What To Expect With Windows 9

snydeq writes: Two weeks before the its official unveiling, this article provides a roundup of what to expect and the open questions around Windows 9, given Build 9834 leaks and confirmations springing up all over the Web. The desktop's Start Menu, Metro apps running in resizable windows on the desktop, virtual desktops, Notification Center, and Storage Sense, are among the presumed features in store for Windows 9. Chief among the open questions are the fates of Internet Explorer, Cortana, and the Metro Start Screen. Changes to Windows 9 will provide an inkling of where Nadella will lead Microsoft in the years ahead. What's your litmus test on Windows 9?

Comments

Haters gonna hate

[Anonymous Coward]

Haters gonna hate, but I think it looks awesome. Love my two touch screen ultrabooks; they are truly awesome. Hate the Surface RT (sucks balls), and love my two Windows 8.1 desktops (home and work). A better working start menu is most definitely welcome for lots of people I know. It sucks that I have to post anonymously here because there are so many fan girl haterz.

The real test?

[grasshoppa]

How my users react to it. I demoed 8 to my users, and got a resounding "HELL NO", due entirely to the start screen. They weren't buying it, and I don't blame them.

Given the leaks so far, I expect my users will be onboard with the new version ( possibly with some grumbling about the "look" ). But I won't really know until I get it in front of them for some feedback.

Re:If it's not like Vista or 8.0 (Vista II)...

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Looking at OSX 10.10, why not have both?

Although at this point, I'm shocked Microsoft just doesn't open up the APIs to let people completely reskin windows. I might come back to Windows if I can run LiteStep again...

Make the server version look like a server.

[attemptedgoalie]

Windows 9 will be interesting, and will break all kinds of things like every other upgrade does.

But Server 2012 is unusable. R2 improved it, but they clearly hate their customers.

1. Why does a Server install have boxes called "this PC" to click on. Just bring back "My Briefcase" and get it over with you lazy pieces of crap.
2. Why does it have a snazzy new front end that then puts back up screens we had in Windows 3.1?
3. I will cut the bitch that decided to use URLs for error messages, but not have them as active links so you could follow them.

I wasted hours of my life trying to make .Net3.5 install on 2012 because a vendor swore they wouldn't support R2, but had to have 3.5. I finally just did R2 and told them it was that or no .Net. If Microsoft didn't want me to install .Net 3.5, they shouldn't have made it the top feature in the list to install. Hide it. Make it separate. Something. But top in the list, incapable of installing saying it can't find media no matter what you do with copying files locally, powershell/DISM/whatever? Bite me you no-testing-code-shipping pieces of crap!

But I'm not bitter.

Re:Make the server version look like a server.

[DocHoncho]

Ctrl-C in any alert type box copies the content to the clipboard. Well, it copies much more than that, which is weird, but it does copy the important bits. Can't find an example right now, but the format is hideous. You've got to paste it in a text editor first, but it's better than nothing.

My personal most hated feature of windows is that god awful "Choose a Folder" dialog that gives you a shitty, small tree list that you can't resize to stumble through your file system with. It's one of the absolute worst dialogs in computing history, and we've been stuck using it since at least Windows 95. The worst part is that it's possible to use the regular Open dialog for directories, but lazy ass devs use the simplest (for them) method of calling that fucking mess of shit.

"What to expect" - really?

[BringsApples]

Anyone that does freelance IT work knows that this means $$$. Hell I'm still counting the money from WinXP's death. Yehaa!

Virtual Desktops (Workspaces)

[corychristison]

I've used workspaces extensively since discovering Linux in the early 2000's. I find it rather interesting Microsoft is /finally/ introducing native, proper, workspaces.

Any time I try to explain it to someone who has never used them, they always ask me "Why would I use/want that?" and then they always jump on the multi-monitor mantra and say "Why not just get X number of screens?"

I personally have 8 workspaces configured. I use them all. I have my pager configured in 2 rows of 4 grid. My window manager is configured to 'skip' to the corresponding workspace by dragging the mouse pointer to the edge of the screen (with a configurable amount of resistance), so its as close to physical screens as it can get without the cost of buying 8 screens, video cards, plus power costs.

