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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."
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.
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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/
I have a pretty ordinary Debian Mint desktop, and I just tried playing a video in VLC and previewing music files with Nautilus at the same time. It worked fine - both played without missing a beat.
He was making reference to something that long ago was a significant issue. IIRC as late as the early 00's it was a problem - and while the sound system was maturing rapidly at that point there were a couple of solutions floating about and were not mutually compatible, not always stable, and none were particularly widely supported.
While Linux and other unix-a-likes were ahead of the game in server related areas for a long time; there are a lot of things in desktop environments that just work out of the box now and that we therefore take for granted that either did not work at all or did not work without much user effort five or ten years ago (when they were working well enough in the Windows desktop world).
I'm a Linux fan myself, but he does have a point: the threshold beyond which something constitutes and innovation rather than imitation seems a lower in one direction than the other. This might be completely unfair though: Linux (and xBSD and others) are community efforts without the money thrown at desktop use Windows sees (most of the investment made in Linux related areas by companies is still aimed at server environments not desktop ones (I'm not counting Android here as doesn't fit in either category IMO)).