I've been using an x64 tablet as a primary device for months. The same exact login on the same OS as a full desktop that I can pull off the dock and hand to someone easily on the other side of the office to look at a report. That's also the device I use for chatting and web surfing at home. Spectacular. Consoles and my phone have become my only other main devices.
I think Win8's biggest challenges come from the Desktop and Metro being *too* much of separate interfaces. I'd prefer to see the "desktop" as a container to manage multiple Metro-style apps at once, tailored to mouse and keyboard. Imagine if hitting "Desktop" just dropped the background of Start into your chosen wallpaper, then compressed the tiles into a Start menu and popped up a taskbar. Then allowed you to run windowed Metro-style apps.
In usage, that's almost exactly how it works (minus the windowed Metro-style apps), but would give visual cues linking the two interfaces.
But why should the 300 million+ PCs be running the same OS as the 100 million+ tablets? Or at the very least, why should they have the same interface?
You really don't see an advantage to having a single OS across device platforms?
It's a tablet OS, or more accurately, for Intel systems it's Win7 with a touch interface. Which leads to the question of whether or not MS should release separate OSs for tablet/phone versus desktops, and notwithstanding the (I figured) obvious advantages of a unified OS ecosystem across devices, I think MS learned their lesson with Windows CE/Mobile.
Anyways, I'd be really surprised if MS did not implement a workaround to launch a more traditional Start menu interface before it goes gold. Though I suppose there's always something like Start8 if they don't.
Edit: Personally I'm most interested in what are likely to be niche devices: a tablet with Bluetooth keyboard and mouse support with ultra book hardware that runs legacy Windows apps, and a handheld gaming machine for PC games.
But why should the 300 million+ PCs be running the same OS as the 100 million+ tablets? Or at the very least, why should they have the same interface?
You really don't see an advantage to having a single OS across device platforms?
It's a tablet OS, or more accurately, for Intel systems it's Win7 with a touch interface. Which leads to the question of whether or not MS should release separate OSs for tablet/phone versus desktops, and notwithstanding the (I figured) obvious advantages of a unified OS ecosystem across devices, I think MS learned their lesson with Windows CE/Mobile.
Anyways, I'd be really surprised if MS did not implement a workaround to launch a more traditional Start menu interface before it goes gold. Though I suppose there's always something like Start8 if they don't.
Edit: Personally I'm most interested in what are likely to be niche devices: a tablet with Bluetooth keyboard and mouse support with ultra book hardware that runs legacy Windows apps, and a handheld gaming machine for PC games.
I can see the advantage of having all of their products running branches of the same OS, and I get that they want to have a unifying user experience across multiple platforms, but that doesnt always translate into a better user experience. Personally, I dont think Metro translates well to mouse and keyboard world, and I dont think it was an improvement over the previous xbox interface (NXE?) but I think its an excellent tablet/phone interface.
And why does Metro launch app versions of full programs? If Im launching IE from Metro, why is it not the same IE I launch from the desktop? Why do I have app versions of full programs on my computer at all?
I don't well understand the focus on the Win8 desktop experience.
Some statistics courtesy of Gartner/IDC.
2009
1 million tablets (presumably MS owned the market here as this is pre-iPad/android)
306 million PCs
0.3% of PC market
2010
19.4 million tablets
308 million PCs
6.3% of PC market
Gross PC sales increased 0.7%, removing tablets PC sales would've declined 5.7% to 288.6 million units.
2011
68.7 million tablets
351 million PCs
19.6% of PC market
Gross PC sales increased 14%, removing tablets PC sales would've declined another 2.2% to 282.3 million units.
2012 (proj)
106 million tablets
370 million PCs
28.6% of PC market
Gross PC sales increased 5.4%, removing tablets PC sales would've declined another 6.5% to 264 million units.
Assuming non-tablet PC sales stagnate or remain flat and tablet PCs continue its trend it's very possible that tablet PC sales will exceed non-tablet PC sales by 2015.
