good reading...

The parts that reminded me to this forum and some of its hardcore users:

...

 

They are giving clear clues, like, they just brought Nokia, whos CEO was working for m$ (2008 to 2010). And he would be the next m$ head (to roll?). So...

 

FileRecovery was a joke from the beginning on. The first time I realy needed that damn thing it didn't worked and constantly eated up valuable HDD-Space. If you realy screwed up to an catastrophic loss you were out of luck with FileRecovery! Does this guy knows what he is ranting about?

What about StorageSpaces and Hyper-V? That are features that never realy existed in Windows 7 and don't compare VirtualPC with Hyper-V!

Well the attempting part he has done but all his logical explanations are based on

• 1 (in words: O N E) click more to do some task
• ranting about users can't read a line on the bottom to not be forced to use a MS-Account
• less details in the metro part as in there desktop counterpart

The rest is 3 pages of ranting and cursing on the Modern UI and basicly omiting the positives of the Modern UI and Windows 8

• Start-Tiles are showing information like new emails on the email-app or what's going on in the app => this was never possible in the startmenu
• Commonly used Application you can pin to the start screen and group them together => in Desktop you added your commonly used Applications to the Taskbar and as a link to the Desktop itselve. Users which heavyly used this behavoir got a very messy Desktop. If you didn't do this you were forced to start all your commonly used Applications through your Startmenu where you allmost every time needed 3 or 4 clicks more then to do this on the Stratscreen.
• Storage-Spaces so you can use all your HDDs with ease through kind of VirtualHDD with thin provision and a optionatail protection against data loss. Out of Storage on your HDDs: only plug another HDD to it you have more space without having another Drive-Letter to shuffle data to it. => This wasn't existant prior to Windows 8. Raid is also very rgid when you needed more space.
• Hyper-V is a full usable Hyper-Visor at a corporate level. => No comparison to the silly VirtualPC from before which wasn't even able to virtualize Windows XP in a useable fashion. In a few years Vmware could get out of bussines because of Hyper-V.

This post sums up perfectionaly every badmouthed post against Windows 8 it the way of substance and positive details. Almost none or very little objectivity and only the high dislike of ModernUI. Postives features of Windows 8 are belittled or even not metioned as a whole.

No positive thing about Windows 8 can outweight the dislike of the ModernUI.

 

Well, we spend our computer lives clicking on things. +1 click means millins of millins of unnecessary clicks in a lifetime. Multiply this with the number of people using computers. The only winners are here companies that manufacture mice. (And MS of course. Probably they even get a share.)

You have probably never seen non-geeks using computers. I'll tell you a secret: They're the majority. And in theory W8 targets them in the first place.

Simple logic. You can't say something is an improvement if it isn't.

You can't include something that doesn't exist.

Anyone remembers the desktop gadgets? They did even more and still do for a lot of people. And a bonus: They do all of this without covering the whole screen.

Actually the start menu has had a very good recent list since Windows XP. You're a bit too quick to forget. The SM also has shortcuts to common folders, control panel etc. And a nice search bar that isn't filled with Bing crap.

Why would anyone use it when it's not portable. You boot linux and can't access your stuff. You boot an earlier version of windows and can't access your stuff. You take your HDD to a friend and your file system is inaccessible. The same useless thing those yellow dynamic paritions were in Windows XP. Nobody used them and no partition editing software supported them.

No HW acceleration, not even a true color desktop? Even the free VirtualBox beats it to death. Note: Corporates won't use it as they avoid 8 like the plague. And for a good reason. It's a toy for teenagers to browse Facebook on their tablet, not an operating system. (Well, technically it is, but that's another story...)

 

I like win 8 for the hardware support it offers for newer systems. A lot of new hardware features works out of the box (incl. usb 3.0 and wifi printing). Also liked the metro interface even though it was largely useless for me.

I did not like the new cumbersome way of getting onto desktop in win 8 nor the problems in closing metro apps.
Yet I have been on win 8 since Dec 2012.

Now MS thinks it must have made a mistake, but they still do not want to admit it. So what they do:

They bring the windows icon on the desktop, and also enable straight boot to desktop. All cool and fine for me since I can now easily shut down and restart. However, wait. MS thinks it made a mistake, but still feels shameful to admit it, and wants to correct it. So what do they do.

You have to right click the windows logo to bring up the commands there. Can not a simple left click do as it did in win 7 etc.

That to me sums up what is going wrong with MS. Make a mistake, correct it, but spite the users who complained in the first place.

