Windows 8.1 Update Released, With Improvements For Non-Touch Hardware

DroidJason1 (3589319) writes "Microsoft has released the highly anticipated Windows 8.1 Update, adding numerous improvements for non-touch consumers based on feedback. It is also a required update for Windows 8.1, otherwise consumers will no get any future security updates after May 2014. Most of the changes in the update are designed to appease non-touch users, with options to show apps on the desktop taskbar, the ability to see show the taskbar above apps, and a new title bar at the top of apps with options to minimize, close, or snap apps."

Comments

It's a start

[lgw]

Well, it's a start. I doubt I'm unique in that I won't be happy until I get a proper, Win 7 Start menu back, at least as an option. Live tiles on my desktop would be nice too.

Basically, give me back the Win 7 UI with the ability to put live tiles on the desktop, and run apps in a windows. Remember "windows"? Call be weird, but I'd like a version of Windows with, you know, windows.

Re:It's a start

[roc97007]

There used to be this thing called Windows Gadgets. But I guess that wasn't cool and trendy enough.

Re:It's a start

[WilliamGeorge]

Doesn't this update have the Start Menu again? I wonder if alternatives like Classic Shell or Start8 would still work now, for those who insist their start menu look more like the one in Windows 7.

Disclaimer: I am going off things I have read, and have not had the chance to update the Windows 8.1 system I am typing from yet.

Re:It's a start

[Spad]

It has a Start *button* but still uses the Start Screen from vanilla Win 8.

Re:It's a start

[Spad]

Wow, really can't tell if this is sarcasm or not (from the linked MSDN Blog entry)

It does NOT include the Start menu that you may have seen/heard about at the recent Build conference. That is some exciting near-future stuff, which demonstrates our on-going commitment to deliver on customer feedback.

Re:It's a start

[WilliamGeorge]

That is what the *current* (read: before today's update) version of 8.1 has. I believe this is the update that is adding back a Start Menu, and letting you run "apps" within windows on the desktop.

Re:It's a start

[WilliamGeorge]

Oh, I see - that is unfortunate. The rumors I had heard were that the big update today was going to include all of that... rather disappointing that it doesn't. Sorry for the confusion!

Re:It's a start

[vux984]

No, this is just the first step towards it. The one with the actual start menu and apps in windows is still coming soon.

Re:It's a start

[BLToday]

"There used to be this thing called Windows Gadgets. But I guess that wasn't cool and trendy enough."

Or useful enough. Remember there was Konfabulator (Yahoo bought them), Google Desktop (widgets, discontinued). Only one left and barely alive is Apple's Dashboard.

Re:It's a start

[maugle]

A menu that's actually usable, that doesn't throw you into the awful metro interface, is considered by Microsoft to be "exciting near-future stuff".

...That's just goddamn depressing.

Re:It's a start

[Anonymous Coward]

EXCITING NEAR-FUTURE STUFF!! Just like a flying car or something near-futurey like that! Such commitment! So demonstrative!! BRAVO!!!

Re:It's a start

[AudioEfex]

I agree. I lived with Win8 for a month or so but just got so annoyed having to slide my mouse around just to close a window and having to fight just to get to the desktop. I gave it a good try, but then I just booted the whole thing and went back to Win7.

It wasn't a lack of willingness to adapt, it was because the interface clearly was not aimed at traditional desktop use. And I have no desire whatsoever for a touch screen - one at the size I would need is not only prohibitively expensive for what I'd wish to pay, but I'm not going to reach up constantly when it's much more efficient to just use a mouse and keyboard in most cases. I can do everything more quickly (why pinch to resize when my mouse wheel does it perfectly, etc.) and I don't have to relearn how to do basic tasks.

I also gave the whole "tiles" thing a try - but again, just organizing it was a chore, I don't have the need for live widgets (and, as others point out, they could work just as easily from the desktop anyway), and because of how many apps I use regularly, the thing was unwieldy to scroll across. I also am apt to add an app to try it out, and delete it if it wasn't what I really needed (so hard to tell just from reviews these days, particularly with video manipulation software), and it always seemed to leave various junk files laying around which I then had to go in to manually remove (text readmes, etc). It was a major PITA.

If someone who has been using Windows for 20 years daily had as much issue as I did, someone who folks routinely ask me to "fix" their computers (get rid of errant toolbars, etc.) - there was no hope for the average user. Nothing was intuitive about it. Even if someone just wanted to click on simple apps or links to use them (say, my mom who goes to like 3 websites, uses like 3 or 4 apps, and that's about it) she would have never been able to set that up herself.

I still have my Win8 Upgrade copy, at some point I'm sure some afternoon in the next few months I'll be watching a TV marathon and decide to give it a whirl - but I'll be fully mirroring my current Win7 set-up so I can go back if they've just put lipstick on a pig. Hopefully they have addressed the usability issues - all that crap they added would be great options for someone who wants to use a touch-interface exclusively, but all it felt like to me was using Windows through a space suit underwater...

Re:It's a start

[YrWrstNtmr]

They killed those off because they were major security holes. Little bits of random HTML.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/gadgets

Re:It's a start

[rudy_wayne]

I won't bother reciting all the things that are wrong with Windows 8, many other people have already done that in great detail. When the new "Update 1" leaked onto the Internet a few weeks ago I decided to give it a try.

The Update does make quite a few improvements and results in a system that is closer to what Windows 8 should have been in the first place. Closer, but not there. After installing the Update and doing a bit of wrangling, what you have is a system that looks and works very similar to Windows 7 except for:

(a) Uglier, shittier color scheme
(b) A "Start Screen" that takes up your entire desktop instead of a proper Start Menu that only uses the lower left quadrant, and you still don't have one of the best features that were introduced in Windows XP 12 years ago -- keeping a list of most recently used programs.
(3) Windows Explorer (now apparently renamed to File Explorer) now has the godawful "ribbon" abomination that makes it 10 times harder to use.
(d) All the other things that are wrong with Windows 8, such as installing a dozen useless "apps" on your desktop.

In other words, what's the point? Windows 8.1 Update 1 is just a shittier version of Windows 7.

Re:It's a start

[roc97007]

Hm. I wonder how that compares with live tiles.

Re:It's a start

[Anonymous Coward]

FUck this bullshit. The late beta versions of Windows 8 before RTM had the god damn fucker start menu fully fucntional and could be enabled with a registry edit. The faggoty assholes removed the ability to enable it in RTM. Code is there. The tool that wrote what you quoted needs to chew on a terd.

Fuck the beta.

Re:It's a start

[lgw]

Windows Explorer / file manager seems to have gotten worse every release since Windows 95. It's amazing.

Any good open source file manager replacements for Windows out there (Classic Shell does give you some good options). I know I wrote a working file manager back when I wanted to teach myself Winforms - wonder if I still have the source somewhere.

Re:It's a start

[WheezyJoe]

I liked gadgets, too. Minor things like a desktop clock, calendar, weather, scrachpad, that kind of thing helps your workflow and save you the time and risk of looking for some random shareware solution. I was never too clear on any security problems with gadgets, thought they were sandboxed. I figured they got dropped because Microsoft just decided the desktop was history and all is Metro. Same reason I figured this or that UI bug in 7 would never get fixed.

There are unofficial ways to get them back on Windows 8, and so far it's worked reliably for me.

Re:It's a start

[luther349]

that's is coming and its looks pretty dam nice almost like loghorn.

Re:It's a start

[SuseLover]

Live tiles? Really? WTF good are they? I have yet to find anything useful for them. I thought this concept was dead after the failure called active desktop because of all the security problems (not to mention all the cpu cycles it wastes even when your not watching).

On a phone's home screen I could see a use but not on a desktop where I keep my dozens of Firefox tabs open and all I gotta do is switch to it.

How do you see a live tile when the desktop is full of windows/apps anyhow? You still must minimize every app to see the desktop, it easier to just click the FF tab it's on.

Re:It's a start

[Joce640k]

"Most of the changes in the update are designed to appease non-touch users"

Do they exist? Really????

How out of touch can a company be?

Re:It's a start

[gstoddart]

There used to be this thing called Windows Gadgets. But I guess that wasn't cool and trendy enough.

Well, they were memory hogs, and completely insecure.

In other words, they might have been a good idea at the time, but I stopped using them after a few days because they used up so much damned memory. Seriously guys, a clock widget doesn't take 200+ MB of RAM. Or, at least, it shouldn't in any sane world.

And, from the sounds of it, Microsoft didn't make a framework which was secure or safe.

A little single-purpose widget should be a small, lightweight thing that does one thing. But even the ones Microsoft shipped were overly bloated things which shouldn't have existed.

I don't think "cool and trendy" were what defined the failure of those. Bloated and insecure, but not cool and trendy.

Re:It's a start

[Anonymous Coward]

Hm. I wonder how that compares with live tiles.

Stupid ideas never die, they just get renamed. Push technology, PointCast, Active Desktop (IE4.0 HTML as wallpaper on Win95), Windows Sidebar (Vista), Gadgets (Win7), and now Live Tiles.

It's all just a bunch of lame attempts to get demographic data on the userbase / turn the computer into a TV so that it can be monetized.

Re:It's a start

[gstoddart]

Do they exist? Really????

How out of touch can a company be?

LOL, you can have my 23" Acer flat panel (with no touch, thank you very much) when you pry it from my cold dead hands (or it suffers failure).

We don' need no steenkin' touch screens.

For my tablet and phone, I like touch. For a desktop? I can't even understand why you would.

Re:It's a start

[plj]

There is a screenshot (not photoshopped!) of a development build with live tiles in start menu (instead of the desktop) and a modern UI app (Mail) in a window, so maybe the future will bring something roughly like that you wish for. See here.

Re:It's a start

[TheRealMindChild]

Windows gadgets were essentially borderless IE windows that ran in the local zone. This means they could CreateObject(...) ActiveX libraries via scripting that could do, well, anything to your system. The sandbox didn't matter at that point.

Re:It's a start

[lgw]

I see a lot of potential for servers, where I want status information displayed on the desktop. There are many hacks to display static stuff like machine name and IP address in use today, but adding real-time server health info would be nice. It's rare to connect directly to the desktop on a server, but when you do it's nice to have everything you typically care about pre-packaged for you.

In general, live tiles are good for machines you don't often use directly that often, or use for displaying some specific set of info. Of course, you could just run a couple of apps in windows and tile them and get the same effect: live tiles are just an optimization of that.

Re:It's a start

[ericloewe]

They had some freakish security flaw and were recently disabled, supposedly. I never bothered to check, they were never compelling enough.

Re:It's a start

[flyingfsck]

...and the granddaddy of them all: Terminate and Stay Resident (TSR) programs on DOS. I'm getting old, sorry...

Re:It's a start

[ericloewe]

Well, you will be getting a proper start menu again, at an uncertain future point in time. I'll venture a guess that it's not too far away.

It's Windows 7 Start Menu on the left and miniature version of the Windows 8 Start Screen on the right, in a format slightly larger than Windows 7's Menu.

Re:It's a start

[93 Escort Wagon]

You can have my TopView when you pry it out of my cold, dead fingers.

Re:It's a start

[ericloewe]

The ribbon hate is really getting old. What is it that makes it so awful in your eyes?

Re:It's a start

[gstoddart]

Well, someone had to figure out how to use the memory over 640K, because Billy Boy hadn't yet done so.

It's OK, it happens to all of us. Just think of all the fun you'll have telling your grandchildren about loading programs from cassette tape, or typing in the source code from a magazine. That should be good for some laughs ... because you'll need to explain both concepts to them.

If you're really old you can tell them stories about toggling in boot sequences or using punch cards. That'll really blow their mind.

Re:It's a start

[chipschap]

"If you're really old you can tell them stories about toggling in boot sequences or using punch cards"

I remember doing that stuff ... it was kind of fun in its own way. I guess I'm "really old" ... :)

Re:It's a start

[Kjella]

Wow, really can't tell if this is sarcasm or not (from the linked MSDN Blog entry)

No, the reality detachment is part of the job requirements. Engineers might be able to keep a straight face for a sales meeting or two, but to really sell moderately good products well you have to drink your own kool-aid. Even when I'm on their side and they're not trying to sell me anything, everyone from marketing and sales I've ever met seems to have an over inflated view of the software's features, capabilities, quality and suitability for whatever the client asks for and trying to take them down a notch is like throwing facts at a non stick surface. No matter what they can bend reality until it's a positive, the only risk is that they go so over the top the customer stops taking them seriously. Like in this case you might take it for sarcasm but I can guarantee you it's not, at best it's an attempt at positive spin.or at worst they genuinely believe it.

Re:It's a start

[gstoddart]

I remember doing that stuff ... it was kind of fun in its own way. I guess I'm "really old" ... :)

LOL, here I'm using "really old" in such a way as to mean "my age or older".

Was talking to someone the other day, and apparently his kid had found his cassette tapes -- he said it took 10 minutes to explain that it used to be for playing music, and another 5 minutes to convince that he wasn't joking.

I can only imagine trying to explain the function of rabbit ears, or how the youngest person in the room was the TV remote. And don't even get me started on black and white TV with 3 stations. ;-)

Re:It's a start

[Anonymous Coward]

And KDE Plasma

Re:It's a start

[Anonymous Coward]

You no like the Microsoft Window?

Re:It's a start

[lgw]

It takes up too much damn space, and it pointlessly moved around shit that I knew. When you're a start up, sure, change things at random, you have vastly more potential users than users, go for it. But when you're the big player stop fucking with stuff that works. It's fine that it's not the shiny new style all the hipsters love: your existing user base vastly outnumbers your potential new user base. Keep your power users happy, at all costs!

Re:It's a start

[eyepeepackets]

Teletype - punched paper tapes. You think you're old? I'm so old I've become an anachronism.

