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 From:  Dave!!   28 Oct 2012 12:26 
 To:  Kriv      13 of 432 
40020.13 In reply to 40020.11 

Some would say it's the ultimate in monopoly abuse. Microsoft taking advantage of their dominant desktop position to push an OS that they *know* is badly suited to the desktop, just to help plug and push their tablet and phone offerings.

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 From:  Monsoir (PILOTDAN)   28 Oct 2012 12:28 
 To:  Dave!!      14 of 432 
40020.14 In reply to 40020.13 
I don't see it as monopoly abuse, just good old fashioned bad engineering.

Dan Herman
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 From:  Matt   28 Oct 2012 12:58 
 To:  Dave!!      15 of 432 
40020.15 In reply to 40020.8 
By forced to use Metro, presumably you mean forced to use the Start Screen part? You're forced to use the Windows 7, Vista, XP, Windows Me, etc. Taskbar and Start Menu unless you install 3rd party apps too, so that's hardly a fair criticism of the OS. The Metro Start Screen is the Start Menu in Windows 8. It's kinda like saying you're forced to use the dock because you've installed OSX.

Start Screen Search does search Control Panel, it's categorised on the right hand-side into Apps, Settings and Files. To view the results for Settings you can press the down arrow on your keyboard to change the category or click on it with your mouse.

Not being able to snap Metro apps side-by-side is a bit odd, but I can see what they were aiming for with a common applicable-to-all UI that works the same for every app you install, be it by Microsoft or Blurbcorp.

Vista really wasn't that bad considering the huge overhaul they did to all the code, the security of the whole OS was drastically improved over XP for one. No doubt the bean-counters were pushing the development team to release something they could sell rather than give them more time to improve it some more and that's kinda how I feel about Windows 8 too, development of it has been restricted by Microsoft's bottom-line.

And if Microsoft's mobile OS development's are anything to go by, where they've adopt an Apple-esq release schedule (release frequently, sometimes with fewer new features), I think we'll see a Windows 8.5 before we see a Windows 9.

doohicky
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 From:  Wattsy (SLAYERPUNX)   28 Oct 2012 12:58 
 To:  ANT_THOMAS       16 of 432 
40020.16 In reply to 40020.1 
I have been running it on my home laptop since the. released rtm on msdn and I am slowly warming to it. I work mainly in the desktop and only use tifkam when I want to have a play around or use a downloaded application from the store. It is faster and Snappier than 7 and there are some nice new features that i feel make it a useful tool.

The wife was a first a little miffed at first but she soon got used to it and spends most of her time actually in tifkam. She saw the new ms tablet advert yesterday and was actually excited about a bit of kit. Looks like we will be an apple free household soon. Bye bye ipad 2 woo!

What I can't understand though is the use of tifkam in server 2012. Wtf were they thinking?

Try it, you might like it!

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 From:  Matt   28 Oct 2012 13:01 
 To:  Ken (SHIELDSIT)      17 of 432 
40020.17 In reply to 40020.12 
But that's just because you need to get used to IE (or whichever app you've pinned there) being there instead of the Start Button.

And anyway, hardcore techies like yourself should be pressing the Windows Key on their keyboard not clicking the start menu with their mouse :P

doohicky
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 From:  Dave!!   28 Oct 2012 14:27 
 To:  Matt      18 of 432 
40020.18 In reply to 40020.15 

My argument is that in every previous version of Windows, there has been ways to revert to "classic" design elements. Win95 still included "Program Manager" for the luddites that still wanted it from their W3.1 days, XP and Vista still included the "classic" start menu. Windows 8 is the first OS from Microsoft which has implemented sweeping changes whilst simultaneously providing no official route back to the old way of doing things.

Criticism of W8 would be reduced if you could toggle the Start Menu back on, but you can't without installing something like Classic Shell. Hence I feel that it's a perfectly legitimate complaint about it.

I know that Search does still search the Control Panel, but extra steps are required to get to those hits, whereas in Windows 7 that's not required. Still a step backwards from Windows 7 IMO. New OS versions should speed actions up, not slow them down.

Not being able to snap Metro apps side by side isn't just odd, it's appallingly backwards. There's no good reason whatsoever why the desktop version shouldn't allow me to drag my PDF to one side of the screen and have Word or Firefox or something open at the other side. The fact that it's not allowed is appalling, lazy and backwards design and makes Metro apps effectively useless on a normal PC IMO.

Vista IMO was poor. The interface felt cluttered and unfinished and it felt badly designed to me. That's why we ended up with about 8 different options under "Shut down" with "Sleep" being the default option - even on Laptops, and with a hefty trip into the depths of Power Options being necessary to change it. This is the same reason that Windows 8 needs you to go into the "Charms bar", then into "Settings", then into "Power" to find the "Power off" option. It's just poor design.

