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Windows Blue 9364 Screenshots Show Feature Enhancements
An anonymous reader writes "As expected, a new pre-public version of Windows Blue (build 9364) has leaked online and it reveals a handful of features that are coming in the next big Microsoft Windows 8 update." Several sites have screenshots from the build; Hot Hardware says "Assuming this is all completely legitimate, the most obvious change pertains to the Metro UI, including greater flexibility in sizing Live Tiles and customizing the Start screen, particularly as the Personalize setting (among others, including Devices and Share) is now under the Settings charm. The Name Group feature for the Start menu looks a little more polished, too."
Shit.
The only connection people already know between Windows and Blue is the Blue Screen of Death. In fact, it took me a minute to realize this wasn't about 9364 screenshots of BSODs.
Really they don't.
Wish Bill Gates was back, he'd fix that mess of an os.
Instead he's off the deep end trying to test condoms.
As a Win7 user, did anyone else feel completely lost reading the summary?
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
Christ almighty! Would someone please tell Microsoft that Windows 8 is a content consumption platform whereas the corporate world needs a multi-tasking UI. This is fucking bullshit!
Life is not for the lazy.
I saw 9364 Windows bluescreens.
one of the featured screenshots being a calculator that will suck up every inch of my large desktop monitor, take that you 20 year old serial terminal in the other room and your fucking text based "windows"
So, anyone have any meat on the new version?
Why is a Windows release named after its most famous failure screen? Is the marketing department that ignorant?
Several sites have screenshots from the build; Hot Hardware says "Assuming this is all completely legitimate, the most obvious change pertains to the Metro UI, including greater flexibility in sizing Live Tiles and customizing the Start screen, particularly as the Personalize setting (among others, including Devices and Share) is now under the Settings charm. The Name Group feature for the Start menu looks a little more polished, too."
They don't get it, do they? Power users and most business users don't want to tinker with the Metro UI. We want to be able to get rid of it and boot straight into the Desktop with a traditional Start Menu.
I can sort of see what Microsoft is trying to do with Windows 8. The idea is not theirs, nor is it a new idea. It actually goes back a long, long time. When GUIs were born designers wanted to implement direct-manipulation as much as possible. The user had to be able to grab anything, drag and drop and click and whatnot it. This included the windows used by programs, if the user wanted to have that giant word processor in a 50x50 pixel window overlapped by a dozen other windows then they should be able to.
Now that GUIs are old hat, all that direct manipulation is getting a bit long in the tooth. Shuffling windows around, organizing them 'just' so is just as inefficient as doing the same to text in a word processor. Why not leave all that repetitive work to the computer? That is what machines are for, after all? In short, Microsoft has discovered the advantages of tiling window managers.
The sad part is that they seem to have forgotten to study the subject before designing Windows 8. All they had to do was install one of the many available existing tiling window managers on a unix of choice and give it a whir. Xmonad or dwm or any of the others do an infinitely better job of it than Windows 8 does. They work with the user, not against him/her.
--frank[at]unternet.org
No thanks, i've seen those before.
Go through the colors of the classic Windows logo first. Windows Green, Windows Yellow and then Windows Blue.
Maybe I'd better luck wishing for some higher res displays as standard on notebooks... How is it that cell phones need 1080p displays, but for doing real work, 1366x768 is supposed to be great ?!
...maybe you should look at a chromebook like the pixel. [2560 x 1700 at 239 PPI] which has a higher than 1080P resolution :)
http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/devices/chromebook-pixel/
Windows didn't hit its stride until the 2000s. Windows XP was released in October 2001, with great commercial success. As of last month, it was estimated to be running on almost 39% of PCs. That's a critical problem that Microsoft faced - instead of dutifully upgrading every couple of years, many people and businesses stayed on XP. Each subsequent release has tried to up the whizz-bang factor of the UI.
Guess what? Consumers generally consumes content on their computers... you know, the vast majority of human beings.
And most of those consumers have already largely switched to smartphones and tablets. In a vain attempt to win them back, Microsoft has sacrificed their competitive advantage with business users – you know, the ones who actually pay the vast majority of their licensing fees...
Its kind of sad really that that Desktop monopoly is so hard to break, Microsoft keeps throwing its customers...and its partners under the bus, just to do it again. Its ironic that both of these groups are moving over to a Google Os. Business Users still feel pretty trapped, but will keep their older hardware running as long as Microsoft let them.
Personalization is currently under the "settings" charm in Windows 8. If you're on the desktop, Personalization (as in desktop theme) is right there in the charm menu. If you're in Metro, then it's the first item under "Change PC settings" (as in, "Personalize" is the first damned thing you see when you launch it). The only thing they did, if anything, was change the label in the charm to be dumbed down for the casual user who couldn't find Personalize without having it spelled out for them. Probably a result of their usage studies.
How much longer are they going to keep making products for consumption instead of creation?
Windows 8 is the "other" in "every other version of Windows sucks," which means they better get their head out of their ass for Windows 9 (or whatever name they pick out of the hat next).
