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Intel CEO Tells Staff Windows 8 Is Being Released Prematurely
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Geek.com: "Intel CEO Paul Otellini may be getting an angry phone call from Steve Ballmer today after it was revealed he told staff in Taiwan Windows 8 isn't ready for release. Otellini's comments were made at an internal meeting in Taipai, and he must have naively thought they would never become public knowledge. We don't know if he went into detail about what exactly is unfinished about Windows 8, but others have commented about a lack of reliable driver support and supporting applications. For many who have picked up previous versions of the Windows desktop OS early, this probably isn't coming as a surprise."
Someone broke it off and it landed up over here:
http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/
because people being able to intuitively use an OS isn't that important?
It's important, yes, but if this is in fact something "broken" with the OS, then it's fixable with a short tutorial or old-fashioned experience sitting down and using the thing, which is a lot easier than trying to fix an unstable performance hog like vista (which required several service packs to get right).
However, it's my opinion from my own usage and watching my friends and family use the new OS that it's not unintuitive to use. Microsoft tells you where to find the start menu and all charms the first time you log in. Installing apps is as easy as going to the marketplace. Launching apps just tap on them. They tell you how to switch apps when you log in for the first time as well. That's pretty much all you need to basically use your computer. If you're familiar with Windows 7, only a few simple instructions familiarize you with Windows 8.
The UI mess is any easy thing to complain about and one that people instantly see.
It's also the most opinionated (least grounded in objective fact), as it's based on personal preferences; and the easiest to fix, as you can a) use the OS without even using the metro UI, b) get used to it and learn how to use it, c) augment it with launchers of your choosing, or d) completely replace it with a different shell
The main problem is what technical or feature reasons are there to switch to Windows 8?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_8
Highlights inclue native iso/vhd support; native USB 3.0 support; fast boot time (my laptop goes from battery out to usable desktop in 7 seconds); native file versioning; integrated family controls; integrated antimalware; greatly enhanced task manager which shows network and disk usage, maintains app history, and manages startup processes; natively estimate data usage over a wireless connection; vastly improved multi-monitor support, with a taskbar that spans both monitors, and multi monitor wallpaper support; new copy/move dialogue, with transfer rate graph and enhanced filename conflict resolution; improved graphics subsystems; logical storage space aggregation from multiple physical storage sources; lower system resource requirements by cutting down on services, which also optimizes battery life....
I could go on, but absolutely none of the aforementioned features have anything to do with the metro UI, nor do they require you to use it or even acknowledge its existence.
What I don't get is why they don't provide the same experience level of the Win7 desktop environment to desktop/laptop users.
Not sure what you mean. Just hit the desktop tile and you are back into Windows 7+.
>>> In fact, any developer worth his paycheck has probably been playing with the OS and maybe even Visual Studio 2012 for months.
Uhh no. Microsoft isn't the only platform in the world you know. Its not even the most popular platform in the sw development jobs market any more.
Many developers never use Microsoft platforms at all, so dont even notice Windows 8, much less want to waste time learning it. Personally I actively avoid development jobs for any Microsoft platform as its always been a relatively bad experience.
Not a problem, go to personalization/color and appearance/ advanced appearance settings and you'll find the old XP desktop color tweaker (I guess they forgot to update it) and you can set the active window to be a different border color if you need it to "pop" out at you, maybe a nice silver or classic grey would make it stand out more. HTH.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I have used it on several, I'll be happy to list specs and give a review of each.
First up is a EEE E350 netbook, here? It is actually okay. Not great, but its okay, as with the bobcat dual core and a 12 inch screen you're not gonna run more than one app at a time and their hack boot (hybrid sleep) actually shaves about 20% off the boot time. Can't tell any difference on battery life, still around 5 hours watching videos or a little over 6 surfing, not bad but not really any different than what I was seeing on 7 as far as battery life.
Next up my test for older systems, a Pentium 4 3.6GHz with HT box I had sitting in the corner KVM'd into my shop monitor which is a 1600x900 20 inch...yuck. Oh the performance was okay, it again booted a little faster than Win 7 but the constant switching between metro and desktop sucked and the metro UI just doesn't work well on a large screen, especially once you go past around 12 programs installed. The whole thing quickly fills up to become this large multi-page mess.
Finally we have my personal system, an AMD 6 core on a 22 inch 1600x900 monitor...again with the yuck, I like to game on this as it has 8Gb of RAM and an HD4850 GPU and once i started loading up my games again metro became seriously messy, I'm the kind that don't allow more than a couple of icons on my desktop and having this huge shotgun blast of a start screen was irritating. Again the hybrid boot was a little faster but seeing as I only turn this system off when its storming doesn't really sway my opinion and the Metro apps just suck, no way to easily multitask and there was some I even had to use Task Manager to kill because they just didn't want to stop, really beta quality crap which considering this was RP didn't make me feel good about it.
Final verdict? the only one where it felt like the equal of Win 7 was on the netbook, which considering its roughly the same size as a large tablet shouldn't be surprising. I said it before and I'll say it again, Win 8 is a tablet and cell phone OS that has been shoehorned by MSFT onto the desktop to try to get people "used" to their tablet UI in the hopes people will buy it over Android and iPad. Will it work? I seriously doubt it, but thankfully Win 7 is supported until 2020 so we have plenty of time to kick back and see how Win 9 comes out. Hopefully MSFT will do as reviewers have suggested and just split metro off for tablets and leave Win 9 with a functional desktop UI instead of this mish mash.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
The shills create a new account for each story and they tend to drop that account rather fast.
For proof, check the posting history of the person being accused of being a shill.
He has only posted in this story and that account will never be used again.
Also he posted the very minute that the story was available to post in even though that account is not a subscriber.
This is the common MO of shills on /. , new account, only posts in this one story, first post at the same time story was available to post in. You see that situation and you will know that that person is a shill.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.