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Windows 8 Even Less Popular Than Vista
New submitter NettiWelho writes with even more bad news for Microsoft. From the article: "Windows 8 uptake has slipped behind Vista's at the same point after its release. Windows 8 online usage share is around 1.6% of all Windows PCs, which is less than the 2.2% share that Windows Vista commanded at the same two-month mark after release. Net Applications monitors operating system usage by recording OS version for around 40,000 sites it monitors for clients. The slowdown for Windows 8 adoption is a bad sign for Microsoft, who experienced great success with the release of Windows 7. Data was measured up to the 22nd of December, so there is still time by the end of the month for Windows 8 to claim a higher percentage of the user base."
Misses a "<"
I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet -Stanislaw Lem
It's not like they've not tried to clean the image of Microsoft when Vista was poorly received.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Considering the amount of desktops and laptop PCs people would've owned between now and 7 years ago, W8 would need volume-wise a larger uptake of vista.
It's resting.
I didn't think it was possible to make something worse than Vista, but Microsoft did it. They really are out of touch with consumers by trying to ram this crappy UI down their throats. Looks like there's a lot of resistance. 2012 wasn't a very good year for Microsoft. 2013 should be even worse.
People clung on to XP because Vista was crap, then dived on Win7 and declared it to be the best thing ever. Those same folks aren't going to give up 7 until the hardware support starts to die off, at which point Windows 9 will appear and the cycle will start again.
Assuming Microsoft are still around to make Win9 and we haven't all had to make the choice between OSX or Linux
I use windows 7. Why would i buy or even steal windows 8. What do i get? A crappy use interface? I like my start menu thing. I dont need this tile crap.
1. The default UI was Metro.
2. They took my start button away.
3. Multi Monitor support was changed (Task bar now goes across all monitors).
While not major, it's still very annoying.
I know you can get utilities/hacks, etc... to fix this, but I shouldn't have to. At the minimum, they should have given options to turn them back on, even if they were off by default. So now they are trying to force their way of doing things on me.
Maybe they'll do better with Windows 9...but for now Windows 7 for me.
Visit the Arcade Restoration Workshop @ http://www.arcaderestoration.com
*WE* saw it.... microsoft, of course, did not. history continues -- every other release of windows sucks hairy donkey balls.
Most of the consumers are preferring to buy Tablets over PC so I guess the numbers of new Windows 8 PC are bound to be down as well. The fact that Windows 8 is horrible is probably just icing on the cake.
As a Linux user, I cannot contain my joygasm! 2013 will be the year of the Desktop Linux!
Why bother upgrading, just to run all my applications from inside the desktop app? Sure the fast boot would be nice, and being able to mount iso's, but thats not worth the extra hassle.
Given the Ubuntu fiasco fallout with the FSF ( short: Canonical sending all searches to Amazon ) this is a perfect opportunity for Microsoft to enter the market with the only product I would buy from them: Microsoft Linux. I'm not kidding : drop the Windows stupidity and back a winning horse and get some good PR for a change, Bill....
I could have had a Windows 8 laptop, but I opted to get a "last year's model" with Windows 7 after test driving that abortion of release 8.
I can't imagine a more unfriendly desktop for a software developer, except maybe Gnome 3.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Metro makes me use the keyboard more to search for apps and pin common ones - actually more efficient than the start menu.
It boots in seconds.
Multiple monitor support is better and configurable.
It really isn't much different to Windows 7.
No sticks. With Windows 8 you get a bunch of uncomroftable tiles, but no sticks.
It sounds like your Mom is trying for every timezone then. I had her for Central Time.
Windows 8 will be officially a worse product than Vista if MS decides it needs to rehash the Mohave experiment, IMHO.
...'cuz he's done.
However, Microsoft is now perfectly positioned to corner the market on firing CEOs, designers, and project managers. They could outdo any other company 10:1 if they just find whoever was responsible for these atrocities and get rid of them
In his house at Redmond dead Microsoft waits dreaming.
It would actually be interesting to see some statistics for illegal downloads of windows 8. Popular software gets pirated.
That people were eager to upgrade to Vista is no surprise, considering the time between the XP and Vista releases. The time between Windows 7 and Windows 8 was maybe not enough to make people switch? As for the start-menu, I don't really care as long as you can use the Win+R shortcut... I run both systems - I don't really think Windows 8 is worse than Windows 7. It is actually faster.
I was at my parents' house for Christmas this year and their computer died. During the ensuing "build me a new one" phase they had one opinion they refused to budge on: no Windows 8. And they know precisely nothing about computers.
On the upshot, you can now build a surprisingly good PC for under 300 bucks without having to pay the Windows tax -- but you can also get a computer almost as good if not better because of the Windows subsidy.
the only thing ms products are good for is practice .hahaha /. youre slippin
but dammit its only 1253 here and it took this long to put up an anti-ms rant
It's kind of sad how some guys fall so hard for inflatable vaginas.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
What can I say?
This ain't the first time the /. editors fscked up.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
They worked their assed off, but made some really bad decisions. Now, sales are looking like a disaster - in their core revenue generator. Microsoft is beginning to feel like a cornered animal. It does still have claws, and hopefully the board will understand just how badly steveb has executed, once it sees the bottom starting to fall out. 2013 will be an entertaining year seeing how Microsoft scrambles. I'd start with a tutorial that wasn't a 2 hour hack job.
Considering the types of people who would use steam, their hardware survey from November showed Win8 adoption higher than Vista if I remember correctly. Their site is down at the moment so they haven't updated for December yet.
Win98 - Decent OS WinME- Absolute crap WinXP- Love it! Vista- Absolute crap Win7- Not bad at all, pretty decent overall Win8- tried the preview, hated it within minutes. Win9- hoping for redemption. Microsoft's pattern continues - good OS, crap OS.
The CEO needs to be let go. It should have happened a long time ago, but I can't see them letting him off the hook yet again. He has literally done nothing positive for the company since he took over.
Although Bill Gates had had his goof-ups, but still, compare to Steve Ballmer, Mr. Gates at least managed to keep Microsoft a top-rate company
Steve Ballmer, on the other hand ... ... Microsoft has become the company with two left feet
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Does it run on my Kin?
Windows 8 sucks so bad...
It sucks so bad, it can lift matter out of a black hole. /snark
User interface guidelines. Android is finally realizing they needed interface guidelines. Apple has done great in both OSX and IOS. But Gnome team and Microsoft seems to be ignoring every standard and going gooey eyed over tablets.
My tablet is not my work computer, not my game system, and not my media box. Its my portable content reader.
Listen to your users.
Once the iPad and other tablets started to take off, it was clear that in some cases touch-screen is convenient. Make monitors touch screen. making the by the millions will reduce costs. Sure not budget monitors, but make it a pretty clear contender as a standard. I dont have windows 8 on any of my touch devices at current but it seems like the UI would be quite alright. Otherwise, defaulting it to metro is a trainwreck for power users or even people who like choice. capacitive touch with tempered or similar (gorilla, etc) glass surface might jack up the cost quite a bit but even a simple resistive film coated would be a start. The notion of interface has changed radically very recently with touch and speech input being default options on phones and tablets. its time to make a 300 dollar phone not outstrip a full pc in terms of input options. toss a decent quality microphone in the monitor too. it would be nice if HDMI could pipe touch and mic and camera through it, i dont know enough about the spec to know if its possible or not.
This time there are a few different factors at play that may alter stats (in either direction):
1 - Vista was released after Christmas, 8 was before. We might expect that this would lead to increased adoption for Windows 8 compared to Vista.
2 - Vista was released before the financial crisis, consumer sentiment has not recovered (and may not fully recover). I posit that most purchases now would be out of necessity rather than whim.
3 - Tablets have significantly displaced PC's and laptops, WinRT didn't really make it onto shelves in time to even touch that market. In my local Harvey Norman retail store I see many older couples and families buying tablets, moreso than those buying laptops or desktops.
4 - Win7 is considered a solid platform. Vista replaced a rapidly aging XP whereas 8 is competing with 7. Windows 7 was and is a fantastic desktop OS. Many would see no reason to rush out and upgrade from 7 to 8.
I don't think these stats say anything about 8 as a product, I think it has more to do with timing and the different market conditions.
Win8 isn't "bad" per se - if you're using WinRT on a Winphone (i.e., Nokia Lumia) it's just fine - but as a desktop OS it feels like a terribly schizophrenic decision. As a tablet UI it's probably just as capable as IOS or Android and perhaps moreso.
As a desktop OS, however, it feels as though MSFT couldn't make up their minds if they were simply going to stop supporting desktops entirely or only partially stop supporting that UI model. The effect of Metro (sorry I know that's no longer the "official" name but many many people still ID the Win8 UI as Metro, obviously) is that it serves primarily as a replacement for the Start menu - i.e., this is how I get to all my programs - but then it's terribly unnecessary for all that. Ergo you end up with all sorts of shell / explorer replacements and add-ons that return the Start menu functionality that has been there now going on well over a decade. In the end you may as well continue on using Windows 7, which most will.
I would be curious, however, to see how Metro feels with a laptop - or even desktop, for that matter - that has a touchscreen and a keyboard. Haven't taken one out for a spin but I think as a UI Metro probably works much better that way. That way your fingers dance between keyboard and screen rather than keyboard and mouse. What is much harder to intuit via mouse + Metro is much easier when you have the touch interface of the laptop or desktop available. You can see MSFT promoting this in their numerous commercials as they try to flog the Win8 beast to the public: i.e., look how AMAZING Win8 is when you have a touchscreen available to use it.
I dabbled with a Surface device some years ago (back when Surface was simply a techie plaything for MSFT) when I had a chance to visit their tech center in Mountain View - 2009-ish IIRC - and the UI of course was nothing like what evolved into Metro. It was more like "stupid UI tricks" that R&D UI engineers like to imagine in their ivory towers. It was fun and entertaining but never felt like an actual operating system UI.
For a UI Metro is a big, huge leap for Microsoft. For design, for execution, and even for daring I actually admire Microsoft for taking a rather massive leap. Coupled with Windows phone and Surface (WinRT) and the redesign of all their core apps - including, of course, Office - it's clear they're banking their future on it. A lot of people - including myself - don't fully "get it" yet and it will take the public quite a while to fully understand it. They aren't hedging their bets here - they're going all-in on the tiled UI concept, winner take all or loser go home. I give them credit, at the very least, for seeing the writing on the wall. The consumer computing universe is migrating to tablets. Laptops and desktops are important for business, still, and are likely to remain so if not forever at least for a very long time. They still have a pretty solid lock on that world but they also see Apple creeping in as the "average" business person now wants an iDevice for their daily computing device. I don't think that gadget consumer is terribly interested in the Surface or Winphone - both very capable devices, of course - and just want an iPad or iPhone (or iPod/iTouch) because they knows that's where the apps are. MSFT is - it has to - play a very long game here. It's got a big cash hoard and will have to plow it into the effort to make these devices relevant not simply to business but to consumers who already have a huge amount of choice and options with IOS and Android tablets and phones. They're facing a massive uphill battle and have a long way to go because it's not just MSFT vs. Apple or MSFT vs. IBM this time it's MSFT vs. Apple *AND* Google and, arguably, themselves as they struggle to extract themselves from their image as a very uncool company.