Otherwise, this is going to push their bread-and-butter business customers away from them and towards Linux. Who'd have thought that the year of the Linux desktop might actually end up being Microsoft's doing?
Ive played with windows 8 and it offered me nothing that improved my desktop experience. I didn't surf the web faster, watch videos any better, my pc didn't run any smoother, or play games any better at all and the interface just made it a little more cumbersome for me.
I love windows 7 and 8 offers me nothing at all that would make me want to drop 100 bucks on it for my two computers, reload everything and set everything up again.
I might have cared about windows 8 if it offered my desktop pc some sort of advantage or played to the strengths of it. Instead MS created a OS meant for tablets, phones, laptops and desktops and because of that it doesn't seem to work towards the strengths of any of those platforms at all. It just feels like something they made just to bring everyone under one umbrella and to me it weakened it greatly.
I welcome these changes as I dispice Metro in its current form for all the reasons you stated. I like to be able to see multiple programs at once, use the taskbar to preview with aero all the differnet IE tabs and apps, and use instant search for things in my word document to see if I have matching files etc.
So far Microsoft is responding to some of the criticism by making making Metro applets do the same things like resizing and having more than one app open.
But the desktop and the start menu is notcoming back. The desktop is dead and Microsoft has invested too much into this and is losing too much marketshare to go back to the old ways. Customers are telling Microsoft they want a cool IPAD, iBook, or a Droid. Not wanting the same sluggish crashy POS with 11 year old blue and green colored XP machines they use at work. Desktop apps are not touch friendly and do not go beyond 100 DPI without major gui issues and bugs. Why is my 2 year old Samsung Galaxy S gives a better browsing experience with smooth GPU acceleration, less pixely graphics, and HTML 5 goodness than my desktop PC?
The infrastructure is dated due to XP compatibility with win32. I do not feel Metro is ready yet which is why I am typing this on Windows 7 but if MS clears its act with more colors a taskbar, a smart screen that doesn't block what you are doing, and more Skeumorphism they will have a winner. Windows Blue is even faster and less crappy and sluggish with huge ass latency compred to Windows 8, which beats Windows 7, which is even more responsive than XP when it comes to Windows Rot.
Arguing against it makes it look like we are old men who hate change because of a silly button.
http://saveie6.com/
We've all heard the old saying that any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic(slight of hand). I'm wondering, is this the direction MS is heading although in reverse. Are we looking at a future where any magic(slight of hand) sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from technology? Hmmmm......
The blue screen already contains almost no good or helpful information. A blue effectively says "We did something wrong and can't explain what happened so were just giving up".
I sense a theme here. Is Microsoft teaming with Nintendo?
Remember Pokemon? First the show, next the game... Pokemon Blue and Pokemon Red are released at the same time and both work together to allow a better gaming experience. Next, Windows Blue and...who wants to make Red? Apple? Microsoft...?
We really could use some unification on the whole OS front. Whoever gets us to the endgame the quickest is what I say. Frankly, I'm tired of buying the next big operating system. Figure it out!
My suggested Windows 8 slogan: "Nowhere to go but up!"
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
...the Zealots here would cackle that MS has no innovation. MS just can't win whether they update or change. The Zealots will change their tune according to what's convenient for them, UNLESS their Linus Christ Superstar codes it into their Bible.
Want proof? They do it to iOS already. Apple dutifully updates iOS, and yet they get hammered here for just "trotting out the same", no innovation, ad nauseum.
I want to see the all so cool new IE!
http://saveie6.com/
Thank FSM my team didn't leak it this time. Any chance you will let us down off this crucifix anytime soon, MS?
Win7? Huh? (checks Excel under XP, still works just fine, just like yesterday, as does the rest of Office)
No, still no need for Win7. [goes back to sleep]
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
"...this monotone nonsense that just blends into everything." Are you referring to the fact that looking at an MsOffice doc, you can't tell whether it has the focus or not? I think the top bar changes slightly, but ever so slightly; I have to look at the other apps I have open to see if any of them has focus. If they don't, then I assume Word (or whatever) has focus.
I dunno how they could do that with XP, as I've not given an Internet connection to its VM.
You can't trust Windows on the net; and you can't trust Microsoft, period.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
LOL. It's not ironic. It's imaginary. There's no significant move towards Google Chrome or Google anything else for that matter in the OS space. There are three players, and only three: Microsoft, Apple, and linux. Apple's got the ball right now, as their machines can run all three OS's, all at once, legally and legitimately. If you're worried about movement, worry about Apple. Google? No chance.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I have a soft spot for the new Start Screen. I find it much more appealing than the old Start Menu which seemed more like a Start Slab by the time it was deprecated. The initial concept had been compromised by the amount of crap that it was asked to handle. Using a tile-based system is a great way to package different sources of data and information into neat little groupings. We can agree to disagree on that one.
My problem is that the rest of the Metro UI doesn't really follow the lead of the Start Screen at all. Aesthetically, it jettisons the entire look and feel for what seems like a bunch of images and text adrift in a lot of whitespace.
