stitch: nah you're right the improvements in XP over 2K didn't lessen its security, I suppose XP was actually a legitimately improved OS.
BlueSun: you're right, it's all leaning towards making everything less exposed, which for the vast majority makes a great deal of sense... I guess it's just sort of annoying where devices are being made that have mostly recreational or home use, not for much actual work, i.e. UI's optimized for tablets, and while iOS, etc., can be used for some sort of work, I wouldn't want an actual workstation to be simplified to that extent.
But I'm sure a lot of people do. I'll get used to it eventually
Define actual work?
For me, actual work means running an SSH client, an RDP client and a text editor. Find me an OS (tablet and desktop alike) that can't do those things?
I guess I was referring to traditional business-environment work, which to be honest probably could be done from a tablet infrastructure. It's just my bias against tablets that would prevent me from doing such work on them, which at some point I'll get over, when they get cheaper or something. Probably stuff like spreadsheets, formatted text documents, or whatever. That stuff assuredly can be done on a tablet.
I guess what I find limiting is the inability to produce stuff, like edit images, make/draw graphs and stuff, etc., with the same efficiency that I can on a real OS. As a device used to remotely administer other machines, tablets make a lot of sense.
Tablets would almost be cooler as just wireless monitors, that have their own batteries, that work remotely. But most of the time VNC type applications are really slow, even on wLAN, unless you turn the colors down to 4 and have really heavy jpg compression.
Image editing and stuff like that would probably be easier on a tablet. Especially with a stylus. Pros have those drawing tablets that they connect to regular PC's anyway.
And with stuff like OnLive, the technology exists to have a remote desktop experience that's almost as good as sitting in front of the machine itself. I don't know exactly what OnLive uses to accomplish what they do, but I want it.
Windows 8 is not meant as a replacement for 7. Reality check, it's for touch-screen oriented platforms. My opinion here is that 7 as a desktop OS will continue to sell parallel with 8.
Oh regular people will be using Windows 8 as it's going to be preinstalled on the shiny new machines they'll buy. But business are going to be using Windows 7 for probably the next 5 years or so. They'll very likely skip over 8 the way they skipped over Vista.
I wouldn't be surprised, though, if OEMs started offering a downgrade option like they did with Vista.
I'll wait until release to judge, but I'm thinking of picking up a real tablet later this year and I haven't yet crossed it off my short list. For what I do with a tablet I could almost certainly get away with the ARM model.
Love the new bsod. It's... different? Admittingly, I've never managed to make any newer version of Windows crash (Windows 7 and later), with the exception of attempting to read an OS/2 formatted hard drive in Windows 7 or using a VB app to kill the system process just to see what happens.
I've never BSOD'd on my current laptop and the last time I had a BSOD on my desktop was after a storm came through and caused some instability with the power in my apartment. I didn't have a UPS at the time and I think my surge protector was on its last legs. Hasn't happened since and that was more than a year ago.
Took a old ide drive with an OS/2 install and hooked it up using a ide to usb converter. Windows 7 recognized it as an ntfs drive ironically, however if you went one directory in, the machine would bsod with the message CACHE_MANAGER. That's been the only time I've seen any machine running vista or later crash on its own.
Love the new bsod. It's... different? Admittingly, I've never managed to make any newer version of Windows crash (Windows 7 and later), with the exception of attempting to read an OS/2 formatted hard drive in Windows 7 or using a VB app to kill the system process just to see what happens.
i actully like that aswell, but hope i will never see it
Out of everything Windows 8 introduced... there happens to be only one main gripe I have. See if you can see it in the screenshot below.
And yes, it's in other default apps.
the integration with the Microsoft media stores?
Yeah, that's pretty low, if you ask me. They already did it on the Xbox, which was predictable and it's their hardware and all, but on Windows... *sigh*
That was the whole point of the screenshot. I have no problem with the market stores, but please please please, don't integrate ads, not even if they are for movies in theaters.
I'm not a fan of ads by any stretch, but that one doesn't seem too bad as far as ads go. It's a video / movie app and it's advertising a movie, seems fine to me.
There should be absolutely NO reason whatsoever for ads in *paid* for software
I don't disagree with you, I'm just saying that as far as ads go, it's perfectly tolerable. Which is saying a lot coming from me, a person that blocks every fucking ad I see.
