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Windows 8: a 'Christmas Gift For Someone You Hate'
zacharye writes "Microsoft is no stranger to criticism these days, and the company's new Windows 8 platform is once again the target of a scathing review from a high-profile user. Well-known Internet entrepreneur and MIT professor Philip Greenspun handed Windows 8 one of its most damning reviews yet earlier this week, calling the new operating system a 'Christmas gift for someone you hate.' Greenspun panned almost every aspect of Microsoft's new software, noting that Microsoft had four years to study Android and more than five to examine iOS, but still couldn't build a usable tablet experience..."
Not some blog that quotes the article
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2012/12/05/christmas-gift-for-someone-you-hate-windows-8/
way of expressing said sentiment?
I've always found Dog Crap in a Box(TM) to be both economical AND effective at communicate feelings of loathing and hatred. It's really easy to get book rates on the postage, too.
It may be worded a bit harsh, but in essence the man is right. Of course, hordes of marketeers will dispute this; But IT wasn't build on marketing, and if it was then it shouldn't.
“Suppose that you are an expert user of Windows NT/XP/Vista/7, an expert user of an iPad, and an expert user of an Android phone you will have no idea how to use Windows 8,” Greenspun wrote.
“Suppose that you are an expert user of Windows NT/XP/Vista/7, an expert user of Windows 8, and an expert user of an Android phone you will have no idea how to use an iPad,” Greenspun wrote.
Seriouslt, playing around with settings,etc is frustratingly hard in iPhones atleast. The basic stuff is on the surface, the rest is 5 km below the surface
I havent tried it yet and I will not try it since just yesterday I moved into suse 12.2. But is it really that bad?
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2012/12/05/christmas-gift-for-someone-you-hate-windows-8/
Seems this is what MS spends their time doing these days :(
Or should I post the "brace yourself you haven't spent enough time with the OS meme"
Seriously the underlying OS changes are rock solid and great for the user and are sadly lost in the discussion over a GUI that should rightfully be reserved for tablets or convertible laptops.
Beware the Lollipop of Mediocrity, Lick it once and you suck forever.
We do not even pretend to be impartial now?
The title obviously should be
> Greenspun: Windows 8: a 'Christmas Gift For Someone You Hate'
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
I've been using an Android tablet after I switched away from the iPad. It was TERRIBLE. Android is definitely the worst of all tablet UIs. Windows 8 is far superior on the tablet than Android or iOS. It's so much more usable. I think this Prof has an issue with Win8's discoverability, which could be improved. I do admit that Windows 8 on a mouse-only desktop isn't as useable as on a touch-device.
While Im not an advocate of Windows 8, miss information makes me mad too. In the article it said "Some functions, such as ‘start an application’ or ‘restart the computer’ are available only from the tablet interface". I took this to mean the Metro tiles, which if that's what he meant, he is completely wrong. The command prompt is still there. The standard desktop is still there. "Old style" shortcuts still exist. Of course, he complained about that too.
I've always said English was my second language. Had Romeo and Juliet been written in C, I might have understood it.
"He continued, “Some functions, such as ‘start an application’ or ‘restart the computer’ are available only from the tablet interface."
*Start an application: Windows Key + X, R
Restart the computer: ALT-F4 from the desktop
*I can only assume that by "start an application" he means "run" because if he actually couldn't figure out how to click a shortcut from the desktop or taskbar......
At the end of his "review" he said he was using Windows 8 on a desktop, not a tablet. "This article is based on using Windows 8 on what may be the best current hardware: Dell XPS One 27 computer with a quad-core i7 CPU, 16 GB of RAM and a solid state hard drive accelerator ($2600). " Well there you go. We all knew there were usability issues on the desktop.
What use would it be to invent something that duplicates iOS or Android?
People would just keep using the original and deny the copy.
It's smart to take features from these systems, but useless to repeat them. Technology is forged by people who find new ways to do useful things. That doesn't mean imitation, it means re-invention.
Microsoft also has a long legacy of Windows products and users to uphold, and has to merge these two.
I realize that liking Windows around here is about as favorably looked upon as non-ironically liking Bruce Springsteen at a hipster party, but demonization for not being a clone is undeserved here.
This might be out there, but I haven’t seen it yet, so some help would be appreciated.
Is there a touchpad/mousepad I can lay on my desk to act as the touch proxy for the screen? I’ve seen the Surface and the screen looked great, well... until it started being used, that is. It got all mucked up after a little bit of use and there’s _no_ way I can use that on my work machine.
So. is there some way I can use something like a mouse pad as the interface (pinch, zoom, swipe, etc, etc) without having to touch the screen?
It's about expressing the amount of hate you feel for the person. It's like expressing love only different.
For instance if you buy your love a bar of chocolate for an anniversary, it will express affection in an underwhelming way, perhaps leading them to believe your affection is as underwhelming as the effort that went into the gift.
Now on the other hand if you go all out and treat them to weekly massage for a year at the local spa so they eventually elope with the sexy massage therapist, then that's a whole other level of showing affection.
I converted my main workstation at work to windows 8 a week ago, mostly in order to learn and get used to it.
While there indeed is a bit of a hassle to change some of the habits from xp, vista and 7 to fit 8, and I really dislike the start panel that has replaced the start menu, it's not really a big deal.
I've put my 20 or so most used applications in the taskbar and pinned my most used folders and files into the respective taskbar icons and changed my "click start menu and open the file or folder"-habit into a "right click the taskbar icon and open the file or folder"-habit.
Also, I've installed regular windows applications as replacements for all the standard windows 8 applications, like vlc instead of the full screen windows 8 movie player, acrobat reader instead of the full screen windows 8 pdf-viewer, etc.
To be honest, I haven't used the start panel at all this entire week, except for going to the desktop after logging in.
On one hand, I've not really seen any of the horrible downsides with windows 8 that everyone talks about. On the other hand, I haven't seen many improvements over windows 7 yet. The new task manager and the new file-copy graph windows are awesome though.
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
He's not a professor; far from it.
He's an "MIT affiliate" (search People on the MIT home page), which is the loosest form of connection to the Institute.
Note also that the blog he's posted on is at Harvard Law, which says:
"Weblogs at Harvard Law is provided by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University as a free service to the Harvard community. Anyone with an email address at harvard.edu, radcliffe.edu, or hbs.edu can sign up instantly and be blogging in minutes."
If you search his name in the directory at Harvard's home page, there are no hits.
In other words, he has no significant connection to MIT, doesn't show up at all on Harvard's staff list, and maybe for some reason has a Harvard email address.
The poster was just quoting the blog, which pointed to the original blog, but hey, is 30 seconds worth of fact checking too much to ask?
An Actual MIT Professor.
I ordered 3 wireless routers from NewEgg and got an offer that I could get a copy of Win 8 Pro sold to me with each, but with a %100 discount, i.e. free.
Now, since it was "sold" to me with a "discount", I'm sure my "purchase" was included in that inflated figure of Win 8 sales that was put out recently.
I might install one on a swappable drive just to try it, but they're currently collecting dust and two of them probably will continue to do so.
I remember doing the same thing in 1992 using a VGA monitor. MS-DOS and a serial mouse..
He didn't test it on a tablet.
He also paid about $1500 too much for his Dell.
You've obviously never worked with Apple or an Apple shop.
That is unfortunately not true. Whatever you think of Jobs showmanship, or the manipulative way me said "magical" every 5 damn seconds. They do have a massive distortion filter...and the whole media industry bent on lying on there behalf. The reality is though that device that Jobs finally held aloft, was a compelling device, and in three cases the first mass market one of its kind [note not the first, best features].
Apples shares are taking a massive dip right now [The value of dell wiped off their cap in a day!!], and its simply due to Apple only having the "distortion field in effect" not the compelling products. In context of this article Microsoft never had them.