Icons have little or no depth at all. They don't really adhere to their origins in minimalist mass transit iconography as the Start Screen does, nor do they acknowledge the benefits of effective drop shadows - or really any developments since the year 2000. I'm pretty sure the version of KDE that shipped with my copy of LinuxPPC 1999 was the aesthetic equal in this one regard.
Text is widely spread out with no clear delineation between where one active area begins and another ends. Even info grouped together appears to take up a significant amount of screen real estate. Not due to font sizing issues, but rather, the line spacing and just random weirdness in the layout. It reminds me less of an OS and more of a poorly-designed Web 2.0 site.
I needed to update the hardware one of my video editing workstations to do 2k, 3k, & 4k renders in a reasonable amount of time. Built an i7 and decided to try Win8 because it was pretty cheap. (cheaper than the last OEM copy of XP I bought years ago) The machine has Vegas Pro 12, VLC, GOMplayer, Mplayer, and Gspot installed. That's pretty much it. I spent a few days trying to keep from driving over to Balmer's house and ripping his dick off for creating such a piece of shit interface, but with the help of the mighty Googles, I eventually figured out how to do REAL network sharing, turn off the bulk of the childish bullshit, and change all the settings to create something that resembled a functional work machine.
My workstations run for months at a time without restarts and the only time I see the Metro interface is on a rare reboot. The half dozen applications I use all got a desktop shortcut the way jebus intended. That's how I start them. Since I have a pair of 32" monitors on this box, bringing up the metro screen is like getting hit in the face with a sheet of plywood. Fortunately, I rarely need to access it.
My only real complaint so far is that the OS locked up tight a bunch of times when I was trying to mass copy about 100k files at once over the network (2 TB or thereabouts). No blue screen, no complaints or warnings. Complete pull-the-plug-to-restart style lock-up like I haven't seen since the 90s. I don't know if it was Win8 or a flakey chipset driver (Asus Z77 board) but I had to end up hand-copying top-level directories one at a time to finish the job. Robocopy blasted the whole drive to an outboard backup drive without any issues later that day, so I'm going to assume that whoever wrote the GUI file copy stuff is a graphics designer and completely unqualified to do real coding.
Outside of that, I've pretty much gotten used to the OS. The new highly-informational file transfer and Task Manager dialogs are completely worth the price of admission. (GUI copy is borked, but it looks nice) I completely ignore Metro and I never used the Start menu on 95 thru XP (desktop shortcuts all the way, bitches!) so its absence doesn't bother me in the slightest.
Not having a shutdown button on the taskbar is massive FAIL though. That really pisses me off. I still might drive over to Balmer's and set fire to his lawn gnomes or something.
Nothing worthwhile ever happens before noon
...but if MS clears its act with more colors a taskbar, a smart screen that doesn't block what you are doing, and more Skeumorphism they will have a winner. ...Arguing against it makes it look like we are old men who hate change because of a silly button.
Actually, that's one of my biggest complaints with the start screen - it covers everything. I like the start menu because it doesn't take up a lot of space. My second biggest complaint is that Windows 8 is ugly - Aero is gone, colors are basic, and it's so blocky. (My third is I don't want to retrain the users I deal with - we have Windows 8 on a few computers at work that are used at floating desks so that we can see how users react, and every one of them has issues using it).
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
We've seen far too much blue software out of Microsoft. They couldn't come up with something catchy and relevant like Harakiri?
LOL. It's not ironic. It's imaginary. There's no significant move towards Google Chrome or Google anything else for that matter in the OS space. There are three players, and only three: Microsoft, Apple, and linux. Apple's got the ball right now, as their machines can run all three OS's, all at once, legally and legitimately. If you're worried about movement, worry about Apple. Google? No chance.
No Windows is primarily a touchscreen OS, with locked down hardware its like a poor android....you not been paying attention to this article...Its main feature is an updated
start page
I call the Google Os because Chrome is doing very well right now [Although personally Its not an OS].
As for Apple being a Success on the PC front quite the reverse, Apple is suffering from its own Post-PC marketing [I would argue Neglect] suffering a year on year decline of 22% sequentially 18% or about 4 times the decline of than the rest of the industry.
Personally though I'm enjoying the benefits of sharing the kernel with Android/Chrome with Gnu/Linux :)
why does Calculate, Sound Recorder need to be full screen??
It's not a small screen tablet or phone
If MS fixes and also the home tab in Office 2013 then I will be more open. Windows Blue has 16.7 million colors and a palette to select. Still I am not ready to leave WIndows 7 yet. But, I hated vista too because active Windows were black and butt ugly. Windows 7 finally fixed the horrible UI and colors.
But the desktop is done. Its caput.
In several years all your users will be used to IOS and Android and it wont be too big. But in early 2013 I agree Windows 7 is a much better bet and is semi modern but starting to age fast just like XP was when Vista came out in late 2006. I see where MS is going where you only use one app at a time anyway but a brain has trouble with shit flying out as one task can use more than 1 Windows. A improved start screen that takes half or 1/3 the page in Windows Red or whatever will make me tolerate it in 2014 if I buy another system rather than put a now 5 year old OS on it. But time will tell. According to the anti Slashdot Neowin the start screen has improved and caught up with Windows 7 with instant search.
