Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Releases Windows 8
Orome1 writes "Microsoft today announced the global availability of Windows 8. Beginning Friday, Oct. 26, consumers and businesses worldwide will be able to experience all that Windows 8 has to offer, including a new user interface and a wide range of applications with the grand opening of the Windows Store. Launching at the same time is a new member of the Windows family — Windows RT — designed for ARM-based tablets and available pre-installed on new devices. In addition to Microsoft Office 2013, Windows RT is designed exclusively for apps in the new Windows Store. In addition to the range of new Windows-based devices available, consumers can also upgrade their existing PCs. Through the end of January, consumers currently running PCs with Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7 are qualified to download an upgrade to Windows 8 Pro for an estimated retail price of US$39.99." Also at Slash Cloud, where Nick Kolakowski writes: "If the operating system and its associated hardware capture the attention (and dollars) of mobile-device users, Microsoft will have successfully expanded the Windows brand to a new and rapidly growing market segment. But if it fails, and Apple and Google continue to rule the mobility space, then Microsoft is left with few alternatives."
So pay 40$ for a downgrade ?
Who the fuck comes up with these crazy ideas ?
Posted using Windows XP Technology
Confession: I'm a Windows/PC user. Win 7 works fine for me. I use it at work. I use it a home. I can run pretty much anything I want on it. It's stable and mostly trouble free for me.
I've yet to see a single compelling reason to move to Windows 8 for desktop/laptop. Maybe it's OK for tablets? I don't know... I use Android and I'm happy with that. Is there *any* "ohhh... gotta have that" feature in Windows 8? Looks like a usability step backwards from Windows 7 to me. Am I missing something?
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
Shills now own slashdot.
more failure for the dollar. That's the m-soft way.
something something linux something something it works for me something something micro$oft tax something something free beer something something
Can I reinstall 7 or does upgrading invalidate my Windows 7 key?
Well, it sounds dubious. You say you are not a "bought" voice, but somehow you know "trust me- no one in Redmond gives a shit about this website". So can you tell me why you bothered to show up? Or where you take your "inside" knowledge from.
The wall is a little steep, I'm sure you can all make it though. The grass is greener on the other side, honest.
Wow! What a surprise. up until yesterday there was absolutely no mention of this Windows 8 version that you are talking about. Who would have thought that Microsoft would develop a whole OS so secretly.
Do we need to keep this up. Let it come out already and see. This has been in the news for sooooo long now that it's probably going to be overshadowed by Windows 9 on Monday.
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
Relax. People here aren't excited by windows 8 because they are already dreading the calls they'll get from their friends and family asking where the damn start button is.
I haven't used windows for years...it still haunts me because i'm too polite to blow off everyone who asks me a computer question.
...for running Linux in a virtual machine.
At this point my setup depends heavily on virtualization.
I need to run the desktop software for which Windows is famous, and prefer the Windows "everything has a device driver" model to fiddling with configuration files.
But when it comes to getting stuff done, it's time to drop into the virtual machine where everything is configured as I'm used to, and I have all the tools built-in that I need to get the job done.
Microsoft could perhaps sway me by making SSH, an advanced command parser, etc. available for Windows, but for now I just delegate that to Linux, although "technically" my home OS is Windows.
Did you hear that, Redmond? * shakes floppy at empty sky *
Give me back my start menu then I will think about it, and no giving me the run around by saying to use some 3rd party shit to get it back.
It is a better OS from a technical standpoint. It is faster (Cakewalk found it sped up Sonar X1 in all heavy load cases) and some of the tools like the task manager are much better. However it isn't major.
On the down side its UI is ugly, and the metro stuff is crap. You don't have to use the metro stuff. Start 8 or Classic Shell will get you a real start menu and you can then ignore the tablet crap.
I'm fine with it, I use it at work since Windows support is my profession and I need to be familiar with it and it works well. However it is not a major update. Internally it calls itself Windows NT 6.2, 7 being NT 6.1. It is improved some, uglied up some, and has tablet bits it tries to shove down your throat.
