Windows Windows 8 Marmite thread... Because you either love it or hate it

...and once again the "don't like it, you're wrong" argument resurfaces. Melodramatic much?

Microsoft have done little more than gone "ooh, Android and iOS are nice, lets make the Windows interface a bit like that". How revolutionary. Honestly. To borrow a phrase, its like making an octopus by nailing arms onto a dog.

Yes, the future may well involve further integration between mobile computers and desktops---but Win 8 is just not ready for the desktop. If they'd released it purely as a cool beta test, a "sneak preview" of future capabilities then it could have been quite cool. But as a desktop OS in 2013 it has little to commend it as far as I am concerned.

 

I don't see the resemblance. And I don't see Android or iOS being used on desktop computers either. What you just said is the same thing as what clueless people say about Microsoft "Microsoft never innovated, not a single thing"... and when you present a list of genuine innovations, you just shrug it off as 'copied' with no proof or actual remotely close resemblance.

 

Android devices have tried the hybrid approach like the transformers, in essense becoming little netbooks rather than tablets, it works well I used one as my main personal machine for 7 months.

 

Android on laptop... is Android with just an added cursor.

 

This turned out a bit longer than I expected it to be

It seems most people have an issue with the lack of a Start Menu. That there isn't one. Well there is. Like it or not Modern is a Start Menu. Ok so it's fullscreen, so what? As far as I'm aware anything that would have created a Start Menu entry on W7 would create a Pinned Shortcut on Modern. And you scroll horizontally instead of vertically. Or if you want to save time you start typing and let Windows pull up the correct shortcut for you to run. Much faster. Don't like typing, you prefer looking at everything in the Start Menu to find the one thing you know the name of to click on? How do you get to msconfig/services.msc? I know in W7 all I did was type them in the search bar.

Yes OK you can't see anything else if you use Modern's Start Menu, and you could on W7, although I for one know that if I was looking for something in W7s Start Menu, I wasn't looking at whatever else was on my screen because I was looking for something in the Start Menu. Probably in Programs, inside a folder, and if I'm really unlucky inside a subfolder. That'll take up some of your desktop space.

Even before Windows 8 came out and I had tried it, I hated the idea of Modern. Thought it was terrible. Then I realised that I don't often go into the Start Menu anyway. Commonly used things have a shortcut on My Desktop. Frequently used things are pinned to my Taskbar.

I treat Modern more of a second Desktop, I've got shortcuts on it. Instead of hitting the bottom right hand corner of my screen to Show Desktop and click a shortcut, I click the bottom left hand corner of my screen and click a shortcut. To run e.g. VLC instead of

Click Start Menu > Click/Hover over programs> Move down program list click/hover of VLC folder > Click VLC shortcut

I

Click Start Menu > Type VLC ( Actually I just need to type the V ) > Click


This isn't to say Modern is perfect. The only real downside I've come across so far with W8 is how, as an example, settings appear in PC Setting in Modern, but there's not everything there, and how there's setting under Control Panel. No sure if everything in Modern is also in the Control Panel, either way it feels a bit disjointed.

Is it an issue? Not really, 90% of the time I go to Control Panel anyway. Regardless of where it is, if I know it's in one I'll go there. If I want to change my Lock Screen, I know it's definitely under Modern Settings so I go there. I'm not going to going hunting in Control Panel for it first. I can imagine this putting off average Joe, getting all confused and making a big fuss over it.

Small things - File explorer should go to My Computer. Or there should be a My Computer option if I right click bottom left corner. The Power button should be easier to get to. Xbox Music/Video apps could be better. Skype/Messenger apps shouldn't give double notifications - skype is beta so we can let that slide. I shouldn't need a third party program - OblyTile - to put an image to a Shortcut on Modern.

As for people who like W8 who aren't fan boys - I'd put myself in this category- The reason we might be getting a bit pushy is that a lot of people just say they don't like it, not really stating why.

I'm going to assume you're talking about the Live Tiles looking to tablet/phone-esque, correct me if I'm wrong. Does this mean you don't have shortcuts on your desktop? Because I'm pretty sure shortcuts on a desktop would look like the same type of shortcuts you'd get on a phone/tablet. Unless you use the Start Menu for everything. Am curious as to why your non techy friends dislike it.

You'll have to forgive me as I've not looked through all of the past 113 pages, so serious flaws?

Yep, I've heard this a lot too. In fact I know someone who got Start8 so he didn't have to look at that POS Metro interface that looks like a**.

