Windows 8

[Chimpy]

It is a bit odd that the most popular OS company is now also producing the most byzantine OS ever.

Well, MS is familiar with Byzantine structures. Just look at their volume licensing programs. No one, even at Microsoft, really seems to know what the fuck is what in that monstrosity.

[Fabricated]

I'm sticking with Win7 for a good, long while.

I might switch to 8 if Metro mysteriously disappears in a service pack. If not, I'll wait for Windows 9 to be hurried out the door with Metro not-so-mysteriously disappeared.

[Hawkbit]

They're sticking to their guns on Metro in their public-face.  We invested quite a bit developing apps for the platform, and MS was pretty clear that they feel the tablet/Metro style of computing is what they feel the future of computing will be.  I suspect that if they continue forcing this down our throats for the next iteration, we're going to see Linux/Ununtu development skyrocket. 

Metro simply isn't officework friendly. 

[Yegolev]

Metro might be the future of personal computing, but not for real work.  Although, I adjusted to The Ribbon.

[Salamok]

Although, I adjusted to The Ribbon.

[Yegolev]

It's not like I had a choice there.  OpenOffice?

[tgr]

The ribbon made sense, though. Metro makes sense for tablets etc, it does not make sense for the normal PC.

I have 2 monitors, and it's not uncommon for me to be alternating between 3 or 4 different programs at the same time, all of which I have on-screen at the same time. And my first thought, when reading about how Metro is, was "I don't want this", followed by "well, guess that means linux'll be my next desktop when MS makes 7 suck dicks to 'incentivize' people into moving onto win8."

[Surlyboi]

 

[Ingmar]

It's not like I had a choice there.  OpenOffice?

/shudder

Google Apps is getting there, but it has a ways to go, especially on the spreadsheet app.

[Rendakor]

It's not like I had a choice there.  OpenOffice?

OpenOffice is what I switched to, but I really only use the word processor. The Ribbon can burn in hell.

[Ingmar]

I actually quite like the ribbon. What's pushing us away from Office is licensing.

[Zetor]

Yeah, MS product licensing can diaf.

My company holds a lot of secure programming trainings for other companies that depend on every participant using the same VM (to avoid the "oh hey, I have something different at 0x0410000C" problem); we could do this with winxp through an agreement with the MS licensing dudes. Problem is that XP isn't really relevant anymore and we won't be able to get a similar licensing deal for Windows 7/8 (having to basically buy a separate copy every time a VM is deployed isn't going to work, sorry) -- so we'll probably end up having to migrate all of our VMs to Linux instead. I bet it'll be fun.  

[Chimpy]

VDI and a returning to a base snapshot before each class is the answer of the future!

[calapine]

The smart money is buying Linux shares right now. If MS keeps that Metro nonsense 2013 will be the year of the Desktop Linux!

[Furiously]

Or the year of touchscreen monitors.

[ghost]

There is a place for the touchscreen implementation.  I think they could have done it without Metro and I still fully expect to have that phased out fairly soon.  I've been using a touchscreen laptop at the office and I'm thinking of getting another because I like it so much. 

And to be fair to Microsoft, Apple's latest offering isn't much better.  It's a resource hogging slog to use on the computers we've installed it on, in stark contrast to the peppiness of the Windows 8 computers that I have on hand.

 

[Tebonas]

Windows 7 is better though, so apart from being forced there is no reason to upgrade at the moment.

[eldaec]

The ribbon made sense, though. Metro makes sense for tablets etc, it does not make sense for the normal PC.

Fuck you. The ribbon makes no sense for any experienced user and caps any user in their ability to learn to use the system more efficiently.

Metro is the same, though I'm not as confident as you guys that it will die.

[Numtini]

The ribbon was a different ok way of doing things. It wasn't non-functional. It was just no better than what it replaced and was change for change sake. Or more accurately for the sake of hitting users for an unnecessary upgrade fee.

I just opened up a win 8 instance in virtualbox. God, it's worse than i remembered.

[tgr]

The ribbon made sense, though. Metro makes sense for tablets etc, it does not make sense for the normal PC.

Fuck you. The ribbon makes no sense for any experienced user and caps any user in their ability to learn to use the system more efficiently.

I like the ribbon. vOv

In other news, I notice your Elite-styled avatar. Have you noticed the Limit Theory game that's made by one guy, and is basically shaping up to be a modern version of Elite? He says it even works on Win8, and for some reason he thinks Win8's mega.

Then again, he is 20, so I guess we're getting to see who are old farts by their Win8 reactions.

[ghost]

Windows 7 is better though, so apart from being forced there is no reason to upgrade at the moment.

Yeah, not unless you need touchscreen capability (which I did). 

[Merusk]

The ribbon made sense, though. Metro makes sense for tablets etc, it does not make sense for the normal PC.

Fuck you. The ribbon makes no sense for any experienced user and caps any user in their ability to learn to use the system more efficiently.

Metro is the same, though I'm not as confident as you guys that it will die.

The ribbon is terrible because it did away with tool buttons which were far, far more intuitive and in your face.  Not only that, but it doesn't display all possible functions.  Experienced users will know "Oh, there's a command for this.." others will look at the ribbon and say, "Oh guess I can't do that."  That other programs copied it and then experienced this problem 10x because they had more functions (AutoCAD being the chief example I have) is probably the greatest sin of "the ribbon."