Non-tablet market share is irrelevant for the Windows 6.2 release; their objective is to become relevant in a space where they hardly exist right now. Does anyone really think the release of Win8 is to address this, and not this and maybe this?
The way a friend of mine explained it was that businesses are shifting towards Linux environments. Especially startup businesses. Obviously business software is the Microsoft bread and butter, so they need to somehow ensure that they can survive the continued shift of businesses towards Linux. Enter Windows 8, focussed on the tablet market which is experiencing massive growth.
Now I don't know if this information is accurate or not, but it does make sense!
Dram on
0
Options
syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Productsregular
I don't well understand the focus on the Win8 desktop experience.
Some statistics courtesy of Gartner/IDC.
2009
1 million tablets (presumably MS owned the market here as this is pre-iPad/android)
306 million PCs
0.3% of PC market
2010
19.4 million tablets
308 million PCs
6.3% of PC market
Gross PC sales increased 0.7%, removing tablets PC sales would've declined 5.7% to 288.6 million units.
2011
68.7 million tablets
351 million PCs
19.6% of PC market
Gross PC sales increased 14%, removing tablets PC sales would've declined another 2.2% to 282.3 million units.
2012 (proj)
106 million tablets
370 million PCs
28.6% of PC market
Gross PC sales increased 5.4%, removing tablets PC sales would've declined another 6.5% to 264 million units.
Assuming non-tablet PC sales stagnate or remain flat and tablet PCs continue its trend it's very possible that tablet PC sales will exceed non-tablet PC sales by 2015.
Non-tablet market share is irrelevant for the Windows 6.2 release; their objective is to become relevant in a space where they hardly exist right now. Does anyone really think the release of Win8 is to address this, and not this and maybe this?
The way a friend of mine explained it was that businesses are shifting towards Linux environments. Especially startup businesses. Obviously business software is the Microsoft bread and butter, so they need to somehow ensure that they can survive the continued shift of businesses towards Linux. Enter Windows 8, focussed on the tablet market which is experiencing massive growth.
Now I don't know if this information is accurate or not, but it does make sense!
aaahahahahahahahaha.
No seriously.
Linux has great penetration in server environments, but almost NOBODY uses Linux as their front facing end user OS - that is still Microsoft's absolute domain. Sure, people run old copies of Windows, but it is a deep cycle in the business world. People who bought XP SP2 are just now looking to do a big rollout of 7 across their company.
What your friend is witnessing is either an amazingly small sample size of the people he/she personally knows, or wishful thinking. It is not representative of the industry at large.
The closest to accurate thing you can draw from that is there is a growing number of businessfolks who are incorporating iPads into their workflow... but even that is a drop in the bucked compared to the "pallet of dell computers" that get ordered thousands of times every day.
SW-4158-3990-6116
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
I don't well understand the focus on the Win8 desktop experience.
Some statistics courtesy of Gartner/IDC.
Non-tablet market share is irrelevant for the Windows 6.2 release; their objective is to become relevant in a space where they hardly exist right now. Does anyone really think the release of Win8 is to address this, and not this and maybe this?
The way a friend of mine explained it was that businesses are shifting towards Linux environments. Especially startup businesses. Obviously business software is the Microsoft bread and butter, so they need to somehow ensure that they can survive the continued shift of businesses towards Linux. Enter Windows 8, focussed on the tablet market which is experiencing massive growth.
Now I don't know if this information is accurate or not, but it does make sense!
aaahahahahahahahaha.
No seriously.
Linux has great penetration in server environments, but almost NOBODY uses Linux as their front facing end user OS - that is still Microsoft's absolute domain. Sure, people run old copies of Windows, but it is a deep cycle in the business world. People who bought XP SP2 are just now looking to do a big rollout of 7 across their company.
What your friend is witnessing is either an amazingly small sample size of the people he/she personally knows, or wishful thinking. It is not representative of the industry at large.
