Microsoft Releases Internet Explorer 10 For Windows 7

An anonymous reader writes "Internet Explorer 10 for Windows 7 is out. Windows 8 may suck but now you can at least enjoy (most of) that version's Internet Explorer. IE10 for Win7, originally not planned, has seen the light of day after all — four months after it debuted in Windows 8. It is available via Windows Update as an optional update; however, if you've already installed a pre-release version, it will be updated automatically as an 'important' update. IE10 on Win7 requires a platform update to bring some Windows 8 APIs to the more mature Windows, and it will not feature embedded Adobe Flash as the Windows 8 version does (use the plug-in version from Adobe, as usual, instead)."

Comments

Actually... I'm glad.

[Kenja]

I have to do compatibility testing and dont want to have to install Windows 8, even on a VMWare image.

Re:Actually... I'm glad.

[geminidomino]

Sad to say, but you probably still will.

If you expect the same versions of the same software to behave identically on different OSes, then the shining glory days of your web development career are still ahead of you.

Incidentally, does IE still have a complete mental meltdown when talking to no-cache servers over SSL?

Re:Actually... I'm glad.

[BLToday]

I thought the "embedded" Flash of IE is similar to Chrome's embedded Flash. Meaning Microsoft maintains its own build of Flash like Google maintains its own Flash. So it's up to Microsoft to fix any security issues and not rely on Adobe to release a patch to the consumer. So it could be a good thing like Chrome or a terrible thing like IE6.

Re:Actually... I'm glad.

[infogulch]

I'm thinking "embedded" actually means "included", like how chrome included flash player instead of using the plugin version.

This is a good thing since updates to flash player happens at the same time as updates to the browser (in the case of IE, it's handled by windows update) and it's easier to update and therefore more likely for critical flash updates to be applied.

Not sure how different "embedded" vs plugin is for security.

Re:Actually... I'm glad.

[filthpickle]

You probably use FF because you just like it more in general. But in case anyone wants to know.

Type chrome:plugins in the address bar to open the Plug-ins page.
On the Plug-ins page that appears, find the "Flash" listing.
To enable Adobe Flash Player, click the Enable link under its name.
To disable Adobe Flash Player completely, click the Disable link under its name.

Re:Actually... I'm glad.

[t4ng*]

I never understood why Microsoft, with all its code signing, frameworks, and what-not, never opened up an API for Windows Update so there could be a single update system instead of every OEM and software company piling on their own update systems. Seems simple...

1. Register application and its update url with Windows Update API.
2. Windows API checks code signing, rejects invalid and unsigned code.
3. Windows Update updates all code-signed software on system.
4. ...
5. Profit?

Ah! Now I see why it hasn't been done!

Re:Actually... I'm glad.

[omnichad]

You mean the Windows 8 app store? They have that. Yes, it's separate from OS updates, but it's centralized and drm-laden as you imagined.

Re:Actually... I'm glad.

[kimvette]

I'm loathe to admit this, but Windows 8 + classic shell isn't terribly bad.

Re:Actually... I'm glad.

[recoiledsnake]

I never understood why Microsoft, with all its code signing, frameworks, and what-not, never opened up an API for Windows Update so there could be a single update system instead of every OEM and software company piling on their own update systems. Seems simple...

1. Register application and its update url with Windows Update API.

2. Windows API checks code signing, rejects invalid and unsigned code.

3. Windows Update updates all code-signed software on system.

4. ...

5. Profit?

Ah! Now I see why it hasn't been done!

Code signed by who exactly?

The problem is this in a nutshell:

1) Bonzibuddy releases version 1, a great clean freeware app with great smileys that everyone wants.
2) Registers with the Windows API and pushes updates regularly
3) Some beancounter at BonziBuddy says we need to include spyware and toolbars to make money so they include it in a new update
4) User uses Windows Update to update Bonzi Buddy, ends with 3 tray icons with notifications, 2 toolbars and changes to home page and the hosts file pointing Google.com to Ask.com and Safari set as the default browser.
5) User blames Windows Update and Microsoft for spoiling their system

Unless Microsoft started inspecting every single update for spyware etc. this won't make sense, but then everyone will claim this is discrimination and talk about user rights to load hundreds of toolbars onto their machine. AKA cluster****.

