[JorgeA]

GrofLuigi, on 03 April 2012 - 09:12 AM, said:

It's a good thing that people who defended things like hectic start menu (it's just a search away), mandatory driver signing (it's vendors' fault that make buggy drivers), bloat (WinSxS folder too big? What's the problem, hdd space is cheap), the ribbon (you should get on with the times), forced obsolence (VS doesn't compile for older OS? You should "upgrade"), mandatory activation (it's their OS, not yours, you've just been granted a licence to use it) etc. etc. can now taste what it felt like for us all along.

+1 on that. I want to say "serves them right" for being MS apologists over the years, but I'd rather they kept speaking up this time...

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

Asok, on 02 April 2012 - 10:05 PM, said:

However, I discovered that overriding the default registry value:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon]
"Shell"=explorer.exe

with

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon]
"Shell"="explorer.exe /select,explorer.exe"

does in fact automatically skip past Metro UI (under most circumstances).

Asok,

It looks like I may be one of those cases that doesn't fall under "most."

When I tried your registry change, next time I restarted Win8 CP all I got was a black page. Clicking on the Escape key or the Windows key didn't make any visible difference. Hitting Ctrl-Alt-Del did enable me to bring up the Task Manager, from where I went back into Regedit, put the key back the way it was, and then rebooted to recover the previous behavior.

I didn't disable the lock screen as you suggested, as I had already configured Win8 not to show it at bootup so that was not an issue for me. I'll go back in and do what you said, if you think it'll help.

Thanks again for the idea -- we need to get something like this to work.

--JorgeA

This post has been edited by JorgeA: 04 April 2012 - 05:07 PM

[JorgeA]

Check this out: http://www.avsforum....53#post21860053

Is there any basis for the idea that Windows 9 might be a "cloud-based" OS?

If it is, then whatever chances Win8 might have with me will be completely gone with Win9. Ain't no way in h*ll I'm relying on a remote server to run my computer, let alone to store my documents. Internet service goes down often enough to render the cloud model too risky for serious work. At least today I can keep working when my Internet isn't. Not to mention that my documents are safely tucked away in my obscure corner of the universe, rather than as part of a big juicy target in some cloud service.

--JorgeA

[bphlpt]

JorgeA, on 06 April 2012 - 10:03 AM, said:

Is there any basis for the idea that Windows 9 might be a "cloud-based" OS?

I don't think there is any more chance of this happening than thin clients being universally adapted in the workplace, for exactly the reasons that you gave for not wanting it. There is a place for it, and for any option, but not widespread, IMO.

Cheers and Regards

[JorgeA]

Good, maybe it was just speculation.

--JorgeA

[CoffeeFiend]

JorgeA, on 06 April 2012 - 10:03 AM, said:

Is there any basis for the idea that Windows 9 might be a "cloud-based" OS?

They're already pushing for cloud stuff with the skydrive crap in Win8

JorgeA, on 06 April 2012 - 10:03 AM, said:

Ain't no way in h*ll I'm relying on a remote server to run my computer, let alone to store my documents. Internet service goes down often enough to render the cloud model too risky for serious work. At least today I can keep working when my Internet isn't. Not to mention that my documents are safely tucked away in my obscure corner of the universe, rather than as part of a big juicy target in some cloud service.

Most businesses think exactly like you. MS is also desperately pushing for its azure cloud services. Too bad nobody uses it. And it goes down on leap days too. Last I checked it was significantly more expensive than most of their competitors (including Amazon which is quite popular for cloud storage, cloud hosting and cloud computing power). Low usage caps on internet usage in Canada also makes cloud-based stuff seem like a much worse option.

bphlpt, on 06 April 2012 - 11:42 AM, said:

I don't think there is any more chance of this happening than thin clients being universally adapted in the workplace

+1 to that.

[belgianguy]

Anyone else heard that loud bang?

Seems Silverlight got taken out back and shot.

I find it very hard to get to the core of this article, it's so vaguely worded. The applications will still work, but they do seem to hint that people who know Silverlight will have to transition to WinRT.
Some say XNA is alive and kicking, others say XNA is not supported...

It's a very weird realization to start reading an article and be less informed by the time you've reached the end.

[JorgeA]

belgianguy, on 07 April 2012 - 05:30 AM, said:

Anyone else heard that loud bang?

Seems Silverlight got taken out back and shot.

belgianguy,

I think you're right about Silverlight being phased out. This is the key passage IMO:

Quote

XAML and C#/VB.NET development in Windows 8 can be viewed as a direct evolution from today’s Silverlight. All of your managed programming skills are transferrable to building applications for Windows 8, and in many cases, much of your code will be transferrable as well.

It seems to suggest developers should start thinking in post-Silverlight terms.

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

CoffeeFiend, on 06 April 2012 - 02:53 PM, said:

Most businesses think exactly like you. MS is also desperately pushing for its azure cloud services. Too bad nobody uses it. And it goes down on leap days too.

CoffeeFiend,

Unbelievable!