Re:It's a start

[chihowa]

Windows gadgets were essentially borderless IE windows that ran in the local zone. This means they could CreateObject(...) ActiveX libraries via scripting that could do, well, anything to your system. The sandbox didn't matter at that point.

Well, that seems like a pretty easy thing to fix. Why ditch them entirely?

Re:It's a start

[sproketboy]

Live tiles have new and improved security holes.

Re:It's a start

[Anonymous Coward]

Translation:

"I'm too old to change and I don't realize that the future belongs to new people who haven't leaned all my bad habits yet."

Re:It's a start

[Anonymous Coward]

The start screen is a vastly superior replacement for the start menu. Fuck that stupid, useless start button and fuck all of you people who whined until they put it back (without even making it optional).

Re:It's a start

[Anonymous Coward]

I was looking at the gadgets the other day in 7 and there is a notice on m$ site that says gadgets were discontinued due to major security risks with them.

Re:It's a start

[Anne Thwacks]

You are obviously too young to understand that some people use computers to perform useful tasks like searching for porn. Learning a whole new way of doing things that is considerably worse than the old way, is badly designed, looks ugly, lacks essential features, and infested with bugs, is not condusive to productivity, and does not amuse me, although it may be an interesting diversion for some.

Lawn: off!

Re:It's a start

[cbhacking]

Live tiles have extremely limited interaction options. You can show some text, you can show an image, you can show a front and a back side. They aren't allowed to have any active code (the app can subscribe its tile to updates from a server, but that just means new text/image that the OS fetches and displays). Pretty big difference.

Re:It's a start

[Darinbob]

I like the Apple Dashboard (just for calendar/calculator). However I never once used a Windows gadget. They didn't feel as convenient, and they were a pretty obscure unadvertised feature.

Re:It's a start

[cbhacking]

That's a future update (Update 2? Win8.2? Win 8.5? Win9? Who knows...) that was demoed as a "something we're working on". I wouldn't be surprised to see it by year's end, but it is *not* in Win8.1u1, despite the wild claims of a bunch of people who couldn't be bothered to actually pay attention to what MS was saying.

Re:It's a start

[GumphMaster]

You are not alone. Patching the bits on a magnetic program load tapes using a combo of front panel switch banks and 50baud teletype is within my experience also (for AQS-901 systems circa 1990).

Re:It's a start

[Black LED]

I have been using 8GadgetPack to get my gadgets back in Windows 8.x.

Re:It's a start

[WheezyJoe]

THIS!

The Ribbon is an eye-candy solution to a problem that only existed in focus groups. Microsoft may have been legitimately worried that OpenOffice and others were encroaching on its turf, productivity apps increasingly looking the same, and wanted something to look new and different. And that's fine, but they made it mandatory, and also yanked the menus and other, customizable interfaces people had gotten used to for getting their work done.

Seriously, a very important feature of Microsoft products was the ability to customize them to a particular job or work environment. That's one way businesses got locked into Microsoft.

The ribbon shot that in the foot at the expense of precious screen space. Shills and trolls just say "learn something new". Thousands of offices still using Office 2003 respond "we're real productive with what we've got, and don't have down-time to gamble on something new." Microsoft has it backward. You don't fish for one or two consumers who want a pretty ribbon to buy one license... you cater to what businesses need, and sell site-licenses at tens, hundreds, thousands of seats at a time. Then, the consumer will buy a copy because that's what he or she trained on at work.

But that's Office. Sticking the ribbon into the File/Windows Explorer is just weird, like an attempt to brand everything in some effort to evangelize one-interface-to-rule-them-all, as if putting it everywhere is going to make people like it. I'm hoping Microsoft is gonna stop forcing it's homegrown ideas down people's throats, and get back to making software people actually want to use to get work done. Clue: busy people don't have time to participate in focus groups.

Re:It's a start

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? I just installed Classic Shell and called it a day.

Re:It's a start

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE still has a healthy widget collection.

Re:It's a start

[lgw]

If I want to change and learn new habits, why would I keep using Microsoft products? See my point?

Re:It's a start

[Mashiki]

I agree. I lived with Win8 for a month or so but just got so annoyed having to slide my mouse around just to close a window and having to fight just to get to the desktop. I gave it a good try, but then I just booted the whole thing and went back to Win7.

My question is, if you hated it as much as I did. Why didn't you just install a replacement shell? And I say that as someone who's been using Windows for 28 years.

Re:It's a start

[Anonymous Coward]

It was a feature so people could make things like processor monitors.

Re:It's a start

[vux984]

For my tablet and phone, I like touch. For a desktop? I can't even understand why you would.

I posted in another thread several examples; most of them revolving around a kitchen or living room 'family computer' especially the common scenario where the keyboard and mouse stored in a drawer.

Then for various quick casual interactions, like to check the weather, check twitter/facebook, start a netflix movie, start playing some music... etc you do it all with the screen without even bothering to get out the mouse and keyboard.

When they want to do any real work they pull out the kb and mouse and don't touch the screen.

I know people who have those big desktop all in one touch screens, and that's how they use them.

Is it a critical must have feature? I don't think so, but its convenient, and its not like they paid a lot extra for it vs a non-touchscreen version.

Re:It's a start

[atlasdropperofworlds]

Apparently the start menu is coming back, as is the ability to run all apps in windows. Live tiles on the desktop is not coming, but they run in the new start menu.

Re:It's a start

[Anonymous Coward]

It's easier to find things in a list of words than in a bunch of little pictures with words.

Re:It's a start

[norite]

On windows server 2012, that's excatly what I did, install classic sheel, disable metro everywhere, and got back to being productive again.
I don't have time for charms, live tiles and other frivolous metro bullshit. I have real work to do.

Re:It's a start

[jmyers]

Translation: "I live with my mom and have never done actual work so I don't mind playing with toys".

  I have learned to live with the ribbon but it sucks horribly. It wastes space. Icons are stupid an meaningless. Text menu items arraigned intelligently are meaningful and useful to people that use these tools to do actual work. It is a step backwards and in now way an improvement.

Re:It's a start

[Dutch Gun]

THIS!

The Ribbon is an eye-candy solution to a problem that only existed in focus groups. Microsoft may have been legitimately worried that OpenOffice and others were encroaching on its turf, productivity apps increasingly looking the same, and wanted something to look new and different. And that's fine, but they made it mandatory, and also yanked the menus and other, customizable interfaces people had gotten used to for getting their work done.

Seriously, a very important feature of Microsoft products was the ability to customize them to a particular job or work environment. That's one way businesses got locked into Microsoft.

The ribbon shot that in the foot at the expense of precious screen space. Shills and trolls just say "learn something new". Thousands of offices still using Office 2003 respond "we're real productive with what we've got, and don't have down-time to gamble on something new." Microsoft has it backward. You don't fish for one or two consumers who want a pretty ribbon to buy one license... you cater to what businesses need, and sell site-licenses at tens, hundreds, thousands of seats at a time. Then, the consumer will buy a copy because that's what he or she trained on at work.

But that's Office. Sticking the ribbon into the File/Windows Explorer is just weird, like an attempt to brand everything in some effort to evangelize one-interface-to-rule-them-all, as if putting it everywhere is going to make people like it. I'm hoping Microsoft is gonna stop forcing it's homegrown ideas down people's throats, and get back to making software people actually want to use to get work done. Clue: busy people don't have time to participate in focus groups.

The ribbon make sense for Office, IMO, although obviously not everyone will like such a significant change. It took a bit for me to get used to, but I didn't mind so much. That being said, I can empathize with many power users who feel like the rug was pulled out from under them since they had to retrain themselves for the new paradigm. Unlearning old habits is often harder then learning from scratch.

Ribbons do have some actual practical advantages over menus and toolbars. They dynamically and predictably scale to fill available screen space, they can provide more detailed and context-sensitive on-screen cues than traditional fixed-sized toolbar buttons and controls, and are generally more easily discoverable than multi-nested menus. While it's true they do potentially use more screen space, you have to weigh that against the general increasing trend of desktop resolutions and what benefits the new UI provides. I'm pretty sure the designers understood that it would cause short-term pain in the hopes that it would provide longer-term usability benefits.

That being said, I completely agree that adding a ribbon to file explorer is questionable judgement at best. There's no good reason to use a ribbon there - for smaller applications, ribbons don't provide any real advantage - they're a solution to a very specific issue (massive complexity) the office team was trying to combat. In fact, they ignored their own interface guidelines in this regard, when they note that a ribbon control isn't a good fit for every application. When a ribbon was proposed, someone should have asked "Why? What problems currently exist with the menu and toolbars that a ribbon would solve?" As controversial as the Office ribbons were, I could understand why there was design pressure for an improved paradigm with it's near-overwhelming complexity.

Re:It's a start

[AudioEfex]

I didn't claim to be a power user, but I would consider myself above average as far as normal computer using folks. I don't write programs, but it can write advanced Excel macros. I've never built a PC from scratch but I've torn down my laptop all the way and can upgrade anything. I'm an advanced user but no expert. And I'll be fully honest - never even knew alternate UI's existed until folks started posting about them here in regards to Win8. I never needed to know because I was always able to customize Windows to do what I wanted. So, if I have never heard of replacement UIs, chances are, most non-IT users don't, either.

Re:It's a start

[ChunderDownunder]

Another promising idea killed off by improper sandboxing? :(

How is 'Little bits of random HTML' any more insecure than browsing the web using IE 11, I wonder...

I'm cheering for Mozilla at this point. Latest builds of Firefox for Android promise seamless integration of HTML apps. If they did the same for Windows, you'd see the HTML5 market expand.

Re:It's a start

[_Shad0w_]

I actually still use Windows Gadgets on Windows 7 - mostly an analogue clock and a set of CPU, GPU, disk, and network monitors.

Re:It's a start

[jones_supa]

It's a shame they don't work properly though. Some weeks ago I played with those widgets and neither of the two weather applets ever displayed any data.

And here we are again. Linux and no proper quality assurance. If this was for example Microsoft, the QA team would have carefully tested each of those widgets before shipping a product.

Re:It's a start

[Anonymous Coward]

Common misconception... the tiles are nonporous. It's the grout you have to worry about.

Re:It's a start

[L4t3r4lu5]

I thought about the performance meters, but then considered that the few times when I wanted to see performance figures they would be obscured by a window. Install a proper monitoring utility which will output to the system tray, or an overlay, or a proper performance monitoring tool. Hell, even perfmon does a better job when set up correctly.

I personally use Coretemp for temperature and fan monitoring, and the motherboard manufacturer supplied tuning app for CPU clock / usage stats. GPUz will give you live graphics info, if you want it.

Re:It's a start

[colinrichardday]

Ribbons do have some actual practical advantages over menus and toolbars. They dynamically and predictably scale to fill available screen space,

Is this scaling an advantage? How does the ribbon know how much space is available? What if the user is running other programs?

Re:It's a start

[jp10558]

Wouldn't your status information be in your monitoring system? I mean, rather than sucking cycles to show a tile on a desktop on my server, I'd just like an e-mail when something gets out of spec, and an overview of a whole set of servers in a WebUI if I want to look actively...

Re:It's a start

[chrish]

The somewhat confusingly named Rainmeter is alive and well, and running on all of my Windows machines.

Of the four, it's the only one I haven't developed for, and it's the only one that's still breathing. What if it's my fault the others died?! :-O

Re:It's a start

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are you using the Metro side of Windows 8 on your desktop?

I'm on Win8 on my home computer and I spend most of my time on the Desktop. If you don't need to be babied, install all the regular apps that you would have anyway on Win7 and 8 functions basically like 7.

Metro is for the uneducated masses that don't understand computers, as evidenced by a preinstalled PDF viewer instead of installing it yourself, a market, etc.

Re:It's a start

[armanox]

I've also used this with great success.

Re:It's a start

[lgw]

Wouldn't your status information be in your monitoring system?

Some representation of it, sure. Chances are that's the only reason I'm connected to the server in the first place. But now I'm on some shitty RDP link where doing anything is awkward, and getting the truth at the server immediately is really nice. Monitoring is great at telling you that a problem exists, but less great about getting the details right.

I mean, rather than sucking cycles to show a tile on a desktop on my server,

It's really quite rare for a server to be anywhere near max CPU (and chances are you're running monitoring watchdogs anyhow, this is just a lightweight UI).

Of course, at real scale I'm working on getting humans entirely out of the repair/recovery loop, but you have to deploy and debug any such software, so you're back to connecting to servers to see what's really wrong.

Re:It's a start

[david_thornley]

I hope multiple resizable and movable rectangles - "windows" if you will - that you can run applications in is also exciting near-future stuff.

Re:It's a start

[Karzz1]

Did you, you know, configure the location for those? I have used several KDE weather plasmoids and they all worked well.. once I configured the location. I am pretty sure that you would need to do the same with MS widgets. Just sayin.

Re:It's a start

[Anonymous Coward]

I hated vanilla 8, but I have to say 8.1 won me over. Still a few annoyances, but the start menu is very configurable. This update only expands on that. The traditional Start menu is very compact and linear which has it's own drawback if you have loads of apps. I've found the new Start Menu is configurable to the point where I'm getting to my desktop apps faster.

Re:It's a start

[_Shad0w_]

I have two monitors; the sidebar is on the right hand one. It mostly gets used as place to dump things I don't need to look at continuously while working or generally doing "stuff".

Re:It's a start

[exomondo]

The ribbon shot that in the foot at the expense of precious screen space.

Oh come on, with dirt cheap high resolution monitors you should have gotten to a point where screen realestate is hardly an issue for doing office work.

Seriously, a very important feature of Microsoft products was the ability to customize them to a particular job or work environment.

You can customize the ribbon. You can create ribbons and within those you can create groups and put buttons in those groups, which is certainly more intuitive than toolbars and menus however if you already are indoctrinated in the use of toolbars and menus then changing is obviously of dubious value. Personally I'm not an office worker (as in I don't spend time producing and editing office documents).