In general I would say don't worry about it. If you've a reason to get it or a system comes with it, it'll work fine. You'll want to get a start menu replacer but it'll be fine after that. However I wouldn't rush out and upgrade. 7 works fine and 8 really does have an ugly UI.
it has better multi core use and other under the hood speed ups.
To bad it's build for touch and smaller screen laptops / tables.
And desktop mode needs to have a start menu and be able to run metro apps in a window.
Presumably this means they've announced the memory limits for Windows 8 somewhere? Windows 7 limits.
Sort of important if you want to know which version to get. I assume they're still segmenting.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
And all is good with a light from heaven shining down on the surface. Angelic music is heard as a golden crown above Steves head as he flies around with angelic wings.
If you happen to disagree? Bah you are just a middle aged old man who hates change!
http://saveie6.com/
I am a very open minded person when it comes to what OS I use, I personally have machines running OS X, Linux (a couple of flavors), Windows 7 and WIndows 8. Everytime I pick up the laptop (A Dell E6510) that used to be my favorite, I end up shutting it down and going for the one with either Windows 7 or Linux on it. I spent 3 hours trying to figure out how to add a second email account to the wonderful email app, only to find out that it doesn't like my Exim mail server for some reason. I will be putting Windows 7 back on the machine as soon as I have some time.
"My immediate reaction is "WTF? What kind of moron doesn't make things 64-bit safe to begin with?" Linus
See, windoz 8 my ballz!!! “Balls”- is the logical computer game, created as office-game. It's the game with good graphic and pleasant becalming music. No go on 8. No profit!
I think you meant to say "download a downgrade".
I've seen it and am NOT impressed. No start button, just a messy desktop.
I don't want my PC to work like a tablet. If I want a tablet, I'll buy a tablet, thank you.
Looks like hardware drivers are being updated for Windows 8 support (WDDM 1.2 / DXGI 1.2 / etc). This means, even if you really want to upgrade, wait at least a few months. All the problems I had (and most people I know) going from XP to 7 were driver related. New driver models = new drivers = buggy drivers = unstable machine = let someone else be the beta tester.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
trust me- Microsoft employees and Microsoft marketing do care about negative comments about Windows8 and Metro on dumb tech news sites. It's their mission to preach the Microsoft gospel.
I recently installed a standard Debian/testing + xfce setup on my laptop. To my surprise, it idles at 80 megabytes of RAM usage. Yes, ** eighty megabytes **, leaving the rest for applications, buffers, and cache.
I'd never try to install Windows8 on this few years old hardware, but if I put it on my new i7 Workstation at work, how much RAM does it idle at? Will it swap on a 2GB machine once the webbrowser has a few tabs open, the graphics package is running, and an office app is open in the background?
(no kidding, modern desktop that idles at * eighty megabytes *)
Why. WHY? WHYYY? http://nooooooooooooooo.com/
Aside from having to use a Windows VM on top of Linux for the odd program, there's not any real good reason non-technical people couldn't use Chakra, Debian stable or Suse. All are friendly and aren't nearly as crap-laden as Ubunturd or Mint. There is a free alternative to nearly every Windows app out there, steam is coming, and on top of it all Wine can run most windows apps anyway. There are fewer virii, fewer attack vectors, and the best thing is that it is completely free.
In general, everything Windows can do, Linux can do better, and has likely been doing it longer than Windows. It's also lighter weight, is much better at managing memory and processor usage...run it on your low powered RasPi, your corporate or internet server, and on your giant cluster. When's the last time you heard of anyone running a supercomputer with Windows Server as the OS of choice?
Finally, I'm sick of the Microsoft ad stories and shills. Bugger off!
Already had the first two laptops with 8 this week, and both of them got the ClassicShell treatment after realising the amount of support calls we'd get if the users get their hands on the new interface.
home
Sell me Windows 7 for forty bucks instead, and you've got a deal.
Why would I want Windows 8?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This OS is bad, and Microsoft should feel bad!
Place your bets on MSFT stock price after the first earnings with this turkey. Fiscal cliff likely to cause problems and a skip-it release in the wild? I would not want to be holding their stock the next few months. Side bet on a CEO change.
Microsoft is in a position for a real customer relations problem here.
