Windows 10 Enables Switching Between Desktop and Tablet Modes

jones_supa writes: In Windows 8, you were trapped in either the Modern UI or using the desktop, and going back and forth between the two worlds was cumbersome. Windows 10 takes a hybrid approach, allowing the user to choose between a classic desktop and a full-screen mobile experience. The feature, which has been developed under the name "Continuum," is now simply called "Tablet mode". In the build 9926 of Windows 10 Technical Preview, switching between the modes can finally be tried out. The leaked build 10036 shows that eventually you will also have the option to automate the process for dockable devices. Since Windows 10 is being positioned as the one OS for all of Microsoft's devices, being able to control the desktop and tablet experiences like this is critical to appeasing the consumer.

Comments

I must be missing something.

[jtownatpunk.net]

Clicking on one icon to switch to "metro" and then clicking on another to switch to "desktop" doesn't seem terribly cumbersome. On my tablet, search/replace click/tap.

Re:I must be missing something.

[Anonymous Coward]

Getting out of a metro app is a mystery to me. I want to kill the video, not have it running in the background. The only way I can find is to swipe to the metro start screen, click on the desktop icon, go to task manager, find the metro app I want to kill, and end the process.

Why can't they let me exit the metro app directly?

If I don't kill the video, when I try to go back to it it gives me some message about being offline, or some advertising or whatever.

It's devolution.

Re:I must be missing something.

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps bringing back a desktop optimized list of installed programs when in desktop mode might be a small improvement? Perhaps when in desktop mode the whole screen does not need to be consumed with the menu. Perhaps when in desktop mode not having all (newer) programs default to full screen might be a small improvement? Opening up a PDF to have on the side of another program is a frustrating experience in Win8.

MS spent a long time getting everyone used to certain way of getting to your programs then threw that all away win Win8. That is the desktop experience we're used to. It may not be the most optimal but just knowing where to go and what to expect helps.

Re:I must be missing something.

[rudy_wayne]

Getting out of a metro app is a mystery to me. I want to kill the video, not have it running in the background. The only way I can find is to swipe to the metro start screen, click on the desktop icon, go to task manager, find the metro app I want to kill, and end the process.

Why can't they let me exit the metro app directly?

Because Microsoft knows better than you.

This is part of the absurd new mindset at Microsoft. You aren't supposed to exit the application. When the application has been idle for a while the OS (supposedly) will suspend it.

This design makes no sense, but neither do the other 1000 bad design decisions they made with Windows 8/10, so it's not surprising.

Re:I must be missing something.

[snowgirl]

Indeed. Android allows you to swipe away a process from the "Running/Recent Tasks" list, which forces a program to shutdown...

"Always forever running, don't worry, when you come back it's there" is not really the best solution for everything... ESPECIALLY, if it continues to play audio...

Now, being able to tell an app like Pandora to keep playing after shutting down is entirely different...

Re:I must be missing something.

[duck_rifted]

Loading apps drains the battery more and wears out memory faster in mobile devices than just leaving them running. Even on an Android device, everything you do is kept running until you manually kill it, and some things just immediately restart. So, there's a sound technical reason for it.

The problem is, this leaves us feeling like we don't have control of our devices, and consumers with intermediate technical skills (read: almost the entire market for Microsoft's shiny new OS) are very uncomfortable with that feeling. Experts disagree, and will point out that it depends upon what exactly is running. Personally, I would have thought that taking control of the machine away from the user was proven bad when Gateway tanked. Also, isn't that why people hated that damned paperclip?

So, there's an element of frustration with that concept among those who consider having control over our machines to be sacrosanct. Then, in niche problems (like mobile environments), we're shown that if that's the case then there must be exceptions to sacrosanct. Now, here's Microsoft in the middle trying to get it all sorted without crossing desktop users. They are absolutely guaranteed to piss off somebody. Or at least they were with Windows 8.

If they can make us feel like the old brand has returned, start menu and all, on desktop then Windows 10 will be a success, simply put. That OS will fly, and so will MS stock in that case. But marketers, PR firms, and some systems engineers are trying like hell to change our perspective on that. Meanwhile, the exact conversations we COULD be having that would accomplish what they want are practically forbidden in social media. Note that you're downmodded just for saying how you feel as a consumer. Since when is consumer preference taboo? What's next? Hating on people for having a favorite color? Aesthetics count.

It's worth putting all this out there because it has been one gigantic clusterfuck ever since Windows 8's features were revealed. And I will continue to point out that PR firms and fanbois have harmed Microsoft more than help them. I really hope Windows 10 can put this awkward, uncomfortable, frustrating dynamic to bed. The social costs of Windows 8 have undermined its value as an OS, and that's so damn silly that it's a shame I have to type it. In the Army, we called that "Mickey Mouse bullshit." All that should matter is the OS itself, and I'm optimistic about Windows 10 in that regard.

Re:I must be missing something.

[snowgirl]

I just checked it out... it doesn't go to metro... it goes to "everything is full screen unless you pull an app to the side for a split-screen effect.

Basically, it's like a tiling window manager, except you only have the choice of one or two windows at a time...

Re:I must be missing something.

[WGFCrafty]

How about offering a desktop manager like in ala Linux?

I feel the reason they don't want to offer such customizable things is because they want you used to this new tablet/phone way of doing things. They want you to use a store like Android/Itunes to buy apps, then they can also push their terrible Music and Video service like they do on the Xbox.

Re:I must be missing something.

[Darinbob]

Drag from the top of the full screen metro app down to the bottom, and it kills the app. 8.1 though added an X to kill apps though.

Re:I must be missing something.

[Anonymous Coward]

Except this is the same with Unity and Gnome 3 where you have lack of customization to the UI.

Re:I must be missing something.

[rudy_wayne]

It's worth putting all this out there because it has been one gigantic clusterfuck ever since Windows 8's features were revealed. And I will continue to point out that PR firms and fanbois have harmed Microsoft more than help them. I really hope Windows 10 can put this awkward, uncomfortable, frustrating dynamic to bed. The social costs of Windows 8 have undermined its value as an OS, and that's so damn silly that it's a shame I have to type it. In the Army, we called that "Mickey Mouse bullshit." All that should matter is the OS itself, and I'm optimistic about Windows 10 in that regard.

I some time running the Windows 10 Technical preview that was released in January. Although it's an early, nowhere-near-finished- pre-beta version, it shows where Microsoft's thinking is headed. And it's not good.

While they have made some improvements over the clusterfuck that is Windows 8, in most cases they have doubled-down on stupid, keeping the vast majority of bad design decisions that were made with Windows 8. Even bringing back the Start Menu was botched. It still isn't as functional as Windows 7.

And the whole thing is just fucking ugly. More and more people spend an enormous amount of time in front of a computer, not just for social/entertainment purposes but for work as well. Aesthetics matter and Windows 8/10 fail horribly. This picture sums it all up perfectly:

http://i.imgur.com/iiXQRtN.jpg

Re:I must be missing something.

[thegarbz]

Alt-F4.
Or drag mouse to top right and click the X which appears.
Or on a tablet drag finger from the top of the screen to the bottom and let go.

2/3rds of that is literally what we've been doing for 20 years now.

Re:I must be missing something.

[thegarbz]

I don't understand. Windows 8.1 allows you to drag the task to the bottom of the screen to kill it. I don't see this very different to the Android task manager.
Though bringing up the metro task manager is completely non intuitive as it's the same action as tabbing to the previous application.

Re:I must be missing something.

[F.Ultra]

How exactly considering that there is a close button on every window in both Unity and Gnome3?

Re:I must be missing something.

[Austerity Empowers]

There is an issue with lack of customization, a big one. But that's different than not being able to close a program you are done with. Definitely you should be able to completely kill a program, not just "demand kill" it.

Afaik both android and iOS have ways of doing this that are very simple.

Re:I must be missing something.

[Alarash]

How is it not as functional as Windows 7 start menu, I'm curious? You've got the same shortcuts and you can (un)pin stuff there, just like in W7.

Re:I must be missing something.

[batkiwi]

In windows 10 you click the x on the top right to exit it. They learned.

In windows 8.1 you swipe from the top, hold for 1 second, and then drag the app to the bottom of the screen. It's silly and convoluted but less convoluted than your method.

Re:I must be missing something.

[arglebargle_xiv]

Clicking on one icon to switch to "metro" and then clicking on another to switch to "desktop" doesn't seem terribly cumbersome.

Installing Window Blinds and Start8 as a one-off doesn't seem terribly cumbersome, and then you have the UI that Microsoft should have given you in the first place (best ever response to this was taking my laptop in to Microsoft and having a MS person staring over my shoulder and eventually asking "what is that and where can I get it too").

Re: I must be missing something.

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, that's exactly what Metro is.

Re:I must be missing something.

[Anonymous Coward]

The real problem is that on a large screen, such as a 24" desktop, using a mouse, dragging the screen to the bottom to have to kill it is a pain. Not only is it non intuative it's not very good design.

Re:I must be missing something.

[loufoque]

99% of the time when my Android phone runs out of battery, it's because some program using GPS was left running.

Re:I must be missing something.

[thegarbz]

You have the same in Windows 8.1 I'm not sure what your complaint is about.

Re:I must be missing something.

[thegarbz]

I don't buy it.

Opening a really really big program like Photoshop takes mere seconds. I don't think there's a saving there vs the resulting paging in and out of memory caused by having all these programs constantly running.

Heck on Android people download programs specifically to identify other running programs and kill them to save battery life. The more that is running the more chance you have of a blocking applications preventing the processor from sleeping.

Re:I must be missing something.

[armanox]

The default option, last I looked, switched to the Windows 8 All Programs list instead of the Windows 6 style menu. The Windows 6 style menu, found in earlier builds can be switched back to via PowerShell. Not sure if they updated the default menu again.

Re:I must be missing something.

[duck_rifted]

Before I get into this, know that I understand that it will take time for Microsoft to develop their new interface paradigm, and I know that it will get better as they do so. Much of what I say here will hopefully not apply at all one day, and it's completely understandable that they need time to reach that point.

Problem 1: Multiple instances of the same program.

In the past, this was simple. Go to it in the start menu and click it again. Now, I have to look up a new set of key-click combinations or run a new search in the start screen every time I want multiple instances of the same program. This forces me into a mobile interface on desktop, and lowers my productivity by making me stop and relearn a set of shortcuts. Sure, they're not that complicated, but people don't just sit around memorizing things just for the fun of it, and the fact that we need to means a downgrade in usability and productivity.

(https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/e9fd8b8a-bc5f-48a8-9e18-6da070c0caec/how-to-run-multiple-instances-of-the-same-application-from-the-metro-interface?forum=w8itproappcompat)

Problem 2: The start screen forces me into a mobile interface.

Simplistic, blocky interfaces aren't so much attractive on mobile and touch screen devices as they're necessary. We tolerate them because they make the device easier to use. However, that does not automatically mean that such interfaces are aesthetically pleasing nor the most useful. The entire point of such interfaces is to overcome the limitations of a touch screen interface, so by forcing desktop users to use that kind of interface is in general a downgrade in usability and productivity.

Problem 3: Windows 8 sends to Microsoft everything we locally search.

The problem with this isn't a matter of privacy paranoia, but rather economics. ISPs today are setting artificial resource limitations to price gouge for profit. That is, data caps. When we exceed these caps, we pay. This isn't a big deal for those who don't stream anything, don't update anything, and don't download any new programs or tools. Now, on top of this, we have an OS that uses bandwidth every time we need to find a program we haven't pinned. Microsoft is effectively spending our money for us. It's inconsiderate.

Problem 4: Functionality isn't everything.

Innovation has revolved around the concept of making things easier to do. If you have two devices that do the same thing but one is easier to use, which will you prefer? So, in general, making things harder to do and pushing everybody to learn something new and more complicated does not innovate. It does exactly the opposite. Furthermore, see item 2 again. The aesthetics of the operating system are sacrificed at the same time, which means on desktop it's all a gigantic step backward.

Problem 5: The new paradigm has a negative impact on consumer perceptions.

The absolute best way for Microsoft to introduce the changes we've seen with Windows 8 would have been to make them optional at the moment of installation. We could then have chosen the interface that best suits our device. Maybe by changing Windows components and features, we could have even made changes later, say, if we bought a touch screen. Instead, Microsoft forced these changed on every desktop user with reason to upgrade and not only have they not cared what any of us think, but they've hired public relations firms to aggressively treat us like shit for having our own opinions. Everything about the first step of this transition has been inconsiderate and disrespectful.

Problem 6: Nothing about the new Windows features is necessary.

I've used Windows 8 for about a year and a half. At one point, my metro apps quick working, and Windows advised me to refresh my PC from installation disc. That would have then involved time sacrificed to updates and reconfiguration. I didn't do it. I still haven't. And there is nothing at all about metro

Re:I must be missing something.

[batkiwi]

If you're on a non-tablet (and thus have a keyboard) you can kill any metro app with alt-f4.

Re:I must be missing something.

[duck_rifted]

I just thought of the perfect analogy!

She wouldn't, but suppose my ol' lady goes out and gets the stereotypical trashy-street-walker-looking trailer park hoochie mama outfit. Of course, it would appall me, and I'd be entitled to that opinion, right? It's her clothes, her body they're being put on, her choice. It would annoy me, but it wouldn't necessarily be a relationship-killer unless she started trying wearing it to functions where it's *really* inappropriate.

However, suppose she paid some group of people to follow me everywhere and interrupt conversations or say rude things any time I mentioned the word "clothes" without involving some kind of glowing praise for the hoochie mama outfit. That would be a relationship-killer, right? That's basically what Microsoft has done, and the mobile interface is the hoochie mama outfit.

Re:I must be missing something.

[Alien1024]

Move the mouse cursor to the top of the screen and you get a title bar with an "X" button which really closes the program (at least in 8.1).

Re:I must be missing something.

[transporter_ii]

> Afaik both android and iOS have ways of doing this that are very simple.

It may be simple now, but my first experience with Android, it was really annoying to me that there wasn't an obvious way to actually close an app. Yes, I agree it isn't that hard, but if you don't know how, it is not obvious in any way whatsoever. An "X" up in the corner of the app is simple.

Re:I must be missing something.

[Cassini2]

Are you saying that the more advanced the Windows UI, the more power users should and will use the keyboard? The entire GUI premise is flawed if the strategy is to revert to keyboard shortcuts.

I think Microsoft's introduction of Windows 8 and the Office Ribbon have been so badly bungled that many power users have simply reverted to keyboard shortcuts. However, as a strategy, I don't think it is a good idea. Why even have the mouse when we can all go back to command line?

Re:I must be missing something.

[Jack Griffin]

This is exactly how IOS and Android work so it's no big paradigm shift to simply hide apps rather than close them. The only catch with Windows is that it behaves the same on a desktop as a tablet, which is shit. Hopefully this fixes that issue.

Re:I must be missing something.

[tepples]

Personally, I would have thought that taking control of the machine away from the user was proven bad when Gateway tanked.

The continued existence of the video game console market, as opposed to gaming PCs in living-room-friendly cases, is somewhat of a counterpoint to this.

Re:I must be missing something.