Now you understand why Windows does not provide an Update API for Windows update except drivers and it's own programs and why they came with the Windows 8 store but pretty much mostly for heavily sandboxed applications that cannot change the rest of the system?

Re:Actually... I'm glad.

[jader3rd]

never opened up an API for Windows Update so there could be a single update system instead of every OEM and software company piling on their own update systems.

If an update comes from Windows Update and it does negative things to the box, people blame Microsoft. Why would they increase the probability of this happening? They want Windows Update to only deliver safe and advisable updates.

Re:Actually... I'm glad.

[DarkOx]

Simple Microsoft (rightly so) does not trust ISVs to keep control of their private key. What's harder standing up your own update server for $APP working out its protocol (probably simple) and making the DNS point to your rogue box; or breaking in once swiping their private key (probably left on some internet connected machine by and moron or on some code monkeys laptop he left on the bus), pushing your signed malicious update to Microsoft from the coffee shop two states over?

Re:Actually... I'm glad.

[squiggleslash]

Doesn't happen under Android, why would it happen under Windows? I'd assume that whether Microsoft examines every binary or not, they'd require anyone using the feature agree to a set of terms and conditions (with penalties for non-compliance) anyway.

Re:Actually... I'm glad.

[squiggleslash]

Thank you for not giving a single example of a piece of legitimate software being replaced by a piece of malware from the same company via Google Play.

I'm impressed by your inclusion of the first one actually: not only is it not an example of the type of thing we're talking about, but it's not even installable via Google Play. One might almost think that you simply googled for "Google Play malware" and pasted the first four stories, without actually checking to see if they're relevent.

Re:Actually... I'm glad.

[recoiledsnake]

I'm impressed by your nitpicking on the first link while failing to address the bigger point.

What is "legitimate" and what is considered not "legitimate" is not even a fine line, it's a complete gray gradient. Even Apple is struggling with the App Store while trying to define it.

For example, newer versions of uTorrent(for Windows) contain ads and contain installations for toolbars etc while the older ones didn't.

As for an example of someone having trouble with updated software on Android, here's one http://androidforums.com/android-lounge/566414-installed-my-update-now-im-bombarded-app-spam.html

I am having a really hard time imaging that you think that this won't be a problem on Windows since a lot of freeware suddenly turns into adware, and worse yet, spyware.

mistake in article

[Anonymous Coward]

IE7 on Win7 requires a platform update
should be
IE10 on Win7 requires a platform update I think

Re:mistake in article

[wonkey_monkey]

It's when they do that announcement that has you running halfway across the station because your train isn't coming in where you thought it was.

So?

[alen]

last decade when active X came out and the promise of applications in IE, i thought it was cool.
for years nothing happened except for flash

i'm perfectly happy with chrome now and web apps like feedly, evernote and others. IE is still in the stone age of the internet where you have to visit a web site to read the content

Re:So?

[kwerle]

Holy crap! County yourself lucky.

I had to wrangle with websites that used activex controls even though they could/should have been javascript. What a freakin' nightmare. Thank goodness it seems to have come to an end.

This is why people hate MS

[h4rr4r]

Artificially limiting what versions of the OS can run their other software is a huge annoyance of windows. There is no reason why this and newer DirectX could not be back ported to XP.

Re:This is why people hate MS

[vux984]

Artificially limiting what versions of the OS can run their other software is a huge annoyance of windows.

And OS X.

Re:This is why people hate MS

[avandesande]

They are ending support for XP in one year. Does it make sense to port software to XP?

Re:This is why people hate MS

[baka_toroi]

Is Debian 2.2 still receiving updates? (It's not) Then why are you expecting Microsoft to still provide updates to XP? I mean, I really dislike MS as a company, but this kind of complaint is just plain and utterly retarded.

Re:This is why people hate MS

[h4rr4r]

I can still build software for 2.2 if I want. I could backport any fix I like.

