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The 30 Best Features of Windows
Barence writes "PC Pro has picked out its 30 best features of Windows 8. Its countdown includes features such as the revamped Task Manager, the option to run ISOs and VHDs natively, and Windows To Go, which allows you to take a portable installation of Windows 8 with you." They've also listed ten features they'd like to see added to Windows 8, "including the return of the Start button on the desktop, virtual desktops and one-click sharing of optical drives."
Is that Windows 8 has 30 features
I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Sent from the iPad I found in your car.
MyCleanPC sounds like a virus, and this looks like spam, or a very long winded joke
I was honestly not aware that Windows doesn't have "virtual desktops." Stunning. It's like a TV with one channel.
Sent from the iPad I found in your car.
I'm honestly in doubt as to wether this is an attempt at being funny, or plain old spam.
Computing redefined for people who REALLY like glossy magazines and coffee table books.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Indeed, this spammer is posting in multiple places using mulitple accounts.
It sounds like they want to copy KDE.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
I'm not clicking through 8 pages, each of which seems to load a popup, just to read a list of 30 items. And judging from the first couple of pages I could stand to look at, the article is hyping up some very un-newsworthy information indeed! There's nothing worse than a site with tid bits of "information" surrounded by an orgy of advertising. Get lost!
Yet another "click here dozens of times so we can get more advertising revenue" article. This could have been done in 3-4 pages, not 10+.
They also clearly haven't used Windows 7 as it has the ability to mount VHDs as well. (Windows 8 improves upon that by adding ISO mounting support) The way they wrote that "feature" is as if the VHD mounting is absent in previous versions.
LOAD ".SIG"
PRESS PLAY ON TAPE
Spam, with a dubious download awaiting if you should happen to visit one of the many links to the site in the post. "MyCleanPC.com", along with sister site "DoubleMySpeed.com" were exposed ages ago as a scam, despite a veneer of legitimacy provided by some TV adverts. Just another one of those so called "security tools" which then proceeds to find a lot of problems with your PC and then requires you to "register" to fix the so called problems.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
10. Quit whoring for pageviews with needlessly split up articles
Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
I was honestly not aware that Windows doesn't have "virtual desktops."
Not included with the OS, however free 3rd party tools are available. Even having used them myself, I don't get the appeal of what basically amounts to a poor-man's alternative to having multiple monitors. Sorry, I prefer having more than 1 display visible at all times, not hidden. Multiple displays have often been a nightmare to get working flawlessly under Linux.
To me, where BitLocker or another disk encryption tool means the difference between a hardware write-off and insurance claim versus having to report to every manager up a chain, as well as the press, I consider the basic Windows 8 security upgrades to BitLocker important.
It would be nice if they would allow non-TPM encryption without a USB flash drive, because not many machines have TPM/TCG compatible motherboards these days.
However, I can deploy images that are already BitLocker encrypted, or just tell the machine to encrypt used space in Windows 8. With the new hardware encrypted HDDs, I can have BitLocker deal with those as well.
Yes, this is boring, but anything that ensures that an attacker isn't going to get data should a laptop be stolen is important for day to day IT.
If I recall correctly, even for Windows 95 there was already software that made virtual desktops possible on Windows. FWIW, I never use virtual desktops, tried it with Indigo magic, but just don't see the point. Maybe my work makes it possible to work without them :-).
Perl Programmer for hire
I agree with number 1 (Bring back the start button) if only for consistencies sake. Windows has had a start button for years and years, and most graphical operating systems have some a main system button in one form or another. Why fix it if it ain't broken? (An argument that could probably be applied liberally to 8's new GUI...)
Number 2: Blu-ray support would be nice, but I actually like how they have removed most of the optical media licensing crap to the media/media pro packs (or whatever they are called). By the time 8 is out, I would bet a majority of consumer-grade computing devices won't have an optical drive. Blu-ray should be supported in the media pack, but I have no qualms if it isn't in the default stack of cards.
As for number 3 (One Click Optical Drive Sharing), I think this might be the most valid criticisms on the list, mainly for the same reasons stated above: optical drives are going away. I currently have one optical drive in the house and have it shared via samba and few other ways, but this is a read-only approach.
Number 4 (Drag to open) doesn't seem like a very harsh criticism, it feels more like list padding. I don't use drag and drop for just about anything after having found the keyboard is much faster though, so I should recuse myself from commenting on this one.
As far as Virtual Desktops go (Number 5), it is technically unfeasible, for reasons I don't quite remember. Something to do with the way Windows handles windows which has escaped me for the moment. Nevertheless, there are third party applications of varying quality that already implement this, to a varying degree.
Bring back visualbasic? (Number 6) No. Just no. That thing was a mess. Friends don't let friends script VB, drunk or otherwise.
Number 7: Fonts preview app: I have the win8 consumer preview running in vmware right now, and the font folder looks pretty much untouched from win7. It still lets you preview installed fonts. More list-padding?
I've got an easy fix for 8 (Dual-pane explorer). Use two explorer windows, one on the right one on the left. Or feel free to use something like Total Commander or its variants. They still make those, right?
As for 9, I'm sure Microsoft is going to give a little polish to the out-of-box-experience. Just cause the alpha doesn't have it, doesn't mean it won't be there.
10 is valid. I don't like where the shutdown button lives on win8. Move it up one level, just so that it is a little easier to find. I don't like to hunt and peck for a basic system function.
"I'm not clicking through 8 pages" -- You should read their Windows 1 feature then.
How do you know? Have you used it?
It's a bit soon to be calling it "the next Windows ME or Vista 2.0" - that's what people said about Windows 7 and that has been pretty good. I mean, yes, there's be a lot of hate for the Metro interface, but no more than for Unity on Ubuntu, and no one is claiming that's dying.
That abomination that is Metro is enough to kill the deal for me. I will use Win 7 until it's end-of-support. Meanwhile, I'm dual-booting Xubuntu so that when 7 comes to an end, I'll already be comfortable with a different OS.
has been replaced by Seamus, the yelping Irish Setter lashed to the top of Mitt Romney's station wagon for those long directory searches.
Half of those "new" features are already in Windows 7, like AppLocker. I have USB3 support now. Sure, it's not "native", but it works, so who cares?
A lot more interesting are the new features under the hood of Windows 8 server. Take a look at this article for example: Optimizing for Latency-Sensitive Applications: scenario overview.
Sure, it's not visible or shiny, but wow those are some big changes!
It's too bad that one of the features of Windows 8 isn't "Not a piece of crap".
Some sort of integrated 'Games' service 'for Windows' that I could connect to 'Live'. Just so I could play such popular games as 'Shadowrun' with my many friends (but no more than 100).
But I'll understand if that technology is currently unworkable.
The best feature is that I can wait for the first service pack to see if it works ok. I have no NEED for Windows 8.
Maybe my work makes it possible to work without them :-).
If by "work" you mean "surfing porn all day" then yeah, you probably don't need virtual desktops.
As a Linux user, let me say, this is not insightful, interesting or informative. It's flamebait.
#1 Feature: You *don't* have to run it!!!!! Stick with Win 7, or Linux, Mac OS X!
Gosh, how clever.
Remember, Windows 7 is really Vista ver. 2.0.
Remember that thing that's not true, you mean? Think of what made Vista a failure before opening your mouth.
Windows 8 will be another Windows ME, or Vista...
It might be a failure. You could check out the missing features, if you'd like to try R'ing a FA.
Don't pay to be a Beta tester for Microsoft operating systems!
You can do that for free. It's called a developer preview.
--
Why would you be looking for new features in an article about the best features? You are aware they're not the same, right? And often, new features don't work very well right? So, from a logic standpoint, I'd expect many of the best features of most OSes to be anything but new.
Thats because its trivially easy to change desktop managers in Ubuntu, for free. But if you must know, I hate Unity. Dont particularly like Gnome 3 either. I keep trying to like KDE, but I keep having a bad experience with font sizes.
With that being said, I kind of like Metro. Maybe because I only use windows for gaming, but for a system where you only use 5 or six programs regularly, its not bad. Though I couldnt get the network to work in a VM when I tried the consumer preview, so maybe I would hate it too if I could have actually installed something on it I wanted to use.
For the thousands of people who realize that maybe a Linux distro isn't that difficult after all, and decide to wipe this version of Windows, that doesn't seem meant for their desktop, off their hard drive.