The closest to accurate thing you can draw from that is there is a growing number of businessfolks who are incorporating iPads into their workflow... but even that is a drop in the bucked compared to the "pallet of dell computers" that get ordered thousands of times every day.
Yeah. No business I've heard of gives it's users a Linux front-end. Sometimes I wouldn't mind it, though.
Linux has great penetration in server environments, but almost NOBODY uses Linux as their front facing end user OS - that is still Microsoft's absolute domain. Sure, people run old copies of Windows, but it is a deep cycle in the business world. People who bought XP SP2 are just now looking to do a big rollout of 7 across their company.
What your friend is witnessing is either an amazingly small sample size of the people he/she personally knows, or wishful thinking. It is not representative of the industry at large.
The closest to accurate thing you can draw from that is there is a growing number of businessfolks who are incorporating iPads into their workflow... but even that is a drop in the bucked compared to the "pallet of dell computers" that get ordered thousands of times every day.
Yeah, for typical business use (servers aside), things are still completely dominated by Windows. Considering most businesses (locally, at least) are just now upgrading to Windows 7 from XP, I'm pretty sure Windows 8 won't really change much. If Windows 8 flops for enterprise, Microsoft will release a subsequent version that fixes it, and companies will just skip over 8 and go straight to 9... by the time 10 is coming out...
Academia is a different story, though, from what I've seen. Windows is still the norm, but, a few departments at my old university did have Linux computers exclusively in all their computer labs. A lot of the workstation-ish number crunching type tasks seemed to run almost exclusively on Linux machines.
0
Options
jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
Academia is a different story, though, from what I've seen. Windows is still the norm, but, a few departments at my old university did have Linux computers exclusively in all their computer labs. A lot of the workstation-ish number crunching type tasks seemed to run almost exclusively on Linux machines.
Academics that have interest in computers also generally have people who can develop software for Linux, and can not only recognize but take advantage of distros that can be custom installed with in-house developed drivers and ensured stability. Windows is not as easily (or cost-effectively) gotten to this state, especially for some of those extremely taxing programs.
Businesses stick with their 10-15 year-old software that got made in the heyday of the dotcom haze, complete with jagged clickable buttons and shitty, grainy pictures taken on digital cameras that used 1.44mb flobby disks as memory cards... because Windows will run it. Never underestimate the power of dragging the dead corpse of bloated, god-awful in-house corporate software through the decades.
Oh, also, Microsoft Office. Despite open source and Google efforts, Office is still the best.
Academia is a different story, though, from what I've seen. Windows is still the norm, but, a few departments at my old university did have Linux computers exclusively in all their computer labs. A lot of the workstation-ish number crunching type tasks seemed to run almost exclusively on Linux machines.
Academics that have interest in computers also generally have people who can develop software for Linux, and can not only recognize but take advantage of distros that can be custom installed with in-house developed drivers and ensured stability. Windows is not as easily (or cost-effectively) gotten to this state, especially for some of those extremely taxing programs.
Businesses stick with their 10-15 year-old software that got made in the heyday of the dotcom haze, complete with jagged clickable buttons and shitty, grainy pictures taken on digital cameras that used 1.44mb flobby disks as memory cards... because Windows will run it. Never underestimate the power of dragging the dead corpse of bloated, god-awful in-house corporate software through the decades.
Oh, also, Microsoft Office. Despite open source and Google efforts, Office is still the best.
Oh, I know all too well how industry drags its feet with software. I'm a geologist (of the evil oil and gas variety), and basically all the software available to me is positively ancient. It's regularly updated with new content, but it really is just 15-20 years of crap piled onto the same old framework. The interfaces are old, convoluted, inefficient, and still manage to respond slowly on quad core equipped modern desktops with more 6 times as much RAM as the hard drives this same software used to run on. It's entirely because the baby-boomers in management are afraid of change and don't want to have to learn anything new. Instead, everyone is stuck using the same clumsy, inefficient workflows that they used when computers had 200mb hard drives and they just printed everything and did their work by hand...
