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ZDNet Proclaims "Windows: It's Over"
plastick writes "You can think Windows 8 will evolve into something better, but the numbers show that Windows is coming to a dead end. ZDNet is known to take the side of Microsoft in the past. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols explains: 'The very day the debate came to an end, this headline appeared: IDC: Global PC shipments plunge in worst drop in a generation. Sure, a lot of that was due to the growth of tablets and smartphones and the rise of the cloud, but Windows 8 gets to take a lot of the blame too. After all, the debate wasn't whether or not Windows 8 was any good. It's not. The debate was over whether it could be saved.'"
Perhaps they are: Windows 8.1 will include boot to desktop. Good news if true, all they need to do then is bring back the Start button & menu.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Most posters so far don't seem to know or understand what happened in Winh8.
Its_not a UI change. Its a UI and core system change, and a turning most of what was Windows to 'Legacy'.
The problem is much deeper than the UI. The problem is MS has explained very poorly what the new core OS and APIs are, and what tools and development was needed to make it fly. Most ordinary windows devs were left simply not knowing what APIs were going to be new or legacy.
I've fitted and made Windows 8 work for me (care of classic shell, and a few tweaks), and under the bonnet frankly there are good engineering works to be had. But the new UI is on par with the poorest touch interfaces I have seen. Its compounded by brilliance like the keyboard shortcuts that MS pushed in relation for it. Nobody in the Windows team seemed to realise that requiring bucketloads of keyboard shortcuts in a UI that is supposed to be touch based is an absolute fail.
You can add in more brilliance - like screwing with Explorer and putting in the appalling ribbon menu bar. Only, they did not fix the ribbon. So its got groupings of small icons mixed in with some that are good enough for touch - and these are too small to work in a touch interface. Sheer fucking genius. And either make the control panel in the dekstop side, or in the new UI. In 8 for some reason the control settings and options get split on both sides and its a plain mess. How it passed UI testing and end user testing is beyond comprehension.
It was fascinating during the development cycle to read some of the justification for the changes. They took feedback collected from end user machines. But not mine. And probably not yours. I know of nobody sane who does not turn that off. So, they collated data from the wrong userbase - and then decided that 'no one is using the start button, lets get rid of it' (I know I simplified the background, but hey..)
The only place where Windows 8 with the new UI works is on ARM, and its been a mistake to put and drive this into the X86 and X64 world. Windows 8 with an option for he new UI should have been the default there, with desktop as the default OS and with legacy and current customer support for the long term being the objective.
And a couple more things from the new UI angle. The applications are tedious, poor, and low quality. And thats before you get into the full screen nature of them UI, and the horrendous square everything. Every single part of it is sharp edged, square, old. There is nothing fresh about it. It reminds me orf the simplifed UI from win2k. This may have reduced system load and it may have been required, but it does not look nice. It does not feel nice. It does not feel modern, or fresh. It just feels bad. And in doing this they had to throw away features from 7 that were previously touted and positive steps forward.
The bottom line is as a release OS - it is a trainwreck. And not just in look and feel, but way beyond. Its a train wreck at the API and engineering level too. Now 99% of the audience is on the wrong track. Moving them over requires that they are going to have to change the gauge on all their wheels.
This is an incredible uphill problem. Move everyone from what they know and like, to what they don't. and .. don't.
The real problem is that the Windows end client is actually the grounding for the MS server and application layers. If the end client fails, these will fail also. And this means that_right now_ the board at MS should be rolling heads.
We`re all equal
for a couple of dollars
Try free as in beer and freedom. http://sourceforge.net/projects/classicshell/files/
if you want quicklaunch, you still need to install an app for that...
Quicklaunch for Windows 8 is the same as for Windows 7. Right click on the taskbar --> Toolbars --> New Toolbar... Browse to "C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch" Uncheck Show Title, Uncheck Show Text. Boom, classic Quicklaunch from the same effective location that it used to be at in XP. For the lazy, there's a vbscript out there to automate all of that for you, but even lazy people don't usually run strange looking vbscripts that do arcane things to your Windows box (hopefully).