People have gone tablet crazy, they estimate that here in Norway around 100,000 tablets have been sold this year for Christmas in a country to 5 million. That's 1 in 50 getting a tablet for Christmas. Not sure how many actually hate it, but Win8 was certainly met with a giant yawn in the market. Must be frustrating for MS to see that nobody wants Microsoft phones and tablets. Apple and Google on the other hand must be making a very, very good year...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
>Assuming Microsoft are still around to make Win9 and we haven't all had to make the choice between OSX or Linux
Do you have any idea how much cash the company has? Windows 8 would not have to sell a single copy and Microsoft would be still filthy rich, just from Office sales.
I think that Windows 8 with Cygwin and KDE as the desktop may be quite nice, but the bad Gnome3 clone formerly called Metro really doesn't work well.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I'd have thought the demographic here was a tad more intelligent to be using Wintel rubbish. I can understand OSX for the basic user who wants security sans 3000000 spyware titles a day but I'd have thought Linux would be the operating system of choice here? Windows is cute, it reminds me of the 90s, nerdy overweight sorts with old junk box PCs with 5 fans screaming..
Having Windows these days is Like wearing blades, sporting a trendy mullet.. or worse - using that skunjy dirt covered mouse pointer thing on a 90s IBM thinkpad.
The level of denial amongst the MS Faithful is staggering. Reading the fan boy forums the problem according to them is that Win 8 is easier to use than Win 7, but your average user is too retarded. Blame the user in other words. Any problems that people have arent problems, they're just wonderful new features that make life easier, and if you cant see that then you're retarded. The apologists are working at Apple fan boy levels, and thats not good news. Hopefully the bad sales figures will make Microsoft understand they've delivered a turkey, forcing a quicker introduction of Win 9, with a more traditional interface.
As a designer, you are mostly fighting between, catchy design vs user-friendly design. Achieving both is the real science. And Windows 8 fails at the later, hence it is less popular and will be less popular. Unless either users change their behavior, or Windows 8 design flaws are fixed, former is less likely.
I bought a win 8 license since support for xp is ending, there was a decent offer and I felt I should still have a Windows virtual (despite needing it less and less).
Before buying I tried to ensure it supports a clean install and was told it does (upgrade license). The upgrade tool was supposed to offer image creation but that was missing. I was told running the tool after upgrading would let me create it and it did, but that seems a vit backwards?
So I upgraded, created the image, did a clean install... Only the license key was not accepted. Called MS, spent 30 minutes in queue, 15 waiting for the agent to find out what a virtual machine is and if it's supported and then got a working key. A bit later I had to activate, and went through the whole process again. I was also told any future install would ve the same.
All this before even getting to use the mess of an operating system that it is. I can't say I got a good taste in my mouth of purchasing the license (why does a paying customer have to have a bad conciousness?), or felt windows had become more friendly (quite the opposite). Hopefully this is the last windows I get, and I expect it is 'cause I feel really bad every time I start it up.
As a designer, you are mostly fighting between, catchy design vs user-friendly design. Achieving both is the real science. And Windows 8 fails at the later, hence it is less popular and will be less popular. Unless either users change their behavior, or Windows 8 design flaws are fixed, former is less likely.
Call me crazy, but I love gnome3.
I almost missed a few things, like minimizing, but I just set pressing my scroll wheel on the top bar as minimizing and it goes wonderful. Does anybody use the maximizing screen when its just as easy to drag the thing to the top/sides?
I really, really prefer this to gnome2. No more clutter on my desktop, simply press alt-F1/F2 to access my programs (or move my mouse to the left top corner). Especially given how annoying the icons were on gnome2 with their tendency to overlap. I truely like gnome3.
Steve Ballmer. You have some work to do. Get Windows 7 back on track. Happy New Year.
I think you mean "Task bar CAN go across all monitors", it doesn't HAVE to, at least not on my copy of Windows 8.
Just get Classic Shell and it's perfect, very fast startup, 20 seconds compared to well over a minute on Windows 7 with exactly the same applications and on the same PC.
They could float Sharepoint and stick around for years. They're still selling Windows 7 (part of the problem) and XBox and servers and Office. Windows is an enabler for the rest but it will take a lot to lose those markets.
Are you fcking kidding me.
"In the first two months, Windows 8 slower in update than windows Vista. 1.6 vs 2.2.
Oh, The 1.6 number still has one half month to go."
So, basically, it's not really 1.6 vs 2.2 but 1.6 vs something else.
It's a perfect chance for ReactOS, and we won't miss it.
It is a pain the butt to restore your previous operating system... but you can get a refund.
I was looking forwards to showing that I am enlightened enough not to hate Microsoft just because they don't make free software by buying their OS that looks like my 1997 web site.
But they botched it. It blow chunks.
I told them that I would pay $30 to have another 4 years of XP.
Actually, I probably didn't express it that clearly. I think I did convey that I would pay for XP.
HEY MS, I WILL PAY TO KEEP YOUR only usable OS UP TO DATE!
( I guess win7 isn't super horrible)
Win8 is not even suitable for web browsing! I can't use a notepad and browser at the same time... I couldn't even find notepad.
FSKERs.
This. The Microsoft Cycle ain't no joke. The "every OTHER Windows is good" is the joke about the real cycle.
Microsoft almost certainly do it on purpose. And that is likely why they are even moving towards faster releases so they can hide this.
Whether this purpose is for experimentation to see what will "stick", or purely for the money, is another question.
I know that Metro will still be around even if nobody likes it on the desktop.
If they actually spent more than 2 seconds making mouse management of metro nice, they could have gotten away with the interface.
God, I could have done a better job of it with some crappy autohotkey script. Might have been slow as hell, but it would still be more functional!
problem is linux is trying to shove the same garbage where you think Microsoft got the idea both gnome 3 and unity are utter garbage and despite being told so more times then anyone can count they just say deal with it we know whats good for you then Ubuntu wonders why mint is overtaking them.
I've been planning to replace my custom built PC of 10 years in the spring. I've been using Linux at home since 2000 and Ubuntu since it came out. I switched to Kubuntu in the last year since I really did not care for Unity.
My plan is to install the KDE version of MINT and run a copy of Windows in a VM for odds and ends.
I've been reading a lot of opinions about Windows 8. A lot of online tech magazine authors have the opinions about Metro that I thought I would see.
Interestingly, I've read some favorable opinions on comp.os.linux.misc. The users there are doing what I plan to do. They run linux, but with windows in a VM for an odd use here and there.
They HATED the amount of advertisements that came with the Windows 8 install (and offered tips about how to purge them ), but they had some respect for how solid Windows 8 is technically.
They did not like Metro, but surprisingly, they said it is not that bad once you get used to it. OTOH, they are only using Windows for an occasional odd usage like running Turbo Tax or Netflix streaming.
It is always interesting to find non-predicable, pat opinions.
Every few years since the 90s I think about going Mac. I get mentally prepare myself to pay more, but somehow every time I go to a Mac store or the Apple site, no matter how much I've stretched beyond my comfort zone, Apple manages to walk 4 paces beyond that.
I have it running on a VM right now at work to look it over and I tried using it a bit but the constant switching from tiles to standard desktop was too much for me. If I took over for Balmer on Windows I'd scrap 8 all together and just take Windows 7 and start cleaning that up big time so it runs even faster and is easier to use then it already is.
Usually I go out and buy a new version of Windows to look things over before upgrading family. This time I'm glad I didn't and even my family from what I told them don't want to touch it with a ten foot pole since it changes things so drastically.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Vista 1.0 is more popular than Vista 3.0 but neither one is as popular as Vista 2.0
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
You are mostly correct, although when compared to the clunkiness of Windows 8, I assume GNOME3 and Unity start to look like dream UIs for many. :)
Les Misérables 8
Cant comment on osx but ios sucks ass. wp as a ui wins over ios imho. task switching showing active application details. large text and fonts in system based appa. intuative app flow wp eats ios and spits it out.
Cant comment on windows 8, osx or anything other than ubuntu (classic) gnome. unity i hated so i may also dislike win8 and osx because my gut inpressions of all 3 is that they try to mimmic each other and attempt to dumb down the overall user experience.
Windows maybe bad but from this entire thread 90% of what people are bitching abut is pretty much what they praise about when it comes from the likes of apple.
Gnome actually has very good, standardized, readable and easy-to-implement Human Interface Guidelines. Of course, it's up to developers to decide whether to follow it.
Yeah, kind of a bad sign when you buy your Fleshlight a Mac.
Perhaps, I should have put a smiley face on the end of that last bit for those that didn't realise it was throwaway New Years morning sarcasm.
Microsoft have lost their way. However, we all know they can afford to play silly buggers for a while without worrying too much about major damage.
First they held back the mobile industry by trying to shoe-horn a +13' desktop interface on to a 3' screen (remember the old HTC's with stylus's just to press the 'start'). Now they're doing the reverse by trying to force a 4' mobile interface on desktop.
On the bright side, just like Apple come along and ate Microsoft's lunch on the mobile side (for their lack of innovation), I can not wait for XYZ to come along and eat their lunch in the desktop market.
I hope this is pushback against the very disturbing trend of operating systems trying to monetize the product after sale. That means they wish to invade my home to be at the ready to push on me or least provide me something I may (but probably) wont ever need. They want to be ever present in my life. Invaders. It's why I'll never run anything later than Windows 7 and why I will be migrating my desktops to Debian from Ubuntu. Give me the software, make me pay if need be, and get out of my house. Thank G-d for the open source movement.
Gnome 3 was not designed for tablets - it was meant for netbooks (which are officially dead given Asus and Acer apparently have no intention to release any more hardware).
The fact that you are required to use a keyboard to navigate Gnome 3 efficiently, or use a finger unfriendly top menu to do anything makes Gnome 3 totally unsuitable for tablets.
Only Gnome could design a new product for a platform that was already dying, and continue to push said platform despite all evidence to the contrary of its need.
A) Linux is already extremely successful on the desktop. You just have a broken definition of success. Linux is far better in fact. Witness the fact that with Windows 8 you get a crappy UI jammed down your throat, while with Linux you get a number of viable choices.
B) Users never have to "type shit like that" with Linux. You have confused the person who installs and configures the OS with the user. In many cases they are the same person, but it is entirely possible for them to be two different people. Furthermore, it is very rare, with a quality Linux distro, that an admin has to "type shit like that".
C) 2001 called, and it want's your broken meme back
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
what the team who developed Microsoft Bob has been up to.
AproposOfNothingUbuntuGuy(TM)! You've arrived sooner than expected.