 

Remember Valve and Canonical. They're working on it with a few others as well.

 

That is pretty much it (not just here at MDL, but elsewhere) - the anger over ModernUI is so strong, it has led to erroneous assumptions.

1. First assumption - ModernUI directly killed the Start menu. False - the Start menu has its own issues. Note that many of the various third-party utilities that emulate it lack certain problematical issues that were in the original Start menu.
2. Second assumption - ModernUI is targeting desktop applications. Patently false - there is not a shred of data, from any reputable source, indicating such is even planned for RT.
3. Third assumption - ModernUI is touch-first. Close - but no cigarette. I have not run into a single ModernUI app - not even the bad ones - that was unusable with a mouse. The bad ModernUI apps would also have been bad desktop applications - bad design is bad design, period. ModernUI is touch-plus, not touch-first.

I've been running Windows 8 (in some way) since the Developer Preview, and demoted Windows 7 to VM duty starting with the Consumer Preview - and on the same hardware on which I had been running 7. (It's a desktop - a mid-tower, to be precise. No touch support at all.) If Windows 8 were as bad as the detractors have been claiming, I couldn't have done so at all.

 

MS killed it. Why? Because they knew no one would want to use the start screen/metro. So they made it mandatory in an artificial manner. They actually failed even at this, because the majority of W8 users just use a SM replacement or desktop shortcuts or whatever, and still avoids the start screen (which is the cradle of the metro ui).

Windows x86/x64 is a desktop/PC operating system. x86 is a PC architecture. The real question is: What is metro doing here at all? It should be limited to windows RT and windows phone.
Yes, we have now hybrid laptops witch touch screens. I wonder owners of these how often use this feature instead of the track pad/mouse.

Well, looking at the giant buttons, giant everything, I'd say it has consolitis and designed for the xbox 360. But it isn't, only touch remains. Of course it's usable with a mouse, as a mouse arrow and a click can "emulate" touch completely. You can even navigate android using a mouse. Is that touch-plus as well?

Actually the underlined part reflects why MS is in great trouble. When you release a product and you know it will be a failure and have to build in tricks, it means you are in great trouble. Some "clever" mind (maybe Ballmer?) at MS thought PC will die and only mobile devices will remain. Some other "clever" minds were too afraid to laugh (it's hard to find a new job these days) and pretended to agree. So MS started the whole thing out of fear of something that never will happen. Employees agreed out of fear of losing their jobs.

The PC has its own use and will have it in 100 years as well.

Can you imagine 3D modeling on a mobile phone? Can you imagine 20th Century Fox making special effects for Star Wars 77 on a tablet? Can you imagine a factory that makes cars using mobile phones to guide the welding robots? Aren't these funny things to think about?

This is what the d**khead at MS, who invented the whole vision failed to see. The parts of the PC market in which MS was successful won't die. Casual users who need a Facebook reader tablet have always pirated windows and will pirate it ever. MS never had any money from home PCs and even if they happen to die, this won't change a bit for MS.

 

Its called software raid and that exist since Windows XP

lol. Thats a JOKE.

 

No true-color desktop? Really? Have you installed the Integration Services in the VMs? (It's the direct equivalent to VirtualBox Guest Additions or VMware Tools.) Corporates ARE using it (Hyper-V) - in Windows Server. Other than the requirement for Extended Processor Tables support in Windows 8, I can tell you exactly what the difference is in Hyper-V between the two platforms - zero. (The second - of three - operating systems I run on this midtower is Windows Server 2012R2 -and entirely *because* of Hyper-V. In order to have a true-color desktop in VirtualBox, you MUST assign at least 128 MB of video RAM to the VM - no exceptions. You can assign MORE than that - 256 MB - if the VM is running Windows 7 or later AND has the Guest Additions installed. Hardware acceleration is, in fact, the reason FOR the EPT support requirement in Windows 8- it is optional in Windows Server 2008R2 (and later) - and something VirtualBox does not offer at all. (True-color support merely requires the Integration Services.) Hyper-V is, in fact, one of only two hypervisors to offer ANY support for hardware-acceleration of graphics in VMs - Xen is the other. And in order to use it in Xen, Xen must be installed bare-metal, due to Xen being a bare-metal-specific hypervisor. What you are trying to justify is not upgrading.

 

eydee - You are basically saying that there is no reason for change at all. However, the PC sales numbers (merely since the launch of Windows 7) disagree with you. Even the Mac sales numbers disagree with you. What is being bought instead? Tablets and slates and smartphones. Never mind the why - the reasons why are many and varied. However, for Microsoft (or anyone else) to ignore that would be crazy.