[Alien1024]

The headline is wrong. They haven't just now "enabled" switching between desktop and tablet modes - that has been possible since Win8 initial release, in more or less convoluted ways. They have introduced a new, "automatic" way to do it.

Re:I must be missing something.

[Gadget_Guy]

Problem 1: Multiple instances of the same program.

This was answered in the link that you provided. Right click on the task bar icon and open a new instance of the application (or access the jump list of recently used files). It works for Windows 7 and 8.

Problem 2: The start screen forces me into a mobile interface.

Yeah, I hate the Metro interface too. But this is the high profile change that they made to Windows 10, so it is already a solved problem.

Problem 3: Windows 8 sends to Microsoft everything we locally search.

This is a configurable option in Windows 8.1, so that isn't a problem.

Problem 4: Functionality isn't everything.

It will be interesting how many of Windows 8's less intuitive user interface features will still be around in the final version of Windows 10. My most hated modern user interface idea is the removal of UI hints to simplify the screen. You end up having to try clicking and swiping everything just to see if it does something. Having to move the mouse to particular corners of the screen is a crap idea too

Problem 5: The new paradigm has a negative impact on consumer perceptions.
The absolute best way for Microsoft to introduce the changes we've seen with Windows 8 would have been to make them optional at the moment of installation. We could then have chosen the interface that best suits our device.

Well that is what they have done now. I read a great article once on the though process that went on behind the scenes about the new interface. I wish I could find it again, because it put it all into perspective. I will still always hate the Metro interface and the loss of functionality that it brings, but I have been surprised at the change of heart about it that the staff at my company have had about it. They went from hating it to acceptance (and even one who loves it).

Problem 6: Nothing about the new Windows features is necessary.

That gets said about every version of Windows. XP was just a face-lift on 2000. Vista was just XP run as a limited user. Windows 7 was just Vista, which, for some reason, the people who hated Vista decided that they loved. The changes in each version are more noticeable when moving back to an old version. You suddenly realise how many of the new features you use when they suddenly disappear.

Now I write that though (on my Windows 7 computer), I can't think of any examples of things that I miss from Win8 right now.

Re:I must be missing something.

[thegarbz]

I agree with some of what you said. But a few things:

Problem 3: Windows 8 sends to Microsoft everything we locally search.

You're really stretching with this complaint. The data usage of this is incredibly marginal. Also windows allows you to set network interfaces as metered connections. I have heard (though not tried in practice) that this will cause the search not to happen. But don't quote me on this. I've certainly seen it do other things like disable windows update in this scenario.

Problem 6: Nothing about the new Windows features is necessary

This I disagree with. Ok Metro is definitely not the answer. It's an ugly clusterfuck of uselessness, but the change was far from unnecessary. Many devices now are sold with touch screens, many more are sold as convertible tablets. We are moving more and more to "transformer" devices like the Surface series where having a full desktop or a full tablet interface is not the answer. Windows 7 was unusable on such a device.

The changes are definitely necessary. Though they are far from perfect.

Re:I must be missing something.

[thegarbz]

Err in Windows 8.1 you click the x on the top right to exit it too.... or am I missing something.

Re:I must be missing something.

[thegarbz]

Why even have the mouse when we can all go back to command line?

You're missing the point. You now have the full list of options:

alt+f4 still works
clicking in the top right corner x still works.

have no mouse and keyboard? Well use the drag down to kill function.

Re:I must be missing something.

[taoboy]

+1. I don't have any problems switching between the two. Now, to a subsequent poster's point, killing Metro apps that don't have a quit/exit/die button is cumbersome...

Re:I must be missing something.

[Dutch Gun]

If you need to install third-party software to make the basic OS usable or presentable, then the OS makers have failed miserably. Add-ons come with potential penalties as well. You're never sure how long they'll be supported. They may have performance penalties or security implications, they might cause stability issues (since some of them hook into the guts of the OS via undocumented interfaces), or they might interfere with future updates, etc. People are quick to load up their software platforms of choice (Windows, Firefox, Android, etc) with dozens of third-party add-ons, and then they bitch about how how slow, buggy, bloated, etc that platform is.

The entire point of an OS platform is to enable your clients to essentially ignore the OS and simply get their work done. Windows 8 seemed intent on getting in the users face by introducing radical and unnecessary new paradigms, or by shoving ass-ugly new "modern" visual concepts that look like Windows 3.1 rejects. At the very least, Windows 10 is improving on some of the worst aspects of 8 usability, even if it still looks like crap.

Re:I must be missing something.

[duck_rifted]

You make a good point on Problem 6, and in fact capture the core of my patience where this is concerned. It's a painful transition, but when it's perfected, it will have been worth it. As a topic crossover, consider the usefulness of interfaces designed for mobile devices while using VR or AR. Where the future of computing lies for design and entertainment, Microsoft is ahead of the game, and we'll appreciate every annoyance when that time comes.

The problem with your counterargument to Problem 3 is that if it's okay for Microsoft, it's okay for everybody, and if it's okay for everybody then the fractions of pennies in the data trickle becomes tens to hundreds of dollars in the data flood, depending on the number of machines using a connection. If it's unethical to spend a thousand dollars of my money for me, then it's unethical to spend a hundredth of a cent for me as well. That's one area where everybody should at least add an off switch and ultimately it would be better to hands off. ISPs charging us data caps while software engineers are perfectly comfortable spending our bandwidth for us together mean that we're just getting plain fucked.

Re:I must be missing something.

[duck_rifted]

It is! ..to an extent. Video game consoles are used for goofing off. Desktop computers are used to goof off, sure, but also to do work, store sensitive data, and pay bills. When video game consoles are sitting on the desks at architectural firms and law offices, instead of PCs, your point will hold.

Re:I must be missing something.

[shutdown -p now]

You do realize that this design has already been changed significantly in Win10, right?

Re:I must be missing something.

[duck_rifted]

At least we're all optimistic about Windows 10! That's a pretty good sign, and this socially and technologically awkward transition phase will not be missed (lmao). Thanks for the HowToGeek link! Off I go to read that right now!

Re:I must be missing something.

[shutdown -p now]

Win8 does the same, except the removal gesture is less than obvious - you have to swipe it to the right (as if you were opening it), and then keep swiping to the bottom of the screen.

Of course, with a mouse, it's all much easier since 8.1, since you can just click on the close button in the title bar.

Re:I must be missing something.

[unixisc]

Getting out of a metro app is a mystery to me. I want to kill the video, not have it running in the background. The only way I can find is to swipe to the metro start screen, click on the desktop icon, go to task manager, find the metro app I want to kill, and end the process.

Why can't they let me exit the metro app directly?

If I don't kill the video, when I try to go back to it it gives me some message about being offline, or some advertising or whatever.

It's devolution.

Actually if you swipe to the lower screen & then swipe right (assuming a touch interface here - I neither try nor recommend 8.x for non-touch), you'll find the Task Manager there.

I find this constant switch b/w Metro & Desktop really annoying. More annoying to me is that there is no way to close an application w/o going into Task Manager & then End Task: something that doesn't need to be done for desktop apps, but does for Metro apps. I do not want all applications running at the same time - that's probably what causes my tablet's battery to run out pretty quickly. Once I'm done w/ an application, I'd like to hit on the 'X' in the north east corner, and end it! All apps don't need to run in the background all the time.

Re:I must be missing something.

[LordLimecat]

Indeed. Android allows you to swipe away a process from the "Running/Recent Tasks" list, which forces a program to shutdown...

Windows 8 has this as well.

Re:I must be missing something.

[unixisc]

In Windows 8.1, you have the same for applications running in the desktop. If you are running, say, News, or Weather, or Sports, there's no way to close the application without invoking the Task Manager. I dunno about Unity, but GNOME 3 does have a way to close every app. Problem there is more w/ some GTK3 apps which under non-GTK UX's like KDE or Lumina go into fullscreen (as opposed to maximized) mode, thereby preventing one from doing anything else w/o closing the app.

Re:I must be missing something.

[Anonymous Coward]

Now I write that though (on my Windows 7 computer), I can't think of any examples of things that I miss from Win8 right now.

Being able to right click on the 'start' button and get a long list of useful shortcuts.

Re:I must be missing something.

[Anonymous Coward]

Two ways:
1) If touchscreen is available, swipe from offscreen top to offscreen bottom, moving from right to left (it doesn't have to be that far right-to-left, either). Basically, draw a "/" across the screen with your finger. It's the touchscreen equivalent to clicking the close ("X") button on the window's title bar. This issues a WM_CLOSE, followed by a WM_DESTROY. The application, if coded correctly according to standard practice will then issue PostQuitMessage in response to one of these messages, which sends a WM_QUIT and terminates the program by escaping the message loop.
2) If a keyboard is available, use Alt-F4 like any other Windows program. Duh. This issues a WM_QUIT directly, and terminates the program by escaping the message loop.

"Metro" apps aren't magical. They're just Windows executables that have a fullscreen UI. They work exactly like other Windows executables.

Re:I must be missing something.

[unixisc]

Loading apps drains the battery more and wears out memory faster in mobile devices than just leaving them running. Even on an Android device, everything you do is kept running until you manually kill it, and some things just immediately restart. So, there's a sound technical reason for it.

Loading apps would only do the above things more if one spends very little time w/ an app. But it can't take more energy than leaving the app running in the background for hours, consuming CPU cycles when the device is idling, thereby consuming the battery along w/ it. Which explains why my new Winbook battery doesn't last long (and I can't exactly complain, since I paid just $99 for it).

On both Android & iOS, killing an app is very easy - in iOS, it's double-pressing the center button and swiping out the background apps that you no longer want, while on Android, it's tapping the right-most button at the bottom. In Windows 8.1, you need to swipe first south and then east, and then hit Task Manager, which takes you to the desktop, and then you highlight the app you wanna kill, and tap 'End Task'. Or you go into the desktop, tap on the taskbar and select Task manager, and do the same. A lot less intuitive, and not convenient for a touch interface either

Re: I must be missing something.

[Anonymous Coward]

Like DOS

Re:I must be missing something.

[Jack Griffin]

Win8 wasn't as bad as the press. I hated it too when I used it and have only just got around to using full time since forced on me at my new job I started last year. In my experience there's a couple of small tweaks that will make the bad go away:
1. Give us the choice to Fuck Metro Off - this seems to be fixed here 2. Give us the start button back - fixed in 8.1 3. When you click on start give us a partial screen menu instead of the full screen one. Apparently fixed in Win10 So if the Metro fuckup is able to be controlled by the user, Win10 should be alright.

Re:I must be missing something.

[dbIII]

All this swiping, does it come with a giant monkey in a temple?

Re: I must be missing something.

[snowgirl]

Um... I didn't know metro still showed the taskbar and window decorations... oh wait, it doesn't.

Re:I must be missing something.

[Anonymous Coward]

Drag (with either the mouse, a stylus, or your finger) from anywhere on the very top of the screen to anywhere at the very bottom in one long continuous motion and then let go.

http://windows.microsoft.com/e...

Apparently you can also hold it there for a sec and the tile will flip around to indicate that you are closing it and any other processes that may be associated with it.

I'm not defending Microsoft's complete paradigm change of a user interface but I also won't defend people who don't take a second to try to learn new things.

Re:I must be missing something.

[zippthorne]

No, they should not add an off switch.

They should add an on switch. The default state shouldn't be "spend my money for me on something that mostly benefits you and not me."

Re:I must be missing something.

[batkiwi]

I expressed no opinion. I replied with a solution to the commentor's issue. Some of us really are just here to help, and use computers every day.

Re:I must be missing something.

[Bing Tsher E]

there's no way to close the application without invoking the Task Manager.

Sure there is. You swipe from the left side of the screen and all active background windows appear. You drag the little window you want to kill across the screen and down to the bottom edge. Once you've done it a few times it's a simple swiping gesture.

Do you even use Windows 8.1 on a tablet to know what you're talking about?? I'm on my second Windows tablet, because I decided I wanted a bigger 10" display and physical keyboard (got an Asus Transformer, old machine was a Venue 8 Pro)

Re:I must be missing something.

[tsa]

No I don't use 8.1 on a tablet. How do I swipe on my PC?

Re:I must be missing something.

[epyT-R]

4. Don't forget the latency and legacy directx issues caused by the always-on dwm. There are kludgy work arounds like using application compatibility toolkit to turn on certain shims, but even those break once multiple monitors are enabled. The only way to enable multiple monitors and have these applications work is to kill the dwm entirely, which is a massive kludge that breaks things like task manager and the login screen.

5. The new interface doesn't allow adjusting window size attributes. It won't even let you set the title text to a light color when the bar is a dark one. Also the current theme is terrible. I'd like the classic win2k look back (with its explorer because of its capabilities, and configuration flexibility). I realize some find that ugly too, but the current design is worse than that.

As far as I know, these were not addressed in the current windows 10 builds.

Re:I must be missing something.

[epyT-R]

With all the search boxes plastered all over to compensate for broken design, we might as well go back to a shell as the default interface.

Re:I must be missing something.

[Bing Tsher E]

If you need to install third-party software to make the basic OS usable or presentable, then the OS makers have failed miserably.

Whoah! Linux is in real trouble, then. It's all third party software, all the way down.

Re:I must be missing something.

[Bing Tsher E]

Microsoft doesn't push music/video in the Windows Store. There is some of it there, but it's not in-your-face marketed. Certainly not to the degree as Android/Itunes.

Re:I must be missing something.

[thegarbz]

In Windows 8.1, you have the same for applications running in the desktop

False. Metro applications have a X in the top right too. Just drag your mouse up there and watch it appear.

The only difference between Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 is that there are now 3 ways of closing an application instead of 2.

1. Alt+F4
2. Click X in the top right with mouse.
3. Single finger swipe from top to bottom (Metro Only).

Re:I must be missing something.

[Gadget_Guy]

A lot of those shortcuts were also on the Windows 7 start menu (unless you turned them off). I don't have a Windows 8.1 system in front of me, but I don't recall anything on it that could not be pinned to the Start Menu. Perhaps some of the direct links into the Control Panel, but that could be done with a bit of fiddling.

Re:I must be missing something.

[thegarbz]

You don't. Click the top right with your mouse and your metro application will close.

You get a minimise button too if you want to use the mouse to get back to the metro menu instead of hitting the windows key.

Re:I must be missing something.

[GoddersUK]

You don't.

I can swipe with the trackpad on my laptop. It drives me insane because it's, almost invariably, not what I'm trying to do. Usually I'm trying to move the cursor (you know, the reason my laptop has a trackpad....).

Re:I must be missing something.

[GoddersUK]

Spoke too soon... it seems I can only swipe from the right (and get the charm bar), not the left, with my trackpad :s. Still annoying though.

Re:I must be missing something.

[thegarbz]

I understand your argument, but I think we as the users have lost this battle a long time ago.

If I walk away right now:
Slashdot will refresh every few minutes.
Google updater will look online.
Windows update will look online.
Outlook will autofetch my emails.
Lync will use data for its keep alive connection to the server even if someone doesn't talk to me.
Macafee will look for new definitions every hour or so (corporate laptop)
Skype is using data for its keep alive connection.

And all of that is just the things I can see running. We have moved well beyond the tipping point of being in control of data we send and receive in our demand for always on, always up to date, and instant push notifications.