Please be gentle, I'm not as big a nerd as I like to think, and more of a scientist than a computer person. The thing is, though, I have a really nice PC for gaming that I built (with help) from my older machine. I replaced almost everything but I kept the Hard Drives (added an SSD to the existing 1.5TB RAID0). It has 32GB RAM (it was on sale) and a core i5 and an nVidia 660 GTX on an ASUS Mobo.
I have on it Vista 64-bit home premium (so I can't use all 32GB RAM) and I want to upgrade. Everyone says that Vista was BAAAAAD, and I'd agree if I was a power user, prolly, there are a number of annoying things like being asked all the time if I really want to change some setting or other.
So the question is this, should I upgrade to Win 8 Pro (and get start8 or whatever it is that give back the regular start menu) or Win 7 ultimate? Given that the promotion is for Win 8 only, I'd like to be able to take advantage of the reduced cost.
To note: I really only use the machine to play games bought on Steam, MUD, and use the net. Is win 8 that bad that even someone who's generally smart, but only uses the computer for a few things, should avoid it?
It seems like the number one complaint so far is "It's different, and I don't like to think". That's just lazy, and I tend to discount it immediately.
There are two fairly valid criticisms, however. The first is that by moving functions into various gestures and hidden panels, the discoverability is quite poor. I'm constantly forgetting that the search feature is buried in that "charms" bar, and instinctively look for a search field on the screen somewhere. I'm sure the Microsoft knee-jerk approach to "fixing" this will be to print tips and reminders on the display bezel, which of course won't make any sense when the screen is rotated some other way. Going back to the drawing board and completely re-engineering a concept doesn't seem to be their thing.
Second, the weird desktop/tablet UI dichotomy is baffling. Functions that were previously confined to a small number of places - chiefly the Start menu and Control Panel - are now spread across two "control panels", a hidden "charms" bar, a "Settings" button in that charms bar, and many of these functions bounce back and forth between the tablet or desktop UI, or even duplicate features of one another. Key functionality has also been removed entirely. Where does one view, edit, and reorder the entire list of saved wireless connections? Nowhere, unless you want to use the netsh command!
So while I can appreciate making finger-friendly design considerations, the way they've done it is disjointed and nonsensical. If I had to fix it, I'd allow "Metro" apps to run windowed instead of only full-screen, make it easier to scale up UI elements of "desktop" apps for touch use, get the Control Panel consolidated into a single point of access, and put some of the most common features of the old Start menu directly on the new one, without hiding them off-screen or in menus (Control Panel, Devices and Printers, Run, Computer, Documents, etc). If you change the window manager to act more like the Metro mode when a window is maximized, then you've got a reasonably successful marrying of the two concepts.
For traditional desktop use, it's not at all horrible for an advanced user, and does have some nice performance and usability improvements here and there. For casual home users, it will probably be overly confusing, and leave them shopping for iPads even more than they are already.
I like Windows 8 and I didn't buy a Zune. People keep calling me a shill, but I'm not. Just buy a copy of Start8, and 95% of the problems of Windows 8 just go away. You get all of the improvements with very little of the downsides.
In Ubuntu i can chose any of a dozen desktop environments, and not have to switch between them to simple thing like shutdown.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
This coming from a guy who couldn't figure out how to play a video on the playbook (http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2012/12/05/christmas-gift-for-someone-you-hate-windows-8/).
Take what he says with a grain of salt.
DNA -- National Dyslexic Association
I think there is also an expectation that Microsoft will fix the Windows 8 flaws... because they have shown in the past the ability to react to negative feedback (i.e. Vista = BAD, Win 7 = GOOD, now Win 8 = CRAP, therefore... Win 9 = teh aw3s0me)
Windows 8, even in release mode, smells like beta testing. The general reaction has been very "ME/Vista"-like. So we expect them to improve it. Will they? That's the real question...
Its not the real question. I barely care but to put Windows 7 in context its Vista released on time; covering up its worse excesses; on hardware that could cope with it better. It still does not look 10 years better than XP [or at least SP2]. Microsoft cannot do that with Windows 8 because the problem is "Metro" on a tablet designed with "Office" in mind, that is a strategy, which you cannot fix with software.
I really don't see why people are so up in arms over Windows 8. A simple Windows+D keystroke takes you into desktop mode...I do hate the removal of the windows launcher in Desktop mode
I've cut out the rest of your post, I think you do see what is so awful about Windows 8 on the desktop. This Article is about how awful it is on a tablet...ironically its for this, is why everybody is complaining about it on the Desktop.
First time I saw Windows 8, I was horrified. It looked utterly awful and I couldn't imagine myself using it on a day to day basis.
However, due to a drive failure, I installed it and thought I'd give it a shot. Once you get past the Start Screen/Page/Menu thing - which is what 99% of the fuss is about - it's not all that bad at all. It is a dogs breakfast though, and does need some refinement. However I haven't had as much fun finding out new stuff in an OS since I got my first OSX box in 2002.
Firstly, I'm currently using it for development on a multi-monitor setup - 3x 24" monitors with one in portrait mode. Windows 8 handles multiple monitors in desktop mode much better than 7, no question about it. The ability to have the Taskbar setup to display programs running on that monitor is a great change.
Secondly, The desktop environment is much cleaner and I'm glad the huge hive of junk that was the Start Menu has gone. The number of times I aimlessly trawled through it to find some obscure program I needed wasted way too much time... Now, I can just pull up the search and find whatever app, then either run it or pin it to the Start Menu/page, or the Taskbar.
Performance is better too. Simple stuff is a lot faster than 7, and running the whole OS from a new 256GB SSD means I can boot in around 12 seconds. Even spindle to spindle file transfers are a lot faster.
You might notice I haven't really mentioned Metro, well that's because I hardly use it. In my view, it feels like a 'fun layer' that you can almost shut out completely when using the desktop for serious stuff. Today I've used it precisely once as I pin all my apps to the Taskbar in pretty much the same way I use the OSX dock. That said, the live tiles are very nice and some of the news and informational apps are good. Overall though, the ecosystem is lacking in content and I really can't see any point when I'd use a Metro app alongside the desktop.
As far as shutdown goes? Simple, I just map the power button to shutdown and don't have to fiddle around in Metro for it.
So, while not a 'fan' of the extreme changes in Windows 8, I am glad I can shut them out to a degree, and can benefit from the underlying changes made to the desktop. It's by no means a Vista though. While I may not like Metro, the underlying OS is solid and works better than Windows 7.
get free legit licenses to Windows Server 2012 (they give you 5) using DreamSpark and use win2012workstation.com to configure it better win8 at no cost.
I know most of the general public doesn't come here, but I will post the advice I give to them anyway. If you buy a new PC that has Windows 8, and you are lost, or just plain don't like it, return it. Even if it was a gift, what use is something that won't do what you need or is a pain to use? It doesn't make you a bad person to return it. You may have downgrade rights to Windows 7 Professional if it came with 8 Pro, but you need a Windows 7 install disc just to use them. If you try to do it anyway when your system is not covered by downgrade rights, expect no support from the manufacturer so you may have trouble finding all the device drivers.
There are off-lease refurbished computers that have Windows 7, or maybe Vista, or even XP that are a better buy. Dell even has an Ebay store to sell them. Nearly all of these are business computers which are of higher quality than home computers, as big business has the power to punish vendors who push manufactured garbage, unlike individual consumers.
If a few individuals send Microsoft nastygrams about Windows 8, it will not matter. "We got your money, sucker!" is their attitude, but if manufacturers complain that all their Windows 8 PCs are being returned, Microsoft will have to respond eventually.
Hate Windows 8? You don't have to take it, you can take it back.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
"but still couldn't build a usable tablet experience..." that put on desktops for no reason.
Are you stupid or something? It takes more clicks and more computing resources to do the same things you could in Windows 7. That's stupid no matter how you look at it. Putting flash and prettiness over functionality is Apple's MO, not Microsoft. They completely screwed this one up.
