to multitask while playing a game.
However, the choppiness during game-play still persists. I'm surprised that you dont experience it - it seems the only way that would be possible is to not run anything else at the same time.
You complain that it is checking for emails yet it appears you still want to run an email client, which is obviously going to check for emails. It isn't a problem of multitasking operating systems, it is a problem of attempting to over utilize the available system resources. When you're engrossed in a game you're unlikely to be multitasking, if you are doing such a thing then you need to ensure you have a system capable of it, which is not an exceptional system by any means.
That would be a real pain for anyone who also uses their PC for other things (that require services etc that run in the background).
Services that run in the background like what? How is this any different from the multi-tasking operating systems in today's modern gaming consoles that run many background services?
You mention the virus scanner - which is interesting because obviously you dont play online games, or even network games for that matter.
How is usage of a virus scanner related in any way to the ability to run network or online games? I've never had a virus from simply playing an online or networked game and I've never heard of such a thing happening.
I'd like to believe you that your system is perfect, but I suspect the truth is that you're a lot less fussy than me.
I know how to set up my system, I also know the capabilities of my system and that trying to run more than my system is capable of is stupid because it doesn't take a genius to realise it would result in the behavior you describe. Therefore if you are experiencing choppiness then you are doing something wrong.