I am not actually expecting them to backport something to XP, just pointing out that until recently they held IE10 from Windows 7 for no good reason.

Re:This is why people hate MS

[operagost]

I'm pretty sure that if you have source code and a compiler for Windows, you can still build things for XP.

Re:This is why people hate MS

[sjames]

The funny thing is that everyone else manages to produce a modern browser without altering the underlying OS to do so. That's why the latest and greatest Firefox, Chrome, and Opera run on anything XP and later but IE versions are segmented.

Yet MS claims that they do not leverage their unique level of control over the Windows OS to benefit their non-OS products. Things like using secret un-published APIs or hacking on the APIs to benefit their other software exclusively...

Re:This is why people hate MS

[avandesande]

Does Red Hat or Apple support a 10 year old OS? Do any open distros do this?

Re:This is why people hate MS

[alen]

that's hot fixes and patches, just like MS

who is writing new software for 10 year old Linux kernels or distros?

Re:This is why people hate MS

[omnichad]

What about Siri? Apple certainly did restrict older devices. All it requires is a microphone and the ability to upload a recording to a server. And they pretended it used advanced technology on the phone itself. It wasn't even until a later phone that they actually improved the microphone to work well with Siri.

Re:This is why people hate MS

[omnichad]

Except that MS considers the OS to include the graphics drivers and drawing API and window compositing. IE10 was specifically written around the more modern compositing system in Windows 7 and up. Then they decided not to support Windows 7, because they wrote specifically to a few API's new to Windows 8 (for probably no good reason). And now they are backporting some of the updates that makes Windows 8 an upgrade into Windows 7.

It's not magic to go back and support XP. It's a complete rewrite of the rendering system. XP didn't use accelerated compositing. And to be honest, a web browser needs a speedy compositing system more than the rest of the OS combined. HTML is a complicated mess, but it works nicely.

Re:This is why people hate MS

[vux984]

Wrong.

How is it "wrong"? How is the fact that itunes 11 won't install on Leopard in any way even the slightest bit different from what Microsoft is doing? Both companies just want to move on and not support the old stuff.

Apple doesn't artifically limit it.

Yes, actually they do. Hell there have been OS X upgrades that they have simply DECIDED not to let run on older Apple hardware.

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/26562/leopardassist

LeopardAssist is a simple tool to install Leopard on older, unsupported Power Macs.

"It bypasses the 867 MHz processor check in the Leopard installer to allow systems that don't meet the requirements to complete installation. It achieves this by temporarily faking the clock speed in the device tree, changing it to 933MHz, and then launching the Leopard Installer. No modified Leopard DVD's, no hardware hacks or tweaks, just a one-time run application. (Much like XPostFacto)"

It doesn't get to be any more of an artificial limit than that. 900MHz = "Ok" 800MHz = "No you can't install it".

There are a number of other similar OSX upgrade related jerk moves like this over the years.

What could be more artificial than that?

They make it clear they move on and don't support old stuff because that's what they want to do not because it's physically impossible.

Same as microsoft.

Microsoft doesn't want to support directX on XP. They said so. Nobody ever claimed it would be "impossible". Ditto for Internet Explorer. They could support IE10 on XP but they don't want to, and said so. But at least in those cases it would be actual work to get them running on the older system.

Apple is the only one that completely artificially blocks you from running new software on old OSes, or new OSes on older hardware. Safari 5 was artificially exclusive to Tiger. Itunes restrictions have also been pretty artificial. I think my favorite is itunes because you needed the latest itunes to support new iphones, but itunes only supports the latest macs.

My brother got burned by an iphone, forcing him to update itunes, forcing him to update his OSX, forcing him to buy a new computer. And he wasn't running a decrepit old computer either; it was meeting his needs just fine.

It was rather ironic that itunes supported Windows XP PC which came out years before his Mac computer. (Granted it required XPSP2... but XPSP2 is a free upgrade that worked on any computer that ran XP. vs OSX updates which were not free and which do not run on any Mac made in 2002 onwards with nothing more than a (optional) ram upgrade.