Yeah, Office is still the best. I've used Openoffice, Libreoffice, iWork, and every version of Office since I was using Windows 3.1. Each of the alternatives do a few things better than Office, but nothing can match Office as a complete package. Pages and Keynote in iWork are superb, for instance, but Numbers is basically a toy compared to Excel.
This is one of the worst iterations of windows I have ever tried on my PC. I don't have a touchscreen on my PC, this metro crap is so backwards and unintuitive for a mouse and keyboard...I had the thing installed for a total of 5 hours before getting frustrated that I had no start menu and had to go through 20 clicks and windows just to shut down/log out. It's like they looked at win 7 and said "Hey you know all those things that make Win 7 awesome? Lets take all those out for out new OS and make it as unfriendly as possible to the average computer user !"
I installed the CTP last night, started playing with it a couple of hours ago and... I like it.
There's a few things I don't like, for starters the very obvious disconnect between Metro and 'legacy' but that's kind of expected I guess. The legacy desktop interface is obviously there for desktop PCs but really, if you look at laptops & tablets as being more similar than laptops & desktops you can kind of see where Microsoft is going with this.
The reason there's no single click shutdown (it only takes 4 clicks to shutdown by the way, which is what...1 more than win 7?) is because on a laptop you just shut the lid and it goes to sleep. On a tablet you hit the power button and it goes to sleep. It's only really Desktop PC's tthat people turn off anymore... the way people use laptops and tablets doesn't require an easy to access shutdown command, so Microsoft has deprecated it.
I'd be very surprised if Microsoft was really going to leave the start menu off the desktop interface... I suspect they left it out of the CTP so people woiuld be forced to use (and try out) the Metro interface. Again, I can see the sense behind that, if they'd left the start menu in how many people would have even given the Metro interface a try?
Anyway, that's just my initial thoughts but in general I really like where Microsoft is taking windows. And, at the end of the day, they had to do something to try and move into the Large screen mobile space. This initial foray might have some rough edges, but it's a pretty good start.
Well, it takes the same amount of work to go into Sleep, too - you just click Sleep instead of Shutdown in the menu. This is assuming you're doing it using KBAM, of course, and not using the physical power button on your machine (which I don't use: feels weird to me.)
Here's the thing though, not having the power menu right there makes a massive difference in how you use the machine (this is all anecdotal of course, so usual warnings apply). I have win8 installed dual boot on a laptop with win7. When I'm using win7 I always, without fail shut the laptop down from the start menu when I'm done with it. It's just habit, because I'm used to desktop machines and OS's and that's just what you do when you're finished working on something. On win8 though I'm quite happy to just shut the lid, which puts it into sleep mode. Having sleep mode be the 'official' way to leave your laptop after your finished with it makes a real difference. And, more importantly, because I know the laptop is in sleep mode and will almost instantly come back on when I want it, I'm much more likely to use it when I want to check my emails or whatever. I do have an android tablet that I could use, but my laptop is more powerful and it takes no time to power on so why not use it?
I'd be very surprised if Microsoft was really going to leave the start menu off the desktop interface... I suspect they left it out of the CTP so people woiuld be forced to use (and try out) the Metro interface.
The start button IS gone. According to Ars (relayed from people within Microsoft), Windows 8 will have a first-time-run tutorial that explains Metro and the classic desktop sans start button.
jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
As soon as the Pell grant clears my Samsung Slate 7 will be on its way to my house, fresh smell of new electronics and all. I've got a flash drive just sitting there with the consumer edition on it, and I'm about ready to jump out of my skin to get this monster up and running.
Of course, the Pell won't clear till around May 20th.
Who even turns desktops off these days? Sleep mode is much better for the computer than rebooting anyway.
I don't know who told you that, but they're wrong. There's no observable difference in component lifespan from either leaving it on forever or shutting down. It's not even like you can argue about switch-on surges, because that's what power_ok is for.
People turn them off because they don't like paying for electricity for something they're not using.