Fascinating release date timing

[TaoPhoenix]

It's been in development for months, but some middle manager decided that the day that XP died was the day to push this out.

Offtopic: Does anyone know of a Day the Music Died song parody called something like "Day my XP Died"?

Re:Fascinating release date timing

[MightyMartian]

A long long time ago,
I can still remember how that NT kernel made me smile.
And I knew that if I had my chance,
I'd write a helluva lot cool VB 6 apps.
And maybe my manager would be happy for a while.

But April made me shiver,
With each Win 8 PC I'd deliver.
Bad news in the staffroom steps.
And I couldn't take one more step.

I can't remember if I cried,
When I read about some XP user heaved a sigh.
But something touched me deep inside.
The day Windows XP died.

So bye bye Windows XP has died.
Rode my Segway to the to the levy,
But the levy was dry.
And good ol' sysadmins were drinking coffee and Sprite,
Singing "This is the day Windows XP has died,
This is the day Windows XP has died."

Re:Fascinating release date timing

[Dragonshed]

Hitting those XP users with the carrot.

Re:Fascinating release date timing

[Anonymous Coward]

Today is Patch Tuesday.

Re:Fascinating release date timing

[ericloewe]

It's a coincidence. Today is patch tuesday, XP's last (thus the official end of support), which is when this kind of stuff is typically distributed.

Re:Fascinating release date timing

[93 Escort Wagon]

But where are the other ten minutes of the song?

Re:Fascinating release date timing

[Darinbob]

Microsoft would discontinue support for the song long before it was finished playing.

Re:Fascinating release date timing

[Anonymous Coward]

The GP pulled a Madonna on the song!

many turds little polish

[Anonymous Coward]

can you see us {;^)-)-)- http://rt.com/news/snowden-nsa-us-facebook-717/

What version are they changing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Man, I'm really sorry for not following along. But is this update going from 8.0 to 8.1? Is it an update to 8.1? But not 8.2 of course. So they're going from X to Y.
What's X and what's Y?

I mean, they've been selling 8.1 a while ago. What the hell is this update then?

Re:What version are they changing?

[ArhcAngel]

Think of it as 8.1 service pack 1.

Re:What version are they changing?

[WilliamGeorge]

Windows 8.1 Update 1 - then next they will do Windows 8.1 Update 1 Service Pack 1 ;)

Re:What version are they changing?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is how it was:
WinXP -> WinXP SP1 -> WinXP SP2 -> WinXP SP3

This is how it is now (MS said there will be no more SP-s released):
Windows 8 -> Windows 8.1 -> Windows 8.1 Update 1 -> Windows 8.1 Update 1 MinorUpdate 1

This will be the next update:
Windows 8.1 Update 1 MinorUpdate 1 Episode 1 (ala Valve)

Re:What version are they changing?

[MachineShedFred]

This is Windows 8.11 for Workgroups.

Re:What version are they changing?

[lgw]

I maintain my stance that Windows 9.5 will be the version that changes everything, with Windows 9.8 mostly getting it right.

Re:What version are they changing?

[jpvlsmv]

Windows Live 8.1 Update 1 Service Pack 1 R2.

Re:What version are they changing?

[Anonymous Coward]

& Windows 9.ME [oh well...] will reverse the improvements, of course...

Re:What version are they changing?

[TaoPhoenix]

"I maintain my stance that Windows 9.5 will be the version that changes everything, with Windows 9.8 mostly getting it right."

Nice joke, but I'm actually hoping for this. It would be poetic justice.

Microsoft's new CEO (with a tough to remember name!) Satya Nadella at least seems to be coming from an engineering perspective rather than Steve B's pure marketing. So after he gets settled, I in fact really am hoping he'll be the next Dave Cutler who pulls a stunning new revision to Windows that really makes *almost everyone* happy. Then maybe it will get a Win95-98-2000-2001-Win7 type cleanup but in record time and set the tech world abuzz.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...

Re:What version are they changing?

[mmell]

I don't know if that needs to be upmodded "Brilliant" or "Hilarious". Oh well - fire twinklers and light balls!

Re:What version are they changing?

[mlw4428]

Windows Live 8.1 Update 1 Service Pack 1 R2 ME Edition?

Re:What version are they changing?

[unixisc]

I was going to ask that. 8.1 has been out for a while, so if they are updating anything, why not call it 8.2? Particularly since the functionality for non touch is very different from what it was in 8.1

Re:What version are they changing?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Windows Server nomenclature (R2 for release 2) is quite possibly one of the stupidest naming choices I have every encountered. Try searching for $OS_NAME after $OS_NAME R2 is released.

Re:What version are they changing?

[hamsan]

And then will come the hoped-for Windows X.p ...

Re:What version are they changing?

[H0p313ss]

Windows Live 8.1 Update 1 Service Pack 1 R2 ME Edition Professional

Attrocious Syntax and Grammar

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there an editor who is fluent in English available to edit submissions before publication? "consumers will no get any" -- "ability to see show the taskbar".

Re:Attrocious Syntax and Grammar

[Anonymous Coward]

sorry, but no.

A patch closer to usability, few more to go

[sinij]

You can pry Start Button from my cold blue-screen hands.

Re:A patch closer to usability, few more to go

[olsmeister]

Yep. I'll skip Win8 altogether, I think, and wait for 9.

Re:A patch closer to usability, few more to go

[MightyYar]

The amazing thing (to me, anyway) is that I always hated the start menu. Never liked having such redundancy... rather than giving me some flexibility in how applications are organized you make this ghetto of delicate "shortcuts", requiring installers for even the most simple binaries.

And yet, what they replaced it with is so much worse that I find myself wishing for it back.

I would not have thought this was possible.

Re:A patch closer to usability, few more to go

[lgw]

I like the start menu for what it is: a comprehensive tree of everything I have installed, including all the rarely used stuff. But it wasn't great for what I'd use often.

I really like where Win 7 ended up. The stuff I use every day is on my task bar, and once I launch it all, the order of the task bar is fixed, much to the delight of my muscle memory.

The stuff I use once a week or so, I can put in the short list in my start menu. The rest is still browseable (and easy to organize if I care to), and searchable, whichever makes it easier to find that one program I installed a year ago and suddenly I need.

Re:A patch closer to usability, few more to go

[MightyYar]

I like the start menu for what it is: a comprehensive tree of everything I have installed

But that's not quite what it is - it's a tree of everything that decided to put stuff there. If you manually dragged an exe to Program Files, no show. If some uninstaller didn't remember the shortcut, you have a dead link. Worse, it's an idea decidedly rooted in a single-user machine, so exterminating an entry means looking in a few different places that they added to accommodate multiple users.

I really do like Windows 7 as well. Still not sold on the Start Menu :) At least in 7 it rarely bothers me. Frequent programs I have pinned to the task bar so that I can use the "pinned" feature in the right-click menu. Less-frequently accessed stuff can be accessed with a quick tap of the Windows button and a few letters from the name. I was quite shocked when I moved to Windows 8. I gave it a year and still hated it. When the hard drive died and I found out how horrid Windows 8 backup is, I moved back to 7.

Re:A patch closer to usability, few more to go

[lgw]

But that's not quite what it is - it's a tree of everything that decided to put stuff there. If you manually dragged an exe to Program Files, no show. If some uninstaller didn't remember the shortcut, you have a dead link. Worse, it's an idea decidedly rooted in a single-user machine, so exterminating an entry means looking in a few different places that they added to accommodate multiple users.

Those are all really Windows XP complaints though. I don't have these problems with Win 7, other than the couple of lingering tools I use with no Windows installer. The combination of MS's open source installer tools (WIX) and the "side by side" fix for DLL Hell means almost everything has proper packaging in Windows now.

I'm forced to use Win 8 in a couple of places myself - thank goodness for Classic Shell!

Re:A patch closer to usability, few more to go

[MightyYar]

Yeah, like I said in the other branch of this thread, Windows 7 hardly ever gets in my way. It cleaned up a lot of rough edges in XP, and it includes a (mostly) useful backup program that can restore from images. I like it a lot, and my one-year "upgrade" to Windows 8 was a mistake.

I still get irritated every time I install something like Putty, where I have to drag the EXE to a folder, make a shortcut, and then drag that to the Start menu. To be fair, you can drag it directly to the Start Menu. I'm sure that is a bad idea for some reason, but I can't recollect why at the moment.

Re:A patch closer to usability, few more to go

[jawtheshark]

PuTTY has an installer. Has had it for ages.

Re:A patch closer to usability, few more to go

[MightyYar]

That was just an example, and apparently a bad one.

Re:A patch closer to usability, few more to go

[I_Wrote_This]

I like the start menu for what it is:

It's quite simple to get in back in Win8.1.

Just add a New Toolbar for the folder: \ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs and squish it along to the left.

It will be called "Programs" and it won't be on the very left, but it will show the familiar hierarchy.

Re:A patch closer to usability, few more to go

[GumphMaster]

You could just install PuTTY with the provided Windows installer and save yourself the irritation.

Re:A patch closer to usability, few more to go

[Mashiki]

Yep. I'll skip Win8 altogether, I think, and wait for 9.

Don't worry, I'm sure you'll enjoy the bitching and moaning when Win9 is released since it's supposed to be x64 only. Just imagine the whining and crying... "Y U NO SUPPORT x32!!!1111ELEVENTYONE1111!!!" Oh I can see it now...good times, it's just going to be like the nuts who couldn't be bothered to build/buy a new $250 PC and move to Win7 away from XP, you know the ones who only use their PC's for email and browsing. And then cry about the EoL for XP...and the 4 year extension date they got. It *might* almost be as good as when we dumped the old 16-bit legacy code...maybe...might even be better.

Re:A patch closer to usability, few more to go

[MightyYar]

Xcalc then :)

Re:A patch closer to usability, few more to go

[Dutch Gun]

Yep. I'll skip Win8 altogether, I think, and wait for 9.

Don't worry, I'm sure you'll enjoy the bitching and moaning when Win9 is released since it's supposed to be x64 only. Just imagine the whining and crying... "Y U NO SUPPORT x32!!!1111ELEVENTYONE1111!!!" Oh I can see it now...good times, it's just going to be like the nuts who couldn't be bothered to build/buy a new $250 PC and move to Win7 away from XP, you know the ones who only use their PC's for email and browsing. And then cry about the EoL for XP...and the 4 year extension date they got. It *might* almost be as good as when we dumped the old 16-bit legacy code...maybe...might even be better.

You're misunderstanding... a 64-bit OS doesn't mean 32-bit code won't run. It's nothing like when 16-bit legacy code was ditched - there was comparatively little of it in the real world compared to the overwhelming volume of modern Windows software that is still 32-bit, and there were good security-related reasons to ditch that compatibility layer. The 32-bit Windows emulation layer is probably going to be around for decades to come.

Re:A patch closer to usability, few more to go

[Mashiki]

No I'm not misunderstanding. You're simply not paying attention to what's going on. There's a difference between an emulation layer, and native support. Currently we have multiple flavors of OS's with native support in either flavor, in a few years we're going to have a single flavor of OS support with an extreme drop off in support for x32. We're already seeing this in gaming with x32 binaries being thrown into the trashbin, and the entire codebase thrown and ditched. The most recent example in gaming of zero x32 support is Watch Dogs for the PC.

Re:A patch closer to usability, few more to go

[Dutch Gun]

No I'm not misunderstanding. You're simply not paying attention to what's going on. There's a difference between an emulation layer, and native support. Currently we have multiple flavors of OS's with native support in either flavor, in a few years we're going to have a single flavor of OS support with an extreme drop off in support for x32. We're already seeing this in gaming with x32 binaries being thrown into the trashbin, and the entire codebase thrown and ditched. The most recent example in gaming of zero x32 support is Watch Dogs for the PC.

Your post seemed to imply that 32-bit apps would fail to run in Windows 9, which is simply not the case. Also, I fail to see the problem with the world moving to 64-bit native OSes with a 32-bit compatibility mode. And what do you mean "an extreme dropoff" of support? 32-bit applications run flawlessly under 64-bit Windows. It's not some soft of half-assed software emulation. 64-bit processors still support the original x86 instruction sets all the way back to the original 8086 and executes those natively. The emulation layer (Windows on Windows) is for the Windows API, not for the binary's instruction set, so it's fairly minimal in terms of overhead.

Also, you seem to be under the impression that you need to completely rewrite your game engine for 64-bits, which isn't true. My current game engine is both 64-bit and 32-bit compatible with zero differences in the codebase itself. Simply throw a switch in the configuration and it's done. There's some types of code you do have to actually port, such as inline assembly, which is not allowed in 64-bit, or any tricks using pointers that rely on a 32-bit size, but for most C/C++ code, there's no difference at all if written correctly. If a game company decides to abandon 32-bit platforms, it's because they've determined that the market can now move ahead with 64-bit platform. This allows them to push beyond the 2GB memory limit of 32-bit applications, which is becoming a serious bottleneck for modern PC games (we had to work pretty hard on my last commercial title to fit in this limit).

Anyhow, I'm not quite sure of your overall point. Do you feel that MS should continue releasing 32-bit operating systems even though there are no 32-bit-only processors being manufactured for desktop or laptop computers, and haven't been for years?

Re:A patch closer to usability, few more to go

[Mashiki]

Actually that's the planned idea, that when "win9" rolls out that's the "eol" for 32bit. Much like with Win9x was the "eol" for 16bit, outside of specialized emulation. Whether a processor supports code execution is different from the OS supporting the execution of the code in a protected environment as you should know. Much like 8bit in a protected environment. And sadly, I have too much experience in making legacy 8-bit hardware and software work in modern machines. It's somewhere between, make it stop and this is the 9th level of hell.

And, in general 32 to 64 bit isn't "flipping a switch" unless you're enabling the handling of larger memory addresses. Which is something you should already know, not forgetting that in 64bit that you're usually doubling the size of your handlers in most cases. Not always but most of the time. Anyway, if you've been paying attention to what's been coming out of not only MS, but from the 'nix camp for the last several years the days of releasing 32bit OS's are pretty close to being dead in the water.

