Aren't you maybe wasting your own time by sticking with the "old" way of launching apps - scrolling through endless folders of installed apps - rather than the new way (which has been there since Windows Vista): hit the Start button and start typing, hit Enter. There is no need for Win+R and hasn't been since Vista. You can also hit CTRL+SHIFT+Enter instead of just Enter to launch an app as an admin.
And all of that works exactly the same in Windows 8. For users who must "browse" their installed apps, Metro is an admittedly poor choice.
In my experience either the WDTV or Boxee box are going to be your best bang-for-the-buck when it comes to doing both online media (Netflix, Hulu, Spotify) and playing back most types of local media (mp3, mkv, m4v, avi, etc). I've tried both and I think the WDTV is edges out the Boxee Box.
Given a WDTV and an large external harddrive, you can start by using MakeMKV and Handbrake (both free) to rip all your current DVD's and Blu-rays. If you were so inclined, you could probably also borrow and rip friends' collections as well, though this wouldn't be legal.
From there, if you were also so inclined, you could pick up a DVD or Blu-Ray subscription from Netflix to go with the streaming subscription. I've heard the same software works pretty well with their discs too.
That doesn't get into downloading movies from Usenet or torrents, which is also an option.
As others have mentioned, the real "problem" is how this is all presented to you, the user. If you cut the chord, you are now going to be picking and choosing each movie and TV show you watch. It's a choice, rather than having a bunch of stuff thrown at you for you to just leave on. It may seem minor, but in practice it's a noticeable difference in how you consume media.
Try Googling "Android before iPhone". Yes it existed. And it was a Blackberry clone. Only after the iPhone was released and a massive hit did they change course.
I gotta say, from my own laptop usage, my wife's, sister's, mother's, and others, I think you are the one whose needs aren't in line with common people.
What applications are you installing you bought on CD? Games these days are being purchased more and more on Steam, Origin, and the likes. Backing up is done more and more to external drives or offsite hosted services.
This is what almost every in-depth article on the situation is finding. Yes there is a "design flaw", but given the overall improvements in the iPhone 4, it is still performing (for most people) better than the 3G or 3GS. Think of it as two steps forward and one step back. To people upgrading from the 3G and 3GS, they still get a great phone with improvements across the board. This only really matters to those who want to demonstrate an issue.
Just because they use a similar core and have a plan to unite the platforms does NOT mean the Kin phones available today are Windows Phone 7.
My original statement was the Kin's are not Windows Phone 7. You are not going to find a quote that contradicts that. Sure that they are "based on the same core" or that they "have plans" to do X.
Again, Windows Phone 7 is still in development. To claim that the Kin phones, available today, are Windows Phone 7 is just silly...
They are different platforms. Windows Phone 7 isn't done...the Kin phones are out. Yes, they plan to align the platforms in the future, and sure they use common components, but they are different platforms now, and the Kin phones are not Windows Phone 7.
Read up on it on Wikipedia, Google, or any number of sources.
You thought wrong. VC++, 6 at least, did not have a comparable form designer to that in VB or Delphi. Only with.NET has Microsoft finally caught up with RAD form design.
As a Windows software developer, I call bullshit. I run and test our software on pre-releases of Windows. So does almost every other Windows software developer I know.
Then you've been hearing wrong. Which is sort of the point of the article. There's all this positive hype around 7, true or not, just like there was negative spin around Vista, true or not. Show me one thing in Vista that's "turned off" in 7, bloat-wise. Windows 7 is Windows Vista with performance optimizations, visual tweaks and UI improvements.
While #1 would be cool, it's mostly up to the authors who create the installations to support this. However, the changes in Vista should make it easier to setup authors to do this going forward.
As to #2, that is already in Vista. It's buried a bit but you can find it in computer management:
Event Viewer>Applications and Services Logs>Microsoft>Windows>Diagnostics-Performance>Operational
Actually, the reason Microsoft got (and still gets) in trouble is because they leverage an existing monopoly to break into new markets. It has nothing to do with them having a monopoly in that new market (browsers).
So, in essence, Apple is doing the exact same thing. They are leveraging their monopoly in MP3 players to break into a new market - browsers.
"Why would someone want Vista?" Because all of the crap you just copied and pasted from bandwaggoning bloggers above is only believed by those who haven't actually used the OS, and prefer to just regurgitate that same BS over and over.
People will be trained to always click yes with UAC, but not sudo right? MS is now in charge of writing drivers too? Why would anyone scroll the start menu when they can just start typing... You're worried about performance, but you'd still rather install a slew of third party applications on top of XP to get the same indexing, integrated search, visual extensions, and more?