The start menu is gone forever. It isn't coming back.
http://saveie6.com/
And we're getting Windows red and blue?
http://pureinfotech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/windowsbluescreenshots6_1020_wide-850x637.jpg
Like the Titanic, Microsoft is merely re-arranging the deck chairs with "Blue". Their OS will still continue to sink.
Apple Formerly Computer, tried a tiling scheme on Educational units in the '90s ... a failure.
Of course, MS W8 seems to be a knock-off of an even earlier time ... the '80s and
CompuServe and Prodigy.
AOL was even a viable 'upgrade' compared to CompuServe and Prodigy and failed equally well.
So, who is the MS 'Division DeJour' CEO Head to roll this time ?
Bill's biggest mistake will be the hiring of Steve Balmer and Bill's support of Balmer to this and
the next several years days.
A sad tale.
...but loves the hardware.
https://plus.google.com/+LinusTorvalds/posts/dk1aiW4JjHd L "I'm still running ChromeOS on this thing, which is good enough for testing out some of my normal work habits (ie reading and writing email), but I expect to install a real distro on this soon enough. For a laptop to be useful to me, I need to not just read and write email, I need to be able to do compiles, have my own git repositories etc..
"
Well if Microsoft can only target that market, then why do I need them? I have an excellent Android tablet that already does stuff like, show apps by install date and move desktop widgets around.... and it does it with a smaller battery for longer and far cheaper with far more choices of device.
Seriously, Microsoft had better get a grip. This one size fits all strategy is killing them.
Therein lies the problem with Linux and it's ever weak adoption rate.
Linux only ever had one problem, and that was the Windows Monopoly. In the context of this article, Windows is such a massive failure in mobile, it burnt though any karma it could have had with its abusive bullying behaviour, that its treated like a cancer giving clown. Android is set to overtake Windows as the Dominant OS, the heavily locked down version of Linux. The power user version of Linux [Give it a name], where you have complete control has been quietly growing market share quite nicely for some time.
But in early 2013 I agree Windows 7 is a much better bet and is semi modern but starting to age fast just like XP was when Vista came out in late 2006.
How can software "age"? It doesn't wear out. There's no reason you can't use the same software forever, in fact.
I don't respond to AC's.
I'll use Metro when I can see my application, code trace, call stack, and variable watch list at the same time.
If Metro is so friggin' brilliant how come VS2012 isn't native? Oh and thanks for making the menu titles shout at me. That's nice.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
There still seem to be lots of essential UI actions that have no visible on-screen counterparts: no buttons, no menus, nothing.
And the UI still seems as schizophrenic as ever, with Metro and a completely separate Vista-like desktop.
But the desktop and the start menu is notcoming back. The desktop is dead and Microsoft has invested too much into this and is losing too much marketshare to go back to the old ways.
They will loose even more if they continue to piss off all of their current paying customers.
Customers are telling Microsoft they want a cool IPAD, iBook, or a Droid.
Microsoft should persuit any market it wants. I simply do not understand why it is necessary to abandon and piss off its current market share in the process.
Not wanting the same sluggish crashy POS with 11 year old blue and green colored XP machines they use at work.
So buy a new computer? What the fuck is your point?
Desktop apps are not touch friendly and do not go beyond 100 DPI without major gui issues and bugs.
Nobody touches a fucking desktop app or puts their face so far up to the screen that any of the apple retnea display marketing coolaid matters.
Why is my 2 year old Samsung Galaxy S gives a better browsing experience with smooth GPU acceleration, less pixely graphics, and HTML 5 goodness than my desktop PC?
Cause your desktop PC is a POS?
The infrastructure is dated due to XP compatibility with win32.
Information free statements are dated.
I do not feel Metro is ready yet which is why I am typing this on Windows 7 but if MS clears its act with more colors a taskbar, a smart screen that doesn't block what you are doing, and more Skeumorphism they will have a winner
Yea more colors.. we should have at least 16 colors...that will make windows better.
Windows Blue is even faster and less crappy and sluggish with huge ass latency compred to Windows 8, which beats Windows 7, which is even more responsive than XP when it comes to Windows Rot.
If you want a faster computer buy more RAM. Its cheaper than a new OS. Windows 8 is not any faster in a way that matters than windows 7 or XP. None of us have any clue what the performance of blue will be cause it aint out yet.
Arguing against it makes it look like we are old men who hate change because of a silly button.
I hate change that wastes my time and provides no value of any kind in return. If that makes me a not cool dinosaur I am soo deeply sorry...I can't imagine how I will be able to sleep now.
... participating in the intentional leak of future versions tactic. How desperate Microsoft has become. Once the king, now toppled and humbled.....