Re:A patch closer to usability, few more to go

[jp10558]

You do know that Putty has an installer if you want?

Re:A patch closer to usability, few more to go

[Dutch Gun]

Actually that's the planned idea, that when "win9" rolls out that's the "eol" for 32bit.

I'd love to see a source for that assertion you're making. There are hundreds of thousands of legacy 32-bit Windows apps that users continue to rely on. MS is not simply going to "eol" them starting with Windows 9. Seeing how near-perfect 32-bit compatibility is already built into both Windows as well as all modern 64-bit processors, they would have to actively remove that existing feature to break compatibility in the future. Why in world would they do that and destroy their own OS's ecosystem? That just makes no sense to me.

Straight C++ is effectively platform agnostic, and that includes 32/64-bit flavors of Windows, of course. As I mentioned, I can compile my game for either 32-bit or 64-bit platforms without any changes to the source code. That's what I meant by "flip a switch" - I didn't mean using the same binary, in case that wasn't clear (you're correct in that regard). A better way to phrase it would be "flip a switch and recompile the project".

Re:A patch closer to usability, few more to go

[MightyYar]

Yeah, it was a bad example. The problem remains.

Re:A patch closer to usability, few more to go

[cavebison]

The rest is still browseable (and easy to organize if I care to), and searchable

Searchable? Pretend you're not computer-savvy, search for "uninstall" or "remove" to get rid of a program, and try working out which link to click.

Then try searching for the screen-shot.. sorry, screen-grab.. I mean snapshot.. whatever tool, if you can't remember it's called "snipping tool".

Search only works if you already know exactly what you're looking for. On the other hand, having cascading menus, like XP's Start menu, made it very clear what your options were. Plus you could rearrange them as you please, and even launch things with simple keypresses - eg. Win+S+C for Control Panel. Win+P for Programs, Win+R for Run. Windows 7's menu makes that kind of quick navigation impossible.

Don't care.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wake me up when you get around to windows 9 and i'll take a look at your product again.

Best listen to your CUSTOMERS when they all tell you it's stupid and crap.

Re:Don't care.

[bazmail]

The Scene: A packed Moe's Tavern, with the tills ringing and overflowing due to sales of the 'Flaming Moe' beverage. Cue a disgruntled Homer Simpson...
Homer: Hey Moe, you just..... you just lost yourself a customer.
Moe: Yeah you can use it!

Re:Don't care.

[seepho]

Weight of the world got you down and you wanna end your life
Bills to pay, a dead-end job, and problems with the wive
Well don't throw in the towel, 'cause there's a place right down the block
Where you can drink all your miseries away
At "Flaming Moe's"
Let's all go to "Flaming Moe's"
Happiness is just a Flaming Moe away
Happiness is just a Flaming Moe away

Re:Don't care.

[Anonymous Coward]

Where liqueur in a mug can warm you like a hug,

Re:Don't care.

[exomondo]

Best listen to your CUSTOMERS when they all tell you it's stupid and crap.

Thing is that during the development phase of Windows 8 that is exactly what they claimed to do, based on customer feedback data (through the customer improvement program) they determined that people didn't use the start menu and instead pinned applications to the taskbar or used the desktop (much like people do in OSX which has no start menu). Now I'm sure many people didnt participate in that program probably for privacy fears, though I'm sure the same people are also confident that MS has built backdoors into Windows anyway so I dont see the issue.

The really amazing thing I see with this is the amount of very passionate Windows users on /., I always thought most people here only used Windows infrequently when they had to.

hoping that Windows 8 is like Vista,....

[Selur]

Windows 3.1 -> worked
Windows 98 -> crashed but worked sometimes
Windows ME -> just crashed
Windows XP -> worked, but has it's drawbacks (64bit version was better, but never really useful due to missing drivers)
Windows Vista -> too much trouble to use
Windows 7 -> useful, but not as customizable as XP
Windows 8.x -> not so useful if you don't have a touch screen, less and less accessible customizations possible
Windows 9 -> hoping that Windows 8 is like Vista and Windows 9 will be useful like Windows 7

Re:hoping that Windows 8 is like Vista,....

[ThatAblaze]

Windows 3.1: good
Windows 95: bad
Windows 98: good
Windows ME: bad
Windows XP: good
Windows Vista: bad
Windows 7:good
Windows 8.x: bad
Windows 9: ???

I always figured it was a marketing strategy on a good day. On a bad day I figure it's a cycle of Lazy -> Oh shit! -> motivated -> relief -> lazy

Re:hoping that Windows 8 is like Vista,....

[pr0fessor]

You missed win95 and a few others but...

I liked win95c w/usb support it made win98 look like crash prone bloat-ware which is sad considering how much better win98 was compared to winME

Re:hoping that Windows 8 is like Vista,....

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows ME was great! It ran fast and beautifully for the entire time it was installed. Unfortunately it was better at hiding than waldo (As I found waldo repeatedly, but not my OS). After two weeks started getting OS not found errors. I promptly reinstalled Windows 2000 and used that until drivers forced me to upgrade to Windows 7.

Re:hoping that Windows 8 is like Vista,....

[ArhcAngel]

Windows 1.0;2.0;2.1: forgettable
Windows 3.0: not bad but definitely not good
Windows 3.1: good
Windows NT 3.1: really bad but has potential
Windows3.11 Windows For Workgroups (WFW): very good
Windows NT 3.5;3.51: really good
Windows 95: meh
Windows NT 4.0: bad
Windows 98;98SE: good
Windows 2000: good
Windows ME: evil
Windows XP: good
Windows Vista: bad
Windows 7:good
Windows 8.x: bad
Windows 9: ???

I always figured it was a marketing strategy on a good day. On a bad day I figure it's a cycle of Lazy -> Oh shit! -> motivated -> relief -> lazy

Re:hoping that Windows 8 is like Vista,....

[Anonymous Coward]

>Windows NT 4.0: bad

Bullshit. NT 4.0 was the first version of NT that was decent.

Re:hoping that Windows 8 is like Vista,....

[ArhcAngel]

After SP1 perhaps. I had multiple BSOD experiences just installing it on rigs that ran 3.51 flawlessly. Just to get it to install on them I had to disable cache RAM. With cache RAM disabled it took over 8 hours to install. The only thing 4.0 brought IMO was the Windows 95 Start bar and Pinball. I really liked the Pinball.

Re:hoping that Windows 8 is like Vista,....

[H0p313ss]

I really liked the Pinball.

Pinball was the absolute best feature of NT 4.0, just like Solitaire was the best feature of Windows 3.1. (Now that I say that, the Win 8 Solitaire is pretty sweet on a retina display.)

Windows ain't done 'till Solitaire won't run.

Re:hoping that Windows 8 is like Vista,....

[keith_nt4]

For the record NT4 with SP 6 and Internet Explorer...I want to say 4 or 5 I don't remember...was incredibly stable and tough (IE added a few new features for making getting on the internet easier). Could not crash that thing no matter what. It really blew my mind having only ever otherwise used 3.1 and 95 at the time. I used it on my home PC for years. Had the latest directx included until well into windows 2000's life actually. I only switched because I had immediate access to XP (I want to say january 2002). Did a lot of gaming on NT4. I really hated to lose that OS. Little things like...USB support and no free defragmenter utility made it difficult to continue to use. It's kind of a nostalgia thing for me at this point...

Anyway NT4 SP1 and NT4 SP6 may as well be two different operating systems. So be specific when you go labeling different Windows this and that, will ya?

Re:hoping that Windows 8 is like Vista,....

[Anonymous Coward]

In what world were 3.1 and 3.11 "good" and "really good"?

Is this a rose-coloured glasses thing? They looked good, because Win95 came out and made them look polished by comparison?

They were crash-happy crap unless you were fortunate enough to use only a few VERY well polished applications. Their best feature was that you could quit to DOS. DOS, FFS.

Re:hoping that Windows 8 is like Vista,....

[Raenex]

Windows 95: meh

Bullshit. Windows 95 was a rockstar (as in it was that well-received). It became the standard UI for computing, the one people run back to when Gnome 3 and other abominations came out. It almost killed the Mac.

Re:hoping that Windows 8 is like Vista,....

[ArhcAngel]

Keith,
I don't disagree. By the time Windows 2000 rolled out NT 4.0 was damn near bullet proof (For a Microsoft OS). I simply stated at launch it was not as good as its predecessor. But I did have a few games that wouldn't run on it so the 98SE partition remained until XP rolled out. I was on a testing team at Compaq for XP so I got it early as well.

Happy that costumer pressure has an effect

[iampiti]

It's probably the refusal of many corporations to upgrade to Windows 8 that got Microsoft to make these changes but it's still a win for everyone.
When designing Windows 8 the new Start screen looked a perfect plan to get the masses to buy apps through their store and thus getting more revenue from Windows. It'd also get them used to the UI shared by Windows Phone which would surely get the fledging smartphone platform many more users.
So when so many people refused to use Win 8 they must've thought "If we backtrack a bit we'll get many people to change to Windows 8, if we don't, we'll get fewer". It's also good to see that Microsoft no longer has near infinite power on the PC world. I'm currently starting to fear Google much more (they know so much about us...) but that's another topic

Re:Happy that costumer pressure has an effect

[MightyMartian]

Pretty much. I know our suppliers simply ask "And you will want Windows 7 on that laptop/workstation, right?" There is an automatic assumption that Windows 8 is not wanted in the enterprise.

Re:Happy that costumer pressure has an effect

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course it's not. Why would anyone in a corporate environment need live tiles, "charms" and "toasts". It's frivolous shit.

Re:Happy that costumer pressure has an effect

[MightyMartian]

Worse, it means retraining, it means loss of productivity, at least in the short term and it brings absolutely no advantage at all to the business workstation. Windows 7 was still part of an evolution from Windows 95. Much smoother and better done, but still, someone coming from XP could, after a few minutes, work in full swing.

Whether the Metro UI is better or not by some subjective, or heck, even objective standard is irrelevant. What is relevant is familiarity. QWERTY may not be the best keyboard layout, VHS may not have been better than Beta, and English spelling rules are a nightmare, but all three were familiar and dominant, and even some technical superiority of alternatives couldn't overcome the level of penetration that they enjoyed.

To my mind, it looks as if Metro will simply become another iteration of the old Active Desktop/Gadgets paradigm, and will likely be ignored by the bulk of PC users.

Re:Happy that costumer pressure has an effect

[MachineShedFred]

We get our machines stickered with Win8 licenses, and then immediately blast that shit off the drive and lay down our Win7 image. Our enterprise agreement allows us N-1 versioning, so we buy the Win8 licenses just in case Windows 8 turns into something that is actually useable someday, or worst case, take advantage of cheap license upgrades for N+1.

Re:Happy that costumer pressure has an effect

[mpe]

Why would anyone in a corporate environment need live tiles, "charms" and "toasts".

Or that matter an "app store".

Re:Happy that costumer pressure has an effect

[MachineShedFred]

There is one use case that is actually a little bit compelling - touchscreen kiosks.

But that's about it.

Re:Happy that costumer pressure has an effect

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah but that isn't what people use as corporate computers.

Re:Happy that costumer pressure has an effect

[Joce640k]

Why would anyone in a corporate environment need live tiles, "charms" and "toasts".

Or that matter an "app store".

...it's a mystery to Microsoft.

Apparently.

Re:Happy that costumer pressure has an effect

[pr0fessor]

There is also the question of all the applications that just are not compatible or are just plain not supported on win8. This is why the place I work migrated to win7 instead of win8 we stall have critical applications that are not compatible or just plain not supported by the manufacture on win8.

Re:Happy that costumer pressure has an effect

[jafac]

Not only that, but I'm hearing that there is a charge for "backtracking" and installing Windows 7. One of my customers is buying a batch of devices that had Win 8 pre-installed, and the vendor was charging an extra $200 per device (for a $400 machine) to install Windows 7.

Re:Happy that costumer pressure has an effect

[david_thornley]

But XP ran with touch. I assume it was a real pain to do real work with, but it would be fine for kiosks, and there's been kiosks with touchscreens around here a lot longer than there's been Windows 8.

The Post-PC era

[TomClowers]

So, we're just gonna start calling it "non-touch" hardware now?

Re:The Post-PC era

[EvilSS]

Yes, didn't you get the memo?

Re:The Post-PC era

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, just like churches.

Re:The Post-PC era

[ADRA]

Don't worry, post-post-post PC era, otherwise known as the fence computing will rock!

Re:The Post-PC era

[jpvlsmv]

Yep, "Feature PCs" (like the Smartphone/Featurephone distinction)

Re:The Post-PC era

[Anonymous Coward]

I also use the words 'good', 'practical' or 'useful' there sometimes.

Re:The Post-PC era

[Anonymous Coward]

You should't touch your hardware. You can go blind.

Microsoft the Old Dinosaur

[Anonymous Coward]

Just stop giving them free press, they should die with their products filled with thousands of bugs. We are tired hearing about release and another and another. With M$ and their shitty OS things are never properly fixed.

Re:Microsoft the Old Dinosaur

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol, and we hear from the 1998 contingent. M$! You are priceless!

Re:Microsoft the Old Dinosaur

[Anonymous Coward]

BOOOO Micro$oft Windoze!!!!!!!!!!!

HOOOOORRRAAYYY open source and slashdot type stuff!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

BOOOO GUIs. HOOOORRRAAAYY command line interface.

BOOOOOOO blackslash path seperator. HOOOOOORRRRAAAAYYY forward slash path seperators!!!!!!!

Re:Microsoft the Old Dinosaur

[Zero__Kelvin]

"BOOOO GUIs."

You are kidding right? Their is plenty of GUI wholesome goodness to go around in the Linux world. We want a powerful command line in addition to the GUI, not in place of it.