You see, Microsoft felt that the complaints about Vista were due to bad OEM practices--bad drivers, inadequate hardware, etc, and that the bad first impressions from things that weren't their fault were coloring user perception. They demonstrated this belief with their "Project Mojave"--see, Vista, isn't that bad when running on good hardware with good drivers! And although they weren't ultimately able to salvage Vista's reputation, their view on Vista was more-or-less vindicated with Windows 7, which was not very different from Vista--except that it had good, stable drivers right out of the gate, and that the intervening time had aged some really slow hardware out of the production channels. And Windows 7 is a big hit. So Microsoft's lesson from Vista/Win7 was: the Microsoft path is the correct path, consumers will love us, and if they don't, someone other than us is screwing it up.
And now comes Windows 8, and people are complaining about the UI, particularly on non-touch devices. Microsoft's response so far is a bad sign: people just need to get used to the new UI, and it's easy to learn. That presents a disconnect with the actual complaints: the complainers HAVE gotten used to the new UI, and they DID find it easy to learn--they just think it's not a very good UI, particularly for non-touch devices. So I fear it could take a long time for Microsoft to actually comprehend the complaints about Windows 8, let alone respond to them.
If you took all of the smiles Windows created and laid them end to end, they would reach all the way to the galaxy and fill up the black hole in space.
I'll get this in before the hundreds of "omg don't want" posts. Windows 8 is significantly different from previous versions, not just for the interface which takes some initial getting used to (although many, predictably, end up warming to it - http://www.zdnet.com/dont-hate-windows-8-7000006297/).
Nope, this Windows is the first release that presumes/pre-empts that you, the user, will do your computing across multiple devices and that you don't want to have to worry about your data & user experience being tied to any one device.
Want to see it in action? Log into Win8 with an MS account on any machine - your apps, data, settings, everything will magically appear (assuming you've allowed it) even if the machine has never heard of you before (and again, assuming this isn't locked down). Load Office 2013 - again, your files & data appear as if you created them on that very machine, all completely seamlessly. All the apps & social integration stuff also follows you wherever you go - the idea being you wouldn't know you were on a new/different device - again all seamlessly streamed from whatever sources of social networking you have setup. That's huge; it effectively eliminates the concept of local file-systems for user data. Everything is transparently in the cloud and just works, as it should be. This is the first Windows to be built from day 0 on this basis.
Now, for people that don't like metro because they don't have touch? The answer is simple - don't use metro-style apps if you don't like them. Your old desktop works just as well (although it doesn't have the same level of cloud syncing) and all the apps you had on Win7 will work just the same way. If a killer game/app comes out in metro-style, guess what, you have the option to run that too. It would be like Mac OS users being able to natively load iOS apps if they wanted - the choice to be able to is good.
Not to mention the benefits for developers having a single & consistent API set to target every form-factor from multi-CPU gaming monster to WinRT/ARM tablet, and that's before we mention WP8 being as it is the same kernel. That's a benefit for users too; pick up any modern MS powered device from Xbox to tablet to desktop PC and the user will be in a familiar UI.
Also, keyboard shortcuts make up for any lack of touch. WinKey + X brings up the power-user menu; WinKey + C brings up the right-swipe bar; there's absolutely loads to help mouse/keyboard users feel at home, but there is a learning curve and from what I've seen from feedback, this is the most objectionable thing. People don't like change; bears have also been know to take dumps in the woods, life goes on.
Are you happy on Win7? Good for you; if you are on Win7 & have no other devices or intention of sharing data on anything but your trusty desktop, then frankly the benefits of Win8 are lesser.. There's a new & vastly improved task manager; Win8 is faster in almost all metrics, and there are some nice desktop GUI enhancements that you'd likely appreciate, however the face of IT is changing to one where it will be rare to have just the one computer, and Windows 8 has that front & center of the design.
One day your average IT worker will find the idea of saving personal data directly to a device actually most amusing I suspect, and the shift in thinking has already started.