Personally I like it. I've been using it everyday for months. Metro is unfinished and needs polishing which it seems to be getting but I still use it more than I used the new start menu for many releases. I get not liking the new releases since NT I always installed 'classic start menu' and turn aero off and there are similar solutions to metro if you don't like it. Something that doesn't get said enough is how much improved the desktop is. The talk is always on metro but if you don't like it fine tweak it and get rid of it. If you haven't tried it really try it for a couple days I've used SGI, Amiga, Mac 0S9, OSX and windows 3.1, NT through 8 and am really starting to get to like it. I thought highly of 7 but 8 as an OS is a good foundation and one that could grow and hopefully will be given an opportunity..
I don't want everything opening to full screen. That should be MY choice. I Want to go right to the desktop that should be MY choice. I should be able to disable the metro or whatever its called that should be my choice. Speaking on the metro its fugly its like having my start button exploded on the screen and not am stuck having a totally confusing totally ugly block system. Im not against anything new thats why i did the beta and MS at this poing doesn't need to screw around on what the desktop should be like its already great. Give us something new and fast on the OS side but don't mess around with the desktop thats the users playground :) The new blue is not something thats going to change my mind and i will continue to save my money to buy another Windows 7 Ultimate full install disk.
Jack of all trades,master of none
Yeah i bought one of those the thing i love most is it's massive 32 gb non removable hard drive.
Comes in a 64GB variety too :) both come with 3 year 1TB storage through Google Drive. It also has a card slot :). To put it in some kind of perspective I'm using Linux Mint and I'm currently using 6.74GB.
I have been using Windows 8. Yes, as a power user I do miss the start menu and how it enabled discovery of programs and multitasking. But, the kernel is responsive and I like the simpler, less chrome look. Even Windows 7 feels less responsive and snappy to me now. And the ideas in Windows RT (the new runtime) make a lot of sense (highly asynchronous, access from managed and native environments). But, they wrapped it up in the weirdest way.
Why Microsoft just doesn't embrace a "desktop mode" and "metro mode" on a per user basis just baffles me. If you select desktop mode, you get the start menu, and to get to the metro screen, you have that option on that menu (or shift+win). Win key takes you back to desktop from any metro app. Metro mode, works like Windows 8 now. Shift+Win is desktop shortcut.
Ta-da, best of both worlds. And you buy some time to get the Windows RT runtime for desktop apps, or integrating metro into desktop mode.
Microsoft, this isn't hard at all. What's up?
I think a lot of this hate comes from people who obviously never have really tried using it. I get just not liking it but most of the comments show that they don't really know how it works or have used it. I work on Cinema 4D and all of Adobe's apps on it every day. No problem.
But the desktop and the start menu is notcoming back. The desktop is dead and Microsoft has invested too much into this and is losing too much marketshare to go back to the old ways.
Wow, that makes zero sense. Perhaps I should introduce you to the concept of sunk cost. "Sunk cost" is money already spent and should NEVER influence future decision making. If you invest a billion dollars in what you now know is a losing proposition, you have to decide what to do with your next $1 of investment. You can sink it in to you loser with a reasonable expectation of making zero profit, or you can go a completely different direction and invest it with a reasonable expectation of 10c profit. The rational decision is to go get your 10c, not lose another $1.
Microsoft has not lost market share in business or even home desktop. They have lost some sales share because the desktop (and laptop) market is mature. A 4 year old Win7 machine does just as well today as the day you bought it. People upgrade now because their computer physically breaks, not to get the latest core i7. Even your average consumer video card can play (most) of the latest games as an acceptable framerates on a normal sized monitor.
Changing the OS to make it worse is not going to drive sales. Metro is not going to make my desktop a tablet or a phone....it's just going to make it a crappy desktop.
You mean like it's 32 Gb hard drive. Please, all this shows is how much you lot all crave the google cock while screaming that MS is raping you.
Google Pixel: $1,299
Intel HD Graphics 4000
32 GB available
2560 × 1700 (px 239 ppi)
4 GB DDR3
Intel Core i5-3427U (Dual-Core 1.8 GHz)
Microsoft Surface Pro: $999+$99 Keyboard
Intel HD Graphics 4000
64 GB (23 GB available)
1920 x 1080 px (208 ppi)
4 GB DDR3
Intel Core i5-3317U (Dual-core 1.7 GHz)
Got to say I think Google have the advantage here, and the machine looks simply stunning.
I have been using 8 since the 1st preview and I have come to really like it. A LOT. I did NOT like it in the early days as I was die hard windows 7 user and it is a great OS. But 8 is 7 after a couple more years of refinement. Do I like Metro? nope. Do I want a touch screen? nope. I hate fingerprints on my screens! But thanks to apps like Start8 I don't even have to know there is a metro ui. [though there are a few nice apps there].
There just are so many refinements in 8 that I could never consider going back to 7.
Is it perfect? nope. But the parts that irk me are few and far between.
It really is fast, it really is rock solid stable, and it get's out of my way and lets me actually get work done.
I'm sure I am going to be modded to hell for this but it is a great OS. I'm not a shill, nor do I have a gun pointed at my head to say this. I just am a old fart who likes my PC and I really do like 8.