Re:Microsoft the Old Dinosaur

[bad-badtz-maru]

..."thousands of bugs" he says, on the heels of a fairly large remotely-exploitable openssl security hole. Go OSS!

Win 8.1 is just fine

[Anonymous Coward]

I like Win 8.1. It's fast and reliable. I don't think it has ever crashed.

I can do everything I want pretty easily: edit videos, produce music, play games, run Steam, run overclocked hardware. I'm 95% certain my core i7 win 8.1 machine is the best desktop I've ever owned (yes, there's some macs, linux boxes and an os/2 box in that collection).

I wouldn't normally have posted this, I just wanted to my experience to be heard as I know there's a litany of hyperbolic and/or esoteric complaints incoming on this article. I don't feel that, post win-7 sp2, that the majority of internet chaff written about microsoft/windows accurately represents my experience or the experiences of the people I do business with.

Re:Win 8.1 is just fine

[Anonymous Coward]

correction. that should have read 'post win-7 sp1'.

Yes, pedantic obsessives: I'm glad I made your day brighter. ;)

Re:Win 8.1 is just fine

[Lendrick]

I like Win 8.1. It's fast and reliable. I don't think it has ever crashed.

I can do everything I want pretty easily: edit videos, produce music, play games, run Steam, run overclocked hardware.

Yes, I'm sure you can do all that stuff that the cool kids are doing. I don't see anyone here questioning Windows 8's capabilities; people are complaining about the fact that it's a tablet interface that's been shoehorned into a desktop, and everything about it is designed to push you back to the tablet interface (which, conveniently for Microsoft, is a walled garden that they control).

At any rate, Windows 7 does all that cool kid stuff too, and the interface is sensible for desktop users.

Re:Win 8.1 is just fine

[jimmyfrank]

It's not a fucking tablet interface, jfc, I use it every day and never see a fucking tile, GD people are fucking stupid.

Re:Win 8.1 is just fine

[Anonymous Coward]

> I use it every day and never see a fucking tile
until this update came out, you are full of shit. the metro interface shows by default and it is tiled.
and don't pull the "b-b-but i installed start8" shit

Re:Win 8.1 is just fine

[H0p313ss]

This

Dammit... commented so I can't mod.

Re:Win 8.1 is just fine

[Anonymous Coward]

> I like Win 8.1. It's fast and reliable. I don't think it has ever crashed.
Yes, just like all of the Win7 PCs I've seen! Wow!

> I can do everything I want pretty easily: edit videos, produce music, play games, run Steam
Just like all of the existing Win7 PCs out there! Another big accomplishment!

Nobody wants of this Metro shit though. It's complete fucking garbage. The strongest, if not the only fact-based, advantage Win8 shills have to offer is that it boosts faster. I'm sure that's great if you spend all day rebooting but for normal people who reboot once on patch Tuesday and who don't sit around and wait while it does it's pointless.

Re:Win 8.1 is just fine

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely running overclocked hardware isn't something you want to do, but something you do to achieve some other goal?

Re:Win 8.1 is just fine

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm, boot to desktop? That existed before this update... People hate on Windows 8 cause it's different. With 0% third party tweaking software you can avoid metro to a sufficient degree, and it has all the power user keyboard shortcuts you're already used to. And yes, if you're really fussy throw classic shell on there and you're good to go. I swear people bitch just for the sake of it...

Re:Win 8.1 is just fine

[exomondo]

people are complaining about the fact that it's a tablet interface that's been shoehorned into a desktop, and everything about it is designed to push you back to the tablet interface (which, conveniently for Microsoft, is a walled garden that they control).

What exactly is it you do with your computer? Everything I do with mine on a daily basis works the same in Windows 7 as it does in Windows 8. Now configuring some PC settings is a little different, and search is now dedicated (win+s) rather than in the start menu (which is of course gone). Now if I were futzing around in the OS and not actually doing anything or if I had developed an inexplicable dependence on Metro apps then maybe I could understand it but none of my applications - and hence tasks that I use my computer for - operate any differently. I don't particularly like the new interface on my desktop (though it's good on touch devices) so I just use the boot-to-desktop switch and things work just as they always have.

Changelog?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, is this just another update to shuffle a couple of buttons and checkboxes around or is there something else in this update?

Re:Changelog?

[bazmail]

> So, is this just another update to shuffle a couple of buttons

Is there any other kind of sub-point release update?

Re:Changelog?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know, it seems even "major" microsoft releases are mostly button shuffling.

Did they finally reintroduce the wireless manager from Windows Vista / Windows 7 or do we still have to train technicians to configure offline/out of range networks with netsh?

Re:Changelog?

[Curunir_wolf]

So, is this just another update to shuffle a couple of buttons and checkboxes around or is there something else in this update?

Good luck finding the change log from Microsoft.

I'm assuming they've updated all the "SkyDrive" stuff to "OneDrive", since they lost the trademark lawsuit on that one.

Re:Changelog?

[LinuxIsGarbage]

So, is this just another update to shuffle a couple of buttons and checkboxes around or is there something else in this update?

Good luck finding the change log from Microsoft.

I'm assuming they've updated all the "SkyDrive" stuff to "OneDrive", since they lost the trademark lawsuit on that one.

That happened in some previous update I think. When I go to my user folder there's a folder named "OneDrive". Open it up and the breadcrumb navication calls it OneDrive. Yet when I check the actual path it's still actually "c:\users\Linuxisgarbage\SkyDrive" folder.

Re:Changelog?

[Curunir_wolf]

So, is this just another update to shuffle a couple of buttons and checkboxes around or is there something else in this update?

Good luck finding the change log from Microsoft.

I'm assuming they've updated all the "SkyDrive" stuff to "OneDrive", since they lost the trademark lawsuit on that one.

That happened in some previous update I think. When I go to my user folder there's a folder named "OneDrive". Open it up and the breadcrumb navication calls it OneDrive. Yet when I check the actual path it's still actually "c:\users\Linuxisgarbage\SkyDrive" folder.

Nope. If you're seeing anything on the Windows GUI called "OneDrive", then you must have the update released today. I'm still waiting for the update to finish installing, but it definitely has always been called "SkyDrive" except on the web site.

Re:Changelog?

[LinuxIsGarbage]

So, is this just another update to shuffle a couple of buttons and checkboxes around or is there something else in this update?

Good luck finding the change log from Microsoft.

I'm assuming they've updated all the "SkyDrive" stuff to "OneDrive", since they lost the trademark lawsuit on that one.

That happened in some previous update I think. When I go to my user folder there's a folder named "OneDrive". Open it up and the breadcrumb navication calls it OneDrive. Yet when I check the actual path it's still actually "c:\users\Linuxisgarbage\SkyDrive" folder.

Nope. If you're seeing anything on the Windows GUI called "OneDrive", then you must have the update released today. I'm still waiting for the update to finish installing, but it definitely has always been called "SkyDrive" except on the web site.

Nope. I had noted the OneDrive / Skydrive thing two weeks ago, and I have Updates currently disabled (and am months behind). I also note that on my Windows 7 PC Skydrive changed to Onedrive. Looks like it was pushed out in February:
http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/...

On the Win 8.1 it can be as easy as changing the desktop.ini to include:

[.ShellClassInfo]
IconResource=C:\Users\LinuxisGarbage\AppData\Local\Microsoft\SkyDrive\SkyDrive.exe,1
LocalizedResourceName=OneDrive

Not that hard to push that out.

The new start screen is great

[jimmyfrank]

But I never used it or the start menu. I always though the start menu was for people that liked to be inefficient. I pin stuff I use a lot to the task bar and for other stuff, Win key, type a few chars. And now I pin those to the start screen but its still faster to Win key, type a few chars. Win 8 is fine, better than Win 7, and miles better than XP. It's the "in thing" to complain about MS so it doesn't matter if the OS is good or not.

Re:The new start screen is great

[Anonymous Coward]

Well spoken just like the Microsoft shill that you are. I can smell your kind from miles away.

Win key + (type something) is 'more efficient' eh? I guess you know more than those usability experts who said otherwise.

Oh, and it is an 'in thing' to criticize idiocy, but it just so happens that Microsoft and idiocy are synonymous, insofar as the design of Win8 is concerned.

Re:The new start screen is great

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's the "in thing" to be a contrarian and a hipster doofus who thinks that because it's new, it's automatically better.

Re:The new start screen is great

[JeffAtl]

That's just silly. The start menu allowed for a hierarchical view of the installed programs which was a very useful feature.

Re:The new start screen is great

[geminidomino]

I guess you know more than those usability experts who said otherwise.

While I'm 100% with you that Windows 8's UI is a steaming pile of stupid, it must be pointed out that this particular appeal to authority is poorly used, especially here.

It was "Usability experts" who came up with the idiotic concept of "unified interfaces," use cases be damned, in the first place. And now everyone who makes an OS now wants us to use our desktop machines like they're friggin' cell phones.

Re:The new start screen is great

[jimmyfrank]

I do development on Android, iOS, and WP/RT. I do the same on Mac OSX, either use the launcher at the bottom or apple key + space bar and start typing. I'm a shill for both operating systems.

Re:The new start screen is great

[jimmyfrank]

Maybe, like I said, I never used it. Mac OSX doesn't have it and I of course don't use it there. My kids seems to do fine on both Win 8 and Mac OSX so I'm not sure what the problem is.

Re:The new start screen is great

[EvanED]

My take is that the start menu required a "lot" of work to maintain if you actually wanted it to be a useful hierarchy. If you just let stuff install by default and never changed things, then I think it turned into more of an almost-not-hierarchical view of a bunch of crap, personally. It'd be one thing if programs installed an icon or two (or even a submenu) under categories like Games/Productivity/Development/etc. like you get with Linux distros, but that would require cross-vendor cooperation (perhaps enforced by MS); instead you just got programs would install to Start Menu/Programs/My Crappy Company/My Crappy Software/* or, even worse, Start Menu/Programs/My Crappy Software and Start Menu/Programs/Help For My Crappy Software and Start Menu/Programs/Visit My Crappy Website etc.

I hesitate to call that "useful" personally, and it's the main reason that once Vista introduced the search functionality I very rarely actually navigated the start menu itself. On Vista/7 navigating it was actually a lot worse than it was in previous versions IMO because everything got squashed into a very small space as opposed to getting expanded out a bit more; but I was one of those weirdos who used Vista by choice and a lot of that was due to the search feature, because that made up for everything else I saw wrong with it. (I discovered Launchy a bit too late.)

I don't know what to think of 8. Vista/7 got me spoiled with the search feature so that's what I use on 8 (I also use that by choice...), and as a result my day-to-day use is basically identical between 7 and 8, and I basically never use the start screen except via search. I feel like the default program launcher on 8 (what you get when you hit the Windows key/button) requires the same sort of manual maintenance as the start menu "needed", and I haven't bothered to do that. The all programs menu I think works better than the start menu if you left the latter alone. People complain about how the start screen takes over your whole display, but I view that as a virtue -- it means a lot more can be displayed at once and, I think, it's easier to scan. I've also never wanted to see something I had open when I was figuring out what to launch. The down side is that it basically collapses the heirarchy -- but I think that unless you groom the start menu yourself, there's usually very little meaningful hierarchy for it to collapse.

That's my opinion anyway. (And no, I do not and never have had a relationship with MS.)

Re:The new start screen is great

[EvanED]

(And no, I do not and never have had a relationship with MS.)

I guess they paid for an internship interview trip for me almost a decade ago. No offer.

Re:The new start screen is great

[mmell]

No, not a shill. He opened with "I". Not "Users" or "Real Users" or any such generalization, "I".

He's relaying his personal experience. Feel free to report your differing experience (mine differs greatly from his), but he's not a shill as far as I can tell.

Re:The new start screen is great

[Kelbear]

I'm fine with Windows 8 too. I think the hate stems primarily from people who are attached to using the start menu. If you're not among those that use the pre-windows 8 start menu on a regular basis, there just isn't much that has changed in windows 8.

I like the new task manager, and the winkey+type to search functionality. Occasionally I mount a virtual ISO in windows 8 without needing a standalone program. I still don't know how to use their tile screen very well, but I pinned my shortcuts or placed them on the desktop, and I don't need to both with their tile screen. Overall, not a lot of benefit to windows 8 over windows 7, but also not a lot of downside. It was just $15 to get a legitimate windows license for a new PC I'd put together so I went with windows 8.

Re:The new start screen is great

[Anne Thwacks]

You and your kids probably have not been using your computer for over 10 years, and therefore do not need to access a large number of programs they use perhaps once in a year, prehaps not remembering the exact spelling of the absurd name the proggie has. Hierarchical menus allow you to look in a specific category, and have mouseover guidance. Metro/Unity gives you a load of coloured blobs with no clear idea of what they are for.

As someone who often uses a program I have not used for over a year, with over 50 useful programs on my hierarchical menu, I prefer xfce. I know barely literate people who also prefer xfce to any version of Windows. I have only seen Win8 once, and was unable to help the owner of the laptop it was on in do anything at all.

Re:The new start screen is great

[jimmyfrank]

"I have only seen Win8 once, and was unable to help the owner of the laptop it was on in do anything at all." So you're not a tech person then, can't use google? My Dad is computer illiterate and upgrade to W8 from W7 without any help. How do people survive on Max OSX without a start menu? I think people like to complain about nothing.

Re:The new start screen is great

[jp10558]

I'm probably just strange, but the start screen is the issue I have with Outlook 2010 where going to the file menu totally covers up all the e-mail. I still use find and run robot myself, on windows 7. It's hard to explain, but the total context switch between what I'm doing and running another program really depends on what I'm trying to do.

If I'm on a web site, and need to run my password manager to log in, it's horribly disorienting to lose the view of the website to just start a password manager. Or if I'm working on my banking website and need to run calculator, it's really disconcerting to me to lose the banking view while trying to start calc.exe. I can sort of do those things in the background of my thought process.