In many regards with the ability to disable some things in windows 8.1 when using a metered connection (i.e. windows update, skype or any other metro application) you will end up using less data now than before. 2 steps forward, one step back.

Re:I must be missing something.

[duck_rifted]

The big difference with those products is that they were designed that way *before* ISPs started being con artists over user bandwidth limits; something it's worth mentioning is potentially now illegal under the new FCC rules but probably one way or another won't change anyway. Because, you know, laws are for little people. Setting that aside...

Windows 8 takes its attitude regarding bandwidth *after* ISPs started their fraudulent price rigging. Where the other software is concerned, there's at least an excuse that since it was designed that way from the start, it's kind of locked in. They can patch in features to better control for that, but most probably won't bother. Meanwhile, new products will continue doing the same as always because, you know, everybody else is. I've actually had conversations with developers where they did everything to blow off concerns about this short of guessing my income and then making fun of me for it.

Meanwhile, these ISPs laugh all the way to the bank because that notion of property and boundaries is deteriorating. What? YOUR money? lmao, YOU don't have money! You just kind of hold it until somebody decides to take it, bitch. And that's the attitude we have levied against us now.

For the ISPs, it kind of makes sense. They make believe that there's a resource shortage, and then they get to charge us multiple times for the same service. They're not delivering any more than they ever did, and usage patterns aren't changing. They just kind of invented a way to stick their hands in our bank accounts and declare, "Gimme that," while getting away with it.

But for companies like Microsoft, and in general any developers making any kind of new product at all that doesn't explicitly depend upon the Internet (browsers and MMOs are, obviously, immune), this doesn't make sense. The fractions of a penny they gain in targeted ad revenue or selling our data won't compensate for the customers they lose when ISPs push just a little bit further and start breaking the camel's back.

And that's the smart bet. There's a good reason why increasingly many developers want to make sure that their software runs on Linux. It's kind of hard for free (as in beer or freedom) software to make their customers feel like branded cattle because they don't have customers. That goes even if the resulting feeling derives not from developers' direct actions but their actions in tandem with ISPs, as if they don't know what they're doing. We know they do.

The impending backlash will start with the poorest people, of course. When people start having to choose between having heat/air conditioning or having Internet, all those hard-earned gains in technological adaptation will be right out the window. Decades of work pissed away so that a few ISPs can get a little boost and big data can continue to try and fail to guess everything about us through surreptitious eavesdropping when they could, I don't know, ASK US. I'd love to just volunteer the categories of ads that would be useful to me instead. Gee. Guess they didn't think of that. And with all this data collection, they still suck at targeted advertising.

Metering our own connections would be slitting our own throats, by the way, because the next step would be metered billing because, "See? They run their own meters!" Except we'd be billed according to unverifiable meters at the ISP that could be any kind of inaccurate, with no recourse available to us. We're halfway there already.

The great change of the next generation will be that smartphones go in the trash if this keeps up. But that's the boomer way. Stand upon what others built, and destroy it for profit. We should just start calling them Vandals.

Re:I must be missing something.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you type like this...

Did you learn English... from pull-down menus...

Because you certainly haven't retained... any writing skills... past the first grade...

Re:I must be missing something.

[Anonymous Coward]

why not just use the mouse controls? that's what they are there for

Re:I must be missing something.

[ksemlerK]

It sort of is. Have you noticed that most people don't even know what GNU/Linux is, let alone have ever run Debian? It's on less than 1% of desktops. For the consumer market, there are 2 options. Mac and Windows. In the common venacular, PC means Windows, Mac means OSX. Linux is a non-starter for most of the population.

Re: I must be missing something.

[Anonymous Coward]

The task manager and pausable file copy dialog in 8 is a massive improvement over 7.

Re:I must be missing something.

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is, this leaves us feeling like we don't have control of our devices

And there is a very simple solution for that: allow the user to choose how, by default, an app is closed.

In other words: Do not force a behaviour onto the users he's uncomfortable with.

And what happens when someone here tries to write his/her own programs (like me) on the new "don't terminate" OS ? Any new compiling will fail because the origional, supposedly discarded program is still "active" in memory, and therefore blocks overwriting of it.

I remember Windows Mobile 5.x having precise such a setting. Granted, you could only change it by accessing the registry, but it was there.

Re:I must be missing something.

[bemymonkey]

Does swiping down drom the top of the screen no longer work? That's the way to do it in Win8.x...

Re:I must be missing something.

[bemymonkey]

Swipe down from the top edge of the screen. That's your "close button".

Re:I must be missing something.

[Neil Boekend]

People also download ram defragmenters.
Seriously, what people do is not always the most wise course. On Android most apps that are not full screen are sleeping. They only use RAM and RAM consumes the same amount of power whether it's full or empty. Most don't use CPU, except for those cases where the programmer explicitly requests it to continue (think a music player or Twilight (no connection to bad books)). These apps have a legitimate use for it.
Not killing apps improves battery life because then the app doesn't have to be loaded when it's requested.

Dunno about non-samsung phones, but on my phone I can see what apps are responsible for what part of my battery usage. That's a useful indicator what apps are misbehaving. Not whether they happen to be loaded into RAM.

Re:I must be missing something.

[bemymonkey]

Loading apps drains the battery more and wears out memory faster in mobile devices than just leaving them running. Even on an Android device, everything you do is kept running until you manually kill it, and some things just immediately restart. So, there's a sound technical reason for it.

The problem is, this leaves us feeling like we don't have control of our devices, and consumers with intermediate technical skills (read: almost the entire market for Microsoft's shiny new OS) are very uncomfortable with that feeling. Experts disagree, and will point out that it depends upon what exactly is running. Personally, I would have thought that taking control of the machine away from the user was proven bad when Gateway tanked. Also, isn't that why people hated that damned paperclip?.

The problem here is that the OS simply can't know what applications I *want* to have running in the background. Common scenario during multitasking on an Android device, for instance, is having music and navigation apps running in the background. On devices with =1GB of RAM, Android will often decide to kill the navigation app when you switch to the music app to change a track, or kill the music app when you're trying to edit a route in the navigation app. This drives me nuts on a daily basis, and devices with 1GB of RAM are STILL being sold! Sure, all the other crap I don't need right now is kept on RAM running in the background, but for some reason Android chooses to kill the exact apps I DO want to run in the background on a regular basis.

Compare that to desktop Windows - if I run a program and leave it open for three months, minimized to my taskbar,I can be pretty damned sure it'll still be up and running when I open it again.

Fuck automatic application lifetime management.

Re:I must be missing something.

[duck_rifted]

There's actually a solution to this. If the OS tracks how often you kill an app within x minutes switching out, it can do it for you when it happens more than 50% of the time. But there are two problems with that.

The first problem is that application usage statistics is screwed from both ends by software patents to the point that nobody wants to touch it. So, yay innovation-killing shitpolicy once again! The other problem is that carriers and manufacturers like to customize Android with their custom bloatware that can't be turned off and then use it for God-knows-what. My first Android phone was on a Sprint contract, and just because I'm in the South they had some stupid Nascar baloney on it that couldn't be removed.

So, there ya go. It's either that the OS assumes everything or assumes nothing. No elegant solutions allowed, and no common sense solutions because math that has existed for more than a century is suddenly owned by the first jerk to loosely describe it in a code-like fashion and buy off the US patent office. If only that stupid binary could be toggled, right?

Re:I must be missing something.

[DrXym]

Gnome 3 is extremely customisable via extensions. It is more accurate to say the default experience is deliberately simple.

Re:I must be missing something.

[DrXym]

You can close tasks in several ways. 1 - you swipe the task from the left and then down (although this is a horribly clumsy), 2 - you can go to your desktop and rightmouse / long press the tray icon and choose close, 3 - if you have a mouse you can move it to the top edge of the app, a bar will appear and you can click the close button.

So yes there are ways to kill apps although IMO none of them are very good. I would prefer a proper finger-friendly "running apps" screen where I can either flick them away or hit close. And Microsoft need to present apps, executables and services in a unified and coherent way from this screen.

Re:I must be missing something.

[bemymonkey]

If only that stupid binary could be toggled, right?

What, like "Autokill on/off"? Oh I would love that on Android... that would be fantastic.

For now though, it looks like I might be in the market for a phone with 3+GB of RAM - how fucking stupid is that?

Re:I must be missing something.

[tsa]

Thank you! You learn something every day.

Re:I must be missing something.

[Anonymous Coward]

Please tell me how.

I have a Windows 8 tablet, and half the settings are burried in either Control Panel or Regedit, both of which are set to run in desktop mode, which is useless without a mouse, as even my small finger covers two or three checkboxes at the same time. How do I switch to metro mode?

The other way, some moron ordered Windows 2012 servers (we specifically said 2008, our software only supports 2008), which uses the Windows 8 UI. Please tell me how to switch those to desktop mode, without the need to install Start8 or Classic Shell. Because as it is now, everybody tries to avoid those servers, because of the terrible Metro UI.

Re:I must be missing something.

[thegarbz]

Not all apps need to be misbehaving for them to consume loads of battery. Easy test. Why not open your phone now and check the number of "Alive" requests your phone has had for the day. Then do a factory reset and check the same.

The fact is that apps on Android will request auto-start permissions, they will run, they will frequently wake the CPU to do something, and they will often do what is not needed.

Comparing the tools written by XDA-Developers which allow you to see far more detail about what apps are running, kill them when needed, tweak the system settings to minimise the background running of apps, and also control which ones boot, to a "RAM defragmenter" which is garbage at best and fraudulent at worst is frankly quite insulting to the developers.

Nothing good for battery life comes from running an endless stream of apps in the background and frequently it causes more problems than it saves.

Re:I must be missing something.

[thegarbz]

I know what you're saying but I'd be far more concerned or sympathetic if I wasn't one of the people who can quite happily go an entire month on a 200mb dataplan on my phone, even then Google Maps eats up most of it. Literally about a month worth of what you're complaining about will cost you less than opening up a short youtube video.

If I were on a 56k modem, I would care about this, but really even if everyone nickle and dimes my bandwidth (which they do) it barely ranks as a rounding error in monthly data usage so complaining that they "steal" a few cents from me is really not worth my time.

Re:I must be missing something.

[Anonymous Coward]

Getting out of a metro app is a mystery to me. I want to kill the video, not have it running in the background. The only way I can find is to swipe to the metro start screen, click on the desktop icon, go to task manager, find the metro app I want to kill, and end the process.

Why can't they let me exit the metro app directly?

Because Microsoft knows better than you.

This is part of the absurd new mindset at Microsoft. You aren't supposed to exit the application. When the application has been idle for a while the OS (supposedly) will suspend it.

This design makes no sense, but neither do the other 1000 bad design decisions they made with Windows 8/10, so it's not surprising.

Swipe down from the top to bottom (or drag from the top with mouse). It's covered in the tutorial that runs when you first log on to a new win8 account... Mystery solved.

Re:I must be missing something.

[Anonymous Coward]

Loading apps drains the battery more and wears out memory faster in mobile devices than just leaving them running.

Do you have any citations that reading any kind of memory in mobile devices actually wears them out?

Re:I must be missing something.

[Alien1024]

I didn't say it was a good GUI. It's horribly unproductive.

I have a Windows 8 tablet, and half the settings are burried in either Control Panel or Regedit, both of which are set to run in desktop mode, which is useless without a mouse, as even my small finger covers two or three checkboxes at the same time. How do I switch to metro mode?

Doesn't the tablet have a Windows button? Alternatively you can swipe from the right edge to get a Start button, which takes you to the metro home screen. But you highlight a different issue - the fact that some setting screens are metro apps, others are desktop programs and yet others have both metro and desktop versions. This is awful design, there is no argument about that.

Please tell me how to switch those to desktop mode, without the need to install Start8 or Classic Shell

Of course, click on the "Desktop" tile, but it seems to me that you want to switch them permanently. I don't think that's possible, nor did I claim it was (even with Start8, etc you will still be taken to metro mode when you launch a metro app).

Re:I must be missing something.

[Anonymous Coward]

But i find this very annoying about Android on my phone too.

Re:I must be missing something.

[DigiShaman]

My favorite is when Flash becomes a run-away process and eats an entire core of CPU on both Windows and OSX. It truly is multi-platform shit.

Re:I must be missing something.

[Windowser]

Sure there is. You swipe from the left side of the screen and all active background windows appear. You drag the little window you want to kill across the screen and down to the bottom edge. Once you've done it a few times it's a simple swiping gesture.

And this is discoverable how ?

Do you even use Windows 8.1 on a tablet to know what you're talking about?? I'm on my second Windows tablet, because I decided I wanted a bigger 10" display and physical keyboard (got an Asus Transformer, old machine was a Venue 8 Pro)

Oh, so you are saying Windows 8.1 is for tablets only, not suitable for a desktop.

Re:I must be missing something.

[DoofusOfDeath]

While they have made some improvements over the clusterfuck that is Windows 8, in most cases they have doubled-down on stupid, keeping the vast majority of bad design decisions that were made with Windows 8. Even bringing back the Start Menu was botched. It still isn't as functional as Windows 7.

And you know what's the frustrating thing for me? I need to buy some KY jelly and hope for the best. My wife is a professional photographer, and she uses Photoshop. I have precisely two viable platforms for that: Windows and OS X. And both Apple and Microsoft are doing their best to drive me to the other.

Re:I must be missing something.

[thegarbz]

Doesn't the tablet have a Windows button?

Yeah, lol have you seen the location of it on the Surface Pro 2 or the Surface Pro 3? In the Pro 2 it is covered up if you have the type cover. On the Pro 3 is positioned such that you will accidentally tap it every time you use the pen.

I have disabled my button and swipe in the Charms bar if I need to access metro for some reason (the start button brings up classic start menu)

Re:I must be missing something.

[squiggleslash]

I suspect you are missing something that's blindingly obvious to Windows 8.1 tablet users but probably not to those who haven't used it. The summary is kinda a kludgy way of introducing the concept, focussing on one implementation detail.

Windows 8.x is implemented as "two worlds". There's the Desktop world, which at the time it appeared Microsoft considered obsolete. And there's the Metro world which acts as a tablet. The two are completely separate - well, they share a file system, but for the most part they're unrelated. Apps living in one world are awkward and clumsy to use if you're using the hardware designed for the other. Apps cannot live in both worlds simultaneously.

Windows 10 removes that distinction, to a certain degree, allowing Metro apps to be written with a UI that works well on both the desktop and the tablet UI. That removes the distinction between the "two worlds" quite considerably. In that environment, you'll want the UI to reflect what devices you're using, not what app you're running. And so the need for a "switch".

In terms of how it's implemented, I'd have thought a "Is a mouse plugged in?" software sensor would make more sense than two icons, but...

Re:I must be missing something.

[nine-times]

And the whole thing is just fucking ugly. More and more people spend an enormous amount of time in front of a computer, not just for social/entertainment purposes but for work as well. Aesthetics matter and Windows 8/10 fail horribly.

Believe it or not, some people like the modern/metro/flat look. Personally, I think it's better than a lot of what came before. After all, look at the Windows XP interface. That blue/green/silver monstrosity is far worse than anything that came after, but the design of Vista was also pretty unappealing. Windows 7 is fine, but all of the windows have this weird thick border of fake frosted glass, including a cheesy fake reflection.