Microsoft has been selling us the same old car with new tires on it for decades. I saw this coming back then, but it's taken longer than I thought for other companies to force it's progression. Wake up.
Don't worry they will be around. They have so much cash on hand, they can probably survive for years without much income. And face it, while Win8 may not sell well, that must mean Win7 is still selling, as the computer market as a whole has not collapsed. And pretty much every single computer sold comes with a copy of Windows.
Last week I got my first look at Windows 8 when trying to set up my 72 year old cousin's new PC that came with it installed. We got it up, but having never looked at it nor even considered getting it I couldn't tell her the first thing about using it. If there had been some EASY and OBVIOUS way to get rid of the METRO interface and go back to a Classic Shell she might have been happy with it, but after an hour of trying to do anything useful she wanted it boxed up and she has already returned it for a refund.
I have never really been that fond of Windows since I started working with Unix and Linux back in the late 1990's but this time I think Microsoft has played a game of Russian Roulette with a semi-automatic pistol.
The distributors can have a large part in this, only including apps that follow the HIG. That's always been the problem; there's guidelines, but no real teeth to back them up. Also, the important megapackages tend to not follow the HIG anyway, reasoning — correctly as it happens — that they'll be included even if they ignore the rules and that keeping their existing users happy is more important.
Fixing this mess will take work, and it will make a good number of people upset.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
Ballmer did the "business" side of things when Bill Gates was still around. Many if not most technology companies need a "tech" guy and a "business" guy to succeed. Granted, Gates was very capable also on the business side, but Ballmer did a lot of administrative and sales stuff to keep Gates free for technology work. .Net, Win32 - these are all quite solid technologies that can underpin a huge business. The implementation is of course bug-ridden and highly insecure, but that didn't hurt sales.
After Gates has (allegedly/apparently) left, Ballmer actually rode M$ very well on the technology base he inherited from Gates. NT, DCOM/COM, MS Office,
Suggesting he "should have driven up stock value" is just ridiculous. You cannot grow stock value of a corporation indefinitely, or it will at one point be 99% of the whole stock market. M$ is already valued at a very high price and it has levelled off now that the company is mature. M$ pays nice dividends, as mature companies should do. From a purely monetary view of things, M$ is doing very well, thank you.
Plus, Ballmer is fiercely loyal to his company and their half-crappy products - and that is much, much better than what you can say about the MBA crapologists who run HP, for example. His monkey-dance means he is not just a beancounter, he is fanatically devoted to his corporation and this is only his second job, after being for two years at P&G.
He is a moron, but a respectable moron unlike the fuckers who run HP.
I, I run Ubuntu 10 LTS and I am happy with that.
Can we have our Gnome-shell back?
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Vista more or less looked like XP/7 with some minor tweaks but the guts were garbage. Windows 8 seemingly has fairly good internals but the UI is for shit. It's like they take turns in having different teams screw it up iteratively. What's Plan C?
If they do, I will quickly look into Windows 8 for deployment at my job.
As it stands now, I wouldnt deploy it because it would cause too many headaches for tech support, teaching people how to use the Operating system.
Users are usually clueless enough, they don't need to be told to "tap here" when they don't have a touch screen. And for those who do have a touch screen, describing the gesture needed to move a tile is gonna be endless fun.
lucm, indeed.
Microsoft keeps saying uptake is higher than Windows 7 was.
Of course, one statistic is based on some non-random sampling of websites without correcting for market bias, and the other are legally controlled statements of sales in a public company. Only the PC makers are reporting a sales slump... because Win8 makes existing hardware work better and people just don't need a new PC.
But yes, by all means lets get Slashdot's ad impressions up by having yet another anti-Microsoft story! I'll get it started: I hear Steve Ballmer's kids prefer to use an iPad Mini!
..most people and corporations would stick with XP, if it had not been artificially been eliminated. Win7, VISTA and 8 bring no value. Rather, they all destroy value by arbitrarily changing the UI without any serious benefit.
M$ would have made their customers much happier by continuing to sell XP and have a "maintenance fee" slapped onto it. I bet people would have paid 10 dollars per year to continue to use XP instead of the random crap they have changed. And yes, Windows 7 is mostly window-dressing.
*woosh*
M$ is an expert at psychological operations. They are sharp thinkers and know that there is no hard reason for users to stick with Windows. So they go enormous lengths to spread their propaganda. Bot the "positive" one about their products and the "negative" about the competition.
The truth is that most corporations could switch to Linux, MacOS and even the BSDs. I know an insurance company which has a "Linux on all desktops" policy. Their only exception is that people who run specialist apps can get a Windows VM.
It is all a matter of motivation, so M$ ensures their propaganda is heard everywhere.
..there are variously popular variants of Windows NT ? Some versions were artificially eliminated ? Each newly dressed Windows NT version is being hailed as the saviour ?
Yeah, that describes it properly.
I bought puts before it shipped. Windows 8 drove Microsoft stock down. I made a bunch of money, so I like Windows 8. I wouldn't use Windows 8, but I'm glad Microsoft ignored their customer base.
That is also why Nokia never lost the dominance in the smart phone business. Their "metrics" could never lie.
Seriously, Mr Churchill had it right: "Only trust the statistics you have manipulated yourself".
Thanks, this makes how many stories about the failing Windows 8?
We get it, you report on the failings of Windows 8, much like Fox News reports on Democrats who run red lights, while doing their best to ignore the Republican caught in a DUI. Or if you're a Republican, how CNN ignores the Democrats running red lights, while talking about the poor victim of government thuggery to stop their Constitutional Right to drive drunk just so they can attack a Republican.
people buy a Windows 8 tablet and then find they cannot run Windows apps on it
Which is why Microsoft is working to change end users' perception of what a "Windows app" is over the course of the Windows 8 product cycle.
I can't see myself going to a UEFI system, so might just go to the consoles
Why? Consoles are locked up even tighter than the "Secure Boot" on any x86 PC. Consoles generally don't have indie games because a micro-ISV generally can't meet the requirements for "relevant video game industry experience" and "financial stability".
I take it you're not an Apple fan. Apple seems hell bent on ignoring pretty much every UI convention it ever wrote in it's own brain dead attempt to make a "One Ring" interface by wedging iOS and OS X into the molten cracks of the pits of Mordor^HCupertino.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Ubuntu with Xfce is a VERY good setup for getting work done :)
....anyone wanting Windows 8. Terrible.
...Steve
..why is Linux a "God-awful mess" ??
Because you can pick lots of technologies in a modular fashion to build the distribution your like ? Choice is bad, tyrannical uniformity is good ?
Because it is wrong that one team can make one aspect world-class (e.g. the kernel, the compiler, the UI library, the web browser) ? Yeah, Linux is a heinous "terrorist" kernel; much too difficult to subvert by the "good killers" at CIA and Mossad.
I would rather use Windows XP than Windows 7. Windows 7 really starts to take control away from the the machine owner. If XP was still available to buy, I would buy it without doubt. Windows 7 is a pain and clearly marked MS intent to wall off their garden, and I am not going to use Windows 8. Which version of Linux is sensible to install? One that doesn't try to treat me and my data as a their commodity?
So just grab an "old" LTS version of Xubuntu.
Or google "Linux distro without PAE".
http://www.webupd8.org/2012/05/how-to-install-ubuntu-1204-on-non-pae.html
http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/releases/
http://hex1a4.net/xubuntu/mirror/releases/8.04.1/release/
http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/releases/xubuntu/
If Ubuntu doesn't do it properly, look for Debian or CentOS. I am sure some people support pretty old hardware.
Since when is Ubuntu and Gnome the same as "Linux" ??
The nice thing about Linux is that we can work around the dollar-driven decisions of Mr Shuttleworth by simply switching to something we like. Such as Debian, CentOS, Fedora, Redhat, Mint, Slackware. Nobody can destroy Linux the way M$ can destroy Windows. Because we own it all. We have the source. The differences will be minor.
I still use Ubuntu 10 LTS, but this year I will either go something non-Ubuntu or xBSD. I will still have firefox, OpenOffice, gpg, bash, gcc and all that. Mr Shuttleworth is a businessman who can only screw up his own business, not the Linux world.
M$ tried to "destroy" Linux by paying Novell to destroy SuSE Linux by means of inserting a sack of fleas in the 11 and 12 releases.
You know how it worked out ? The reputation of Novell/SuSE went into the crapper and people switched to other distros. With Ubuntu it will essentially be the same.
I am sure this game of "destroy by commercialization" will continue until M$ realizes they are like Don Quichote fighting against windmills. Or, like cutting off the heads of a hydra. The rate of "head growth" will be larger than the rate of "head-cutoffs".
Name one thing that you can do in XP that 7 forbids you to do.
If there had been some EASY and OBVIOUS way to get rid of the METRO interface and go back to a Classic Shell she might have been happy with it, but after an hour of trying to do anything useful she wanted it boxed up and she has already returned it for a refund.
The Classic Shell I use is a third party addon:
http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/
It's a useful project that has been adding back features removed by MS from Vista onwards. Their start menu actually pre-dates Win 8 - it's more configurable than the standard Win 7 menu.
Of course, it's crazy that downloading something like this is even necessary!
Your in the wrong time zone, first post of the new year probably went to an Australian.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
You are a Propaganda Ant, right ?
That is the wet dream of Mr Ballmer. But when the sales reality hits, he will give people what they demand at the threat of going Linux and MacOS. WinXp++ aka Win Blue aka Win 8.5
Yeah, 1.64%! The year of the Linux desktop is here!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems
- "Scientia non habet inimicum nisp ignorantem"
why can't metro apps run in a window on windows? and why can't have the desktop or metro UI in the window as well?
Windows 3.1 did not have a start menu but at least apps where not all full screen.
some must of said Calculator and notepad full screen is a bad idea and people in desktop mode need them as well.
Yes. Mea Culpa. I didn't see the facetious nature of the post having stopped reading at the end of the line I quoted, and can clearly see now that I was , for the duration of the time I wrote the post, exactly the kind of moron that I hate ;-)
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
You're a genius!!! I hadn't realized until now that the Lamborghini is also a failure in the Automobile market given its equally low market share.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Microsoft have spent the last 15years (at least) trying to kill OpenGL. In 1997 they stopped SGI supporting OGL with the Fahrenheit deal, a deal they had no intention of delivering their side of, it really was just about stopping SGI working on OGL in Windows. It worked, SGI became irrelevant, OGL seemed dead - but Nvidia and ATI stepped in to fill the void and fscked the plan.
For XP they tried to drop OGL acceleration. Hardware suppliers went ahead and added it back in anyway, while professional users applied pressure to stop MS going further in crippling their tools. OGL support was frozen with no updates and every app having to manually discover ogl extensions to keep up with DX.
Vista again borked OGL by supplying it as a shim translating calls to DX. Awful performance. 3rd party drivers could restore OGL but only by disabling parts of the GUI, another attempt to make it unpleasant actually using OGL. OGL frozen at 1.4, again leaving apps in extension discovery hell.