Now, if I'm totally starting a new task (say launching a video player to watch a movie), then overlaying the whole screen isn't a big deal - I'm planning on totally context switching. But if I'm just checking to see if an app I need is installed, or I just want to start a helper app, I don't want to "lose my place" in that way.

MS still doesn't get it

[bored]

I think its great they are fixing their OS...

The problem is that they are making user facing changes in a maintenance stream.

Re:MS still doesn't get it

[ericloewe]

Many will consider this a major bugfix.

Think of it like someone accidentally wiped a decent portion of Desktop code from Windows 8's source and now they've had to slowly add stuff back without breaking anything, taking the opportunity to rewrite decades-old code along the way.

It even sounds plausible as an alternative to "Everyone at Microsoft went insane at once and the result was Windows 8."

Re:MS still doesn't get it

[Anne Thwacks]

It even sounds plausible as an alternative to "Everyone at Microsoft went insane at once and the result was Windows 8."

But nowhere near as credible.

Just about three more...

[edibobb]

About three more updates and it may finally have as much functionality of Windows 7. The Microsoft line about Windows 8, "users will get used to it," doesn't exactly sounds like an upgrade.

They work on phones though

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a few widgets on my android based phone that I use regularly.

huh

[jimmyfrank]

So you didn't slide your mouse around to close windows in Win7? Ever use Alt-F4? Win8 has better keyboard shortcuts than the previous OS's but you'd have to spend 2 mins learning something I guess.

Re:huh

[Anonymous Coward]

I love it when idiots try to define this turd of a GUI using keyboard shorts and the search bar.

Re:huh

[edibobb]

It's not a matter of learning something new. It's a matter of lost functionality. It's a matter of the additional time required to accomplish specific tasks. Management at Microsoft, as well as other companies (such as Dice), seem to gloss over functionality in favor of flash. The decision makers are no longer power users.

Re:huh

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not a matter of learning something new. [....] seem to gloss over functionality in favor of flash.

Exactly! if you bothered learning something new, like keyboard shortcuts (or gestures for the touchy-feely types), you would not need the flash and glam of animations and wasted display space to hold your hand while performing rudimentary tasks that once you use are easily remembered and do not require the wasted time or space (e.g. closing a window).
 
Try pressing Windows+X in Windows 8 and tell me that does not have power users in mind? How about the option to open a command prompt, root command prompt, or powershell terminal directly from any Explorer window that opens in that directory? That was surely just for Grandma.
 
Serious question: Do you still pee your pants because there are no instructions tattooed on your arm? That's quite intuitive, too, once you get the hang of it. Everything is new at some point and instead of advocating castration, you should try to learn how to use those new things.

Re:huh

[jimmyfrank]

A power user complaining about having to move the mouse to close a window... I'm confused.

Re:huh

[edibobb]

It's too slow!

Re:huh

[AudioEfex]

A lot of times I just am working with a mouse and don't have hands on a keyboard. I have a Razer Naga with 19 buttons I often don't need the keyboard. Just clicking the x was so much easier than having to click and drag down to emulate touch. Yes, we are talking about minor effort, but when you do it dozens of times a day it's just annoying. And that's just the start.

It's just absurd to have to use a mouse to emulate touch which was designed to emulate a mouse to begin with. It is like translating something from French to English and then translating it back to French. WTF is the point.

Re:huh

[jimmyfrank]

You mean for modern apps right? The 'x' never went anywhere for regular Win apps. The 'x' is on modern apps now too. Thanks Microsoft.

Re:huh

[jimmyfrank]

So you don't want a kb short cut or to close a window with a mouse? I'm confused.

Windows 8... no more

[Camel Pilot]

Last week after my disk totally crashed I had to decide to re-install Window 8 and re-install a long list of apps - several which are updates and require the original disk (ah where are they)....hmmmm I thought here goes the day.

I decided to install CentOS Desktop instead. I am familiar with CentOS in the server mode as I use it on my dedicated server. Within an hour I was back up and running and being productive in my consulting business. My QHD / Nvidia graphic card were recognized and drivers installed, HP printer setup was simple, digital camera is recognized, scanner, etc. I really prefer the Gnome 2 interface to Windows 8 (and even Gnome 3) it stays out of my way and lets me get my work done efficiently.

I really haven't missed Windows at this point... well maybe Notepad++ just a little and haven't figured out what to do about Quickbooks yet. Maybe I can install enough plugins to get Gedit to be a reasonable editor and I may have to setup a windows virtual machine to run Quickbooks or find an alternative.

This morning on the radio I overheard an advertisement offering a Windows "speed-up service" with the main pitch being that over time your Windows machine become slower and slower being encumbered with cruft, malware, "help functions", virus, etc .. I couldn't keep from smiling.

Re:Windows 8... no more

[nashv]

Pretty much agree with what you said. If you're looking for a Notepad++ replacement, you might be pleased by Sublime Text or any of the other alternatives.

Re:Windows 8... no more

[Camel Pilot]

Thanks for the recommendation. At the time I just needed to get up and running quick... now i have more time to investigate some alternative text editors.

I also thought I was going to miss WinSCP but the gnome "places" is actually a better solution for the work I do which is largely editing files on remote servers. Also tabbed terminal app cleans up the workspace as opposed to numerous putty windows and virtual workspaces... oh my.

Re:Windows 8... no more

[KingOfBLASH]

Notepad++ shouldn't be the killer app you can't leave windows for. Decades ago vi and emacs were the original Notepad++. Hell, I even remember in comp sci class many years ago we wrote our own text editors because it was sufficiently complicated for a project but easy enough that we could do it over a period of a few weeks, and some students naturally added some bells and whistles you wouldn't find in notepad. (Ahhh, memories. Now get off my lawn)

Re:Windows 8... no more

[Anonymous Coward]

You might check out geany and gnucash.

Re:Windows 8... no more

[Anonymous Coward]

So far the best GUI editor on Linux I've seen is http://geany.org/

Re:Windows 8... no more

[cyborg_monkey]

Oh bullshit.. it does not take long to install Windows 7 or 8... There goes the whole day? You are either a complete retard or... nope, just a retard.

Re:Windows 8... no more

[Anonymous Coward]

Kate (KDE text editor is my Linux version of notepad++) and Kile (for LaTeX word document preparation(Because who in their right mind would ever manually make APA/MLA/Chicago/ACM/IEEE/etc bibliographies anymore, or remember different formatting rules... ))

Both are really nice for what they do, and I use Kate daily (Kile not as often, but I make papers less often than I program/make notes/etc)

Re:Windows 8... no more

[Anonymous Coward]

What compelled you to respond like a jerk?

As noted installing windows from DVD, installing the updates, then other apps such as MS Office, Visual studio, Editors, Image processing software, Database, Webserver, sftp, putty, etc. takes a good part of day. Maybe you just use your computer to surf the web or something.

Re:Windows 8... no more

[FlyingGuy]

Gui Editor - Easy, just get Kate. Not KWrite, but plain old Kate. Syntax highlight for just about every language, columnar selection and paste and all the bells and whistles you could want.

Sick to death of VI or VIM or EMACS for the simplest of CUI chores? Get Nano it is pico's older brother and works quite well.

Re:Windows 8... no more

[Anonymous Coward]

Either you can't move a mouse very fast or you have some slow ass hardware.

Installing windows takes minutes, installing updates takes no more than an hour, and you can usually get all your programs installed in the meantime with minimal work after updating. If you can't have a PC formatted and back to where it was within 4 hours tops, there's either slow hardware or a slow brain at play.

Re:Windows 8... no more

[Anonymous Coward]

Try "Postbooks" as an accounting package.
http://www.xtuple.com/postbooks

I like jedit as an editor.

I've used jedit, only recently met postbooks and it is on my "to try" list. Not affiliated with either. Though if xtuple want to post me a check for a few mil I'll take it :)

No thanks Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Until you have removed every single line of Metro and Metro-related code from the operating system (including touch-centric gimmicks such as the Charms bar and the lock screen), I will keep avoiding Windows 8, and will evangelize this to people whom I know everywhere.

We don't want a Start menu with Metro tiles or a 'boot to desktop'... you're not solving the problem, but merely papering over cracks.

Touch-centric OS for mobile devices vs desktop OS should be separate and distinct.

Stop attempting to leverage your desktop monopoly in order to get more people to buy your phones and tablets... it ain't working. If we want a touch device we get something Apple or Android. Microsoft is the third wheel that is neither here nor there.

Enjoy your continued woeful market share for Windows 8.

Re:No thanks Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm with you.

Mandatory

[Guest316]

From the article summary:
>It is also a required update for Windows 8.1

From the article:
>Failure to install this Update will prevent Windows Update from patching your system with any future updates starting with Updates released in May 2014 (get busy!)

Summary should have read that it's mandatory for all Win8 installs, not just 8.1. Bit misleading. Still, a UI update is mandatory for future security updates?

LOL, good ...

[gstoddart]

I don't think I care about Win 8 either way, but I was in a store the other day which sold computers, and saw a 20"+ HP computer with a touch screen.

And all I can think of is an old fashioned type-writer.

Seriously, you think I'm going to sit and type and then reach up to the screen to do something? This is supposed to be a good thing?

The ergonomics of a desktop computer where I'm meant to reach up and touch the screen seems stupid to me.

Touch makes sense on smaller portable devices ... but for a desktop computer it's the most ridiculous thing I can imagine. My monitor is further than arms length from my chair, WTF benefit does a touch screen bring to me? What is the use case for this that I'm missing? Is leaning forward to touch the screen somehow supposed to be better?

I think Microsoft just went gaga over the notion of touchscreens and lost the plot a little about when they're useful. And the companies making the computers have followed suit and made silly machines.

Re:LOL, good ...

[Curunir_wolf]

WTF benefit does a touch screen bring to me? What is the use case for this that I'm missing?

And here I thought the use case for it was pretty obvious.

Re:LOL, good ...

[vux984]

Seriously, you think I'm going to sit and type and then reach up to the screen to do something?

No, nobody thinks that.

What is the use case for this that I'm missing?

A 20"+ HP that you saw in a store is aimed at the consumer family computer market. The use case, is its sitting on a desk in the kitchen or living room, and sometimes people will interact with it entirely by touch, without sitting down at the desk.

Maybe grandma is visiting and one of the kids wants to show her some pictures... tap, tap, tap, slideshow.

Getting ready for school, want to check the weather forecast... tap tap.

Doing some math homework? keyboard and mouse are in the desk drawer out of the way, textbook, pen, paper, and scrap paper spread out on the desk. tap - tap play some music. song comes up you don't like, tap- skipped.

Ok, math is done, time for that English essay. math textbook and paper away... keyboard and mouse come out. And you don't touch the screen for the next 2 hours.

NOBODY thinks you are going to sit there hard at work, hands on the keyboard and mouse and that you are periodically going to reach up to tap or swipe something. But there are all kinds of casual interactions that one can imagine where one will just use the screen entirely and not bother to use the keyboard and mouse... especially in households where the keyboard and mouse may be stored in a drawer when someone's not using it.

There's a reason why business workstations rarely have touch screens; and all the touchscreens are being aimed at the home consumer "family computer" area. Because unlike a business desktop, there are lots of imaginable "casual use" cases for a touch screen at home.

I know a couple people with them now, and they use them exactly as I described. If the kids just want to do something quick like start some music or watch netflix on it, they just use the screen instead of the keyboard and mouse. Given that they do keep the wireless keyboard and mouse in a drawer when they aren't using it, being able to use the computer for something quick like that is actually pretty cool.

Re:LOL, good ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, you think I'm going to sit and type and then reach up to the screen to do something?

No, nobody thinks that.

What is the use case for this that I'm missing?

A 20"+ HP that you saw in a store is aimed at the consumer family computer market. The use case, is its sitting on a desk in the kitchen or living room, and sometimes people will interact with it entirely by touch, without sitting down at the desk.

Maybe grandma is visiting and one of the kids wants to show her some pictures... fap, fap, fap, slideshow.

Getting ready for school, want to check the weather forecast... fap fap.

Doing some math homework? keyboard and mouse are in the desk drawer out of the way, textbook, pen, paper, and scrap paper spread out on the desk. fap - fap play some music. song comes up you don't like, fap- skipped.

Ok, math is done, time for that English essay. math textbook and paper away... keyboard and mouse come out. And you don't touch the screen for the next 2 hours.

NOBODY thinks you are going to sit there hard at work, hands on the keyboard and mouse and that you are periodically going to reach up to fap or swipe something. But there are all kinds of casual interactions that one can imagine where one will just use the screen entirely and not bother to use the keyboard and mouse... especially in households where the keyboard and mouse may be stored in a drawer when someone's not using it.

There's a reason why business workstations rarely have touch screens; and all the touchscreens are being aimed at the home consumer "family computer" area. Because unlike a business desktop, there are lots of imaginable "casual use" cases for a touch screen at home.

I know a couple people with them now, and they use them exactly as I described. If the kids just want to do something quick like start some music or watch netflix on it, they just use the screen instead of the keyboard and mouse. Given that they do keep the wireless keyboard and mouse in a drawer when they aren't using it, being able to use the computer for something quick like that is actually pretty cool.

Re:LOL, good ...

[Anne Thwacks]

You get to see all your apps through a mixture of burger juice and ketchup!

Re:LOL, good ...

[Anne Thwacks]

There are all kinds of casual interactions that one can imagine where one will just use the screen entirely and not bother to use the keyboard and mouse...

And for that, the ideal solution is to use your tablet as the interface and Allcast to project it onto the TV (You do use Samsung products, don't you? - if not, there's always the Chromecast.) However, command line on a touch screen? No good. Most families are not like mine with four generations of Unix users.

Re:LOL, good ...

