bbchien
Touchdown! Greaser!
Mech's XP computer went down today. Replaced it with a big box store win Win 8.
OMG.
OMG.
Windows 8?
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steamee
Pre-takeoff checklist
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Steamee
Price of progress in my book. Technologies change. Paradigms come and go. Buttons move around. It's the surest bet that more stuff will change in Windows in the coming years even if it is to go backwards (I hope not).
But more, what I was originally getting at is all the people loudly proclaiming they'll never switch off Win 7 and how Win 8 is the devil incarnate when they don't have to do so. Ok I get it. You (not targeted at you per se - just in general) don't like it. Am I suppose to abandon what I'm enjoying to suit naysayers?
There's plenty of OSes out there for everyone!
TMetzinger
Final Approach
I just wish I could turn off my touchpad in Solaris 11 when I have my USB mouse plugged in... but while I could find a linux control app for the Synaptics touchpad, no such luck.
On the other hand, so far Win7/64 runs great in an Oracle VM on top of Solaris 11.
I spent most of the yesterday in 8 on a machine that ran 7 just fine. I kept task manager open to kill locked processes. On at least two occasions it got so locked up I logged out and logged back in to try to clear things up. A locked cursor caused severe problems since I couldn't even log out.
I needed to unzip a rar file. When I double clicked the rar file I wound up in a full screen ap with no ability to creat new directories. Really?! I find 8 large screen unfriendly. I am also getting tired of moving a window and having all of the others minimize. With 7 I never had to do this much window jiggling to keep bringing the windows back.
What's sad is that I am for OS convergence. I really want to like 8.
Do you really find 8 better than 7 on a setup using a large screen (24" or bigger)
and a mouse with no touch controls? I feel like I am on a large tablet and that is NOT a compliment. The tiles quickly became worthless as I added programs. Too many screens full of tiles to flip through. Because the start menu is gone I load the desktop with icons.
How is the absolute nature of a touch screen differentiated from the relative position of a track pad?
Yes Vista had search but it was so poor I mostly used it to open a command window. When I first used a Mac I was shocked at some of the nice Win7 functionality that was missing but I loved the search. I had to be told to use it because my Win7 experience was so poor but when I did the responsiveness was great. It was a very different user experience compared to Windows. On the other hand resizing screens per Mt. Lion was a joke.
Ok, please address a large screen monitor and mouse. Do you really think having an app go full screen and swiping all the way from top to bottom to kill it is better than clicking an X? I love this for a tablet. It addresses some of my many gripes with iOS. My complaint is 8 on the desktop.
flyingcheesehead
Touchdown! Greaser!
What Win7 functionality was missing from the Mac? (Or had you simply not found it yet?)
And I don't understand your screen resizing comment either... What do you mean by resizing the screen? Or do you mean resizing windows?
denverpilot
Tied Down
Their handling of the killing of their packaged Java recently was God awful for anyone needing to run the older version.
Blocked it from running via the OS's security measures, even if you force-installed it, and since they forced Oracle to let them package the older versions and then decided to bail when massive security holes were discovered and Oracle was slow to fix them... you have to do some deep command-line hacks to bring back what was working, installed, and easy to avoid the bad things on the Internet that were attacking it, when one needed the older version for Enterprise / protected network duty.
Basically once you start forking around trying to get past their "security" so you can use YOUR software that was working the day before, you screw up multiple things and eventually you'll have to just uninstall all Java stuff and reinstall to get it working again.
Very very poor customer service on that one, there should have been a built-in override that was littered with warnings but not completely blocked, to continue to utilize the buggy Java. One system I interact with uses Java Class libraries that no longer exist in Java 7. There's just no way to deal with it properly on the Mac. I had to (yuck...) go back to the PeeCee to access that thing.
Apple has done similar things before. I wouldn't hold them up as a perfect example of managing transitions. Running OS9 software on OSX under Rosetta was god-awful, too... If you had to do it to wait for a vendor to whip out an OSX binary for a while there.
Here's another recent pet peeve... Why the hell doesn't the main screen on iPhone rotate properly yet, after six major releases? All the Apps can do it...
Try hanging your iPhone in a vehicle mount sideways and leave it that way sometime. Will drive you batty. Inside an App, no problem. Home screen, you have to bend your head over 90 degrees to read the damn thing.