0
Options
jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
Who even turns desktops off these days? Sleep mode is much better for the computer than rebooting anyway.
I don't know who told you that, but they're wrong. There's no observable difference in component lifespan from either leaving it on forever or shutting down. It's not even like you can argue about switch-on surges, because that's what power_ok is for.
People turn them off because they don't like paying for electricity for something they're not using.
My computer uses something along the line of 10 watts when in standby. That comes out to about fifty cents on the bill for the month.
So I see theres basically going to be 2 versions of Windows 8 for PC - Windows 8 and Windows 8 Pro. I also see that if you get Windows 8 Pro you can buy Windows Media Center as an add-on pack. Does anyone know if Windows 8 non-Pro will come with Windows Media Center? The only reason Im even considering getting Windows 8 is because I like Windows Media Center, but the version of Windows I run on my HTPC doesnt have it.
Windows 8 Pro is designed to help tech enthusiasts and business/technical professionals obtain a broader set of Windows 8 technologies. It includes all the features in Windows 8 plus features for encryption, virtualization, PC management and domain connectivity. Windows Media Center will be available as an economical “media pack” add-on to Windows 8 Pro.
augustwhere you come from is goneRegistered Userregular
You have to buy WIndows 8 Pro in order to buy Media Center. You can't get Media Center on regular Windows 8. It's basically their way of killing it off.
Yeah. They haven't really said if they're going to make any changes to WMC8 either. In the CP, the interface is the same but it doesn't work with extenders for some reason. The fact they haven't said anything about it kind of lends credence to the school of thought that they're trying to kill it off.
If they're making an add-in anyway, it would make a lot of sense to make it a WHS2011 add-in at this point. It'd be nice if I could set up a box that backs up all my PCs and does all my TV recording too.
It occurred to me I never use sleep mode on my desktop.
Upon trying it, I realize why: my computer makes exactly the same amount of noise when sitting idle as it does in sleep mode. So, no reason not to shut it down each night.
I'm running a W7MC setup right now, and I just hope that someone (anyone) else gets into the CableCARD game before Microsoft totally pulls the plug. At least the licensing changes won't affect me if I move the HTPC to W8, because I go through TechNet.
Dehumanized on
0
Options
Casually HardcoreOnce an Asshole. Trying to be better.Registered Userregular
My computer boots up so fast that there is really no point in having my computer be in sleep mode.
The reason there's no single click shutdown (it only takes 4 clicks to shutdown by the way, which is what...1 more than win 7?) is because on a laptop you just shut the lid and it goes to sleep. On a tablet you hit the power button and it goes to sleep. It's only really Desktop PC's tthat people turn off anymore... the way people use laptops and tablets doesn't require an easy to access shutdown command, so Microsoft has deprecated it.
I'd be very surprised if Microsoft was really going to leave the start menu off the desktop interface... I suspect they left it out of the CTP so people woiuld be forced to use (and try out) the Metro interface. Again, I can see the sense behind that, if they'd left the start menu in how many people would have even given the Metro interface a try?
I still wonder - why force a touchscreen interface on a desktop? Its not even intuitive. It doesn't improve my workflow (yes I know about the new shortcusts). I mean you still have to switch to the Windows Desktop anyway which is required for most programs - only that it is lacking the start button (instead it takes over whole screen). They could have put in Windows Media Center as default shell in the customer preview - would have made as much sense. If they wanted to force people to use it - why not make it something that is desireable to use?
If Metro would run like an extented launcher in the background of my Windows Desktop - which is usually doing nothing on my PC besides showing a pretty background picture, this would be awesome. If I could pin a fullscreen game or multiple to Metro in order to resume them later - so I can dick around the Desktop this would be awesome. With the current implementation I feel like I am running Windows inside a VirtualMachine.
Personally I am worried about the state of Windows 8. Windows 7 appeared to be almost feature complete in its second preview form (and I used the beta several months, till the release as my main OS).