[vux984]

And for that, the ideal solution is to use your tablet as the interface and Allcast to project it onto the TV

So if your doing math in the kitchen... you want to allcast some music from a tablet to the TV in the living room on another floor as the "ideal solution" instead of just using the computer in front of you? How is that idea?

In any case the fact that you can also do most of these tasks with a tablet + TV most of the time is great, you could also just use the keyboard and mouse for all those scenarios too. But so what? There is only one way to do things in your house?

 

dont care

[Anonymous Coward]

its for TOUCHED users and seeing how i have no mental issues ...no sale

Rock and a hard place

[ADRA]

It sucks currently, because most mom's, pop's, and joe plummer are all switching to touch devices for most of their needs because frankly looking at cat videos or updating my facebook status are about the pinnacle of computing purposes for most people.

For everyone who wants to 'do stuff' with their computers, there will still be a PC market, but don't expect to see the perfectly functional computer anymore, since we're now in the proverbial dog house. The same happened with consoles where around the PS2 era of gaming, a huge number og developers just stopped developing for PC's. Its improving now that the console market is getting a little frayed (and expensive), but for a long time PC gaming was the ugly stepchild that people just didn't talk about.

Oh, and Windows is now learning the hard fact their their market is generally not the new hotness touch crew, and probably never will be.

What Took Them So Long?

[WheezyJoe]

Some of the changes are actually pretty good. The hover-over title bar on Metro Apps seems like a no-brainer. The hover-over, universal task bar for easy app switching is also a really good idea. Right-clicking works now on the Start Screen... where have you been?

I mean, it's real easy to see these things in hindsight, but you gotta wonder whether anyone in Microsoft was testing this out on desktops with large screens, and didn't reflexively hit the right-button and expect something to appear. I mean, the developers didn't create Metro on small-screen touchpads, did they? Someone over there must have noticed how awkward and strange it is to work modern apps on a workstation, right?

Don't know whether to give Microsoft credit or slap them. If these features had been in the original Windows 8, there would have been a lot less hate (read: a lot more adoption) of the operating system on the desktop, and maybe an easier path for people to jump off XP. It's the arrogance, the suck-it-up, get-used-to-it, and the desktop-is-history BS that turned me off so hard, with a blatant disregard for just plain stupid things, like switching out of the desktop to some lame Metro previewer each time a user opens a PDF file (with no visible way of getting back).

These changes, plus the promised Start menu in an upcoming release, might just make Windows 8 usable in the workplace like 7 is. In view of that, I hope Microsoft has turned a corner, 'cause like it or not most people (me included) depend on Windows to make a living. Hopefully, they understand that again, and will keep throwing bones out to us desktop users (maybe permit more desktop customization features? fix those ugly window decorations? drop shadows?). But they wasted almost 2 years in the doghouse alienating their biggest customer base, and encouraging people not to migrate off XP and older systems. Hope their learning their lesson.

Re:you think that's bad?

[lgw]

Wow, that's a classic /. troll. A real blast from the past. Nostalgia-ing hard here. Thank you, sir troll, for the reminder of /.'s better days.

Re: The day XP Died

[TaoPhoenix]

Bravo. Truly a Mod-Limit buster.

I even saved a copy to my computer. : )

Unfortunately . . .

[mmell]

isn't that the textbook definition of "vaporware"?

Obligatory . . .

[mmell]

It's a trap!

Non-touch devices aka

[msobkow]

Non-touch devices, aka 99.9% of the PCs on the planet.

Re:Non-touch devices aka

[ChunderDownunder]

Laptops running Windows make up more than 1% of the PC market. MS aren't just pitching to replace the hundreds of millions of ten year old office PCs running XP.

By 2015, the percentage of Windows laptops sold without a touch-screen will be single figures, as the differential between the cost of production diminishes and manufacturers compete based on value-added features.

Watch the TV ad for Windows Surface Pro. A boss buys his entire staff a tablet, so they enjoy a 'fringe benefit' of a lifestyle device outside work hours. This tablet also docks to a keyboard, so that they can run standard business programs; a free gift of a convertible tablet enslaves the corporate user to be connected to the workplace 24/7 - evil genius.

Only one complaint

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally got the update installed, didn't show up in windows updates until after 1:30PM CST (for me). I like that the taskbar shows what Metro apps are running and can also be seen from the Start Screen. When Metro apps launch they show the titlebar briefly as well to let you know it's there and then it hides (nice). My only complaint is the Lock option does not appear in the Power menu on the Start Screen, but instead remains in the menu that appears when you click on your profile photo. It makes a little sense that you are locking your account, but it would make more sense to appear in the Power menu.

Win 8.2?

[asmkm22]

Why isn't this just Win 8.2? Has there been any official explanation for the weird version system they are using now? I though they were specifically moving away from the "service pack" model, but what did we really get it replaced with?

Re:Win 8.2?

[Anonymous Coward]

Chaos

Re:Win 8.2?

[H0p313ss]

So.... situation normal?

Re:Win 8.2?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Updates"

Why are you using the touch interface with a mouse

[locopuyo]

Why are people using metro touch apps on desktops and bitching they don't work well with mice?

If you want to use it like a desktop use the same desktop applications that have always been available the exact same way as you would on Windows 7 and you get the exact same interface as on Windows 7.

If you do this Windows 8 functions exactly the same as Windows 7 but with a different start menu. It isn't hard people.

goodbye

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but I have been with windows since 98.
Windows 8 has finally killed the golden goose.
My next step is Steam OS (linux) so i can keep on playing games.
Windows might get run in vmware if it's lucky.
Microsoft is dead. Sad to see them go but , oh well.

Re:you think that's bad?

[charlesnw]

LOL. Did you go into a coma on 3/31 and wake up a week later and post this as an april fools joke? :D

Re:Why are you using the touch interface with a mo

[Dynedain]

How do you shut down Windows 8 with a mouse?

Let me walk you through the steps as I do them on my test VM (default Win 8.1 install, no added software)

Get the the top level of the Metro UI (I still have not figured out how to do this without hitting the windows key on my keyboard. If you're buried multiple levels deep in something, or running something in desktop mode, there's no intuitive way to do this without a touchscreen)

Move your mouse to the bottom right corner of the screen. A tiny transparent icon will appear in the very bottom corner that only displays while the mouse is in motion. This icon is the traditional "minimize" icon. Pretty intuitive that I should go interact with it to do something not present on the home screen.

Hover over this icon, but don't click or right-click! Even though every other interactive icon that appears in Metro requires clicking to engage. If you click it, it minimizes. If you right-click, some other weird bar pops up from the bottom of the screen. Hover, but don't click.

A row of icons will slide in. Most seem relatively intuitive. Other than the convoluted way to get them onscreen, I have little complaint about their appearance or overall functions (other than the one with the Windows logo which does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING because I'm already in the Metro home screen). Click on the one for settings. Really.... settings?

A new menu comes in, with some pretty useless options for Start, Tiles and Help a ton of empty space, and a row of buttons at the bottom. Oh, and another option under that, which looks like a label but is actually where all the "real" settings are hidden. Ignore that for now and click on the button labeled power.

A popup menu appears, select "shut down". I've gone through 5 distinctly different interface methods just to do a shutdown.

Meanwhile, Metro is trying to give me helpful hints to swipe in from the edge of the screen. These "hints" overlay the actual menus I'm trying to use, and have no way to dismiss. Metro really wants me to try swiping and won't dismiss these unless I follow the instructions, even though I have no touchscreen.

Why is it so difficult to just shutdown? Everyone has been taught for years that you must do safe shutdowns on Windows, so let's undo that all in swoop by making a safe shutdown exceedingly difficult to get to?

Here's another example. On my default install, I have news, stocks, etc on the main screen of Metro. OK, I don't care for it, but I can live with it. But the only application (outside of IE) that gets a tile for launching is Silverlight? Why in the world would Silverlight ever need a launcher? And why would that launcher ever need to be on the default start screen?

Quickbooks vs. GnuCash

[Anonymous Coward]

I've done several migrations from Quickbooks to GnuCash. The reasons were that a heterogenous environment (Mac, different versions of Windows, Linux) meant a nightmare for Quickbooks, Quickbooks is not compatible believe it or not across Mac/Windows, even though they claim the Mac Version can export to Windows, none of the Windows Quickbooks folks could read the export files. Go to Quickbook forums, you'll see export is hit or miss, and even on the Windows versions (there are three different versions for Windows) the different versions cannot always read across each other, only the "Expert" (most expensive license) can read downward.

Meanwhile GnuCash will do the following that Quickbooks cannot: 1. Split entries in the register (i.e. multiple check deposits, grocery bill includes maybe medicine or other items you want to split out for separate tracking, useful for professional purposes too; 2. Multiple accounts in a single report, very useful for profit/loss reporting on projects if your accounts are set up right; 3. Run for free on any OS; 4. THIS IS CRITICAL, WRITE TO AN XML FILE NOT A PROPRIETARY AND BUGGY BINARY LOG FILE.

GnuCash is just better, even if the icons are uglier, reporting is not as nice and pretty and does not transparently export to Excel (or LibreOffice Calc). You have to export a report to HTML, then load it into Calc or Excel. That's about the downside, other than lack of reporting on the Description/Memo fields, reporting is strictly account based. So to search for say, all payments to "Joe Blow" you'd have to dump all transactions into a report and sort that report (in the report options or spreadsheet) on the Description or the Memo fields.

To get your data out of Quickbooks, export your account structure to a CVS file and use the list to create the account structure in GnuCash, and then export all your registers (Checking, Saving, etc.) to a CVS file. GnuCash can read QIF files, so there are macros that convert CVS to QIF files for both Excel and LibreOffice Calc (I used the one for Calc). Worked pretty darn good, as long as your accounts are the same. Later you can change them.

This is around 2-8 hours of work depending on your complexity, any glitches, size of your data, etc. And how rigorous you were in matching accounts.

What I like about GnuCash is that vs. Quickbooks, it gives me a lot of reporting freedom, runs on any computer, and costs nothing while having good support in all sorts of forums. For multi-user support, lots of project based accounting, and particularly non-profits that take govt grants, I'd go Peachtree or whatever they call it now. Pricey but worth it. [Neither Quickbooks nor GnuCash as yet are true multi-user accounting systems though GnuCash is working on MySQL support for a possibility.]

Why not call it Windows 8.2????

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft are good at inventing stupid names for products.

Windows 8.1 Update 1..... that's hopeless.
Someone in the marketing team should be fired.

It should simply be called Windows 8.2.

Re:Why are you using the touch interface with a mo

[locopuyo]

I agree the shutdown should be easier, but it isn't as hard as you make it out to be.

1. Move mouse to bottom right corner and the menu appears
2. Click Settings
3. Click Power
4. Click Shut Down

There is a way to make a shut down shortcut on your start screen but it is complicated. You should just be able to right click the power button and add it.. really it should be there by default.

Actually...

[Anonymous Coward]

Any computer running Windows 8.1 is definitely "non-touch hardware" for me.

Re:Why are you using the touch interface with a mo

[Anonymous Coward]

Hover over this icon, but don't click or right-click! Even though every other interactive icon that appears in Metro requires clicking to engage. If you click it, it minimizes. If you right-click, some other weird bar pops up from the bottom of the screen. Hover, but don't click.

You forgot to mention that you can't dawdle here, if you hover over this icon for too long (where too long seems to be about 3 seconds) the row of icons will disappear and then you have to move off the minimize icon and then move over and hover again.

Oh, yet another thing, when you go to select one of the icons that slide in make sure you move `straight` up, if your cursor moves left into the main desktop area the magic row of icons disappears, time to find that minimize icon and hover again. (I like to move my cursor in an arc, clearly I've been marked by Satan.)

Re:Why are you using the touch interface with a mo

[I_Wrote_This]

What about.

• Go to Desktop
• Ctl-RightMouse in the bottom-left Windows icon to get the menu, on which there is a shut-down option.

Re:Why are you using the touch interface with a mo

[Anonymous Coward]

8.1 without this update installed.
Right click on the "start" menu.
Hover over "shutdown or sign out"
click shutdown.

Re:Why are you using the touch interface with a mo

[H0p313ss]

How do you shut down Windows 8 with a mouse?

1) Click on desktop
2) right click on the windows icon on the bottom left corner of the screen
3) In the menu that appears go to "Shut down or sign out" sub menu
4) Select "Shut down"
5) Bend over and kiss your work goodbye

Re:Why are you using the touch interface with a mo

[Dynedain]

I just grabbed that as an example. Of course there are ways to work around the limitation, but the most basic elements of the UI have serious fundamental flaws. Some of these are easily correctable, but still haven't been 16 months and two major releases later.

Overall, I think the *idea* of Metro to be something interesting. A unified interface for both mobile and desktop devices is a cool challenge both from a tech and a design standpoint. It's also a bold direction for a company like Microsoft, especially Microsoft, to attempt.

However, the implementation completely fails. The graphics are great, the fonts, colors, etc, are fairly well thought out. The failure is in not thinking about the ramifications of forcing this interface onto the underlying OS layer that doesn't directly support it. Too many elements rely on older Windows interfaces (some going back as far as WinXP or Win2K). Too many basic user tasks (like shutdown) are hidden far deeper than they should because the interaction designers didn't consider them, and the downstream implementation teams just shoehorned them in wherever they would fit.

As someone who's done a lot of UI work, this is really challenging stuff to get right. What is intuitive is often counter to the aesthetic or the underlying technical behavior. It just amazes me how Microsoft let such a flawed experience ship. Why did they bet so heavily, but not put the resources in place to ensure success? Metro could have been a lifesaver for Microsoft if they had actually executed on it thoroughly instead of the usual approach of slap another UI layer on top of the most commonly used elements but leave everything underneath identical to previous versions.

Re:Why are you using the touch interface with a mo

[ljw1004]

You can also do CtrlAltDel, down, down, enter.

Or you know press the power button on your desktop or laptop or tablet.