I must sound like an MS shill in this thread, but it annoys me to see so much hate for what I think is their best OS in years. The consistent interface across ALL ms products, from office live, office 2013 desktop, skydrive etc, is pretty impressive IMO. The UI changes to various products and services should be understood in that context. If you want something to complain about, target the office 2013 color schemes. White-on-white, or grey-on-grey. It's terrible. And no, you can't change it, even via registry hacks (I would love to be proved wrong on this though). Win8 installed to a bootable desktop in 10 minutes, on my 3 year old laptop. It's a much better OS than Vista and 7, and unless you're allergic to change I can't see why you'd want to stick with previous versions.
It was just matter of time, the first reviews of windows 8 were mainly from tech magazines/blog that need to keep their microsoft advertising revenue, now more and more real users are finding how painful is to use this two faced operative system. Apple approached the "touch world" with a new OS that share only some API foundations with OSX, while Microsoft touched only the "surface" of the problem, trying to adapt is best horse (windows 7) to the "touch world"... The result is awful, trying to use office on a RT tablet for a few minutes is enough to see how bad it is their tablet solution.... and the amount of "start menu tools" and "corner sensitivity remover" for the desktop version show how bad the metro interface is in a mouse/keyboard enviroment....
They have a habit of missing the boat on things and then when they realize it, they compensate by embracing it and over doing it. A perfect example was the Web. They completely missed the boat on it in the mid 90's and when they realized it, they reacted by reworking everything they could to be based on http/html and the result was a mess. This time they completely got it wrong on smart phones and tablets and now they are over compensating by trying to turn a desktop into a tablet.
Apple seems to be getting it right by moving the best features of the tablet to the desk top but doing it in a way that makes sense. For example, gestures are great on both, but when it comes to the desktop, you should use a proxy surface such as a touch pad rather than the screen itself. The first fucker that jabs his finger into my monitor to move a window is going to lose it :)
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
I was speaking to a local "custom build" computer shop the other day, who cater to gamers, people who know the configs they want and pick every part, that kind of thing. They build many systems in November and December during the Christmas rush. On every system with Windows they ask people whether they want Windows 7 or 8. They have had ZERO system builds with 8. Everybody wants 7 installed.
That's a pretty sad commentary.
Regardless of what anyone thinks of MS products, (and I use Win7 everyday, and think it's perfectly fine), my candidate for understatement of the decade.
What was once true, is no longer so
How would you do it?
What use would it be to invent something that duplicates iOS or Android?
Why do something that is worse? Nothing wrong with not duplicating...but you kind of have to have a better product when entering an established market.
It's an abomination of the highest order designed by programmers who have no clue of what they're doing and violating the first rule of IT that should never be broken: Never let programmers design your applications.
Actually, the abominations that are Windows 8, Lion and Mountain Lion, Unity, and Gnome 3 are the result of people buying into your line.
So called UI experts suck, and it's far preferable to let a programmer design the UI. At least it will be practical, even if it's not pretty.
miss information
Ah yes, little miss information. Always putting in her 2 cents whether you like it or not.
Classic Shell
http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/
What exactly about iOS is hard to use?
You mean aside from requiring reasonably up-to-date Mac or Windows machine to run iTunes on? (note that's two problems there, not one)
Every time I touch iTunes I end up wanting to MURDERDEATHKILL every single developer involved.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
That would only apply to direct adoption, correct? Making your own clone of something and then extinguishing it does nothing. If you take over a product line, and then manage to kill it off, that might work, but you need a secondary competing product line.
I'm pretty sure the "embrace, extend, extinguish" campaign with the Zune didn't do much to the iPod.
No people are not complain about different, ios is different..Andoirsd is different, people seen not only to like these interfaces they LOVE them. I'm pretty much tired of blaming the users for bad UI choices. Its not just a windows 8 thing.
Beats me why you got modded down, but out of the box Ubuntu has one of the ugliest and least functional windows managers of all time, and I'm old enough to remember windows 2.0! I started using Ubuntu around about Putrid Papaya in 2007, and with every release they made it slower, uglier, look more like a kiddie toy, and more of a pain in the butt to use. Is there a major distro out there that is the Anti-Gnome? I'm done with Ubuntu and want to remove it ASAP, but haven't used another distro in years.
First, you're taking this guy's word that it's unusable. Second, the first version of just about anything is less usable than subsequent versions. Do you remember the 1984 128k Macintosh? Or the first Mac laptop (sorry... "portable")?
it annoys me to see so much hate
I am a little tired of people hating behind poor products, by pretending people don't like them!? for emotional reasons. It doesn't even make sense. Its an OS; if it was better people would like it. People hate for *a* reason...Hate is not *the* reason.
.
Anyway, Windows 8 is clearly better than Windows 7 to me, on the 3 brand new, nearly identical machines I have running 7 or 8 -- the first two are on 7, the third was a pre-Black Friday deal $50 lower than the best deal I could get on the other two, so I figured install Start Shell" and I can always downgrade to 7 if vomiting continues.
Well, none of that ever happened. For those familiar with Start Shell, it brings a truly large number of features to the Start menu and numerous other parts of Windows, including the dreaded Start Tiles via a shifted-click option.
To me this is ideal as I can work on a machine for someone in the way I want to -- old start menu, cmd prompt, etc., set people up with their key apps pinned to the Start menu, and then mention that if they shift-click the start "shell" they can check out the newest interface.
Anyway, new features I strongly like in Windows 8 include much faster startup and shutdown. Geeks are often "all about the benchmarks" but the /. hasn't been blowing this horn much with Windows 8...guess it doesn't suit the "Let's jump on the hate" bandwagon. As the systems person of my tribe, I appreciate quick starts, stops and reboots which of course we all do plenty of as well.
I also like how Windows 8 starts up -- on my Lenovo laptop anyway. It starts quickly, shows the Seattle skyline and the time, and when you click gives you a "new school" login prompt. Click that and away you go. Feels VERY responsive, and that is the only thing I care about when I am firing up Windows. Probably half of the "feels faster" is actual improvement, the other half is a new "spinner" and a more segmented startup so that something new happens more frequently, to distract us from the wait.
Another thing I like a lot is that Win-X key combo gives choices that include not just a "shell" (i.e. cmd.exe session) but also a "command shell as administrator" as a separate option. I never run any other way, so this saves me right-clicking and waiting. Now I can Win-X, click...then wait for the still annoying, random time delay, never know if the screen will blank or what...Windows warning. And end up at the DOS prompt quicker than before.
Finally, I like using the latest "shiny". What I mean is, by running Windows 8 on my laptop, I now know exactly how it operates (and how it can be tweaked/fixed/improved). This is a plus for someone who supports others. Surprised more slashers don't mention this.
Anyway, I guess this is what a neck beard brings -- the wisdom to at least try something that is one 3,399,552 byte download away from brilliance.
And why do I have the audacity of saying, on this forum of all places, that Windows 8 is brilliant? Because it will (a) promote the new phone interface to hundreds of millions of people...so that when they are in the phone store they will for sure not be put off by, (b) it is a truly "innovative" version of Windows, with quite a number of features that I or someone I know will use (touch is one I won't, but more novice users will; faster start/stops are not easy to accomplish and it gets an "A" here, the new storage stuff is very future looking and I could go on), (c) I was never a fan of Aero and invariably turn it off on any system I have to use regularly. The "flat" interface beats Aero, at least for me. Microsoft had guts to ditch Aero, and that is smart. Finally, (d) Microsoft has guaranteed it will sell even more Windows 9, and continue laughing and banking.
Maybe Windows 8 is XP, to Windows 7's 2000. Once I tried XP I never wanted, nor bought, a Windows 2000 system again. Now I'm never going to buy a 7 system.
I come here for the love
Since I've recently passed the 40 year mark, maybe that puts me in that "old dog" category now? But I still work in I.T. supporting multiple platforms and systems, and I think I'm still pretty good at figuring out new UIs and upgrades to applications.