Have you used a Mac? (Any Mac, MacBook, or MacBook Air/Pro with Snow Leopard or later.) If so, you have doubtless seen Launch Pad. In what way is that any different from the iOS layout? (Note that no Mac has a touch screen display.) Why is there an iOS-type layout on an Apple computer that doesn't support touch? (It's still there in Mavericks -OS number three.) Seems to me there's a use for the design even without touch - otherwise, Apple would not have kept it through four iterations of OS X - and counting.

Have you used any Android tablet or slate that has a docking option? Most of them look (docked) like netbooks or notebooks - not tablets or slates. (ASUS' Transformer line is the most obvious example.) If you saw the screen you would think you were looking at Linux or Windows - not Android.

Apparently, change - for whatever reason - scares you silly.

Now, to tackle your mis-assumptions, since you dared to state them.

1. The Start menu has more than its share of faults - the biggest one is that it is confining and static. There is little to NOTHING that has been done with the Start menu over its existence - and not for lack of trying.
2. ModernUI apps are simple and concise - they aren't big and bulky applications. If you need a full-featured desktop application, you can still install one. (The Mail app didn't prevent me from installing Outlook 2013 x64 - or using it, either.) You can use ModernUI apps - or not. Your choice.
3. That is an opinion - and badly-sourced, at that. If anything, the inspiration for ModernUI is Windows Media Center - which is also in fact the inspiration for the XB360 Dashboard. (Would you now say that the XB360 has PC-itis? You would be more accurate.)
4. You would be referring to Industrial Light and Magic - a pioneer in the use of render farms. The close cousins are the beowulf cluster and the compute cluster. The idea behind all three is distribution of workload. So as far as your idea of having a bunch of tablet/slates/smartphones do rendering, it's not as silly as you would think - how do you think Folding@Home works? And there are render farms - at ILM - running Windows Server today.

 

Let's not forget we're talking about 8 here, not server. This is the whole point. MS is successful in the business sector, where everyone buys software legally and needs official support. W8 is consumer oriented, it's meant to run on home PCs (I mean.. tablets and phones.). These are the ones declining, not the PC of the business sector. Or have you seen that welding robot running on a smart phone? I'd be surprised. Have you seen secretaries writing business documents on mobile phones? Well, it would take a while.

Well, as I stated before in other threads where I was labelled as a Luddite, I used Vista since it was beta. I used Win7 since it was beta. Because they had changes for the better. (Some may even say I'm mistaken about Vista...). I use a few linux distros, Fedora is among them which is well-know about it being cutting-edge and always bringing the new features first. However, I might add, Gnome 3 was a similar failure as metro is, and I switched DEs after seeing its shortcomings. Thank god you have a choice when you run linux. MS could learn a lot from these people.

To answer the questions:
Mac: I never used one, I have no money for even half a mac.

Docked tablet: I don't really see the point of them. If you can bring the tablet and the dock, you can bring a netbook as well. More power, the ability to install decent operating systems etc. These docked tablets are also an abomination made by W8 and MS. They knew a simple tablet won't turn people away from real computers, so they disguised their stuff as one. It's still weak, it's still closed, it's still useless.

Screen: I prefer 24" and above. Something mobile devices cannot do and never will. At least as long as you can't fold them.

Start menu: It is static. It never was meant to be anything else. It's for launching application. If it wasn't static, our grandmothers would have a hard time using it. Live stuff which shows the weather, CPU temperature or emails are still the good old desktop gadgets. A shame that MS had to lie about them being a security risk and removed them in favor of the start screen.

Use or not to use metro: I still think there should be separate systems. Windows RT with metro and windows x86 with the desktop. Everyone would be happy.

WMC: It actually has something very close to consolitis. It is designed for the WMC remote, that's why it has such a strange layout. Things being giant is because it's supposed to be a home theater application and people usually watch TV from a larger distance. Actually WMC is another proof that layout like this is totally not designed for mouse but for a more limited input device. In this case, the remote, but it could be the xbox controller or touch as well. They all have something in common: being limited compared to keyboard and mouse.

So lets just not jump to the Luddite conclusion. Change is good if it makes things better. If doesn't, even if it doesn't make things much worse, you should resist, or the next change will be even worse. They'll know they can do it, so they'll just do it. Like removing the desktop completely. Could you live with that? Or would you become a Luddite as well when Windows 9 (or 10) comes out? Will you ever wonder what if it would have been stopped at the beginning?