I've argued this in the past on Slashdot here, but I honestly don't see the appeal of physical screens. Maybe Windows people will finally 'get it' when Win9 comes out.

Re:Virtual Desktops (Workspaces)

[NormalVisual]

I understand what you're saying (I think) but I've always wondered (and this is from a hardware-guy's perspective) wouldn't you rather have one big monitor [flickr.com], than two small monitors [wired.com]?

I actually prefer multiple displays along with virtual desktops, as the bezel doesn't bother me, and it's easier for me to have a dev environment on one screen with documentation/tools on the other sans taskbar, with the virtual desktops being used for stuff like IMs, email, etc.. Maximizing something on the second display fills that display, but leaves the primary untouched. Additionally, there are some folks that prefer to use multiple displays in different orientations, although I'm not one of those. Finally, it's cheaper. :-) Having said that, it's not something I'm dogmatic about. People should use whatever works best for them.

Nothing Useful

[darkain]

I evaluate new software primarily based on two areas.

1) What do I gain with the new software? Currently running Windows 7, what do I get that helps make my life more productive with Windows 9? Thusfar, I see nothing. From Windows 8 to 9, yeah, I can see the improvement, but so far it is simply "improved" to the point of reverting back to what 7 already has.

2) What do I lose with the new software? From the current leaks, Windows 9 is just as ugly as Windows 8 desktop mode. The Win8/9 UI looks like Windows 3.1. They've switched back to centering title bar text from the previous decade+ of left-align title bar text. They've taken the UI from the clean and modern Aero Glass and turned it into flat colors just like Windows 3.1. The OS as a whole is simply less visually appealing.

So, the question still remains: WHY SWITCH!?

Winning the lottery

[msobkow]

My Windows 7 laptop does everything I need for Windowsy stuff, so I won't be replacing or upgrading it unless I win the lottery.

Sadly, my 10+ year old 3.8GHz Pentium-pre-Core2 box is finally dying, so I'm in the midst of shifting my development and personal stuff over to the laptop. I've used Windows for years as a developer so it's not *too* painful, but I'm going to miss Linux. Linux just *works* without getting in my way; I can't say the same for Windows, even on trivial issues as to which widgets get auto-focused when you open them up (who is the brilliant idiot who came up with the idea that the file browser should focus on that damned library panel instead of the list of files?)

Re:The Year of Windows on the Desktop

[Luckyo]

Yet another year of windows 7 on the desktop to be precise.

A few things...

[Entropius]

What's your litmus test on Windows 9?

I want an OS that:

1) Doesn't attempt to hide the workings of my computer from me -- in particular, don't hide the way that paths and directories really work. (As a bonus: remove the spaces from system directories, dammit, because I get real tired of escaping them when I access my NTFS partition from a real OS.)

2) When something goes wrong tell me what the fuck it was. "The internet connection has limited connectivity" doesn't tell me a damn thing. "DHCP timeout" tells me something. Include both messages, by all means, for the benefit of Grandma -- but Grandma likely can't fix her internet connection on her own anyway.

3) Don't be patronizing. Copying .mp3's to a phone shouldn't give a "Your phone might not be able to play this file, copy anyway?" message, and there are a thousand things like that in Windows.

4) Get rid of file locking, or at least allow an override. I can decide whether a file is sufficiently "in use" that I shouldn't delete it.

5) Don't attempt to push other MS products (cloud services, "stores", and the like) on me, and don't keep spewing Windows Media Player etc. icons around after I delete them once.

 

A non-UNIX OS in a UNIX world?

[GreatDrok]

I find it funny that MS is now the only major OS vendor that isn't running on a UNIX base. Seems like an uphill struggle as the world passes them by. They should do an Apple and virtualise the old Windows code in a classic environment and switch to a UNIX base. Or just stop trying to make operating systems altogether and focus on software.

Re:A non-UNIX OS in a UNIX world?

[GreatDrok]

"MS says they have 75% market share for x86 servers (I've no idea if that is a legit statistic). Macs are barely a blip in desktop/laptop market share. Win 8 and Win 8.1, which according to comments in posts like this is the worst OS since Win ME, each has greater market share than all versions of Mac OS combined."