Nonetheless, I absolutely agree with Greenspun's blog on this. It's not so much a debate on whether the old START menu or the new tiles screen is more useful. It's a design issue/problem, where the radically new tiled UI feels like it's crudely bolted onto the traditional desktop UI. I feel like in Windows 8, I'm really running two different operating systems in tandem on a desktop machine, except the integration between them isn't even as tight as recent versions of a product like Parallels Desktop or VMWare Fusion for Mac OS X gives you when running virtual Windows 7 sessions inside them!
For example, the tiled UI happily displays icons for apps like MS Office, which actually install and run from the Windows 7 style desktop side of things, yet it's possible to install web browsers which act completely independent of each other in the two UI's. To access them from both the tiles and the desktop side, you have to install them twice!
Innovation is generally incremental. The iPod was not the first MP3 player; they just perfected it. The same is true of many MSFT products.
Microsoft also unified the computer market with Windows back in the 1990s. Before that, it was sheer chaos and incompatibility. Windows and FAT32 gave the world a standard.
While many people dislike it, Microsoft Office was the first complete and integrated office suite to include all the functions needed in an average office. It took it some years to get good, but now it's the standard.
Windows 95 gave us real multitasking at a time when you could freeze a Macintosh by holding down the mouse button.
Come to think of it, the 'softies have done a lot of good things.
And then there's Microsoft Research and Microsoft Press.
The only actual experience I've had so far was helping a relative setup Skype. The app was nice in theory, but things like the back button did strike me as odd (as did the bug that we had to reboot to work around, but that's the fault of the company that made the new Skype app). Setting up Skype on my android device (before they rewrote it) took me a couple minutes. Doing it on my Linux box was similar, and we were calling and receiving calls right away. But on the new Windows 8 interface we struggled to do basic things like make a call to a Skype user.
I do *really* like Android's ever present, on screen, back home and apps list now. And the preferences showing up in the same bar on newer apps is fantastic. But there was a learning curve for me when I first started on Android. The fact that not every app put their menu in the same place, for one. Some of the gestures (I only learned about double tap to zoom to text in the browser while reading about patent lawsuits).
I think it is a better product, absent a few interface glitches. You can run desktop software on a tablet in a secure and powerful environment.
The criticism appears to be only about those interface glitches.
Ideally, they'll keep improving it and lower their prices to make it more competitive. Yours is good advice for the 'SFT.
Is windows 8 now the new fruitcake you send to people you dislike?
When travelling, it's ok if the airlines lose your emotional baggage.
Why for god's sake is Metro UI on Server 2012? I will never install this onto a tablet, and you can't pass tablet gestures through RDP. What the hell were they thinking? Praying that 2012 R2 removes this crap.
Selex
Really? How many articles are we going to have about Windows 8 and how much hates it.
Surely it must be getting old to even the die-hard anti-windows fan...
A Linux install running VMs for Windows XP, 7 and any other environments you need is one of the best ways to configure a laptop.
The only thing that really is pissing people off is that the start panel doesn't show their wall paper!
And of those dozen, have you actually found one that works ?
Linux Mint impressed me. It's Ubuntu-based, so it still has the training wheels, but it has a sane interface (I prefer Mate to Cinnamon). It's still a little sluggish though.
Personally, I just use Debian. It's grouchy at first and takes a little time to get it how you want it, but after that it stays out of your way.
I see the Windows 8 hate train is making daily stops here.
I wonder how many have actually used the damn OS. I installed it well over a month ago on a 5+ year old Dell. My impression has been that it's a fabulous OS. It does away with a lot of the clutter and performs extremely well. I think gesture control has been implemented very well, not once have I felt like lacking a touchscreen has compromised my experience. I like the tile interface and don't find it cumbersome at all to switch between apps, it's certainly a lot better than Apple's attempts at full screen mode.
For your average consumer who doesn't do much more than browse the web, check emails and maybe use Office it's going to offer a clean, intuitive experience. One of the biggest turn offs for Windows has always been that users feel like they're fighting the OS, that the inner workings rise to the surface far too often. It's been one of the appealing attributes of OSX and definitely iOS. So Windows 8 runs with that concept and offers great online integration. Even your average office worker who spends their entire day with Outlook or Office is going to get a better experience with this OS. And given that you can clear out the start screen of everything except the essentials, it will make things even easier for them.
The nature of my work, however, demands that I work in a windowed environment. Being constrained to full screen mode is cumbersome. Windows 8 does offer desktop mode, and for anyone so repulsed by the tiles, you can use your start screen strictly as a glorified start bar, if at all. But I do agree that there's a bit of a disconnect between the two modes. Transitioning between the two isn't too bad, but there really should be a way for those metro apps to jump switch to windowed.
I'm not suggesting anyone needs to like the new OS, but at least look being the Microsoft bias and appreciate what they're trying to do. The problems are there, but it's not the sort of thing that's going to be evident in a cursory review.
While the integration is nice, it also turns things into a bit of a mess. I've ended up with a lot of duplicated contact info which I've yet to sort through. And the problem is that linking accounts is dangerous because it's far too aggressive in looking for similarities. Sometimes it will link accounts merely because two individuals have the same first name. And if you have a lot of contacts it gets overwhelming trying to fix it all. My Android phone did a lot better job with this.
Messaging and Skype is a bit of a mess. I'm currently in a situation where the few Messenger I still have and I see each other as offline regardless of our actual status. And the rampant linking of accounts makes it difficult to sort things out, especially if you've got stuff like Facebook tied into it. You can link Skype to your account but once you've done so it's permanently link. To separate it from your Microsoft account you actually have to get in touch with customer support.
Early on I had an issue where despite being logged into Xbox Live games weren't seeing this and wouldn't log in. The problem there is that instead of spitting back a message the games would just crash. Eventually it all just started working; I'm not sure what I did, if anything, to fix it.
The way bookmarks are handled in the metro version of Explorer is a joke. It gives you this impractically long band of bookmarks you're supposed to sift through.
If you're going to complain about Microsoft at least find a target that makes sense. I think from a fundamental UI standpoint Windows 8 is great. It's in the details and always have been in the details that Microsoft stumbles. My overall experience is great, but then I run into an issue, or some intuitive hiccup and there's this creeping sense that there's an insurmountable mess just hiding under the surface.
But then, I fire up GIMP on my Mac and am reminded of how miserable an experience open source can be. And I'm running one of the more highly recommended packages. Sure,
Me too, except for OS/2, which scared me off. The "good old days" were good not for the products in them, but how good they were for the time, especially in contrast to what came before.
I don't think I'd want to trade today's OSs for some of those older, chaotic days.
Another way to view this is that they understand what's current now, and change forces them to learn new things, at which they might not be as competent. They're afraid of that, understandably.
I find Windows 8 extremely productive.
I can hit the windows key to get to the start screen and click the application I want to launch on my Desktop much much faster than using the old start menu.
I can keep my hand on the mouse, hover over the lower left corner of the screen and access the start screen to launch something without having to touch the keyboard. Either with the Windows key or hover over it's two clicks, with the start menu it was a click, scroll, more scrolling to find the app or to "expose" all the applications in the cascading menu hoping the menu didn't drop because I moved the mouse out of boundaries.
People need to get over the competition's positioning of Windows 8 and just use it. Once they do, they will realize it's not the pain that competitors and their paid press minions made it out to be. Sure the "metro" interface uses big square tiles, but hey those are live tiles and reflect the state of the application or provide information display about the app or information from the app. The old icons didn't have this information feedback, were stagnant and didn't reflect anything other than a link. I like live tiles.
I can and do have a beef with Surface RT. If people want to bash that and use it as the straw man for what is wrong with Microsoft I will join in the chorus, but to lament about Windows 8 Pro, the actual operating system I differ. The OS is rock solid, fast, stable and comes with loads of extras like the built in touch screen capabilities, file history (backup) and the easy to use restore features which makes getting the system up and running a breeze.
