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Operating System Specific Discussions => Other Operating Systems => Topic started by: persia on March 02, 2012, 02:21:49 PM
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Anyone playing around with the MS Windows 8 consumer beta? I've loaded it on an X86 tablet and it definitely has potential. The screen keyboard is in the right place more than half the time, the gestures work and make as much sense as the gestures on any other tablet device. There aren't many tablet specific programs, it's a pain to use MS Word on it.
My first reaction was where was the ()$%$#((# Windows ball????? But it isn't needed on a tablet and would just be an annoyance. I have yet to try it on a desktop but every gesture seems to have a mouse equivalent (I tried a mouse before I learned the gestures) and it's fairly easy to get to your programs. You just need to unlearn some of the conventions that were added with Windows 95. I'd give it a 3.5 on a scale of 1 to 5, higher when the bugs are worked out.
(http://www.replica-watch.info/vb/images/smilies/pirates5B15D_th.gif)
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My first reaction was where was the ()$%$#((# Windows ball?????
What is a "Windows ball"?
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What is a "Windows ball"?
The button on the task bar that opens up the start menu. Start button as other people call it. LMAO. I suppose start button is a stupid name considering Windows is already running.
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Got it, YAWN, tiles are great on my kitchen floor, not so much for my OS. Here comes Vista 2.0.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2401064,00.asp
For a long time M$ has been missing it's best feature (Billy Gates). Like him or not, without him MS is doomed.
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Got it, YAWN, tiles are great in my kitchen, not so much for my OS. Here comes Vista 2.0.
Nah, you need voice recognition in your kitchen or you get pancake mix all over the screen when your touching the tiles....
..that wasn't what you meant was it?
But seriously, I agree with you. Windows 8 does not have me convinced.
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I understand it on tablets and phones. And I know you will be able to switch to a more standard view on desktops and non-touch screen monitor setups.
I hate what they have done to Xbox dashboard
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I hate what they have done to Xbox dashboard
+1!!!!!
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Yeah - I hear ya on the xbox dashboard. You know who doesn't hate the new xbox dashboard? My wife.
These ugly interfaces are focus grouped to DEATH. I won't call it Vista, and I will refuse to buy it for myself most likely, but it is the future. Its the future for the computer as appliance generation -- we are not that generation.
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I always thought it was more a way of trying to validate paying $150 for the stupid motion sensor.
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Yeah - I hear ya on the xbox dashboard. You know who doesn't hate the new xbox dashboard? My wife.
These ugly interfaces are focus grouped to DEATH. I won't call it Vista, and I will refuse to buy it for myself most likely, but it is the future. Its the future for the computer as appliance generation -- we are not that generation.
Yes, those types of interfaces might be the future. CDTV started that trend, one of the CDTV guys actually works for the xbox division. It's very doubtful that MS will capture that computer as an appliance future. Apple already dominates it and GoogleTV is nice too. Lets not forget Android which sells and sells.
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Well, yeah, the XBox 360 dashboard update has not been a favorite of mine, either. (Though, to be fair, I haven't used it with Kinect.) But, in general, I was having a very hard time trying to wrap my brain around what Microsoft is trying to accomplish with the Metro interface.
I ended up having a bit of time I could allocate to testing at work, and I threw the Windows 8 Consumer Preview on a smallish average laptop (i3, 4GB RAM, Intel GMA), to see if I could make more sense of things.
Short answer: I think I understand Metro more. But I don't think I've seen a good implementation of it, yet.
The W8 preview feels like a complete hack-job. It is almost two competing operational management systems that are stuck together because neither one quite accomplishes everything it sets out to do.
I can see that I could actually like the new Metro home. I'm starting to "get" this a bit. Like the XBox dashboard, it does still feel disorganized. But I think I could sort it out in my brain, and come up with some useful layouts, here. It's in serious need of more live widgets, though. Why isn't my email an actual email window? Show me my most recent message headers, here. Same with the messaging and social networking stuff. And why isn't my Internet Explorer URL shortcut an actual Internet Explorer instance? Show me the webpage, not a big logo. If my Android device easily has enough horsepower to do this, I don't see why W8 can't. Why don't I have a persistent "Back" button to get out of applications in the Metro interface? All I can do is go back to home, and then close them from the finicky sidebar.
I think Microsoft is trying to remove the idea of application management from the user experience. And (I haven't tried it, yet) but I've heard that W8 will cull idle backgrounded applications as it needs to... But I'm a bit paranoid about privacy and like to actually close things I'm done with. And, aside from security, being able to easily close things I'm done with should help ensure that the OS won't automatically cull the browser session I left backgrounded because I wanted to wait until later to read that interesting article I accidentally found.
And, outside Metro, the old desktop is still there, like a strange relic. Except it feels like it's half missing, as there's no start menu launcher, anymore. It almost feels like an old Unix X session without a Window Manager, now. There's just an empty translucent bar with IE and Windows Explorer pinned to it, for some reason. It makes for a strange breaking point separated from the modern context. I suppose you could do like all my users do, and just create shortcuts for all your applications on the desktop (or pin them to the bar)... But, it just seems like a really clunky solution.