 

If anything is a joke, it's software RAID. Yes - it HAS been around since XP, and it is what it sounds like - a cheapskate's alternative to hardware RAID. Software RAID was rendered moot merely on desktops in 2004 - by the launch of the Intel ICH5R southbridge, which included HARDWARE RAID support, as a standard feature. With few exceptions, every southbridge in every Intel chipset since has also supported hardware RAID.

Hyper-V, on the other hand, is no joke at all. It is enterprise-level virtualization (in fact, it is standard with Windows Server, and has been since 2003R2).

Other than the Extended Processor Tables requirement on Windows 8 (while Windows Server can leverage it, it's an option, not a requirement on the server side) there is no difference at all. And that includes REAL GPU acceleration support for virtual machines (called RemoteFX - it's the reason for the EPT requirement in Windows 8). It does require a CPU upgrade (and in all too many cases, a motherboard upgrade on the Windows 8 side); however, the CPU and socket support list is rather lengthy, and not all on the list are expensive.

Intel CPUs - any Core I-series CPU (any generation) and most Celeron or Pentium derivations in any four-digit LGA or PPGA.
AMD APUs - all AMD APUs without exception.
AMD FX series CPUs - all FX-series CPUs without exception.

That above list just covers EPT support (the Windows 8 requirement); I pointed out earlier that the server side lacks even that. Instead, the requirements are no higher than VirtualBox - VT-x support. (My midtower desktop has an Intel Q6600 CPU - VT-x, but no EPT, therefore no Hyper-V in Windows 8. However, I can use Hyper-V just fine in Windows Server - and I do.)

 

If anything is a joke, it's software RAID. Yes - it HAS been around since XP, and it is what it sounds like - a cheapskate's alternative to hardware RAID. Software RAID was rendered moot merely on desktops in 2004 - by the launch of the Intel ICH5R southbridge, which included HARDWARE RAID support, as a standard feature. With few exceptions, every southbridge in every Intel chipset since has also supported hardware RAID.

Hyper-V, on the other hand, is no joke at all. It is enterprise-level virtualization (in fact, it is standard with Windows Server, and has been since 2003R2).

Other than the Extended Processor Tables requirement on Windows 8 (while Windows Server can leverage it, it's an option, not a requirement on the server side) there is no difference at all. And that includes REAL GPU acceleration support for virtual machines (called RemoteFX - it's the reason for the EPT requirement in Windows 8). It does require a CPU upgrade (and in all too many cases, a motherboard upgrade on the Windows 8 side); however, the CPU and socket support list is rather lengthy, and not all on the list are expensive.

Intel CPUs - any Core I-series CPU (any generation) and most Celeron or Pentium derivations in any four-digit LGA or PPGA.
AMD APUs - all AMD APUs without exception.
AMD FX series CPUs - all FX-series CPUs without exception.

That above list just covers EPT support (the Windows 8 requirement); I pointed out earlier that the server side lacks even that. Instead, the requirements are no higher than VirtualBox - VT-x support. (My midtower desktop has an Intel Q6600 CPU - VT-x, but no EPT, therefore no Hyper-V in Windows 8. However, I can use Hyper-V just fine in Windows Server - and I do.)

 

Google and Apple are at two different price points- even more telling, both are vulnerable, but in different ways.

1. Android on tablets sells entirely due to price - RT tablets aren't going after the price aspect, as Android is deliberately aimed low-ball/cheap. Also, Android hardware and RT hardware differ very little - the spec side is entirely in RT's favor. The primary target of RT tablets is iOS and the iPad - not Android.

2. Android on smartphones - again, the issue is quality, not price. Not just OS quality or even hardware quality, but app quality, too. Both Android and iOS are vulnerable - however, that is a longer-term strategy.

3. The iPhone is, in fact, a major target of Windows Phone, if not THE major target. Apple has had its share of footbullets with the iPhone - how long can it keep doing so before the coolness factor heads south? (I'm referring to the supplier issues.)

4. Android on x32/64 - that COULD have been a real nightmare for Microsoft; however Google has refused to let it advance -why? (It would have certainly been a bigger threat than ChromeOS or the Chromebook is.)

5. iPad - That is the stated target of Surface, Surface 2, and all RT hardware The vulnerability factor is not merely price, but bang-for-buck.

Microsoft has absolutely no reason to get into a price war with Android, as Google is not the main target. (Worse, it would lose such a price war, and it knows it.) Apple - not Google - is the low-hanging fruit.