I can believe that MS has 75% market share for x86 servers simply because you can replace a whole host of Windows servers with a single Linux box - I know, I've done it multiple times. When it takes several machines to do what a single *nix box can do then sure, you're going to get high market share but that doesn't necessarily mean you're doing a good job. This is similar to their claims for IIS when it is just hosting parked domains.

MS has a bigger problem than that though because they're failing to break out of the jail of desktop in any serious way. Xbox cost a fortune and while the 360 did OK, the One is struggling badly compared with the PS4. The Windows phones are a joke, as are their tablets. The desktop may not be going anywhere soon but people have so widely embraced other technologies like Android and iOS that the desktop has little leverage any more. They simply can't use it to control the world and stop people leaving. Windows 8 was their attempt and it is an abject failure. 9 may be a decent version of Windows but really they've got no growth left in them. MS needs to get away from the idea of owning the platform and focus on developing software because they don't have the leverage to succeed the way they did back in the 90's and 00's. The sad fact is, the software they make which isn't supported by their OS isn't really all that good. Can they write good software without the tie in to the OS? I don't know but the signs aren't good.

The funny thing is I remember reading back in '97 that the whole world would ditch UNIX and switch to NT over the following few years. Without Linux, maybe that would have happened but now the spawn of Linus has really spoiled their day, especially Android despite their bogus patent claims. I agree with the other poster, if they had been broken up back in 2000 I suspect the world would have seen a lot more innovation and maybe Apple wouldn't have had the chance to grab the lion's share of the profit and overtake MS in the value stakes.

Re:A non-UNIX OS in a UNIX world?

[terjeber]

I find it funny that MS is now the only major OS vendor that isn't running on a UNIX base. Seems like an uphill struggle as the world passes them by.

This is one of those religious things I find quite funny. For the record, I have used Linux since 0.97 and Slackware. I grew up on SunOS and thought that Sun moving the System V with Solaris was a tragedy. I even once ran a home-written BBS (you wouldn't know) on a dual-floppy x86 machine running Minix. I know Unix. Standard Unix Operating system architecture is an archaic, abhorrent monstrosity that we should have left behind computer-eons ago. The Linux OS architecture is bad at its core level, and it isn't really fixable. The Windows NT core is a much better architecture, but Microsoft has made some serious mistakes on the user end.

Oh, and let's not forget X. It was a reasonable idea back when we had big-ass servers running X clients talking to "cheap" X terminals with X servers on them (yeah, X terminology is kinda backwards). I theory. In practice it became a pig. A monster pig. Sure, you can smear any kind of lipstick on the X pig, whether that lipstick is called KDE or GNOME, but it is still just a monster pig smeared with (what is now monster) lipstick. Leave it to the OS community to take what amounts to lipstick and make it a huge unwieldy monster in it self!

If you want to see Unix-like operating systems with a decent architecture, look at Minix 3 and QNX. The concept "Unix base" is not a good thing (TM) per se. Quite the opposite. Monolithic monstrosities are never a good thing. Think about it, the entire core of Minix 3 has plenty of room to run inside the L1 cache of your CPU.

Re: What To Expect With Windows 9

[MightyYar]

Microsoft has every other consumer OS hits going back to Windows 97

I think this probably indicates that they bite off too much in each release. It's actually a common problem when companies try to abandon an incremental development cycle and get a little ambitious.

barely supports metadata, much less user metadata

NTFS supports arbitrary metadata "streams", analogous to xattrs on unix. Windows and applications simply don't make use of them very much.

Also, Microsoft did introduce a new filesystem: ReFS. It is sort-of analogous to zfs or btrfs, but not very well supported in Windows 8 at the moment and not as feature-complete. Still, they seem to be ahead of Apple which is still using HFS.

Re:Clippy sings a Beatles song

[binarybum]

c'mon now- how is this not modded up?

Re:Ah well

[hyades1]

Fair enough, that's a valid point. But I believe you're the first person I've encountered who seems to love, Love, LOVE Win 8. I know people who tolerate it. I know people who have stripped it off their system and replaced it with 7. I know nobody who feels about it the way you evidently do, though. That's why I thought your comment sounded a lot like a PR blurb from MSoft.