Slow network file copying has nothing to do with DRM and is already fixed in a public hotfix. People who actually use the OS (and therefor have the ability to give firsthand impressions of the OS and not just regurgitate the popular negative opinion) would know this.
Large file copies are inordinately slow--way slower than XP on the same hardware. Already fixed in public hotfixes.
The OS asks me literally seven times to confirm and click okay to things like trying to delete a file that I just created. Bullshit. The only time you get more prompts than XP is if you don't have rights to delete it. Maybe an application you installed created it, but you sure didn't. Yes, file operations that require UAC take one too many clicks. This is a shortcoming of UAC and hopefully will be improved in the future. But spouting bullshit like this doesn't help.
Their naive approach to indexing the hard disk causes constant disk thrashing for a feature THAT STILL SUCKS ASS and cannot find anything that I'm really looking for. That's your opinion. Myself, I find the search brilliant, as do many users who aren't part of the vocal minority who piss and moan all over Digg and Slashdot, or pat each other on the back for running OSX or Ubuntu.
They've gratuitously moved nearly every operating system configuration setting or hid it behind three more layers of dialog boxes for no reason other than to treat me like I'm an idiot whose never used a computer before. Err, or they've moved them to more logical locations, while preserving backwards compatibility through symlinks... What, are you the ONE person who preferred having settings in C:\Documents and Settings\Some User Name\ rather than C:\Users? Give me a break...
I bought the Ultimate addition with the promise of killer applications provided free throughout Vista's lifetime. I don't consider two crappy games to be worth the money. Congratulations. It took you that long to get to a valid point.
But I'll never buy another Microsoft product for my personal use until that company has knelt down before the alter of its customers and contritely begged forgivingness for such sins as license activation (even typing in CD keys) So you won't use software with CD keys? Man, good luck with that.
restricting virtualization for no reason Hrm. If you need the feature, buy the version that supports it. I love how companies like MS or Sony release several versions with varying features to support different price levels, and people still bitch.
and their relentless attempt to build a software monoculture that excludes anything not coming Redmond. Please pass what you're smoking. Are you kidding??? Look at the iPhone, and tell me Redmond is the one limiting 3rd parties. Microsoft has a huge 3rd party market, and you're asserting that "anything not coming Redmond" is excluded? Give me a break. I'm a software developer, and have no problem developing for MS platforms. And we don't even use all MS development tools.
They're Smith Corona in 1985, going out to their users and asking what new features their customers want on their typewriters because they've noticed that sales have flattened. Vista is just adding an LCD to a typewriter. It's not going to stop what's about to happen to Microsoft. Keep smoking it man. It's so funny to come hear and read these comments where 200 people pat each other on the back and assure themselves, year after year, that this is the year of Linux on the desktop, and Microsoft is finally doomed. The other millions of people running Windows just keep using their software, oblivious to the little jihad that goes on in your minds.
You're looking at it backwards. The real (and honest) question is, how long until the Linux and OSX cheerleaders realize "Yep, Vista isn't as bad as all that!"?
I also write Windows software for a living, and far prefer Vista to XP. So do the developers I work with, and those I talk to online who use the OS. So now, in the future, you can say you do in fact know of someone who has said Vista has made their computer so much better.
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People are already doing this. Notepad++, putty, bochs, and 7zip (with UI) are already ported.
Aren't you maybe wasting your own time by sticking with the "old" way of launching apps - scrolling through endless folders of installed apps - rather than the new way (which has been there since Windows Vista): hit the Start button and start typing, hit Enter. There is no need for Win+R and hasn't been since Vista. You can also hit CTRL+SHIFT+Enter instead of just Enter to launch an app as an admin.
And all of that works exactly the same in Windows 8. For users who must "browse" their installed apps, Metro is an admittedly poor choice.
In my experience either the WDTV or Boxee box are going to be your best bang-for-the-buck when it comes to doing both online media (Netflix, Hulu, Spotify) and playing back most types of local media (mp3, mkv, m4v, avi, etc). I've tried both and I think the WDTV is edges out the Boxee Box.
Given a WDTV and an large external harddrive, you can start by using MakeMKV and Handbrake (both free) to rip all your current DVD's and Blu-rays. If you were so inclined, you could probably also borrow and rip friends' collections as well, though this wouldn't be legal.
From there, if you were also so inclined, you could pick up a DVD or Blu-Ray subscription from Netflix to go with the streaming subscription. I've heard the same software works pretty well with their discs too.
That doesn't get into downloading movies from Usenet or torrents, which is also an option.