After seeing what OblyTile can do, he changed to something along the lines of, that doesn't look too bad, I might try using that. I'm not going to hold my breath though.

 

Ok, to compare windows 8 to such a piece of technology as the first aeroplane is an absolute fallacy. The first aeroplane was entirely (and I can't stress entirely enough) unique and unprecedented. Windows 8 is neither. It is two well established technologies (O/S types really), slapped together to make something that can only really be described as, well...two different things slapped together. Sort of like putting stereo speakers in the cistern of a toilet. Actually, that might be a better combo than what Windows 8 presents (providing you add the necessary water proofing ).

By all means technology should evolve. But not simply for the sake of change. If you want to bring about change then do so. But offer an improvement over the precursor. What does windows 8 bring? Some O/S refinements which are good and frankly the very least any O/S release should have. However it doesn't bring revolution, it doesn't bring anything unique, it doesn't change the game, its just the same old thing with a different same old thing tacked on the side.

Right so we put windows 8 on a wacom and now we have the future is that it? All of those things that WACOM have are probably great. Lets not forget that the wacom thing is hardware and Windows is sfotware. But Microsoft didn't even try with a device like that. Windows 8 doesn't fit into a device like that any more than windows 7 does.

Microsoft were at the point where they could have turned the technology world upside down. Instead they just saw apple and android doing well and went: "Well, we'll give them a bit of that and mix it in with what we already have" It is in fact the antithesis of creativity, of revolution, of new. Frankly as I think about it, it's just disappointing.

You really want to see the future of software look at chrome os. On the face of it nothing new or special but it has one simple idea. Basically, everything in the cloud. All your apps , all your data, everything. You end up with a thin client that can do amazing things and simply sips the juice. Of course that is predicated on constant ubiquitous and high speed internet access. So that is a looooooong way into the future.

You might say the windows 8 is just a stepping stone. But its such an incredibly poor step. It doesn't present us with the future nor does it present us with anything particularly useful for the current day. Current technology does not limit what windows 8 could have been.

 

Not knocking Linux Ubuntu, but what innovations has it driven?

 

A pity you edited your post, Nexxo. I was about to point out that a variant of linux was on 500 million smartphones...

The thrust of the argument from Nexxo and Goodbytes is that Windows 8 is good because its innovative. Even if you accept that---and I don't---that doesn't mean its any good.

When the Wright brothers discovered powered flight they weren't daft enough to try and sell commercial flights on it---the technology wasn't ready for that. As a proof of concept, it was great. As a finalised commercial product---consumers wouldn't have liked it because it just wasn't developed properly.

As for the idea that Windows 8 is as important as the first planes or cars, don't make me laugh. Its a new interface for a computer. If mobile computing and touch screen interfaces does suddenly become the new standard then the pioneers of that will prove to have been iPad and Android, not Microsoft.

 

Ah, how soon they forget. Unless you are a middle-aged man like me, who was a teenager when the first home computers hit the market and already a man before the Web came along, you wouldn't remember the days before GUI, mouse, Plug and Play, multitasking and stuff like that which you take for granted now. All these innovations were if not driven by Apple and Microsoft, at least made mainstream by them. Google innovated information on the Web. And Linux did...?

Flight, meanwhile, quickly moved from proof-of-concept stage to practical application when WWI came along. When the market is there, proof-of-concept evolves rapidly into something that people can use. That doesn't mean that the first planes were terribly refined or practical, but they were the first step.

And are you suggesting that computers have not been as important a technological revolution as cars?

 

Greetings!

Doubtful, more like a prototype of future OSes. And a weak one at that, made by gluing two existing UIs together.

What are you talking about? W8 can not be compared to the invention of heavier-than-air flight.
If you want to compare it to anything aeronautical, the closest thing is the invention of a gyroplane\autogyro. Two previous ways of flying put together:

Ah... Actually it wasnt. Just research the works of Áders Éole or 14bis Santos-Dumont, others were working on planes too. They were already jumping and self-power flying before Wrights. If we didnt lived in a American culture supremacy History books would be rewritten.

Of course they have, however W8 cant be compared to first computers or first cars or first planes.

 

I'm not going to get sucked into a mickey measuring competition between linux and windows. I was referring specifically to how Canonical are approaching device integration which is different and better to how Microsoft are approaching the same thing.

I'm not a technological philistine simply because I prefer someone else's approach to something. Nor do I lack vision because I prefer something other than Microsofts ideas.

