Windows 8

[kildorn]

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?

Have you poked it with process explorer or handle? I haven't mucked with 2012 yet, but it sounds like the open file handles issue random linux apps can have where the pointer is deleted, but someone still technically has the file open so the space is never freed.

[Paelos]

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.

Honest question, have we seen a lot of advances in any facet of computing since Windows 7 came out? Other than moving shit to small devices (which I don't really consider a technological leap) I'm failing to think of much.

[kildorn]

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.

Honest question, have we seen a lot of advances in any facet of computing since Windows 7 came out? Other than moving shit to small devices (which I don't really consider a technological leap) I'm failing to think of much.

Linux has been making it's own desktop advances, but they're not revolutionary to anyone but linux.

Most of the tech advancements I've seen in the past few years have been virtualization based, and a steady migration of data storage to online sources. Very few major alterations. Even Win7 wasn't that much of a jump from Vista's post patch experience. Vista only sucked on release, it was kinda decent towards the end.

Even then, if I'm going to shell out cash for an OS, I kind of expect some form of notable improvement. Ubuntu can get away with it's tiny moves from version to version because it's free.

[Surlyboi]

 

[MahrinSkel]

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.

Then we'll skip it, like we did with Vista (and that version of DirectX had a lot more to attract developer interest).  Game developers aren't in the business of promoting Windows upgrades.  We push hardware upgrades, but there the relationship is reversed (hardware vendors kiss our ass and shower us with free hardware to push the envelope).

Microsoft?  We build for what the installed base is, and just as it was never there for Vista, it won't be there for Win8.

--Dave

[Raph]

I'm gonna be a contrarian and say

- Windows isn't going anywhere for a long long time.

- Many of the basic ideas in Win8 are good. (Lots of the implementation needs work).

- Windows needs to embrace mobile.

The fact that Win8 can be "mostly fixed" with some freeware is indicative that it isn't that broken. It mostly feels like an alpha. It'll probably get fixed. Frankly, what most needed to happen was a way for standard menu bars and scroll bars and the rest to become touch-friendly. Metro isn't that, but a lot of the design language is.

Win RT, on the other hand, is a complete waste. 

[schild]

Can we stop saying any company needs to "embrace" mobile.

Everyone is embracing it.

They're mostly doing a shit job.

[MahrinSkel]

Raph, you just like being able to finally draw on a computer like it was a sketch pad.  And Metro is a decent touch UI.  It's a shitty mouse UI, and forcing it on everyone to create cross-platform mobile systems cloud synergy, or whatever buzzword salad was in the bong-water in Redmond when they made that call, is proving to be a fuckup of incredible proportions.  

It might have been excusable if they could still believe people would just accept whatever OS was most current when they bought a system, but when people proved willing to pay a premium to downgrade from Vista, they lost that excuse.

Win8 is built on the belief that people need a common interface for both mobile and desktop.  And they don't need it, or want it.  "Embracing Mobile" doesn't mean trying to make the computer I sit down at and use for hours at a time work like the one I pull out of my pocket and swipe at with one thumb for thirty seconds.

--Dave

EDIT: Don't get me wrong, I still believe that the day is coming when the computer I carry in my pocket is my primary computing device.  But it will operate in different metaphors, different UI's, when it's plugged into a full size monitor and keyboard than when I'm swiping at it with my thumb.

[tgr]

The only two things MS is going to accomplish with forcing Metro on normal PCs is
1) making win8 irrelevant, or
2) do the same thing to programs as the consoles have done for games (FPS games in particular).

[calapine]

Honest question, have we seen a lot of advances in any facet of computing since Windows 7 came out? Other than moving shit to small devices (which I don't really consider a technological leap) I'm failing to think of much.

It feels like we have hit a wall the last years. I have been looking at new PCs latley (mostly window shopping, cant afford an upgrade), and CPU wise nothing is going on.

My i7 920 @ 3,6 Ghz was bought in early 2009 and there is still nothing that requires me to upgrade. CPUs used to be obsolete after 2 years, nowadays it's 10% more IPC every generation and maybe 100 Mhz more. Thats for intel. AMD is lagging - literally - years behind.

It's just sad.

[tgr]

While the clock frequency hasn't increased much the last few years, the number of cores have, and I'd bet that you'd start noticing the lack of power of old CPUs when the new generation of consoles are released and start getting utilized properly.

[Lantyssa]

Have you poked it with process explorer or handle? I haven't mucked with 2012 yet, but it sounds like the open file handles issue random linux apps can have where the pointer is deleted, but someone still technically has the file open so the space is never freed.