Even Apple gets it, that Desktop and touchscreen devices have unique requirements and workflows - so they ported the things from iOS that work in a Desktop environment. Currently these things are optional - and usually Apple is even less about "choice" in their OS. The default scroll direction for example can be changed, you can ignore the Launchpad, if you don't like it.
That didn't work in the CP? Ouch. Hopefully they'll show some new Media Center stuff, too...
The taskbar features are already available in the CP. I can't confirm that the backgrounds stuff works though.
From what others have gathered, it seems like Microsoft are trying to kill off Media Center by making it a paid upgrade. That, or they just want more money.
I think its the killing off thing since they said almost nobody uses it.
That didn't work in the CP? Ouch. Hopefully they'll show some new Media Center stuff, too...
The taskbar features are already available in the CP. I can't confirm that the backgrounds stuff works though.
From what others have gathered, it seems like Microsoft are trying to kill off Media Center by making it a paid upgrade. That, or they just want more money.
I think its the killing off thing since they said almost nobody uses it.
Yeah. I use it as a DVR, but the telemetry data indicates that something like less than .5% of W7 users ever enter WMC, and something like 70% of those who do immediately close it. Just hope that if Microsoft ever officially kills it someone else deals with the bullshit associated with acquiring CableLabs certification. Right now if you're on a cable provider that encrypts their streams (such as Comcast), WMC is the only way you can roll a HD DVR with a HTPC.
That didn't work in the CP? Ouch. Hopefully they'll show some new Media Center stuff, too...
The taskbar features are already available in the CP. I can't confirm that the backgrounds stuff works though.
From what others have gathered, it seems like Microsoft are trying to kill off Media Center by making it a paid upgrade. That, or they just want more money.
I think its the killing off thing since they said almost nobody uses it.
Yeah. I use it as a DVR, but the telemetry data indicates that something like less than .5% of W7 users ever enter WMC, and something like 70% of those who do immediately close it. Just hope that if Microsoft ever officially kills it someone else deals with the bullshit associated with acquiring CableLabs certification. Right now if you're on a cable provider that encrypts their streams (such as Comcast), WMC is the only way you can roll a HD DVR with a HTPC.
Id really like to, I used to back when the Windows 7 RC came out, but I didnt have an extra Windows 7 license to use on my HTPC so no WMC for me.
Im really hoping the new Windows 8 RC has it but I doubt it will
They've already gone over how WMC is going to work with Windows 8: It will be available as a separate purchase for Windows 8 Professional (Why Professional? I have no idea)
Posts
But same OS doesnt require the same interace.
In usage, that's almost exactly how it works (minus the windowed Metro-style apps), but would give visual cues linking the two interfaces.
You really don't see an advantage to having a single OS across device platforms?
It's a tablet OS, or more accurately, for Intel systems it's Win7 with a touch interface. Which leads to the question of whether or not MS should release separate OSs for tablet/phone versus desktops, and notwithstanding the (I figured) obvious advantages of a unified OS ecosystem across devices, I think MS learned their lesson with Windows CE/Mobile.
Anyways, I'd be really surprised if MS did not implement a workaround to launch a more traditional Start menu interface before it goes gold. Though I suppose there's always something like Start8 if they don't.
Edit: Personally I'm most interested in what are likely to be niche devices: a tablet with Bluetooth keyboard and mouse support with ultra book hardware that runs legacy Windows apps, and a handheld gaming machine for PC games.
I can see the advantage of having all of their products running branches of the same OS, and I get that they want to have a unifying user experience across multiple platforms, but that doesnt always translate into a better user experience. Personally, I dont think Metro translates well to mouse and keyboard world, and I dont think it was an improvement over the previous xbox interface (NXE?) but I think its an excellent tablet/phone interface.
And why does Metro launch app versions of full programs? If Im launching IE from Metro, why is it not the same IE I launch from the desktop? Why do I have app versions of full programs on my computer at all?
Also, get off my lawn.