Microsoft didn't remove the Window 7 experience, it's still there in the desktop. It just now comes with additional features wrapped in the Windows 8 name and for that I thank Microsoft.
Have you looked at Xubuntu or Kubuntu? If you like the Ubuntu distribution other than its use of gnome, one of those might do the trick, and it's easy to switch to one of them if you already have Ubuntu installed.
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
Yup. Add Launchy + Rainlendar into the mix and it's wonderful.
to me, it looks like a clown has vomited all over your screen
Microsoft had a great little OS on their hands. It works better on the same hardware than the rock solid Windows 7 and incorporates real performance and useability improvements.
All they had to do to have made Windows 8 a great success on both existing and next-generation devices was:
1. Default to the desktop on systems that don't have a touchscreen.
2. Bring back the start menu.
Simple! Yet, they but on the blinders, and said to themselves 'we can be like Apple too' and proceeded to completely alienate their existing user base in favor of a user base that hasn't been proven to exist (touchscreen device users who prefer Metro to Android or iOS).
For what it's worth, I happily use Windows 8 with the free Classic Shell utility that resolves Microsoft's blunders.
So you like that it starts up faster. That's great, but beyond starting their computer up, most people also like to use it, and a lot of the complaints are around the experience of using Windows 8.
Regarding the administrative command console, you do know that on Windows 7 you can create a copy of the cmd shorcut and set it to always run as administrator, or hit the windows key, type "cmd", and press ctrl+shift+enter? If you are really trying to claim that you use the command prompt all the time but never investigated these options on Windows 7, you're probably not the kind of person we want to be taking advice on operating systems from.
So they took away the start menu: the simple list of programs you have installed.
So in Windows 8, how do you find the program you installed 6 months ago, but you forgot the program's name?
This use case, finding an old forgotten program, is the only thing I use the Start Menu for.
Old man doesn't like change.
Kidding!
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
It's a shame Ubuntu is so tightly locked down into that one UI without any way of changing it.
/* No Comment */
As a CentOS user I can choose not to use Ubuntu.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlZgcAacIxU&feature=player_embedded Yeah, it's so difficult.
Insert_Ending_Here
"People are aware that Windows has bad security but they are underestimating the problem because they are thinking about third parties. What about security against Microsoft? Every non-free program is a âjust trust me programâ(TM). âTrust me, weâ(TM)re a big corporation. Big corporations would never mistreat anybody, would we?â(TM) Of course they would! They do all the time, thatâ(TM)s what they are known for. So basically you mustnâ(TM)t trust a non free programme."
"There are three kinds: those that spy on the user, those that restrict the user, and back doors. Windows has all three. Microsoft can install software changes without asking permission. Flash Player has malicious features, as do most mobile phones."
"Digital handcuffs are the most common malicious features. They restrict what you can do with the data in your own computer. Apple certainly has the digital handcuffs that are the tightest in history. The i-things, well, people found two spy features and Apple says it removed them and there might be more""
From:
Richard Stallman: âApple has tightest digital handcuffs in history
http://www.newint.org/features/web-exclusive/2012/12/05/richard-stallman-interview/
Microsoft just made the first FULL desktop OS capable of running on all devices including touch based tablets
Microsoft had Windows running on Stylus based tablets ten years ago. It's not like what they are doing they have not done before... they have been trying to make the same system work across multiple platforms for over a decade.
APPLE is ALREADY fucking trying to figure out how to do with OSX.
Apple had been doing this since the launch of the iPhone, which is OSX just like a mac. The difference is that Apple is content to let desktops have a different UI than tablets or phones. So far they are quite happy with that choice, as are the users using Apple products.
You may think making a desktop OS that supports touch screen also is brilliant but where are sales figures supporting that claim? Microsoft couldn't move desktop tablets ten years ago and they appear to be having a problem moving the refined version now.
will you credit Microsoft for being the first to head in the direction where we ALL want to go.
The problem is that it's not clear that a desktop OS running on a touch tablet *is* where we all want to go. I absolutely give Microsoft credit for trying but you have to recognize that simply because someone tries something bold does not guarantee success.
I give Microsoft way more credit in the more subtle task of figuring out ways to bring touch into a desktop OS that make some sense. People do seem to like some aspects of this - but again this doesn't mean it's the right choice to make your tablet OS and desktop OS identical in UI.
An Ipad is a toy. When an Ipad can run full photoshop with pressure/tilt sensitive pen.
No reason it couldn't, we just need better hardware. There is already a pressure sensitive stylus.
that is exactly what MS has just delivered to everyone this year. Apple will do it next year.
I am quite doubtful about that. If Microsoft is wildly successful, perhaps.
The thing is that Apple already has lots of touch based gestures going on in desktop OSX - they are just based around touch on a trackpad, not the screen. They have for years.
But the gestures that seem to make the most sense in a desktop can just as easily be done on a trackpad as the screen...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Meanwhile, Apple and various Android manufacturers are suing one another on account of studying one another's usable tablet experience. As one or the other is banned from country after country, a competitor with an original, unpatented, unusable tablet experience suddenly finds an advantage.
I'm using mate right now out of a ppa but gnome fall-back works fairly well, you could alway try kde. xfce is fairly light weight but is a little to utilitarian for my taste, have heard good things about e17 haven't gotten around to trying it though. don't care for unity but like the HUD con sept maybe if the could separate it from the unity bar and let you use it in other DE's also don't like the global menu or the horrible scroll bars.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
At least it will be practical, even if it's not pretty.
I can assure you, a UI designed by a programmer will be neither practical nor pretty. One need only look at ITIM (IBM Tivoli Information Manager) to see what a horrific pile of aardvark shit the programmers created. Multiple screens to do the simplest of tasks, hidden dropdowns so you can't see what the selection is, no rhyme or reason to why one piece of information is in one location but not another, etc.
Then of course we have anything from Oracle or SAP, current McAfee products (I'd be running too if my name was associated with that product), the bloat and nonsense that has become Firefox, and the list goes on.
The longer I have had to work with software the more I am convinced we are regressing in terms of usability and convenience. As I have said elsewhere, a large part of my day involves fixing problems created by software (and another large part spent fixing problems created by users) or finding ways to work around the problems created by software.
A large part of software today just plain sucks and it can be tied directly back to programmers who want to show off shiny rather than accomplishing something useful.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Give me metrics. Give me measurements. Give me science. This shit? This is just software politics. Corporate hate. There is so very little wrong with Windows that it has market dominance. Do you not get that? How do you not understand that this is what people want from their computers? WE WANT full featured computing on our mobiles. Not app store machines. Win8 brings that. Nothing else does. What is wrong with you that you fail to comprehend the general population is RIGHT when it comes to usability? MS dominance... This wasn't due to unethical business tactics. This was due to it being a product people actually used effectively. MS declining in dominance? The only factor there is politics. MS didn't release a product that sucked. It was just hard for other companies to market with MS as your primary partner. Evidence: Android instead of Linux; OS X instead of Unix. If your platform is so much better, howcome no one calls it by name? So you may like your Android/OSX/whatever but for fucks sake if you can't bring reason to your hate against MS then why the hell do we call what we do "computer science" ? There's no science here. Not at all. None of the shit I hear about these reviews remotely resembles a scientific, analytical intellectual discourse. It's just some jerk's stupid opinion. Put on Slashdot, and 100,000 people will be swayed that way, right? News for nerds, yea right.
I did the same research as you just did, but a search for Anonymous Coward gives:
No matches to your query.
Confused,
I don't hate anyone that much. Not even Bush, Cheney, Yoo, Rumsfeld, Rove, the Clintons, Ashcroft, etc etc.
> And of those dozen, have you actually found one that works ?
The only one that doesnt work is Gnome-Shell.