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
...features that have been in every other operating system for years.
I can't believe people get excited for this. Now we have to deal with all the fanboys who every time they see these things in other operating systems are going to yell about people ripping off Microsoft.
I tried to come up with the 30 best features of Windows 1. I don't think it had 30 features, even counting startup and shutdown.
> Multiple displays have often been a nightmare to get working flawlessly under Linux.
Oh, come on! It's 10 to 15 seconds to configure. I had more stress finding the cable...
Indeed, one of the features is "Doesn't require more hardware than Windows 7". Clearly that feature was just copied from Windows 7!
dom
this time?
It has to be a joke. First because some are quite funny (my favorite is the one where the guy had cancer and his family left him, but then he found MyCleanPC and everything was dandy). Second because creating multiple accounts to post on /. is a bit time consuming, especially given that this is arguably the worst site for spamming that sort of scam - it has a very high incidence of tech-oriented nerds, way too many running OSX, Linux or something weirder, and very few grandmas.
Best feature - it can download Linux and burn a bootable iso of your choice.
Why cant you mouse over the volume status in the system tray and roll your scroll wheel to change your volume? Linux has had it for over a decade.
Really Microsoft, people would not mind it you implement this feature.
vi +
That's clearly another Windows feature - opening up the market to sell unnecessary software to suckers.
And let's not forget its capability as a host for bots.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Missing feature from the article: how well Windows 8 can be overwritten with Linux.
Missing feature from Windows 8: avoiding the Windows tax.
Now for my karma points, here's a link for the article on one page: http://www.pcpro.co.uk/features/374587/30-best-features-of-windows-8/print
Of all of the things I could dabble with on Linux, this is something I've just never managed to get around to. Beyond the cost and bother of having and extra GPU and monitor to try it with, the ability to manage windows with virtual desktops has kind of made the point moot.
There are window managers from the early 90s that still do it better than anything Windows or MacOS has to offer even now.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
It is so annoying everytime if I just want to look at a file or to open it in different editor, or delete I file I need first to search the app that opened it. In Linux you just open the file with whatever you want, move it, delete it, etc. no problems.
#2, virtual desktops.
If I work on a project and then want to look something up, or someone comes with an USB stick and I need to copy it, and open the files, I just switch the desktop. It's like you have one table full of stuff, then you go to a different table to eat your pizza, and then you go back to your work table. You don't put away your work stuff so you can eat the pizza, you just go to the kitchen table.
#3 Fast file system checks.
The fsck on Linux takes only 20 seconds for 100GB (ext4) why does Windows need minutes for a check?
#4 A good command prompt
I really hate the 1990 DOS command prompt. Can we please have a modern command prompt in the year 2012? A modern cmd prompt is: any true type font, any size also full size, completition of commands with tab key, searchable history of cmds, different background, different text color, etc. For an example of a modern cmd prompt, see Konsole (KDE).
#5 Ease change of the desktop environments
I mean a complete change, not just like a theme. I really like to replace the whole Windows desktop with KDE.
#6 Good SSH integration.
In Linux I can type in anywhere: ssh-add and it adds my ssh key for every program. Why can't it be that easy in Windows?
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
Perhaps you read the title as "The 30 Best New Features of Windows 8", as I did, which is not what it says. Regardless, I found some interesting:
* Split-screen for Metro-style apps
* Trial periods built in to the Windows store
* Picture passwords
* Windows To Go booting from removable drives
Yawn...
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
3d party tools? All of them are either slow, buggy or have some very weird behaviours.
Oh and I plugged my second monitor on my Ubuntu box, didn't even had to configure anything, it detected it. Took me a whole 5 seconds to get it running. Flawlessly.
s/Vista ver.//
(wasn't Windows 2.0 tiled?)
Clearly Microsoft hears complaints from users that computers are too complicated. Their solution, unfortunately, is to keep hiding things. Like that helps.
I think it started with "personalized menus": the menu items you haven't used in a while get hidden... which rather defeats the purpose of menus, because you're less likely to remember seeing those less-used features to know they exist, and when you go looking for them, they're concealed. Filename extensions apparently confused some people, so now they're hidden... making it easier to trick people with trojans disguised as Word documents, befuddling them when they see two files (of different types) with the same name, and rendering files "unopenable" if they get saved somehow with the wrong (hidden) extension. They've been doing it with IE in a big way: taking buttons off the standard toolbar, removing button labels, and recently hiding the whole damn pull-down menu bar! The MS Office "ribbon" left me scratching my head trying to find the "print" button (or menu option) the first time I encountered it. The Start button has lost the word "start"... not exactly hidden, but no longer as easy for newbies to find when told to click on it. In Win7 (maybe it was Vista), the "log off" and other I'm done-using-the-computer options are now hidden under a non-descript arrow button. And now in Win8 (which I've looked at in preview only long enough to get frustrated trying to re-orient myself) they've hidden the Start button altogether, and made Shutdown even harder to find.
Instead of actually simplifying the system, what they're doing is the equivalent of sweeping the complexity under a rug. It's still there. And often you still need it. But it's harder to get at. They're shoving more and more features into the system... then hiding them away. Along with a bunch of the old ones. Eventually it will get simple enough for my aged mother to use it... but by then I will find it totally unusable.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Here's the list not spread over 9 pages. I'm surprised there are 30 new things worth commenting on.
#1. Interactive tiles
#2. Task Manager
#3. Run ISOs and VHDs natively
#4. No new hardware requirements
#5. Airplane mode
#6. SkyDrive integration
#7. Windows Store
#8. Interactive lock screen
#9. Split-screen apps
#10. Split touch keyboard
#11. App contracts
#12. Fewer surprise restarts
#13. Cross-device synchronisation
#14. Improved 3G support
#15. Built-in antivirus
#16. Picture passwords
#17. Instant search
#18. Windows To Go
#19. Secure Boot
#20. Revamped Explorer
#21. Restore PC
#22. Thumbnail previews
#23. Metro groups
#24. Kinect for Windows
#25. AppLocker
#26. Reset PC
#27. File copy revamp
#28. Faster boot times
#29. Native USB 3 support
#30. Panoramic background images
and none of it makes up for metro.
And make this year the year of Linux desktop!
I don't bring my desktop on airplanes and that's the whole point.
They're using their grammar skills there.
I have to admit, i LIKE this feature. Everybody with me: Windows TO GO GO GO.
I kept comparing them to win 2k and win xp and just said "I don't need any of that".
It really sucks when a corporation wants to "Shape" an OS instead of just making it a jack of all trades so that people who have been quite happy without an app store, don't need a "metro" interface and just want a gaming machine or a programming machine are ignored.
It's even worse because they have the ability to stop supporting the Operating systems that are useful. I don't need a shiny new interface. Just let me keep playing my games and earning a living.Don't hop up on that idiotic "oohhhhh my phone will winzors the world" cause there's a bunch of folks like me, and even more that are retiring and have diminished eyesight and won't be able to use the smart phone platform.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Right, because there's no way the retards would copy and paste two lines of text to install mycleanpc automatically on their Linux distro in order to get it to "run faster".
>pay
You say that as if most of the consumers are going to actually be directly paying for it, if at all.
I can't believe they forgot the best feature -- the ability to be removed from one's computer. ;-)
I was using some of those things you are asking for on a Win2k desktop in 2001, with a little help from a machine on the network. Now you can do it all with the help of a virtual machine on the physical host:
Virtual desktops, desktop environments, Good SSH integration - I was doing that with X Windows on the Win2k desktop. Any X program that supports the extensions available can run across the network and a Window Manager is just another program to X. I was running KDE and Enlightenment on the remote host and using it to manage the local screen, so not just stuck with the twm and fvwm available to cygwin. Now cygwin supports a pile of other stuff and there are of course a pile of other X windows implementations for MS Windows.
Decent shell and terminal? Cygwin can be used to handle things locally. There are many others, from Norton Commander style things on.
File locking sucks and still happens despite it being years sicne the introduction of the volume shadow copy hack (which finally made MS Exchange more than just a toy without reliable backups). There has to be some sort of third party file browser that exploits volume shadow copy and lets you do things with opened files.
The best feature of Windows is that it's FREE!
You are welcome on my lawn.
you don't need a second video card to have a second monitor on linux...
(Nah, only 1.0. Read all about it here.)