Since Microsoft is so good at ripping off other ideas, they might as well be consistent. Why not steal KDE for their next brilliant idea.
Oh, yeah! Wise guy, huh? Woob woob woob woob! Nyuk! Nyuk!
check and mate
Good for you google your laptop is as good as a beefed up tablet. Why compare the pixel with a tablet? It is a laptop, and i can think of many laptops better than this one for a similar price if not better. Personally I'm partial to a thinkpad.
of death shows as list of windows enhancements.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
And when you bought it, how much did Microsoft pay you for the use of space on your hard drive to store Metro? Software you never use and never wanted and can't delete (I suspect, still using XP, which itself has a lot of crap permanently wasting space as well) taking up hard drive space on your computer.
4GB of ram? 64GB ssd? that's it? yeah the screen is nice, but the rest of the machine is anemic rubbish..
screen of death.
Because that way is better.
Duh!
For the price, it's borderline stupid to buy a chromebook rather than a MacBook Air
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
turd polishing is turning into a sport for this company.
Beware that W8 doesn't have a safe mode. No F8 at reboot, no way to fix a failing Windows that way anymore.
All I see are a lot of people complaining about the Windows 8 UI. But let me ask you a serious question, why do you feel like you are forced to use Windows?. Let's get real, it's not the 90's anymore, perfectly usable alternatives now exist. Instead of dealing with whatever UI Microsoft forces upon you, why not at least TRY an alternative OS, you can have whatever UI you take a fancy to.
Please don't start on the Games and Office software, that's an old argument that isn't valid. I used Windows 98/ME/2000/XP/Vista and I was firmly hooked by Microsoft's Nicotine. Then I had 7 forced upon me, I hated the over-sized and ugly new taskbar and set out to see what Linux had to offer. I had a closet full of Windows only games and had never even used Office, so Games were upfront for me as well as stability and strange Hardware support.
I saw many different UI and flavors of Linux and after several months of research into my Games, Wine and Hardware; I decided that Xubuntu was for me. It offered ease of use through PPA and the Software center, stability and Hardware compatibility. And best of all, nobody forced me to upgrade every two years or be stuck with a strange UI forced upon me. And I didn't need to worry about an Anti-virus slowing my PC down or Hard Drive thrashing. When the UI popped up after a few seconds after Power-On, it was instantly usable without waiting.
Not all my Games worked with Wine, but I didn't really care since before I switched I found alternatives for the 100+ games I had; not to mention I had already played those games to death anyway. I had a whole new world of Games to play around with and the Software Center was central in helping me; along with lgdb.org and later Steam and Djl.
The only hard part about switching, was knowing that I would not be part of the Microsoft world anymore and things would be much more relaxed and less stressful; so I now had too much time on my hands to do actual work and leisure activities. Looking back, leaving Windows after 15 years of use (Since 1998) was the best decision I ever made. And I know for a fact, if a person like me could do this, there is no reason others couldn't also since the only hard part was knowing that Windows would be your past. I am happy, and the three people that converted with me are happy also, that's really all that matters.
Windows Me! - Windows is a verb, and an obscene one
Windows Blue - Windows means Porterhouse
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
If I remember the bluescreen of Windows 8 right, it is "Your PC (not us) did something wrong and we can't explain what happened so we're just giving up".
LOL.
I can't remember the names of half my programs, I have over fifty installed, and being able to simply open Start --> Programs --> means I can look through my list and FIND it.
Obviously the ones I use regularly I can type the name in.
Duh. In your moronic "I can never admit I'm wrong" world, you remove one of the options- thanks for that. Way to go.
Metro is a joke, Microsoft's UI team should all be SACKED. I bet MOST Microsoft employees feel the same, but aren't allowed to question the 'great god' of Metro.
Or you could buy a netbook for far less.
Valley View is out Q4 2013 or thereabouts and it will have 4xout of order Atoms at 2.7Ghz and Intel Gen 7 graphics
anandtech
xbitlabs
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Hell I don't own any Apple products or even care much for the company but even I can see buying a ChromeBook at that price is just dumb, the Macbook Air will have better resale value and retain its worth for a lot longer than a thinclient ChromeBook Pixel will, in fact I bet you'd be lucky to even get half of what you paid in a year whereas I've seen 5 year old Macbooks going for nearly $400.
Like it or not when you get over the $1K price mark frankly Apple makes a lot of sense if for no other reason how long they retain their value.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
It depends on your level of knowledge.
I really have no problem understanding the content of a blue screen, but I'm a developer. Your average IT support tech wouldn't have a clue because the information is too low level for them but then, BSODs only happen when low level faults have occurred so it kind of makes sense.
This isn't about BSODs though, it's about Windows Blue, Microsoft's new name for Windows or whatever.
The OSX crash screen is sneaky: "Your need to restart your computer". I haven't used Macs almost at all, and when I was playing with Hackintosh, I thought it was some routine restart related to configuring the system or installing updates. It's so friendly that you don't necessarily even know there is a complete system crash behind.