Until Windows 8, I always just went back to the "classic" look of Windows 2000. At least it was plain and unobjectionable. Windows 8 seems fine to me, aesthetically at least. As far as user interaction, it's worse than Windows 7, but aesthetically I think it's an improvement.

Re:I must be missing something.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like your machine is lacking a decent firewall.

On my machine *nothing* can connect to the outside world unless I allow it. I also either don't install any auto updaters or I remove them.

My machine, my bandwidth, my choice.

Re:I must be missing something.

[macs4all]

This is exactly how IOS and Android work so it's no big paradigm shift to simply hide apps rather than close them. The only catch with Windows is that it behaves the same on a desktop as a tablet, which is shit. Hopefully this fixes that issue.

I don't know about Android; but on iOS you simply double-click the Home Button, then a "list" of thumbnail-screenshots of the running Applications appears. Simply Swipe Up on one or more Apps to actually Close them, or Tap on one to bring out of Suspend.

Re:I must be missing something.

[Anonymous Coward]

Vista was a beta version of 7. It's really good features were overshadowed by the horrendously bad problems and the natural time it takes to spin up a new system architecture, i.e. new drivers, new software, new games. Vista made a lot of computers run like absolute garbage. Most, if not all the problems were solved in 7. Microsoft has a history of having every other OS be really good. So if 10 falls in line it will be the improvements on 8 that will make it really great to use. I'm personally hopeful that it will be good too. 8 made a lot of tech support harder because it buried so much of the troubleshooting tools I was used to deep in violent pink folders(admittedly this was not due to MS) many of which had no context clues to help those who were used to every other version of the OS. Luckily keyboard commands still worked, that was the only way I found half the stuff I was looking for.

Re:I must be missing something.

[macs4all]

I'm not defending Microsoft's complete paradigm change of a user interface but I also won't defend people who don't take a second to try to learn new things.

The first time I launched that POS Metro web-browser (is that a flavor of IE, or what?) (by invoking "Help" somewhere), I was nearly in TEARS I was so mad by the time I STUMBLED UPON the way "out"!

A UI should NEVER be an Easter-Egg hunt!

Re:I must be missing something.

[macs4all]

Why do you type like this...

Did you learn English... from pull-down menus...

Because you certainly haven't retained... any writing skills... past the first grade...

You learned elipses in the first grade?

Dick.

Re:I must be missing something.

[macs4all]

Loading apps drains the battery more and wears out memory faster in mobile devices than just leaving them running.

Boy, the technical proficiency of the average Slashdotter is certainly going down the drain.

While "Loading" Apps might drain the battery, it certainly does NOT "wear out" the RAM memory (where the RUNNING Apps load!).

Also, there is a LOT to be said for "familiarity" in an OS. I can take someone who hasn't touched a Mac since System 1.0 in 1984, and put them in front of Yosemite, and in a matter of an hour they would be almost completely at-home. Why? Because MOST of the UI elements (Menu Bar, Windows, etc.) are relatively familiar. Now, I will admit that making this claim across the first version of "Classic" MacOS and OS X Yosemite might be a bit of a stretch; but it is not at all unbelievable.

However, if you take a Windows user from even the Windows 7 era and dump them into Windows 8 and above, most users will feel COMPLETELY lost, and that "lost" feeling WON'T be going away in just a few hours.

"Flattening" the UI is one thing; but throwing essentially EVERY UI element and paradigm out at the same time is just insane.

Re:I must be missing something.

[Wdomburg]

I found the Palm solution for this elegant enough - provide gestures for both behaviours. You could either flick a "card" away (swipe up) to close it or catapult it (drag down and release) to kill the app.

Re:I must be missing something.

[duck_rifted]

If any variables are set at all in the program's initial load (and some almost certainly are), then yes, the flash memory is worn down. It has a finite number of writes.

Re:I must be missing something.

[duck_rifted]

200 mb? Seriously? How do you do anything?

But yeah, let's wait until you're personally losing hundreds of dollars a month before we think about changing this.

Re:I must be missing something.

[Anonymous Coward]

>I think Microsoft's introduction of Windows 8 and the Office Ribbon have been so badly bungled that many power users have simply reverted to keyboard shortcuts.

What?

You really think that the disaster that was the menus before the ribbon was better?

Nerds were completely wrong about the ribbon, as time has shown.

Re:I must be missing something.

[Anonymous Coward]

And the whole thing is just fucking ugly. More and more people spend an enormous amount of time in front of a computer

Most of my time in front of a computer I am not looking at the OS I am looking at a browser or other application. I really don't care too much what the icons are like, as long as I can find what I next want to do quickly. That's where Windows 8 falls down.

Re:I must be missing something.

[macs4all]

Before I get into this, know that I understand that it will take time for Microsoft to develop their new interface paradigm, and I know that it will get better as they do so.

From the screenshots I have seen, it looks completely like a grotesque and schizophrenic mashup between Windows 8 Metro and OS X Yosemite.

Re:I must be missing something.

[Anonymous Coward]

Alt and F4 together still work fine to close the active window...

Re:I must be missing something.

[macs4all]

Having to move the mouse to particular corners of the screen is a crap idea too

OS X has had the concept of "Hot Corners" for years (something that actually started back in the MacOS (Classic) days, where you could Invoke or temporarily Disable the Screen Saver from the Upper-left and Upper-right corners); and even though the Hot Corners are Configurable as to what they do (and yes, you can shut them off individually, too), the ONLY thing I ever set mine up to do is the old Screensaver actions I talked about above. Why? Because, more often than not, I end up invoking them by accident, instead of on-purpose, and it gets really annoying.

However, some of my Mac-using friends simply love them, and have all 4 corners set to do various and sundry things. So I hope that at least the "Hot Corners" (Mac term) are CONFIGURABLE (including "OFF") in Windows 10, without having to resort to Registry-Hacking or the like.

Re:I must be missing something.

[macs4all]

If any variables are set at all in the program's initial load (and some almost certainly are), then yes, the flash memory is worn down. It has a finite number of writes.

Do you mean like "preferences?" Maybe.

I know Flash has a finite number of writes; but it is usually pretty high (usually around a million writes or more for recent NAND Flash). That means you could open the same app, loaded into exactly the same memory locations, 100 times a day for over 27 YEARS before there MIGHT be a failure.

Re:I must be missing something.

[Anonymous Coward]

Problem 2: The start screen forces me into a mobile interface.

Yeah, I hate the Metro interface too. But this is the high profile change that they made to Windows 10, so it is already a solved problem.

It's a "solved problem" in the preview builds, you mean. This was also "solved" in the Win8 Technical Preview, only to get yanked out in the RTM version. So frankly I'm going to wait and see if this is truly solved or not, or if they're just yanking our chains again by putting things in the preview builds that won't make it into the final product again.

Re:I must be missing something.

[Vlado]

ALT+F4 ? And even for the Metro apps there is the well-known X in the upper-right corner.

Re:I must be missing something.

[duck_rifted]

Your argument about the resilience of flash only holds so long as we're opening and closing one app that writes one variable. Obviously, that's not what's going on here, and trying to quantify this for the average user requires data we don't have. But you could use my own argument to knock down the idea that keeping apps running helps save flash memory.

Just how many smartphone apps aren't loading data from the Internet anyway? Even apps that have nothing to do with online content are usually ad-enabled. So, how fast does flash die when your phone keeps several apps open and each is reading from some server so many times a minute? The point of saving the flash memory negates itself when we think about what these apps do, and we don't even need to grasp at a concrete quantification to see that.

Note that I'm not trying to defend nor condemn the design in question here. Aesthetically (at the very least), I'd prefer that apps actually exit when I close them. Also, we have to wonder how much of a motivation data collection is when it comes to keeping them open.

Re:I must be missing something.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't it be nice if we had the option to entirely *UNINSTALL* Metro?
Like, say, you intended to use your desktop machine as a desktop machine and had no use or need for the Metro interface?
This way a useless feature you have no need for wouldn't be taking up space on your hard drive or memory.

Well, we know that'll never happen. I might as well be asking if everything could be made of ice cream and orgasms.

Re:I must be missing something.

[ConceptJunkie]

I agree with your comments until we get to Windows 8. I think Windows 8 is another step in uglification of Windows. No problem, I originally thought, because there's always classic mode. In my option, although the Windows 7 default UI was the least objectionable, I think every version of Windows since Windows 2000 has had an uglier default UI than Windows 2000. But it's no big deal when you can go back to the "classic" look.

But apparently Windows 8 is so advanced, so sophisticated, it can't do that, so I'm stuck with the hideous flatness (memories of Windows 2) where all the windows on the desktop look like a giant mess because there little or nothing to differentiate between them, and there's nothing I can do about it. Regardless of what you think of the "flat" look (and like I said, I hate it), there is absolutely no way it is an improvement from a functionality and UI point-of-view. Elements on the screen, and especially different windows simply run together in a mess of undifferentiated rectangles. The pajama boy hipsters have taken over the asylum and we all have to suffer from their ridiculous sense of taste.

I really wouldn't mind this nonsense if there were some way to just make it work like it used to. There is almost nothing in Windows 8 that I like over Windows 7*, and there wasn't much in Windows 7 I liked over XP.

*The only thing I can think of is the pauseable file copy dialogs (which Linux has had for at least a decade), but of course, they now have focus issues and I will often find myself dragging and dropping something multiple times because the file copy dialog is hidden underneath everything else, showing an error message that I never see until I alt-tab to it. Fortunately, robocopy is still a thing, because nothing beats it.

Re:I must be missing something.

[ConceptJunkie]

Yeah, I think the Windows 8 UI is a steaming pile of fail, but I never understood the hate the ribbon gets. Sure, it's different, and has its advantages and disadvantages, but I never had any issues with it. Of course, I avoid Office as much as possible, but I have no issues with the ribbon.

Re:I must be missing something.

[ConceptJunkie]

If you need to install third-party software to make the basic OS usable or presentable, then the OS makers have failed miserably.

You're preaching to the choir. Users have been screaming this since the earliest test releases of Windows 8.

Windows 8 was all about servicing Microsoft by trying to funnel all of the users into their app store ecology. That was the sole purpose of every change to the UI and the existence of Metro on the desktop in the first place. It was never about anything else. The only reason that don't abandon it entirely is because that would require admitting that it was all a farce in the first place.

Re:I must be missing something.

[nine-times]

Regardless of what you think of the "flat" look (and like I said, I hate it), there is absolutely no way it is an improvement from a functionality and UI point-of-view.

I think it's an improvement aesthetically-- almost like, "How could it not be?" You went from ugly, busy, childish graphics to a blank. A plain color. It grates on me less.

But I would agree, that Windows 8 is a step back in terms of user interaction, in various ways big and small.

Elements on the screen, and especially different windows simply run together in a mess of undifferentiated rectangles.

I'm not sure I agree there. I suppose you could use a drop shadow to help provide depth in order to differentiate the windows, but I don't think making them flat make them more confusing.

The pajama boy hipsters have taken over the asylum

And this, I don't get. This is the second time I've heard someone claim that Windows 8 is the result of "hipsters", which leads me to conclude that you probably don't know what hipsters were.

Re:I must be missing something.

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 7 was just Vista, which, for some reason, the people who hated Vista decided that they loved.

WOOOAH there, friend. That is far from the truth.

Vista, prior to SP1, was virtually UNUSABLE on hardware it was supposedly certified on. They didn't spend nearly enough time optimizing Vista before release. The major problems I recall were around I/O speeds, which were atrocious, even on well-specced hardware. I vaguely recall an article from the time showing that if you were playing music(!) file transfers became intolerably slow. That's just one example.

I recently had the misfortune of having to repair a Vista machine, and after reinstalling the OS from a recovery partition (customer didn't want to upgrade) it was still unbelievably slow and unresponsive until I installed SP1, at which point it became much better. Still poor compared to W7, but at least it didn't take 30 seconds to open a simple directory listing anymore.

SP1 helped a lot. IIRC, SP2 was full of smaller fixes and a few upgraded enterprise features.

I guess you could make an argument that Windows 7 was Vista SP3+, but it definitely contained more changes than a SP usually brings - and it definitely wasn't "just Vista".

Re:I must be missing something.

[david_thornley]

Vista started out bad, and 7 didn't. That's the difference.

When Vista came out, Microsoft yielded to pressure and certified computers as Vista-ready when they couldn't really run Vista well. My first experience with Vista was on a high-end machine, and it kept taking little one- or two-second vacations when I tried to use it, jarring my thought processes. File copy was initially screwed up, and there were a lot of other things wrong.

There wasn't much wrong with Vista after it got enough service packs, but by then its reputation was destroyed. 7 showed up usable from the start, and was an improvement over even the late Vista versions.

Re:I must be missing something.

[david_thornley]

Linux isn't an operating system. It's a kernel, which is an extremely important part of an OS, but saying it's an OS is like saying the engine in my Civic is a car.

There are many OSes based on the Linux kernel, usually involving a lot of Gnu software. (How many OSes is a matter of what you want to define as a separate OS, of course.) Most of them seem to have Linux in their names.

In my experience, these OSes run just fine as is, and don't need third-party software for basic use.

Re:I must be missing something.

[thegarbz]

Well I don't because when I hit my limit I get a text message from the ISP that I am about to hit it and doing so will bump my data plan up to 2GB for $5/ month. That happens about once every 6 months.

The point is I don't do much data intensive stuff on my phone beyond using Google Maps maybe 5-6 times a month, then Maps appears to eat about 120MB, while the browser will typically sit at around 50MB and google search, google now, and all those other applications that are always sending data back and forth, always keeping connections current, downloading email headers, getting whatsapp messages etc end up being a pittance of my usage, and my dataplan is not your average dataplan but rather a very tight one because I'm a cheap bastard.

Now Facebook defaulting to autoplaying videos, for that I grabbed the pitchfork!

Re:I must be missing something.

[unixisc]

there's no way to close the application without invoking the Task Manager.

Sure there is. You swipe from the left side of the screen and all active background windows appear. You drag the little window you want to kill across the screen and down to the bottom edge. Once you've done it a few times it's a simple swiping gesture.

Do you even use Windows 8.1 on a tablet to know what you're talking about?? I'm on my second Windows tablet, because I decided I wanted a bigger 10" display and physical keyboard (got an Asus Transformer, old machine was a Venue 8 Pro)

Yes, I just bought a Winbook, as I wrote elsewhere. When you swipe from the left of the screen, it switches b/w apps, pulling up the last running app: however, you can't pull the boundries enough to have all the running apps show up, and then you swipe them down. It's more refined on both iOS and Android in that respect

Re:I must be missing something.

[unixisc]

Where do you get ALT F4 on a tablet? Which is what we are discussing here

Re:I must be missing something.

[Gadget_Guy]

Having to move the mouse to particular corners of the screen is a crap idea too

OS X has had the concept of "Hot Corners" for years

The difference there is that if you didn't know about the hot corners, the Mac was a perfectly usable system. On Windows 8, you had no way of getting to the start screen or charms without knowing about them. Without that knowledge, Windows 8 was an unusable system.

