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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."
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
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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.
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!
if you click the link marked print this you will get everything on one page, yes it pops into another window....
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
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
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.
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.
Click with the mouse wheel or the middle (centre) button, this will trigger a new instance or right click then click the app icon just above unpin.
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*
BitLocker is FIPS 140-2 certified, I seriously doubt there is a backdoor in it.
The certification is done by the same government agency that is most interested in having a backdoor.
There's almost nothing in that list that hasn't been available on other platforms for more than a decade.
Half of those features are actually available on my Windows 7 installation already. Support for USB3.0 devices, not rebooting / nagging to install updates, builtin antivirus, quick search, device synchronisation, 3G support, split screen multitasking, the ability to turn wifi off with a click of a button rather than a hardware switch, and the ability to auto mount ISOs, all of that works just fine on my Windows 7 install.
In fact judging by Microsoft's early attempts at WiFi integration, and CD burning I predict that Windows 8 will be shit at all of the above.
they've made the desktop as functional as windows 2000 with a crashed explorer. yay!
huh? my desktop looks just like my desktop in windows 7. BTW if you really hate the metro interface you can turn it off and have a plain old windows 7 with the more efficient windows 8 core. anyway don't want it? don't use it but stop spreading false information. 10 years ago it was microsoft who spread FUD like crazy - now it's the ubuntards...