Microsoft's Dumbest And Smartest Moves Of 2011

[Duce]

The dev preview of win 8 has been out for months, and the RTM/Consumer preview will be out on the 29th.

RTM means ready to manufacture, the version coming out on the 29th will be very similar to the end retail product.

Dev preview was freely downloadable, so will the RTM/consumer preview version.

[SysAdmin]

The dev preview of win 8 has been out for months, and the RTM/Consumer preview will be out on the 29th.

RTM means ready to manufacture, the version coming out on the 29th will be very similar to the end retail product.

Dev preview was freely downloadable, so will the RTM/consumer preview version.

All versions of it have one common feature. They are extremely boring and irrelevant to the market. Just like Windows Phone 7.

[Duce]

Valid point - Dev version was a waste of time for the most part.

The RTM version hopefully will be a bit more usable, and I am curious to see how much they have actually changed the desktop experience.

The Metro UI and any MS tablet specific interface holds no interest to me.  They are too late to the game to make a dent in the market with that side of things.  I doubt the actual Windows 8 desktop interface will differ much from Win 7, tbh - so needless to say I just ordered an OEM copy of Win7 64 bit for the new gaming rig I am building vs. waiting on Win 8.

[psxphill]

The dev preview of win 8 has been out for months, and the RTM/Consumer preview will be out on the 29th.
 
RTM means ready to manufacture, the version coming out on the 29th will be very similar to the end retail product.
 
Dev preview was freely downloadable, so will the RTM/consumer preview version.

RTM means release to manufacture.
 
After the consumer preview there will be a release candidate and then release to manufacture. There is no current ship date for RTM but it's widely believe to be in 6 months.
 
Any minor annoyances could easily be changed in that time. Now is your chance to find them, when it's free to try & you might stand a chance of getting them changed.
Major changes would be harder to predict, although it's known that Windows Media Centre doesn't come in the consumer preview.

[SysAdmin]

@psxphill

If there are minor issues or problems in the product silence is golden.



Let them sell garbage, like they have done many times in the past. Let it fall flat on its face and fail just like Visa.

[Duce]

Thanks for the correction on RTM, Phil - was 4 AM here and wasn't paying attention.  

Transition, while I loathed Vista (and still do), our definition on the word "failure" must differ.  140 million copies of Vista were sold between late 2006 and early 2008 alone.

I found Vista an unmitigated disaster, like most people - but by the numbers, it didn't do half as bad as people think it did.  But in overall scope of things, you know your product is loathed when you are forced to offer downgrades to XP on machines that came with Vista pre-installed, so in that case it was a real shambles.  Hell, I even "downgraded" a Toshiba laptop that came with Vista, back to XP.

I disliked Vista enough I almost made the switch permanently to Mac, in fact - but Win 7 is actually an excellent product.  It's no Amiga OS, but for your OS for the masses offerings, it's one of the best I've used, Win7.

[psxphill]

you know your product is loathed when you are forced to offer downgrades to XP on machines that came with Vista pre-installed, so in that case it was a real shambles. Hell, I even "downgraded" a Toshiba laptop that came with Vista, back to XP.

It's no different to commodore allowing degrader to include kickstart 1.3 when the a500 plus came out.
 
Then again there are some people who preferred kickstart 1.2.
 
I ran vista x64 as it was the only choice if you wanted a 64 bit os. You could run XP64, but that was basically Windows Server & had less worse support than Vista.
 
Then I wouldn't touch XP if you paid me.

[runequester]

It's no different to commodore allowing degrader to include kickstart 1.3 when the a500 plus came out.
 
Then again there are some people who preferred kickstart 1.2.
 
I ran vista x64 as it was the only choice if you wanted a 64 bit os. You could run XP64, but that was basically Windows Server & had less worse support than Vista.
 
Then I wouldn't touch XP if you paid me.

The only 64 bit windows option you mean.

[commodorejohn]

Some people hate change, I remember when XP came out and how unpopular it was with the 9x lovers. Then Vista was terrible and XP was great, etc etc. However change is innevitable, so if there is a backlash it will be a minority and in a couple of years nobody will care anyway as there will be a new version to hate.

There is truth to this, but XP is something of an extraordinary item by these standards - Windows 95 didn't remain on sale for eight years after release, wasn't still getting active support/updates eleven years later, and didn't remain in major use until present day (estimates I've seen put XP at somewhere around or just below 7 for market share.)

95 was a step in the right direction, but it never got to become a really mature, stable OS; XP has, and consequently it's got a lot of users that aren't going to give it up until they absolutely have to. Tons of businesses still use fleets of XP workstations, many of which are definitely not 7/Vista machines, which means XP isn't even going to come close to going away until they're ready to do mass upgrades. (And in this economy? Good luck with that.)