To me you bought the software to use and not to see ads in it. It would be different if it was free software and you get ads but not if you paid for it and stuff. Putting ads in there windows you paid and put on your computer basically microsoft is getting paid twice for the same software you paid for all ready. There got to be a law out there that they can't do that. Whats next microsoft going to put ads in the games they make for windows. I know i sticking with windows 7 when windows 8 comes out.
The app that the ad came from was the video app.
Video = playing videos. However, you don't notice the play local files function until you realize you have to scroll to the left.
Now I understand having links to purchase videos and stuff in the video store option of MS's store (or whatever they call it now), or even including different places to stream video built in, but an movie ad is uncalled for. Compare that to if you bought a DVD player, and before you put the dvd in, you have to view ads in order to eject the tray and put a disc in.
Comparing IE displaying webpages with ads is not a decent comparasion. A better comparasion would be if you bought a webbrowser and every time you run it, you are greeted with a banner ad built into the program.
Also reguarding cable tv and ads, when cable/satelite tv first came out, the channels were adfree. Commercials were added to capitalize on the increasing number of viewers.
It's one fucking tile in the middle of the main screen. Is it really that obtrusive?
And are you really using that app to play videos in Windows 8? I sure as hell wouldn't. I'd install VLC or hell, even use Windows Media Player (which should still be there unless they removed it in the final version).
When I use Windows 8, I spend pretty much all of my time on the Aero desktop. So I honestly could care less what fucked up crap they're doing with their metro apps.
BOD: yes, precisely. To clarify, I agree that integration with MS media stores is understandable and fair; however, including ads within the operating system is irritating to say the least, especially considering the fact that it's paid software.
It would be like seeing advertisements for new movies in your %UserProfile%\Documents\Videos folder in Windows Explorer. If you want to push this Xbox-esque UI, don't make it full of ads.
I reiterate - when it's the company's own hardware, that's acceptable; on the other hand, for standalone -commercially distributed- software, no.
BOD: yes, precisely. To clarify, I agree that integration with MS media stores is understandable and fair; however, including ads within the operating system is irritating to say the least, especially considering the fact that it's paid software.
It would be like seeing advertisements for new movies in your %UserProfile%\Documents\Videos folder in Windows Explorer. If you want to push this Xbox-esque UI, don't make it full of ads.
I reiterate - when it's the company's own hardware, that's acceptable; on the other hand, for standalone -commercially distributed- software, no.
Why is it more acceptable if it's their own hardware? It's their own software... what's the difference?
I think the image oversimplifies the problem on a huge level, but I suppose that's what image macros are for. My issue with Metro is that it throws away any semblance of being able to mass multi-task and on a broader scale hampers my ability to get work done, which was the entire point of the desktop UI paradigm we've had since the Amiga in 1985. In Windows 8, Metro only allows you to have one and a half applications on the screen at one, regardless of your screen resolution. From a tablet point of view, that type of multitasking makes sense since more often than not you're going to only have a few apps that you use heavily and the only ones that are persistently running in the background are something like social media or music player apps where it make sense to only them show in a reduced functionality sidebar-type layout ("half"). They are largely media consumption devices and it's the very reason that the iPad is as successful as it is despite having a half-assed multitasking implementation.
One specific example of this using a real life scenario is editing work I do for a friend that runs a YouTube channel. At any given time I have the following applications running: Firefox, REAPER, Adobe After Effects, Photoshop, LibreOffice and any other miscellaneous software required to interface with my audio/video equipment. To produce a video, I drag and drop the audio into REAPER and do some post processing such as changing audio levels and cutting dead air at the beginning and end of the recording. I then save it in a folder that I already have opened full of raw materials necessary for producing the video. I drag and drop the audio and video into Adobe After Effects. I then switch to LibreOffice which has my notes on where to cut and how much as well as any required special effects based on an email exchange I had earlier. Once the video is edited and finalized, I pull the title card into Photoshop to add the text for the title of the video and import it into After Effects and then set the video off to render. Once it's completed, I switch to Firefox and upload the video to the channel. None of this is unreasonable nor is it an uncommon workflow for video production. This is all perfectly fine on Windows 7 or to some extent, Windows 8's desktop UI.