Vista really needed another 6 months of development and feedback in order to correct its flaws and bad design elements. As it didn't receive that, it felt rushed and flawed to me - hence why I used it for a while, then jumped back to XP. It's also why it ended up as a flop in general. Windows 8 feels exactly the same in this respect. With a few tweaks and improvements and a bit of listening from MS, it could have been a real improvement over Windows 7. But too many aspects of it feel poorly conceived and badly designed to me. Hence, Windows 8 (to me) is a disappointment that I'll be avoiding.

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 From:  Matt   28 Oct 2012 15:22 
 To:  Dave!!      19 of 432 
40020.19 In reply to 40020.18 
Luddites is a very apt word choice :P

Switching back to Task Manager could only be done it you knew where to change the shell in the Windows Registry. Microsoft never provided an official user configurable option to disable the Start Menu and Taskbar in Windows 95. You should see Classic Shell or Start8 (or the other various hacks floating around) in the same vein as modifying the Registry.

If you know it can search Control Panel, why did you say it can't?

That aside, I like the improvements to the search categorisation in Windows 8. On more than one occurrence when searching in Windows 7 I've ended up opening some random document or email instead of the app I wanted because of the looser categorisation of results that sometimes puts documents above programs for no obvious reason.

And new OSes (anything actually) shouldn't just speed things up with new releases, they should also make things easier to accomplish. This is a really difficult thing to balance correctly, efficiency vs. usability is often the bane of most software developers' working lives.

I totally agree about not being able to snap Metro / TIFKAM next to each other, it's silly, but it doesn't make the whole damn thing useless!

And I totally disagree with you about Vista. It wasn't poor and it wasn't generally a flop either. Yes, it wasn't as good as Windows 7 and yes it was flawed in some aspects, but it was also featured some huge improvements over XP in both performance and security.

doohicky
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 From:  Matt   28 Oct 2012 15:24 
 To:  Dave!!      20 of 432 
40020.20 In reply to 40020.18 
Also, need to clear your cache to stop the double-line-break-me-do.

doohicky
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 From:  Dave!!   28 Oct 2012 16:01 
 To:  Matt      21 of 432 
40020.21 In reply to 40020.19 
Hmm, Luddites is a different one when talking about a touch-screen interface on a desktop PC, but I digress. The search one I should have worded better I suppose. What I meant was that the control panel no longer shows up in the default list of search results - which it doesn't. You can't search for the name of a Control Panel applet and just hit "Enter" like you can in Windows 7.

Fair enough about easier, however searching is harder in Windows 7 (IMO), shutting down is harder, working with multiple programs (if any of them are TIFKAM) is harder. For the desktop user, Windows 8 does seem to have been designed to be harder to use than Windows 7 IMO, and that's a bad thing.

Regarding TIFKAM snapping, not useless no. But next-to-useless if you're actually planning on using TIFKAM apps on a PC whilst being anywhere near as productive as you can be with Windows 7.

As for Vista, well we'll have to agree to disagree about it. I thought it was a shite OS personally - yet one that could have been so much better if it had been properly tested originally and if it's UI had been designed properly.

As for being a flop, the highest Vista's market share managed to get (according to W3C's statistics) was just 18.6% after nearly 3 years as MS's main OS. Windows 7 in comparison reached the same market share in just 8 months and in the time it took for Vista to hit 18.6%, Windows 7 managed 53.8% market share. If you instead look at Windows XP, well after just under 3 years of being available, that had 52.5% market share.

No matter how you look at it, Vista was widely hated, fairly widely avoided, and managed a pitiful market share in comparision to both its predecessor and successor. I'd call that a flop myself - even if you personally happened to like it!

And "yay" for my line breaks working correctly again, although right-clicking in the quick-reply box doesn't seem to be working :-(
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 From:  Matt   28 Oct 2012 16:25 
 To:  Dave!!      22 of 432 
40020.22 In reply to 40020.21 
For right click you have to hold Ctrl otherwise you get the mock-context menu thing for pasting in to CKEditor.

But back to Windows 8. Shutting down is only harder if you go via the Start Screen. Maybe I've become too overly optimised, but I tend to just hit the power button on my PC if I want it to actually shutdown or leave it and let it go to sleep otherwise. I've been doing that for a long long time now, even back when I was using Windows XP.

Speaking of shutdown, Windows 8 doesn't actually power off your machine any more, it's somewhere between powered off and Windows 7's hybrid sleep. A hybrid shutdown if you will. This is partly what makes Windows 8 so quick to boot. You can spot the difference if you "shutdown" vs. if you do a proper restart.

One of the nice things I like about Windows 8. When it BSODs (damn you ATI AMD and your Catalyst drivers), you get a sad smilie and some text saying "Oops, something went wrong" (or words to that effect). The other cool thing is, which I'm guessing is related to the improved persistent state-ness / hybrid shutdown thing, when restarting after a BSOD Windows restores your apps and documents right where you were moments before the crash.

The W3C are hardly the best place to look for statistics on OS usage. They only collect stats from visitors to their own W3Schools website, which is going to be a very specific target audience. However, I would actually see 18% as very good market share! Those are numbers Apple Linux can only dream of.