The way a friend of mine explained it was that businesses are shifting towards Linux environments. Especially startup businesses. Obviously business software is the Microsoft bread and butter, so they need to somehow ensure that they can survive the continued shift of businesses towards Linux. Enter Windows 8, focussed on the tablet market which is experiencing massive growth.
Now I don't know if this information is accurate or not, but it does make sense!
aaahahahahahahahaha.
No seriously.
Linux has great penetration in server environments, but almost NOBODY uses Linux as their front facing end user OS - that is still Microsoft's absolute domain. Sure, people run old copies of Windows, but it is a deep cycle in the business world. People who bought XP SP2 are just now looking to do a big rollout of 7 across their company.
What your friend is witnessing is either an amazingly small sample size of the people he/she personally knows, or wishful thinking. It is not representative of the industry at large.
The closest to accurate thing you can draw from that is there is a growing number of businessfolks who are incorporating iPads into their workflow... but even that is a drop in the bucked compared to the "pallet of dell computers" that get ordered thousands of times every day.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Yeah. No business I've heard of gives it's users a Linux front-end. Sometimes I wouldn't mind it, though.
Yeah, for typical business use (servers aside), things are still completely dominated by Windows. Considering most businesses (locally, at least) are just now upgrading to Windows 7 from XP, I'm pretty sure Windows 8 won't really change much. If Windows 8 flops for enterprise, Microsoft will release a subsequent version that fixes it, and companies will just skip over 8 and go straight to 9... by the time 10 is coming out...
Academia is a different story, though, from what I've seen. Windows is still the norm, but, a few departments at my old university did have Linux computers exclusively in all their computer labs. A lot of the workstation-ish number crunching type tasks seemed to run almost exclusively on Linux machines.
Academics that have interest in computers also generally have people who can develop software for Linux, and can not only recognize but take advantage of distros that can be custom installed with in-house developed drivers and ensured stability. Windows is not as easily (or cost-effectively) gotten to this state, especially for some of those extremely taxing programs.
Businesses stick with their 10-15 year-old software that got made in the heyday of the dotcom haze, complete with jagged clickable buttons and shitty, grainy pictures taken on digital cameras that used 1.44mb flobby disks as memory cards... because Windows will run it. Never underestimate the power of dragging the dead corpse of bloated, god-awful in-house corporate software through the decades.
Oh, also, Microsoft Office. Despite open source and Google efforts, Office is still the best.
Oh, I know all too well how industry drags its feet with software. I'm a geologist (of the evil oil and gas variety), and basically all the software available to me is positively ancient. It's regularly updated with new content, but it really is just 15-20 years of crap piled onto the same old framework. The interfaces are old, convoluted, inefficient, and still manage to respond slowly on quad core equipped modern desktops with more 6 times as much RAM as the hard drives this same software used to run on. It's entirely because the baby-boomers in management are afraid of change and don't want to have to learn anything new. Instead, everyone is stuck using the same clumsy, inefficient workflows that they used when computers had 200mb hard drives and they just printed everything and did their work by hand...
Yeah, Office is still the best. I've used Openoffice, Libreoffice, iWork, and every version of Office since I was using Windows 3.1. Each of the alternatives do a few things better than Office, but nothing can match Office as a complete package. Pages and Keynote in iWork are superb, for instance, but Numbers is basically a toy compared to Excel.
There's a few things I don't like, for starters the very obvious disconnect between Metro and 'legacy' but that's kind of expected I guess. The legacy desktop interface is obviously there for desktop PCs but really, if you look at laptops & tablets as being more similar than laptops & desktops you can kind of see where Microsoft is going with this.
The reason there's no single click shutdown (it only takes 4 clicks to shutdown by the way, which is what...1 more than win 7?) is because on a laptop you just shut the lid and it goes to sleep. On a tablet you hit the power button and it goes to sleep. It's only really Desktop PC's tthat people turn off anymore... the way people use laptops and tablets doesn't require an easy to access shutdown command, so Microsoft has deprecated it.
