Microsoft's Dumbest And Smartest Moves Of 2011

[Iggy]

I'm with most of you on this.
Tablets are a bit painful as a substitute for a PC.
Kind of like carrying around a giant cell phone
 
Anyone remember those giant novelty TV remotes?
 
Honestly, if I have to carry around something that big, I want a real fricking keyboard.
 
And Windows 8, why?

[Iggy]

I'd second the opinion that a tablet centered UI for all Windows8 computers is seriously dumb.

Microsoft's problem is that older windows variants are still perfectly usable.

Something tells me Win8 will not be that great a success and that WinXP, Vista, and Win7 will be around for quite awhile longer.

[Iggy]

Windows 8 is like Windows 1 - you can either have a bunch of small panes tiled together, or a full-screen.

Remember how popular Windows 1 was?

Not really. We had it on the shelf for sale.
But I don't remember actually using a version of Windows till some IBM engineers gave me a beta copy of Windows 3.0.

[Iggy]

Persia,
I don't doubt tablets are here to stay. I fact I was looking at a 7" one yesterday because I thought it might be convenient to carry around the house.

I just hope that Win8 features an alternate to its touch based UI as I don't feel comfortable with that or require it on a desktop.

In some ways, touch is a bigger pain then an advantage.

[Iggy]

Good points John.
I like having a real keyboard.
Laptop keyboards are a poor substitute.
Phones, if they have a keyboard, offer ridiculously small keys.
And tablets don't have real keyboards.

[Iggy]

Yes, I suppose when literacy finally gasps its last and the alphabet is discarded as arcane devil-runes that distract us from the right and proper path of licensed media consumption, we won't need keyboards for much anymore...

:roflmao::roflmao::roflmao:

Yes! I'm still not sure how I'm going to enter text from a touch interface (a picture of a keyboard? lame).

[Iggy]

...make you look like a goon for talking to an inanimate object...

The first time I saw someone with a Bluetooth phone interface, I thought they were schizophrenic. Walking along talking to someone that wasn't there...weird.

[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.

[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.

[Iggy]

Vista is like a high maintenance girlfriend who is also very ugly, why bother?

What significant differences do you see in Win7?
Split screens?

[Iggy]

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.

Funny, I'm running it right now and I don't have any problems (at least none that also don't surface in Win7).

[Iggy]

...if you really want to do something in a terminal/command line you need a Mac...

:roflmao:

Now that IS funny!

Windows grows out of a CLI based OS (MS-DOS), but Apple Mac's (which have always been GUI based) are the choice for command lines.

BTW - Glad to see a few other Vista users here. Win7 has completely underwhelmed me.

[Iggy]

Mac is BSD.  Why is that funny?

Because Mac IS BSD NOW.
Its kind of like jacking up a car and driving a new one underneath it.
Exactly what about Macs has any relationship to its origins?
Three ISAs, multiple radical OS changes, definitely your Grandfathers axe.

[Iggy]

Fascinating how a thread that was introduced to denigrate Microsoft has provoked so many defensive responses.

I was using OS9 on 68000 based computers before Linux existed.
Minix was around, BSD existed on college servers, and Microsoft was still pushing Xenix.
But the Mac crowd was using a graphic based OS with no command line (on a black and white display) and X86 machines were running a criude CLI based OS that was basically a copy of CPM.

So now, two decades later, you young punks think you can educate ME?

You're just using systems that have finally caught up to ideas I was advocating in the 80's.

[Iggy]

You tell 'em! :lol:

In a way, all older Amiga users ought to feel the same way.

Using a colorful multi-media, multi-tasking computer before anyone else caught on?

Why be apologetic? Everything else looks like our machines now.