[CoffeeFiend]

Tripredacus, on 10 April 2012 - 08:01 AM, said:

I think I only know one person that shuts down their computer at night

Yes. Especially with sleep that just works and that we don't have to reboot nearly as often as we used to.

Sure, it's nice to have faster boot times but it's a really minor point when you look at the big picture.

Windows needs a lot of work in many areas (I had listed just a few points here before). And when one of them gets addressed it's often in a half-baked, very basic way e.g. how Windows handles zip files natively. It's almost worse than having nothing. Even crappy WinZip 4 from 1995 is a million times better than what Win8 still has... Or just like it's finally getting ISO mounting, but years late and with less features & less supported formats than Daemon Tools 3.02 from 2002. It's like they're not even trying.

So much useful things they could do... but instead of making it a truly fantastic desktop OS i.e. further improving what they had, they force this frankeinstein-ish hybrid smartphone/desktop UI on us which might be okay on a tablet but sucks very badly on a desktop.

[JorgeA]

Microsoft is currently projected to enjoy just 11 percent of the tablet market four years from now, with iOS and Android growing faster in absolute terms during that period.

Projections can be famously wrong, of course. But assume for the moment that this turns out to be true: is that what MS diminished the Windows UX for?

--JorgeA

[CoffeeFiend]

JorgeA, on 11 April 2012 - 12:02 AM, said:

Projections can be famously wrong, of course

Indeed. I'd be surprised if they got anywhere near 11%, based on how their Windows Mobile/Windows Phone/Zune/Zune HD/Kin devices are selling. Or not selling rather. Zune, Zune HD and Kin were killed outright, and the phones are well below 1% of the smartphone market share by most website statistics reports. And it's not like it's some new product either: Windows Mobile (now rebranded to Windows Phone) would be 12 years old right now. So much time wasted for so little market share (just like Linux)... You'd think they'd get the point by now and stop pouring money into it. Metro not being very much liked by most (due to being forced on desktops) probably won't help, and WOA tablets being incompatible with anything useful won't help either.

JorgeA, on 11 April 2012 - 12:02 AM, said:

is that what MS diminished the Windows UX for?

Yep. Everyone gets a copy of Windows that sucks because of that.

[JorgeA]

I just spotted a new method for booting straight to the Desktop in Windows 8.

Right now I have the CP working OK with a different hack to boot to the desktop, I'll try this new one when the RC comes out in a few weeks (assuming MS hasn't itself made this improvement).

--JorgeA

[MagicAndre1981]

this also doesn't work well. I've already tried this.

[JorgeA]

MagicAndre1981, on 14 April 2012 - 04:15 AM, said:

this also doesn't work well. I've already tried this.

MagicAndre,

What happened when you tried that method?

I'm using a different method to boot to the Desktop (see post #3 on that page), but that one leaves me waiting for several seconds on the Metro screen. If I'm at the computer it would be faster to just click on the Desktop tile, but at least if I'm doing something else during bootup I can have the Desktop already up when I come back and not have to see that Metro start screen.

--JorgeA

This post has been edited by JorgeA: 14 April 2012 - 08:18 AM

[CoffeeFiend]

[JorgeA]

CoffeeFiend,

Wow, amazing. The "progress" (or lack thereof) is even more stark when you consider that those smaller Metro tiles show up on a bigger monitor screen, so that they come out to about as big and gaudy as those Commodore rectangles.

Nice work putting the image together, BTW.

--JorgeA

This post has been edited by JorgeA: 14 April 2012 - 12:41 PM

[MagicAndre1981]

JorgeA, on 14 April 2012 - 08:16 AM, said:

but that one leaves me waiting for several seconds on the Metro screen.

this is the same. It also takes some time.

Also nice picture:

[Joseph_sw]

whoa, that picture give me hope, that sombody would sue M$ for its metro,
just like apple sue-ing various desktop manager vendor, because their product were somewhat similar to apple's.

[JorgeA]

Joseph_sw, on 14 April 2012 - 09:22 PM, said:

whoa, that picture give me hope, that sombody would sue M$ for its metro,
just like apple sue-ing various desktop manager vendor, because their product were somewhat similar to apple's.

Interesting angle!

I wonder if that may be (part of) the reason that MS bought all those patents from AOL last week.

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

More love for Windows 8 from the community:

Quote

Metro is retarded.

I won't spend a dime on this pathetic excuse for an operating system much less let my overpowered hardware get the chance to laugh at it

Quote

RT? really? Maybe MS should defend that by stating what it means. RT=Real Turd? Really Trying? Random Touch?

[MagicAndre1981]

I also don't understand the name RT. The only good thing is that there are only 2 main editions and that language switching now works also on the smallest edition.

[Tripredacus]

MagicAndre1981, on 17 April 2012 - 03:38 AM, said:

I also don't understand the name RT.

Quote

For new apps, the focus for Windows RT is development on the new Windows runtime, or WinRT, which we unveiled in September and forms the foundation of a new generation of cloud-enabled, touch-enabled, web-connected apps of all kinds.

[MagicAndre1981]

if only this edition is focused on WINRT/Metro they can remove the crap from the normal editions.

[Tripredacus]

Well the news of these 3 versions are still leaving one out. 8 Enterprise version is different than 8 or 8 Pro. I would expect 8 Enterprise to be just like 8 Pro but use VLK/MAK, and HOPE (yeah right) it lets to disable Metro. Because as I've said before, MS is taking the entire market focus to the retail side and ignoring all the engineers and developers (and maybe stock traders) that won't have anything to do with Metro. So we all will just stick with XP, Vista or 7, or worse case end up (for them) going to *nix based OS. It isn't the same as corporations sticking with old version OS because of compatibility reasons, this time it is usability reasons.