There you go; that's my take on the best of Win8. I don't expect many here to appreciate it as I do but there's some real benefits in Win8, despite that being an unpopular opinion in the group-think echo chamber that Slashdot can be sometimes. Now lets return to the flaming.
throw new NoSignatureException();
Says it releases at 11:15PM tonight in NYC, so it's not quite out yet. Me personally? I am converting two machines from Vista to 8. I couldn't justify the price of $400 for upgrades (Two copies at $200 each for OEM) to 7 for the rigs, but when I heard about the $40 upgrade path I was a bit giddy for getting rid of Vista. In hindsight Vista isn't bad, but it's being abandoned in the dust in favor of 7. So yeah. One laptop with minimum requirements and one four year old desktop are getting some new paint tonight.
For those who seek perfection there can be no rest on this side of the grave.
...after they remove all of the Metro (not that there's anything wrong with that) nonsense...
What I'm not OK with is a tablet interface forced on desktop users. Why can't desktop users have the option to default to well... Desktop mode. I would say 90% of my program launching activities is done from the task bar, so no big lost for me if there's no Start Menu.
Just out of curiosity will they still continue selling Windows 7?
I have heard some new PCs will come with "downgrade" rights. And back in the Vista days XP CDs could often be found, although usually at a higher price.
But will it still be possible to purchase, for example the full Windows 7 ultimate retail without resorting to eBay?
If I need to put together a new machine in the near future, I would rather not have that messed up Windows 8 UI in my way - underneath the hood improvements be damned.
No, no, Windows 8 is brilliant. Now when people ask for help on their Windows machines I'll be able to say 'sorry, don't know how to do it' and mutter something about massive UI changes if they ask why.
And so begins another era of nerds lamenting change!!!!!
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
zzz
OMG WANT : http://www.lenovo.com/products/us/tablet/thinkpad/thinkpad-tablet-2/
At least some posts must be from real people.
The most common reason people stick with Microsoft is because they are familiar with the GUI. With this major switch by Microsoft, is there any reason not to switch to Mac or Linux? Some Linux distros look a whole lot like the GUI that many people know and love.
I don't understand the business plan of "Force users to adopt a GUI they don't like just because we want it." What business college teaches that course?
Of course, despite all that, a lot of people will probably stick with Microsoft because, well, "It's Microsoft".
No offense, but if you haven't used Windows for years, you probably aren't a great source of info about new versions.
This sounds like a huge security/privacy nightmare. I'm going to stick with my current OS...
I suspect Microsoft does care, because some of anti-social freaks are directly or indirectly responsible for a considerable amount of purchasing, and Windows 8's success in no small part hinges on us buying into it being the best durned OS for the desktop, the tablet and the phone.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Perhaps that happens when you use the Ballmer app?
http://apps.microsoft.com/webpdp/en-US/app/steve-ballmer/e1cd420c-8d42-4cc0-aa54-3254b41b7ed5
Seems unrelated, but guess what software changes and evolves. The biggest reason to upgrade to windows 8 is that 8 is higher than 7. People still running XP are like people running a linux kernel 2.4 because 2.6 doesn't really have anything you need...of course it doesn't...its about the long term aggregation. XP doesn't run IE 9...why we have so much IE 8! Just upgrade already or buy a new machine or whatever...just do it. Yah your 1997 honda civic might run "fine", but I bet it has a tape player.
Having an OS that can run well on a tablet and well when in traditional PC use is going to be hard and it's going to take a few versions for anyone to get right.
MS is NOT apple. They don't need people standing in line on release day clapping at one another to be successful. No one gives a crap about some big line outside of a Best Buy. MS will sell this OS just like Windows 7....slow and steady. Apple wishes they sold even a fraction of the number of Windows 7 licenses of anything. Windows 7 = 670 million total, Ipad = 84 million.
This idea that Windows 8 is going to be Vista is sort of silly. Enterprises will likely have a Software Assurance or whatever MS is calling it these days and so the upgrade is just a matter of when not if.
Windows in the home? Windows in the dorm room? Harder to predict, but probably less often, but not less. You might get an Ipad every year and a PC every three. I ain't paying thousands more for a damn silver laptop I use every 3 months...some shitty 500 dollar Acer ultra book will do just fine. For the college student maybe a Chrome book is good nough.