In the future could we get linked right to the review/post in question, instead of reading the summary, then clicking and reading another... summary, then clicking, and FINALLY getting to see what all these words are about.
I recently installed windows 8 on a new AMD box I put together; some aspects of it are cool and some just plain annoying. I was planning on using it as an htpc, 8gb of ram and a silent fanless cpu, but was sorely disappointed with my initial run through of the apps. I got the $39.99 Windows 8 pro package and added the media package, which is free for a limited time apparently, expecting to be able to play back music and view movies I have on my server. My server runs ushare and the device was detected and displayed instantly, but failed to play anything giving me a "format not supported" error message. Windows media player however plays all my media. I have a netflix account so installed the app; "Error during playback: check the video card drivers". A quick look on the web and I found that netflix advises users of window 8 who are experiencing problems to use the web site to play their content. So off to the netflix website I went; "Sliverlight is required for playback". After installing Silverlight I was able to use the web site to play their content. As a test I decided to try the Windows 8 app again and low behold it now works. So .... Why do the metro apps differ in functionality from the desktop apps and why was'nt Silverlight installed by default when I installed the netflix app. I regularly use Windows 7, ubuntu, ios, osx and android and have no problems hunting down fixes for issues I have but 'come on man' these things are basic. I realise that their are alternative ways of acheiving what I wanted but it should have provided the basic functionality out of the box I dont think I was trying to do anything patrticularly out of the norm.
If the shoe fits, it's ugly.
> They do have a massive distortion filter.
They _had_ a massive distortion filter, focused on Job's Führer-like charisma. Apple as just a faceless company doesnt even remotely have that "please allow me to be your slave" effect on people, Steve Jobs, Adolf Hitler and David Koresh, just to name a few, had on people.
From personal experience, Win8 + Start8 is pretty much the same as Win7, UI-wise. It even lets you disable all the hot corners and the charm bar, so you literally never see even the glimpse of Metro.
Other than that, well... everyone seems to agree that Win8 is indeed faster - how much does that apply to games is a matter of debate, but it's not any worse, at least. There are some other little bits that make it slightly more convenient, like the new file copy dialog, the "one level up" button in Explorer, or the ability to mount ISOs out of the box. If you get Pro, there's also Hyper-V. Some features are more hypothetical at this point, but may become more important later - e.g. Direct3D 11.1.
On the other hand, there are also some changes that you may dislike, such as e.g. Ribbon in Explorer, or the fact that you'll have to pay extra to get Windows Media Center and DVD playback.
All in all, if the total cost of Win8 upgrade + Start8 + Media Pack is less than Win7 upgrade, I don't see any reason to not take advantage of that.
I've found KDE to be a joy to use these days. Unity isn't great but it does work.
Until recently, being a rather old /.-er, I have spun fun about and around W8. I know too well what it takes to be a nerd, and a member of Slashdot (aside of the few who try to post reasonable stuff, paid handsomely by the evil empire).
Finally I took the leap, and actually installed an original version (not OEM, neither pirated) on my box. My partner started a row with me, when after a few hours, I seemingly unmotivated exclaimed OMG! while she was in deep concentration. Done. Finished. Whatta crap!
From now on I can honestly state 'been there, done it, useless'. Okay, not totally, it actually installs fast, boots significantly faster than W7. But that's the end already. Being a CS person, I could even navigate the two disparaging screens. And still, no need I would ever want to again. I don't miss a 'Start'-button (my KDE is configured to do totally without), I love screen edges (my interface is configured to let me do most stuff with edge events). The time - bang-bang - comes in like I was visually impaired, the address bar of IE looks likewise. The logon screen is okay, fresh and inviting. But the two non-unify-able interface constructions, with a bit of toggling switches left and right and a bit of traditional radio-boxes; no, OMG!
If it was free (of charge), I'd discourage using it, because 'there are better interfaces'. But someone paying actual money for a rabid mixture of unfinished substances ought to have her head examined.
I was told by a friend that if you get Win 8 Pro you can get the media thing for free.
I see again and again that your account profile is tied to your Live account. We've spent years and years tuning Windows to be deployable in a closed network environment, where our users don't have internet access. How will Win8 accommodate that setting? Will there be any way to setup a custom "app store" so that if someone develops a metro app, it can be distributed? Will there be any way to NOT use MS Live accts, or an easy way to have an organization-specific Live server? How will it work with smartcards, and other alternate forms of authentication? I can't believe that MS didn't consider these use cases, but I haven't seen any answers on this front.
"Ahh! I see you're in that indeterminate Schrodinger state where - oh, uh
Seriously.
Trust us. ...
Hey, come back!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
This is consistent in my advice about all hardware and software, whether from Microsoft or not. Truly new products take at least 18 months to work the bugs out. (There is some flexibility here: really good management will nail most of them in a shorter period, but that's rare.)
I have found this to be great advice with Apple products. You generally had to wait a couple years for them to revise the ROMs so you didn't get random undocumented bugs. And in the case of several machines, they never fixed them.
I view cars the same way. Brand-new 2013 models? Forget it. I'll buy the model that was new in 2008 and they've steadily been upgrading it since then. (Some of the best cars on the market use 1960s designs -- for example, for engines or body -- that they've been incrementally upgrading for decades, like some of the Volvo, Mercedes and Toyota models or even some of the older American pickup trucks.)
Ummm.... yeah, you're full of shit. Very aggressive shit, by the look of it, but still shit.
Right-Click in the lower left corner (where Start appears), select Control Panel. Behold, the control panel appears (you can do this from anywhere, but it's typically something you'd do on the desktop since it's a right-click). There's a ton of other stuff on this menu too, including some that are harder to reach in Win7, such as an Admin command prompt or the Programs and Features (add/remove programs) control panel. It can also be used to jump straight to the desktop from any app, incidentally.
There are so many ways to shut down the computer it's crazy. Alt+F4 on the desktop. The Ctrl+Alt+Del screen shows the Power button. Lock screen shows the Power button. If you are an "expert user" like this idiot in the article is ranting about, you'd know how to use the Shutdown[.exe] command; you can call it from the Run dialog or add shortcuts to it (on either the Start screen or the desktop, of both if you want). In fact, you can even add a shortcut key chord (Win+Ctrl+S, perhaps) to trigger those shortcuts. If you can tolerate the presence of the Charms bar and just don't like the ever-so-offensive concept of a tablet-like gesture to display it, try Win+I to display Setting immediately, at which point Shutdown or Restart are two clicks away.
Seriously, did your brain calcify or something, resulting in frothing at the mouth without even *trying* to look for the things you claim "ARE NO LONGER" present?
Other things that your so-called "absolutely correct" review got, in fact, completely bone-headedly wrong:
Let's start with this beauty, from near the top. First of all, Microsoft requires the presence of a hardware Start button on RT devices. Call it a "Home" button if it makes you happier; I've heard even a few Microsofties do so (I live in Seattle; there's a lot of them here; I'm not one myself). Second, you can always access Start from anywhere with at worst a small gesture. If you're using Touch, swipe in from the right side of the screen and tap the Start button that probably appeared right under your thumb. If you're using the mouse, move down to the lower-left corner (where the Start button would be on the desktop) and lo and behold, a Start button appears!
Perhaps it slipped this... enlightened gentleman's notice, but the App Bar (that thing that appears on the bottom of the screen when you swipe from either the top or the bottom) is context sensitive. It's intended to be a more graphical and touch-friendly replacement for context menus. I don't think it's as good an implementation of a context-based interface, personally, but it's not missing.
We've mostly been over this ground already, but I wanted to point out that starting a program totally doesn't require using a tablet interface. If you like icons, put some on the desktop or put them on the taskbar (exactly like in Win7). If you prefer the keyboard, tap the Start key and type the first few letters of the program name, then hit Enter; you can be launching the program (and back on the desktop) before that oh-so-offensive tablet interface finishes its half-second fade-in animation. You can also use Run from the desktop, via Win+R (as before) or right-clicking the Start button or hitting Ctrl+X to bring up the menu, then selecting Run. You can certainly use the command line interfaces too.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Apparently, it's a time-limited offer.