I should have been more clear that having the ability to do this is fine, but requiring the user does it as the main interface is not.

Re:I must be missing something.

[Gadget_Guy]

Windows 7 was just Vista, which, for some reason, the people who hated Vista decided that they loved.

WOOOAH there, friend. That is far from the truth.

By the time Windows 7 was released Vista had enough service packs to make it quite usable, so I don't think that it is fair to say that my statement was far from the truth. There are plenty of people who still claim to this day that Vista was an unusable mess even though that was just the initial teething problem.

And even then, a lot of what was said about the OS was just wrong. I avoided Vista because of what I read about it here. When I finally got a laptop for my wife with it pre-installed, I decided to try it out for a laugh before I wiped it with my XP CD only to find that it was a perfectly capable system. It certainly didn't take 30 seconds to do a directory listing for me. I'm sure that a lot of people had driver issues that caused problems, but the other stuff said about it (like the DRM that was supposed to infest the OS and stop you from doing anything that Microsoft didn't want) was just the product of fantasy.

I guess you could make an argument that Windows 7 was Vista SP3+, but it definitely contained more changes than a SP usually brings - and it definitely wasn't "just Vista".

Of all the examples that I gave of the times when people have said that a version upgrade of Windows gave no real features, I think the Vista to Win7 would have to be either first or second in the list when ordered by plausibility. I think the fact that this claim was made about Xp->Vista (when that was the biggest change in Windows under the hood in nearly a decade) shows that in reality it is a bogus thing to say. I certainly don't say it. I was just pointing out that with each upgrade, someone will make that claim.

Re:I must be missing something.

[Jack Griffin]

IOS: clicking the home button hides the app, double clicking and swiping closes it
Android: clicking the home or back button hides the app, double clicking home and swiping closes it.
Win8.1: clicking Windows hides the app, swiping from top to bottom of screen, or clicking x in the top right closes it.
They're all the same concept.

Re:I must be missing something.

[macs4all]

Having to move the mouse to particular corners of the screen is a crap idea too

OS X has had the concept of "Hot Corners" for years

The difference there is that if you didn't know about the hot corners, the Mac was a perfectly usable system. On Windows 8, you had no way of getting to the start screen or charms without knowing about them. Without that knowledge, Windows 8 was an unusable system.

I should have been more clear that having the ability to do this is fine, but requiring the user does it as the main interface is not.

I absolutely agree on both points

Re:I must be missing something.

[Vlado]

Where do you get ALT F4 on a tablet? Which is what we are discussing here

Really? Please track this thread to its beginning and tell me where a tablet is mentioned for this particular issue?
Also, on a tablet you can get ALT+F4 with a virtual keyboard, if you would absolutely need it.
And third, there is still the bloody little X in the upper right corner if you do not like the ALT+F4 option or if you actually have to be on the tablet. And I mentioned that option, but you choose to ignore it and rather point to an issue that doesn't exist.

Otherwise known as...

[Anonymous Coward]

fucked up and fucked sideways

Re:Otherwise known as...

[Anonymous Coward]

"fucking" means there can be love involved. say "raped" when you mean it.

Re:Otherwise known as...

[Anonymous Coward]

fucking is paid for, rape is not, get your shit straight dumbfuck

Re: Otherwise known as...

[Anonymous Coward]

So more like S&M?
Paying to be tortured?

Re:Otherwise known as...

[Anonymous Coward]

on the contrary, modern marriage certainly qualifies if she decides the fucks you 'paid' her for were rape.

Start Menu Best Menu

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't take the real start menu away, at any time, and I will use your operating system. Learn a lesson from your Win8 flop Microsoft.

Re:Start Menu Best Menu

[theshowmecanuck]

I agree with this. If they get rid of a real start menu, I'll make the unwanted switch to Apple if I need another proprietary system.

Re:Start Menu Best Menu

[Anonymous Coward]

My thoughts exactly, until I had the misfortune of dealing with Yosemite.

When I used to work in end user support, I had users telling me they wanted to switch away from Windows after Windows 8/8.1 was released.

Now I hear Mac users saying they want to switch away from Macs because of their experience with Yosemite.

It's funny how both MS and Apple are both pushing their users away. MS still almost has a monopoly on the enterprise desktop. All MS has to do is just not screw up too bad, but it is.

Apple is well positioned to grab all MS users whose personal or corporate budget allows them to go Mac. Apple doesn't need to go for the budget or intermediate markets. It could just target Windows users who can easily afford a mid-range or high-end Macs. All Apple had to do was target Windows users with money and not screw up what it had, but it is.

It's like some sort of joke.

Most of the users I know are not interested in switching to Linux.

Long time...

[redwraith94]

I can't believe it took them TWO FULL VERSIONS to realize they needed the feature. This should have been implemented back in Windows 8, or 9 at least...

Re:Long time...

[doom]

The real question is why Windows 8. Okay, some dorky website run by twenty-somethings is bound to leap on trendy, flashy technology, because the kids look on "backwards compatibility" as some outmoded, fuddy-duddy infringement on their creative freedom, but you'd think a company like Microsoft would run a complete UI revamp through a testing phase, and not just listen to some bullshit like "oh, people are always resistant to change, they may hate this at first, but when they get used to it, they'll love it!".

Re:Long time...

[rudy_wayne]

I can't believe it took them TWO FULL VERSIONS to realize they needed the feature. This should have been implemented back in Windows 8, or 9 at least...

Windows 10 IS Windows 9.

Re:Long time...

[Anonymous Coward]

> I can't believe it took them TWO FULL VERSIONS to realize they needed the feature. This should have been implemented back in Windows 8, or 9 at least...

Yep, I did it myself in Windows XP.

Did some hacking and got a shortcut to switch between XP desktop mode and Linux.

Never went back... ;-P LOOO-

-OOOOL

Re:Long time...

[Anonymous Coward]

That depends if you count Windows 8.1.

Re:Long time...

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 8 because: - IOS had an app store with millions of apps.
- Android had a play store with million of apps.
- Windows Mobile had an app store with hundreds of apps.
- Windows non-mobile OS had millions of apps.
- Make Windows 8 and claim that the desktop version and mobile version are the same and you can claim: Windows 8 has millions of apps, and hope that desktop users who often have no choice in OS, create the Metro apps on their desktop so they also fill up the empty Mobile app store.

Re:Long time...

[Anonymous Coward]

9 = 10.

Re:Long time...

[Anonymous Coward]

you'd think a company like Microsoft would run a complete UI revamp through a testing phase, and not just listen to some bullshit like "oh, people are always resistant to change, they may hate this at first, but when they get used to it, they'll love it!".

You'd think. But you'd be wrong. Digg did it. Firefox did it. GNOME did it. Even Slashdot damn near did it. UI is about elegant discoverable interfaces between user and computer, and if this means expensive testing and actually listening to feedback that says "don't fix what isn't broken," so be it. UX, by contrast, relies on bogus metrics to justify change for its own sake - said change always requiring the hiring of more UX people, for some strange reason.

UX has become a cancer upon the profession. UXtards destroy products in order to leave their creative stamp on them. They lie to the marketroids and the C-suite by convincing them that change for its own sake is value-add. The existence of UX personnel in your organization ultimately results in a loss of marketshare and mindshare. Fire them all before your customers do.

Re:Long time...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but Windows current series started with Windows NT 3.51

Re:Long time...

[Dutch Gun]

I think one of the problems from management's perspective is that some of these platforms are now incredibly mature. If version + 1 looks and works exactly like version, then it's harder to make the case that the new product is worthy of purchase. That is, you'd actually have to produce real innovation. That's hard to do in a platform like Windows, where your greatest assets are mass market penetration and boring old backwards compatibility with the ancient Win32 API.

UX is a perceived shortcut. It's a fresh coat of paint that the masses can point to and say "look, it's really different". The downside, of course, is that any UX change is incredibly disruptive even in the *best* case. That means you go through mental disruption and re-learning how tasks are performed, but eventually gain some benefits, especially with initial training which doesn't have to "unlearn" old habits. In the *worst* case, you end up causing a lot of pain for people, and end up with a system worse than what you started with. Then, you either undo what you did and cause further pain, or you stubbornly double-down on the new UX and try to incrementally improve it (aka polishing a turd), with the hope that if you polish it long and hard enough, it may turn into a diamond.

Re:Long time...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, Windows 10 is Windows 6.4. Or, at least it was until Microsoft marketers took over the engineers' internal version number system and forced them to reset it to 10.

Windows 7 is Windows 6.1

Re:Long time...

[ksemlerK]

You mean NT 3.10? https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:Long time...

[gl4ss]

they knew it all of the time, they just had a pipe dream of selling 30K $ cad software through windows store and getting a 10K$ cut.

they knew it was not good usability, they didn't care, it was just for pushing the windows store. of course no sane company would get onboard with that.

Re:Long time...

[Irate Engineer]

'What is the most recent version of Windows, Winston?'

Re:Long time...

[DigiShaman]

8.1 is really SP1 repackaged as a new OS. In fact, in Windows 10 preview, there's the feature to install the latest build version. So as it stands, Service Packs are gone and replaced with latest build editions.

Re:Long time...

[tlhIngan]

You'd think. But you'd be wrong. Digg did it. Firefox did it. GNOME did it. Even Slashdot damn near did it. UI is about elegant discoverable interfaces between user and computer, and if this means expensive testing and actually listening to feedback that says "don't fix what isn't broken," so be it. UX, by contrast, relies on bogus metrics to justify change for its own sake - said change always requiring the hiring of more UX people, for some strange reason.

UX has become a cancer upon the profession. UXtards destroy products in order to leave their creative stamp on them. They lie to the marketroids and the C-suite by convincing them that change for its own sake is value-add. The existence of UX personnel in your organization ultimately results in a loss of marketshare and mindshare. Fire them all before your customers do.

And don't forget the compliant press who believes shiny should be different.

Because you know what the biggest complaint about iOS6 was? That the UI, which has changed little since iPhone OS 1.0, was "dated" and "outmoded".

UIs SHOULD be incredibly stable - they SHOULD get out of the way. The only way a UI is dated or outmoded is if it gets in the way of the user. (E.g., how iOS used to do notifications).

It's not just UX designers deciding to revamp everything - it's the press that decides that just because your windows look the same for 2 years that it needs redesign.

It's really why Apple bothered to go flat in iOS7, to partially implement it in Mavericks, etc. The press was basically calling out Apple for being stubborn with "stale" UIs.

critical to appeasing the consumer.

[Anonymous Coward]

How many companies have to appease their customers? What does that say about your product?

Re:critical to appeasing the consumer.

[Oligonicella]

All of them at some point. This was a big one though.

Holy shit...

[Anonymous Coward]

you guys are LATE on the news.

What What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Up Microsoft's butt!

-OSes that try to be all things to all people are shit, looking at you Windows 8 and now Ubuntu in the rear view mirror. Upgraded from Ubuntu to Linux Mint. Never going back.
-Mobile sites suck for the same reason. Cutting functionality.

Here us the take away, as Einstein said in some Universe "Make things as simple as you can, but no simpler."

I have apps on my phone, not programs. I want different things out of a phone or tablet email client than a desktop one. That should go for operating systems too, mostly the GUI. These companies trying to ramrod some OS singularity down our throats suck.

I don't even perceive the benefits were it to take off. Just have open standards and file formats and none of this shit would matter.

Re:What What?

[viperidaenz]

You're not talking about the OS, you're talking about the shell.

What do you do when you plug your tablet in a docking station and start using it with multiple displays, a keyboard and a mouse?
Get frustrated that you're stuck with a touch oriented interface, or have an OS that can change the behaviour of it's shell?

Re:What What?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

What do you do when you plug your tablet in a docking station and start using it with multiple displays, a keyboard and a mouse?

I have no idea. In probably 4-5 years of owning tablet-style devices, I have never once connected them to any external peripherals like that, nor wanted to.

Tablets are for convenient data access and occasional very light data entry. For the stuff that needs multiple displays and serious input devices, I have other tools that are much, much better at it than any tablet ever produced.

In other words, my use cases (and going by the Internet commentary, almost everyone else's use cases too) are completely different for tablets and real PCs. It makes absolutely no sense to run the same style of operating system on both of them -- not just the shell, but the file system, the process model, the security model, connectivity...

Re:What What?

[ChunderDownunder]

Well I agree with GP's assertion that a 4" phone shouldn't have the same interface as a 2x21" desktop. As such one of my 'computers' runs Firefox OS and the other KDE atop debian.

But I don't have a tablet in my life. A 9" phone, running iOS or Android, that doesn't make phone calls, no thanks! What would convince me to buy a tablet would be one that comes with a fancy stand (we used to call it a docking station back in the day) that allows me to plug in all my existing peripherals and transform into a workstation OS.

MS share that vision. KDE share that vision via plasma (though their Vivaldi tablet didn't make it to market).

Re:What What?

[ChunderDownunder]

Well for the last 4-5 years I haven't owned a tablet. :) A phone can do everything a tablet can do, albeit on a tiny screen such as "convenient data access and occasional very light data entry".

What constitutes a "real PC" these days? Laptops are, for many, a desktop replacement. Touchscreens are becoming the norm because it's a 'value-add' that adds little to the purchase price. If you embed the CPU in the screen instead of the keyboard, you have the option of detaching the keyboard altogether.

Should one device perform both functions, or do we stick with the Apple mantra that you need both an iPad AND a macbook? Or the Google mantra that, increasingly, you don't need a desktop OS altogether?

Re: What What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some do. Microsoft sells a Surface Pro 3 dock.

Re:What What?

[Anonymous Coward]

And that's the problem with Microsoft. A one device fits all approach is not what people want. Computers are cheap, tablets are cheap. A tablet with the power of a computer is more expensive than an ordinary tablet, but still less powerful than an ordinary desktop. Having to buy the docking station and of course the screens, and you end up paying just as much for a tablet/desktop combination as for a separate desktop and tablet. On top of that, you only have 1 device, and can't have a backup when your one device goes down for whatever reason.

A seemless synchronization between devices and programs adjusted to the different view modes and input methods is a lot better imo. What if there will be a new kind of device, like a smart TV, a smart radio in your car, a smart light switch, ...? Create a one device fits all approach running Windows 10. So you have to buy a car that is also a house and a phone and a table and table and a ....

What is wrong with creating a device that does one thing and does it good? When I eat, I use a fork and a knife, and not a swiss army knife that includes a fork, knife, screw driver, pincet, ... simply because it's a lot easier to use.

Re:What What?

[viperidaenz]

What's wrong with having one device with the capability of satisfying both use cases?

I don't have one phone for text messages and another for phone calls and yet another for light web browsing when I'm not at a computer despite there being a compromises - on-screen keyboard for text messaging because web browsing requires larger screen - bigger device to hold up to my head for making phone calls.

If a tablet sized device can provide the power to perform desktop activities, why restrict it with software?

Re:What What?

[Anonymous Coward]

My Asus Transformer moves quite seamlessly and painlessly between tablet and keyboard mode, but it uses Android. When I remove the keyboard, it's a tablet. I don't know why Microsoft have found this so hard to get right.

Re:What What?