MS is essentially the new IBM. They will come up with new products and people everytime will try and compare them to Apple...and everytime it will be for a different market no stupid day trader or CNet reviewer will ever understand. You never see "DB2 10 wil be a SQL Server 2012 killer"
p.s. If I hear another the "ribbon" in office is worse I'm going to shoot someone. The ribbon is better, if you don't think so your just old and stubborn. Your probably reading this in Chrome...u see a file menu? Even the three line menu is just a vertical ribbon. If your in FF do you see a file menu? Why do you think FF feels clunky? Techies love to hate Windows new GUIs and so there will be Metro haters...MS is smart enough to not care about techies and haters, but to care about average users.
Anybody see Ballmer's tablet demo on CNBC this morning? After his usual arrogant blathering, this time about none of the tablets satisfying user's needs, he picked up an MS tablet and stumbled through a short demo in which the news reader feature he was touting promptly failed to load any news.
One can only assume he has pictures of the MSFT board collectively banging a farm animal or something, as there is simply no reason whatsoever why he remains CEO.
If you think Hyper-V is the same as VirtualBox you know nothing of virtualization. Here's a start.
-1 overrated isn't the same thing as "I disagree".
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Win 8 is like a car that has technically better performance in ways that the average driver will never notice. It is also uglier than sin and the starter, steering and brakes have all been changed and moved around to places the driver won't except them to be.
The most common reason people stick with Microsoft is because they are familiar with the GUI.
That 's one, but the other common reasons people stick with Microsoft are:
- They depend on some small, specialized app that's Windows only
- They don't want to install a different OS when their PC already comes with one out of the box.
- They don't want to pay Apple prices
Even if the first doesn't apply, the second will have them learning Win8 rather than learning Linux.
People still use the start button? I haven't had to use it since Win7. This is actually a large reason why MS got rid of it. Their metrics showed the average person almost never used it.
Here is what I have on my Win 7 desktop
1. Adobe PS, Dreamweaver, and Illustrator
2. VS 2010
3. Office 2010
4. Vmware
5. Utilities that include truecrypt, uTorrent, Firefox, Chrome, dropbox, truecrpyt, notepad++, skype, YahooIM, filezilla, Google Earth, Avast anti virus, Gimp 2, and Paint.net
In other words an average PC setup for someone who works and plays. Do you have any idea how many freaking tiles that would create! 80+ tiles!!
Visual studio has 15 links for utilities and websites (click here for Silverlight 3 SDk, click here for Silverlight 4 SDK ....). Adobe has shit like ActionScript Extender, Photoshop cs, Photoshop cs 64-bit ..
If I had this on Windows 8 I would have to scroll over and over and over and over and over to find everything with 12+ pages! Sure if I had every command memorized I could hit the start key with its inferior search over Windows 7 but I do not except for 4 or 5 programs off the top off my head.
Metro can't handle desktop apps because of the tile mess and I do not have a lot of programs compared to some folks who have +30 programs and shareware utilities. You are then talking about 100+ tiles.
http://saveie6.com/
I use the Start Button everytime I want to shutdown Windows.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Not really. I do like the speed up and simplicity of having a roaming profile stored at Microsoft with a single hotmail account. Installing is Muuuch quicker with my settings all back after a re-image.
Overall it feels no different than Windows 7. Benchmarks show them similar with a tiny i/o advantage for Windows 8 under a few scenarios. Nothing that blows your hair back or anything.
The move from XP to Windows 7 on modern hardware has a much better impact on performance than to Windows 8. Especially for multi core systems. But the SMP code in Windows 7 is the same in Windows 2008 release 2 which can scale to 32 processors. If you have just an icore5 you wont notice anything. Now XP ... yeah that was optimized for 2 - 4 cores if anything as it is 11 years old.
Graphics are slower too on windows 8 as the drivers are not optimized yet. No contrary to popular belief the driver model is updated and WDWM has changed which is why IE 10 is not available for Windows 7 yet.
http://saveie6.com/
I'm really not! Now if only i could convince my family...
Another version of the junk from Redmond that I will never buy.