Win8 they've at least switched to using DX to drive users to Metro, with DX upgrades only planned for Metro mode. Have they given up trying to cripple OGL faced with total lack of cooperation from card makers? Too early to tell but I think they believe DirectX already won. Valve may have a BIG surprise coming for MS.
The reason Windows 8 sucks is because Microsoft chose to ignore the clear and unambiguous wishes of its users for selfish reasons.
MS is to big to go app store only and they will get sued.
Just thing of windows with no auto cad, no adobe CS, no quicktime, no firefox, no flash, ECT.
No real choice here. 6 computers in this house run XP,. the offline kitchen Libretto won't go beyond 98 and there's a netbook that came with Win7 that nobody wants to use, not even visitors. What's my upgrade-path supposed to be? Is it free? So I bought some spare OEM XP keys, which should cover any junk replacements I may need to get, that will 'just work' well enough. 'Singer Sewing Machine' was a great case study at business school (qv).
well they will need to get pass the locked in app store idea MS is way to big to get away with it.
Also there is way to many older apps to go full screen with the new UI.
Even mac os X run the older apps side by side with the newer ones.
I only lasted 2 weeks with GNOME3, then wiped everything and installed kubuntu. KDE seems like they're headed down this path of fixing things that aren't broken and ignoring things that are, but Microsoft and Gnome are clearly winning that race.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Quoting Mick Jagger n' the stones "Dance, little sister dance" http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3348385&cid=42428889
Because it absolutely blows. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0fsyb-ttcw
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
Big, freaking Whoooosh!
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
I bought Windows 8 on the first day because the 40$ for Pro deal, no matter how you look at it, is a good one. After a month of running it, I ended up purchasing Start8 to have the interface return to that of Windows 7 and removed any Windows 8-centric application. To say the least, the new interface bothers me even though I like the improvements on the classic side of things. My only gripe is how the OS doesn't support hardware which was properly supported under Windows 7.
You should probably not compare a cheap clunker to a BMW.
In your case, don't even look at a Mac. Compare a low end ${brand} versus a high end ${brand}. For example, look at a cheap Dell, then look at the high end Dell.
Do that, instead of complaining about Apple. You'll find more satisfaction in your life.
I like windows 8. Of course the first thing I did was change the default applications to be all desktop programs. Once that is done you can more-or-less *never* have to look at the shitty tablet ui. The start screen is a good place to dump links to applications I use infrequently. Main applications get pinned to the task bar. Hibernate is WAY faster and more reliable than it was in windows 7. Homegroup seems to be a lot more reliable as well. After a month or so of use, I've grown to like the start screen. It's WAY more useful than the start menu and I only have to look at it when I want to.
Anecdote time! My father-in-law ( a long time windows user ) bought a new computer with windows 8 on it. He called me to complain about "This shitty lenovo UI" that makes it so he can't do anything with the laptop. Then he returned it. The "shitty lenovo UI"? Metro.
cbiltcliffe likes to dance. "Dance little sister, dance" http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3348385&cid=42428889
The future lies not in touch but in gesture. MS is going to couple their kinect with their OS. Then the user will be able to manipulate the device without having to actually touch it. It'll be like casting a spell to change windows.
The point you made is a fairly standard reply to my point. I put it to the test last year. I went window shopping, writing down part names, numbers and prices as best I could. An iMac was always several hundred dollars for a similar set up of hardware to a PC. The iMacs looked nice, but since I was so careful about comparing apples to apples as far as hardware went, I couldn't stomach paying several hundred dollars more to get about the same thing.
Still - even with classic shell in my opinion the Windows 8 interface is just plain ugly compared to Windows 7.
I do not like the cartoon-like windows borders. It just looks like a OS from last century.
And - on top of that.. It just has no features that would convince a Windows 7 user to jump to Windows 8.
Or Chicken before the Egg problem.
Microsoft has a really big problem. If few or no businesses adopts Windows 8, why would a business adopt their phones and tablets?
If a business wont buy their phones and tablets, why would they update their desktops to use the GUI Formerly Know As Metro (GuiFKaM)? Especially as the first thing you have to do is start up the old desktop metaphor to get work done.
Microsoft's strategy is dependent on the horse pulling the cart, but they've put the cart before the horse. For a horse, pushing is so much harder.
Next, few Surfaces tablets are out their, who's writing the next great App for Microsoft? Microsoft? There's not much evidence they have the ability or knowledge. How many Surface tablets will Microsoft have to sell to make a profit? How long before they have to discount the Surface to even get people to try it out?
I will admit, Windows 8 came in a nice package with just two DVDs, not the raft of CDROMs Windows 7 came in. Very 2000 of you Microsoft, you finally caught up to Redhat and Fedora, a release on DVD. The two DVDs are for ia32 and AMD64. Why they have a release for ia32 I have no idea. Was that some type of joke? When was the last ia32 processor sold? Wasn't that PV (Pre Vista)? The install also asked for the product key first, not after an hour off installation time. I didn't think Microsoft was ever going to figure that out. Also Microsoft's release was much cleaner then the crapy job Acer did. It took me quite a while to scrub the crapware off the GuiFKaM screen, what with every active tile launching if my cursor got too close.
Also, the active tile thing, showing thumbnails from my pictures? BAD IDEA Microsoft. I, like most men, have some damn good porn on my hard drive. I don't need a passer by at the dentist's office seeing that. So more stuff to turn off.
I also like that Windows 8 has a much smaller foot print on my hard drive. As I rarely use it, I hated having a hundred and fifty gig being devoted to nothing.
Even at the very low price they offered Windows 8, it's really slow start is a death knell. I can hear the sad, sad ring even now. Do you think it's ringing loud in Steve Ballmer ears?
I wonder how Steven Elop of Nokia feels now. Steven? The ringing in your ear? That not a phone. Or maybe it's your phone, with your last call from the Board of Directors?
I predict Nokia's next smart phone will be a very low priced Android, unlocked and sold directly from their website. They got to get the customer base back before their name is a footnote in the Wikipedia history of Samsung.
The Surface tablet will go the way of the ... what was the Microsoft music player call .... let me Google that on my Acer A500 tablet. Oh yes. The Zune. I swooned for the Zune; not.
What is funny is these PR firms are apparently lazy as hell as I've noticed when someone will post a criticism of Win 8 a hell of a lot of the time the "its great!" Win 8 response you'll get back you can drop a line of in Google and they've posted the same reply word for word across dozens of sites, its like the fricking Nigerian prince emails. I don't know which is funnier, the shill copypasta or the "Oh that is not a problem, all you have to do is (big pile of keyboard crap)" which of course i just HAVE to reply with "So THIS is innovation? We need cheat sheets for our OSes again like its 1985?"
I have never seen a company in all my years just up and completely destroy themselves like this, damnedest thing I've ever seen. For those that think Win 8 is just the "Star Trek Rule" in action you might want to look up the "Windows Blue" memo, in it Ballmer lays out what he is doing in 2013 to "save Microsoft"...ready? He is gonna fuck the hell out of the OEMs and pretty much kill Nokia so that MSFT can make phones (just like Apple) tablets (ditto) desktops (notice a pattern?) and laptops (Ray Charles could see through this) and all of which will be priced HIGHER than anything Apple is offering, because dammit high prices MUST mean its good, after all people buy Apple right?
So congrats MSFT haters, you are gonna get to see the company completely self destruct as the PHB in charge torpedoes everything that Gates spent 20+ years building because he is too damned stupid to realize you can't slap a coat of paint on a Pinto and have it compete with Porsche. It took Apple decades to build its rep as a high end brand, Ballmer thinks all he has to do is triple the pricetag on everything and voila! Suddenly Windows is hip and trendy...NOT!
If the board doesn't stop smoking crack and fire this moron I predict in 3 years Apple will own the top, Google will own the bottom, and MSFT will be RIM, with nothing left but legacy business installs and even those will be looking at exit strategies. The truly sad part of it all is the day of the DIY desktop will end, you'll buy a black box Android or Apple and that will be that, unless you have workstation money it'll all be black box like the ChromeBooks.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
.
I am beginning to think that Windows has something similar: every third version of Windows is unappreciated by geeks when it comes out, only to be loved later on.
Ok, I have a small sample size but here goes:
- Windows ME = hated forever
- Windows 2000 = tech-loved
- Windows XP = hated at first, then tech-loved
- Windows Vista = hated forever
- Windows 7 = tech-loved
- Windows 8 = hated at first, then tech-loved
- Windows 9 = Beware...
I come here for the love
1. The eekonomy sucks worse today than when Vista was released. 2. Equipment lifetimes are greater 3. Unlike Win 3.1 or Win 95, there are far fewer perceived needs to upgrade the OS independent of a complete hardware replacement. In some cases (older hardware w/ XP) nothing short of replacement allows win 8 use. Lets put this in some perspective too.. outside of the Uber fanboys, how long does it take to get people to upgrade to the latest of Suse/Debian/Fedora /*BSD?
In most cases, things now work well enough that there really is not much reason to go through the hassles of a complete upgrade unless you are starting over from scratch.
"It's not like they've not tried to clean the image of Microsoft when Vista was poorly received.
...
There's no mention of Microsoft in that article apart from a mention that CEO Mark Penn got a job at Microsoft after he left Burson-Marsteller
AccountKiller
if you still have a 98 machine in daily service there is no upgrade path for you cause you obviously dont give a fuck
Maybe it's me but, ever since the Vista fiasco I have noticed a surge of fanatics defending MS in forums and web sites. I find that a little weird.
I mean, before Vista, or until Vista, the forums and chatter clearly predicted the success of a product. But today, even with clearly bad rubbish, you get fanatics defending MS even after things have gone under the water (i.e Windows phone)
So, I m thinking that MS just figured that their products are great and it is the 'Unfair' asd 'biased' bad comments that throw their products
So now they hire people to post good things about their great products. My thesis you see.
The really weird thing is that today is new year and nobody is defending MS here Coincidence ??, or all those artificial MS on a holiday??
Is that the reason why MS has stopped listening to the web ???
What do you think ??
There would have been a large (two squares wide) tile in the first column saying "Desktop". Click once. Viola. Instant Classic Shell.
I love Windows 7 and do not understand why anyone would want XP today in this day and age that is unless you have old out of date hardware.
But to go through the hassle of putting XP on a new rig that would require many hours of backporting drivers, hacking .ini files, and not having USB 3, thunderbolt, uEFI, power management, and other things I have to ASK WHY??
I can do everything and more with Windows 7 than XP. I do not want to go back. It think the fact that the little button to sort in Explorer is gone and means you have to click on date manually or the other mouse button is too much for people. Instant search and aero peak and aero snap make life easier for me and I feel castrated on XP as I can't just type Windows Key CM.... enter for cmd in 1/4th of a second! Nope I have to browse to find command prompt.