[Jack Griffin]

I take it you've never used a Surface? The Surface Pro 3 is a valid laptop replacement, we use them across the board at my current job and they work well. Tablet in the meeting room, docked at desk to dual 24" monitors, keyboard and mouse giving 3 full HD desktops. This is the MS vision, if your use case doesn't suit, that doesn't mean most of the corporate world doesn't. And this is the target market for MS.

Re:What What?

[aberglas]

There will be this cool new interface. Maybe called "Viewpoints". You will be able to open several different apps at the same time and see them in different parts of the screen. Special technology will let you resize them, but without any API for programmers to know how big the "Viewpoints" are. You will be able to move them about, even close them. Who knows there might even be an "ActionBar" at the bottom so you can see what Viewpoints are open.

Progress in computer science is mainly achieved by finding new names for old ideas.

Re:What What?

[thegarbz]

What do you do when you plug your tablet in a docking station and start using it with multiple displays, a keyboard and a mouse?

I have no idea. In probably 4-5 years of owning tablet-style devices, I have never once connected them to any external peripherals like that, nor wanted to.

Tablets are for convenient data access and occasional very light data entry. For the stuff that needs multiple displays and serious input devices, I have other tools that are much, much better at it than any tablet ever produced.

In other words, my use cases (and going by the Internet commentary, almost everyone else's use cases too) are completely different for tablets and real PCs. It makes absolutely no sense to run the same style of operating system on both of them -- not just the shell, but the file system, the process model, the security model, connectivity...

I thought the same. Until I actually bought one. Ignore the word docking station, just look at the typecover for the Surface to see what the GP really is talking about. The switch from consumption device to production device is seamless.

I bought a Surface Pro. I've not used my laptop or my tablet since. The switch between tablet mode and desktop mode is a little rusty but was greatly improved in windows 8.1 and I have high hopes for windows 10. I don't miss having a "consumption" device (and whoever had that idea needs to be buried under a mountain of unsold Galaxy Tabs).

Re:What What?

[thegarbz]

Surface Pro 3.

I haven't used the docking station personally and the single USB port is limiting without it, but I know someone who's Pro 3 is their primary computer docking station, 4k display, keyboard, mouse and all. On the road it's a tablet with a cover that folds into a convenient laptop, at home it's a replacement for the box under the desk and you'd be none the wiser that he is using it unless you look in his bank account. Convenience costs money.

Re:What What?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Tablet in the meeting room, docked at desk to dual 24" monitors, keyboard and mouse giving 3 full HD desktops. This is the MS vision, if your use case doesn't suit, that doesn't mean most of the corporate world doesn't.

Given that Windows 8 has been a Vista-scale catatrophe for Microsoft, I think by now it's safe to say overall the corporate world doesn't buy into that vision either.

Again, the things these devices are useful for in meetings are not necessarily the same things they are useful for when someone is working alone at a desk. So far, it appears that trying to fit the same modes of operation into both boxes just results in a mediocre compromise that isn't very good at either set of tasks.

Re:What What?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

What's wrong with having one device with the capability of satisfying both use cases?

Nothing, as long as it satisfies both use cases as well as two dedicated devices would, or at least close enough not to make any meaningful difference.

This is not what I saw with Windows 8, however. Instead, what you got was a least common denominator. Reducing desktop workstation and tablet to a least common denominator does to the workstation roughly what reducing gaming console and power-gamer PC to a least common denominator does to the power-gamer PC. That is, it's such a poor substitute in both power and usability that the serious end of the market doesn't really consider it an alternative at all. You're just hoping there's enough of the market willing to pay real money for something that isn't very good to get away with it.

Re:What What?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

What constitutes a "real PC" these days? Laptops are, for many, a desktop replacement.

True enough, but how much of that is because they're better at doing the job, and how much is just convenience for people making the purchasing decision?

If you actually do work away from your desk a significant amount of the time, or use your computer in different places around the home, a laptop offers a genuine advantage. And if you have an organisation where many/most of your staff are in that category, consistency among your users might be a genuine advantage for purchasing and technical support purposes as well.

Otherwise, compared to a "real PC", a laptop is often just a more expensive system with lower performance, lower storage capacity, fewer display options, worse ergonomics, limited connectivity... Of course as technology improves the distinctions will probably become finer and less of a concern, but we are still a long way from parity.

Touchscreens are becoming the norm because it's a 'value-add' that adds little to the purchase price.

A 'value-add', really? I suggest that touchscreens on laptops are becoming a common sight for much the same reason that "smart" TVs are: it's not because many customers actually want or need them, it's simply that a plain system the customer bought a couple of years ago is now perfectly capable of providing excellent results for several more years anyway, so manufacturers need to create a gimmick and then convince you via their advertising efforts that you need that gimmick so you should spend more money with them.

Should one device perform both functions, or do we stick with the Apple mantra that you need both an iPad AND a macbook? Or the Google mantra that, increasingly, you don't need a desktop OS altogether?

To me, an iPad (running iOS and simple apps) and a MacBook (running OS X and full applications) might both be useful for quite different tasks, so if fruity technology is your preference then I would tend to agree with Apple here.

I find Google's position on almost everything to be favourable to Google but rarely an acceptable alternative to incumbent technologies for everyone else. Google, like a lot of "cloud" services, provide the software equivalent of those touchscreens and smart TVs I mentioned above. Looking objectively, most of their web applications are so limited and often so short-lived that I find it hard to take them seriously.

Re:What What?

[viperidaenz]

So don't you think they're introducing this mode switch so you can switch between two interfaces, instead of trying to make one interface fit both use cases?

Re:What What?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have no idea. In probably 4-5 years of owning tablet-style devices, I have never once connected them to any external peripherals like that, nor wanted to.

You've clearly never owned a Windows 8.1 tablet.

You know the place they hide all the real settings? Regedit. Guess how that looks on a tablet. Exactly the same as on a PC.

After just a few registry keys, you REALLY want a mouse and keyboard.

Re:What What?

[Jack Griffin]

Given that Windows 8 has been a Vista-scale catatrophe for Microsoft, I think by now it's safe to say overall the corporate world doesn't buy into that vision either.

Yes, but if you try and understand what sucks about Win 8, most of it will be (hopefully) be fixed with Win 10. So just as Win7 was a relative success, I can;t see why Win 10 won't be the same.

Again, the things these devices are useful for in meetings are not necessarily the same things they are useful for when someone is working alone at a desk.

No not necessarily, but in most instances, Office people use Office apps (Outlook, Word, Excel, Web etc), and for that a Surface does the job of a tablet, laptop and desktop quite sufficiently.

Re:What What?

[DigiShaman]

Well, that's effectively what the Microsoft Surface Pro 3 is - a tablet with keyboard for screen cover and touchscreen. The iPad comes close with a BT keyboard, but it's limited to just the iOS world. The Surface Pro 3 is x86 Windows and PC architecture. In addition, the Surface Pro 3 also had a Docking Station with a single mini-display port.

I'm not a fan of the Windows 8, 8.1, and 10 GUI, but at least MS if forward thinking in leap-frogging to convergence here. So while I get and agree with the new paradigm concept, MS also botched the OS implementation horribly!!! And that's the travesty, it could have been executed so much better. Simply put, it's not a hardware limitation, but one of corporate management and direction.

Re:What What?

[houghi]

Do they use it because it is different, or because it is not possible? e.g. causation and correlation.

I have an Acer laptop with a detachable keyboard (or a tablet with an attachable keyboard) that I use as laptop/tablet. I also connect a screen to it (remote, but still) and use it as a desktop.

I have a more powerfull PC, so I bought a pretty light one, but I am sure it would be powerfull enough to be a laptop/tablet/desktop for many users who only do basic stuff. Having a real keyboard/mouse/monitor connected to it is all and I still can take it with me with its 11" (I think) and evn just use it as a tablet if I so desire.

So yes, uses ARE different, but that does not mean that the core hardware needs to be and if the software is able to adapt, it is the best.

COmpare it to using GNOME in tablet mode, KDE for portable mode and XFCE if ou want to do real work on your desktop.

Re:What What?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Yes, but if you try and understand what sucks about Win 8, most of it will be (hopefully) be fixed with Win 10.

I think the marketing problem for Microsoft is that, for desktop/laptop users, most of it was not broken in Windows 7 anyway. Windows 10 can't just be about fixing the things they got wrong with Windows 8. It needs to have some significant benefits as well, or everyone who's on Windows 7 today will just stay there and not upgrade.

No not necessarily, but in most instances, Office people use Office apps (Outlook, Word, Excel, Web etc), and for that a Surface does the job of a tablet, laptop and desktop quite sufficiently.

But for those uses, a laptop does the job just fine anyway, and people who go to a lot of meetings probably take their laptop with them already. What extra benefit do they get for having a more complicated and expensive device like a Surface?

Re:What What?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

The thing is, I don't think it's just the shell interfaces for Windows that matter. The entire way people use the device is usually different. Are you working with multiple applications at once? Is your data associated with a specific application or stored within a more structured filesystem that you can see? Do you install software with a lot of flexibility and many options, or does the software concentrate on simplicity and need minimal configuration?

Like smartphones, I think tablets have been successful precisely because of their simplicity. Tasks like installing software so you can use your device to do interesting things should not require any more effort than choosing the software you want and if necessary paying for it, but Windows is awful for this, OS X isn't much better, and Linux is OK as long as exactly the software you need is available from your distro but otherwise it's a joke. Smartphones and tablets came along, with their app store model but also with the simple "home screen" style of launching apps and usually with a single app visible at once, and made all that horrible complexity go away, and that's why non-geeks love them.

Of course, there is a price to pay for that simplicity: the software isn't as powerful and flexible as the kinds of applications we run on desktop/laptop systems. The tablet/smartphone UI style doesn't scale to more demanding tasks and can't cope with the kinds of complicated interactions that, for example, an office worker manipulating a spreadsheet needs all the time.

So for that, we come back to a desktop/laptop style of UI, with a real keyboard and mouse. Once you've got those, although a touch screen might be useful occasionally, it's mostly just a gimmick anyway.

Re:What What?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I've never owned a Windows 8 (or 8.1) anything. There are good reasons for that, starting with the fact that I've used Windows 8. ;-)

But seriously, you give an excellent example of the real problem here. Tablets are valuable precisely for their simplicity and because they work with minimal configuration. The idea that anyone should need to run a tool like regedit to be able to use a tablet-style device properly is just... bizarre.

Re:What What?

[viperidaenz]

In your first paragraph you say you don't think it's just about the shell, but what you've gone on to described is the shell (the interface between the operating system and the user)

The rest of your post is confusing installation simplicity with application complexity. The two are not tied together.

Re:What What?

[david_thornley]

Lots of people can get along just fine with a tablet, and no laptop or desktop. Tablets are good for email, light web browsing, simple games, and light word processing, and that's all some people do with their laptops or desktops. I'm happy with smartphone and laptop and eInk eReader, myself, and have found no personal use for a tablet. I'm not interested in something that tries to be both a laptop and a tablet.

I have no idea what lots of other people need.

Re:What What?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

In your first paragraph you say you don't think it's just about the shell, but what you've gone on to described is the shell

The shell is important, but it's only worth as much as the underlying models the operating system provides. For example, the underlying file system has nothing to do with the shell. Nor do the security model or any related control of application installation and permissions systems. Nor do the process model and any mechanisms for inter-process communication.

The rest of my post, referring to how applications are installed, was an example. The point is that on tablet/smartphone devices, everything is simplified/dumbed down [delete as applicable] in the same way. The average tablet/smartphone app is designed to do one simple task using simple interactions. To my knowledge, no-one has yet written a smartphone or tablet app that is anywhere close to the complexity and flexibility that major desktop apps routinely offer.

Re:What What?

[viperidaenz]

The file system?
You mean how Android uses ext4, the same as all current Linux distributions? Pretty much the same kernel too.

Permissions?
It's implemented in Android as file system permissions. When an app is granted certain permissions, its user is added to specific groups.

as for complex software, there's nothing stopping anyone from doing it, apart from hardware performance and target audience.

Re:What What?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

No user of any popular tablet or smartphone today, Android or otherwise, is exposed to the kinds of internal implementation details you mentioned. The APIs provided by both iOS and Android are very much geared to the per-app/sandbox model used by apps on those systems, and even on Android, you wouldn't normally be messing around with a FHS-style directory tree the way Linux desktop or server applications would.

Anyway, I don't know whether you are wilfully missing the point just to troll or you really can't understand that there are fundamental differences between tablet/smartphone and desktop/laptop use cases beyond the cosmetic details of their shells, but further discussion here seems unlikely to get us anywhere useful.

Re:What What?

[Jack Griffin]

I think the marketing problem for Microsoft is that, for desktop/laptop users, most of it was not broken in Windows 7 anyway. Windows 10 can't just be about fixing the things they got wrong with Windows 8. It needs to have some significant benefits as well, or everyone who's on Windows 7 today will just stay there and not upgrade.

It ain't broke don't fix only works in a static or slow moving environment. In fast paced IT, it's keep up or die. Win 7 was great fro desktops but missed the whole mobile revolution that occured after it's release. Win8 attempted to fix this (poorly). The converged OS is still a good idea IMO, it just needs to be tweaked to better suit the needs of it's customers. Win10 may do that, it may not, only time will tell.

But for those uses, a laptop does the job just fine anyway, and people who go to a lot of meetings probably take their laptop with them already. What extra benefit do they get for having a more complicated and expensive device like a Surface?

That's 2010 thinking. I work in a Surface only workplace. They aren't perfect, but slowly even the die-hards are losing the Laptop mentality. The cost of a Surface is similar to a Macbook Air (which is the de facto standard around here), but you get touch and stylus input, and native support for all the Office apps out of the box.
I accept that they aren't for everyone, but if you want a generic machine that does most things it ticks the box. For corporates, this is a no-brainer, and MS are aware of that. All they need to do is to get Win10 to be "good enough".

Re:What What?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

It ain't broke don't fix only works in a static or slow moving environment. In fast paced IT, it's keep up or die. Win 7 was great fro desktops but missed the whole mobile revolution that occured after it's release.

OK, but why should Windows, an OS designed for desktop and server user, also be the product they offer in the mobile space?

Let's be blunt: Microsoft are an also-ran in the mobile space, but they still dominate the desktop. Offering something actively worse on desktop in a half-hearted attempt to enter mobile makes no sense for them.

That's 2010 thinking. I work in a Surface only workplace. They aren't perfect, but slowly even the die-hards are losing the Laptop mentality. The cost of a Surface is similar to a Macbook Air (which is the de facto standard around here), but you get touch and stylus input, and native support for all the Office apps out of the box.

Well, my 2010 thinking still seems to be 2015 thinking according to most of the business world, judging by how little success Surface seems to have enjoyed so far.

And again, you still haven't given a single reason that the Surface is better than just buying a laptop and running Office on that, which has been the norm for probably a decade and change. Touch and stylus input is only an advantage if they actually help you to do something useful. What is objectively better about your day because you all use a Surface? Do you do some things faster, or more accurately, or with better quality results? If so, how, and why is the hybrid device an advantage for you?