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
You don't need more than one GPU to use multiple monitors. Pretty much any halfway decent modern graphics card is gonna have more than one output and nowadays if you have the right setup you can even daisy-chain multiple monitors off a single port.
ten features they'd like to see added to Windows 8, including the return of the Start button on the desktop
It's called the Stockholm syndrome, an "apparently paradoxical psychological phenomenon in which hostages express empathy and have positive feelings towards their captors, sometimes to the point of defending them"
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
I really hope Windows 8 includes MyCleanPC by default!
If not, & I skimmed the article only briefly? They should have. Services you don't use in Windows 8 automatically shutdown.
It saves a lot of RAM, CPU cycles, & other forms of I/O associated with those self-terminating services that are unused, plus, process mgt. thrash in the scheduler & memmgt subsystems is less as well (bonus).
(As well as the possibility of an unsecured service with a security flaw in it!)
However, services in Windows 8 are in 'isolation' better now too than before (username/groupname priveleges etc./et al running them).
* I've done all of the above manually for decades to Windows NT-based OS, & it just works (for added speed, security, & even stability...)
APK
P.S.=> I don't think I'll ever like metro over the start button interface I've been using since 1994 in the Win9x betas. That much was noted, & I think the option should be introduced to switch back for say, a PC &/or Server but leave Metro for phones...
... apk
i dunno what Microsoft is thinking with windows 8. didn't google try the same crappy look its a wbpage desine with chrome os and look how well that went. most just wanna see it dead in favor of a official x86 android. . i agree with everyone hear windows 8 will be another vista disaster where nobody will want it and actively seek downgrades to 7 or run linux. then of course by 9 they will bring back stuff they should have never removed and it will be a hit.
If it's like Windows 7, then it does. You just need the Pro or Enterprise version to have virtual PCs. I use the Virtual XP PC all the time within Windows 7 to run some old software that won't work on my 64 bit machine - but runs great in a virtual 32 bit XP machine.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Use them! Although they do prompt to print or not. :P
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
For as long as I've been here slashdot has been a proving ground for bots of various types. Goatse guy is actually a key Debian developer doing counter captcha research. This one's developer just has a different sense of humor.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
It sounds like they want to copy KDE.
Let me know when the copy the almost virus and malware free feature offered by KDE/Linux - it's not quite the same as the free virus and malware feature they seem to have in the current versions of Windows.
If you work in Windows most of the time virtual desktops are a habit best avoided because going back to not having them is frustrating.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
There were also shareware programs for Windows 3.0, and DOS always supported two monitors (ega/vga + hercules/mono). Anyone who used any Borland compiler seriously at the time would have known this. Other software, susch as Lotus 123 and dbase also supported dual monitors under DOS, as did batch file programming (change the display mode to switch between monitors - mode mono vs mod co80).
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
what if your card only has one output.....
Come on people, fix your spam filter.
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
Even having used them myself, I don't get the appeal of what basically amounts to a poor-man's alternative to having multiple monitors.
For me, the problem is that multiple monitors don't give me enough real estate compared to virtual desktops. I run the Microsoft-written "TopDesk" at 11x3, so that means my total desktop space is 21120x3600 pixels.
I can have a dozen programs maximized without having to hunt through them (one keystroke plus one mouse click gets me to any open window). In addition, it's easy to group sub-tasks together onto one desktop. So, I can have 3-4 terminals open to a Linux machines to configure nfs client and server, and video and audio editing software also open, yet neither group of windows interferes with the other. In addition, my e-mail client, web browser, and a spreadsheet are also open without getting in the way of any other tasks.
I can also easily configure windows to always open in the same location, which can be a problem with multiple monitors. Then, too, moving windows around from one desktop to another is much easier, as I have the overview of the whole workspace, and can move the window using that (and that has shortcuts that allow me to snap the window to special places).
There's nothing wrong with multiple monitors (although it can be an issue when you use a KVM as I do), but adding virtual desktops gives you another whole level of window management tricks to employ.
I tried it, and it really is the worst product Microsoft has ever made. Metro is awful, and the Win8 desktop is a step backward. And it's a memory and resource hog.
Please, don't take my word for it - download it yourself. It makes Unity look almost good.
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
Smells like fish, three days in the sun.
Initialize the the disk platter with GRUB, load Ubuntu, and have m$ in VMWare.
Otherwise? It's Mothers Day, appreciate the one that loves you; even when you search for a Start Button.
Obviously, you are not familiar with sarcasm. You must be new here?
Or the sarcasm wasn't very funny or poignant.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Is it a good idea to make Task Manager consume even more CPU cycles? Especially if you're using it to find an application that is using 99% of the CPU9s) in the first place?
Free as in ...um?
WOW! If this is true I must get MyCleanPC NOW, Yet my problem is I'll also have to install Windows on my computer to use it. Well I must get MyCleanPC, so i'll abandon Linux and Unix to get MyCleanPC NOW.
I literally just read this post up to the cancer bit while drinking tea and almost choked to death.... Had to run to the sink to spit out the tea before it all came out my nose.... Hillarious
The answer to all your problems
At first I thought Microsoft was drinking soo much of their own metro tablet coolaid it had melted their collective brains and caused them to go insane.
Then I quickly realized a deeper truth. In their rush to emulate Apple MS no longer cares about me or my needs. A list of 30 useless features and a big fuck you over start menu makes my point for me. It is not about "new" or changes.. It is about flushing their existing market in an attempt to make more money in a different one currently saturated by Apple.
Oh and.. you gotta love being able to run two applications at once on the same display... Like rediscovering dos era deskview all over again...WOW.
So long MS.
It's also reasonably easy to switch back to the stock Start menu / desktop full of icons UI as well.
You can also change UIs reasonably easy as well; this isn't a new feature but one that exists since 3.11.
> what if your card only has one output.....
Hah! Linux can solve that, too!
Just use another old computer (or a modern smart TV) and output to it using X (and yes, I've done it long, long ago). You run a program and tell it to use the "remote" display. Piece of cake! In your face, troll...
Ooh, I'm almost hearing you say: "but, but, but... what if you don't have arms to carry the old computer?" or "what if the card has no output and the PC got no network card?"
Let me save your (and my) time: you're going down to a stone (or a dead computer) and then I'll have to admit Linux and Windows on a stone both perform the same way. Satisfied now?
I have to agree, after running both the dev and consumer previews, as well as setting up a machine with consumer preview in the shop to let common folks try it there is one thing we could all agree on and that is "Metro UI sucks on desktops".
Maybe it'll be nice for tablets and smart phones, who knows, but considering that MSFT owns less than 5% of the smartphone and tablet market and 90% of the desktop taking a big old dump on the desktop for a shot at smartphones is a DUMB fucking idea. I ran it for nearly a month on my home desktop before I wiped it, Metro UI just seemed to be fighting me every step of the way. And I agree with you on the suckage of resources as well, all the updates of those stupid always on metro "apps" slammed my network constantly and the thing was blowing through more than 2.2Gb of memory. Compare this to win 7 with all the bling, aero, AND more than a half a dozen tray apps and it would top out at a little over 1.3Gb.
So please, everyone who doesn't believe, try it for yourself here and you'll see what all the hate is about. Some have pointed out I hated the QL on win 7 but TBH after seeing what a slow uptake there was on Vista i didn't think companies would jump to support the new QL like they did. Without practically every application supporting jumplists the Win 7 tasklist would have been IMHO a serious step back over the XP QL but I'll be the first to admit now that its widely supported the Win 7 way is nice.
There is just NO way that I can see that one can take a cell phone touch based UI like win 8 and make it a nice experience for your average laptop or desktop user, the differences between designs is just too steep. Watch the MSFT videos talking about win 8 for yourself and count how many times they say "touchscreen". last one i saw i quit counting at 30. Now does ANYBODY think with the x86 PC business being so damned cutthroat they are just gonna eat the $100+ cost per unit to include touchscreens?
I'm sorry but win 8 is a BAD design and I'm just glad I've gotten the majority of my customers as well as my family onto Win 7 so we can all just skip win 8 completely. Touch UI is fine and dandy for a tablet, much better than the pen approach, but I have NO desire to poke my netbook or desktop all damned day. As for TFA frankly I don't see much there that can't be had for free with third party products such as process explorer for Task manager. BTW check out #4, even for the "old kit" they used for Win 8 was a touchscreen laptop! Seriously how many current laptops and desktops are touchscreen? 2%? 3%? Kinda sad when even the ones plugging the OS aren't putting it on non touch devices...hmmm...wonder why?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
No one said that about Windows 7.