Re:This is why people hate MS

[sjames]

Firefox, Chrome, and Opera manage to run on XP, Vista, and Win7 just fine.

Fully agreed that the deep integration, particularly the way they did it was bad. That doesn't explain why a newer browser that's not doing any of that won't work when everyone elses' newer browser that doesn't do that works just fine.

Re:This is why people hate MS

[LordLimecat]

For the record, "10 year old kernel" would be 2.4.

So "yes, but only embedded folks".

Can we have the story with the additude?

[jellomizer]

Ok you guys dislike Windows 8, we know. You guys hated Windows 3.1, 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP, Vista, and 7 when it came out too. When windows 9 comes out you guys are going to go why change Windows 8 windows 9 add whatever features that makes my life so much harder. This will be the version people will finally shift to Linux in droves.

Re:Can we have the story with the additude?

[squiggleslash]

No. Most of those versions of Windows were not hated "when they came out".

Win 3.1 was massively groundbreaking at the time, a huge improvement on 3.0, itself the first version of Windows to be taken seriously. People started to seriously dislike it as time went by, with its major memory problems, and as systems that had superior UIs but inferior featuresets (such as Mac OS) started to catch up, but at the time it was launched? It was loved.

95, ditto.

98? I thought it was meh, and by that point the Microsoft vs Netscape war was on, with Linux starting to get taken seriously. Still, people who liked Windows liked it.

Me? Yes. That one you're correct about, people hated it when it came out.

2000? No, that was widely loved. XP? Mixed reception, as it was the first consumer version of NT (good), but also introduced everything from the ugliest UI since Windows 3.1 to "Product activation".

Vista. Yes, That one you're correct about. But that was based upon user reviews. (Personally I didn't think Vista was that awful, but...)

7? No. Widespread rejoicing as almost everything that was wrong about XP was fixed. There were even die-hard GNU/Linux users who were willing to run it. Even I like 7.

8? Yes. That one you're correct about. But that's based upon user reviews.

So, basically, out of the eight versions of Windows you mention, three were panned "When they came out", three were widely praised, and two had mixed verdicts. Even on Slashdot.

Re:Can we have the story with the additude?

[Runaway1956]

"If people hate Windows 8 so much, why do they even bother commenting on it, "

Apparently you have failed to notice, that the things we hate the most about Win8 are also being adopted by OTHER operating systems.

We bitch, we moan, we threaten and cajole, we even develop new desktop environments in rebellion against the metro-cloud thing. Not only are we not going to use the damned thing, but WE WANT EVERYONE TO KNOW WHY!!

Does that help you to understand?

Re:Can we have the story with the additude?

[jonadab]

> Most of those versions of Windows were not hated "when they came out".

Several more of them were than you want to admit. Windows 95 and 98 both got a lot of negative press at the time, and Windows XP was almost universally panned as *horrible* until SP1 came out. (Granted, it got better press than Windows Me. Art Modell got better press than Windows Me.) As for Seven, all the people who had upgraded to Vista jumped on Seven like college boys on free pizza, but among the overwhelming majority who were still using XP, reception of Seven was rather tepid for the first few months.

The bottom line is, a lot of people don't upgrade to new versions of Windows while they're still new. This hasn't changed, and it likely won't change in the near future.

Re:Can we have the story with the additude?

[DragonWriter]

Really? Have you guys even used Windows 8?

Yes.

It's virtually exactly the same as Windows 7.

No, its not.

Even the hated "start screen/new UI/Metro" performancs exactly the same as the Win 8 start menu for the majority of people that use it

Assuming you mean Win7 start menu (there is no Win8 start menu), this is just wrong. It doesn't work at all the same.

1. Click the lower left of your screen (Windows 7 and 8)
2. Type the first 3 or 4 letters of the program you want to run (Windows 7 and 8)

The vast majority of people I know that use the Start Menu don't use click-and-type; the majority use click-and-click, and the minority that type use Start-key-and-type. But, yes, on the level you describe, there are similarities.

