Windows 8

[ghost]

That was a stupid review.  I'm not sure why anyone who is rational would expect the Surface RT to be anything but in its current unpolished state.  It will improve.

[rattran]

Because it's released. When shit is released, it shouldn't be buggy and slow as all get out.

[Quinton]

When you release a product into a space where competing products shipped first, yeah, you're going to be judged against what's already there.  Probably worth taking that into account, especially if you're going to claim that the products all your competitors shipped are inferior -- you might look silly.

[luckton]

Kinda like MMOs 

[Trippy]

Windows uber-fanboy Paul Thurrott has published his review of the Surface RT, and it's pretty harsh. Buried in the review is his take that Intel Clover Trail may be the real future of Windows tablets:

Intel’s PC maker partners are about to ship a new generation of “Clover Trail” Atom-based Windows 8 devices that will offer the best of both worlds: the hardware and software compatibility of Windows 8 combined with the battery life and thin and light form factors provided by ARM devices.

I’m holding out hope for that latter option, and I’ll be reviewing Clover Trail devices as soon as possible. It’s a shame Microsoft isn’t making a Clover Trail-based Surface. Its first model, Surface with Windows RT, is simply too frustrating and too limited.

Intel says that about every generation of Atom processors. I'll believe it when I actually see it.

[Sky]

Because it's released. When shit is released, it shouldn't be buggy and slow as all get out.

You're old.

[apocrypha]

That was a stupid review.  I'm not sure why anyone who is rational would expect the Surface RT to be anything but in its current unpolished state.  It will improve.

Er, isn't a review supposed to describe what exists and highlight it's shortcomings as well as it's successes? A review isn't supposed to be a glossing over of reality in the vague hope of future improvements.

I know that's what we've got used to in these days of sponsored deals, product placement, metacritic-dependant bonuses and corporate shills, but that's not a useful state of affairs for the entire concept of reviews.

RT may be unpolished but a lot of people have paid a lot of money in advance for this product and the fact that it's not fit for purpose is fucking disgraceful. But hey, this plus the iPad mini are nothing but good news for Android.  

[tgr]

I'm kind of having a problem seeing why people would put down money beforehand to get the first version of anything, especially when you know it'll be better (and maybe even cheaper) a while after launch.

[apocrypha]

Because modern life is rubbish and they're desperately trying to fill the gaping voids in their souls with mindless, slavish consumerism?

 

[Yegolev]

Not enough people live in caves and hide from bears while scavenging for berries.

[luckton]

General query: If I purchase the $40 download from MS' site, will it just be an upgrade copy that requires me to first have Windows 7 installed on the computer before it'll install, or can I do the old "put the install disc of the old software in the drive to verify" thing?

[01101010]

I'm kind of having a problem seeing why people would put down money beforehand to get the first version of anything, especially when you know it'll be better (and maybe even cheaper) a while after launch.

Two words: Miracle Patch.   

[Pennilenko]

I wish there was an andriod OS for my desktop.

[ghost]

General query: If I purchase the $40 download from MS' site, will it just be an upgrade copy that requires me to first have Windows 7 installed on the computer before it'll install, or can I do the old "put the install disc of the old software in the drive to verify" thing?

I think you can just do a fresh install by checking the "install from media" box during install.  I never saw anything about an upgrade or having to put in an install disk.

[Salamok]

General query: If I purchase the $40 download from MS' site, will it just be an upgrade copy that requires me to first have Windows 7 installed on the computer before it'll install, or can I do the old "put the install disc of the old software in the drive to verify" thing?

I think you can just do a fresh install by checking the "install from media" box during install.  I never saw anything about an upgrade or having to put in an install disk.

Didn't w7 upgrade just ask for you to type in your qualifying product's key?  Or was that some other software I am thinking of. 

As far as I am concerned the only thing windows 8 is missing is Ballmer issuing some ridiculous challenge ala bing and the windows phone.  After all if Ballmer doesn't believe in the product why should I?

[Jeff Kelly]

My Windows 8 upgrade experience so far would even exhaust Picard from all the face palming he'd have to do.