...is no longer included in Windows 8.
Earlier this week, I thought I'd upgrade my HTPC to Windows 8. I've been using WMC on W7 now for a couple of years and it has been working great using HDHomeRUn tuners for local broadcast reception and recording/time shifting.
Imagine my surprise. No WMC. It's a paid upgrade. Ok, I'll bite. Where to I upgrade it? Clicky linky. Sorry, the licensing server is not available.
So I said to myself, Self... Let's see what else this WIndows 8 has to offer. This user interface is a total abortion. After fumbling around for an hour and feeling like a fool, I eventually clicked some of the colored boxes on the screen. Not a single thing would launch with the exception of IE9. Reason? My TV is 720 lines of resolution, not 1080. Every stinkin' app said I didn't have the required resolution.
My HTPC is now running Windows 7 again. And will be for a long time to come. It's way too good of a television to discard for a new operating system.
We should start referring to processes which run in the background by their correct technical name... paenguins.
Launching at the same time is a new member of the Windows family — Windows RT — designed for ARM-based tablets and available pre-installed on new devices.
This isn't the first time Windows has supported ARM. Heck it used to support SPARC, too!
You don't need to keep everything pinned to tiles. If you felt like it, you could just pin a folder with all your shortcuts to each group to the launcher.
We are speaking about the perceived functionality here. For everyday casual user it makes no difference at all if it's a baremetal hypervisor or not.
Only because the everyday casual user has no reason to care about virtualization at all.
-1 overrated isn't the same thing as "I disagree".
You reminded me of one feature I will miss: the "recently opened" menu that opens up when you highlight an application.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
So, Windows 8 will not have an advantage with this particular functionality after all. You know, in the eyes of a casual user who is the person we are discussing here.
It seems to me that many of the people that now use Linux/OSX/Android/iOS are doing it precisely because they DON'T want to use MicroSoft products. All of the aforementioned systems work just fine without any assistance from MS. Ok, so MS has a new OS and a new tablet. That's great if you're looking to stay in that ecosystem. But if you're using one of the other operating systems why in the world would you want to change?
I use a Mac and an Android phone and tablet. I've got a Windows VM on my Mac and haven't had to use it in probably a year. But I keep in around just in case. The phone and tablet work great. I've got tons of apps to choose from and I can do anything I want with it. Windows 8 and their shiny new tablet do no excite me in the least. I'm happy with what I've got.
When did that happen? This discussion was about what features Windows 8 has over Windows 7. You were the first to mention casual users, and only after you looked like a dumbass thinking VirtualBox and Hyper-V are interchangeable.
They should've included an angry birds type of game where if you had a touch screen, you could have a cartoon Steve Balmer launching chairs at cartoon figures of ESR, Larry Page and the ghost of Steve Jobs.
It *would* be a shame, but they didn't, so that's irrelevant. Aero Peek, Aero Snap, Aero Shake, live thumbnails in Windows Flip (Alt+Tab), and limited use of transparency (the taskbar and the desktop overlays are still slightly transparent) are still present. The only Aero features that are gone are window border transparency (which I do miss) and Flip3D (which I don't). The keyboard shortcut of Win+Tab now switches among "Metro" apps and the desktop (as a whole), while Alt+Tab still switches among all open windows, including "Metro" ones. Aero Peek on Alt+Tab, hovering on Taskbar previews, or on the whole desktop using the lower-right corner (which also still functions as a "Hide/Show Desktop" button) all still work.
Win8 Pro RTM (build 9200) x64, shitty Intel integrated "Mobile GMA X3100" graphics with WDDM 1.1 driver.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Well rather than being a bitter middle aged man who hates change, these as well as yours is why Windows 7 is here to stay for me and millions of others.
Until the Modern UI has a taskbar and a way to organize a shitload of tiles from desktop apps, the ability of having more than one tile opened, ... and recently opened, I will hold off. Maybe Windows 9 will have this?
Microsoft has a story of releasing half baked products to make them stability and fixing them later in future releases. Vista was ugly and it seemed beta quality. MS fixed the colors and performance in Windows 7. Same with Internet Explorer. Unfortunately they were so damn slow that IE 6 got entrenched that people shun IE even though IE 9 and 10 are good.