But that is just my preference.
http://saveie6.com/
I do like Windows 8. Even more than 7. The ribbons are actually useful in the explorer. I like the new design. These flat colors rather than gradients. And finally the new start menu aka tiles. I prefer them over the classic start menu and it still allows my win7-way to start programs (win key -> start to type the application name -> hit [Enter]). I do not like the app store. I don't want a Microsoft account, especially not a hotmail account. That sucks. Even though I like Windows RT and WinJS so far.
..with Linux you are in control when you want to adopt all the shiny new GUIs. With Windows, Mr Ballmer stuffs them down your throat. All for your own best, of course.
I can't find it anymore,but I had to laugh when there was a poll awhile ago that said 50% of people who tried windows 8 liked it. Just looking at the sales numbers told you that as BS. When reality and your poll numbers don't match, chances are reality is correct.
I just don't see everything going black box though, there is just too much need for a general purpose OS. If anything, someone will come out with a BSD variant or something. As long as the OS UI is as good as Windows 98 or better that will be good enough for businesses. (It better be a lot more stable of course.)
I simply can't see Balmer lasting much longer. They have the code to put a Windows 7 style interface in 8, they just stripped it out. All it would take is a service pack to put that back in there. They'll slap a new name on it though, like Windows 8 second edition or something, perhaps give it the windows 9 label. The board is probably making plans to get rid of him, they just need to find a replacement and give Balmer a little more rope to hang himself with. They are probably trying to figure out how Gates is going to react to Balmer getting the boot.
You think Linux is like a Lamborghini? Ahahahahahahahaha! Oh, that's a good knee slapper right there. You kind of missed the part that a Lamborghini also costs hundreds of thousands of dollars per unit, allowing it to make up for quantity with a whole heaping helping of quality.
Sorry, Linux only rates a Jeep Wrangler with better fuel efficiency.
Cygwin is like "finally having a proper command line with associated tools on Windows". "Like having a Unix command line". "Like being able to kill 25 excel processes in two seconds".
I care so much, I checked - actually, it's 95. Try putting anything else on a Libretto 30! It runs Scrabble perfectly from a CD image, and has all her recipes to hand. Two others dual-boot Mint, which is fun and upgrades free and nicely (so far), but people here with things to do click on familiar applications intuitively so they always boot XP instead.
Exactly. Metro is just a trojan designed to harvest your data.
What they really want is you using Windows Live, getting news from their sites, searching with Bing, using Internet Explorer, play with their XBox, etc.
This is Microsoft's strategy to catch up to Google. If you can't bring the desktop to the web, you bring the web to the desktop.
There's always a new demographic. I'd say Windows 8 will appeal to younger users (those who think the computer was invented for tweeting or for Facebook). It's likely Microsoft has factored this is and is aiming in potentially new customers in the Asian markets, which are predicted to move to the middle class by hundreds of millions in the next few years.
Is it too late? I don't know. People are used to their iTunes for buying songs. The iPhone has sold a lot in China last year (when people don't have the money, they buy the Android). We are all used to Google (and Bing sucks too).
They do have the potential to bring innovation. Kinect could bring a whole new paradigm to interfaces, but we don't know if that's in the pipeline. Apparently, they are pretty much failing with the gestures thing (Apple is much better in this on the new iMacs).
We'll see.
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
..$hill you are.
"I use Linux all day, so I am competent, but dearly need Metro". Priceless how naive M$ Propaganda ops are.
I agree.
Besides, Window 7 sucks, it hangs apps all the time.
It's just that Windows users are sorry fuckers who don't really have a choice but to claim they're happy now that they've adapted to the new crap MS came up with.
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
Iv'e deployed it at work with no problems. If you want't to use it like 7 you can, Just a start screen instead of a start button. I admit I don't really use the apps/metro interface for much, but you don't really need too.
No Linux is like a Volvo and Windows like a Fiat. I hear Fiat has some nice designs. Don't expect it to last more than two years without rust holes, though.
Of course it's impossible to anyone to actually like Win8, so they must be shills. This /. dogma is getting worse every decade.
The point was parent was claiming the "Linux Desktop is doing quite well". And it just isn't. At least not in the way implied.
- "Scientia non habet inimicum nisp ignorantem"
What, like downloading a good browser, or a good email client? What about a good pdf reader?
No. The OP was pointing out that Windows has a registry, and making changes to it is just as convoluted, or more so really, than using a command line and editing a Linux config file. He was pointing out that people who claim that Linux "will never succeed on the desktop" because it is hard to administer are idiots who don't get that the reason Linux doesn't have a bigger share of the market has nothing to do with any complexity, real or imagined. It has everything to do with illegal and monopolistic practices by Bill Gates and his minions, though the GP doesn't actually point that out implicitly or explicitly.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
There's an easy solution for Microsoft. They need to call it Windows Mojave. It seemed to work with Vista.
Windows Vista was the set-up to make Windows 7 look good. Now, they are switching things up so that there is no obvious continuation of the "Bad Word Version saved by Good Numbered Version" pattern followed by ME/2000, Vista/7.
Windows 8 is clearly lowering the bar and defecating on the playing field to make sure that Windows Chasm is a savior-success story.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Probably the hot corners. The "Charms" bar, in particular, is a crucial way of interacting with "modern" apps - most of them offer no other way to access either their settings or their search functionality, because those are required to be built in - and while there is a keyboard shortcut (Win+C) to display the bar, it's intended to display on the right side of the screen (which is also where you put the mouse to access it) and I don't know how well that would go over with windowed apps. Additionally, there's the resolution issue. at 1024x768 (the minimum resolution most apps are designed to expect, although they will scale to other resolutions with varying degrees of grace), most monitors even today would have difficulty displaying many of them at once. Sure, you could switch between them... but that's already supported, and the touch gesture used for it (swiping in from the left) would be very odd for switching between windowed apps.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Gee, it's not like your posts aren't highly repetitive and spammed in nearly every discussion this site either.
My only problem with ClassicShell is that it focuses WAY too much on the Start menu. I never use the Start menu, even with ClassicShell. There's a lot of things about Windows7 that annoy me compared to XP, but the only thing that really helps me is how ClassicShell changes how folder attributes are sorted.
I know Win7 is really popular among geeks and people seem to support the new window manager, but I'm still surprised how the OS pretty much declared war on how XP did things.
The reason geeks hate Windows 8 is that they made the computer easier to use and less confusing for the non geeks. This makes being a computer geek less, well, geeky, because anybody can use it without screwing up as much.
The "Start" button was flawed in design and usability right from the beginning.
The UI formally known as Metro (Metro), is a great advancement in usability. How many clicks does it take the average user to access an 90% of the applications they use now compared to pre Metro? 1 click in metro vs minimum of 2 using the start menu. The applications are onscreen and obvious and easy to locate unlike in the convoluted Start menu (remember, I said for the average user, which most of slashdot are not).
Embrace the new, forget the old and evolve.
You mentioned hip and trendy. I've noticed that Microsoft is still trying to be cool. Watching their commercials and ads and comparing them against Apple, Android and even google's chrome. Microsoft seems to really, desparately want to be 'cool', but their definition of cool is the one that teenagers and early-20 year old men have. Maybe the XBOX division has a lot of influence in the company. Apple and Android commercials, at least the ones I see, are useful things you can do with their devices, and coolness is there but it's well done and comes across and supporting and not the focus, the usage is the focus. Microsoft shoves it in your face that they are cool, and usage is secondary. To me, it comes across as desperate and crying for attention. It's very offputting.
The bitch is I have been told that it may not be possible to fire Ballmer short of a hostile takeover, because between him and his BFF Bill they own more than 50% of the voting stock. Now if that is true or not I don't know, but if it is true that means it would take old Bill turning on Steve for anything to be done, otherwise the house that Bill built will be the house that Steve knocks down.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
> the day of the DIY desktop will end
Ubuntu's already making inroads in most of the world as a preinstalled general purpose OS. Dell has that XPS 13 variant, even in the US.
You always believe what you're told? That's completely wrong, and it takes 10 seconds of googling to find out.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/mh?s=MSFT+Major+Holders
All MS insiders combined only own 10% of the stock, while 65% of the stock is owned by Hedge Funds and other institutions.
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
I know. That's the stupidest part. Just because YOU (not you, who i'm responding to.. but you know.. YOU) don't like WIndows 8 doesn't mean nobody likes it. There are a lot of people that like it a great deal.
Fact is, People just aren't buying desktop PC's much these days. That's the real problem.
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
The problem with Apple is that I would have to buy that BMW to get the features I want. Apple picks its price points carefully, and since their machines are lot less upgradeable you have to pay for everything you might want to do upfront instead of leaving if off now and adding it later if need be. Granted, their computers may come with a lot of features, but I can put together a PC that does what I want for a fraction of the price of the Mac.
They may stick around, but if they keep jerking around their enterprise customers they might not have the development support they've traditionally been able to lean on.
Apple at the time of release is generally cheaper than a comparable HP, Dell for a new model, but not always. I see your comment below. You probably aren't comparing the same hardware. For example Apple screen are color accurate, you have to go up models from Dell to get that.
In general though if it has been that long then you wouldn't like being with Apple. It is not just paying more for the hardware, it is paying more for connectors, paying more for software... If value is really really important to you Apple will upset you. The culture is not value oriented it is quality oriented.
Really? Lets take that for a test run shall we?
Standard 27" iMac is $1800, has 2.9Ghz i5, 8GB, 1TB, 512MB Video.
http://store.apple.com/us/configure/MD095LL/A?
Dell's closest I could find was one XPS One 27 Touch. $1600, 2.7Ghz i5, 6GB, 1TB, Intel Integrated Graphics.
http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=fxdwvx25h&model_id=xps-one-27-2710-aio&c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19
HP's closest I could find was the HP Z1 Workstation, $2150, Xeon E3 3.3Ghz, 4GB, 500GB, Intel Integrated Graphics.
http://www.shopping.hp.com/en_US/home-office/-/products/Desktops/Desktops?SearchParameter=%26%40QueryTerm%3D*%26categoryusagedesktops_dte2%3DAll-in-One%26CategoryUUIDLevelX%3DOp0QxXjbaUcAAAE0eehcZzOt%26Processor_facet_DTE2%3DIntel%26TieredPricing2%3D%255B1200.0%2BTO%2B9999.99%255D%26%40Sort.TieredPricing%3D0&PageSize=15
From this simple search, it can be seen that you are full of shit. Even getting a more expensive iMac with a 3.4Ghz i7 is only $2200, and it includes a 1GB Nvidia Graphics instead of the Intel Integrated Graphics.
http://store.apple.com/us/configure/MD096LL/A?
I don't think quality and value are exclusive. The system I am replacing this spring I had custom built from good parts literally 10 years ago. It still works fine ( I am using it now ). The only reason I am replacing it is that while fully functional the hardware is starting to get obsolete.
10% of the value or 10% of the votes? My guess is 10% of the value.