Through half a dozen reboots and enabling and disabling the drive?  I through a battery of tools at it.  One set says there is 13GB on the disk, the other says it's got the full 100 GB.  All say only 2.7 GB free.  Move and copy within an explorer window works, so it seems to only be issuing a delete command through the command line.  As I said though, I haven't done detailed tests.  I was too pissed and too tired to bother.

Another interesting quirk is that I had a program which needed an earlier version of .NET.  2012 brought the VM to its knees throwing a dozen errors containing hundreds of MBs of data every second.

PS - Fuck Microsoft's KMS implementation.  Make a real goddamn interface already if you want us to manage an always on key server.  (And what the fuck needing a Win 7 or 8 instance to issues Win 8 keys?  Why the FUCK can't I use 2008 or 2012 for what should be a server function?)

This upgrade has been nothing but headaches, and each time it's about a server upgrade just "not working" because MS has to fuck about with things every damn iteration.  I won't even get into the consultant whom my boss "had a good feeling about".  I'm about ready to torch my server room and start from scratch.  Fuck business continuity.

[Chimpy]

Are you sending the delete commands from CMD or PowerShell? Curious to see if it works from PowerShell but not the other.

Stuff like that is why my boss won't go to 2012 for anything until at least SP1. Shit, we are just now pushing towards 2008 R2 (2008 Enterprise for 32bit legacy) as our standard. We still have production machines running windows 2000 

[Venkman]

Win8 is built on the belief that people need a common interface for both mobile and desktop.  And they don't need it, or want it.  "Embracing Mobile" doesn't mean trying to make the computer I sit down at and use for hours at a time work like the one I pull out of my pocket and swipe at with one thumb for thirty seconds.

It's built on the belief by MS they need to own a common UI across multiple devices. I'm sure they think "but Apple did it". Except, well, Apple didn't and won't because they're not lacking in design or common sense skills.

MS will never admit they were wrong about Metro for PC, but they will hastily release something that does to 8 what they did to Vista. They're not in a commanding role anymore. Retailers are offering downgrade services for the remaining hardware makers not caught up. Software developers aren't pulled along by 8. Web developers treated IE10 as just another minor edge case, though theoretically IE10 on Win7 could change that. The Surface isn't selling any better than Windows Mobile devices, and people are so used to bitching about their console/settop box UIs that just nobody can even make the excuse that metro worked well on Xbox (which it doesn't but there people have zero choice).

Design failure they probably knew about a year and a half ago but were too far down the path of business inertia they couldn't change direction.

Computing power in our pocket is already here. Except the devices are designes mostly for consumption. Content creators can create on them, but only very specific things. Until what we consume moves beyond 2D games and movies, I don't see us needing much of a paradigm shift of the creation tools that exist.

[Lantyssa]

Are you sending the delete commands from CMD or PowerShell? Curious to see if it works from PowerShell but not the other.

Stuff like that is why my boss won't go to 2012 for anything until at least SP1. Shit, we are just now pushing towards 2008 R2 (2008 Enterprise for 32bit legacy) as our standard. We still have production machines running windows 2000 

CMD.  I wrote an AutoIt script to do all the conversion.  (The old process used a BAT file.  They're more or less the same, but the new script has a bit more error checking and convenience features, like generating an HTML file so our quality control person can search that instead of the thousands of mp3 we record each day.)

Maybe it can be done, but as I said, I didn't do any testing to reproduce or see if I could get around it yet.  It's taken me since Friday to calm down enough to do my bitching here today.

[MahrinSkel]

It just occurred to me why MS didn't learn a lesson from Vista, and won't from this.  They don't need to.  People who don't like Win8, what are they going to do?

--Dave

[Rendakor]

Not buy it and wait until Win9, like we did with Vista, and ME. And also, bitch about it on the internet.

[MahrinSkel]

Not buy it and wait until Win9, like we did with Vista, and ME. And also, bitch about it on the internet.

Or pay extra to get Win7 instead.  My point is that Microsoft has reached a point of market dominance that makes them immune to the normal rules of tech companies.  They can completely screw the pooch in ways that would sink any normal company, and it won't hit their bottom line at all.  They have to reach a level of arrogance in their invincibility where they're not even trying anymore before it opens up the possibility of a disruptive innovator.

--Dave

[tgr]

Not buy it and wait until Win9, like we did with Vista, and ME. And also, bitch about it on the internet.

This is assuming they'll swallow their pride and fix what's wrong with win8. Hopefully they will, because my last experience with Kubuntu wasn't what it was 3 years ago, where while it was a bit of work to get working, at least the problems made sense and seemed fixable.

[Raph]

 It's a shitty mouse UI

(and rest of rant)

Yes, I agree with all that!

Win8 is built on the belief that people need a common interface for both mobile and desktop.