The first annoyance is that the €29 upgrade doesn't come with a downloadable installable image. No, to get an installable image directly it'll cost you €59 and they send you a DVD.

So choosing the €29 upgrade only gets you a program that then checks if you are eligible for upgrading to Windows 8. This is sold to you as if there was some sort of upgrade check and performance check done to make sure you could actually run W8, but as far as I've seen it just checks whether you run a licensed copy or not.

The next hurdle is that the upgrade check app automatically switches to your system language (German in my case). Even if you download the US app from microsoft.com.

This would be great expcet that all of the text input boxes are hard coded to english (US). So none of the special characters work if they are on different keys or selected with different modifiers than on an US keyboard. So no @, no umlauts, no dashes or m-dashes or most of the other special characters. You also cannot copy from or paste into the text boxes so you can't even write down your e-mail address in notepad and copy it to the app.

The only solution is to switch your keyboard layout temporarily to english (US), search for the layout online so that you know which key combinations to press, make absolutely sure that every character you type is really the one you wanted in there (especially annoying with passwords because you only see ****) and then hit submit. At first however you spend an hour googling for a solution to that problem since it's not in the microsoft knowledge base.

Windows then automatically repartitions your HD without asking (great if something, anything goes wrong during that step) and then downloads THE WHOLE FUCKING IMAGE into the newly created system restore partition and then extracts it. When that download is finished about a week later (I sometimes got only 10 kb/s from the microsoft.com servers so it took more than four hours to complete) it then let's you create an install image for DVD (Meh) or USB drives (yay).

This wouldn't work for any of my dozen or so USB drives however (it always failed with a nondescript error) so I chose the DVD image. Creating that image then takes another half hour because the installer actually creates a new iso image from all the files downloaded as an image and already extracted.

After the win installer has downloaded the image, created a recovery partition without asking, extracted the image and then created a new image from the extracted data you have the option of updating the existing installation of XP, Vista or Win 7 or installing from scratch from the newly created install medium.

Updating will only keep your home folder, it is basically a clean install that keeps your user data and preferences (it even says so in the text) so I chose to do a clean install.

Clean install is pretty straightforward and only takes about 20 minutes.

After the utter confusion has worn off and you have actually found out how to start apps and access the preferences or how to get "back" from any app or screen since pretty much everything is different and more obtuse than before you realize that you cannot activate your installation of Windows 8.

This means that you can't change most preferences or even simple things like screen resolution and you cannot access most apps. The system simply tells you that "you need to activate Windows to access that".

Activation doesn't work because while the installer let's you do a clean install without updating an existing install, the activation wizard won't let you activate that copy since it wasn't installed over a previous version of windows. I found this out the hard way after spending a whole afternoon downloading and installing and surfing the web for workarounds.

There is a way to remedy that without reinstalling two OSs (your old OS to be eligible for upgrade and the win8 upgrade) I sadly found that solution only after having wiped my disc and starting over from scratch. (Glad I did this in a parallels VM).

I know have a working copy of Windows 8, a system that is utterly confusing to anyone that is used to the XP or Win 7 way of doing things. No start menu. Context menus have fewer options. No one tells you that there ARE smart corners. When you find out you realize that different corners activate diferent functions. When you triggered one of those function you don't know how you get back to the desktop. Some Keybindings no longer work, some keybindings moved to different key combinations.

Explorer and Internet explorer both are still a confusing mess of functions and UI elements. System preferences is still a confusing mess of functions

In short Win 8 is completely unusable or frustrating to use with mouse and keyboard, has changed or removed almost anything people have ever leraned about how to use windows based operating systems and the install or upgrade experience is error prone and takes hours to complete.

Microsoft offers no help, no tutorials, has clearly never tested the process with any system localized to any language other than US english, doesn't list any of the issues I encountered as bugs or offers workarounds and has so far not even fixed any of those issues.

You'll only find solutions to those problems if you can speak english and know how to use google.

Apart from that it offers you nothing that is inherently easier or better, more streamlined or less frustrating than Windows 7. Even worse it forces you to un- and relearn almost anything that you knew about previous versions of the OS so that you can use an OS that is not significantly better than Windows 7.