Also note that even with the Media Pack, you only get DVD playback in Windows Media Center. You still don't get it in Windows Media Player, which I personally find somewhat annoying.
Service Pack 1.
Very fitting epitaph for the os for squares: "'Christmas gift for someone you hate.'"
I second Linux Mint... they even make it relatively easy to install proprietary hardware drivers. The only thing that annoys me is that they try a bit too hard to get money via search engine referrals (they default to various other search engines in your browser, and even in Chrome they overwrite your profile to use the Linux Mint Google portal which I find pretty annoying). But once you clean all that up it's nice.
But even in Ubuntu, I'd spend some time replacing the default desktop with compiz-fusion or enlightenment or something. It's not that difficult to switch desktop environments in any Debian-based distro (compared to, say, Redhat / CentOS).
I want to like KDE, but I've never been happy with it anywhere outside of a KNOPPIX LiveCD. Too many background services and other bloat. But it's been a while since I've tried it.
Much to my surprise, I am furious every time I read a scathing review about Windows 8. I rarely get emotional about these things because opinions are opinions. But, I'm becoming overwhelmed with the misrepresentation of Windows 8. I know it won't matter to most people that read this comment, but I've been working on the Windows platform as a systems engineer for over 15 years - since Windows 3.1. Windows 8 is absolutely amazing. It is fast, powerful, and has so many optimization and configuration options, one might think you could turn your home PC into a nuclear reactor once you get into the guts of the OS. I'll keep this rant as short as possible by focusing on what seems to be the single biggest gripe amongst the critics: the Start Menu.
Pretend for a second that you log on to your Windows 7 machine and press your Windows key. Visualize it, please (or do it). You'll see the little menu pop up with a vertical list of pinned shortcuts and "first tier" applications. To browse this menu, you must drill down and/or across to locate applications. It's a functional, familiar, yet messy way of accessing your applications. In Windows 8, the Start menu is still there! Only you are transported "into" the Start Menu when you hit the Windows key. It is simply a revisualization of the clunky-old Windows Start Menu of yore. The Windows 8 Start menu is fully customizable, just like before. The Windows 8 Start menu is fully scalable, just like before. The Windows 8 Start menu contains all of your applications, just like before. Only now with Windows 8, you can gracefully and quickly swipe across menus and access your applications extremely quickly and efficiently. With the Live Tiles, instead of seeing stagnant shortcut icons, you have up-to-the-second information. News, weather, mail notifications, system information all being updated within the Live Tiles to provide the user with at-a-glance information about the things important to us. Press the Windows key again and the Start Menu closes and you're presented with your Desktop, which is the same way it's always been. It's brilliant and incredibly simplistic. The more you use it, the more the powers of the split screen functionality and on-demand access to your apps become apparent.
Critics make the mistake of visualizing Windows 8 as some sort of "dual operating system" monstrosity. It's not. The Start Screen isn't an alternate universe. It isn't segregated. They talk like the user is forced to operate two disconnected operating systems at the same time. It isn't at all, unless you would argue that the Start Menu prior to Windows 8 suffered from this same problem. Please listen, folks: from a User standpoint, Windows 8 is simply Windows 7 with an updated Start Menu. That's it. And once you see it and begin to use it as such, you'll find that not only is the new Start Menu incredibly powerful and intuitive, but Windows 8 is absolutely the best version of Windows yet. My one gripe is that IE10 within the Start Menu could use some love. I’m using Chrome instead because accessing the bottom panel to get to my shortcuts is a pain.
Microsoft OSs are like Star Trek Films, the alternate between good ones (Win 95, Win 98, XP, Win 7) and terrible ones (Bob, Win ME, Vista, Win 8).
If you install Win8, and then install Classic Shell, you'll be able to get the Windows desktop experience you're familiar with, and bypass MS' clunky attempt to force you to use the Metro interface.
First: you can still use desktop icons for shortcuts. You *can* even do it for "modern" apps, though it requires some effort.
Second: Tiles do not, for the most part, have constantly changing icons. Most tiles aren't "live" and you can trivially easily "kill" the ones that are. Also, I've never seen an add on a Live tile except in apps like Newegg (where it's pretty obvious); get back under your bridge.
Third: Tiles do not reflow when you install an app. They only move if you move them. Otherwise, new apps go at the end of the Start screen. You clearly have no fucking clue what you're talking about (or you're a troll; either way implies an atypically low intelligence).
Fourth: You can use the Start menu like every keyboard-competent user has used the Start menu since Vista: open it (preferably with the Windows key), type a few letters, hit Enter. You can do this before the Start screen animations (which are quite fast) are complete.
Fifth: You can use the command line just fine on Win8; what the hell are you smoking? In fact, you can even launch the command line right from the desktop without typing or pining anything; right-click on the Start button (yes, the one that appears when you mouse to the lower left corner) and then select either "Command Prompt" or "Command Prompt (Admin)". You can also display this menu via Ctrl+X, by the way.
Sixth: How the hell is changing tile sizes (flick them downward then tap the "make smaller" button) or moving them (simple dragging motion) difficult on a tablet?
Seventh: I think we've already covered this, but since you stated your bullshit twice; I'll refute it twice: tiles do not move on their own. They will reflow if the resolution changes, but that's it.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
In Ubuntu i can chose any of a dozen desktop environments
11 of which emulate Windows XP in some way. Recursion is delicious.
Please tell me who are the ones that agree on windows 8 being faster. Every review I've seen shows the darn thing pretty much on par with Windows 7. It's understandable. Windows 7 was , roughly, very optimized Vista code. Pray tell, how much could they optimize the optimization to make that thing at least, I don't know, 30% faster. Oh, yeah, if you're going to insult me by linking tests PCMag did, don't bother to reply.
Been using VS2012 on a Win8 laptop, folks, and I think MS is creating some sort of gonzo singularity where searching documentation has become utterly, totally useless. After two decades of piling crud upon crud upon crud, you can find anything in the documentation, but ... you don't have a clue what it applies to. Is this a COM/OLE feature, a .NET feature, or a WinRT feature? Does it work in C++? Does it work in the dialect-of-the-year C++ you're using at the moment? Even their own example code has slipped over the event horizon and seems not to know. I've found Heisenburg documentation where two different pages say different things about the same functionality.
Basically, in WinRT, to make a JSON call from a C++ program, you have to go back to 1998 and use a hideous COM interface designed for loading XML documents. Reminds me of Windows where you had to call assembler routines because someone forgot to include I/O routines in the new graphical user interface.
If gaming is your priority, you'll get better performance out of Win8 than Win7. If minimal interface changes are your priority, then Win7 is closer to Vista than Win8 is, although the difference is less than many people claim when you aren't trying to use the tablet stuff (which can be almost entirely avoided even without something like Start8; just pin Steam to the taskbar and use it as your program launcher).
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
I agree - I much prefer having mine touched while they are being sucked.
Ignore the tests. Just try timing its boot sequence yourself, and look at its RAM consumption.
You mean they have menus and windows and a mouse?
Linux interfaces borrow from all sorts of places including the original source material that Microsoft and Apple steal from.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Install ClassicShell from Sourceforge. Then disable ModernUI, replace all settings, install Firefox instead crappy IE. Then it looks and feels much more like XP. Or even better.
Down with Metro whatever they call it!
timing boot? seriously?! man, my machine does serious work (compiling especially). booting up is not that. RAM consumption? Since when is this a metric? I have 16GB, the OS better use that up and be fast. With my '97 machine, ram usage was a concern, I only had 8 megabytes, nowdays RAM is cheap, like really really cheap.
Personally, since MS will let you get Win8 pro for $16 (google windows upgrade offer and say you bought a computer last month, they don't check), I'd go for it. You'll save about $200 not buying 7 ultimate, and even though 8 is annoying, you can learn or get around it with time.