The difference is that the Win8 UI mechanism is visually different in a distracting way (and it goes beyond the menu, since for many tasks you end up using a mix of Win8 UI and traditional desktop UI apps, including for basic configuration.) I was a fan of lots of the principles of the Metro UI design language when it was published, but the actual Win8 implementation -- especially the way the desktop and Win8 UIs are combined on desktop systems -- is a big loss from the more consistent UI of Win7. Its possible that its a waystation on the road to an improved consistent UI in Win9 or later, but that remains to be seen.

Re:Can we have the story with the additude?

[shugah]

I don't hate Windows 8, I just don't see any compelling reason to switch from Windows 7. In fact, the lack of compelling reasons to upgrade is probably Microsoft's biggest business challenge going forward.

I do consulting work and have to work with, and share files and working environments with clients. My previous laptop was a Dell XPS M1330 which I downgraded to Windows XP Professional. I hated Vista and continued to use Windows XP until last June when I replaced my laptop with a Lenovo W520 running Windows 7 Professional. I've played around with Windows 8 a bit - my son's computer has it, but I don't see anything that would cause me to update my laptop that is less than a year old. Likewise with MS Office. I used 2003 for the longest time, and quite frankly, would have been content to continue using it except for 2 reasons. 1) Clients started providing materials in MSO 2007 formats, and 2) I upgraded my old versions of Visio and MS Project to 2010, and it caused instability and incompatibility when embedding Visio and Project objects in Word 2003 and Powerpoint 2003 documents.

The switch from Windows XP to Windows 7 was relatively transparent. The switch from Office 2003 to Office 2010 wasn't too difficult. I don't find the ribbon quite so annoying anymore and it it nice to be able to Save As PDF rather than printing to a virtual PDF driver. I don't know what or when the next MS Office release is, but I can't see myself upgrading unless they change file formats again, and client documents force me to upgrade. Windows 8 is a whole new UI, and from what I have seen of it, I'm decidedly meh on the whole thing. I don't have (and have no plans to get) Windows Surface tablet - I have a Samsung tablet and an iPad2, so I don't see much benefit in a unified UI. Windows 9 is due in 2015 (if not delayed) - that is probably about the time frame I will need to replace my laptop, so I'll defer the decision until then. Hopefully by then, third parties will have a Windows 7 compatibility shiv for Windows 8 as I am usually loath to adopt versions of Windows prior to the first service pack.

Re:Can we have the story with the additude?

[Opportunist]

It's not so much hate, it's simply "why bother?" At the very least, very, very few of the Windows versions that came out were a "must have" the day they hit the street. Most matured first, and after much maturing they became useful.

Win3.1: It was something new, and it was something very useful to people who couldn't memorize CLI commands, but face it, it gobbled away a lot of the very precious 640k most programs NEEDED to run. It wasn't even useful as a launch platform, but programs written for it went ... well, they went. I almost said went fine. Still, for its time it was serving the purpose, but it was of little use to me.

95: 95 sure WAS a step ahead, but again, in the beginning, it was mostly a "what for?" thing. Few programs were "for 95", but it sure did run Windows programs much smoother than 3.11 did. Since I had few 3.11 programs, my use for it was pretty limited, considering that I had to boot into the DOS-Mode it (luckily) had more often than not. Still, over time, it became very useful, but only after programs appeared that made use of it.

98: 98 was the working version of 95. Especially in the networking area it sure was a huge leap ahead. 98 was actually one of the few versions that I didn't ask "what for?" but got it instead. Funny enough, its big advantage over 95 was mostly "invisible", because what set them apart was not the surface but actually the inner workings.

ME: ME was a solution desperately looking for a problem, and in their infinite wisdom MS made ME the problem so people could start looking for a solution instead. This was the true "what for?" moment in the development of Windows, because not even after it was out a while it became more useful than its predecessors.

2k: 2k was groundbreaking. It was, as far as I'm concerned, the ONLY OS MS ever made where there was simply no reason to ask "what for". It had its right to exist right from its inception. It combined the stability of the NT line with the compatibility of the 9x line. Seeing how this was also the time when security actually started to become an issue, there was no reason to tardy.