No, no... it's built on the belief that people need a common OS for desktop and mobile. The biggest problem with it is that it has two UIs that are poorly integrated.

 "Embracing Mobile" doesn't mean trying to make the computer I sit down at and use for hours at a time work like the one I pull out of my pocket and swipe at with one thumb for thirty seconds.

It does in the sense of being able to open the same files, use the same software, and move your stuff back and forth. Or connect to the multiple decades worth of software that are impossible to replace or do without that fill multiple industries.

EDIT: Don't get me wrong, I still believe that the day is coming when the computer I carry in my pocket is my primary computing device.  But it will operate in different metaphors, different UI's, when it's plugged into a full size monitor and keyboard than when I'm swiping at it with my thumb.

And once again we agree. :)

[Raph]

This is assuming they'll swallow their pride and fix what's wrong with win8.

Enterprise will make them.

[MahrinSkel]

I'm gonna be a contrarian and say

Yes, I agree with all that!

[...]

And once again we agree. :)

Raph, one of us sucks at this "being a contrarian" thing.

The synthesis is that Win8 was probably a good strategic decisiosn but the implementation sucks donkey balls.  The new cross-platform metaphors should have been phased in more subtly, allowing desktop users to keep doing what they were doing while offering mobile users some value-added that might draw people to Windows on the phone, and tablets splitting the difference.  Win8 is really a tablet OS from a UI POV, and the market isn't ready to make the tablet the default computer system (if they ever are, about the only major computer tasks that tablets are better for are websurfing from the couch and drawing).

Microsoft has been pushing the tablet form factor since Bill Gates stole it from Go Computers back in the 80's.  Here they are, almost at the finish line, and they still find a way to muck it up.

--Dave

[Venkman]

It just occurred to me why MS didn't learn a lesson from Vista, and won't from this.  They don't need to.  People who don't like Win8, what are they going to do?

Buy a tablet.

Your argument held until about two years ago. Desktop sales have tanked. Laptops are declining. The usual way MS forced adoption on users was through OEM and corporate proxies. Like WinXP before it, Win7 is more than fine enough for corporations for the next two years at least.

Win8 is built on the belief that people need a common interface for both mobile and desktop.

No, no... it's built on the belief that people need a common OS for desktop and mobile. The biggest problem with it is that it has two UIs that are poorly integrated.

I disagree.

• First, this would hold if Windows Mobile had any prayer of being competitive (it's current "on the rise" comes from cannabalizing Blackberries  ).
• Second, the metro end user UX would matter if people commonly thought of their Xbox in the same breath as their PC or laptop.
• Third, people aren't unifying their desk/laptop with their phone (or console) outside of the geek set who has already done it through the usual set of software-based baling wire and duct tape.

Does the average consumer need to ensure their Excel doc works on their phone, tablet, desktop and Xbox? No. Are there some who do? Yep. And they already have solutions that they're not going to replace until their work IT forces them to. And IT is not going to force them to with this POS. They'll wait the afforementioned year or two.

MS a year to make positive noise to fix this, or they'll be writing down a whole lot of zeroes on Win8 capital.

[tgr]

How many desktop sales aren't happening because there's no need to to keep up with today's games, since the limiting factor when designing games these days are 8 years old and has 1/64th the memory and god knows how little computing power compared to my mediocre i7 and is limited to 720p maximum?

[MahrinSkel]

How many desktop sales aren't happening because there's no need to to keep up with today's games, since the limiting factor when designing games these days are 8 years old and has 1/64th the memory and god knows how little computing power compared to my mediocre i7 and is limited to 720p maximum?

Most of our "PC" games are either console ports, or built with engines that are primarily aimed at consoles and just happen to be able to compile for Windows (because of the 360).  We broke the upgrade escalator.  We keep the video card upgrades going with raw poly counts and texture density, but CPU and memory, we haven't done anything to push those in 10 years.  Hell, how many games are there that can even use *two* cores?

--Dave

[schild]

My main desktop is still a Q9450 processor with 8GB of RAM and whatever 3 year old graphics card a user here sent me (name withheld).

It still runs nearly everything at maximum, except Crysis. But I don't play bad games, so whatever.

I don't think this is a discussion about the power of computers, or at least it shouldn't be.

[tgr]

The only reason "the power of computers" is brought up is because where I used to upgrade once every year, maybe twice, I now upgrade once every 3 years, and I'm sure I could've continued to use my already-3 year old q2quad with the gf285 the 1-2 years since I upgraded as well, if only the 285 hadn't died in a manner consistent with a motherboard frying itself. The desktop market simply "died" because there's no need to continually buy new hardware.

[Venkman]

Desktop computing died because computing moved to laptops and gaming moved to consoles, both consumer preference and ability to generate revenue. And then smartphones and then tablets started handing both their shirts.