I did like the bit in the article about the root cause being a "faulty software bug" (as opposed to a properly working software bug? ).

--JorgeA

[CoffeeFiend]

belgianguy, on 07 April 2012 - 05:30 AM, said:

Seems Silverlight got taken out back and shot.

Not that anyone will really notice. Besides, it's been shot dead before. It was already fairly well known there won't be a silverlight 6, and that silverlight won't work on Metro IE (they're "embracing HTML 5" instead). Just like usual, they've pushed ridiculously hard for something that never saw much adoption, only to kill it moments later.

The repeated cycles of this is very well known by developers. You waste so much time learning the new stuff, porting your apps to it, then they kill it off, and you start the cycle yet again. After seeing happen it enough times you being to doubt all their new offerings. I for one, won't be wasting my time with this Metro garbage.

belgianguy, on 07 April 2012 - 05:30 AM, said:

The applications will still work

For one more version, probably in some "compatibility mode". They don't want to directly tell you "you're developing for an already dead platform", but now you know that it's no longer an option in the long-term.

belgianguy, on 07 April 2012 - 05:30 AM, said:

they do seem to hint that people who know Silverlight will have to transition to WinRT

Yep. They expect everybody to stop using WPF and Silverlight (not that either is exactly popular), and to use WinRT (Metro) instead. I'll definitely skip on that.

belgianguy, on 07 April 2012 - 05:30 AM, said:

Some say XNA is alive and kicking, others say XNA is not supported

That's definitely not clear. But I won't be surprised at all the day they decide it's no longer supported, no matter how soon that happens.

[gunsmokingman]

Truthfully Windows 8 GUI looks like it was design by a someone who took to much acid in the 70`s and never came down.

[MagicAndre1981]

agree.

Gnome3



or Unity look both much better:

[TheWalrus]

Jesus. It looks like some sort of crippled mixtureof MacOS and Windows 3.x. No way in hell I am potentially buying something that would force me to use such interface even if the whole thing was ten times as fast as Win7. And I was so stunned by that old article where they said how W8 can be ran (not used of course) on some ridiculously old hardware.

[CoffeeFiend]

TheWalrus, on 09 April 2012 - 11:50 PM, said:

No way in hell I am potentially buying something that would force me to use such interface even if the whole thing was ten times as fast as Win7A

Exactly. There's a handful of people obsessing over how fast it boots when I reboot like once a month. That might save me all of 2 minutes per year! Or indeed, how it would run better on a ten year old computer which I'd never want to use for anything in the first place. As if those are main concerns, especially when Win7 already works great on 5+ year old hardware.

If you take away the new task manager and explorer then there's basically no new worthwhile features left. A pair of minor features doesn't justify the price tag (I mean, SP2 for XP brought us more functionality for free), especially when it comes with that Metro trash which MS won't let you disable.

[TheWalrus]

Don't get me wrong, I like useless ehnancements. I am all up for improved efficiency. Of course five seconds shorter booting time means nothing, but it gives you the impression the engineers over there did something very good for a change.

But there are always those buts. This time frigging huge ones. I'm not buying into this at that cost, sorry (if the new UI was not there I probably wouldn't wait a single second to feed them my money, despite being extremely happy with Win7)

[Tripredacus]

CoffeeFiend, on 10 April 2012 - 12:07 AM, said:

Exactly. There's a handful of people obsessing over how fast it boots when I reboot like once a month. That might save me all of 2 minutes per year! Or indeed, how it would run better on a ten year old computer which I'd never want to use for anything in the first place. As if those are main concerns, especially when Win7 already works great on 5+ year old hardware.

A lot of the talking points from MS on Win8 are about increased boot time. Tossing around figures and times that remind me of my old Win95 PC as far as boot time. I think I only know one person that shuts down their computer at night. Most people just leave them on since the old days of memory corrupting and PC getting slow are things of the past OS like Win95 or 98.

[TheWalrus]

I remember I had like 100-200 days uptime on my work XP machine few years ago, and I used to do all kinds of funky stuff with it It DID get slower over time though, but was still very useable.




Anyway, I would love a system that boots even faster. It's not about saving time, it's about being extremely impatient

[Tripredacus]

From what I can tell so far, the boot time is "decreased" by moving certain functions to after the desktop shows up. So while full system functionality may take the same amount of time as Windows 7, Windows 8 will appear to boot faster because loading Metro/Desktop is earlier in the order of operations.

[JorgeA]

Tripredacus, on 10 April 2012 - 08:53 AM, said:

From what I can tell so far, the boot time is "decreased" by moving certain functions to after the desktop shows up. So while full system functionality may take the same amount of time as Windows 7, Windows 8 will appear to boot faster because loading Metro/Desktop is earlier in the order of operations.

Tripredacus,

So the whole "faster booting" thing may be just an illusion. Lovely.

Speaking of Win8 performance, I came across this report from the field.

What do you think?

--JorgeA

[MagicAndre1981]

no, I've explained the fast boot last year:

http://www.msfn.org/...__1#entry973871