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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.
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....
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.
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.
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.
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 !
When you have to post as AC to say you like Windows 8...
Anyway, I don't get why the few seconds faster boot time is such a big deal. How often do you boot your computer? And Metro is a disorganized full-screen monstrosity with a walled-garden app store and ad platform. It's there for Microsoft to make money ala Apple, not necessarily to make your life better. Saying that it makes you use the keyboard more is the opposite of efficiency when it's supposed to be a visual/touch UI. Design fail?
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.
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.
Dude seriously.. if all that is done with an os is web browsing, email, and the occasional third party app here and there.. ANY os will do. When it comes to getting some real work done you really need the operating system to stay the fk out of the way and be as intuative as possible. As a cloud operations engineer with one of the worlds largest companies, i could never use that os for work... it is a mere toy for the consumer base. Nothing more. Linux Mint will cure the illness... welcome all defectors!!
I also like File History way better than the old backup utility. And drive space lets me group several drives into one virtual drive. So it's got that goin for it, which is nice.
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.
For years windows guys have been telling me how backwards us *nix types were for reliance on the keyboard. Now suddenly to try pump Wndows 8, the keyboard is a great thing.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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?
That's what hibernate is for...
you can hibernate your windows 7 (which is essentially what windows 8 is actually doing, btw.. ) and get nearly the same "boot up" times.
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.
I got called in to help my Mother's barely computer-literate friend with her new super-duper Windows 8 laptop.
Good grief. What a nightmare. What normally takes a few minutes with 7 (slap on Firefox and a few other progs. done) took half a day and I even had to do a factory reset when the lappy decided my user account didn't have enough privilege to run UAC ("Please enter your administrator password" - WHERE?!?!?) The funny part was when I got a call a day later telling me the machine didn't work, it was stuck on "Some picture of a skyscraper". Ah, that would be the lock screen. How do we get rid of that? Errr, move the mouse down to the bottom of the display, click and drag the picture up thus revealing the password box underneath. ARE YOU SERIOUS MICROSOFT!?!??! Yeah, I know this makes perfect sense on tablets. She wasn't using a tablet, so WTF?
Based on this one exposure I'm betting millions of average people will currently be tearing their hair out over the Win 8 monstrosity. Telling them they can download hacks & fixes & third-party tools isn't going to help. Telling them to forget half their Win 7 controls and just remember various keyboard shortcuts isn't going to help, either.
As for the Metro GUI. Good grief. I've been overlaying different-sized windows since the days of my Atari ST. Metro seems to be either full-screen, or a kind of triptych tiling system. Not so handy for anyone with a display bigger than nine inches (i.e. 99.9% of Windows users).
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!
That's because it's for tablets now, that don't even have a keyboard.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Really? Who actually said that? Can you point to any post from some Windows user saying how backwards it was to use the keyboard?
Windows was originally designed so that it could be optionally be used without a mouse, so it had keyboard shortcuts for everything. You can operate menus, move & resize windows, launch programs and even use the ribbon interface with the keyboard. Windows 8's use of the keyboard is nothing new.
And Hyper-V is included, which is nice.
I'd have thought the demographic here was a tad more intelligent to be using Wintel rubbish.
Not sure about more intelligent, but they're certainly more condescending.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
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.
Steve Ballmer. You have some work to do. Get Windows 7 back on track. Happy New Year.
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.
It's a perfect chance for ReactOS, and we won't miss it.
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.
one thing you're missing is the difference between 20 seconds and 1 minute - when you're sat there watching it, that difference is nothing. Its meaningless as you have to sit, bored, like watching paint dry, for the system to start for you. So most people turn it on, and then do something else, like tidy their desk, go for a coffee, say hello to their colleagues. By the time they've done those tasks, the system is fully booted and has been sat waiting for the login prompt to be filled...
and then you have to wait for the system to connect to the network, start up outlook, and download all your emails.... you can get another coffee in that time.
So super-fast boot up times, unless they're of the 5 seconds or so time, is meaningless.
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. :)
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.
"It is a pain the butt to restore your previous operating system."
Say what? If it really is a hassle, then get ye to the internet for many, many tutorials on doing so including making custom install media.
Installing Windows 7 from a clean .iso then using Daz Loader is very low effort and you don't need that machine to be connected to the internet.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
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.
You're not a Linux user, you're an Anonymous Coward. I, OTOH, am I Linux user, and I just realized I could not care less about this story. Good job there's no clickable link to it or I'd have wasted more time reading it.
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
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'!"
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?
Having said that, I agree that the future of M$ is very unclear. Ballmer has fired people who helped to make M$ what it now is. Think of the VP of Server&Tools, who (I would assume) was responsible for their great success with Visual Studio, SQL Server and Windows Server. These are money-spinners.
The lady running Windows now, well I have some serious doubts about her capabilities after Win8.
So, yes, maybe Ballmer is slowly eroding the company because he can't judge technology skills and technologies. All M$ technologies are slowly ageing and will need some replacement in the future. Wholly new technologies such as touch-interface technology means new technology must be developed. Will they be able to do that without a Gates at the controls ?
I would never buy Windows for the datacenter; Linux is just better in many ways. But that guy Ballmer pulled off the trick to get Windows into the datacenter at a massive rate. See Developer Tools&Servers revenue.
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.
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.
The interesting thing about Metro -- like the Ribbon -- is that Microsoft, in fact, did massive amounts of human factors testing. Both changes were made because it actually made people more productive, not because people thought it was making them more productive. Unlike a company like Apple, which can toss whatever new UX paradigm they want out (hello, ITunes 11?), Microsoft can't. They have a hundred billion dollars a year worth of enterprise contracts they need to protect. Microsoft doesn't make changes like that lightly -- when you have a half billion install base of something like Office, you don't take that risk without absolute hard scientific proof. Time proved that out with the ribbon, and I wouldn't bet against it with Metro for touch apps.