So, I guess my biggest gripe is rather ironic. Even though this is one of the largest interface overhauls Microsoft has ever done... And I know how much users are resistant to change... I don't think Microsoft overhauled nearly enough to pull this one off successfully.
ETA: I struck out a part of this post. I was having problems with Windows 8 syncing my Live and Local accounts. Turns out the PC clock wasn't set, and this was causing Windows to fail authorization, as well as causing all syncs to fail.
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I tried Win8 back when it was the developer test.
It blows. It's annoying.
Screw tablets and screw touchey poke interfaces.
the clear move to try and make traditional computing obsolete in favor of this mobile horse **** is well, horse ****. Why is the standard Windows style setup sort of thrown in the backseat?
It wasn't designed with keyboard heavy use in mind.
I'm waiting for them to say "oh we got rid of cmd.exe. you dont need to type any of that in. just poke everything, it'll do it for you"
The whole thing feels like a gimmick. Screw that.
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Screw tablets
I like tablets, but only ones that run proper art apps. That's because I'm an artist of course, I see little other use for them beyond the digital easel.
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I actually tried it. Wow, another milestone in GUI inconsistency. On the pro side I found that it installs remarkably fast. But then again, I uninstalled it even faster. :D
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I installed it under VM Fusion on my Mac, and it's absolutely awful as a desktop OS. I had to install mouse drivers. Mouse drivers! PCs haven't had to deal with that since early DOS. And the driver package left 5 new icons on my metro panel. Such clutter! And if I remove them, the file system is so masked that I don't know where I'd find them if I needed access to them at some future point.
Also like DOS, there's no multitasking. At least, it's almost impossible to tell from the metro interface what's running. I find navigating within metro programs to be extremely difficult as well. I'll give this another few hours of experimentation, then it's going in the proverbial trash.
On the plus side, it's making me use my Amiga more!
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I installed it under VM Fusion on my Mac, and it's absolutely awful as a desktop OS. I had to install mouse drivers. Mouse drivers! PCs haven't had to deal with that since early DOS.
devicehigh = c:\[strike]dos[/strike]windows8\mouse.sys :roflmao:
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I couldn't get it to install - despite my PC being more than up to the task. It gets about 3/4 of the way through and then says it can't continue, due to an error - sound like the sort of message a mac would display!
Anyway, remember the Metro front-end is optional and not really recommended for a desktop, unless you have a nifty touch-screen. The standard desktop is much more like Win 7 and pretty acceptable.
Mike.
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Anyway, remember the Metro front-end is optional and not really recommended for a desktop, unless you have a nifty touch-screen. The standard desktop is much more like Win 7 and pretty acceptable.
Mike.
Metro is on by default, and I haven't figured out how to get rid of it yet. And as Triptaka. Notes, the start menu is gone. Not sure if turning off metro will bring it back. Do I have to manually navigate to Program Files to launch things?
OSNews calls these trends the War on General Purpose Computing. Windows is turning itself into a digital toy like the iPad. I wonder if this will sink them in the business market?
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Correction correction: Its not Windows 8 Consumer "beta". Its Windows 8 Consumer Preview.
Or Windows 8 CP.
:)
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OSNews calls these trends the War on General Purpose Computing. Windows is turning itself into a digital toy like the iPad. I wonder if this will sink them in the business market?
That's what baffles me about this. Microsoft had a huge presence in the workplace with Windows XP, because it was easily tweakable (and I mean easily, like your-grandma-can-figure-it-out easy) into the same no-nonsense user environment that was the standard since Windows 95. Come Vista, they started to nerf that capability, and I suspect that may be one of the reasons I see far fewer Vista/7 workstations than XP workstations in business environments (the other, of course, being that businesses don't usually feel the need to upgrade something that already works if doing so will cost money or a significant time investment.)
Still, though, excepting a few changes that annoy the hell out of some people (i.e. me) but probably not most, 7 is still pretty much like XP. 8, though... By all accounts I've seen the classic-desktop mode in 8 is hardly more than an afterthought (no Start menu? Seriously?) I don't know what they're thinking. The home market isn't exactly chump change to Microsoft, but compared to the massive number of business licenses, you'd have to think it'd give them pause to consider who they're more worried about pissing off - are they really going to try and leave business customers without a proper classic environment? That's not going to make anybody very happy...
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@ commodorejohn
My company is only just now switching to 7. My machine, which I got about 18 months ago, shipped with 7 and IT removed it and put on XP. There is absolutely no way I can do what I need to do with 8.
Good old trends! Just be because someone is doing something doesn't mean that everyone should. Lots of follow the leader in computing these days.
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this is sounding like Ubuntu's move from gnome to unity.
I'm still on gnome because it does all that I want it to and I know it well. I don't want to learn ANOTHER way to do what I now can without thinking.