Just going by your previous post, I'm not sure how far Microsoft would get with a sales pitch that their new and trendy gear for 2015 is not worse than what we've had since the early 2000s and costs (at current UK prices I just checked) only 2-3x as much as numerous perfectly serviceable business laptops that will all run Office just fine.

Re:What What?

[viperidaenz]

But everything you've said is a function of the shell.
You've failed to understand the difference between the shell and the rest of the OS.

Re:What What?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

You seem to think approximately 100% of what an OS does is the shell. Take a look at, say, these Apple docs, and look at how many of the services provided by iOS are specifically geared towards working on a simple/mobile/touchscreen style of device. In contrast, very little of what is described there is specific to any particular UI.

For example, having an OS where the process model distinguishes a single foreground process and multiple background processes has nothing to do with whether to move an app to the background you swipe, push a Home key, or throw your tablet to the ground in frustration. Such a process model is likely to be relevant to a tablet or smartphone, but probably not to a desktop or server OS.

Re:What What?

[viperidaenz]

The services that provide the mobile/touchscreen interfaces come from the window manager.

I can install debian on a PC and choose KDE or GNOME as the UI. Each of those desktop environments provide different API's for applications to use.
The operating system is the same - Debian GNU/Linux.

I can also choose to leave the operating system without a desktop environment all together.

You can't argue it's a different operating system when I choose to install a different desktop environment.

For example, having an OS where the process model distinguishes a single foreground process and multiple background processes

You're describing Windows 3.x, Windows 95, 98 and ME. They all distinguished the foreground process from the background ones.

Re:What What?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

You can't argue it's a different operating system when I choose to install a different desktop environment.

I haven't argued that, or anything close to it, anywhere in this entire thread. The examples I've mentioned have mostly been about things like the process and security models, which would be the same regardless of any particular style of UI you build on top, but might have different priorities for mobile, touchscreen, very user-friendly devices than they have for desktop or server environments.

You're describing Windows 3.x, Windows 95, 98 and ME. They all distinguished the foreground process from the background ones.

And it worked so well that no popular desktop or server OS has promoted such a distinction for well over a decade.

However, if you're designing an OS where the user typically interacts with single apps in isolation -- as is the case for tablets and smartphones -- and where you have more limited system resources and a need to conserve battery power -- again, as is the case for tablets and smartphones -- then naturally your basic assumptions will be different.

Re:What What?

[Jack Griffin]

OK, but why should Windows, an OS designed for desktop and server user, also be the product they offer in the mobile space?

Because MS recognise they fell asleep in the mobile space, and now woken up obviously feel a converged OS would work best. I can't see why one OS can't work, as long as the switchability can be controlled by the user. This is where they screwed up in Win 8.

Well, my 2010 thinking still seems to be 2015 thinking according to most of the business world, judging by how little success Surface seems to have enjoyed so far.

I agree there is slow take up, but I believe that is the direction the world is heading. It might not be MS hardware, but some sort of convertible tablet satisfies most general requirements for most people, most of the time.

And again, you still haven't given a single reason that the Surface is better than just buying a laptop and running Office on that, which has been the norm for probably a decade and change.

Laptops have become only really wide spread in the last 6 or 7 years as prices came down. Prior to that was desktops with laptops only for the Execs and road warriors, and before that typewriters. After laptops will be convertibles or hybrids, then probably something else.

Touch and stylus input is only an advantage if they actually help you to do something useful. What is objectively better about your day because you all use a Surface? Do you do some things faster, or more accurately, or with better quality results? If so, how, and why is the hybrid device an advantage for you?

Why do people use iPads? you can do all that on a laptop too if you try hard enough? Having the ability to use a full powered machine at your desk, then walk off with it to a meeting where you can use it as a tablet for hand written notes (with a stylus rather than your finger) and diagrams is very convenient. I've used mine as a whiteboard which can be shared via Webex and it's a shitload easier with a stylus than a mouse.
When I'm on the bus to and from work, the tablet form factor is a lot easier to use than try to wedge a laptop with attached keyboard into the cramped space. Same goes for air travel. I accept this is not for everyone, but for a lot of people these are real benefits.

Just going by your previous post, I'm not sure how far Microsoft would get with a sales pitch that their new and trendy gear for 2015 is not worse than what we've had since the early 2000s and costs (at current UK prices I just checked) only 2-3x as much as numerous perfectly serviceable business laptops that will all run Office just fine.

Not sure what you classify as a business laptop. These sell in the region of $2k (Australian dollars) for HP, Dell or Lenovo with decent processor, memory and hi-res screen. A Surface Pro 3 costs a little less than that. The benefits are power, weight, resolution, battery life, and flexibility. I'd like to see which business grade laptops you are buying for a third the price of a Surface Pro.

Re:What What?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Laptops have become only really wide spread in the last 6 or 7 years as prices came down. Prior to that was desktops with laptops only for the Execs and road warriors, and before that typewriters.

Interesting comment. Here in the UK, I'd say laptops have been ubiquitous (meaning that anyone who had a plausible need for one would probably have one) since the early 2000s. Certainly that was true at every employer I worked for back then and more recently for every client I work with today. By 6-7 years ago, even the students all seemed to have laptops.

Why do people use iPads? you can do all that on a laptop too if you try hard enough?

An iPad is far more portable: you can't put a laptop in your handbag, or hold it in one hand while you sit on the sofa reading an e-book.

An iPad is also very much simpler and easier to use.

One of these is about the hardware, while the other is about the style of software you run on it, but both are fundamental, qualitative distinctions between today's tablets and laptops, and today's hybrids are still much closer to the laptop side.

Not sure what you classify as a business laptop. These sell in the region of $2k (Australian dollars) for HP, Dell or Lenovo with decent processor, memory and hi-res screen.

We are living in different worlds. I have just looked up what I could buy if I walked to multiple stores within 15 minutes of where I'm sitting now and picked something up off the shelf.

There are numerous models of laptop, from well-known brands such as those you mentioned, with at least an i5, 8GB of RAM, an SSD, and a 15" screen, for well under £500 (a little under AUS$1,000). Such a powerful machine is easily sufficient for any normal business use.

Even with a tighter budget, it looks like I could have a choice of laptops with a slightly lower spec (i3, 4GB, HDD, 13" screen), still easily capable of running things like Office and web browsers, in my hands in 20 minutes for not much over £300.

Of course if you do want to spend silly money, you can buy a laptop with a 300dpi class screen or go with Apple products, and they'll happily double the price or more, but that is totally unnecessary for a basic office system.

So, that's laptops, but what about hybrids? It's hard to do direct comparisons because of all the minor spec variations, but in general the price premium to get a convertible laptop/tablet device with an otherwise similar spec to the laptops appears to be about a factor of 2x today. The Surface Pro seems to be particularly bad: you can't even buy it from any of the local stores I looked up, and the on-line price for a Surface Pro 3 around the i5/8GB/SSD level (but with a much smaller screen than the laptops I was looking at) is well over £1,000.

Any way you look at it, the idea that a hybrid doesn't have a significant price premium just doesn't stack up. The only way hybrids are cheaper than laptops, at least here in the UK, is if you consider a close to top-of-the-range MacBook to be a normal business laptop, but you're willing to accept an overall much lower spec for your hybrid just to get the convertible form factor.

Re:What What?

[Jack Griffin]

Interesting comment. Here in the UK, I'd say laptops have been ubiquitous (meaning that anyone who had a plausible need for one would probably have one) since the early 2000s. Certainly that was true at every employer I worked for back then and more recently for every client I work with today. By 6-7 years ago, even the students all seemed to have laptops.

The Desktop was still a mainstream device in 2008. Vendor sales figures back that up. Unlike now when they are pretty much dead.

An iPad is far more portable:

As portable as a Surface Pro. Get it now?

We are living in different worlds. I have just looked up what I could buy if I walked to multiple stores within 15 minutes of where I'm sitting now and picked something up off the shelf.

There are numerous models of laptop, from well-known brands such as those you mentioned, with at least

You seem to be unaware of what constitutes "business-grade". Please list the actual models for comparison. For example, a Dell Latitude 7000 is a standard business laptop. Business grade means long term vendor hardware support and warranty, robust chassis, and high res screen as a minimum. These things alone can double the price. If you an unsure ask any vendor Account Manager for details

Of course if you do want to spend silly money, you can buy a laptop with a 300dpi class screen or go with Apple products, and they'll happily double the price or more, but that is totally unnecessary for a basic office system.

It is completely necessary if you work with professionals who spend 40 hours plus/week using their machines productively.

Re:What What?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

The Desktop was still a mainstream device in 2008.

I didn't say it wasn't. I just said those who had a business need for laptops typically all had them by then.

I also mentioned that even a lot of students were arriving at university with their own laptops by 2008, and those machines were perfectly capable of dealing with their coursework, even for the CS or math students who might need a bit of real processing power at times.

But we're drifting off the topic here. My point was that laptops have been just fine for many years at doing the kinds of work people used to need a desktop for. Even entry-level laptops today are absolute beasts in performance and storage compared to what the high-end machines had a few years ago, and somehow people still managed to type a document in Word using them. You don't need some magical new class of hybrid device to get work done.

[An iPad is] as portable as a Surface Pro.

Don't be silly. Just looking at the physical dimensions, the Surface Pro 3 is two inches longer, over an inch wider, about 50% deeper and about twice as heavy compared to the iPad Air 2. It needs to be to accommodate the keyboard and a screen large enough for laptop-style uses, and you see similar distinctions between most convertible/hybrid devices and most large tablets. And there are plenty of tablets that are a bit smaller for added convenience, such as the iPad Mini, Galaxy Tab 7", etc.

If you're carrying your gear around in a laptop case anyway, those differences might not matter. However, for ladies who prefer to carry something in their handbag, they make a huge difference, and for gents, the smaller tablets will even fit in a coat or suit jacket pocket.

It's also common for people to hold a tablet in one hand just like, say, an e-reader. It's hard to imagine many people doing that with these larger, convertible devices. They're just too big for that kind of use over extended periods, and anything with a full-size, standard-layout keyboard always will be.

You seem to be unaware of what constitutes "business-grade". Please list the actual models for comparison.

Seriously? Are you really arguing that an i5, 8GB RAM, SSD, 15" screen laptop (the spec I gave before) is not sufficient for everyday business use? It's a wonder we ever managed to get anything done on computers more than a couple of years ago. </sarcasm>

I'm not going to bother citing specific machines, because basically every machine I was looking at before -- the ones I could buy off the shelf in a few minutes for around the £500 mark, from well-known brands like HP and Lenovo -- had a higher spec than the entry-level Latitude 14 7000 for half its price, and getting anything close to spec parity would still more than double the cost.

Yes, you can buy expensive support plans from the likes of Dell, but again the Latitude 14 7000 right off Dell's site only includes a 3-year warranty for that price, and even the laptops I was looking at from my local John Lewis store -- hardly a business-centric supplier -- typically came with a minimum of a two-year warranty. I see no indication that the Microsoft Surface Pro 3 price I found, right on the Microsoft Store web site, comes with the kind of long-term, rapid-response business support you seem to think is essential either.

The only qualitative difference I can see with the Dell is that you get that next-business-day on-site support. But for a more than 100% mark-up and given that the dominant cost of hardware failures is usually the immediate downtime and then the recovery time, that seems like the kind of deal only a Corporate CIO who went to school with a Dell VP could think was a good investment. I've worked at big companies that used Dell as a supplier and talked with the IT guys who had to actually use those support contracts, and not one of them thought it was actually worth it.

In any case, again we're drifting off the topi

Re:What What?

[Jack Griffin]

But we're drifting off the topic here. My point was that laptops have been just fine for many years at doing the kinds of work people used to need a desktop for. Even entry-level laptops today are absolute beasts in performance and storage compared to what the high-end machines had a few years ago, and somehow people still managed to type a document in Word using them. You don't need some magical new class of hybrid device to get work done.

You don't need anything. But given the choice, in the business market, which Microsoft are targeting, a Hybrid solves more problems.

Don't be silly. Just looking at the physical dimensions, the Surface Pro 3 is two inches longer, over an inch wider, about 50% deeper and about twice as heavy compared to the iPad Air 2. It needs to be to accommodate the keyboard and a screen large enough for laptop-style uses, and you see similar distinctions between most convertible/hybrid devices and most large tablets. And there are plenty of tablets that are a bit smaller for added convenience, such as the iPad Mini, Galaxy Tab 7", etc.

If you're carrying your gear around in a laptop case anyway, those differences might not matter. However, for ladies who prefer to carry something in their handbag, they make a huge difference, and for gents, the smaller tablets will even fit in a coat or suit jacket pocket.

It's also common for people to hold a tablet in one hand just like, say, an e-reader. It's hard to imagine many people doing that with these larger, convertible devices.

You don't have to imagine it, I see it everyday.
And you have demonstrated the exact problem perfectly here. Above you mentioned why laptops do the job, now your saying why tablets do. So what do you choose, one or the other, or both? With a hybrid that problem is solved.

Seriously?

Yes seriously because you're into your this response but still avoiding this crucial point. A business needs more than just a standard of performance, it needs all the other fluffy bits too. Just because you don't understand this doesn't make it wrong.

The only qualitative difference I can see with the Dell is that you get that next-business-day on-site support. But for a more than 100% mark-up and given that the dominant cost of hardware failures is usually the immediate downtime and then the recovery time, that seems like the kind of deal only a Corporate CIO who went to school with a Dell VP could think was a good investment. I've worked at big companies that used Dell as a supplier and talked with the IT guys who had to actually use those support contracts, and not one of them thought it was actually worth it.

That's why those guys are still working in the helpdesk and not managing departments.
I already explained the difference in my last post, but I'll try again since you are struggling with it.
When you manage a fleet of hundreds or thousands of machines, you want them all to be as similar as possible. You want them the same so that your support people only have to learn as few systems as possible, so your support costs are lower, and that any issues are as minimal as possible. In business, downtime costs money, so spending a little extra to minimise this is cost effective. Buying one off machines because the sticker price is cheaper is a false economy. The few dollars you save end up costing you thousands to manage and support.

In any case, again we're drifting off the topic. The original point was to do a like-for-like comparison, so we're just looking at the cost overhead of moving from laptop to hybrid. Obviously the hybrid-style devices I was looking at from the same stores for price comparison purposes were coming with a similar level of warranty terms and customer support, and they were still about 2x as expensive for like-for-like specs.

Because you're comparing apples with oranges as I've explai

What about privacy

[theshowmecanuck]

How much does it send back to Microsoft? I have heard it is much more onerous in this regard than previous OS versions. Can anyone shed some light on the truth of that?

Re:What about privacy

[viperidaenz]

As a technical preview with a primary goal of soliciting feedback from its user, I'd say quite a bit.

Re:What about privacy

[theshowmecanuck]

I'm talking about what the final version will be like. Come on, try not to be so literal.

Re:What about privacy

[viperidaenz]

You'd best wait till the final version is released then.

Start Menu

[MrDoh!]

If only they put the original start menu structure back in one of those modes, maybe an 'enterprise' or 'user with 20years experience on windows' option. Still need to install 'Classic Start Menu' to make things sane. Users I deal with will never switch to metro, they love using Desktop to dump all those files they're working with, at least can boot into Desktop mode now to save metro flashing up. but.. STILL need the start menu. Have the Metro 'view' slide into place when you select that menu, but for all that's workable, PUT BACK THE START MENU.