/ The Arrow
"How lovely you are. So lovely in my straightjacket..." - Nny
Understood. But Apple has a focus on the one and not the other.
I built my own very good system back in 1990. I build servers all the time to capture value. Apple and the other OEMs do not offer the same ratios of value to cost.
If you are the kind of person who wants to use the same system for a decade you won't like Apple. I'm change my computer about every 3-4 years and I an't buying cheap Apple's all the time either. pple forces an OS upgrade and those OS upgrades often obsolete hardware. Most 2007 systems cannot run 10.7.3. Most software today requires 10.7.3. That is not atypical.
The plus side of this is you get rapid development and deployment for the platform. The minus side of this is you need to keep up.
Like I said, I don't think you would be happy with Apple.
but but but, end users don't want to download shit off sourceforge.
you might as well download kde4win and save yourself a lot of mess.
I dunno, maybe it's all a charade. The good cop-bad cop system applied to OS releases.
One release sucks, but it does its job. (the real job of the OS release is to make stuff obsolete so that people buy new one, that's why vendors will ship with the new windows even if they rewrote it in COBOL). Also it's suckyness makes the round in the media who could have talked about more interesting things.
The release after is just a polished up version that more or less works and people rave about it because it doesn't get in the way. Another round of media exposure.
In the end nothing much changed but they did two releases instead of an update.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
This is not statistics. It's 10% of the shares, which equals 10% of the votes.
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I actually am running Windows 8 and I do like it. I think what MS did to Win7 to make Win8 is stupid and what's been added that is new is barely worth it. But the OS, from a performance standpoint and even usability (once you Google how to close metro style apps, get the charms bar up and how to shut down) is pretty good.
MS simply didn't add anything beyond what Win7 already had which is appealing. I'm happy with Win8 but had I not gotten it for mostly free I would have never switched to it. So the poll with it's 50% seems pretty fair if not low really. Because Win8 is Win7 with some weird additions. If you know one, you know the other. Anybody who says otherwise is simply a bandwagon person who wants to spread hate because this is the internet. And that's not an, "my opinion is different than others" point of view. That is simply a fact. Win8 is Win7 with the metro crap thrown in.
There are a lot of people that like it a great deal.
Yes, if I were being paid by a PR firm to post drivel like this, I would like it, too.
The solution is very simple. Don't buy a Mac if you want to put parts together.
I don't go out and bitch about how BMW forces me to get leather seats and how I have to pay extra for the three letters.
Life is more than that. Learn to enjoy it.
They have the code to put a Windows 7 style interface in 8, they just stripped it out. All it would take is a service pack to put that back in there. They'll slap a new name on it though, like Windows 8 second edition or something, perhaps give it the windows 9 label. The board is probably making plans to get rid of him, they just need to find a replacement and give Balmer a little more rope to hang himself with. They are probably trying to figure out how Gates is going to react to Balmer getting the boot.
They didn't strip it out, they just covered it up. For what reason? We don't know.
yeah, helped fix a laptop for a friend (failed HDD, vista x64), and thought I'd take advantage of the £25 pro upgrade offer on at the moment. Turns out you have to install it onto the exact same drive as the original OS, and that you have to install windows8 from inside the original OS. Since that was not possible, I spent about 4 hours on the phone to MS activation, who agreed the license was valid, and that they should be able to activate it at their end, but everything they tried to do, failed to activate windows 8. Eventually I just got fed up and asked for a refund (which appeared to be a very common request when talking to the person at MS activation). For possibly the first time in my life, I seriously considered installing linux on someone else's computer. The only sticking point was lightroom 4 (which AFAICT, does not work in wine yet, and no, gimp is not a viable alternative). Ended up turning it into a hackintosh instead.
To rub salt into the wound even further, Windows 8 is very much linked to your MS live account, so now I get a daily e-mail from MS explaining yet another hidden feature of the UI (todays was "How to use the start menu") that failed to even work in the first place. Terribly bad GUI aside, the entire experience was the worst software experience I've ever had in 30 years of playing around with computers. For the first time ever, I can actually say that 2013 may finally be the year of the linux desktop (although it will need lightroom 4 working in wine/natively, steam for games, and Open Office as a good-enough-replacement for MS office).
Meh, it follows M$ every second rule. Every second update is completely crap it still generates some income but ultimately what it does is drive interest in the next update. Now take into account M$'s adherence to the stupid customer rule, M$ knows that when they talk about all the great improvements of windows 9 versus windows 8 all the idiots will suck it up without realising it pretty much was windows 7 or windows XP, you know blah blah blah.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Steam for Linux Beta Now Available to All
OpenOffice is as good as dead. Use LibreOffice
I can't commetn here, but outlook not so good
M.
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
Companies can issue some of their stock as non-voting shares - you get a piece of the profits, but no say in the governance of the company. The tiny company that employs me operates that way - I can buy as much non-voting shares as I can afford, but the two founders own all of the voting shares and don't plan to sell, so no matter how much company stock I buy, I have zero say in the governance of the business.
As far as I know, Microsoft does not have non-voting shares, so as you said 10% shares means 10% of the votes. Maybe you already knew that, but I think the_arrow did not.
No, this is not statistics. This is business, where not all shares are created equal. 10% of the shares can easily equal 50%, 60% or more of the vote, depending on how the shares were set up.
You can not only have non-voting shares, you can have super-voting shares, where all the shares vote, but some vote more than others.
I have a free upgrade that I have not installed. What demographic am I? I am perfectly happy with Windows 7 since it has a start button. Windows 8 boot times are a cheat since it is a hibernation mode. Windows 8 is cheap so people can buy stuff from the Windows 8 store. Windows 8 offers no benefits for desktop computing.
That 50% number may well be accurate, however you have to look at it as only 50% of people who tried Windows 8 liked it.
Their marketing department (and management) should view that number as a catastrophe, because with the market share and installed base of Windows, they really should be seeing a number closer to 90%.
Trust me, that 50% number means Microsoft f$cked up. Right now they're on damage control trying to salvage it and get something out of the several years and millions of dollars spent on development.
Remember this is Microsoft we're talking about, every other version of Windows sucks.
Windows 8 as an OS is not bad and pretty much on par with Windows 7 in performance. I like how you can scan your hard disks without scheduling on boot and doing it in dos mode. MS essentials is as good as any commercial ant-virus software on the market. Sorry, don't want to buy an upgrade I don't want to waste hours installing windows 7 than windows 8 on top of it if my hard drive suddenly crashes. The only Windows 8 pro full versions I could find are OEM's on newegg and amazon. The Metro Store has a 3 or 4 things that I use but the majority of the apps are complete crap. I'm using the final evaluation which will expire soon. I will stick with windows 7 for development and gaming but eventually will run it in virtualbox under linux and hopefully steam for linux will have some excellent pc game ports.
Microsoft pricing for single license is still ridiculous and the prices will jump in the $200 range and over for pro upgrade and full pro. Firefox still crapping out on Windows 7 and Windows 8 but on Linux Mint 13 or Ubuntu 12.04 no problems.
I can understand a lot of the hate people are giving Windows 8, but I don't understand all of you guys who, like me, were willing to learn the ins and outs of Linux. Seeing all the hate here makes it seem like learning Windows 8 is like forcing a computer dummy to use Vi for the first time. We're the adaptable ones, and we should be able to make Win8 look just like Win7, if that's what we want.
Of course that doesn't excuse Win8 for all its flaws... But the flaws should only hurt those that don't know how to customize the GUI with 3rd party applications.
I noticed that pretty much all new computers sold at Best Buy can be had only with Windows 8 now. So almost everyone who bought a new PC since around Thanksgiving time has Windows 8 on the new PC, and was counted as an "adopter". In reality, I know of several people who ended up buying a laptop with Windows 8 and who are horrified and want to go back. Fortunately, some vendors will mail a Windows 7 system restore CD if you request.
That's not true. At all.
There are only two kinds of stock (there are more, but for this discussion, only two). Voting and non-voting. All voting stock is the same, 1 share = 1 vote.
Different kinds of stock generally only affect how things like stock exchanges or splits are handled. Some stock has restrictions on when it can be sold, etc.. but when it comes to voting stock, all voting shares are the same.
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Non-voting shares are not sold over the counter, and have no affect on the numbers presented by the SEC.
The company you work for is not a publicly traded company. Non-voting shares in a non-publicly traded company are essentially worthless, except in the case of liquidation of assets.. in which case you would be in line behind everyone else for some of that money.
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Switch to Linux you n00bs.
I don't think that is the issue. Windows 8 is a good OS, just it's nowhere near as good as windows 7, or XP.
But is that VOTING stock or just class B stock? You DO know there is a difference, yes? this is why guys like Zuckerberg and Ellison can control the company even as they sell stock, because they have class A which counts higher when it comes to voting compared to class B or "common" stock.
So that link you have doesn't really tell us either way, because it doesn't list whether those holders have class A, class B, or a mix of the 2.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I looked at the cheap upgrade as well, I was gonna buy a copy and stick it in a corner in case i ran into software in the future that needed Win 8 but the "We tie everything to your account oh and do you have a CC? We have an appstore ya know" was the fucking deal breaker for me. When I took advantage of the Win 7 cheap upgrade i got a nice little green box, no different than the retail upgrade in stores, and on install it asked if I wanted upgrade or clean and since it was a new drive there was no "OMG you gotta have zee Windows previous installed" crap and away it went. I was impressed enough I turned around and bought the family pack and switched the whole household over.
Now they want you to pay nearly double for a fricking disc, it checks for an install so you have to jump through THAT hoop, and as you pointed out its picky as fuck about that, and of course then the final straw about the accounts. I'm sure its so they can try to push you into their appstore but I don't give a fuck, if they have a good appstore I'd use it but I'll be damned if they get me on it by bugging the fuck out of me and tying everything to it which is just a security nightmare. so if my fricking Windows Live I had to set up for Bioshock II gets hacked my fricking desktop is vulnerable too? Fuck that noise.
I'll hang onto Win 7 until/unless games stop being released for it which by then hopefully either ballmer's fat stupid ass will be fired or somebody will have a viable exit strategy for us gamers that doesn't involve a shitty console, maybe Valve will hook up with the Crossover guys so that the DirectX games will work in Linux who knows. All I know is after running Win 8 from CP to RTM waiting for them to fix the obvious stupidity only to see they actually thought it was a good idea I wouldn't take Win 8 on a bet, I'd fricking use that Vista Basic disc i got setting in the shop before i touch Windows 8 again, I hate it THAT much.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Maybe it's not BS. 50% of your users not liking your product is a pretty bad number.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
Sorry but you are wrong and here is why: when looking at the numbers and comparing them to the previous year at the exact same period, which just FYI had an even worse economic outlook than we did this year, computer sales are down by more than 13% and I'm sorry but you don't have THAT big a drop, especially during the run up to Xmas, unless something is REALLY wrong or you have a product people don't want to buy. Even the OEMs are flat footed saying that Win 8 units just aren't selling which is why you see more and more places like Tiger showing Win 7 machines for sale, nobody wants Win 8.