Some will say thats like the people complaining about going from a CLI to a GUI. I don't think it is.
Touch screen interfaces have their place where its cumbersome to have a mouse-driven and menu interface.
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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/03/andrew_does_windows8/
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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/03/andrew_does_windows8/
I've always been a huge fan of Andrew's writing. He's almost always spot-on.
I installed Windows 8 Developer Preview in VirtualBox. As with 7, it's very snappy and responsive, even using VB's built-in RDP. I'm going to install it on my "entertainment" PC sitting under the TV stand just for kicks. But the short, I'm not overly excited about Metro. Not at all, actually, for my laptop or a business PC.
I can, however, see some keenness on a PC connected to the TV. I have to use 1024x768 on the TV (yes, it's non-HD over S-Video, wanna fight about it?) is barely readable even using the 150% setting in 7, mostly because many websites over-ride my preferences. But I can see switching to 800x600 with Windows 8 and it being very usable... at least in Windows terms as most programs simply cannot contain themselves to such low resolutions (even bloody installers) and I'll be luck to find the [OK] button.
So, again, it looks like it will work well for an entertainment environment. Agreed, get rid of Metro and the performance enhancements would be a boon for productivity apps. Otherwise, 8 looks like a fancy toy.
As far as 7 goes, personally I absolutely despise, loath, and abhor (not to mention just about any thesaurus word for "hate") the Vista interface. I can't stand navigating a phone tree to use my computer, and asking "Windows, may I?" to access some of the advanced functions I have to access on a daily basis in the line of my IT duties. For my business users, and were I a standard user, I would be able to settle just fine. But I am not, and I have found that many users possessing power user-level skills and above feel the same as I do (not all, mind you, but the majority with whom I work.)
I've been rolling out Windows 7 x64 since just about its release. The betas and RCs were splendid, so I was quite pleased and ready when the time came. XP mode works beautifully, in my experience. Vista, on the other hand, was a nightmare and a disaster -- for a while I was making good money "downgrading" computers which shipped with Vista, and I did not sell a single computer with Vista on it.
Hopefully Microsoft will listen to the business market and realize that they can capture the home and mobile market with Metro without pissing off business. Of course, business will follow grudgingly into the fold if they have no choice.
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@LoadWB
What home & mobile market is left for MS to capture? Apple & Google already own it.
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@LoadWB
What home & mobile market is left for MS to capture? Apple & Google already own it.
Mobile, perhaps. But home is still owned by Windows. For now, at least.
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Mobile, perhaps. But home is still owned by Windows. For now, at least.
Not my home, Apple's 100 billion $ in the bank and 500 billion $ market cap proves it is not only me.
:)
This
http://www.google.com/finance?client=news&q=apple
Vs
http://www.google.com/finance?q=microsoft
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Not my home, Apple's 100 billion $ in the bank and 500 billion $ market cap proves it is not only me.
:)
This
http://www.google.com/finance?client=news&q=apple
Vs
http://www.google.com/finance?q=microsoft
Granted, but I am also not the only person with an Amiga on his desktop, but that doesn't necessarily make my platform selection relevant. So, I'll see your financial data and raise you an equally irrelevant market share research quote.
Gartner Says Worldwide PC Shipments Increased 2.3 Percent in Second Quarter of 2011
http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1744216
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I suspect Microsoft will be forced to put some kind of implementation of the ball (which was called a start button in old (pre-2004) Windows versions) into Windows 8. The two headed interface is confusing, especially when one of the heads seems to be just an incomplete remnant of what used to be the standard interface. Metro is supposed to be that old start ball spread horizontally in tiles, but I can't see this making a lot of sense on a notebook unless you change some of the functionality of a notebook track pad.
I'm going to load this up in a Virtualbox on a Mac and see how my Magic Track pad works with it. So far I've only used it on a tablet and it is far far better on a tablet than Windows 7. But then Windows 7 on a tablet was akin to Chinese water torture....
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Perhaps they should have made a tablet and desktop version. Both tailored to the environment in question. I can see a lot of desktops sticking with 7.
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Market share will always be skewed from reality due to 80s and 90s people getting PCs despite it [Wintel) being the 5th worst home solution (after Acorn/Apple/Atari/Commodore solutions).
I believe it was last year when sales of Macs (to students) outstripped sales of Windows machines?
But hey now they have Kinect/360 profits due to Windows/DOS$'s now ;)
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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/03/andrew_does_windows8/
Nicely put. It's good to see someone publically calling this out as the forcible takeover of Windows by the self-styled "designers." Art students who think they know interface design are bad enough in web design, where they're absolute farkin' endemic, the last thing we need is for them to successfully worm themselves into the operating system itself.
But I can see switching to 800x600 with Windows 8 and it being very usable...
According to the Register article, though, it requires a minimum of 1366x768? Or does it simply require a device capable of that?
As far as 7 goes, personally I absolutely despise, loath, and abhor (not to mention just about any thesaurus word for "hate") the Vista interface.