[CoffeeFiend]

Quote

Metro is retarded

...and that's most likely what RT stands for.

Quote

RT=Real Turd?

Or that, yes. Or possibly Ridiculous Tablet? Refurbished Trash? Regret This? Or Return-it-to The-store? I dunno.

Tripredacus, on 17 April 2012 - 11:05 AM, said:

and HOPE (yeah right) it lets to disable Metro

But then there would be an edition that would be worth buying, and if people have the freedom of choosing whether or not to use Metro then nobody will use it. Sure, that would mean a even more certain failure for Metro (just how much higher than 100% can you go really?), but at least it wouldn't be an outright failure for Win 8 as a whole. Seemingly they don't mind the Windows brand to be associated with several major failures and losing market share in what's essentially their "only trick" (desktops), so long as they have that small, tiny chance at selling some tablets. It's quite a gamble and the odds & outcome both look really bad to me.

It looks like we have another 4 years or so of hearing "Windows sucks", "LOL Vista Metro", "I'm switching to [other OS]", "Downgrade rights" and "help me upgrading from Win8 to Win7". It's going to suck, especially so soon after the Vista fiasco. Users and developers alike are starting to doubt of the platform's future and to strongly consider alternatives. That's all Ballmer & Sonofski are succeeding at.

Tripredacus, on 17 April 2012 - 11:05 AM, said:

So we all will just stick with XP, Vista or 7, or worse case end up (for them) going to *nix based OS

It's funny how that seems so obvious to everyone but Ballmer and Sinofski. At this point we can only hope that the shareholders will do like RIM's shareholders did. It's about time they get some competent management.

[CoffeeFiend]

CoffeeFiend, on 11 April 2012 - 12:17 AM, said:

based on how their Windows Mobile/Windows Phone/Zune/Zune HD/Kin devices are selling. Or not selling rather. Zune, Zune HD and Kin were killed outright, and the phones are well below 1% of the smartphone market share by most website statistics reports. And it's not like it's some new product either: Windows Mobile (now rebranded to Windows Phone) would be 12 years old right now

Talking about that -- their mobile devices not selling: Microsoft Windows Phone Marketing Manager leaves after 5 months in the job.

If it doesn't sell, it just might be because people don't want of it, or that they're simply not good enough. I very much see their tablets sharing the same fate. I mean, it's basically WinCE (another product that consumers don't buy) with Metro on top, or the Windows Phone OS on a large phone that can't make calls... Windows, but without Windows apps or anything else that makes it worth using.

Oh, and Media Center is now an addon, and not available for what would have been called the "home" edition, but just for the pro edition now? That's going to sell great!

Edit: seemingly one of my kids' schools is lending iPads next year. And you can now "borrow" ebooks from our city's public libraries (with DRM/expiry) if you have an iPad. Add too that all the apps and the fantastic hardware and you have a winner, even if the price tag is pretty high.

[JorgeA]

CoffeeFiend, on 17 April 2012 - 07:57 PM, said:

If it doesn't sell, it just might be because people don't want of it, or that they're simply not good enough. I very much see their tablets sharing the same fate. I mean, it's basically WinCE (another product that consumers don't buy) with Metro on top.

Yup. They're late to the game and (apparently) bringing little that's new to the table.

One aspect that I'm surprised hasn't been given more attention, is the esthetic angle. Look at the picture of that Nokia Windows phone with those crude, flat tiles. Given a choice of looking at that every day vs. the beautiful floating 3D-effect buttons you see on other devices, which one would you pick?

CoffeeFiend, on 17 April 2012 - 07:57 PM, said:

Oh, and Media Center is now an addon, and not available for what would have been called the "home" edition, but just for the pro edition now? That's going to sell great!

An incomprehensible decision, unless the idea is to squeeze more $$$ out of those who really want Media Center. Folks over on the A.V. / Home Theater forums are not happy about it.

Media Center in the CP is reportedly unchanged from Windows 7. It would take significant improvements (such as elimination of a couple of notable flaws) for me to shell out for 8MC as an add-on.

--JorgeA

This post has been edited by JorgeA: 17 April 2012 - 08:56 PM

[CoffeeFiend]

JorgeA, on 17 April 2012 - 08:55 PM, said:

Folks over on the A.V. / Home Theater forums are not happy about it.

Honestly, I don't think too many people will even notice it's not there. Almost nobody uses it, and for a couple main reasons:

1) it's a pretty terrible video/audio player:
-it supports no popular subtitle formats
-it makes it a pain to play .mkv files
-it can't seek into FLAC audio files
etc

2) outside of the USA media center is just about useless as a DVR:
-CableCARD doesn't exist outside the USA
-ATSC feeds are USA-only, besides a handful of channels in Canada and WMC disables ATSC support if your country is set to Canada. So you have to hack at the registry to even enable that then.
-DVB support (what most of the world is using) is pretty darn awful, if not completely useless specifically for DVB-S (then again Vista didn't support DVB-S cards at all, back when I still had a use for it)
So the best thing most of us can do with it is record 480i stuff with an analog TV tuner, from the output of your decoder (changing channels with an IR blaster) in horrible quality. It's no wonder people just buy the HD PVR from their cableco or satellite provider instead.

So nothing of value was lost IMO. I've tried it several times from XP to Win7 and it's always been a huge let down.