Vista was widely hated by the tech community. But don't you think it's weird how hated Vista is / was compared to the praise heaped on Windows 7 when the two of them have much more in common (flaws included - I can think of a fair few that are still present in Windows 7 that people moan about in Vista) than either of them do to XP?

doohicky
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 From:  Ken (SHIELDSIT)   28 Oct 2012 16:25 
 To:  Dave!!      23 of 432 
40020.23 In reply to 40020.21 
I'm with you on this. I'm in the process of restoring my 7 backup.

I should say I agree about 8 on desktop. I would imagine on touch its kick ass. I went out last night looking for a surface to play with but couldn't find any.


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 From:  Dave!!   28 Oct 2012 16:59 
 To:  Matt      24 of 432 
40020.24 In reply to 40020.22 
That's the thing. Windows 7 to me is what Vista should have been. All the improvements of Vista but with all the flaws fixed. So UAC is actually bearable, the "Shut down" option works properly, the UIs of many of the control panel applets received the desperate makeover that they needed etc. Then on top of that, they added features which were genuinely useful, like snapping Windows to the side, the newer task bar, etc. Windows 7 isn't perfect, that awful folder-jumping bug in Windows Explorer for instance is a notable example, but it fixed a lot of Vista's flaws, hence why it's been a generally well-liked OS.

As for Windows 8, I agree that there's lot to like. Including the new task manager for instance. Unfortunately, there's also plenty to hate as well. Hence why I reckon it'll struggle overall to be accepted. Still, we'll see. It'll either be a great success that will change PC computing, or a huge flop. Time will only tell which way people will ultimately view it.
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 From:  99% of gargoyles look like (MR_BASTARD)   28 Oct 2012 21:34 
 To:  Dave!!      25 of 432 
40020.25 In reply to 40020.13 
quote: Dave!!

Some would say it's the ultimate in monopoly abuse. Microsoft taking advantage of their dominant desktop position to push an OS that they *know* is badly suited to the desktop, just to help plug and push their tablet and phone offerings.

"Back to the Mac" (AKA forcing iOS over a proper OS) anyone?

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 From:  Extrobe (ALDREDD)   29 Oct 2012 16:02 
 To:  ALL 26 of 432 
40020.26 
Overall, I'm quite pleased with it, and pleased I upgraded. Perhaps it was the 7 pound price tag :-D 

I think on its own, the Start Screen works quite well - and equally, the desktop environment works well too, and has some nice, if subtle & mostly cosmetic changes.

Where I think it struggles, is mixing the two environments - it just doesn't flow right, like Alt+tabbing between apps when in Start gives Metro Apps + Desktop, but not desktop apps - etc. Same with opening files within Metro, launching desktop apps - it just doesn't quite flow very well.

I think it would have made more sense for you to be able to choose which environment you're working in - but guess they wouldn't be able to climatise users to the 'touch' interface that way!

My wife loves it though - when I told her I was spending my weekend upgrading Windows, I got the usual 'you've lost me already' look - but once she saw it, had a play, and explained it was much like her phone with a 'store' and 'apps' - she was sold and wanted it herself.
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 From:  Chris (CHRISSS)   30 Oct 2012 18:12 
 To:  ALL 27 of 432 
40020.27 
Up until now I've pretty much completely ignored it based on what people have said but I'm getting a small urge (no John (I was very tempted to say that on Talk Ford when I said I had a fiddle :D )) to try it out now. Don't know if I could be bothered to reinstall 7 if I hate it though, even though it would be nice to reinstall and have my boot drive back to C.
Me
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 From:  milko   30 Oct 2012 19:34 
 To:  Chris (CHRISSS)      28 of 432 
40020.28 In reply to 40020.27 

I bought it last night, though not installed yet. You can get it for £15 by saying you bought a PC in the last year or something! Excellent! 


milko
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 From:  Chris (CHRISSS)   30 Oct 2012 21:01 
 To:  milko      29 of 432 
40020.29 In reply to 40020.28 
That's almost tempting to have my first legal OS (on a main computer) since Win95.

There's a review on Engadget, I haven't anything but the wrap up, which says it should be used with multitouch gestures, even if it's just a multitouch trackpad on a normal PC.
Me
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 From:  milko   31 Oct 2012 00:13 
 To:  Chris (CHRISSS)      30 of 432 
40020.30 In reply to 40020.29 
I'm using it now. It's a bit odd!

milko
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 From:  99% of gargoyles look like (MR_BASTARD)   31 Oct 2012 00:33 
 To:  milko      31 of 432 
40020.31 In reply to 40020.28 
where?

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 From:  milko   31 Oct 2012 11:07 
 To:  99% of gargoyles look like (MR_BASTARD)      32 of 432 
40020.32 In reply to 40020.31 

http://www.windowsupgradeoffer.com/

 

It asks what you bought. I said "other" and picked June last year. It might be right! (It's not right).


milko
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