Now, imagine that same scenario using only Metro. The example I gave is the baseline for a video game review, which is fairly easy to edit in less than a day. However, I have had videos that take me several days or weeks to do and make the flaws in Metro even more significant. Instead of devoting time to editing the video, a significant portion of my time would be spent switching through apps because I can only have one useful app on the screen at a time and having to trudge through "open" dialog boxes that may or may not save the path in order to get to the files that I need. It would significantly slow down my work flow and what would usually take me around a couple hours to produce could take me near 3 or 4 times longer due to not having everything I need front and center. This is a problem because as they say, time is money. I'm not exactly alone in this scenario because people use Windows to get work done whether that be video editing or some other non-trivial task that requires interaction with multiple applications at once. Because of this, it wouldn't be at all outrageous to see the majority of Windows 8 usage on PCs being in the desktop UI while using the Metro UI as a glorified application launcher making this whole endeavour rather useless aside from creating a viable tablet interface and maybe trying to lock 3rd party distribution out with the Windows Store.
Sorry for the wall of text and essentially writing a blog post here, but it's the only way I could think of to illustrate the fundamental problem I have with Metro in Windows 8 from a critical point of view instead of an emotional one. All that said, I think some of the new features are neat such as storage spaces (though I wish it had block-level check-summing to prevent silent data corruption a la ZFS), the "Refresh and Reset" recovery option, native support for USB 3.0 to negate the requirement of shit awful 3rd party drivers for the controllers, hardware acceleration for all UI elements, DPI scaling that works properly, and some new multi-monitor features that have finally been built into Windows that you would otherwise have to use a 3rd party application for. Oddly enough, I also like the new ribbon UI in the Windows 8 Explorer as opposed to Windows 7's that hides all the functions that Microsoft determined from their survey stats were seldom used from me and replaces others with clunky text-only buttons. Having used it in Office 2010 (not 2007, good lord), I felt like it struck a nice balance between functionality and simplicity. It's all kind of bitter sweet, really.
I don't think it could be said any better than that, CoreDuo. Like you said, most people will just use Metro as an application launcher in Windows 8 and spend all of their time in the desktop UI. The only time it will have any real importance is in Windows RT or Windows 8 on x86 tablets.
So with that being said, that's why it doesn't seem like a big deal to me to have an ad in a metro app that I'm most likely never going to use.
Personally, I am saving up for a 64 bit windows 7 ultimate disc for future proofing (Running 32bit at mo) any rig with UEFI I win/build/beg/resurrect. UEFI (because of Daz's Loader@MDL??) is one reason. The other is that I have tried Win 8 and it is just not me. Been using computers since the 8 bit days and Win 8 is a dead end for me (may make a bit more sense with a touchscreen, though I have Android for that) If I was going to learn a different UI I would make myself a BLT and a flask of coffee and get my head around Ubuntu. I like Win 7, it does what I need without going Sesame Street on the interface. Just my 2 pence.
Comments
Most people in a business environment are only using word processors or web browsers and such.
Very few people are actually doing anything to the OS itself.
Define actual work?
For me, actual work means running an SSH client, an RDP client and a text editor. Find me an OS (tablet and desktop alike) that can't do those things?
I guess what I find limiting is the inability to produce stuff, like edit images, make/draw graphs and stuff, etc., with the same efficiency that I can on a real OS. As a device used to remotely administer other machines, tablets make a lot of sense.
Tablets would almost be cooler as just wireless monitors, that have their own batteries, that work remotely. But most of the time VNC type applications are really slow, even on wLAN, unless you turn the colors down to 4 and have really heavy jpg compression.
And with stuff like OnLive, the technology exists to have a remote desktop experience that's almost as good as sitting in front of the machine itself. I don't know exactly what OnLive uses to accomplish what they do, but I want it.
I wouldn't be surprised, though, if OEMs started offering a downgrade option like they did with Vista.
Love the new bsod. It's... different? Admittingly, I've never managed to make any newer version of Windows crash (Windows 7 and later), with the exception of attempting to read an OS/2 formatted hard drive in Windows 7 or using a VB app to kill the system process just to see what happens.
i actully like that aswell, but hope i will never see it
And yes, it's in other default apps.
Yeah, that's pretty low, if you ask me. They already did it on the Xbox, which was predictable and it's their hardware and all, but on Windows... *sigh*
Why is it that people only complain when Microsoft does this stuff? Every other OS has a store of some kind now. Why shouldn't Microsoft?
I don't disagree with you, I'm just saying that as far as ads go, it's perfectly tolerable. Which is saying a lot coming from me, a person that blocks every fucking ad I see.
You pay for a subscription TV service, there should be no commercials.
You pay taxes to drive on roads, so there should be no billboards.
You bought a copy of the newspaper, so there can't be any ads in that either.
It just doesn't work that way anymore and it hasn't for a long time. I don't like it either, but it's a really stupid reason to avoid using the OS.