So frankly it doesn't have a damned thing to do with ME or MY opinion, honestly if I wanted to i could put up with the bullshit or just hack the shell, i just don't see enough benefits to put up with bullshit like tying everything to a MSFT Live account or hacking the shell to make it worth fooling with. Nope what this is about is the simple fact that this is the typical user reaction to Windows 8 only she doesn't get frustrated as badly or curse like many of those trying it at the shop did. Hell I got people calling me I haven't heard from in years going "You still got that shop? Yeah see i went to look at Best Buy for a laptop and all they had was that 'weird new Windows' and I REALLY don't like it. Is there any way you can get me one with the 'good Windows' on it?"
It has NOTHING to do with opinion, or taste, it has to do with the fact MSFT put out a Frankenstein mess of an OS, designed for an interface that less than 2% of ALL computers made or even sold in stores even has, and which is NOT intuitive, or discoverable, or in any way easier or friendlier than the product that came before. I'm not the one writing articles like "Windows 8..Yes it is THAT bad" I'm simply pointing out the reasons WHY it is THAT bad, just as I did with Vista. Sadly by SP2 they had pretty much fixed the problems with Vista but people had already moved on, I honestly don't think they can fix Windows 8. Even if they kill the Metro UI you still have everything being tied to a MSFT account, ads in the OS, and a mish mash of ribbonized and non ribbonized programs. Not to mention there are SOME controls you can only get to through control panel in desktop mode and SOME that you can only get through metro so unlike some here I don't think they can just "patch metro away" as they moved too much crap into it already.
Like it or not there isn't gonna be a Windows anymore, you are gonna have Apple and ersatz Apple, MSFT is even announced they are building their own hardware and Surface was just the start, you'll have MSFTPhone and MSFTDesktop and MSFTLaptop, all probably priced even higher than Apple just to cement the fail like they did with Surface pricing compared to iPad.
So while you ARE correct that not as many are buying and NO its not that they are replacing them with cellphones like the press keeps harping about, or with tablets, but the average user just can't stress out even a first gen Core Duo or Phenom X4 you just don't have numbers drop THAT bad unless you have a product that the customer is turned off by, and that is Win 8 in a nutshell.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I can't find it anymore,but I had to laugh when there was a poll awhile ago that said 50% of people who tried windows 8 liked it. Just looking at the sales numbers told you that as BS. When reality and your poll numbers don't match, chances are reality is correct.
They only interviewed people who were still running Windows 8 after a week. The fact that this was less than 0.1% was not disclosed.
I know. That's exactly what I said in my post.
I'm curious, are you not from the US? Supervoting shares are quite rare (and sometimes illegal) outside the US, but they are rather common in the US. In the US, all voting shares are *not* necessarily the same.
Not!
Windows 8 was a failure when it was conceived. It should have been aborted at conception. The big question is is MS has the balls to admit they failed.
Windows 8 in an absolute train wreck.
I am going to design a car specially for microsoft designers to drive. I'm going to switch around the gas and break pedals. Put the wheel on the right side of the car. Put the windshield in back, the rear window on the side, one regular side window, and one side window over the dash, I'm going to weld the trunk shut, and make them have to login while standing on one foot and tapping their head to open the hood. Which when they do manage to open the hood, there will be nothing under the hood but a fat, bloated, proprietary, grinning whino with a bad case of the leaks.
When they complain, I'll tell them to shut up and 'evolve'. This is the future.
"I suck!"
Indeed!, MAC OSX forced Windows 7 to make a leap, becoming the only other big name OS with a hybrid kernel which is on mobile devices from both platforms too. Windows 8 is a massively retarded paradigm shift the wrong way. It seems like a real productivity bottleneck, and that's probably why a server was "accidentally" giving (some would say pushing) free licences out.
Metro is now an app effectively so the smartest thing MS could do is open up the Metro app integration as an APIs with an unencumbered licence and app store (good luck with that!) , so third parties could write their own window managers/environments. That would change things!
I greatly appreciate that you are having a conversation with me instead of just doing the usual Slashdot penis waving dance, but I don't understand your point.
By buying a custom built PC, I got all of the power of an iMac ( in fact the CPU & RAM are still comparable to a modern iMac and many modern PCs ). I got it at a far lower cost and that PC has lasted me for 10 years.
So, I don't see what buying an iMac would have done for me that the custom built PC didn't.
I advise, STRONGLY, all of my non IT-savy family and friends to go Apple, because they will get an easily maintained box that will last with fewer hassles.
However, having used Linux for 14 years that isn't a selling point for me to spend several hundred dollars more, especially with distros in the Ubuntu family.
Does this bring back the old winXP style search? If it does it would be pure gold. Mandatory installation for all new PCs.
Yes, it's nice that the new search is based on Indexing. It's too bad the indexing is awful, glitchy, inaccurate, inconsistent, nigh undocumented, slow, and pretty much broken and not worth implementing over simple network shares let alone a functional enterprise.
Why wouldn't they just ask Gates how he feels about Balmer getting the boot? Invite Gates to coffee and ask for help.
This has gone way, WAY too far, it's no longer an open question whether Microsoft has a clear plan, everybody knows they are now the underdog, slipping further and further away from any chance of dominating the market like before.
Thank Lucifer we have Apple to fall back to. I'm no fanboy, but it's better than nothing for a few years.
Classic shell is not "necessary", you're just a baby that refuses to grow up and get rid of his old blanket.
Any type of hegemony will have awkward repercussions and collateral damage.
Casteism
Currently, many large tech (and non-tech) companies use multiple share classes so that the founders or managers have complete control of the company despite only owning a small piece. Probably the most famous tech company to have this structure is Google. Brin and Page own B shares in Google which have 10 times the voting power as the Class A shares. This gives them the majority of the voting interest despite only owning about 16 percent of the company (by value). Last year, Google introduced Class C shares, which have no voting rights whatsoever. They did this so that they could continue to give stock to their employees without those employees gaining more power in the company.
Other notable companies with similar systems:
Facebook
Broadcom
Ford Motor Company (the family controls 40% of the vote with only 6% of the stock (by value)
Just because someone likes something doesn't mean a concrete sale. I like a lot of things i haven't bought so what does that mean?
Jack of all trades,master of none
I can't wait to finish my boring monotonous work this morning so I can download and install this.
The one thing it has that I want more than anything else is getting the UP button back in Windows Explorer. When I am nine levels deep trying to find a readme file that tells me to go back up several levels to find the file I need to edit, I'd very much like not to remember how to get to it, just to go up up three levels and it be there. To do that with the "address bar" is a bullshit pain and those folders slide around all over the place while I'm trying to click the fuckers and I always click wrong and end up way too high up the hard drive food chain.
I don't know about popular, but Win8 is a far sight better than Vista. ModernUI (aka Metro) interface aside (thanks to Start8), I've encountered far fewer issues with Win8 than I did with Vista. For me, that's what matters most.
It's like the browser wars, where users skipped every other version.
maybe the point is a $500 micro ATX box does about the same job. I've stacked up parts in a virtual basket to give exact same specs as your macintosh. i5 2.9GHz, 8GB ram, 1TB 7200 rpm HDD, and a GTX 650 (same thing as the 660M roughly, but with twice the ram). good 350W PSU. brand name case. That comes in at 494 euros with VAT included. (funnily it's the cheapest i5, cheapest HDD worth buying, lowest amount of ram worth buying and almost the cheapest graphics card worth buying too.)
I downloaded and installed Windows 8 on the 31st December, nuking my HD now.
I have used Microsoft OS's all the way back to MS-DOS 5 in the 80's, apart from the BSOD's that i had through poor drivers with Vista, i have found all incarnations of Windows to be usable and my productivity has never suffered.... Until Win 8.
Maybe 56 hours isn't long enough you may say?, stick with it you may say? 56 hours is 57 hours too long i say! Stick it, is what i say!
Installing Windows 7
Oh and i cant tell you all the reasons it's so terrible but there are "lots", just trust me on that.
putting the command prompt in full screen and changing the Classic UI's colors. Admittedly I have to go down to these points (but I used those features in XP)
Again, to my original point, you can put together a nice v6 engine car that doesn't cost as much as a BMW. So go do it. Why bitch about people buying a BMW?
I also noticed you left out interesting details like noise, form factor, look and feel, a proven IPS panel, you know, all put together in a nice box with an OS that people actually like using. And $199 for the Windows license for your home made box.
As the Dell and HP links showed, when companies try to do the same thing, they cannot reach the price point Apple has. So don't give me the bullshit that Apple is more expensive than an equivalently configured $brandname, because *IT FUCKING IS NOT*. Lenovo doesn't even have anything remotely close to the iMac yet.
But hey, continue talking rot.
I have been saying for years that the problem with Microsoft is Steve Ballmer. Bill Gates and the rest of the MSFT board won't fire him for some reason. I personally would rather have seen incremental improvements to Windows 7 than see what appears to be a complete revamping.
Bull. You have ZERO evidence to support your claim, yet there is lots of evidence that people are buying more and more tablets and phones at the expense of PC's.
I personally know half a dozen people that sold their computers and just use their phone or ipad for all their computing needs. If you only check email or surf the web, there is no reason to own a desktop unless you need a big monitor or physical keyboard (Handicaps, for instance).
Why do you think MS is keen on the tablet and PC market? Because they KNOW that is where people are moving to.
Fact is, most people don't care what OS they use, and I know a lot of people that use Windows 8 without problems but just don't care.
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I think you are mixing a lot of stuff together into one pile.
1) Cost of manufacturing. I highly doubt your custom built machine is remotely like the iMac in terms of manufacturing quality. Which is not to say the custom built machine doesn't have better parts, but the iMac line is built around high cost of manufacturing. Apple's CEO is a manufacturing logistics guy, part of their stock and trade has been ever increasing manufacturing process quality adjustments. You are taking a great deal of the cost of the iMac and treating it like it costs $0. I doubt your custom machine is 12.5 lbs or 6.8 inches in depth, those are both very expensive features. Every screw is better quality and then many of them glued down as well. Something like the Vizio-touch all-in-one is still worse manufacturing but at least in the same ballpark, I think generally goes with slightly better parts and is about the same cost.
2) Any OEM vendor charges you markup on parts. If you build your own you don't pay parts markup. That's starting to change as Apple is becoming their own parts vendor. But for now you have to compare marked up prices for parts to Apple.
I would exclude the personal build your own and compare Apple to a higher quality windows machine. Asus Zenbook vs. Retna. Vizio all-in-one vs. new iMac.... in terms of price comparison.
_____
Now in terms of what an iMac would have done for you, it would have let you run OSX. Unless you like OSX there isn't much reason to run Apple. If you are OK with Linux as a desktop OS then Apple only makes sense for laptops and only if manufacturing quality really matters to you (that's why Linus uses Apple laptops to run openSuse). I like Apple laptops for Linux distributions that are obscure mainly because they are well supported. Ubuntu is well supported on anything, so that's going to matter much if that's is the OS you want to run.