Virtual PC is support on other versions, it's just the XP mode that required Pro or better. I prefer VirtualBox myslef, although it does still have a few quirks under Windows and the really powerful features are only accessible via command line (like making a virtual disk immutable).
Speaking of virtual disks, Windows 7 supports booting a to a VHD. The functionality is there but not exposed or easily setup. So technically it's not a new feature.
bitch, please...
Big deal. Final fantasy 1 was tiled.
http://www.pcpro.co.uk//features/374587/30-best-features-of-windows-8/print
I won't click through those 8 pages just to read everything..
Hah! Captcha: favors
" - their done."
It's "- they're done" as in "- they are done"! Their is a possessive pronoun.
X is awesome but seems nobody knows how to really use it. I run Cygwin with X on Windows and everyone keeps asking me what operating system I am running when running Unix apps and Windows apps at the same time.
120 characters ought to be enough for anyone
My problem with multiple monitors is they seem to be contageous. They are like a herpes or something. In the office and soon as one person hooks up the second monitor, it starts to spread amongst their department and then others. Eventually someones symptoms get worse and they spring up a 3rd or someone presents differently with a 90* rotation... soon it's this big pissing match of who has the most productive workspace. Next thing you know, you have a 2x3 grid of 30" super high-res monitors and your open gl screen saver won't work because some limitation at 4096 pixels... and all windows in the center monitor because it strains your neck to look so far left or right.
120 characters ought to be enough for anyone
Really? That's some exciting shit for you, huh? Wow.
It's Netscape, isn't it? ;-)
I am John Hurt.
...across two consecutive versions!
Holy shit has slashdot fallen. Never in my wildest nightmares did I think /. would have an article on the best features of an upcoming windows release. What a fucking joke...
Mounting ISO images has available for years through Windows add-ons, and even longer as a standard part of more advanced systems like OS X and Linux.
VirtuaWin is neither buggy nor slow. I've used it for years on XP boxes, and even though I prefer some Linux virtual desktop implementation, this one is at least as good than most of those.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
There are only three features I'd like to see there:
1. Proper CLI. Enough is enough, just fucking give up and port zsh and ship the OS with a suite of unix-like CLI tools. While they're at it, kill the drive letters and switch to using slashes in paths.
2. Full blown native PDF support, like in Linux and Mac OS X.
3. SSH
You need glasses.
"Jeremlah Cornelius (2638287)"
Really, and how do you do this without having to use a 3rd party paid app? The classic desktop is an app now and the start menu is gone.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/kimkomando/story/2012-03-30/windows-8-questions/53861344/1
"For Windows 8, Microsoft is replacing the Start button and Start menu with a Start screen based on the Windows Phone 7 Metro interface. Microsoft made this change because the Metro interface is very touch-friendly, and Windows 8 is going to appear on touch-screen tablets. Unfortunately, it isn't as friendly for people using a keyboard and mouse. It's not likely Microsoft will bring back the Start button. Fortunately, other companies are doing it for them. Longtime Windows customizer Stardock has released Start8. This free tweak re-adds the Start button and makes the Start screen more mouse friendly."
It is not a "memory and resource hog", it's footprint is smaller than Windows 7. But yes, Metro is an awful interface to have on a desktop OS.
Don't forget to apply directly to the forehead.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
You just showed that you know nothing about modern versions of Windows. DOS is long gone (the command prompt is not DOS) as are some of the old Windows APIs. In fact XP Mode is free for the Professional, Ultimate, and Enterprise versions so that businesses can run legacy apps.
I'm quite surprised that no-one's commented on using Windows Live login to access your PC. Everyone's too busy complaining about the metro interface (which I agree sucks). But considering the privacy minded folks here, having windows force you to use the Windows Live login for everything is akin to Google linking all their databases together.
1.
hiberfile.sys it's fine - good idea to use the increased multicore power to save the state but does it cut the power?
Do you have the option to do a traditional shutdown whereby when you restart, you want to see a clutter free fresh restart rather than an encumbered load of x open apps and open folders everywhere.
2.
Applocker - it's fine but will Microsoft try to nanny the customer with preconfigured policies of apps that can be locked. I don't want Microsoft telling me what to do, for example, having a template pre-bundled that locks out Frirefox would tick me off. Can M$ be trusted with this?
3.
"To unlock a Windows 8 PC, simply swipe upwards on a tablet device, or press the spacebar on a laptop or desktop."
That could potentially be extremely annoying.
4.
Secure boot. Anti-root kitting - I'm all for that but, Windows doesn't have the right to monopolize the hardware. If they do, I'll only have one OS on my next machine and guess which one that will be? UBUNTU
Metro is okay on a small handheld device with a touch screen. On a PC, it makes no goddamn sense. Microsoft is trying to figure out a way to tie the PC into the current popularity for smartphones and it just isn't going to happen.
I read as far as where the article says "Our own Jon Honeyball has argued that it “isn’t reasonable for the majority of PC users to have to put up with unsecured booting, simply because an alternative OS vendor can’t be bothered to go down the same route”."
Then I stopped reading in disgust. Some people just don't get it.
.. there's nothing I can see here that has me excited. I know that this is all great stuff if you've been stuck with just windows but if you've gone out and tested other platforms this listing is mediocre.
The third party tools don't work very well, primarily because they are hacks and 99% of software isn't designed to work with them, including the base window manager...
OSX used to be the same, under 10.4 and earlier the virtual desktop hacks were buggy, didn't fit in well with the rest of the system and most apps didn't expect them to be running. Since spaces was included by default in 10.5, osx apps awareness of multiple desktops has improved massively.
X11 has always had virtual desktops, so its support for them tends to be the best of the 3 by far.
I can understand how you would find virtual desktops less useful, having only used very poor implementations of them...
As someone who has access to a desktop with 4 screens, i actually find virtual desktops to be better than physical screens in most cases... Off the top of my head:
Less head movement, all the virtual screens are in the same physical place so i dont have to keep adjusting my viewpoint and dont get distracted by movement out the corner of my eye...
Works on laptops - i use a laptop for a lot of my work, and it would be impractical to carry a second screen around with it..
Lots more - you can have many virtual desktops - i tend to have 16, a similar number of physical screens becomes completely unwieldy both to physically look at, and to drive (you'd need a system full of videocards, or a cluster using something like xdmx).
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
You'll see that Microsoft is in the business of selling to hardware manufacturers. This operating system allows them to refresh their lines and bring out something that could genuinely be a major success, even if it is a blast from the past, Convertible Tablet PC's. The Lenovo Yoga (though it's lacking Wacom) is an example of something new and different that will have a chance of seeing sales due to this "awful" OS. Perhaps someone out there is realizing that putting the same thing onto the market year after year has to come to an end, and when they look at the Tablet market cutting into the laptop market, they want back in.
Nothing to see.
http://technet.microsoft.com/fi-fi/sysinternals/cc817881
The other sysinternals are also worth checking out http://technet.microsoft.com/fi-fi/sysinternals/bb842062
I disagree. By making a unified OS like Windows 8, Microsoft leverages its desktop monopoly to quickly populate its store with apps that will work on Windows tablets and phones, which puts it in a much better position to compete against iOS and Android. It is a good idea in theory - it just seems to have been poorly executed.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
That is all it is, pure and simple.
Move along here. Nothing important to see.
1. Proper CLI. Enough is enough, just fucking give up and port zsh and ship the OS with a suite of unix-like CLI tools.
Ahem, zsh doesn't hold a candle to PowerShell. PowerShell being truly object oriented ties in much better with Windows than any unix-like shell ever could. Already it is much more powerful than even the feature-rich zsh. Instead of special case galore, PowerShell has more generic features and very high consistency.
Examples of generic features: Commands do not have switches or options to control their output, like e.g. ls or ps. Instead PowerShell includes a few "formatting", output and conversion cmdlets such as Format-List, Format-Table, ConvertTo-Csv, Out-GridView. You know, back to the "commands should do one thing good and one thing only". Why would commands to navigate the file system need to have output options?