I agree. The inability to switch back to even the standard XP behavior (let alone the nice, simple Classic look) is basically the only reason I haven't upgraded to 7 and don't plan to if I can avoid it.
Perhaps they should have made a tablet and desktop version. Both tailored to the environment in question. I can see a lot of desktops sticking with 7.
That would've made too much sense, I guess. Or rather, it wouldn't make the Metro team feel as validated as they will by forcing their design on everybody...
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Perhaps they should have made a tablet and desktop version. Both tailored to the environment in question. I can see a lot of desktops sticking with 7.
Why have a tablet or desktop when you can have a table?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlWCgWCoeOg
:)
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Metro apps require 1024x768, they won't run on a lower resolution. My tablet has 1024x600 so I do a neat little registry hack to fool the OS.
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ITT: Guys who have grown old over using a windows-and-mouse centered GUI and thus having become too inflexible to adapt to something new, i.e. the inevitable future - apps-n-tiles.
I like growing old, btw.
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Hardly "inevitable." The only reason this exists is because the tablet fad is in full swing. It's not as if this is some kind of logical evolution of the GUI that is the only possible future direction.
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Been playing with it for a day or so, now. On the TV unit (a Dell P4 2.66GHz with 2GB RAM, 512MB video with S-Video output, 160GB IDE hard drive,) it installed in right around 20 minutes. It happily output at 800x600, which made everything easy to see, but not a single app would launch, giving me the error that my resolution was too low (including IE, which launched happily on the Desktop.) I changed to 1024x768 to try a few things only to discover afterward that I cannot reduce back to 800x600.
Firefox 10 runs great, including with Flash. I have been unable, however, to get Flash to work at all in IE. Dell's OEM PowerDVD crashes when launched specifically, though its DVD decoder appears to work in Windows Media Center, which launches even when requesting the DVD be played with PowerDVD. The requirement to use WMC may be due to PowerDVD crashing, though I am not convinced of that. Windows Explorer sees my Sony Ericsson C905a connected to the network via wireless, and sees its music, video, and photo content just fine, though Windows Media Center refuses to play ACC-encoded M4A files. Boot time is rather fast, bringing up the Start screen within 30 seconds from a cold boot. As a whole the system is rather peppy and responsive, surprising given the age of the hardware. Some videos which were jumpy on the same hardware under Windows 7 run very smoothly with no jitter. I've attempted to add a few different network library sources (photos, music, videos) to see how the apps work with them, but I frankly lost interest in doing so as time has gone on. I might dink around with those later.
I also installed the x64 edition under VirtualBox on a quad-core 2.66GHz machine with 8GB RAM hosted by Windows XP x64. 2GB allocated to RAM, 128MB given to the video with 3D acceleration turned on. Again, performance is surprisingly satisfactory. Boot up is fast, when it boots: I actually have not been able to get it started since the last shut-down as it attempts each time to perform a repair. I suspect this might be a problem since I installed anti-virus in this guest, though it's worked fine numerous times since installation.
I suppose my fault in the media PC is that I don't have an HD TV. I can see it working much better on such a setup. Things would be readable, at least. The interface looked very good at 800x600, and the requirement to run 1024x768 or better seems like an arbitrary requirement as the apps could easily be coded to render more friendly at the lower resolution. But, I'm fighting against progress, here. I'm surprised at the performance on such old hardware. Windows 7 runs pretty well on the same machine, and I expected that the latest-and-greatest would put much more strain on it. Microsoft definitely seems to have learned from the Vista fiasco.
While working with the troublesome x64 virtualized installation I've had the chance to work with some of the troubleshooting options on the installation media (similar to Windows 7.) Very clean, concise, and easy to navigate. While it offers simple options for some advanced fixes, I would like to see wording which is a little more description of what each option does, or at least a pop-up which does so. You can restore from a previous image, refresh the installation, and so on. The repair also offers advanced options for the advanced used, including a command prompt with the standard set of troubleshooting and configuration commands. Alas, as I write this I have been unsuccessful in salvaging this installation. I will play a little with disabling the anti-virus drivers to see if that helps as so far even restoring back to a previous point at which Windows booted properly has failed.
That's all I have for now. In short, pleasantly surprised at performance, and while I do not particularly care for the interface for productivity purposes on a desktop, I can see where as a media or portable PC it has its place.
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I changed to 1024x768 to try a few things only to discover afterward that I cannot reduce back to 800x600.
That is annoying, I have the same on my netbook with 1024x600 LCD that can do fake 1024x768. I'm currently using quickres2 to allow me to switch back to 1024x600.
http://oette.wordpress.com/quickres2/
The missing start menu is a little weird at first, if you get too lost then you can add a toolbar to the "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu" directory to the taskbar.