I wish they wouldn't do this and just not release something before it is baked.
http://saveie6.com/
First Windows 8 remote exploit spotted in the wild in 5... 4... 3...
Count me in!
it may be a bit bothersome to get around / disable the Win8 UI-elements I don't like, but apart from that this sounds like a really good deal.
sig? Oh, that sig...
Right click on the tiles you don't want. Click unpin. That's it.
-1 overrated isn't the same thing as "I disagree".
Now that is a good idea and it's something I've been considering. I probably will eventually do it myself, actually. The only problem is, waiting for all computers currently in use to be replaced with Windows 8 machines. I say replaced, because "upgraded" seems to be absent from most people's vocabulary. I often use similar excuses when asked to deal with Windows 7/Vista machines, simply because I don't care to mess with them... but because the general layout of the GUI hasn't changed a whole lot, the claim doesn't really hold water. I've personally been Windows-free for about six years, when I left Windows (then XP) for good in favor of Linux. I provided relatively little help for Vista, and even less for 7. It's looking like the time is finally right to cut off all ties.
I haven't run Windows for a long time, but because I prefer to have a nice, clean desktop that doesn't have shit all over it (unlike my real-world counterpart), I tended to use the Start menu all the time. I would have the bare basics on the desktop (My Computer, Documents, Network Places, Recycle Bin, Firefox), five or six of my primary programs in the quick launch bar, and literally everything else I accessed from the Start menu. Including, of course, the Shutdown/Restart option...
While Win 8 may have a whole bunch of other problems, what you've stated is not one. If you assume AV technology is so primitive so as to be completely ineffective simply because virus writers will check against it, well, your assumptions need to be reconsidered. Do you think current viruses are not checked against Norton/McAffee/etc?
As long as users (or the software itself) updates the AV database regularly, the chances of an infection are indeed reduced to a huge degree. When a new virus hits, a few computers indeed will be compromised, but the flip side of that is that the signature will enter the database, so everyone else is safe.
Including a AV by default is a good thing. I only hope it is a competently designed application.
http://dilemma.gulecha.org - My philospohical short film.
Care to explain any advantages that you can get with VMWare over Hyper-V at the same price point? Aside from the ability for the hypervisor manager to run on Linux, which doesn't seem terribly relevant here, I'm not seeing it. This is a true (type 1) hypervisor, like ESX(i), with admin tools included, for no extra charge.
I'm not sufficiently familiar with the feature lists for both sides to give a point / counterpoint comparison, but Hyper-V (the Server 2012 version or Client) offer some nice features. Since my job frequently requires installing and testing third-party software (and I don't want it messing up or otherwise interacting with my own software), it'd be tremendously helpful to have on my workstation.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Metro search brings up Apps search. You need to "down arrow" one time and hit enter when typing "printer". Then you'll get a wide selection of printer stuff, including "Devices and Printers". This is an incredibly non-intuitive way to find something. Better way is to simply right mouse click in the start corner, click Control Panel and then click Devices and Printers without ever using Metro.
So microsoft has released a new system which presents a significant learning curve for people while providing questionable changes that users may or may not find functional, all for a price. And they want all of their current customers to throw away the software they have now (in the middle of an economic downturn) and buy new, just because.
I don't own another version of Windows ... how the hell do I buy a version of Windows 8 that's not an upgrade? That website is a mess.
Considering Windows 7 was a whopping $200 when it came out, Windows 8 is quite a deal. Microsoft I be leave is doing this in an effort to get users off the old versions of there operating systems. It will be interested to see how this play’s out for Microsoft they are taking a major gamble redesigning the look, price point and cross platform compatibility.
http://www.thetechnologygeek.org
Saw the ads this morning.
70$ for 32bit upgrade not 40$
110$ for 32bit OEM.
So pretty much as expensive as all of their OS really.
Quite simply I get new n shiny syndrome. However took advantage of the 25 quid upgrade deal and it won't install anyway...
APK catches the trolls with their pants down again and they downmod him for being correct? This is slashdot.