Windows 8

[Hammond]

So I have had a windows 8 pro tablet sitting on my desk for a bit over a week now at work. (samsung Ativ smart pc pro) All said and done its not a bad piece of hardware. It has a I5 processor so there is decent speed.  Battery life is not great but we knew this when we bought them. Roughly 4 hours on average office user use.  The bezel is a bit big and if the screen went from edge to edge it would be a lot nicer looking. Office 2010 is not very nice on a touch screen and office 2013 is not looking much better.

That being said Windows 8 is just awkward to use even on a tablet. However I can see where Microsoft is going assuming they stick with it. My wish is a tablet with 12 hours minimum battery life that has as much power as any desktop machine with half the weight of the Ativ and no active cooling (the fan gets loud!). Plug it into a docking station at work so I can use my big monitors, keyboard, mouse to do actual work. Then I can take it home or to a meeting and use it as a tablet. Will that ever happen? Maybe but its going to be a few years down the road.

[Kageru]

It's a ultrabook with the guts in the screen and a detachable hinge. It will suit the people who want to pay a lot of money to run office on a platform not designed for that sort of thing (and even less convenient since it's heavier and more resource intensive) without the style and integrated eco-system that made the ipad popular.

[Hammond]

Actually in our case we are looking at using tablets on the manufacturing floor for our QA people. Our applications require a full computer and carrying a ultrabook around and being forced into using a keyboard isn't a great idea. We will probably end up with the toughpads that panasonic makes but we wanted to see if windows 8 made sense.(which it doesn't, at least not yet). As far as the ipad goes we have tried them but it just will not work for our situation.  Keep in mind we are not a home user which something like a Ipad or a Nexus tablet makes more sense for.

[Kageru]

I thought it was something like that. Microsoft still has a solid monopoly and eco-system lock in on the corporate market and can extend that to mobile data terminals. There's people making those already though a surface tablet seems way overkill for a data collection device, but microsoft can make the alternatives difficult if it chooses to.

But with Windows 8 they really wanted the domestic market and the "flash" of exciting gear. Otherwise they end up being like IBM. Boring gear you are mandated to use at work but not nearly as interesting as what you use at home. And long term that makes them vulnerable.

[Sky]

Ye gods. I was just told to order 8 laptops for our training lab and it seems the options are 'shitty processor, shitty OS or both'.

Dammit. I just got a working model for win7, you sheepfuckers.

[Hammond]

You can still buy laptops with windows 7.  All of Dell's business grade laptops should still give you windows 7 as a option. No idea what your budget is though and if you are in the low end range you may be out of luck.

[Venkman]

Ok so I finally decided to take a look at Windows 8, by way of torturing the wife with a new laptop (good) with Win8 on it (not so good). Until this very moment I wasn't interested in it so had avoided this thread. I'm going to start thumbing through, but I need to get this off my chest first:

What. The. Fuck.

The basic settings accessible through metro make the fucking iPhone settings menu look like the space shuttle. I can't even figure out how to connect to a network that has SSID broadcast off. And forget trying to find the MAC address. And fucking wifi keeps flickering in and out of connection with no indication on what's failing in the basic interface. They obfuscated the desktop mode, but that's the only place all that shit still exists!

And that was all before I realized the Mail program doesn't support POP3, used by every fucking ISP ever. At one point I had all her emails (she refuses to ditch the email box from our ISP) route through gmail. Then I said fuck it and put on MS Office 2007 so she could have Exchange.

I finally just set up everything so she could use desktop mode fulltime, with the caveat that there's no longer a start button but instead start "tiles". Which she'll never need because I put all her shit in the desktop task bar.

So I think I know what they're thinking: proprietary UI we can own and then we can MTX people for deeper features (like those stupid-ass netbooks with basic Win7 that charge you for shit like wanting to change the background image), and get kickbacks from all the geeksquad calls.

The problem is that MS is no Apple. Not that Apple is any better at intuitive design (and Jobs' fixaction on skeuromorphic design really sucked). But what Apple has is a loyal fanbase willing to suck down change, even change only for the sake of change.

