Why does MS Marketing Still Try To Mislead Everyone?

[HarryTri]

Windows XP was and is great in terms of computing experience, it is totally worthy of it's name (xp derives from experience). Microsoft made the absolute OS and then... tried to make something better. They ignored two simple rules:

1) You don't have to change a good GUI in order to improve an OS (you can change everything else instead).

2) You don't have to remove something every time you add something else!!!

Edited April 27, 2014 by HarryTri

[bphlpt]

Windows XP was and is great in terms of computing experience, it is totally worthy of it's name (xp derives from experience). Microsoft made the absolute OS and then... tried to make something better. They ignored two simple rules:

1) You don't have to change a good GUI in order to improve an OS (you can change everything else instead).

2) You don't have to remove something every time you add something else!!!

XPclient would certainly agree with these statements, especially the second one. I wonder how Win8.x would be today if MS had never removed any features or capabilities since Win2K, but only added everything they added and made sure all bugs were fixed and features were updated to work correctly with both older and newer hardware? Well, it might have become an unwieldy mess, and the "average Joe" user would probably have been overwhelmed unless there were well defined presets to choose from, but if they had concentrated on making features as options that could be selected at install time it might have worked. I guess we'll never know.

Cheers and Regards

[HarryTri]

The option to choose is really important. In Windows XP you can choose between the new and the classic shell e.g. in the case of the Start Menu. In this way each individual chooses what he likes best and everyone is happy. Windows 8 still have many customization options (if you look for them you can find them e.g. taskbar icons with text like on Windows XP) but could and should have more. Why not somebody to be able to choose between the Start Screen and the Start Menu or have them both? I can't understand why it is the one or the other.

[vinifera]

maybe not relevant to any here

but I think they shot themself by changing UI elements all the time

up until Vista we had standard UI.. the classic one look, no matter if it was skinned or not

with Vista and 7 they changed it into fancy Aero (which granted was in development since late 2002)

but with 8 they try to force fullscreen UI crappy named "modern", ... and where did that led to... oh wait

they will bring back the _ [] X on it

the one thing they will never learn that users of Windows are not only new kids

but they have base users since 80-ies

thus UI must be modular and left for user to choose which one he/she/it likes/wants

[NoelC]

I have to agree with you, Harry and all, that choice would be better than no choice.

Here's a good example of something having gotten worse after XP:

In XP you could set up Explorer to be quite dense - I mean you could have a lot of files/folders visible, because you could set up a small font and the lines could be made to display quite close together.

Now, everything's all spread apart and airy, with ever bigger fonts, and without a configuration option to counteract that trend. Maybe that's simpler to look at, and Microsoft claims to be countering "cognitive overload", but I'm sorry - there are computer tasks that REQUIRE a lot of things to be visible at the same time, so that you can make sure you're dealing with them all. I have a huge desktop because I do a lot of these kinds of tasks.

Another example is that ridiculous UAC. I understand that for laypeople it may help them avoid malware, but as a computer professional I need to be an admin full-time. Now I can't have that and run Metro/Modern apps. Who thought up that stupid, arbitrary limitation?

Thank goodness there are 3rd party developers who have come to the rescue. They have figured out what can be poked where in Windows to restore the more useful functionality. They have also PROVEN that the system is capable of doing the things they have enabled, so my question is this:

Why make it necessary to hack to get the features some people want? What does Microsoft save by oversimplifying the system?

If anything, Microsoft seems to be putting ever more effort into building a "walled garden" to try to close off the possibility of people "having it their way". It's just the wrong direction.

-Noel

Edited April 27, 2014 by NoelC

[vinifera]

with UAC disabled and no ability to run Metro apps

just shows how devs are not able to make sandboxed IE, but have to do system wide restrictions

which just shows how still IE and NT shell are in danger of being exploited

its funny how everybody is praising whole NT 6 line to be so much safer than NT 5

while in fact if you disable UAC (annoyance), you get the same level of security that of NT 5

one should ask, will Windows NT ever be safe ? (I think not)

Edited April 28, 2014 by vinifera

[NoelC]

Praising security? That's just more spin. It seems like ALL there is is spin any more. People have as many problems with malware and viruses today with the latest systems as they ever had. Perhaps more.