Re:Why are you using the touch interface with a mo

[norite]

LOL, that's sheer insanity....on KDE I just click the shutdown button that I have on my taskbar (Right next to the KDE application launcher menu)

You can save yourself the torture by installing a start menu replacement and disabling all aspects of metro :)

Re:Why are you using the touch interface with a mo

[Dynedain]

In what way is that remotely intuitive. Really? Ctl-RightMouse on brand logo?

Power-down is not an advanced user task.

And that logo doesn't even exist in Win8. It was reintroduced in 8.1

Re:Why are you using the touch interface with a mo

[Dynedain]

Oh, I know. Windows+R, "cmd", enter. Type "shutdown /s"

I wasn't asking the quickest way to shutdown for a power user. I was pointing out the obtuseness of the basic, introductory way of performing a task. You know, the thing that should be the most intuitive, straightforward, process.

Re:Why are you using the touch interface with a mo

[I_Wrote_This]

Sorry - no Ctl needed, just RightMouse (which is the standard way to bring up control menus). Also, it turns out that there is no need to go to the Desktop either - works from the Start screen as well.

Re:Why are you using the touch interface with a mo

[Dynedain]

I know I can rip this all out. I don't because this is a test VM for seeing what my average user sees.

If I perceive this as convoluted, confusing, and horrendously unintuitive, what does the basic non-technical user think? And they are supposedly the people this interface was built for.

Re:Why are you using the touch interface with a mo

[H0p313ss]

I was pointing out the obtuseness of the basic, introductory way of performing a task. You know, the thing that should be the most intuitive, straightforward, process.

I agree completely.

As far as I'm concerned the Window 8 UI is a total clusterfuck for power users and novices alike, it's the worst of both worlds.

Re:Why are you using the touch interface with a mo

[Dynedain]

We've spent 30 years training people that right-clicking is reserved for secondary extended behaviors, and left-click is for primary interaction.

And either way, I wasn't pointing to the fastest way to shutdown, I was pointing the defacto method of shutdown as encouraged by the interface that's explicitly designed to be intuitive for non-technical users.

Metro is a great concept, but fundamentally broken in its implementation as the vast majority of basic user tasks are overly complex, unintuitive, and don't even follow the standard UI practices introduced as part of Metro. Metro is literally inconsistent with itself.

Why is that popup menu I mentioned in the last step even there? I have yet to see that popup menu UI paradigm appear anywhere else in the Metro launcher UI. It's reminiscent of a secondary right-click menu on the desktop, but appears on primary behavior (tap, left click). Every other icon or menu I tap on takes me to a nested full-screen menu tree, tiles, or row of icons. Why does this one single menu get a floating menu relative to the button location instead?

Re:Why are you using the touch interface with a mo

[baker_tony]

Just press the power button? That'll send a signal to shut down windows.

exactly

[erlegreer]

> For my tablet and phone, I like touch. For a desktop? I can't even understand why you would.

Exactly. Touching something in your lap or hand is a natural movement. Reaching up and forward to a screen is just ridiculous.

Off topic: Apparently I don't know how to quote on /. and searching didn't help.

Re:exactly

[Anonymous Coward]

Off topic: Apparently I don't know how to quote on /. and searching didn't help.

You want a 'blockquote' HTML tag. It's right there in the list of "Allowed HTML" when composing a message.

Apparently, 7 digit IDs really don't have a clue.

Re:Why are you using the touch interface with a mo

[Trogre]

But I don't want the large prominent power button to automatically shut my computer down. I want it to "ask me what to do" if it is pressed.

Sadly that option was taken away in Windows 7.

Re:Why are you using the touch interface with a mo

[Anonymous Coward]

Just try booting into safe mode...

Ultimate fix for W8

[Ol Olsoc]

I had an old Laptop running XP that's been sitting on the shelf for years now, unused. Here's how to fix every Windows 8 issue, with just an old Laptop.

Best buy has a trade in program,

1. Take old laptop in, get significant discount on a new computer

2. Buy a Chromebook

There, All Windows problems fixed.

Tomorrow it goes dual boot between Linux and Chrome.

Re:Why are you using the touch interface with a mo

[Ol Olsoc]

You can also do CtrlAltDel, down, down, enter.

Or you know press the power button on your desktop or laptop or tablet.

Easy Peasy workaraound for Windows 8, number 5,999,123.645

Here's why its bad. For power users, a whole lot of what we did in our sleep is now changed

For Grandma, she now has to learn a bunch of really stupid shit to do what she already did before. Grams is a little pissed too. No power user, but she just wants email, maybe some games, and the interwebz. I went through the same thing with my father when they brought out Vista, and my asshole sister thought his old W98 computer was too old, so bought him a Vista Basic machine.

After buying a Chromebook to check out, if initial impressions are lasting, I'll recommend Chromebooks to the most casual users, and Macs of one or the other flavor to those who want to dive in a little deeper.

Now that I'm semi retired, I still support a lot of people and their computers. I've put out the word that I will not support W8 (aside from my wife's, for whom I bought one just to investigate the OS) I've had enough of Windows.

Re:Why are you using the touch interface with a mo

[Dutch Gun]

Still worse than Win7:

1. Click Start Button
2: Click Shut Down

But it's the content of the steps you provide and not even their number which cause the consternation with Windows 8. What about the bottom right corner is so magical that it compels people to move their mouse there in the first place to discover this menu? What about "Settings" would lead people to believe that this is where the power control is? Yes, these are easily learned, but the more of these non-intuitive steps there are, the more frustrating things are for the user. I remember how frustrated I was trying to figure out how to shut down a full screen metro app for the first time.

The best user interfaces have a sense of intuitive discovery about them. Have you ever been to a "mystery meat" website? That's where the designer was being hip and minimalistic, and forced the user to hover over a bunch of obscure icons to figure out what the hell each one of those do before they click. Generally speaking, it's a usability disaster that no serious web designer would make today, yet Microsoft managed to do exactly this.

That's why the "Start" menu worked so well when when it was introduced in Windows 95 and continued forward. It was a reliable fallback for users in order to access all functionality on their computer. Not necessarily the fastest or most efficient, but it was all right there, easily discoverable with few clicks right from there. Every application, every computer setting one would commonly use, and yes, also functionality for shutting down the computer. At the time, the start button got some mild ribbing for being the method used for shutting down your computer, but by and large, that was largely just playing for laughs.

When I bought a mac mini recently and used OSX for the first time (I hadn't used an Apple computer since my Apple II+), my experience was completely different. Everything was slightly unfamiliar, but it was a gorgeous visual experience and not at all hard to figure out because of the shared paradigm of most all modern desktop environments (closing a window - I'll guess the red X in the upper left corner). Once I wrapped my head around a few conceptual differences (such as the top-most window, and the separation between the app window and instance), I pretty much felt at home.

It's pretty incredible to me that, as a longtime Windows user (since 3.0), I felt roughly the same level of discomfort when learning an entire new operating system as when simply upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 8, which has never happened before. In previous version upgrades, I always felt like the UI was evolving and improving for the better (like with the Windows 7 taskbar - only took me a day or two and I fell in love with it). In OSX, I don't feel like I'm being bludgeoned with an IOS-wanna-be interface every time I have to start up an application or perform any sort of OS-related task. Apple understands that these are two wildly different computing paradigms. Why didn't MS figure this out?

Re:Why are you using the touch interface with a mo

[Anonymous Coward]

or just push the power off button on the computer

so... is it a service pack or isnt it?

[Anonymous Coward]

this update might walk like a service pack, talk like a service pack, contain previous and new updates like a service pack, and prevent further updates like a service pack... but why the fuck isn't microsoft calling it a SERVICE PACK? this is a very important term because microsoft supports software for a length of time from most recent service pack..... if microsoft calls it a service pack, the EOL date of win81 gets extended...... if microsoft doesn't call it a service pack and still denies automatic updates if you dont have it, then they're in violation of their own fucking update/support policies.

Re:Why are you using the touch interface with a mo

[ChunderDownunder]

The 20th century called - how often does the typical user *need* to shutdown?

An ACPI device should, when idle, suspend to RAM after 15 minutes and hibernate after an hour.

I have a fossil-fuel guzzling noisy desktop PC in my sleeping quarters that I shutdown every night but a modern PC should snooze on minimal juice.

Re:Why are you using the touch interface with a mo

[gonnagetya]

Because despite it being 2014, I STILL encounter the odd program or process that affects system stability or performance on a long enough timeline sufficient that a reboot will fix the issue. Or a badly coded device driver that will behave oddly/slowly after resuming from a suspend/hibernation compared to a clean reboot. It has happened before, and will continue to happen so long as people develop code with memory leaks. Performing a shutdown instead of continually suspending/hibernating ensures that none of this shut can happen or accumulate.

Besides, once you obtain an SSD you realize that you no longer have to worry about slow startups, so you might as well shut down completely since you guarantee a clean slate and won't have to wait particularly long anyway.

Re:Why are you using the touch interface with a mo

[Anonymous Coward]

To shutdown in Windows 8.1 with only a mouse:

Right-click Start button
Hover mouse over Shut down or sign out
Click Shut down

That wasn't so hard now was it? I get that you're trying to make some point about shoehorning a mouse into a touch screen user interface, but you sure do waffle on. Here's your method summarised (BTW you don't have to be in the Metro UI to shutdown):

Move mouse to lower right hand corner until sidebar appears
Move mouse up and click Settings
Move mouse and click Power
Click Shut down

Re:Why are you using the touch interface with a mo

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody is saying it's "hard". The trouble is that it's not useful and it's fiddly.

Fair point. In XP the Start menu....

[Radical Moderate]

was easy to customize. Win 7 made it much harder, although the Pin to Start Menu feature was pretty slick. I hate Win 8.

Re:Why are you using the touch interface with a mo

[Anonymous Coward]

Right-click the start-icon in desktop mode and choose "Shut down or sign out"

Re:Why are you using the touch interface with a mo

[Anonymous Coward]

Move the mouse to the right (regardless if you are in Metro or desktop)... bar appears... POWER -> Shutdown.

Depending on how you count actions, this could be LESS actions than a typical desktop. FYI, I'm not defending Windows... I'm letting you know how off you are.

Re:Why are you using the touch interface with a mo

[ro_coyote]

How do you shut down Windows 8 with a mouse? (plus a bonus answer!)

Right-click the Start Button (assuming Win 8.1 here), go to "Shut down or sign out", "Shut down" (or "Update and shut down")

With just the keyboard (haven't tried in vanilla 8.0): Press [X] while holding [Windows key], press [U] to select "Shut down or sign out", then [U] once more for "Shut down"

Easy? Sure! Fitting the criteria of being obvious? Not one bit! =)

a version of Windows with, you know, windows.

[peacefool]

Would be a clear winner advertising campaign for MS, as neither Apple nor Linux distros offer free apples or gnus with their OS.

non-touch

[mcswell]

Sounds like a lot of kids: "MOM!!!! He touched me!!!"

Hey bigmouth bullshit artist... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

See you here http://tech.slashdot.org/comme... you bigmouthed little nobody...

APK

P.S.=> Have the balls to show up there in the link above to reply to it (& NOT days later like you did, LONG after I left that thread!)

NOW, in the link above, I simply tore you apart in it vs. your "so-called 'points'" that you "amended" bogusly, changing your parameters/constraints there!

(& I am going to rip you a new asshole there YET AGAIN, publicly, for your BIG mouth you little shit - prepare to be utterly humiliated, publicly...)

... apk

W8 is far better than the 8.1 upgrade +/ or update

[TuesdayTuesday]

8 was a shock- I was one of the ones that trotted off to buy a new laptop...blissfully unaware. I didn't have a clue that W8 would differ from any previous OS. No manual, no tutorial I didn't even know how to shut-down the computer. I thought people were kidding when they said I wouldn't' be able to play a disc on my brand-new laptop's BlueRay player with W8. The formerly free games had ads. The OS had ads. But it was sink or swim-- at that time W7 was long gone. Whilst trouble-shooting the recurrent disconnection from the Internet with Microsoft a few months back, the tech said "...you aren't trying to access Internet Explorer from the Tile Screen, right..?! Don't do that-- that's JUST AN APP"... I did everything from the desktop screen and ignored those pre-school, remedial tiles completely. ...and you know what...? It was ok. I grumbled like everyone else but I found myself right-clicking on corners and pulling the hand down, upper-mid-screen, when using my back-up laptop running W7, believe it or not. Upgrading to 8.1 in October was horrifying. Nothing was compatible and I 'recovered' back to pre-installed W8, swiftly. 8.1 was glitchy, buggy and plagued. Fast forward 6 months- last night- 8.1 update is supposed to fix what ails 8/ 8.1. Let's see-- I no longer have volume nor security system icons. Kaspersky AV isn't compatible, nor is Windows Defender. Tool-bars and/ or add-ons are also incompatible. Error pop-ups and white screen of nothingness... My mouse isn't being recognised. Looks like the bugs and glitches with 8.1 haven't been resolved (at least for me). I'll be 'recovering' back to pre-installed W8 this weekend because 8.1 (and its creepy update) are far worse than 8 ever was! Windows 8 is dreamy compared to 8.1 or 8.1 update. Everything I was forced to grow accustomed to in the last year+ has been altered (and not for the better). I get why most commenters are still cranky about missing W7 (I loved it, too). 8's lame colour blocks/ tiles are annoying. Microsoft tried the irritating, floating 'charms' with Vista (but at least they could be moved and/ or locked-in-place back then). Restarting the computer thrice-daily due to its disconnection from the Internet is such a waste of time and I'm so sick of checking for updates, I could scream... but I'll live with it because at least I know my way around W8, now. The changes Microsoft has made with the original 8.1 upgrade and 8.1 upgrade’s 1st update are more hindrance than help. I’ll wander through another full-throttle, back-to-factory-settings/ Windows 8 recovery and STAY THERE.