MS does not have that. They have an audience grugglingly conceding the computers are cheaper when it comes bundled with shovelware and a stupid UI.

I swear, their OSes are like Star Trek movies: every other one sucks.

I told her we'd give it a week. If she hates it, I'm nuking it from orbit and putting on Win7. Or return it and drop an extra $300 for an Air.

[Lantyssa]

Classic Shell with "skip Metro" checked.

[Yegolev]

Classic Shell with "skip Metro" checked.

What do you have if you do this?  Seems there is a lot of complaining about the OS in general, so would this alleviate the complaints, leaving us with Win7.1?  I'm in no hurry to update, so far no one has forced me, but you never know.

[Reg]

Yeah, I thought there was no way to do that sort of thing. Was I mistaken or is this something from a recent patch?

[Lantyssa]

Classic Shell is a free app, not part of Windows.

Yes, it makes it Windows 7.1.  I have to deploy 8 for my end-users, so I'm okay with it being functionally the same.  I do NOT want to have to teach them how to use 8.

[calapine]

Had an opportunity to get Windows 8 Pro for free, so took it. Bought Stardocks' Start8 for 4.99$ (similar to Classic Shell, but more features)

Start8 provides a startmenu, allows to boot directly into the desktop and to disable the charm corners. I activated all options and haven't seen metro ever again.

[Fabricated]

I like how Win8 was so bad it turned Stardock into a company producing a legitimately useful product instead of stuff for people to skin their OS into an ugly anime monstrosity.

[Venkman]

Classic Shell is a free app, not part of Windows.

Yes, it makes it Windows 7.1.  I have to deploy 8 for my end-users, so I'm okay with it being functionally the same.  I do NOT want to have to teach them how to use 8.

Thanks!

Going to grab that. Wish I read this when you posted it. Woulda been a good April Fools joke. Now it's just a mundane problem solver 

[Engels]

Interesting facts about the Windows 8 'store'. Can be barely called a 'store'. More of a front for shovelware and the dregs of the internet. Makes Android Marketplace look like a place to take your mother-in-law.

[Krakrok]

Interesting facts about the Windows 8 'store'. Can be barely called a 'store'. More of a front for shovelware and the dregs of the internet. Makes Android Marketplace look like a place to take your mother-in-law.

The Windows 8 store sounds like an awesome place for a developer to make some cash. Little to no competition and no one minding the store for the win.

[Ingmar]

I like how Win8 was so bad it turned Stardock into a company producing a legitimately useful product instead of stuff for people to skin their OS into an ugly anime monstrosity.

I will still never, ever, ever give them any more money.

[luckton]

I'm hoping Win7 is the last windows I'll ever buy.  With Valve trying to lead the Linux Gaming Revolution now, I may just switch over.

[Engels]

I'm hoping Win7 is the last windows I'll ever buy.  With Valve trying to lead the Linux Gaming Revolution now, I may just switch over.

Have you tried installing, say, Team Fortress 2 on Linux? It isn't exactly a walk in the park for an amateur Linux user. I have, and my conclusion is that unless you have the absolutely most vanilla Linux install, with only one monitor, a known video card, etc, you're going to run into all sorts of trouble. Not to mention that TF2 on Linux looks like absolute shit and runs worse.

[Ingmar]

Yeah the 'Linux gaming revolution' stuff is *years* away.

[Fabricated]

The Linux gaming revolution will literally never ever happen.

[luckton]

[tgr]

As much as I want Linux to be a viable gaming platform, I just installed kubuntu 12.10 on my gaming rig. What I experienced there was unlike what I've experienced any other time I've tried to fiddle with linux (I used kubuntu back at work 3-5 years ago or something): I could open up the KDE variant of the start menu, but I couldn't select anything within that, with the mouse. Keyboard worked. Same with any and all programs I started up.

Apart from that, uh, minor issue, everything worked much more smoothly compared to the previous time I used it (the problems were mostly X-related, with me having to fix the configuration and installing updated ATI-drivers etc). But I've no idea why that problem happened, and unlike the other problems I've had in linux, I've no idea what to do to fix this.