Another example of how PowerShell simplifies through generic features: Through providers external hierarchies can be mapped to a PowerShell "drive" where you can then use the very same cmdlets to navigate and manipulate it (cd, ls, rm). This is not the Unix "map everything to a file" idea; the items in the hierarchy are still very much their own types which may expose their own properties and methods and often have their own access control. Yes, you can now "cd" into the registry or the cert store and manipulate the objects using familar and consistent commands.
And Windows 8 will come with PowerShell 3 which sports workflows. This allows robust, suspendable and resumable scripts which can even script across machine restarts. This is not the Unix "suspend process" - this is actually suspending to disk and resumed days later or may be even resumed on a *different* machine, still picking up the state, variables and progress from when it was suspended.
While they're at it, kill the drive letters and switch to using slashes in paths.
Uhm. Between Libraries and PowerShell that's pretty much done. After libraries drive letters don't really matter any more. And PowerShell allows both backwards and forward slashes.
2. Full blown native PDF support, like in Linux and Mac OS X.
Yeah, well.
3. SSH
OpenSSH exists for Windows. You can use PowerShell across SSH, but PowerShells built-in remoting features (based on WinRM) are much more powerful, for instance multiple remote sessions (not just piping to/from a remote shell but actually marshalling stuff such as return codes, exceptions, progress and events back to the controlling console so that it can be meaningfully scripted), fan-out remoting (executing same script block on multiple remote hosts simultaneously and consolidating the results back to the controlling console), implicit remoting (importing commands of a remote session to create "local" commands which will implicitly execute on the remote host) etc.
Reading slashdot one-liner: (irm http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot).rdf.item | fl title,desc*
The odd-even rule. Not just for star trek.
Basically every video card supports 2. A lot have 3 ports of different types but they still only support 2 at once.
The Official Site of 1337 Pwnage
I've obviously not been using Windows for a while... When did the start button disappear?
Follow me
MyCleanPC is one package which ought to be GPLv3
Does it run Linux?
1. Powershell is included by default on all recent Windows systems. If that's not your cup of tea, there's plenty of alternatives. My preferred is bash, and it's "native" (POSIX syscalls, not win32, which among other things means it uses UNIX-style paths).
2. It's an in-the-base-install Metro-style app on the latest preview build. This article is shit, but you could have done the trivial research to discover this for yourself. By the way, "Linux" has no PDF support at all, although many distros include a PDF viewer.
3. Remote Desktop works well enough for most Windows users (and is a lot faster than X forwarding over the same network connection). Powershell supports secure remote operation, effectively covering SSH's use case between Windows machines. If you want SSH specifically, enable the POSIX subsystem and install openssh like I did (it's in the SuaCommunity repository, server and client).
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Really, and how do you do this without having to use a 3rd party paid app?
Why would you think that it would have to be a paid app? There are heaps of free programs available for Windows for doing stuff like this. My first search on Google found a couple of examples to get the start menu back.
Or you could just hack up your own start menu without any extra programs.
This concept is not new. There was a program called Calmira that made Windows 3.1 look like Windows 95. Have a look at this screenshot!
AllowMeToViolateAss and MightiestBootyFuck...
You could be selling the cure for cancer and I still wouldn't buy jack from you with such dumb ass names...
I use Xming and PuTTy for a similar role. Basically the only real reason I do it is because I'm too lazy to walk over to the lab to run the Linux tools myself. :)
Most people on Slashdot are fucking idiots.
So did you get back your wife and kids after that, or do you still have a restraining order?
If Linux gets something Windows or MacOS have had for years, like, day, the ability to play sound from more than one program at a time without special setup or hardware mixing, that is a major improvement, something to be lauded, etc. However if Windows gets a feature something else has had, it gets looked down on, as though the first OS to get the feature should be the only one, ever.
What the fuck is a QL? QL this QL that. I have no idea what the fuck you are talking about. Blowing wind mostly if you don't explain yourself. Not everyone is as cool as you.
It's a bad idea even in theory, which is why KDE has issued different editions of their DE for laptops, tablets and phones. Everyone else who's copying Microsoft - GNOME3 and Unity - is getting the same sort of howls that MS is getting
The point is that it is not a built-in feature.
goddammit, I read 3 paragraphs of that, I only scrolled down to see what the punchline was. stupid bot
sag
A paradox that people often fact in modern times is that more choice can lead to less happiness. People are presented with a bunch of choices they don't understand, so they are unhappy with whatever choice they make because they fear it is the wrong one. Or they get paralyzed by all the choices and simple don't make one at all. It is a real problem that has been studied. There is a book and a talk on it called The Paradox of Choice.
This is a problem many Linux distros have is they want to install a shit ton of stuff in the name of "user choice". They'll put 10 media players on a system with the idea of "you can use the one you want" but all it ends up doing for non-technical users is confusing them.
As such it can make sense to hide choices from average users. Give them a default presentation that is what they get. More advanced users can then go and mess with things, if they wish.
This is probably a very unpopular opinion but I actually like Windows 7, enjoy working with it also during my spare time and on top of that have become pretty fluent with Office 2010 as well (switched when openoffice went down the drain).
But Windows 8? Gimme a break. As much as I enjoy Metro on my Windows phone I just couldn't manage to even remotely enjoy it on my desktop. Metro only gives desktop users a terrible headache IMO.
And this article clearly shows that these guys don't understand much about it either. Take the point about the task manager; they claim it makes things easier. Well; it doesn't. The power of the current task manager (win7) is that you start with a minimal set of info which you can expand on if required (the tab after 'services'; check the button "resource control" or something close enough). All Win8 has added is bloat. More meters, more gui; that's not what we need.
When something goes awry you need stuff such as 'top' (or win7 task manager): process list, user, load, memory usage. Seldom do you need more unless you're debugging.
"Run iso's". Yeah right! Every poweruser already has stuff to access iso's. MS is merely trying to catch up. Its a nice feature; but I bet people would prefer being able to play DVD's out of the box.
And the rest... Its all old stuff. SkyDrive integration? Win7 has it (and I'm not even talking about the SkyDrive program). 3G support? Yeah, that'll benefit my desktop really well.
I'm surprised they didn't mention "full screen applications". Because that's a pro right? Remote desktop? It's full screen (Metro) now; who needs to be able to type over data... Serial numbers for example due to remote installations. Nah; real admin's can memorize a Microsoft serial!
Tip: mstsc.exe; the old remote desktop is still there.
But I think the best tip is to simply stay on Win7 until this monstrosity passes and we're in for Windows 9.
At some point you might not have even that, as we look at the plans MS had for the ARM platform.
Next time try using your dick, not your tongue
1) Powershell has been upgraded to a first class citizen and is very powerful. So powerful that Windows Server is now command-line first, GUI second. This is just another example of criticisms of MS being out of date.
2) If MS baked in PDF support I'd fully expect that the /. crowd (along with PDF companies) would cry to the government about MS's evil bundling strategy which will destroy competitors and increase Windows "bloat". This is just another example of MS being criticised no matter what they do.
Any tips?
Sure. Grow some healthy swimmers and remember to not pull out. That would help.
Would, but Ma had her tubes tied about four years back. Good luck, 'mano.
Uhhh...Dell tried that recently with a convertible tablet, remember? The problem is a 17 inch touchscreen runs $300+ at retail and a 24 inch non touch runs $150. Now which do YOU think the customers will choose? The simple fact is capacitive touchscreen tech is NOT cheap ATM and there is no way in hell the OEMs are gonna eat that cost and as we all know resistive screens suck.
The mistake, which i believe will be a fatal one for Win 8, is that the vast majority of panels being sold on desktops and laptops were built originally for HDTVs and people aren't gonna want to get their greasy fingers all over their HDTV when they have a remote. this is why you have seen the resolution for laptops fall, as all these small panels are built for everything from dorm HDTVs to headrests for SUVs so it saves the OEMs money to simply use the economies of scale. That isn't gonna change simply because MSFT releases an OS, nor will it get people to shell out larger sums of money, not when the competition will sell them a non touch screen laptop at hundreds cheaper.
As you have pointed out we have had convertibles so long its "a blast from the past" yet they have NEVER caught on, even though both Vista and 7 had frankly damned good touch support...why? because given the choice of two laptops, one with a touch screen at $200 ore more higher than the one next to it without most will choose without. Ask Dell, HP, Acer, Asus, etc what their best selling units are and i bet my last dollar they are the $400 and under units. Makes sense because for most users even an Atom or E350 will do the vast majority of tasks they have such as FB and webmail.