By the way, there are several easy things one can do that make a modern windows system FAR more secure, including disabling the default ability for Internet Explorer to run ActiveX from the Internet Zone, adding the MVPS hosts file to block parasite web sites, upgrading to a better 3rd party solution from the mediocre anti-malware software package Microsoft includes (and which is every malware writer's prime target), and adopting good computing practices.

-Noel

[MagicAndre1981]

Xp was never a good UI. I always hated it. The Vista/7 UI is 1000 times better.

[dencorso]

Xp was never a good UI. I always hated it. The Vista/7 UI is 1000 times better.

 

In your opinion (as the great Judge Patrice Lessner would put it..)!

That's why you love Vista.

I don't. I love XP. So, IMO, the XP UI is the best one there is, hands down!

At most, we can agree to disagree... 

 

@ NoelC:

Marketing is an euphemism for Propaganda... why would you expect them to act any different?

[xpclient]

Xp was never a good UI. I always hated it. The Vista/7 UI is 1000 times better.

I don't think it can generalized like that. There are areas where the NT6 UI is an improvement in terms of productivity and usability. In some areas, XP's UI is better. (The dreadful always-scatter-my-files-all-over-the-folder-to-make-my-life-difficult mode of NT6 Explorer comes to my mind.)

If there's one certain statement that can be made, it's that Microsoft no longer GETS UIs. That skill died after Sinofsky and his minions took over and started destroying classic UIs at Microsoft without any rational or logical benefit and without considering the all-round big picture (focusing on just one benefit of the UI redesign).

Edited April 28, 2014 by xpclient

[vinifera]

to me vista had worst UI in history of win32, too clunky and too scattered on all sides

although win "7" fixed the clunkiness a bit, the scattered options are still there, a non user friendly

where winblows 8 only made this worse

as for security

NT would be far more resilient if IE would have been taken out from shell completely

and yet again I doubt we will ever see this, even less now coz Metro depends on it

and those boneheads did it on purpose

now they can justify having IE as "must" integrated deeper

and they get IE usage share bigger again

monopoly is back

Edited April 28, 2014 by vinifera

[NoelC]

If there's one certain statement that can be made, it's that Microsoft no longer GETS UIs. That skill died after Sinofsky and his minions took over.

I don't think I've ever seen it stated better. Thank you, xpclient.

The thing that most folks don't realize is how long the pipeline is. What we're seeing released today was designed by those minions. People credit Sinofski with Win 7, but if you think about it he really just kept the pipeline flowing for things that had been originally designed years earlier.

And wow, the Quote button actually worked here on the forum.

-Noel

[MagicAndre1981]

If there's one certain statement that can be made, it's that Microsoft no longer GETS UIs. That skill died after Sinofsky and his minions took over and started destroying classic UIs at Microsoft without any rational or logical benefit and without considering the all-round big picture (focusing on just one benefit of the UI redesign).

yeah. Win8, Office 2013, VS2012/2013 all GUIs are broken

[pichorra]

Microsoft is bloating Windows in every new relase.

Windows 8 Metro brings no advantages for people that does not have an touchscreen equiped computer. Heck, it is just annoying with a mouse. By the other side, GNOME3 still is very usefull with a mouse.

Windows 8 uses a lot of Hard Disk space with stuff that I will never use. I miss the option in Windows 95/98 when you could select what to install.

Windows 8 "Aero" just can't be disabled through options, that means more megabytes of memory and processing that could be used in something else.

Windows 8 brings a new "Fast boot" technology that works nicely if and only if you do not have another OS installed. otherwise every change you do in any shared partition through another OS will make Windows get confused and corrupt the added files.

Heck, Windows 8 does not support less-than-32bits colors at all, they had to include an buggy wrapper for legacy applications.

[vinifera]

winblows 8 has no aero

and you can choose components in every NT version, just search for Embedded versions