[Surlyboi]

The Linux gaming revolution will literally never ever happen.

LIEZ! 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 is the year of linux on the desktop!

[Pennilenko]

Holy shit, windows 8 is like a bad infection, it just doesn't go away. I have to use it for a class I have so I used my student copy on an extra hard drive I had installed. For years I have had multiple versions of windows on different drives and the option to boot from any of them has been clean and easy to use. 8 does some shit to windows 7 even though its on another drive so that windows 7 wont boot and I just get a blank black screen with a mouse courser. I had to physically disconnect the drive with 8 on it before it would let me boot into 7 successfully again.

Also holy shit, windows 8 is a gigantic steaming pile of shit.

[Lantyssa]

It's like they took Windows 7 and decided to merge it with Vista and ME.

[Paelos]

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/149762-four-months-in-windows-8-adoption-is-almost-at-a-standstill

It's a disaster. Plain and simple. Not only is it not getting adopted current users, they actively speak out against it. Windows is having to cut prices by 75% to even get manufacturers to put it on their machines, and it's murdering sales. If I was a retailer, I wouldn't want to carry the things. It's a waste.

[Lantyssa]

It's very much building for a market they want instead of the one they have.  Only instead of 200k customers, they had most of the desktop market.

And it's all because of two stupid things they took out that can bed added back through freeware.  Morons.

[Venkman]

What was the second thing? I can only think of the Start button (which you linked to a freeware thing earlier in thread, which has been awesome, thanks!)

Two weeks in and my wife spends all of her time in desktop mode. Easy when you only need five programs in the taskbar, including Minecraft for the kids (and, well, me).

Paelos' chart matches every other one I've seen too. I'm quite sure MS is not a fan of this. I wouldn't be surprised if whatever yutz pushed for metro isn't even there anymore.

[Lantyssa]

The Metro start instead of a desktop makes a huge barrier due to first impressions.

[Chimpy]

I wouldn't be surprised if whatever yutz pushed for metro isn't even there anymore.

Pretty sure that yutz is Steve Ballmer.

[Venkman]

Then those are the metrics he deserves 

The Metro start instead of a desktop makes a huge barrier due to first impressions.

Ah. Yea. That was the first few hours of my pain. She just doesn't ever shut it off so largely remains in desktop mode.

Until, apparently, and as I just found out, you want to open images. Those images won't open in a Picture Viewer window. They'll dump you back in the stupid Metro UI until you fiddle with changes to make it stop.

[kildorn]

I would accept metro and the charms stuff if there was some compelling reason under the hood to upgrade. As is, it seems like it's Windows 7 with a shittier UI. I'm failing to see the technological advances here, and MS doesn't seem to really be running out the amazing leaps forward to try and convert the techies. And I'm pretty much offended at the rumors (facts?) that the new DirectX will be Win8 only in order to push sales, not for any technical reason.

[calapine]

I would accept metro and the charms stuff if there was some compelling reason under the hood to upgrade. As is, it seems like it's Windows 7 with a shittier UI. I'm failing to see the technological advances here, and MS doesn't seem to really be running out the amazing leaps forward to try and convert the techies. And I'm pretty much offended at the rumors (facts?) that the new DirectX will be Win8 only in order to push sales, not for any technical reason.

Well, .iso files can be now mounted natively in Explorer, without the need of a programme like Clone CD.
The programme search that opens when you press "Win-Button" has been somewhat improved over Windows 7.
The Taskmanager looks nicer.

Thats about it.

[Lantyssa]

Well, .iso files can be now mounted natively in Explorer, without the need of a programme like Clone CD.

Same with Server 2012.  Interesting bug in 2012 which I haven't tried to duplicate yet, nor really want to, but I'm going to need to see if it happen in Win 8...

We make a ton of recordings.  WAV format, so we convert them to MP3 to save space.  It involved a DEL command.  No biggie.  Except it seems that 2012 will remove the file but not deallocate the space.  Guess what happens when your 100 GB disk has 90 GB of full non-existent files?