[Iggy]

Thanks for the correction on RTM, Phil - was 4 AM here and wasn't paying attention.  

Transition, while I loathed Vista (and still do), our definition on the word "failure" must differ.  140 million copies of Vista were sold between late 2006 and early 2008 alone.

I found Vista an unmitigated disaster, like most people - but by the numbers, it didn't do half as bad as people think it did.  But in overall scope of things, you know your product is loathed when you are forced to offer downgrades to XP on machines that came with Vista pre-installed, so in that case it was a real shambles.  Hell, I even "downgraded" a Toshiba laptop that came with Vista, back to XP.

I disliked Vista enough I almost made the switch permanently to Mac, in fact - but Win 7 is actually an excellent product.  It's no Amiga OS, but for your OS for the masses offerings, it's one of the best I've used, Win7.

From my perspective, there is very little difference between Vista and Win7 (except Win7 is slightly less secure). Aero, Dx10 and DX11 - virtually the same OS.
Personally, I think people's perspective is skewed. XP wasn't that great. Vista and Win7 both offer drivers for products that are no longer updated by the manufacturers.
I remember when people insisted on retaining Win98 instead of migrating to XP.

"I disliked..." - perfectly silly.

[persia]

Yeah, a flop up button that just basically lists your applications folder is kind of brain dead.  Even AmigaOS realised this decades ago.  The whole MS Windows desktop interface could use a serious redesign with 21st Century GUI principles in mind....

[commodorejohn]

Yeah, a flop up button that just basically lists your applications folder is kind of brain dead.  Even AmigaOS realised this decades ago.  The whole MS Windows desktop interface could use a serious redesign with 21st Century GUI principles in mind....

What, pray tell, are "21st century GUI principles?" Who codifies them? What are their merits?

[Duce]

Iggy, if you don't see the differences between Vista and Win 7, we're on different planets.  It's like comparing Windows 3.x with Win 95/98.  I don't mean on a UI front - Windows in Windows that way, but in actual usability and functionality.  Vista was a train wreck compared to Win 7.

Massive differences in terms of day to day operational use, you'd have to be borderline daft to not notice how much better 7 runs than Vista ever did if you used either, lol.  Even on the exact same hardware base.  My old Vista machine used to lock up 3 times a day, on a good day.  This PC hasn't been rebooted this year thus far, Win 7.

Early Vista releases were barely functional in regards to stability and actual usability.  7 is a treat in comparison.  Even the Mac fanboys find it usable.

Yes, Iggy.  "I disliked" Vista ****ting the bed everytime I tried to do anything with it.  What's silly about not liking an operating system that works poorly?  "I disliked" indicates I no longer use Vista, and I didn't have much fun using it.

[Iggy]

Iggy, if you don't see the differences between Vista and Win 7, we're on different planets.  It's like comparing Windows 3.x with Win 95/98.  I don't mean on a UI front - Windows in Windows that way, but in actual usability and functionality.  Vista was a train wreck compared to Win 7.

Massive differences in terms of day to day operational use, you'd have to be borderline daft to not notice how much better 7 runs than Vista ever did if you used either, lol.  Even on the exact same hardware base.  My old Vista machine used to lock up 3 times a day, on a good day.  This PC hasn't been rebooted this year thus far, Win 7.

Early Vista releases were barely functional in regards to stability and actual usability.  7 is a treat in comparison.  Even the Mac fanboys find it usable.

Yes, Iggy.  "I disliked" Vista ****ting the bed everytime I tried to do anything with it.  What's silly about not liking an operating system that works poorly?  "I disliked" indicates I no longer use Vista, and I didn't have much fun using it.

"Massive differences in terms of day to day operational use..."

Really?GuessI am daft because I don't see it.

Vista  doesn't work poorly for me. In fact, it doesn't work significantly different then my other system that runs Win7.

Stability  has never been an issue for me. Both run more reliably then XP ever did for me. Must be your hardware.

[Fats]

[/I]Vista  doesn't work poorly for me. In fact, it doesn't work significantly different then my other system that runs Win7.

I only run Windows virtually here at home and that seems to work
I do know at my work they spend considerable effort to switch from XP2 SP2 to Vista but in the end backtracked and stayed at XP as they could never get the Vista environment problem free.

greets,
Staf.

[Fats]

typically much more restrictive than the keyboard bottleneck (rate of precision typing)

And then that is still not the fastest way to type. I do remember when live subtitliing was introduced on the Holland television. These people were trained to use a keyboard to input syllables and not single letters and also it was done by pressing combinations of keys at the same time.

greets,
Staf.