You despise Metro in its current form? Most of us despise Metro in ANY form.
Microsoft is losing market share precisely BECAUSE they got rid of the desktop--specifically because they got rid of something that worked. Otherwise, please explain why this UI and the concepts that go with it which "customers are telling Microsoft they want" has resulted in the worst sales of an OS that they've ever had? Sure, you get Windows 8 on a new PC because PC makers get strong armed into it and that counts as a "sale" in some logic, but retail sales of Win8 are horrible. Absolutely horrible. This "update" is not going to fix that. Why? Because far from listening to its paying customers, Microsoft is ignoring them instead of ignoring the media hype about the dying desktop and all that FUD and crap.
Now, tablets and smartphones are of course gaining market share. It's easy to gain when you start from nothing. They are useful devices. They do cut down on the number of PCs an average person might need either at home or at work without a doubt and that is what results in declining PC sales relative to what they were before there were tablets and smartphones. Better interaction between them and PCs is a good thing, and Microsoft is right to be concerned about that.
Here's a concept that just doesn't seem to fly these days: sometimes change is not right, the people promoting change are not right, and the people complaining about change are right. The opposite meme gets pushed on a lot of people largely by clueless corporate management and HR types as a way to try to ram bad ideas down their throats and to try to nullify the arguments of people who actually know what they're talking about.
Now, is it time to really retire Win32? Probably a little past time, but the reason it still exists is because the grown ups with businesses to run have investments in software that need it and don't much care for a crappy OS that makes their life difficult. This sort of thing can be worked out with a lot of hard work though. IBM has managed it with mainframe software for decades now. A little engineering and a lot less wiz-bang crap actually helps sometimes. Is it time to have a better architected OS with a lot less baggage? Yep. I could agree with lots of arguments on why Windows has to change, but the change needs to be smart, workable, and well thought out. Windows 8, Metro, and these useless (on a desktop) tablet and smartphone design paradims are not smart, not workable, and not well thought out. That is why they fail and will continue to fail.
As of last month, it (XP) was estimated to be running on almost 39% of PCs. That's a critical problem that Microsoft faced - instead of dutifully upgrading every couple of years, many people and businesses stayed on XP.
As I have stated time and time again, Microsoft is looking at this the wrong way, they should support XP beyond the EOL, they could charge and we will happily pay.
I'd be happy to pay the same as windows 8 for XP updates past the EOL.
But what I won't do is toss out years of a stable and debugged productive system for a piece of crap
I've lived on the corner of Hate and Crashberry for seven and eight days, after several unexpected deaths, now I live on the corner of debian and xp.
Windows 8 -- please insert coin to continue..
No, the kernel is responsible to either catching or responding to invalid requests or access. You need to handle them with out needing to restart the computer. In Linux / Unix think about how rare it is for the kernel to actually give up and need a restart of the computer, in fact it almost never happens, I've seen it maybe twice in 12 years. The blue screen really is giving up and just admitting your not good enough to deal with the issue at hand. For another spin of the same view, think about what would happen if an embedded system just gave up and quit and rebooted, most if not all of our devices in day to day life wouldn't work, the internet for one would be a brick if that happened. The blue screen is the lazy approach to OS programming.
Thats fair, I'm a developer also but still have trouble understanding most of what a blue screen tells me. Granted I got the point of this post wrong so I'll admit that was my mistake.
Apple just decided to handle it in an elegant way as opposed to windows which handles it in the developer way. I like the Linux / Unix model where you deal with it and don't restart. Restarting should be a last option not a routine operating procedure.
It depends what level of development you do as much as anything. If you're a web developer it wont contain much of any relevance to you, if you're an OS or kernel developer it should be clear as day.
Embedded system developer, I mainly write my own firmwares and operating systems. 90% of the time I work on the Windows platform and then other 10% are custom jobs. I do 0% window's development, I don't even write systems to interface with windows, so hence all my low level code is mostly Linux based.
I'm not about to even try and claim the blue screen isn't useful, it just don't help me personally track down issues. I would rather have raw kernel output with a nice stack trace then see random memory address and a name.sys file.
Not wanting the same sluggish crashy POS with 11 year old blue and green colored XP machines they use at work.
Ok, fair enough. But then what ARE users supposed to use at work instead? As an IT administrator looking at deployment for a user base, let me tell you, users DO NOT want Windows 8 metro bull-crap for their WORK computers. They want Windows as it always has been. Heck, just getting people to adopt Windows 7 from Windows XP is a bit of a pain, but at least it's similar enough they can usually manage.
I honestly don't care one bit what Microsoft wants to shove down the "average consumer's" throat, because I am not the average consumer. I manage an IT department and am responsible for training and deploying software such as this to a large user base. I will not undergo the process and pain of forcing users to adopt Metro in their work environment. I will switch to Linux first.
"I'm not about to even try and claim the blue screen isn't useful, it just don't help me personally track down issues. I would rather have raw kernel output with a nice stack trace then see random memory address and a name.sys file."