Video = playing videos. However, you don't notice the play local files function until you realize you have to scroll to the left.
Now I understand having links to purchase videos and stuff in the video store option of MS's store (or whatever they call it now), or even including different places to stream video built in, but an movie ad is uncalled for. Compare that to if you bought a DVD player, and before you put the dvd in, you have to view ads in order to eject the tray and put a disc in.
Comparing IE displaying webpages with ads is not a decent comparasion. A better comparasion would be if you bought a webbrowser and every time you run it, you are greeted with a banner ad built into the program.
Also reguarding cable tv and ads, when cable/satelite tv first came out, the channels were adfree. Commercials were added to capitalize on the increasing number of viewers.
And are you really using that app to play videos in Windows 8? I sure as hell wouldn't. I'd install VLC or hell, even use Windows Media Player (which should still be there unless they removed it in the final version).
When I use Windows 8, I spend pretty much all of my time on the Aero desktop. So I honestly could care less what fucked up crap they're doing with their metro apps.
It would be like seeing advertisements for new movies in your %UserProfile%\Documents\Videos folder in Windows Explorer. If you want to push this Xbox-esque UI, don't make it full of ads.
I reiterate - when it's the company's own hardware, that's acceptable; on the other hand, for standalone -commercially distributed- software, no.
Why is it more acceptable if it's their own hardware? It's their own software... what's the difference?
One specific example of this using a real life scenario is editing work I do for a friend that runs a YouTube channel. At any given time I have the following applications running: Firefox, REAPER, Adobe After Effects, Photoshop, LibreOffice and any other miscellaneous software required to interface with my audio/video equipment. To produce a video, I drag and drop the audio into REAPER and do some post processing such as changing audio levels and cutting dead air at the beginning and end of the recording. I then save it in a folder that I already have opened full of raw materials necessary for producing the video. I drag and drop the audio and video into Adobe After Effects. I then switch to LibreOffice which has my notes on where to cut and how much as well as any required special effects based on an email exchange I had earlier. Once the video is edited and finalized, I pull the title card into Photoshop to add the text for the title of the video and import it into After Effects and then set the video off to render. Once it's completed, I switch to Firefox and upload the video to the channel. None of this is unreasonable nor is it an uncommon workflow for video production. This is all perfectly fine on Windows 7 or to some extent, Windows 8's desktop UI.
Now, imagine that same scenario using only Metro. The example I gave is the baseline for a video game review, which is fairly easy to edit in less than a day. However, I have had videos that take me several days or weeks to do and make the flaws in Metro even more significant. Instead of devoting time to editing the video, a significant portion of my time would be spent switching through apps because I can only have one useful app on the screen at a time and having to trudge through "open" dialog boxes that may or may not save the path in order to get to the files that I need. It would significantly slow down my work flow and what would usually take me around a couple hours to produce could take me near 3 or 4 times longer due to not having everything I need front and center. This is a problem because as they say, time is money. I'm not exactly alone in this scenario because people use Windows to get work done whether that be video editing or some other non-trivial task that requires interaction with multiple applications at once. Because of this, it wouldn't be at all outrageous to see the majority of Windows 8 usage on PCs being in the desktop UI while using the Metro UI as a glorified application launcher making this whole endeavour rather useless aside from creating a viable tablet interface and maybe trying to lock 3rd party distribution out with the Windows Store.
Sorry for the wall of text and essentially writing a blog post here, but it's the only way I could think of to illustrate the fundamental problem I have with Metro in Windows 8 from a critical point of view instead of an emotional one. All that said, I think some of the new features are neat such as storage spaces (though I wish it had block-level check-summing to prevent silent data corruption a la ZFS), the "Refresh and Reset" recovery option, native support for USB 3.0 to negate the requirement of shit awful 3rd party drivers for the controllers, hardware acceleration for all UI elements, DPI scaling that works properly, and some new multi-monitor features that have finally been built into Windows that you would otherwise have to use a 3rd party application for. Oddly enough, I also like the new ribbon UI in the Windows 8 Explorer as opposed to Windows 7's that hides all the functions that Microsoft determined from their survey stats were seldom used from me and replaces others with clunky text-only buttons. Having used it in Office 2010 (not 2007, good lord), I felt like it struck a nice balance between functionality and simplicity. It's all kind of bitter sweet, really.
So with that being said, that's why it doesn't seem like a big deal to me to have an ad in a metro app that I'm most likely never going to use.
All the best.