____
Finally my point on 10 years is simple. Apple does not allow you to comfortably use a system for 10 years. Your annual spend has to be higher to make Apple a good purchase.
It took Apple decades to build its rep as a high end brand
My brand new Mac Mini (late 2012 version) won't drive my monitor through a DVI port, even though my laptop will drive it using the same cable! This is both before and after installing the firmware update (a firmware update on a machine just released!) and fully updating the OS. I've never before bought a brand new computer that couldn't turn a monitor on! To my mind, Apple's reputation as a high end brand has just tanked!
That wasn't a pussy, that was Sweaty B's ass right before he threw another chair at M$.
--
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk
Friends do assist M$ addicted friends in committing suicide.
Non-voting shares are not sold over the counter, and have no affect on the numbers presented by the SEC.
I did not know that, thanks for educating me.
I believe the terms of my non-voting shares contract indicates that if the company is sold, I get a piece of the purchase money in proportion to the non-voting shares I hold at the time of the sale. I am also permitted to sell my shares to other employees or purchase shares from other employees. The two fellows that own the voting shares also hold the highest portion of the non-voting shares, so in the event of a sale they get the biggest piece of that pie. Since all of this is worthless unless the company is sold for a hefty price, I mostly ignore my shares except when making pointless contributions to a Slashdot discussion.
It's all goes to the way that the higher management of the company understand what they are managing. In the past (not so long ago) the upper mangement was easily reached by people that grew with the company. Then the MBA management took the places. This happens also in other industries. In my company that is same and we are astonished about the crap that is flowing from the upper levele. They are totally disconected from our industry reality and what is worst they do not seek any support from the specialists that we have and know the industry. They rely only on people like them that are finally just a "yes men" army. .... ... with some bulshit HP "business" line laptops that have the windows 7 license stikers attached even if we are stii using the XP installed.
Look what happens with Nokia, RIM, HP
Balmer is the biggest clown that I saw. He has no understanding what a Pc, tablet or smatphone it is. He have a limited view and because of his power and the army of yes men that are probable his consultants, he believe that if he will declare the shit as being chocolate everybody will buy it.
Unfortunately their business model is still succesful as you don'have too many choices if you are buying a new computer. This is valid for the common users that don't know anything about Computers but it apply to the companies aas well. For instance our company still use XP for all users and last year they start a laptop replacement program for our lenovo t42, t43, t61,x61
Put this and the fact that you want or not (there are very few exceptions of laptops that you can buy wit a free dos or linux) you will buy a windows 8 OEM license. If you are using or not doesn't matter too much. Sooner or later the user base will go up as they don't have a real alternative.
I give you hard data, you return with bullshit. I provide multiple citations backing up my position, you return with anecdotes.
Sorry but until you can return with something other than "my best friend's cousin's gardener sold his PC for a tablet, swear to God!" I think I'm gonna have to go with the hard numbers. Now if you wanted to argue that tablets are taking the little niche that netbooks had? i agree, but I am gonna need something other than "I know some people" to show that any significant number is giving up PCs for tablets.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
And the Windows 7 interface and I will be happy for at least another 4 years, at least until 128 bit computing gets here....if ever.
EVERYBODY gets Metro. Windows 8 has it, Server 2012 gets a dumbed-down variant. Sharepoint 2013 gets the annoying mono-color faux web browser variation of Metro. Office 2013 gets it.
You can't escape, Microsoft is mother, Microsoft is father. Obedience is not enough, you must love Big Ballmer.
I think that's irony, (then) "great" multitasking of Win 3.1 cemented the fascination with Microsoft Windows over competitors. Windows 8 disposed of one of the greatest advantages they ever provided.
Science & open-source build trust from peer review. Learn systems you can trust.
First of all, are you 12 years old? if not then you should probably be informed that the SECOND you start typing "M$" the first thing 90% of the people that read these posts will do is say "douchebag" and pass right on by, so you could have the most insightful post in the world but nobody will give a fuck because you just labeled yourself as this guy aka "basement loser troll".
Second if you would have read my GP post I had already answered that this is NOT the "Star Trek Rule" as the Windows Blue memo makes it clear that as long as Ballmer is in charge there will be NO going back, its gonna be full retard ahead with MSFT making MSFT hardware running MSFT software sold in MSFT stores for a higher than Apple markup, because "God damn it we're better than Apple and we need to get the stock price up!"
Finally you are again wrong if you are referring to Win 7 over Vista, they did a complete gutting of most of the Vista code, new kernel, new memory subsystem, new driver subsystem, even the few things they kept from Vista like Readyboost and UAC got pretty big rewrites. Comparing Vista to 7 is like saying "Well Win98 and 2K3 Server are the same, its made by the same company so anybody who bought it was a sucker" while ignoring the incredible number of changes under the hood. Vista in many ways was WinME, where they had a couple of good ideas that were executed poorly and ultimately ended up with a broken mess whereas 7 like XP took those few good ideas and a bunch of major under the hood rewrites and rebuilds to make a truly solid product. In fact the only other MSFT product I can compare Win 7 to is 2K3 X64 workstation, aka WinXP X64, because in both cases you have a product that is just so much more rock solid than anything they had previously released it just isn't even funny. I have seen plenty of Vista BSODs working on customers machines because Vista screwed itself up but only with XP X64 and Win 7 have I never seen a BSOD that wasn't related to a hardware failure.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
This is all about slashdot spam.
Here are the facts.
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=Windows%20XP%2C%20Windows%20Vista%2C%20Windows%207%2C%20Windows%208
Prediction: Windows 8 will skyrocket past Windows 7 because anyone that uses it can see why, those that "tried it" have opinions that can be ignored.
... it still blows my mind that I saw sooo many review sites before I bought that said "Microsoft cut out the Desktop screen everyone loves, and I can't figure out how to use anything"
All it took for me was the Newegg hardware review guy to day "Seriously? Just hit 'Windows Key+D for desktop, or pin it to your Start Menu, idiots."
>Assuming Microsoft are still around to make Win9 and we haven't all had to make the choice between OSX or Linux
Do you have any idea how much cash the company has? Windows 8 would not have to sell a single copy and Microsoft would be still filthy rich, just from Office sales.
Do you have any idea how much cash Microsoft burns through each year?
If sales of Windows or Office fall significantly, then their profits evaporate pretty quickly, and the banked up cash will go just as fast.
If sales of both Windows and Office fall signficantly at the same time, then that whole process will dramatically speed up, and the cash could be gone in a two or three year timespan.
Read the SEC reports - yes, they make $1B USD/month in profit, they also spend nearly as much to run the business.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
Haven't heard one good thing about Windows 8 yet, even Pirillo seems to be trying hard not to bash it - on tablets even.
Every non-techie who's ran into it absolutely HATES it.
With Vista at least it LOOKED like windows, it simply didn't work. THIS seems to work at least but it is a whole new interface. WTF MS, WTF.
Flappinbooger isn't my real name
If you think Windows 8 sucks, you are too stupid to use a computer. If you worked in my IT department I would fire you....
Want to log in? move your mouse or hit a key...
Want to go desktop...hit the window key
Want to go to back to the Windows start screen... hit the window key...
Looking for a program?
Hit the window key to bring up the start screen (just like the old start menu) use your mouse wheel to scroll through... or better yet... just start typing the first few letters of the app you want.
for example.. want to start word????
[window key] W, O
and voila! you got it!
Its tons better than the old start menu, where if you were looking for something you had to click start.. then click on all programs... then navigate the entries and open folders to finally find what you wanted... or click start.. then click in the find box and then start typing...
Want to create new start folders... just drag an app to an open space on the start screen and drop it.
And this is from a guy who got started on Slackware 1.0
fuggin' morons
Unlike a lot of people, I kind of liked the Metro look and feel and integration. Windows UI is stale and boring. I welcomed a changing in UI thinking and presentation. Even if its not perfect, its refreshing to see some out of the box thinking. But because almost "nothing" is a metro app, everything I do goes back to the desktop, and that's where Win8 blows, unless you know a lot of command line ways of doing things. As a developer, Metro sucks. It is a subset of WPF. So I cannot just "port" an existing WPF app to metro. I'm forced to completely re-do the UI (assuming the rest of the system is architected well). On top of it, in order to develop metro apps, I have to be running VS in Win8--which becomes a real pita when we start talking about upgrading systems with drivers that are not available for Win8 yet.
I've always said English was my second language. Had Romeo and Juliet been written in C, I might have understood it.
For me MS stands for http://www.msaustralia.org.au/, http://www.mssociety.org.uk/, http://mssociety.ca/en/ and http://www.nationalmssociety.org/index.aspx, and will always do so. Also the $ was well known and specific use in M$ languages which is part of why the M$ came about so no not just the greed. So don't forget those societies at this time of year or at any other and dig deep after all for us geek and nerds our minds are pretty much everything. So suck it up 12 year old douchebag ;P (and thanks for enabling me to promote them at this time of year it's been quite some time since the last anal retentive type called me up on M$).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
I never thought it was possible for Microsoft to become even more useless since windows me & vista, but god love you guys you are almost as incompetent as both the uk & us military for implementing useless equipment! Just when windows 7 had pretty much nailed it, you bring in a system that is about as user friendly as a bag of potatoes!!
They are also, or at least used to be, very common in Sweden. Shared was usually divided into A and B shares, with A shares being 10 votes and B shares having one vote.
/ The Arrow
"How lovely you are. So lovely in my straightjacket..." - Nny
Let's be fair. Besides Microsoft's questionable dealings there are also plain old network effects in effect. One reason why Windows is so successful on the desktop is because it's so successful on the desktop.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Thermal runaway doesn't happen until you reach until you reach the tipping point. The catalyst that caused the heat to reach that temperature was their illegal practices. Ergo, your "successful because of (past) success" argument is merely a way of re-framing the situation in terms that imply rather than state the preconditions. In other words you are just saying that it was their illegal practices, but in a different way, that carefully avoids actually saying it.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
No, I explicitly mentioned the illegal practices ("Besides Microsoft's questionable dealings"). All I did was to point out that presently network effects are one reason (but not the only one) why Windows is successful. Fairly or not, it did reach a massive market share on the desktop and that factors into the equation today.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
If I have to chose between OSX and Linux, I will stop using computers.
MS will be around in 5 years, ONLY, as it falls back on a 100% government business model. MS has such an incestuous relationship with the US government already, is just the next logical step.
And the US Gov will pay ridiculous money to MS, so MS can keep paying 10% share-to-dividends-ratio, to keep the stock from fully collapsing. And why not pay any price, to save "a dear friend".. they just make more on a copy machine.
An MS stock collapse is tantamount to a federal reserve note value collapse . Both will happen. Its not a matter of "if" but just "when".