XP: Another initial "what for" that gradually earned its right to exist. In its early stage, it was pretty much 2k with little useful add onto it. Its useful features only became more prominent as they became more widespread.

Vista: Vista is IMO still waiting for its reason d'etre, as is 7 (and considering how I deem 7 the final version of Vista, I will lump them together). So far I couldn't identify any features in Vista or 7 that XP didn't provide sufficiently, aside of arbitrary compatibility issues that could easily be backported if MS so pleased.

And finally Win8 may be useful on a tablet, but so far I didn't see any features that would convince me that I'd want it on my desktop. It's not "worse" than 7, mind you, but the eternal MS question applies to this one as much as to nearly every version before:

"What for?"

Re:Can we have the story with the additude?

[recoiledsnake]

GP is talking about summaries and +5 insightful Slashdot posts.

7? No. Widespread rejoicing as almost everything that was wrong about XP was fixed. There were even die-hard GNU/Linux users who were willing to run it. Even I like 7.

Perhaps you missed the FUD campaign with faked benchmarks that Slashdot lapped up against Windows 7?
Or the stories about how it was horrible?

A refresher, go read the summaries and comments:

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/02/16/2259257/draconian-drm-revealed-in-windows-7
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/02/11/1735210/anti-piracy-windows-7-update-phones-home-quarterly
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/01/30/1437233/if-windows-7-fails-citrix-not-linux-wins
http://it.slashdot.org/story/09/09/08/1345247/windows-7-reintroduces-remote-bsod

One of the faked benchmark articles http://tech.slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&type=story&sid=10/02/18/0429258

The big reveal http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/02/21/2329249/windows-7-memory-usage-critic-outed-as-fraud

It's funny to see the modded up posts on Slashdot on given stories. Comparing Windows to Linux or OS X? Windows absolutely sucks and everyone has or is moving away from it. Windows N vs. Windows N-1 ? N-1 is suddenly the best OS ever and version N sucks horribly.

Re:Can we have the story with the additude?

[Miamicanes]

> Windows 95 and 98 both got a lot of negative press at the time,

Are you kidding? When Windows 95 came out, it was like god himself opened up the skies while everyone yelled, "it is good". Stores had launch parties at midnight, and there were lines out the door of people buying it like twinkies & toilet paper after a nuclear attack, along with pretty much ANYTHING that had the number "95" printed on the box.

People bitched about 98 because ActiveDesktop made your shiny new 60-100MHz Pentium crawl like a 33MHz 486SX. For years, Win95 OSR2 was the gold standard against which everything was judged, especially if your USB needs began and ended with "mouse" (95OSR2 could deal with USB mice, though I don't remember whether it was 'out of the box', or 'by hand-copying a few DLLs ripped from a 98 system').

Win2k Pro was either the best or worst OS Microsoft has ever made, and your opinion depends almost entirely upon whether you cared about using software and hardware that was supported by NT Workstation 4. If you (like me) came from NT4W, it was a gift from ${deity}. If you cared about running "Pooh's Alphabet Adventure" from 1993 on your old PC, it sucked.

People's opinions of XP were pretty much their opposite opinion of Win2k. People who loved Win2k's compromise-free perfection hated XP's compromises made in the name of legacy compatibility (especially its endless reboots for everything). People who loved Win95OSR2 and hated Win2k loved XP's compatibility and prettyness. Most of the Win2k camp grudgingly ended up with XP 2-3 years later, when XP's superior SMP won them over, and Win2kSP3 or SP4 made Win2k need reboots as often as XP, anyway.

Everyone hated Vista, or at least had a grudging love-hate relationship that left them feeling like a battered spouse. I loved the real symlinks, but hated its video driver dysfunction. It was my All in Wonder 128 Pro's deathblow.

Then came Windows 7. Ahhh. Flawless perfection, especially once I discovered that Win7/64 requires signed drivers, but I can sign OTHER people's binary drivers MYSELF with my own self-signed certificate & Windows will quit nagging and leave me alone to install them as I please (this is a big, huge deal for anyone who does embedded development, especially anything that involves a legacy parallel port).