The "charms" menu is a bit annoying to pop up with a trackpad, but I've been using the keyboard shortcuts.
http://www.overclock.net/t/1224031/itw-windows-8-consumer-preview-keyboard-shortcuts
Until I found about those and the "charms", I was a bit lost as to find anything like computer management etc. Windows I is the new Ctrl Escape.
I'm not entirely convinced about Windows 8 yet, but I've only got it my netbook so far. I noticed one program that I launch effortlessly with years of muscle memory on Windows 7 & earlier is now quicker using the new app menu. So I think there is definately promise & we are way off release, this is not even an alpha release in terms of final functionality.
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Windows 8 is going to be another windows that nobody like just like Windows Vista. I wait for Windows 9 hopefully by then AMiga OS5 might be out. I hate the tile idea on a desktop os. If you wont that look why not just make a theme/App that you can install not change the whole dam OS.
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Microsoft's Metro folks are trying to engineer a paradigm change that hasn't happened in Windows since 95. It's the same one that's driving OS X and Linux Unity.
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Yes, and they're wrong there, too.
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I dunno... I can clearly see the lowest denominator lapping it all up. My problem is that while the user interfaces are being dumbed-down to match a massive untapped user base, technically-savvy users are being shat on and told they have to dumb-down. Suddenly, the technically inept look like uber-users and the rest are made out to be dinosaurs and luddite hold-outs, and made to feel like elitist snobs that don't want anyone else in their playpen.
Kinda like how the term "geek" has been co-opted by gamers.
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I'm not so certain on that. Doubtless Microsoft are hoping that the non-techies will eat this up, but there's two factors that I think they either haven't considered or have brushed aside.
One is that there are still a hell of a lot of desktops and laptops in use in home environments. I can't dispute that tablets are selling well these days, but I don't believe there's more than a few people who have only a tablet. Even "average users" are still users, and I don't think any initial infatuation Win8 does manage will last too long in the face of millions of people trying to use an interface designed for tablets and phones on desktops and laptops.
(And that's assuming that this doesn't turn into something like Vista, where word-of-mouth spreads so quickly that even ordinary non-techies start avoiding it.)
The other, of course, is that I still don't see how they can possibly hope to reconcile this toy shell with the needs of business customers. By what I've read they keep saying "oh, yeah, we've got that covered, don't worry about it," but they haven't revealed any kind of plan, and if the insistence that Metro is The Official Way Forward has any basis in reality, it suggests that they're just ignoring the issue and hoping it'll go away - good luck with that, MS.
We'll see how it all works out, but given their apparent blithe disregard for any issues of practicality, I don't see this going anything like how they apparently hope it will.
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@LoadWB Yeah, when are they going to put the switches back on the front of computers so we can enter programs like real programmers. Keyboards and mice are for wimps.
(http://www.superamir.be/files/images/supercoder.jpg)
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Hey, we can all have a good laugh at the days of front-panel switches, but at least with the Altair there wasn't a third party controlling every software installation...
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Linux Unity
There's no such thing.
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Well....I installed it. Then removed it. Don't need it. They must be really bored.
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My problem is that while the user interfaces are being dumbed-down to match a massive untapped user base, technically-savvy users are being shat on and told they have to dumb-down.
Windows 8 isn't dumbed down, at least on x86/x64 platforms. It's just different.
There are many improvements unrelated to metro, which is why they allow you to install on a machine that doesn't meet the resolution requirements of metro. Task manager & the file copy progress are much better for instance.
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Is Windows 8 Metro failing even at Microsoft?
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/is-windows-8-metro-failing-even-at-microsoft/10311
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Windows 8 isn't dumbed down, at least on x86/x64 platforms. It's just different.
There are many improvements unrelated to metro, which is why they allow you to install on a machine that doesn't meet the resolution requirements of metro. Task manager & the file copy progress are much better for instance.
It may indeed have tons of architectural improvements under the hood - by all accounts it's quite snappy, which is always nice (and a rare pleasure for any version of Windows at launch.) However, the Metro UI absolutely is dumbed down - there's the inherent dumbness in trying to push a tablet/phone UI on a desktop/laptop environment, however nice of a tablet/phone UI it might be, but by many accounts there are things that are just plain stupid (they tried to kill Alt+Tab. They didn't succeed, because of all the screaming, but the mere fact that they tried should point to how wrong-headed they're being about serving the needs of Windows users. And the "Start screen" is quite frankly a massive, pointless waste of space in a desktop environment, but they're not giving you the option to get rid of it.)
I have no problem whatsoever with performance improvements - in fact, I am all for anything that makes Windows lighter and faster. I am less pleased at the attempt to move away from native code and the Win32 API and onto Microsoft's proprietary VM (primarily because any VM is a waste, but also because backwards compatibility is half the reason I use Windows in the first place,) but for the moment they haven't ditched it, so I'll leave that argument until its proper time. What I cannot tolerate is a bunch of upstart "designers" telling me that I need to just get used to them changing things on me because they need a prominent place to display their little art project, so that people will appreciate it as is their due. Yeah, here's your appreciation, Metro Team: I'm not buying it. Not unless someone in management reins you in and makes your tablet OS entirely 100% optional on my non-tablet. Period.