I'd also like to hit again on the notion that Windows 8 is for tomorrows devices. Windows 8 is actually for today's devices. It just fits really poorly with today's devices. It is designed with the specific puprose of operating on touch laptops and tablets. In fact that's pretty much yesterdays devices. After all Windows 8 is just a frantic grasp at trying to recapture what it has lost to Google and Android. Both of which have made there mark on yesterdays devices.

Ok well the first working plane had to be unique and unprecedented regardless of who made it. Either way comparing it to Windows 8 is like comparing apples and concrete blocks.

 

No, I'm suggesting that Windows 8 is not as important a technological revolution as cars.

When the great history of the world is written computers will have a massive section. And Microsoft will have a very important section within that section. But that doesn't mean that Windows 8 will be seen in years to come as an invention that changed the world in the same way that planes or cars did.

 

Is the Surface Pro really selling that well? From what I've read, while you can still find plenty of 64GB models, it's the 128GB that sold out. Even then, there have been conflicting reports about how Microsoft is defining "sold out." ZDNet and Ars Technica both report that some stores only received a single unit.

While I agree with the broader point of your argument, I would be careful about supporting the argument with the fact that the Surface Pro has sold out - at least, not until Microsoft releases actual sales figures. I suppose you could argue that a lot of people are upset about the lack of supply, and that points to high demand, but I'm not sure this is the case.

 

Critics cannot have it both ways. They argue that the Surface RT was a dud because it did not sell many, ignoring the fact that it was in limited supply (it is only now being released on the European market and took until December to even appear in US and UK shops). Now they argue that the Surface Pro is not really a success, pointing to its limited supply.

Meanwhile, ZDNet is now arguing that the two models should have been a different colour. That's right: we're now down to criticising their colours. The hate is getting a bit pathetic.

 

I bought a touchscreen windows 8 laptop this week (asus s200E) and for something that is meant to be intuitive windows 8 feels remarkably laboured and unfriendly. i.e it took me five minutes to find out how to shut the thing down as they hid that behind 3-4 layers of needless touchscreenery.

My initial impression is that it is largely an effort by MS to create a closed ecosystem to milk the app market.

Having said that having a touchscreen on a portable laptop and programmes designed for touch input is really handy to have but i really dont see the point of touchscreen on a desktop.

 

I don't think you actually ever need to shut it down such are the low power states w8 machines have in sleep mode when you shut the lid.

 

Yep the shutdown button is in a silly place. Use Oblytile, it has an option to put a shut down tile on the start screen.

 

That's the idea. But that is still a weakness of the current design of the Windows 8 Start Screen. Nothing that can't be fix in future updates. You always have the power button in any case.

As for touch screen on desktop, as I said, it works... the problem is that the displays we have are design for touch. The ultimate idea, in my book, is that our desktop computer monitors will be what the Wacom Cintiq is in design. You can have it upright, but at the press of a button on the side of the monitor, it unlocks the stand and you can bring it close to you in an angle, floating above your keyboard, and you can put it nearly flat. All possible with an IPS panel as you'll perfectly see the screen. It will be more than touch, it will be digitize pen support like the Wacom Cintiq (just, not as fancy, of course). Basically, desktop computers will still have keyboard and mouse, but will also be complimented with multi-touch and more importantly digitize pen support. It will be kick-ass in planning a match on a game map with friends, or playing RTS with such screen. Plus, you can do thing with much greater easy, that was not the case with a keyboard and mouse (paper and pen was better/faster): you do do graphs, draw, diagrams, and math (you write your integrals of wtv, and the computer understands and voild. Already MathLab, Maple, and Microsoft Mathematics all support that feature... the problem... no monitors have this feature to use it, beside convertible laptops, Surface Pro, and products like the Wacom Cintiq or Wacom style tablets.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79SdxuA1WjY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-oArux66gA

 

That what is the lid of the laptop is for. Or just press (here comes the surprise) the power button on your laptop.

 

As was said: press the power button? Close the lid?

I remember the days when you had to go to Start to select Shut Down and then select Sleep, Hibernate, Shut Down or (natch) Log Off. Then, in W95 times, you had to wait until your PC had gone through its shut down ritual and parked the HDD and told you it was safe to turn off the computer, by pressing the physical power button. No-one ever complained about this.

But we got used to the idea that you had to tell your PC to shut down, in three actions (same as in Windows 8; the location has changed but that's all), rather than just poke the power button. Well guess what? Now you can just poke the power button.

Yeah, because it's not what users want at all, is it?

People didn't see the point of a mouse. Can't blame them --PCs still had text-only command line interfaces. Then Windows 1/MacOS came along...