Metro isn't going anywhere, ever, and you can expect more boneheaded ui "INNOVATIONS" from MS in the future.  Sinofsky was replaced (in part since his job was split in two) by the creator of "The Ribbon" and "Metro" when he left.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/13/who_is_new_larson_green/

[eldaec]

The other big reason the ribbon is such a fucking abomination is the limits it puts on customising your toolbars.

Prior to the ribbon I would explain regularly to my dev teams that MS Excel had best UI in the history of mankind. The reason their users wanted everything to look like excel was that excel was just that good.

Now, not so much.

[Fabricated]

The ribbon's creation can be laid at the feet of dumb users; it was created because when they would poll enterprise users of Office the biggest requests were for features that were already in Office. People literally didn't move or even extend their toolbars to find buttons or functions, so they made the context-sensitive ribbon that uses more real-estate to display as much as possible.

Personally I like it better but Microsoft never handles major UI overhauls well. They just kinda throw it in there and give you a thumbs up for luck.

[veredus]

Just installed win8 yesterday to replace win7. I like it. I like the new home screen (or whatever it is called) with all your apps right  there and the win7 desktop is just one click away when it's needed. I can see a lot businesses not being interested in it since you'd probably need or want to run it in desktop mode more so not sure what the point would be. For home use it's really nice though. My computer is used for gaming and Internet use and it does all that just fine. Having said that, my copy only cost like $35 so price wasn't an issue. I don't think I'd pay full price to upgrade to it from win7 but I would take it over win7 if I was buying a new computer.

[Kageru]

Windows 8 is pretty good evidence that microsoft are scared they missed a paradigm shift (mobile, tablet... effectively casual computing) that could sideline them and break their monopoly. They're fairly confident their desktop monopoly is still solid so they're trying to leverage that to get a foothold. But it looks like they've failed to get much interest and windows tablet sales are miniscule. Apparently they've really burnt any OEM interest in windows tablets by pushing their own hardware, but Microsoft dreams of owning the entirety of the platform and is willing to lose billions for years so they might not even care.

I'll stay on Vista (it just plays games) and hopefully steam for linux will have enough games by the time it reaches end of life. I really won't have any need for Windows after that.

Watching Nokia collapse is pretty impressive though. They used to be such a power-house.

[Zetor]

To be fair, the Nokia collapse started back in ~2007 -- basically they were content with their Symbian-based smartphones dominating the market, and reacted WAY too slowly to the iphone / android 'revolution' (they didn't have a viable touchscreen phone until uh 2011?). Sad thing is, the latest Lumia phones aren't bad at all, but... yeah.

Any parallels that may be drawn to Windows 8 are coincidental, I'm sure.  

[Kageru]

I was working at Motorola when they were doing their Linux phone, and I'm pretty sure Nokia was part of that industry consortium. They had their own linux devices out as well. But they were companies driven by the process of building diverse handsets to fuel their close relationships with carriers. Motorola thought "thin" handsets were enough to carry them through. And none of them realized it was moving to a single, carrier neutral device that competed on the basis of software and apps.

Microsoft under-estimated this too. That the mobile phone platform was going to become a sufficiently powerful computer for a lot of peoples day to day use. They don't want a software ecosystem in which they are not dominant because that means they have competition both in devices and apps. Plus that growth is coming at the cost of PC's where microsoft still has dominance and which funds all their money-losing divisions like X-box. I tend to think the tablet is going to hit a ceiling, it's not a PC replacement, though it might well be making many people realize they don't need a PC, but Windows 8 is all about trying to leverage their existing monopoly into tablet and phone domination.

Which isn't working out so well.. thank heavens, competition to microsoft is a good thing.

[Draegan]

The frustration thing with Win8 is I don't know how to close apps in the background.  I had skype running in the background and I didn't know how to turn it off.  Meh.

[veredus]

Mouse over to left part of screen. Opens up a list of all running apps. Can close them there.

EDIT: Just found out windows key + tab does that too

[Krakrok]

I bought a i7-3770 machine and Windows 8 was the only option for it. Would have preferred Windows 7. Apparently with Windows 8 Pro you can downgrade it to Windows 7 for free if you want. In any event I installed Classic Shell for the Start menu and after that it seems to be the same as Windows 7. The Classic Shell thing auto skips past the Windows 8 start screen.

[ghost]

The frustration thing with Win8 is I don't know how to close apps in the background.  I had skype running in the background and I didn't know how to turn it off.  Meh.

These frustrating little quirks go away in about a week of using it, once you get used to the gestures and such. 

[Selby]

In any event I installed Classic Shell for the Start menu and after that it seems to be the same as Windows 7. The Classic Shell thing auto skips past the Windows 8 start screen.

If that is supported and continues to be available without any major headaches, then I'd have no problem with upgrading to Windows 7 or 8 in the next 2-3 years when I build my next machine.

[ghost]

This........

makes me think of


this: 

[CmdrSlack]

Just purchased a new PC and specifically sought one with Win 7. I had to take a lesser processor (i5), but at least I didn't have to get Win 8.