Re:Start Menu

[itsenrique]

Bingo. It doesn't have to be the start menu as imagined in 7, but it CAN NOT require you to type to find things. Tap, click, hover, whatever. But keep the original structure of shortcuts.

Re:Start Menu

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck your Start Menu, that you probably never really understood how to customize with custom folders. I've been using Windows for 18 years. I used an Amiga before that and a TI99/4a in the beginning. I don't miss the Start Menu one bit. I quickly adapt to change because I'm not a stupid motherfucker like the idiots you pal around with.

You choosing to use Windows for 18 years says far more about you being a stupid motherfucker.

Re:Start Menu

[St.Creed]

Your use of ad-hominem attacks and posting as an anonymous account says enough about you.

See, we can all do ad-hominem attacks. Join the fun.

Re:Start Menu

[Bing Tsher E]

PUT BACK THE START MENU.

Rumor has it, they just couldn't get a contract with the Rolling Stones for the Windows 8 Release Event.

The Stones are getting older and older all the time, too.

Re:Start Menu

[thegarbz]

I find it funny how typing in the start menu is something people are talking about now as if it's a new thing. Someone even showed me how "amazing" the auto search was in Windows 8.1

I blew his mind when I showed him Windows Vista does the same thing.

Re:Start Menu

[Anonymous Coward]

If they liked that, they'd love what Ubuntu is doing. You can search the application menus via pressing and releasing [Alt]. You can search the applications via tapping [Towel] then typing.

Note: Some people call the [Towel] key [Super], because towels are super, and you shouldn't leave the Space Bar without one.

A mode that would be useful

[Anonymous Coward]

MS needs a mode that will take you back to Windows 7 or even Windows XP. That would help a lot more. A mode that takes you to Windows 8 though would guarantee nobody would buy this.

Re:A mode that would be useful

[Anonymous Coward]

XP mode for the win. Everything I ever want Windows to do works nicely in XP, although 7 is a bit prettier. There is no feature at all in 8/10 that I would pay $1 for.

Re:A mode that would be useful

[unixisc]

Yeah, this could have been a good idea - have the 'desktop' icon actually be a VM icon, say Virtual PC, and have 2 versions of it - a 64-bit 7 and a 32-bit XP. Whenever someone wants to run a 32-bit program, invoke XP and run it like that, in a XP mode VM. If one wants to run a 64-bit program, invoke 7 and run it like that in a 7 mode VM. Oh, and have an easy way to kill the VMs so that they don't end up hogging CPU cycles & battery if the device in question is a laptop or tablet, as opposed to a PC or server.

Good points.

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe that the Hololens will require Windows 10. And the upgrade to Windows 10 will be free.

Sold.

The end of an era.

[KreAture]

This marks the end of an era.
It means I will no longer have the option of using either Linux or Windows for my desktop computers. When one leaves the desktop in favor of a platform I find cumbersome, overpriced and unnecessary I am left with only one choice. Unfortunately this choice seems to be hung up on tablets and mobile systems as well. Luckally it at least have multiple flavours and some are still promising to be true to the desktop.
I am just hoping I can find proper software to continue my work without it being riddled with open source "but you can fix it yourself" issues. Open source is fine, but I do not need open bugs. Paying for software is fine as long as I do not have to pay for someone to package open source stuff and then maybe fix the bugs.

Change is good if it is for a reason but change for changes sake can be left to the bedroom walls please...

Re:The end of an era.

[Billly Gates]

Good thing gnome 3 wasnt based on webs or anything. Waiting on flat low color elements next

Re:The end of an era.

[serviscope_minor]

It means I will no longer have the option of using either Linux or Windows for my desktop computers.

Huh? How does this affect Linux?

Open source is fine, but I do not need open bugs

Well, the abacus is pretty bug free. I mean sure none of need open bugs, heck none of us even WANT open bugs, but I'm not sure what that has to do with open source. Or are you suggesting that closed source software is free from bugs?

Change is good if it is for a reason but change for changes sake can be left to the bedroom walls please...

Indeed, and I certainly agree. The counter argument is (and has been common here recently) "you're afraid of change!" as if somehow welcoming endless churn with no improvement is somehow a good thing.

The One OS to rule them all

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 10 is being positioned as the one OS for all of Microsoft's devices

So was Windows 8, If I recall.

Re:The One OS to rule them all

[unixisc]

Also, what I've been told - in 10, the Windows Phone OS and Windows will both be identical (aside from the CPU level binary differences), and the store will have common apps for both. For instance, right now, you can download Yelp! on Windows Phone, but not from an Atom based tablet. In 10, any app that's there on the phone will be there for the tablet, and vice versa. I'm assuming that apps that require cellular connections (like calling apps) might be an exception.

This is certainly good news, since there are some things that my Windows tablet can do quite handily, but while Windows Phone has those apps, the tablet doesn't. Downside could be that legacy Windows apps (from, say, 7) may not work, if the only way of getting things installed in a laptop or tablet would be over the internet. Next week, I'll see whether I can get the technical preview on my tablet

Windows 8.1 works very well, thank you.

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of folks complained about this 'problem', but it no longer exists in Windows 8.1. I delayed trying 8.1 until Microcenter offered it on their $59.99 Winbook tablet. Windows 8.1 makes it extremely easy to go back & forth between the classic desktop and the new start page. It's just one click and, presto-chango, you're on the other page. Sure, any new OS will have some annoyances, but Windows 8.1 has surprisingly few. So few that I took my Raspberry Pi budget for the month and bought 2 more TW700 tablets instead!

Microcenter just raised their price to $69.99, but if you outfit a RasPI with 1280 x 800 IPS touchscreen LCD, Wifi, flash memory, 2 cameras, built-in microphone, Rechargeable Lithium Polymer battery and an AC Adapter, it still can't come close to the TW700. Even after you take the time to setup all the software in Raspbian.

And if you don't like the way Metro apps operate, don't use them. All my old DOS and Windows programs run with little or no modification, and they can all be shutdown as usual. Nobody buys this OS because of the App Store. but there are a lot of other good reasons to use it.

 

Re:Windows 8.1 works very well, thank you.

[SternisheFan]

...Nobody buys this OS because of the App Store. but there are a lot of other good reasons to use it.

To be fair, the app store does have a kickass free pinball game. :-)

With Classic Shell 8.1 works fine for me. A much stabler OS, updates install with no issues. I can't see myself needing Cortana, if 10 doesn't allow Classic Shell, free upgrade or not, I'll stick with what I know works for me.

Switching is not integration

[iamacat]

I understand the logic of having apps run in full screen for small tablets by default. But this does not justify having two kinds of apps, none of which run in both modes. Either it's a classic desktop app without multitouch/orientation switch support, or a metro app that can not open multiple windows (can it even be tiled with other apps these days?).

What Microsoft should have done in Windows 8 is provide a framework for creating tablet-friendly apps which are ALSO usable desktop apps without any handicaps. In fact, they should have required 1st class experience on both tablet and desktop to be included in Windows Store.

Re:Switching is not integration

[thegarbz]

The apps themselves are not the only issue. This does need OS integration despite how much people say the contrary. The windows interface is borderline useless without a mouse and keyboard which is exactly why they did what they did.

Yes the interface switching is clunky as all hell but the tablet styles and gestures make a lot of sense when you disconnect the keyboard and mouse. It is almost impossible to resize and move a window in tablet mode, it's hard enough to hit the tiny start button, and even harder to hit the x, even with my small fingers and IMO excellent touch screen.

Metro is ugly and not the answer, but it is at least an attempt to solve a very real problem.

Re:Switching is not integration

[jones_supa]

But this does not justify having two kinds of apps, none of which run in both modes. Either it's a classic desktop app without multitouch/orientation switch support, or a metro app that can not open multiple windows (can it even be tiled with other apps these days?).

The Modern UI apps will run inside resizeable windows in the desktop mode. You are right though that Modern apps cannot open multiple windows.

Does 2012 Mark the End of the Netbook?

[tepples]

In other words, my use cases (and going by the Internet commentary, almost everyone else's use cases too) are completely different for tablets and real PCs. It makes absolutely no sense to run the same style of operating system on both of them

After the demise of 10 inch laptops, fans of that form factor have had to make do with things like Surface Pro and Transformer Book, which are Windows tablets with keyboards.

Re:Does 2012 Mark the End of the Netbook?

[thegarbz]

I wouldn't call it "make do".
I would call it a very welcome replacement.

I know I'm gonna catch a lot of crap for this...

[taoboy]

...but I'm finding Win 8 as a switch-hit tablet/sorta-netbook is working pretty well for me. I've been using both Windows and various Linux desktop distros for decades now, waiting for someone to put together an OS that would alternatively do the tablet thing, then do desktop with a BT keyboard and mouse. Ubuntu seems to be heading there, but Win 8 actually does a passable job in both modes. I'm running it on a cheapie WinBook from Microcenter with 2GB RAM and 32GB flash as C:. And then, to add insult to injury, IE 11 is the best tablet browser I've tried, and I've tried quite a few. I still use Firefox when in the desktop, as well as all my old Windows desktop applications, but I try to Metro-app in Metro when at all possible. Thing is, when in desktop, get out the mouse and keyboard; the screen is too small for fingering around. But I'm finding Metro to be like any other device; you've gotta spend a little time figuring it out, but there's nothing onerous about it, well, maybe the app killing thing.

I wanted Ubuntu to get there first, but it is my studied opinion that Windows is ahead in tablet/desktop switch-hitting. So there; flame away, I've already attracted my mate so I don't have to worry about how I look, smell, or are regarded your eyes... :D

Winbook - enough for Windows 10?

[unixisc]

Will this be upgradable to 10, though? I too bought a Winbook from them, but knowing that the $69 one would be limited, particularly since the integrated flash is just 16GB and almost completely eaten by the OS, I went for the $99 version. 2GB RAM and 32GB flash. Can definitely support Windows 10 - we're now talking about the 32-bit version here, not 64-bit, which would suck on these configurations. I also bought a 64GB SD card (which is the max that this thing can handle), and retargeted My Documents and everything to reside on this, rather than the integrated 32GB flash. That way, I have space for my apps, which typically can't be installed on a SD card, while ensuring that ALL data, not just my photos & videos, are there on the SD card.

Re:Winbook - enough for Windows 10?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see any compelling reason to switch to Windows 10, so I really can't understand why this should be a concern.
I also put everything on the SD card which makes it pretty easy to backup and clone a new tablet. I have 100's of applications on that card. but not many 'apps'.

It's interesting how marketing has redefined 'app' to mean a network connected program that installs and updates itself. Some are marginally useful, but in general, these things would be better called 'software for dummies'. If you install 'apps' they will eat up space on the internal flash.

If you are looking for software that will run fine from the SD card, start your search at
          portableapps.com they have lots of free software applications for not-so-dumb users.

My internal flash still has over 6GB free and currently my SD card has:
= Internet radio players
= MP3 players and editors
= Programming IDE's
= compilers & interpreters
= Video players
= Graphics editors & viewers
= all kinds of text and binary editors
= virtual test equipment (sweep generators, scopes, freq counter etc)
= Tons of music
= millions of pages of books
= putty, WinSCP and many network diagnostic and trace programs
and a whole lot more! All of them run fine on the SD card.
Some of these are really not useful on a 7" touch screen, however the TW700 has an hdmi video port and a full size USB port for keyboard and mouse.
My desktop is better cause it has more RAM and a faster CPU.
BUT, it won't fit in my pocket.

Great feature!

[hcs_$reboot]

Really, great feature. Ok, now, let's be practical: can Linux be installed over windows-10 as usual?

But...

[Anonymous Coward]

...is there a way to switch out of 16-color mode into 32-bit color, so it doesn't look like an OS straight out of 1985?

Pop! Hear that sound?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's MS finally getting it's head out of it's ass! Seesh, finally, got a clue! People hate metro on the desktop!

MS still don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

Most people do NOT want an operating system that is for both a tablet, and for a normal computer. Desktop and tablet operating systems run DIFFERENT programs, with DIFFERENT interfaces, designed for DIFFERENT purposes. The idea of creating a single device or operating system release to do both is STUPID.
Of course they could share the same technical underpinnings, but for Microsoft this is no longer an option for Windows, since Windows is now irrevocably dead and buried in the tablet market.
The same applies to tablets. People do not want a tablet that is a laptop, or that has a detachable screen. They have the problem that they run one bizarre mutant/hybrid OS, as above.

Re:MS still don't get it

[taoboy]

> Most people do NOT want an operating system that is for both a tablet, and for a normal computer.

I do. I'm tired of lugging around a full-sized Dell laptop when I travel, and I like to read whenever I'm in ever-shrinking airplane space. So, I do want a tablet that'll step up to laptop/desktop functionality when I sit down at whatever desk they come up with for me at the places to which I travel.

And, while I am ever hopeful that a Linux distro will step up to the switch-hit tablet/laptop challenge, it is my humble opinion that Microsoft is making better progress in getting there. Not perfect, at this point, but definitely useable.

Re:I know I'm gonna catch a lot of crap for this..

[NJRoadfan]

I'm running it on a cheapie WinBook from Microcenter with 2GB RAM and 32GB flash as C:. And then, to add insult to injury, IE 11 is the best tablet browser I've tried, and I've tried quite a few. I still use Firefox when in the desktop, as well as all my old Windows desktop applications, but I try to Metro-app in Metro when at all possible. Thing is, when in desktop, get out the mouse and keyboard; the screen is too small for fingering around.

The advent of cheap Win8.1 tablets and lack of a "Metro Mode" in Firefox is really going to bite Mozilla in the ass. Hopefully they will reconsider adding that feature back in as even with Australis, Firefox on a Winbook TW802 is a bit annoying to use. I have tried running the Android version of Firefox thru DuOS as an alternative, and its mildly better to use, but still not as slick as IE11 in the tablet UX area.

What?

[Anonymous Coward]

"In Windows 8, you were trapped in either the Modern UI or using the desktop, and going back and forth between the two worlds was cumbersome."

So... pressing the little "Windows" key on your keyboard was cumbersome? huh?

I don't like Windows 8 anymore than the next guy, but this article is a bit off.

Microsoft finally employs Captain Obvious

[gestalt_n_pepper]

Let's hope he becomes the Windows designer in chief.

WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

In this case, it's WHY the f..k.

WHY would I want to SWITCH? Can't they tell what kind of device I'm on, and give me the best interface for it?

It's not like I'm going to decide to take an install of windows and move it to a different device.

Still, someone must have loaned MS an IQ point, because as foul as it is, it's better than assuming I'm on some sort of touch device and preventing me from even finding the stupid desktop like Windows 8 did.

Perhaps you can tell, I'm not terrifically interested in logical arguments to the contrary :)

Re:WTF?

[taoboy]

I use my tablet both ways, at different times. On the plane, tablet/metro. In the hotel room, I'll prop it up, connect the keyboard and mouse, and it's laptop/desktop. Soooo, I don't want to hard-code Metro on my tablet.

Not logic. Just the way I'm working..... :D