Windows 8? Endless suck. I suspect that, like 98(SE) with 98Lite to make it tolerable (98Lite removed Active Desktop & basically let you have 98's guts with 95OSR2's much faster Explorer), I'll probably end up with 8 eventually... but I have zero desire to put myself through Win8's misery just to make it tolerable. Plus, I'm still hoping that Microsoft will see the light, and quickly release Windows 9... giving us back Aero Glass, and allowing us to apply the translucent-titlebar effect to the ENTIRE WINDOW when it's being dragged. Assuming, of course, that Microsoft is willing to compromise and let us HAVE multiple windows again, instead of turning "Windows 8" into "Window 9" (no "s").

Truth be told, Vista briefly pushed me over the edge to Ubuntu. Ubuntu's then-dysfunctional handling of dynamic multiple monitor configurations on a laptop killed it for me, but apparently Linux/Xfree86 *finally* fixed that problem sometime around 2009 or 2010. Early in the Vista era, I used Ubuntu 6... right around the time Compiz became official, and booting a laptop configured to use monitor #2 as the primary desktop meant having to boot into single-user mode and hand-edit xinetd.conf (I think... it was a few years ago) to put it back to single-monitor with laptop = main display. Oh, and circa 2007 or so, Linux's handling of multiple cores with non-SMP-aware apps basically sucked. The prevailing attitude was, "If the application's author wanted to make use of multiple cores, he should have made it properly multithreaded", as opposed to "application authors are lazy, so make the OS itself as aggressively multithreaded as possible so that even single-threaded apps kind of benefit from multiple cores by virtue of their implicit library calls". From what I've read, it was kind of a kernel-level holy war between the purists and pragmatists, but the pragmatists won, and Linux is now about as good at faking SMP support in single-threaded apps as Windows is.

Re:Can we have the story with the additude?

[Miamicanes]

It depends. Plenty of us have had brief love affairs with Linux at one time or another, before discovering that the grass on the other side of the fence had clumps of dogshit strewn around, too. Until fairly recently, Linux sucked at handling laptops that were occasionally connected to second displays (especially if you wanted to use the external display as your primary display in an adhoc manner). Likewise, Windows has historically done a MUCH better job of making sure that even apps that are oblivious to SMP and multithreading benefit to some degree from having multiple cores and CPUs. Windows might be bloated, but KDE & Gnome (not to mention Xfree86) make Windows Explorer look like hand-tuned assembly language at a Scandinavian demoscene conference. On the other hand, Windows' networking (especially pre-7) had so many single-threaded chokepoints, and so many things that ran into them (especially Explorer), that Windows has become practically *unusable* on a true single-CPU single-core system without even hyperthreading to fake it.

Truth be told, I occasionally wonder whether the ultimate pushback to Windows might be a full-blown port of KDE or Gnome to Windows, in a way that allowed it to become Windows' primary desktop shell... kicking Metro to the curb, and acting as the primary window manager for Windows ITSELF. On one hand, Microsoft would still make money from licensing Windows. On the other hand, Microsoft would lose control over their own platform's look and feel. Since KDE & Gnome are free, all it would really take is one or two popular apps that required it, and the ability to run without causing compatibility problems with "normal" win32/64 apps.

This isn't entirely a new idea... Window Blinds kind of started it years ago by being one of the first/only Explorer alternatives/enhancements in history. If someone could leverage the 70% or so of KDE or Gnome that would be relevant to Windows, Microsoft would be *hating* life. Remember, Explorer/Metro might be firmly enmeshed within Windows, but so was Internet Explorer... and Firefox eventually motivated roughly half of Windows users to kick IE to the curb anyway. The key is to enhance and extend Windows, without forcing users to burn bridges behind them. Firefox duplicated functionality from IE, but did it in a way that left IE itself unharmed (just ignored and unloved). If KDE or Gnome could pull off the same feat, it would be a HUGE blow against Microsoft's "Platform Power"

Think about it for a moment... how many kernel-level things about Windows 8 are truly intolerable? Or driver architecture? Windows 8's suckiness is almost entirely due to its UI and window manager. Dump them for open-source alternatives, and we can have our cake & eat it too. Now, we just have to get Miguel de Icaza on board with our little scheme to corrosively topple Microsoft's power by "embracing and extending" Windows in ways beyond Microsoft's own control ;-)

not so...