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Metro (tile) UI is optional, and the desktop interface is not much different than Win 7 once you get past the changes to start button. Your run command, cmd line and similar are still there...
However, there is a lot to be said for the "who wants/needs this?" critics - and I am one of those critics, and also a person that works in supporting MS products as a MCSE/MSCA for a living. Win 8 is snappy, runs well, but Metro brings nothing to me over Windows 7, really. I won't shell out good money for a "new" OS, just to have to revert it to a familiar GUI desktop via settings or group policy. I see no real way I could use the Metro UI in a productive manner in the ways I currently use computers, and many others - a vast majority of serious computer users in fact, likely feel the same. All the good intentions of MS and others to "appify" the desktop on traditional computers is a real, real hard sell. I fail to see value in such an interface on a serious level on the desktop if said interface is merely a way to launch programs into traditional desktop modes for productivity purposes. It comes off as a hacky skinned interface to me, for how I use a computer anyways.
I have zero intentions of ever owning a W8 tablet, but for some there *might* be some appeal in the "Apple" sense of using a more tablet-like interface on a desktop. The Metro UI might be very nice to use with an input device similar to the Apple magic trackpad and gestures, but for me W8/Metro is a complete nightmare to try and use via traditional input methods with that Metro UI.
But you also have to bear in mind that people 1 year from now will simply have this OS on the machines they buy off the store shelves, so it's forced adoption in a wide sense. A strategy that may prove to be entirely worthless if it turns out that 95% of the users of Windows 8 are simply running it with Metro entirely turned off. I suspect that will be the case for many users.
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The problem in IT has always been forecasting the future. It's an industry younger than a lot of the people in it. Personal computers started out in people's garages and a plaything of geeks and have become a household appliance.
What percentage of people prefer a touch or touch like interface? The tablet marketplace is exploding while laptop and desktop sales stagnate. If I were a manufacturer I could easily read that as the market demanding more touch devices. The click the windows ball and have all your programs listed is an outdated paradigm, most people just pin their favourite apps to the non-dock dock bar at the bottom and never touch the "start" ball. The question is what makes the most sense to replace it with. Would metro make more sense if your computer had a kinect connected to it?
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Well eh. It's been how many months since windows 7 came out? Time for people to pay the piper again (and again for the undoubtedly accompanying version of office)
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The problem in IT has always been forecasting the future. It's an industry younger than a lot of the people in it. Personal computers started out in people's garages and a plaything of geeks and have become a household appliance.
IT has been a full-fledged industry since the '50s. And forecasting the future is always tricky, but one consistent lesson from those 60-odd years has been that change for change's sake is going to be derided, disliked, and usually ultimately ignored. Technologies that don't offer concrete improvements don't tend to stick around.
(Even technologies that do offer improvements have to justify the cost of the transition in time and effort - which is why the US still uses the imperial measurement system and not metric. Moving to an entirely different UI paradigm on a device not even designed for it is likely to be a hell of a transition cost.)
What percentage of people prefer a touch or touch like interface? The tablet marketplace is exploding while laptop and desktop sales stagnate. If I were a manufacturer I could easily read that as the market demanding more touch devices.
And thus we see the folly of making all decisions based on sales-driven market research. If Microsoft had bothered to look further into the question, they might've realized that people aren't not using laptops and desktops just because they aren't buying new ones as often. And if they paid more attention to use instead of sales, those countless fleets of XP workstations out in the field might tell them something...
"You can't invent a customer to fit your research." It's a lesson that somehow we keep failing to learn.
The click the windows ball and have all your programs listed is an outdated paradigm, most people just pin their favourite apps to the non-dock dock bar at the bottom and never touch the "start" ball. The question is what makes the most sense to replace it with.
The question is whether it needs replacing at all, and the answer is "no." "Outdated" as a slur in UI design is a warning sign that you're entering change-for-change's-sake territory, and UI is the absolute worst place for that kind of thinking. The Start menu has survived from 1995-present by being a useful feature, even if not everybody uses it all the time. It doesn't need to be changed just because it's old. I'm older than the Start menu, and I might guess that you are - should we be thrown out and be replaced with vapid stand-ins simply for being "outdated?"
Would metro make more sense if your computer had a kinect connected to it?
No.
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Have you ever heard one Mac user say "Gee, what we need is a round ball that you click that lists the contents of your applications folder?"? But of course we do need to be sure that what we replace it with is better from a UI perspective. I agree with you that we aren't to the touch pad, kinect, touch screen phase in the PC world yet and it's not clear that will end up the direction. The Metro developers clearly believe that it is the direction, but for the operating system to lead rather than follow is dangerous.
Apple is moving iOS and OS X back together, but they are doing it in steps, making sure that the hardware & software work together in a logical way. Microsoft seems bound and determined to skip all those steps in between and plunk a fully developed unified desktop/tablet OS down this year.