This relates because MS deluded themselves into thinking it was the early 2000s and they could do whatever they want because they own the computers and users.

They're wrong. But unlike 2007, they're now wrong in an age where people are moving to consuming content on tablets which they have no competitive presence in, after smartphones which they never will, and neither of which have games driven solely by how many more voxels can be added each year. With them follows that developers will stick with what works well.

tl;dr: MS is fighting the last war.

[Fabricated]

This is assuming they'll swallow their pride and fix what's wrong with win8.

Enterprise will make them.

That ship has sailed. Close to a 9:10 ratio of the companies/universities I know the future software maintenance plans of are skipping Win8, and a smaller portion of those are telling their users that they're not going to get a single bit of support if they try to use their employer provided upgrade cash (in offices where people are given autonomy in purchasing their own mobile equipment) to buy anything with Win8. The university I work for is adding knowledge base articles for doing basic stuff (setting up the VPN, connecting to our campus wireless, etc) but in my shop we're telling any faculty/grad student who comes to us with a university purchased laptop/device that we're not even going to entertain a request for help if it runs Win8/RT.

Most of our "PC" games are either console ports, or built with engines that are primarily aimed at consoles and just happen to be able to compile for Windows (because of the 360).  We broke the upgrade escalator.  We keep the video card upgrades going with raw poly counts and texture density, but CPU and memory, we haven't done anything to push those in 10 years.  Hell, how many games are there that can even use *two* cores?

--Dave

The only current game I know of on PC that really takes advantage of multiple cores is Battlefield 3, which can use 4+, and actually greatly benefits from it.

Also I laugh at anyone who says that desktops are dead or will be dead in any reasonably short timeframe. Sorry, no one does real work on a tablet. I don't consider reading/answering email "real work" either (also email is for olds). No researcher, no business office user, no student, no professor here is going to be doing their actual work on a tablet. I don't see that changing in a lot of offices either.

[Paelos]

My office still uses XP.

[Hammond]

I am finally moving my last few users to 7. We actually bought a few 8 tablets and really the hardware, battery, OS is just not there. However with the start button apps that are popping up I could probably get away with it if I really had to(which I won't). Not holding my breath on 9 but traditionally Microsoft has "fixed" the issues in the next version.

Desktops are a interesting discussion, in our office environment 7 year old machines do anything we want. The only program that is driving any kind of push forward performance wise is Solidworks which is more GPU  than processor dependent. In the computer market I think we have just reached saturation point for desktops and people only replace them when they die. There is very few new technologies that are forcing upgrades.
In a few years we are probably going to hit that point with the Ipads and tablets of the world. I know very few users that actually upgrade their tablets.

Sure they may hand them down to the kids but they are not replacing them unless they are broken. I just do not see the long term growth unless they figure out a way to obsolete the machines somehow. The last few generations really did not bring anything new to the table and with the Retina screens you are getting close to the best screens you can use. Its becoming more and more gimmicky things to help drive the sales.

[MahrinSkel]

In a few years we are probably going to hit that point with the Ipads and tablets of the world. I know very few users that actually upgrade their tablets.

Sure they may hand them down to the kids but they are not replacing them unless they are broken. I just do not see the long term growth unless they figure out a way to obsolete the machines somehow.

Notice what all of the tablets have in common?  You can't easily replace the batteries.  After 2-4 years, you'll only be able to use them 'tethered', which will be even more inconvenient than a laptop in the same condition.

--Dave

[Hammond]

Yea but the batteries are a issue on all electronic devices. That in of itself will not keep the current massive growth in tablets going. Once you reach saturation point then you get into a similar situation as desktops. You are just replacing things when they die. If you look at Apples growth plan they are really expanding overseas to try to keep the growth going. Similar things with Samsung and many of the Chinese manufacturers. I guess my point is once everyone gets one what is the driver for a new one? You will always have the apple fanatics that want a new one but in reality that is a small percentage of actual users. There will always be new gadgets (see the smart watch rumors) that will drive electronics so its not like the cycle will end but you never know what will be next.

[Engels]

This is why Microsoft better be a bit less arrogant. This wasn't true even 4 years ago, but it sure as fuck is now:

[schild]

That's been happening for YEARS. Back in 1999 I was told to buy a mac by my university. I didn't, because working on MacOS makes me feel less productive. Still does. But that's besides the point - I don't think Microsoft cares about the "Had To Spend My Parents Money/Scholarship Money on a Computer and Got an Overpriced Mac" market. Especially since, you know, they don't make hardware.

Edit: Yes, I'm aware they make some hardware, but they don't make laptops/desktops in house. Ain't no college kid, I don't care how white they are, gonna get any work done on a fucking tablet.