*woosh*
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".
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!
....anyone wanting Windows 8. Terrible.
...Steve
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
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
I upgraded my WHS 2011 to Windows 8 because of drive spaces...it is working great... I just had to run a few commands on my server and clients to keep the mapped drives from disconnecting.
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.
..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.
Vista was a total pig, mostly due to bad hardware support by Microsoft's missteps. Windows 7 is just fine, especially better support for new hardware and much better security. There are all kinds of issues with XPs age and integration of features that just didn't exist when it first came out.
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
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.
Sadly Windows 8 requires PAE and NX bit, which depends on PAE and is found on some models of late Pentium 4, 64bit AMD processors and VIA CPU from some model onwards.
So don't buy it. Also, thank Intel for leaving out PAE in your processor, it's an oddity maybe due to a hardware bug, as PAE works on Pentium pro/2/3/4.
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.
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.
No, you just press any key and the skyscraper slides up...
Metro is rubbish though. Use Classic Shell, then Windows 8 works better than Windows 7.
.
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
Complaints about the command line fall into this category, and why would an interface made for touch also be so dependent on a keyboard to actually be usable??
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.
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.
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
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
You should try PC-BSD. It's really a true FreeBSD with a great innovation called PBI (it just install packages like you do on Mac or Windows).
If you need anything else there's the famous ports, except that now FreeBSD has a binary package manager for apps , e.g., like apt-get. See also pkgng - next generation package management for FreeBSD.
(NB: binary system upgrades was made possible years ago).
PS: Right now, packages are on hold because of the recent security incident, so only ports are active (they're source files). BTW, before any Linux fanboy says anything, shall I remind them how many times Debian has been hacked?
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
I got 5 second boot times with Fedora on a 6-core Athlon and SSD that I built a couple years ago. My ancient single-core (2004-ish) 1-gig laptop (with new SSD) boots Linux Mint in about 15 seconds.
MS has some work to do yet.
That I'm right, and you don't like it, doesn't mean I'm a troll.
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"
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...
On: 70W
Off: 0W
S3 Suspend: 2W
If the security risk of leaving your machine powered on is a serious concern, you should be using laptop with systemd and a fast SSD and keeping it in a tamper-evident safe. You might also consider potting an ultrabook in thermally-conductive epoxy.
Also if you can still read this there's quite a good topic about Mint on PAE there.
You're not complelety left in the cold you have Mint 13 for a start (the Xfce version is excellent and not ugly), you're good to go for years with it ; then you have Mint LMDE which doesn't suffer of Ubuntu decisions and doesn't even require i686 to run.
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=117368
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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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.
What's going to help is them getting a touchscreen so those controls feel intuitive.
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.
Because obviously, nobody that isn't a shill could possibly like Windows 8. Therefore, if you like Windows 8, you must be a shill.
Think much of your opinion, do you?
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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.
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 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.
What!???!!! Windows 8 is exactly the same as Windows 7 as far as slapping on new programs. I just put Firefox, Chrome, Paint.Net, Adobe Reader and several other programs on my mom's brand new Windows 8 net top and it took about 20 minutes. ZERO PROBLEMS. The UAC is the same as in Windows 7. If you're having an issue with that it's not a Windows 7 vs. Windows 8 issue. The lock screen does not require you to use the mouse at all. Just hit Enter (or any other key) and the image slides up by itself revealing the password box. In fact, if she just hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete like she would do on Windows 7 it would have worked as well. If you would have had any issues doing these same tasks on Windows 7 you would have just worked through them. Because it's Windows 8 you blame the new OS.
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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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 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.
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.
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.
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)
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.)
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.
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
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.
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.
Yep. I replaced a 1st gen HP WHS that had been doing a great job for many years with drive spaces. He was a good server. Felt a bit sad powering him off at the end.
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.
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.
I missed the news where Microsoft is supplying touchscreen's for free to every Window 8 victim. Could you point me to it?
thanks
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
They don't. New OS means new new equipment has been standard for a very long time. Microsoft has downplayed this, particularly when they allowed Vista to ship with lower system requirements. And I think they should have made Window 8 touchscreen semi-mandatory. Pretending that Windows 8 works well on legacy hardware was bad.
That being said, the press on Windows 8 was pretty clear it was touch screen mandatory. You upgrade your OS upgrade your system to work with it. Microsoft doesn't owe you new hardware.
Microsoft has downplayed this, particularly when they allowed Vista to ship with lower system requirements
Ok, so people should pay for Microsoft's mistakes. Got it, shill.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Despite "shill" I'm going to try one more time to reason. Microsoft is the OS vendor that people choose for their systems. When the OS vendor upgrades that frequently means people have to upgrade their hardware. That's always been the case both with Microsoft and everyone else.
People aren't paying for Microsoft's mistakes, they are paying for the upgrade. If they want to be on a keyboard / mouse / no touchscreen system Microsoft sells one, Windows 7.
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.
Mistake :
Microsoft has downplayed this, particularly when they allowed Vista to ship with lower system requirements
Surely mistake is the kindest explanation for this.
Paying : having to buy a touchscreen, using funds from one's own pocket? If this is not paying, nothing is.
For : the causal relationship is obvious.
Shill : you are trying to deny such clear facts, shill is the kindest description you can receive by this. Less kind ones could be "idiot" or the like.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
>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
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
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
Hi, APK. Nice to see you.
That wound must really smart, for you to still be licking it after 18 months.......
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
APK has multiple personalities.
And they're all mentally unstable, and *desperate* for approval from a bunch of people who he claims to be better than.
Weird how that works, isn't it?
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
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)