As others have mentioned, the real "problem" is how this is all presented to you, the user. If you cut the chord, you are now going to be picking and choosing each movie and TV show you watch. It's a choice, rather than having a bunch of stuff thrown at you for you to just leave on. It may seem minor, but in practice it's a noticeable difference in how you consume media.
Try Googling "Android before iPhone". Yes it existed. And it was a Blackberry clone. Only after the iPhone was released and a massive hit did they change course.
I gotta say, from my own laptop usage, my wife's, sister's, mother's, and others, I think you are the one whose needs aren't in line with common people.
What applications are you installing you bought on CD? Games these days are being purchased more and more on Steam, Origin, and the likes. Backing up is done more and more to external drives or offsite hosted services.
Do you love what you do? If so, I find it hard to believe that you have never, not once, been inclined to create something on your own.
AFAIK neither of them currently have Flash.
We use JIRA and I like it quite a lot. We used DotProject previously and it just didn't cut it.
This is what almost every in-depth article on the situation is finding. Yes there is a "design flaw", but given the overall improvements in the iPhone 4, it is still performing (for most people) better than the 3G or 3GS. Think of it as two steps forward and one step back. To people upgrading from the 3G and 3GS, they still get a great phone with improvements across the board. This only really matters to those who want to demonstrate an issue.
Basically, haters gotta be hatin.
The Kin is not Windows Phone 7.
Just because they use a similar core and have a plan to unite the platforms does NOT mean the Kin phones available today are Windows Phone 7.
My original statement was the Kin's are not Windows Phone 7. You are not going to find a quote that contradicts that. Sure that they are "based on the same core" or that they "have plans" to do X.
Again, Windows Phone 7 is still in development. To claim that the Kin phones, available today, are Windows Phone 7 is just silly...
They are different platforms. Windows Phone 7 isn't done...the Kin phones are out. Yes, they plan to align the platforms in the future, and sure they use common components, but they are different platforms now, and the Kin phones are not Windows Phone 7.
Read up on it on Wikipedia, Google, or any number of sources.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Kin
"The Kin is based on Windows CE and is distinct from Microsoft's Windows Mobile and Windows Phone 7 platforms."
The Kin is not Windows Phone 7
You thought wrong. VC++, 6 at least, did not have a comparable form designer to that in VB or Delphi. Only with .NET has Microsoft finally caught up with RAD form design.
As a Windows software developer, I call bullshit. I run and test our software on pre-releases of Windows. So does almost every other Windows software developer I know.
"The Opera web browser has recognized mouse gestures since version 5.10 (April 2001)."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouse_gestures
Then you've been hearing wrong. Which is sort of the point of the article. There's all this positive hype around 7, true or not, just like there was negative spin around Vista, true or not. Show me one thing in Vista that's "turned off" in 7, bloat-wise. Windows 7 is Windows Vista with performance optimizations, visual tweaks and UI improvements.
While #1 would be cool, it's mostly up to the authors who create the installations to support this. However, the changes in Vista should make it easier to setup authors to do this going forward. As to #2, that is already in Vista. It's buried a bit but you can find it in computer management: Event Viewer>Applications and Services Logs>Microsoft>Windows>Diagnostics-Performance>Operational
Actually, the reason Microsoft got (and still gets) in trouble is because they leverage an existing monopoly to break into new markets. It has nothing to do with them having a monopoly in that new market (browsers).
So, in essence, Apple is doing the exact same thing. They are leveraging their monopoly in MP3 players to break into a new market - browsers.
"Why would someone want Vista?" Because all of the crap you just copied and pasted from bandwaggoning bloggers above is only believed by those who haven't actually used the OS, and prefer to just regurgitate that same BS over and over.
People will be trained to always click yes with UAC, but not sudo right? MS is now in charge of writing drivers too? Why would anyone scroll the start menu when they can just start typing... You're worried about performance, but you'd still rather install a slew of third party applications on top of XP to get the same indexing, integrated search, visual extensions, and more?
Yawn...
Only on Slashdot would this be modded insightful.
Right. Because Vista hasn't had any updates...
Slow network file copying has nothing to do with DRM and is already fixed in a public hotfix. People who actually use the OS (and therefor have the ability to give firsthand impressions of the OS and not just regurgitate the popular negative opinion) would know this.
You're looking at it backwards. The real (and honest) question is, how long until the Linux and OSX cheerleaders realize "Yep, Vista isn't as bad as all that!"?
I also write Windows software for a living, and far prefer Vista to XP. So do the developers I work with, and those I talk to online who use the OS. So now, in the future, you can say you do in fact know of someone who has said Vista has made their computer so much better.