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Have you ever heard one Mac user say "Gee, what we need is a round ball that you click that lists the contents of your applications folder?"?
No, I have not, but here's the thing:
A. Mac is not Windows, and their users do not expect either to be the other. It would be generally unreasonable of them to. (Any given user probably has a few behaviors they'd like to see carried over, but if they were really unhappy with one they'd probably switch.) Windows users do expect Windows to be Windows, though, and rightfully so.
And B. Mac OS has actually had equivalent functionality for a long time (since its inception? At least since System 6.) In classic Mac OS, you can add program shortcuts (or even programs, period) to the Apple menu simply by placing them in the Apple menu folder, exactly like the Start menu - in later versions, it even supports sub-folders. OS X moves this functionality to the Dock, but the end result is roughly the same. (Minus the sub-folders, annoyingly, but that's details.)
Having an application-shortcuts menu is a tremendously useful thing - note how many implementations of this functionality are available on Aminet, for instance. Even Microsoft isn't trying to ditch it entirely, because that would be stupid even by Metro standards - they're just trying to make it waste enormous amounts of screen space and cover up everything you're doing every time you want to launch a program.
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(they tried to kill Alt+Tab. They didn't succeed, because of all the screaming, but the mere fact that they tried should point to how wrong-headed they're being about serving the needs of Windows users.
Both the consumer & developer preview have alt+tab, I don't think there was ever a chance it would disappear.
Windows 8 is ambitious but it is not finished yet. Screaming is unlikely to have any positive effect. Everyone at Microsoft should be running the preview by now & they are Windows users too.
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"Ambitious" is only a positive if the aims are good. Windows 8 with Metro is a retrogression to the attempts at operating systems for the computer-illiterate of the 1990s, like Microsoft Bob and Packard Bell Navigator. It's ambitious in the sense that Smith & Wesson switching all their product lines to Nerf guns is ambitious - ballsy, yes, but a completely terrible idea in every other respect.
(Also, I don't know how "unfinished" it can possibly be, when they're talking about rolling it out this fall...)
(According to the previously-mentioned Register article, (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/03/andrew_does_windows8/) the developer preview attempted to ditch Alt+Tab, but as I haven't used that I'll defer to those who have.)
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Well eh. It's been how many months since windows 7 came out? Time for people to pay the piper again (and again for the undoubtedly accompanying version of office)
Uhh, Win 7 has been out for well over 2 years. RTM was in July, 2009 - retail in October, 2009.
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Uhh, Win 7 has been out for well over 2 years. RTM was in July, 2009 - retail in October, 2009.
well, then you are well overdue to cough up another 100 bucks.
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well, then you are well overdue to cough up another 100 bucks.
What? Did the Apple mother ship release Bengal Tiger, already?
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What? Did the Apple mother ship release Bengal Tiger, already?
The man makes sense to me.
Win 7 should have been Vista Service Pack 3. But Vista became a dirty word, so they said:" I know what, lets make them pay for something they should have got when Vista first came out, and call it something else".
And now MS wants to start the ball rolling again, this time wanting to make touch screen hardware as essential as a mouse.
How many OS's will they be supporting with updates/service packs/ security concurrently?
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I don't get the whining about Win8. They replaced the start button with a start screen and added a new application layer for metro stuff. I've been using the developer preview for a few months now, it's the same Windows we've been using forever with some minor tweaks to things like explorer and task manager. Big deal.
I like the start screen, it's easier to find stuff there than the horrid start menu, and easier to configure. I always launched applications from the run box or pinned commonly used stuff on the bar.
The metro apps are kind of pointless on the desktop, I simply don't use them. It doesn't bother me, I'm not so anal as to complain about something simply for the sake that it exists. They would be useful on a tablet and it's good to be able to have access to them on the desktop. Who knows, when I get an x86 Win8 tablet, I may find some apps useful enough to want them on the desktop as well.
It will be nice to have Win8 on an x86 tablet, everything one could want on a tablet that can also pull double duty as a full blooded PC when docked at the office or at home. Such a setup makes the iPad and Android tablets look like children's toys. I've had an iPad 2 for several months now, I've found its locked down nature and lack of features frustrating to say the least.
Microsoft finally seems to be on the right track again.
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Win 7 should have been Vista Service Pack 3.
Trolling, but I'll take a teensy weensy bite. I've seen this statement made more than a few times, and it's utter rubbish. The kernel enhancements alone made in 7 are far more than just a service pack. I made a lengthy post on the matter somewhere and I can't be arsed to find it. Suffice to say: no, Windows 7 is not worthy of a simple SP moniker for Vista.
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I don't get the whining about Win8. They replaced the start button with a start screen and added a new application layer for metro stuff. I've been using the developer preview for a few months now, it's the same Windows we've been using forever with some minor tweaks to things like explorer and task manager. Big deal.
I like the start screen, it's easier to find stuff there than the horrid start menu, and easier to configure. I always launched applications from the run box or pinned commonly used stuff on the bar.