I think the BSOD is really just intended as a summary. You can get much of the sort of information you probably want from the minidump files, though it's been quite some time so I can't remember exactly what's in there, but IIRC I believe it does include a stack trace.
I guess as much as anything though a lot of it depends on what you're used to.
Am I in a parallel dimension, or did the 20 odd office users I just installed Windows 8 for go down really really well. Turns out they all love the quick access to their relevant systems and after a decent 5 minute intro for the all the users they said they were already getting more work done by the end of the first day. As a developer I am also finding it rather easy to work with. It seems like everyones getting all defensive about 8 when all they need to do is spend the time setting it up nicely for their particular work role!
is still shit.
. . . they can start by developing a network operating system that doesn't fall on its face every four days. For that matter, after 15 years they still haven't figure out a way to patch their servers without requiring a reboot. I patch my Ubuntu server twice a day via cron and I can't remember the last time it was restarted.
A couple things:
1. The 23GB figure was from a prerelease unit with a bunch of diagnostics loaded, the final units actually have 31GB free and can open another 9GB if you move back up the recovery partition to a USB drive. Even more if you delete the preloaded Office trial.
2. You can get a 128GB Surface Pro and still spend less than a Chromebook Pixel.
3. Surface comes with a pressure sensitive Wacom pen and digitizer, which is great for art or note taking.
Other than the impressive screen, I'm not seeing the advantage. And the Surface Pro screen isn't bad, either.
I would rather have Live Tiles more like an active wallpaper on my Windows 7 start screen. Not two distinct UIs.
If you install start 8 and mouse without borders then windows 8 is not that bad. start 8 brings back the windows start menu (and its free). It also puts the metro apps on the start menu. Mouse without borders allows you to use one mouse and keyboard through the network. ITs a Microsoft app. It has a usefull option if you have dual screens. In windows 8 it will make the 4 corners not allow the mouse to go to the next screen. very helpful on windows 8 dual screen machines . helps with the hot corners access.
I am surprised with the icon sizes. I figured with windows phone 8 and windows 8 on the same kernel that all features would be on both. I guess not.
Software doesn't age. But people's expectations do. You can still play Asteroids on an Atari 2600. But that doesn't mean most people would want to given the choice of that or more current games.
to control their computers, or is Micro$oft using it to control the users?
I like linux as much as the next guy but it won't replace the desktop for home or business anytime soon. I tried installing Linux applications without the internet in .deb, .rpm, and even compile them and it could not be done except for LibreOffice and blender, dependency issues. With windows 8 i just download whatever applications I need and save them on my external storage just in case I need to redo my machine(hard drive go bust) and my internet is out and I had this happen to me a couple of times. Unless the whole u.s goes wi-fi free or prices go below $30 with more competition like most of Eastern Europe Linux has no chance.
I don't understand why people find the metro so complex it's actually better and simple compared to the old start menu styles. I find the linux lxde, xfce, mate, cinnamon all look shitty, buggy, look like they belong in the 1990's and time consuming compared to the unity or metro. Kde looks more modern than the other linux DE's but the start menu navigation is pretty confusing.
I have no problem running all my windows 98/xp/7 applications under windows 8. Eventually, the metro will grow on the complainers and those who are too stubborn to move on. It happened with windows 95/xp/7.
Many of those XP systems are in China. Considering how cheap and accessible Android on ARM devices are in China vs x86 gear, it'll be interesting to watch. I'm reminded of when Bill Gate's said something to the affect of "I'd rather people pirate Windows than use an alternative".
no one gives a shit about Microsoft.
- Sent from my daddies Windows laptop
FTFY
There is an opportunity here if M$ is smart enough to take it. Just like Coke turned the New coke fiasco into a brilliant mistake, M$ could turn this Win 8 failure into a chance to actually differentiate its myriad different versions of Windows products. Win Home versions could come with Metro the default UI, with the classic desktop as an option. The pro and enterprise versions could make the standard desktop the default with metro as an option, but with the option to disable Metro all together. The server versions should not have a metro bone in them at all. Now if they basically give the home versions away, charge a fair amount for the pro/ent/server versions... profit. And the hate may die down.
I don't think they are this smart however, and hope they ride this Win8 turkey all the way to oblivion. It is really entertaining to watch.
Is this the "working title" (like "Longhorn") or has their marketing and branding team finally descended into madness? It seemed like with 7, and then 8, they were finally remembering how to do sequences...
I see the same old crap when Windows 95 was released. When Windows XP was released. You people just don't like change.
It's changed, it's going to stay that way. Microsoft has made this very clear, it's time to shut up and get on with it.
I did and I enjoy Windows 8 just fine.
How can software "age"? It doesn't wear out. There's no reason you can't use the same software forever, in fact.
It ages in the sense that it stands still while the rest moves on.
Want to run the latest browser on it? You can't, the OS is too old.
Some hacker found a kernel exploit that makes you vulnerable on the web? Too bad, no more patches are made.
Want to connect some new hardware gizmo to it? Too bad, no drivers will ever be made for your old OS.
And so on...