Maybe it's a beter experience when you use touch-based devices but offering control options for mouse and keyboard almost seems like an afterthought.

For normal PCs with keyboard and mouse I strongly recommend staying with Windows 7.

[ghost]

That's a little over dramatic about the problems with the OS, but they are valid points as to why it's difficult to use.  An instructional tutorial would be great, as would the ability to turn on or off certain features for business purposes.  Some of the parts clearly weren't well thought out.  For example, when searching their webstore there is no "search" area that is clearly and easily visible.  You have to use the "Charms Bar" search function, which is completely idiotic.  But none of these issues are deal killers once you figure things out and do them once. 

[Reg]

I'm not using Windows 8 yet but a couple of days ago I got a spam email from Stardock and they've written a utility to restore the Windows 7 style start button to Windows 8.  It's only 4.99 and it actually looks like it might make Win8 more usable with keyboard and mouse. It's called Start8.

note: I'm not a shill for Stardock but they actually do a pretty good job at little OS utilities like this.  Much better job than they do with their games anyway.

[ghost]

Windows 8 could actually be pretty decent with some GNOME 3 type tweakability. 

[tgr]

I'd rather lean more towards a KDE inspired deal, myself.

[ghost]

I've never liked KDE.  It just seems so clunky. 

[Zetor]

Oh man, it's a Linux desktop holy war in the windows 8 thread. Btw, vi > emacs. 

[ghost]

That's a holy war?   

[Engels]

Be quiet, apocryphal gnome lover. Cinnamon ftw.

[Shannow]

Oh man, it's a Linux desktop holy war in the windows 8 thread. Btw, vi > emacs. 

burn, burn! emacs foreva!

[Trippy]

Modes are the devil.

[Salamok]

Be quiet, apocryphal gnome lover. Cinnamon ftw.

The future is here!

[tgr]

Oh man, it's a Linux desktop holy war in the windows 8 thread. Btw, vi > emacs. 

burn, burn! emacs foreva!

Nano.

[Surlyboi]

Pico

[NiX]

I'm not using Windows 8 yet but a couple of days ago I got a spam email from Stardock and they've written a utility to restore the Windows 7 style start button to Windows 8.  It's only 4.99 and it actually looks like it might make Win8 more usable with keyboard and mouse. It's called Start8.

note: I'm not a shill for Stardock but they actually do a pretty good job at little OS utilities like this.  Much better job than they do with their games anyway.

Wasn't enough for me to keep using Windows 8. Despite having the start menu "back", it still feels tacked on and unlike the original. Part of that has to do with Metro being so heavily set on using the tile screen.

[tgr]

The thing I don't fathom is this obsession with making everything one way. A PC isn't the same as a tablet, which isn't the same as a phone, so why oh why does MS try  to treat them all like they're nails and the Windows OS is a hammer? It's what's turned me off a ton of FPS games, developers treating two hardware input devices as nails and their game as a hammer.

[Reg]

Is it possible that MS might be in collusion with manufacturers to sell the new (and much more expensive) touch screen PCs?

[Vaiti]

The most hilarious part of Windows 8, it feels awkward on the Tablets it was designed for as well. 

The most disappointing part of Windows 8? There will be no SP2 for Windows 7 because of Windows 8.
They dropped all support, no SP2 will roll out. A fresh install of Windows 7 w/ SP1 requires 400+ updates.
Amazing oversight.

[Reg]

Can you even still buy Windiows 7? The two PCs I'm responsible for at home run Vista and an ancient XP upgrade that I've been moving from computer to computer for years.  Eventually we're going to need to upgrade though. Will I be absolutely forced into Windows 8 at that point?

Heh. Maybe I'll have to somehow hang on 'til Windows 9 comes out.

[Ceryse]

I picked up Windows 7 last week (finally upgraded from XP due to more games no longer supporting it), so.. still available, here at least. Windows 8 is full of the stuff I abhor. Hell, even my phone isn't touch screen. I'll never use anything that's touchscreen. Probably best to grab it sooner rather than later, however.