Well, I can't say you're "wrong" for liking the Start screen (or rather, I can and would go on at length about it, but I don't think either of us would convince the other on that front,) but I will say this: I don't object to its existence as much as I object to the idea that I should have to use it. They say that Metro is "optional," but as I understand it there's no way to turn off the Metro Start and get the old Start menu back, and that's a deal-killer for me. I want my options.
(Hell, the inability to get back the classic, proper hierarchical-folders Start menu is one of the reasons I haven't even moved to 7 yet.)
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Well, I can't say you're "wrong" for liking the Start screen (or rather, I can and would go on at length about it, but I don't think either of us would convince the other on that front,) but I will say this: I don't object to its existence as much as I object to the idea that I should have to use it. They say that Metro is "optional," but as I understand it there's no way to turn off the Metro Start and get the old Start menu back, and that's a deal-killer for me. I want my options.
(Hell, the inability to get back the classic, proper hierarchical-folders Start menu is one of the reasons I haven't even moved to 7 yet.)
I'll second the forced-usage angle. I've seen elsewhere that the RPEnable registry trick was removed from the consumer preview so it could be troubleshot better. The conjecture is that most people would have just turned it off right away, which in and of itself might say something.
Anyway, you might want to check out Classic Shell (http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/)
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Yeah, I've seen Classic Shell, and I'm sure I'll be taking advantage of that if I ever do move to 7. For now I'm sticking with XP while I can get hardware to run it, and looking at alternatives.
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One of the great things about new versions of Windows is that you get to watch people blow their gaskets over the new changes, then 5 years later you get to watch them blow up again while vigorously defending the very same version they previously lambasted.
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One of the great things about new versions of Windows is that you get to watch people blow their gaskets over the new changes, then 5 years later you get to watch them blow up again while vigorously defending the very same version they previously lambasted.
Maybe so, but I've been a fan of the (Classic-tweaked) XP interface since I first started using XP, and I remain so today, eight years later. Good design is good design (or at least decent design,) and developers today could stand to re-learn the value of leaving well enough alone.
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Trolling, but I'll take a teensy weensy bite. I've seen this statement made more than a few times, and it's utter rubbish. The kernel enhancements alone made in 7 are far more than just a service pack. I made a lengthy post on the matter somewhere and I can't be arsed to find it. Suffice to say: no, Windows 7 is not worthy of a simple SP moniker for Vista.
Depends on how you look at it: If you think that the changes to the kernel in Win 7 ( I take your word for it that they exist) are so significant and could only have been implemented at the time when Win 7 was released, well and good. But most people see the XP-->Vista "upgrade" as a broken failure.
My view is that Win 7 is what Vista should have been.
And MS knew it, which is why it rushed out Win 7 when sales of Vista were poor, in much less the time that it went from XP to Vista.
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Depends on how you look at it: If you think that the changes to the kernel in Win 7 ( I take your word for it that they exist) are so significant and could only have been implemented at the time when Win 7 was released, well and good. But most people see the XP-->Vista "upgrade" as a broken failure.
You don't have to take my word on it. Mark Russinovich, formerly of SysInternals, has written numerous in-depth articles on the matter which you can find on TechNet.
I'll definitely give you that Vista is broken, though I will say that the upgrade process worked flawlessly for the several I did. Vista is crap, there's certainly no argument there. Like 7, it does have a number of internal enhancements, like the new security model for drivers, but any gains were incumbered by what some would argue is sloppy programming or over-intricate dependencies.
My view is that Win 7 is what Vista should have been.
I'll concede that, as well, given Microsoft had over a half-decade to work on it.
And MS knew it, which is why it rushed out Win 7 when sales of Vista were poor, in much less the time that it went from XP to Vista.
And padded their Vista licensing figures, and so on. Yeah, they know they have a turkey, which explains the very short support life-span of Vista. What really pisses me off is the obvious "phuq-you" Microsoft gave to people who refused to go to Vista in the form of no direct in-place upgrade path from XP to 7.
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From Slashdot, Start8 (http://www.stardock.com/products/start8/)
- Adds a “Start” menu to the Windows 8 taskbar
- Enables quick access and searching of your installed applications
- Adds Run... option via right-click menu
- Adds Shutdown... option via right-click menu
- Choose a custom Start button image
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And that says it all right there - instead of a zero-day crack, we have a [strike]zero[/strike] negative-day restoration of old functionality...
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(http://i282.photobucket.com/albums/kk260/herlien/moz-screenshot.png)
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(http://i282.photobucket.com/albums/kk260/herlien/moz-screenshot.png)
There should be an Amiga tab to this, also. Something like "Cool, I've only been waiting since 1994" or "Coming in two more weeks!", or something, LOL. ;-)
Have downloaded that Windows 8 preview here, myself. Kind of scared to try it out, sounds like I'm going to hate it. Russian proverb: "New is first enemy of old". ;-p