[Chirs]

Like star trek movies the consumer versions of Windows tend to alternate between good and bad.

98 was good, then ME sucked
XP was good, but Vista sucked
Win 7 was good, but Win 8 sucks

Windows 2000 was good, but was more of an enterprise OS so it doesn't count for the good/bad cycle.

I actually almost like Windows 8

[ilsaloving]

It's really sad that Microsoft screwed up so badly with the whole UI formerly known as Metro. And the licensing. And, well, pretty much everything beyond the core OS.

I bought the upgrade as a cheap way to get the latest Windows running on my MBP, but the installation was an amazing hassle. They don't tell you up front that you're not allowed to do a clean install, so you have to run through registry hoops and calls to the Microsoft Licensing hotline thingy just to get your legal copy of windows working properly.

Once I got it installed, I found a start menu replacement. I ended up spending the 5 bucks for Start8 by Stardock cause it's head and shoulders better than the freely available ones. It lets you bypass Metro completely unless you specifically want to use it, and from that point on I've actually really liked Windows 8. It's wonderfully snappy, and it's understated window dressing is a refreshing change from the kaleidoscopic orgy of previous versions of Windows.

For the cheap upgrade price, I'm not TOO upset, but there is no way in hell I would put up with this crap if I was paying full price. I'd sooner do without.

Re:I actually almost like Windows 8

[hobarrera]

You bought an upgrade; you're allow to do an upgrade, why would you expect to be able to run a clean install? This has never been true for any version of windows. (and even I know this, being a pure *nix user).

How to block IE10

[toygeek]

Open an Administrative Command Prompt (click Start, type "cmd" then Ctrl+Shift+Enter) and paste in this command.

REG ADD "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Setup\10.0" /v "DoNotAllow IE10" /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f

From my blog: http://tidbitsfortechs.blogspot.com/2013/02/blocking-ie10-on-windows-7-heres-how-to.html

Re:How to block IE10

[CastrTroy]

As a personal user, you probably have no reason not to upgrade, but for companies, there's many intranet applications that will break if you move to IE10. We're still running some machines on IE8 because it's the latest version that works with some of our stuff, and there's no way to upgrade the existing software.

Re:How to block IE10

[Nimey]

If you're a company you should use WSUS instead of some unsupported hack.

Re:Another MS browser I don't care about

[sjames]

The fighter was more useful as a web browser than IE.

IE10 improvements over IE9

[unixisc]

Actually, I use IE9 at work, and IE10 at home - both on Windows 7. There is a clear difference that I notice on /. - whenever I'm posting in IE9, things like autocorrect, spelling error highlighting, occur, while in the Comment Subject box, there is an 'X' at the end, which if clicked, will delete the entire subject line and one can type. The latter is just a tad more elegant, but the former is a major improvement. That said, I'm not planning to upgrade on the office box, but yeah, I do think that IE10 is better.

Re:Summary is FUD. Windows 8 does not suck.

[Nocturnal Deviant]

Not sure which world you are in, but in the age where humans dont have elephant arms for holding their hands up all day every day messing with a touch screen on a desktop, it sure isnt this world where windows 8 Does suck. This is primarily a website for IT and Developers, people who make things/work for others, if you want a site that is about the average joe with his laptop, go ahead praise it all you want, but this is news for nerds, and according to nerd usage, yes, it does suck.

Re:Enjoy?

[CSMoran]

I object.

I am so excited...

[RyanGehrig]

I am so excited! Oh wait, nobody uses internet explorer except on Dubstep commercials

Re:Still need IE 9 to test in IE 9

[kwerle]

I use the developer modes of IE9 to test pre-IE9 browsers. It's not perfect, but I don't need it to be (my requirements are pretty simple).

Does IE10 have the same developer modes?