I'd be very surprised if Microsoft was really going to leave the start menu off the desktop interface... I suspect they left it out of the CTP so people woiuld be forced to use (and try out) the Metro interface. Again, I can see the sense behind that, if they'd left the start menu in how many people would have even given the Metro interface a try?
Anyway, that's just my initial thoughts but in general I really like where Microsoft is taking windows. And, at the end of the day, they had to do something to try and move into the Large screen mobile space. This initial foray might have some rough edges, but it's a pretty good start.
Tall-Paul MIPsDroid
Tall-Paul MIPsDroid
The start button IS gone. According to Ars (relayed from people within Microsoft), Windows 8 will have a first-time-run tutorial that explains Metro and the classic desktop sans start button.
Of course, the Pell won't clear till around May 20th.
I don't know who told you that, but they're wrong. There's no observable difference in component lifespan from either leaving it on forever or shutting down. It's not even like you can argue about switch-on surges, because that's what power_ok is for.
People turn them off because they don't like paying for electricity for something they're not using.
My computer uses something along the line of 10 watts when in standby. That comes out to about fifty cents on the bill for the month.
Small price to pay for instant booting!
But the environment!!
Yeah, fuck that. I changed all my globes to flourescent, I favour solar hot water, gas cooking and heating, and I buy low water usage appliances.
Imma leave my shit on standby, thank you very much.
Heres the source.
If they're making an add-in anyway, it would make a lot of sense to make it a WHS2011 add-in at this point. It'd be nice if I could set up a box that backs up all my PCs and does all my TV recording too.
Upon trying it, I realize why: my computer makes exactly the same amount of noise when sitting idle as it does in sleep mode. So, no reason not to shut it down each night.
Then again, I do enjoy my $15 electric bill.
I still wonder - why force a touchscreen interface on a desktop? Its not even intuitive. It doesn't improve my workflow (yes I know about the new shortcusts). I mean you still have to switch to the Windows Desktop anyway which is required for most programs - only that it is lacking the start button (instead it takes over whole screen). They could have put in Windows Media Center as default shell in the customer preview - would have made as much sense. If they wanted to force people to use it - why not make it something that is desireable to use?
If Metro would run like an extented launcher in the background of my Windows Desktop - which is usually doing nothing on my PC besides showing a pretty background picture, this would be awesome. If I could pin a fullscreen game or multiple to Metro in order to resume them later - so I can dick around the Desktop this would be awesome. With the current implementation I feel like I am running Windows inside a VirtualMachine.
Personally I am worried about the state of Windows 8. Windows 7 appeared to be almost feature complete in its second preview form (and I used the beta several months, till the release as my main OS).
Even Apple gets it, that Desktop and touchscreen devices have unique requirements and workflows - so they ported the things from iOS that work in a Desktop environment. Currently these things are optional - and usually Apple is even less about "choice" in their OS. The default scroll direction for example can be changed, you can ignore the Launchpad, if you don't like it.
http://www.theverge.com/2012/5/16/3023633/windows-8-multiple-monitor-support-release-preview
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/
I write about video games and stuff. It is fun. Sometimes.
That didn't work in the CP? Ouch. Hopefully they'll show some new Media Center stuff, too...
The taskbar features are already available in the CP. I can't confirm that the backgrounds stuff works though.
I think its the killing off thing since they said almost nobody uses it.
Yeah. I use it as a DVR, but the telemetry data indicates that something like less than .5% of W7 users ever enter WMC, and something like 70% of those who do immediately close it. Just hope that if Microsoft ever officially kills it someone else deals with the bullshit associated with acquiring CableLabs certification. Right now if you're on a cable provider that encrypts their streams (such as Comcast), WMC is the only way you can roll a HD DVR with a HTPC.
Id really like to, I used to back when the Windows 7 RC came out, but I didnt have an extra Windows 7 license to use on my HTPC so no WMC for me.
Im really hoping the new Windows 8 RC has it but I doubt it will