If the rumors are correct Win 8 is as high as Win 7 to OEMs so we are talking $35 for Starter and $50 for Home so where are they gonna get the money to still hit the price points they need? Dell makes on average $8 a sale for the low end so there isn't any fat to be trimmed friend and MSFT can't just "demand" they all switch to touch because as they saw with netbooks if they act like dicks the OEMs WILL go to Linux.
So I'm sorry friend but I just don't see it happening. MSFT has been pushing touch support for years and their numbers don't register. I personally believe this is Ballmer's "Hail Mary" trying to literally force his way into the ARM market because every previous attempt has been a flaming failure. But trying to get there by forcing the users of every non touch device to have a worse experience simply isn't the way to go and frankly i wouldn't be surprised if this fails if it ends up Ballmer's swan song at MSFT. Because honestly i just don't see the board putting up with another billion dollar failure with his track record.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Quick Launch, maybe?
That's Jeremlah Cornelius, he was talking about Jeremiah Cornelius, who does have a 3-digit uid. His whole point was that the spammer is using a username easily confused with another used with a 3-digit uid.
The point is that it is not a built-in feature.
It took me less than 10 seconds to find the link to the software to fix this. It took me the same amount of time to find the instructions to do the equivalent fix for ubuntu - replace Unity. Not much difference there.
It would, however, take a lot less time to install one program than to do all of those steps in the second link. People who claim that using a third party application is too hard remind me of the people on infomercials that overact to show that they can't operate an old fashioned mop. If it is so hard to download one program (or put one mop in a bucket of water) then I think that you would have much bigger problems in life.
Those 3rd party tools imitate the feature to a degree but all the methods have some drawback or another. Virtual desktops are only a poor man's alternative to multiple monitors if you are a poor man with a single monitor (in which case, they're a godsend). I find desktops incredibly useful especially when I have multiple monitors. My personal experience with multiple monitors in Linux has been: plug in an extra monitor and it works perfectly just like that - with much better results than in Windows. Of course, ease-of-use is a function of the operating system, not the kernel, so my experiences with "Linux" might well be different to yours,
> I'm sorry but win 8 is a BAD design and I'm just glad I've gotten the majority of my customers as well as my family onto Win 7 so we can all just skip win 8 completely
1 MS shows a toy GUI next windows
2 People say "DAMN" and flock to upgrade their aging XP desktops for win 7
3 no ???
4 Profit!!! (MS has found a way to get people off XP, I never said they weren't good at marketing)
Once xp is dead and poor devs have made some win8 apps that help the smartphone division, win8.2 or win9 will get back to normal.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
And Quick Launch is?
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
3rd party paid app
This free tweak re-adds the Start button...
Oh yeah!
But don't think of the desktop as an app. Instead, think of it as the desktop it still is, but with a featurefullier, fullscreeniererer Start menu that doesn't always go away when you click it. You still access it with the flag key or by clicking the bottom-left pixel of the screen.
Used that a lot a couple of years ago in the physics department computer lab. The fun part was they didn't properly set the security in the default wm so you could use other computers X while other people where logged in. Popping up random windows on other peoples screen can be very funny. About five minutes after I noticed this I had a new wm installed.
It took me less than that time to find the software to "fix" the Unity "problem" under Ubuntu. Xubuntu, Kubuntu, and Lubuntu are installable with a single meta-package install- along with Linux Mint's Cinnamon. All one has to do is select one of these three packages from the repository...
and installed it with the following command:
That plain. That simple. It's doable even from a GUI instead of the command line with not much more effort. You make it MUCH more difficult sounding than it actually is. In fact, it's so easy I spelled it out for everyone in a mere /, post.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
virtual desktop != second monitor. Plugging in secondary monitors has been working on Windows since 2000 at least. Can't remember if 98, 95 or 3.11 could do it though it wouldn't surprise me.
The little toolbar next to the Start menu in older versions of Windows. Many application installers default to placing an icon there. Example. In 7, it was replaced with taskbar pinning.
And Quick Launch is?
Microsoft's term for icons directly on the taskbar which you can click to launch apps.
Er, GNOME 3 and Unity both came first. Still a bad idea, but Microsoft is the one copying here.
Is that I'm not using it!
Yay me.
How are they a nightmare to get working flawlessly under Linux? With KDE/XFCE/Gnome/WMaker, they seem to work just fine immediately.
Also, MS provides their own multi-desktop. You don't need to go to 3rd parties. It's not the greatest (imagine the *nix variants, but somewhat sucky), but it's free, and does the job... mostly.
Also, am I the only one who thinks the vast majority of these great new features have been on available in FreeBSD, Linux, and probably every other *NIX system out there for at least 10 years?
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
First thing that came to mind - 30 Best Features? There are that many ?
He enjoys Anal and Oral pleasures.
Enjoys anal and oral pleasures with men. He's an alternate registered user account for sockpuppet trolling out of you and we all know it.barbara.hudson@unjava.com from http://slashdot.org/~Barbara%2C+not+Barbie = barbara.hudson@barbara-hudson.com from http://slashdot.org/~tomhudson Explain those multiple accounts of yours above please troll.
So...:
- search
- fewer reboots
- built in antivirus
and: task manager
made the Top-30...
(Looks at my MacBook Pro laptop (center), with attached monitor (top), CentOS 6.2 system's monitor (left), Ubuntu system's monitor (right), Windows XP laptop (right top) all connected via synergy and the iPad (far left))
*ahem* I don't know _what_ you're talking about :)
[John]
Shit better not happen!
"You can do that for free. It's called a developer preview."
There's no reason not to do it for "free" anyway, except that new Windows releases aren't exciting enough to bother with.
There's every reason to ignore it for a few years until it's sorted out.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Bullcrap. You obviously haven't even tried it. Look at the real-world numbers from people who have. It's a major cpu+resource suck, while giving reduced functionality. Dress it in a red shirt and beam it down so it can die nice and quick.
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
It had a better interface than Metro.
mount it on a menubar in the center at the top of the screen. Then make it unclickable. (Points to you if you understand my reference.)
The Verisign pop-up won't close, seriously who designs that crap.
There's just one problem with your scenario - XP isn't going to die on April 8th, 2014. People with their original install disks will just keep re-installing it whenever it craps out - it's not like it's hard to bypass activation, and if they've paid for it, they have a legal right to do so when Microsoft shuts down the activation servers.
Or they'll just clone an existing "known-good" VM image.
There's plenty of software that doesn't need to be upgraded, and stuff that just won't work if upgraded, so I expect XP to be around long after it's officially dead. After all, there are still plenty of DOS and Win3x apps running tools, process controls, etc.
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
I've never heard of this "daisy chain multiple monitors off a single port" except for things like Dell's two-monitors-single-port-proprietary-splitter-cable nonsense. Care to elaborate?
Karma: Poor (Mostly affected by lame karma-joke sigs)
Post parent to mine's a great write up based on fact. Why a downmod of it then? Makes no sense.
Take the MacBook Air and add a touchscreen to it. Now make it so the screen can flip and close. You now have an iPad that can turn into a notebook and back again. That's where the industry is headed. Apple Launchpad is a perfect example of a fusion between OSX and iOS. A non-functional fusion of course, but the groundwork has been laid for a future unification of both portable platforms. Microsoft knows this and so they're focusing on cutting right to the chase and take part in this new market about to take center stage.
Now between you and me, I don't want to be poking at a screen all day long. If the Windows 8 Developer preview is anything like the final, it's going to sucks really badly. Fortune 500 companies will be skipping this abomination for sure.
Life is not for the lazy.
I don't get the appeal of what basically amounts to a poor-man's alternative to having multiple monitors. Sorry, I prefer having more than 1 display visible at all times, not hidden.
Maybe you never use a computer when multiple monitors are impractical (e.g. a laptop on a train or plane, or indeed any work when on the move), but that is a common work pattern for many of us.
I've been waiting for someone to publish a "why?" article. I wish the submitter had used the single page version and saved me a click. As to TFA,
1. Interactive tiles
Fine on a phone, but I don't want it in a PC OS.
2. Task Manager
Windows has had this for literally YEARS. IIRC Win 95 had it. BTW, is there anything like that in KDE? I'm hoping someone says "yes" and points me to it.