Also, you can do a gimp start menu in Win8 by do the same basic steps but for the folder "C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs", leave on "Show Title" and shrink it so that only the arrow and title shows. Then clicking the arrow is sort of like clicking on a start menu but with reduced functionality. But hey, it's not third party and it doesn't require admin permissions, so for higher security environments maybe it's the ideal work-around.
These two changes made it so that I could "live with" Win8, but I'm still annoyed that it required jumping through hoops just to get back to semi-functional. And the metro interface remains an abomination.
It used to be you could + and cycle through windows in a predictable manner, so you weren't required to remove your hands from the freakin' keyboard when you're working at 90 miles an hour.
I finally found out wtf they did with alt-tab. Turns out, they keep the first 6 apps in the usual MRU order we're used to (and that's sensible and can be remembered). Then they inject the desktop into the 7th slot (because ignorant people clutter their desktop with all kinds of crap), and then every application after the desktop is in alphabetical order. By window title, I believe.
The most wildly useless arrangement they could think of that still has some sort of order to it. As if I remember my programs by window title, especially when there's absolutely no consistency in titling. Some programs prefix their name with the open file. Some suffix it. Some don't list the open file. So where the program falls in the list may (or may not) depend on what document you have open at the time. One of their stupider ideas, which successfully sabotaged an interface that worked, for the people that knew about it. And there's no registry key to turn off the braindead sort order, either. You can disable it entirely, and go back to program icons only. (And you can set registry settings to change the spacing of the application image thumbnails. 'cause that's what needed to be customizable...)
I double dog dare you to step into multiple manufacturing environments. Hey, guess what, Manufacturing does still exist in America, and *shock* we actually make enough money to stay in business. Stop looking at that @$#%#%# thing in your hand and step out into the real world. Come talk to those of us that actually have to support things like a building that has such large voltage drops that the battery backups are nonstop frying up....or making a Dos 6.22 machine try to just find that Windows Server 2008 share to pull it's programs.....
We are trying something as simple (and fun to design) as making the shop floor paperless. NOT AS EASY AS ONE WOULD THINK...when you actually break down where the paper is really at. You can't just take the paper away and shove a tablet in their hands....these guys work in 115 degree heat sometimes, with a layer of metal dust caking their fingers. Some of these guys have been in the business 40 years....and their eyesight isn't exactly capable of reading the dimensions on that drawing of a part that is 7 ft tall, and 5 ft wide on a device that is 5-10" in size.
Heck, I can't even get a mobile device that doesn't require Internet to function. Look at the Google Apps. Just using a Nexus to try to take a picture of that Aerospace part is already, out of the gate a huge no-no. Why? ITAR regulations. The App Dev is in the UK. You are taking a picture of a part that is required by ITAR regulations to not be accessible to persons outside the US. Just by buying that app from the Google Store made you give permission for that App to have access to the camera....which is the Devs....that are located outside the US. Any Google Apps and Devices are already eliminated out of the gate for our use.
The problem is with IT nowadays is that everyone is looking for a niche product to get rich quick off of, and not trying to really solve problems.
Which is true ... if you do not read PDFs ... have javascript disabled ... or never go onto the net!
I have seen the same corporate computers get infected over and over again by java exploits. They ran java 1.4.2 and only went on business websites. I looked at the logs. No porn, no downloading free screensavers, just doing the occasional Google image search and using corporate websites with infected ad servers.
The sysadmin in all his good wisdom decided not to allow updates after May 2009! Gee viruses keep coming and coming. Can't imagine why?! You can get infected just by doing a Google Image search of OBL killed back in 2011. With javascript exploits you could get infected even without clicking the images! Goole would pass the XSS domain cross vulnerability and your browser would run whatever the hacker would want.
Little girls searching for puppies got infected constantly this way. Adobe reader, flash, and even 0 day browser exploits all target Windows after they get through the browser security to run. These XP machines will be infected immediately. Hell slashdot tried to serve malware on my laptop though an infected ad a year or two ago too. If you ran unpatched flash, XP, without adblock you got 0wned.
http://saveie6.com/