While browsing for gifts today, I stopped into the MS store and tried out the Surface, it's a pretty looking device, lots of bright colors and a fairly responsive UI. But, as soon as I tried doing anything in the OS, I found myself stuck, like.. oh how do find my video files or my documents? I keep pressing the windows key and nothing is happening, oh, it doesn't flip between the desktop and the start menu until you "Start" the desktop for the first time.
Overall, I would rate the experience of using the Surface a 5/10. I would like to add that the Surface is difficult to get accustomed to. Meanwhile, after using Windows 8 on a desktop for a while, I'm actually getting quite used to it, and it's not bad. I might even go so far as to say that the desktop experience with Windows 8 is a little easier to work with on a daily basis than the tablet.
> So called UI experts suck, and it's far preferable to let a programmer design the UI. At least it will be practical, even if it's not pretty.
I'm a programmer, but I must disagree with you on that one, at least in absolute terms.*Some* programmers are good at UI design. Others (I would even venture the majority) are not.
See The Gimp, for example.
a light touch moves the mouse around, a heavier touch acts like holding down the mouse button
Because MS wanted Windows 8 to run well on a low-powered CPU, they went to considerable pains to optimise all the code. Stuff that wasn't necessary got chucked out; stuff that was obsolete likewise. The result is that it's considerably faster on normal PC hardware.
Yeah, I detest the Metro UI, too, but the actual underlying operating system is rather good - better than Windows 7, which was better than Vista.
If they come up with a Start menu again, Windows 8 will be just fine for me.
Really, he's saying to look at Android? Android on a tablet is a total abomination. Windows 8 on a tablet isn't that bad, I could agree with this statements on a desktop for the most part (minus the hyperbole) but Windows 8 on a tablet is quit functional, vastly better than Android on a tablet, and on par with the iPad if not better sans the apps.
> but still couldn't build a usable tablet experience..."
Or desktop experience, as it turns out.
On Black Friday, one of my coworkers bought a new laptop that came preloaded with Windows 8. Last week she brought it in and asked me to look at it because she couldn't get anything with Flash to work in IE.
I know Flash in the "metro" IE is supposed to be severely limited in what it can do, but even the desktop mode IE refused to run Flash. This despite the add-on being present and showing as enabled. After googling around and fucking with it for about 45 minutes, trying to get something to work that should have just worked right out of the box, I gave up and just installed Chrome for her so she'd have something that could run Flash stuff.
She later managed to find a Windows 7 laptop somewhere, bought it, and returned the Windows 8 laptop. When she returned it, the clerk asked her why, and she told him it was because Windows 8 was awful. He told her that Windows 8 machines were being returned to that store in droves, and every person he asked gave him the same reason.
Messing with her laptop was my first experience with Windows 8, and if I can help it, it will be my last. I found it to be a jumbled mishmash of confusing crap, and I've been doing IT for 20 years-- I can only imagine how hard non-techies are going to reject it. I am going to cling to Windows 7 for as long as I can.
This is just a circle jerk conducted by the uninspired and na- sayers. Windows 8 works and works well. How many of you actually use it seriously as an OS day in and day out? Not many I would suspect. In a few years you'll all be enjoying the UI experiences that will be built on the foundation that MS are laying with this OS.
Rubbish - there were plenty of alternatives before Microsoft Office, e.g. Data General's CEO
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CEO_(Data_General)
UI design is about making software that is easy to use and giving a damn about the user experience. It should be an integral part of software engineering. It doesn't need to be visually impressive or bewilder the user with bizarre new concepts. (In fact, I hate that shit.) I think it's best to stick with instantly recognizable, easily understood UI concepts that anyone who has used a computer in the last 20 years will be familiar with.
"We have to innovate everything from scratch and make it fresh because marketing said so!" != UI design
.. you just need Teracopy
http://www.teracopy.com/
It's free, replaces the windows default copy/paste, allows you to retry copying anything which failed to copy the first time (useful when a virus scanner product blocks a single file copy in the middle of 5000 files being copied), and Just Works.
How else do you copy thousands of files, or very large files, on Windows?
I used to wonder why Microsoft doesn't just buy them out and incorporate their product. Now I no longer care.
Perhaps someone who knows can advise if Windows 8 finally can copy files in a decent manner.
You have a sick, twisted mind. Please subscribe me to your newsletter.
Why is release early and often good for FOSS and not for proprietary software? MS sells experimental versions of it's software. Arrogant I'd say, but completely justified because (1) people buy it and (2) they get valuable feedback that way. Then they release the next version, which history shows is almost always better.
The only surprise about Windows 8 is that people are surprised about it being unfinished.
I don't use a mouse much, this problem doesn't effect me. I do like how things are easier to control from the keyboard in Windows 8.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
wait for some time. don't jump to conclusion by reading one or two people's conclusion on win 8. just wait!
Well CE and ME were about as fast as cement that's true.
NT was pretty solid. Of course it was used for so long, that it eventually started to run into technological issues like XP did. You can only apply so many paches until you're runing more patches than OS.
Oh and I am sure there is a joke in there somewhere about patches and cement, but I'll let someone else have fun..
I agree. They must hire emo hipster developers, who want to share their bleak outlook on life with the rest of us.
Apple. You make how much money a year? iTunes is like your flagship software that links all sorts of your buisness together. You come up with that?
I mean it updates about every 0.25 days with a new version, but seems worse and worse. If I was ever involved in that project, they first thing I would say, OK we are going to blow up iTunes and start fresh, as that abominated bloated corpse of evil has to go!
Not only that, much of the execution had to do with hardware device drivers. Many of those probalems were caused by manufactures that were reluctent and/or slow to produce drivers for Vista rather than XP. About the only thing MS might be at fault for is if they didn't communicate the changes in enough time.
Part of the reason WIndows 7 worked so well is that Vista slogged through 2 years or so of getting people to re-write drivers.
I know I was one of the early adopters (ya I know... sigh, it WAS painful).
Vista works perfectly fine now. Should I have to re-install it clean it would again be a bit of a pain, as I would have to run a million updates, as my physical version is old. But at least the drivers actually exist now. Before half of them didn't or they were so halfassed phoned in by companies that they were buggy as heck.
Anyway I think people are still holding on to how Vista was when it launched, which was bad. However its not that bad anymore. That said, when Windows 7 came out (and yes I wish I waited), it made the working Vista irrelevent. Were I to buy now, I'd get Windows 7.
What, you mean the part about Apple losing market share to Android devices? Yeah, that part pretty much is playing out exactly as foretold.
Nobody will deny that Apple makes quite a bit of money, but if you take the entire Android ecosystem vs the Apple ecosystem, there is far more money being made overall in the former, with the larger and larger share of the pie that former is taking.
Do you have a source for that "more money" claim? Because everything I've seen says that yes, Android is slowly taking more of the market, but iOS is still making money so much faster than Android it just isn't even funny.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
Why would anyone use an OS as a gift? How crass.
In what way is it "better" or "more efficient", other than the new start screen which nearly everyone hates?
captcha: "cosmetic"
This made me think of that classic trip to the moon clip where they climb in the shell and it impacts right square in the Moon's eye..... But that film probably had more thought and planning behind it........About fifteen minutes maybe.....
Of those dozen, only twelve are better than window 8.
I would show you but I just flushed it down the toilet. And it really stinks in here. That's what I think of it.
I remember when Windows 95 came out, and everyone complained about that start button and start menu. Now that its going away everyone is complaining again. I use multiple OS`s and dont have a problem with Windows 8. Ive been using windows a lot since 3.1 so I can understand how a lot of the kids have difficulty adapting if thats the only ui they have ever really used.
Seriously, its not that bad an OS from microsoft and is nothing as bad as Vista. I like it. If people dont like it they should chill the fk down and relax. Another OS will come along soon that they can pick from.