4. No new hardware requirements
LOL! "That means â" in theory, at least â" that any PC capable of running Windows Vista should be able to handle Windows 8." I'm running the latest kubuntu (just upgraded yesterday) on a machine I built out of ten year old parts, and it runs well. No way would Win 8 run on that thing. TFA looks like loke a Microsoft ad.
5. Airplane mode
Man, MS is really grasping at straws here. FN+F8 (F8 has a wifi icon) toggles wifi on my netbook, along with an indicator light. Bluetooth is shut off when you unplug the dongle. In short, this feature is completely useless.
6. SkyDrive integration
The Stones said it and I agree -- hey, you, get off of the cloud. I'll keep my own data on my own deviced, thank you very much.
7. Windows Store
Um, is that like Apper except you have to pay for the software?
8. Interactive lock screen
Rubbish. Nothing of substance, just "Ooh! Shiny!"
9. Split-screen apps
What's new here? New for phones, maybe, but not computers.
10. Split touch keyboard
Useless for PCs and laptops
11. App contracts
"Microsoft has published a set of APIs common to all Metro apps that allow them to freely exchange data. Itâ(TM)s possible, for example, to give a Twitter client access to the Photos app, massively simplifying the process of photo sharing."
It sounds unsafe to me. It also sounds like one of the kinds of thing I got away from Windows for. And people wonder why Windows is the only OS with malware problems.
12. Fewer surprise restarts
My Linux box has no surprise restarts whatever. In fact, the only time I restart it is when I'm upgrading the kernel, maybe once a year or longer. Meanwhile, the notebook still has Win 7 and I wind up having to reboot every week or two, thanks to MS's hatred of users.
13. Cross-device synchronisation
"The Windows 8 installation screen practically forces users to set up a Windows Live account." And they call that a feature???
14. Improved 3G support
Useless on a PC or notebook
15. Built-in antivirus
Not new, there's Windows Defender already. You're grasping at straws, Microsoft!
16. Picture passwords
Kind of cool I guess, but useless on a PC.
18. Windows To Go
"Another one in the eye for those who claim that Windows 8 has little to offer businesses is Windows To Go. This allows companies to provide employees with a locked-down installation of Windows 8 on a USB thumb drive." Uh, I've been doing that with Linux for a decade.
19. Secure Boot
Most emphatically DO NOT WANT!!!
20. Revamped Explorer
"The Windows Explorer is now graced with the ribbon interface"
Do Not Want!!
21. Restore PC
How anout instad they write an uninstaller that actually works? TFA says you have to reinstall all your apps after a restore, PITA. I don't have to put up with this nonsense in Linux.
22. Thumbnail previews
Probably useful on a phone, not on a PC.
23. Metro groups
Good on a phone, bad ona PC.
24. Kinect for Windows
I'll reserve judgement on this one, it might be good.
25. AppLocker
Again, nothing new, and TFA even says so.
26. Reset PC
Look, if you're going to wipe and reinstall your OS, just FDISK and install. I don't see what problem this "solution" solves, unless installing Windows is still the PITA it was with XP.
27. File copy revamp
*Yawn*
28. Faster boot times
This is one place Windows beats Linux (Most distros anyway). Fortunately, a L
Free Martian Whores!
So the spammer is now using new accounts that look almost like long-time slashdot users
because IMO that makes for an entirely different story (and therefor a different expectation when following the link).
What I find the most interesting out of all of this, is the majority of people either nodding their heads on the entirely new UI, or drawing conclusions (right or wrong), of the UI.
Why do I find this interesting? Because one of the largest things that was always dinged about Apple, Linux, and pretty much any non-windows UI was that their UI was 'different' than Windows. That the applications behaved 'different' than Windows. That just the entire experience was 'different' than Windows.
So I guess 'different' is fine, when it's Windows doing it? Huh.
It just enforces a belief that I've always had. The general public really has no idea what they want... at least until Business tell them what it is that they want. Then they happily throw money at it, beat their chests and grunt and scratch.
Course there's exceptions, but it is a commentary on the 'general public' and majority of the sheeple in it.
One particular case I know works is Apple displays over thunderbolt. You can connect one display to your computer's thunderbolt port, then a second display to the first display's TB port and it'll daisy chain.
Couldn't read article because of CSS popovers, and no I don't have the patience to wait for them, and no the little x didn't work. So they can just fuck themselves.
i hope they update it so instead of saying "svchost.exe" in processes it will say "svchost.exe (service.name[s])", so i can instantly know what service is using which instance of svchost.exe instead of having to click Go to Service(s) from a drop-down menu.
So, the kernel session is hibernated. Okay, here's a problem: Solid state hard drive.
Unless they've made some big changes, HIBERFIL.SYS sits in the root of the OS partition (and is far as I know unmovable) and takes up as much space as you have RAM. On a solid state hard drive with a lot of RAM that can easily be a fifth of the drive just for that one file.
So, have they made that file way leaner, or movable, or are they just hoping that people won't go with 16 gigs of cheap RAM and an 80 gig SSD?
Must be famous "Mika Mokaa" aka "Seppä Syntyjään" troll....
Hrmn, when reading this I quickly realized the list that would be much more useful. "The 30 Wost Undocumented Features of Windows 8". I guess as more people start to use Win8, that list will fill up quickly.
I said "interesting" not "exciting". If you're going to troll you could do a much better job of it.
Don't get me wrong, I totally agree. I have Windows 7 on one computer just because it seems silly to wipe it for the sake of a few GB. I never even touch the thing.
But keep in mind I'm responding to a hysterical troll. Disliking Windows for valid reasons is perfectly fine.
--
Did anyone else notice that the text reads like a Nigerian scam? (minuteness? "their gigabits"?) Geeze what do they teach in those missionary schools, anyway?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
You made my morning (thank you!). I have hated that ever since starting to use Win7 (otherwise prefer it over XP).
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
...but PCMag could say you had 30,000 great features and if every last one of them was ugly, unremarkable and tied to your stupid, memory-leaking kernel I'd still have to pass for the luxury of my boring, little green cli.
~Just as a thing fails if it lacks a kernel, so too it fails if it lacks a skin. ~ Rumi, Discourses
Normally I'd disagree but...my XP Home nettop i have in the shop has been running for EIGHT YEARS now...you know how damned many programs I'd have to reinstall? Its data is saved on a separate drive and the OS is imaged weekly so when 2014 rolls around if the old gal is still running I can't honestly say I'd go through the major headache of reloading THAT damned many programs.
So I wouldn't be surprised if you are 100% correct, after all I had a customer that only retired his Win2k box about a year ago and only then because i gave him a good deal on a dual core. If it ain't broke? I know i still have no problem selling XP desktops and the shop down the road installs XP on the majority of hardware that comes through.
The only real problem I can see for a firewalled XP box would be if browsers all dropped support but I have no doubt that FOSS will come to the rescue, same as how Kmeleon has instructions on how to install to Win98. But as long as it does its job, which is download drivers and research problems I can't see myself giving up the little nettop, its just too handy.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Can't remember if 98, 95 or 3.11 could do it though it wouldn't surprise me.
95/98 could, but it was kludgy.
Basically you needed two video cards based on the same chipset, and the "primary" card needed an actual VGA BIOS, and only certain chipsets worked. nVidia cards were hard-if-not-impossible to get working; early Radeons were buggy in hardware; your best bet were rage3d (for which drivers sucked) and 2mb/4mb s3 or Matrox cards
Then, you'd install the drivers for your secondary card first, then for your primary card (as oftentimes libraries would get overwritten), if they actually had different chipsets.
Finally, whichever card was the primary in boot-order was also the primary in Windows. You couldn't actually switch primary cards on-the-fly until Win2k (or XP, perhaps)
And how much is a Macbook Air? $2000? the iPad is $600 last i checked for the top one. Now compare this to the X86 market for Windows where the average selling price is $400 or less. Hell Tiger has been selling Fusion laptops for $350 and the local Walmart has a big seller in a $250 Atom dual core netbook.
MSFT can't just magically turn Windows into an upscale brand because the market simply isn't there and won't tolerate it. To use a /. car analogy it would be like Ford slapping a $100,000 sticker on the Mustang and expecting it to cut into the Ferrari sales, it just ain't gonna happen. As we saw with netbooks if MSFT gives the OEMs too much shit they WILL go with their own Linux version and as i pointed out the margins are simply too tight to support capacitive touchscreens at the current price point and it would be suicide to try raising the prices in a dead economy. All it would take is Walmart and Tiger selling a cheaper version to reap the rewards and leave everyone else with models they'd have to take a loss on just to get rid of.
In the end MSFT seems to be sticking their fingers in their ears and going "La la la...touchscreen!" while ignoring the fact that the REASON why laptops are so cheap is because the screens are being massed produced for HDTVs and this gives even the smaller OEMs huge economies of scale. this is why you don't see hardly any 4x3 laptops anymore, because the HDTVs are being made for TV and movies which is in widescreen format. But NOBODY is gonna start cranking out HDTVs cheap with capacitive touch because it would be idiotic. Why would you want to poke your TV when you have a remote right there? it is THIS market reality MSFT seems to be willfully blind to and I predict it WILL bite them in the ass. Because in the end if the consumer is offered a unit for $350 without touch and the same unit is $600+ with touch...which do YOU think the majority will pick?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
It's all about how you divide your work. I sometime use three different desktop workspaces: two containing windows for two different school subjects, and another one for all the entertainment stuff I had open. It keeps me focused.
Flipping between them is as simple as pressing ctrl+alt+left or ctrl+alt+right, and it keeps my task bar organized, too.
I am not devoid of humor.
I meant DOS in its literal term - the disk operating system, i.e., how it gets data off the drive.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
I can't remember the last time I *used* an optical drive.
After several decades, MS with all its billions of dollars still can't make an OS that can copy files competently. But we're supposed to get excited about the fact that it's slightly better at guessing how long a copy will take....assuming it succeeds.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Ohhh! Wow! A fresh and original (honesty not withstanding) "works for me" reply in praise of Linux. While you're one roll, can you help me with this one? I've been fucking your mother twice a week for the past year but she still hasn't gotten pregnant. Any tips?
Only one hole can get her pregnant. Remember to cum in that hole not the other two. Also, she got her tubes tied long ago. She not getting pregnant.
Over AdBlock & DNS Servers ALONE 4 Security, Speed, Reliability, and even Anonymity to an extent:
1.) HOSTS files are useable for all these purposes because they are present on all Operating Systems that have a BSD based IP stack (even ANDROID) and do adblocking for ANY webbrowser, email program, etc. (any webbound program).
2.) Adblock blocks ads (not anymore apparently, lol:
Adblock Plus To Offer 'Acceptable Ads' Option
http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/12/12/2213233/adblock-plus-to-offer-acceptable-ads-option )
in only browsers & their subprogram families (ala email), but not all, or, all independent email clients, like Outlook!)
Disclaimer: Opera now has an AdBlock addon (now that Opera has addons above widgets), but I am not certain the same people make it as they do for FF or Chrome etc..
3.) Adblock doesn't protect email programs external to FF, Hosts files do. THIS IS GOOD VS. SPAM MAIL or MAILS THAT BEAR MALICIOUS SCRIPT, or, THAT POINT TO MALICIOUS SCRIPT VIA URLS etc.
4.) Adblock won't get you to your favorite sites if a DNS server goes down or is DNS-poisoned, hosts will (this leads to points 5-7 next below).
5.) Adblock doesn't allow you to hardcode in your favorite websites into it so you don't make DNS server calls and so you can avoid tracking by DNS request logs, hosts do (DNS servers are also being abused by the Chinese lately and by the Kaminsky flaw -> http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/082908-kaminsky-flaw-prompts-dns-server.html for years now). Hosts protect against those problems via hardcodes of your fav sites (you should verify against the TLD that does nothing but cache IPAddress-to-domainname/hostname resolutions (in-addr.arpa) via NSLOOKUP, PINGS, &/or WHOIS though, regularly, so you have the correct IP & it's current)).
* NOW - Some folks MAY think that putting an IP address alone into your browser's address bar will be enough, so why bother with HOSTS, right? WRONG - Putting IP address in your browser won't always work IS WHY. Some IP adresses host several domains & need the site name to give you the right page you're after is why. So for some sites only the HOSTS file option will work!
6.) Hosts files don't eat up CPU cycles like AdBlock does while it parses a webpages' content, nor as much as a DNS server does while it runs. HOSTS file are merely a FILTER for the kernel mode/PnP TCP/IP subsystem, which runs FAR FASTER & MORE EFFICIENTLY than any ring 3/rpl3/usermode app can.
7.) HOSTS files will allow you to get to sites you like, via hardcoding your favs into a HOSTS file, FAR faster than DNS servers can by FAR (by saving the roundtrip inquiry time to a DNS server & back to you).
8.) AdBlock doesn't let you block out known bad sites or servers that are known to be maliciously scripted, hosts can and many reputable lists for this exist:
GOOD INFORMATION ON MALWARE BEHAVIOR LISTING BOTNET C&C SERVERS + MORE (AS WELL AS REMOVAL LISTS FOR HOSTS):
http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm
http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/
http://hostsfile.org/hosts.html
http://hostsfile.mine.nu/downloads/
http://hosts-file.net/?s=Download
https://zeustracker.abuse.ch/monitor.php?filter=online
https://spyeyetracker.abuse.ch/monitor.php
http://ddanchev.blogspot
Are you afflicted with a stupidity disease are just haven't reached your 13th birthday yet? MS R&D goes after technology regardless of their viability as an eventual MS product. They possess the same level of technical talent as companies such as Google and Apple. What's your level of development talent or are you one of the people who think text messaging and social networking are the ultimate technology?
I have tried it and it uses less RAM (~1GB) than my Windows 7 box (~2.3GB) when idle with nothing loaded. However I promptly removed it because of that monstrosity called MetroUI. Not to mention that every tech outlet that has compared the two have shown that Windows 8 uses less resources. So quite trolling.
Which has not been in use since the release of XP.
Actually, the dog. I kept waving a dog bone in front of the monitor trying to get him to chase it, but all he did was ask "It seems that you are an idiot, would you like help with that." I loved the doggy.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Next up is linux, 200 meg at idle ... opening libreoffice, eclipse, gedit, a couple of terminals, jedit, firefox, opera ... anything to eat up ram ... still under 1 gig (while also running an ftp server, an http server, a ssh server and 2 db servers in the background).
Then ... Win8 on the same machine, with ONLY firefox ... 1.5 gig consumed, 75% cpu. Sick. Just sick. And the UI? Totally unusable.
So 1 gig at idle is nothing to brag about - it's a shame.
Of course, all of them fail next to BSD on the same machine, but then again, BSD + 6 consoles, each doing a compile of a huge selection of ports, go to a 7th console, log in, don't even notice that anything is going on, it just keeps chugging along.
These are real-world numbers from last month. Same hardware. The ONLY thing that was changed between runs was the OS - in each case, a fresh install.
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
You can use it to download Ubuntu.
You can buy an iMac online with it
You can buy an ICS phone with it.
You can safely stop using it now, you've got enough stuff to replace it.
You're right about everything except for the tab completion and command history. These features are provided (if at all) by the shell, not Konsole.
Yes, I guess that was my mistake; that's what I read.
I must say though, I don't know what the fuss is about if the features are not new (how is that news?)
I'm also pretty impressed as to how my initial post went all the way up to "Insightful (4)", and then down to "Troll (-1)"
I must say; I wasn't trolling, merely stating facts. It's also quite funny how my previous post got modded up to +4 (Insightful), and then all the way back down to -1.
The number of displays is still limited by the internal hardware, however. The "daisy chain" just moves the connectors around, it doesn't add more connectors. To quote the MacWorld review: "Systems with integrated graphics, such as the MacBook Air and the $599 Mac mini, can support two displays. The Air’s built-in screen counts as one display, meaning you can use it with one external Thunderbolt display. Laptops with discreet graphics can use three displays; the MacBook Pro can have two external displays working while its built-in screen is operational."
Karma: Poor (Mostly affected by lame karma-joke sigs)
Well, if features are new to a particularly large audience, they don't have to be strictly new to be newsworthy. Recycled but newly popularized ideas are common. In this vein I'm reminded of Pierre Wantzel, who proved the impossibility duplicating a cube or trisecting an arbitrary angle with only a compass and straightedge in the 1830's, but who died early and whose work was essentially ignored for a century, despite those problems being quite famous at the time.
As for your moderation, I've seen the same thing happen a number of times recently. I suspect more mod points are being given out than in the past, but I'm not sure.