Palmpilot
Touchdown! Greaser!
Not as far as I'm concerned. I like consumer choice, and that includes your choice to use what you like.
If Microsoft decides to make only one OS available, then consumer choice goes away to a large degree.
On a laptop resizing windows was a pain if they were near the right side of the screen. You had to drag the window left so there was room to grab the lower right corner and resize the window. For ages Windows has allowed resizing by grabbing any edge of the window. Apple finally fixed it but it sure took them long enough. Win 7 has a great ability to resize to half the screen by dragging a window to a screen edge. If you are working with two documents this is very nice. Since I have complained about Windows 8 on a large monitor, here is a Mac related pain. I find having to go to the top left of the screen on a Mac to get to FILE and EDIT a pain on a 30" monitor. I like it for laptop screens but large desktop monitors need the menu on top of the windows like Windows does. Would it be that hard to make it user selectable?
supernovae
Line Up and Wait
You can alt-f4 to close an app or grab it with a mouse and drag it down, or you can just leave it running.. Windows 8 will sleep it/swap it out too. They don't consume any cpu when they're not active unless they have an agent running in the background doing an active task..
You can also try stardock's "modern mix" if you run on a monitor - it will put windows around all the apps and let you minimize/maximize them.
http://www.stardock.com/products/modernmix/
steamee
Pre-takeoff checklist
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Steamee
Can't say I enjoy the full swipe to close on either form factors. It feels gimmicky and one that grows tiresome after the initial cool factor. I understand that the apps "hibernate" as far as resource utilization is concerned, but the obsessive part of me just wants to close things. I recognize though that it is a challenge to have task management options in a chrome-less display. The best I could think of that fits within the overall design scheme right now is that when you right click there's a top bar with some default OS widgets including a close gadget. Possibly the smarter thing to do would be for the OS to detect that a pointer manipulation device is being used and decorate the app screen with a small top bar with "window" manipulation gadgets including close. For tablet users this will just never appear (short of an explicit bottom up swipe) and they would close as they do now. But this is more complicated to engineer and increases the need for context specific user understanding. For the "average" user I imagine maybe MS probably just punted and said "one way only". I'm not saying they're right. Just that I can see why they'd want to try a one size fits before immediately overloading with options.
But let me ask you this: why insist on using apps if this bothers you? Why not just keep using your desktop applications and ignore this part? As far as I know there's no "app" that is necessarily superior to a windows desktop application at this time anyway if you're doing real work. Maybe a game being an exception, but those have never strictly followed OS level interaction patterns in most cases anyway.
I'm not trying to be jerk about this. I'm really curious.
I get the feeling that people may know about the desktop portion but choose to willfully ignore it to make a better sounding argument about why all of Win 8 is a fail for desktop computing. If I look hard enough there's probably something that annoys me about every single piece of software I use. I use Win 8 daily and I'd say 90% of my time is desktop work (on a desktop) even though I don't mind the apps.
I do use the desktop but it isn't a FULL version of the old desktop. Also, while I may eventually customize things it would be nice if I actually liked the built in capability. Without customizing things you run into using apps even if you are on the desktop. Just click a RAR file and see what happens. I'm getting used to it but I don't like it. When you click a RAR file you get a supreme example of dorm over function. I get a 24" monitor screen filled with one limited function app that deserves only a small window. Not only does it lack basic capability but I can't circumvent that without exiting the screen. If I need to make a new folder and a program in Win 7 doesn't support it I just use File Explorer which is usually open anyway. I don't understand why, if you keep the "-" to minimize on the desktop view you couldn't keep the "X". The arguments remind me of, shudder, Mac fanboys explaining why I shouldn't ever want to download to someplace other than the downloads directory or an iOS fanboy explaining why my huge desire for access to a directory structure so I can share files among apps is misguided. In Windows 8 I like on the desktop but it is a more limited experience than Win 7 and constantly jerks me to someplace else or thinks because I moved the window a little that I want to minimize everything else. I love the idea of Win 8 on a tablet since I want to run my desktop apps and get rid of the painful distinction between laptop and tablet. I just want more user friendliness when on a conventional desktop.
RJM62
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flyingcheesehead
Touchdown! Greaser!
Who says you can't do that?
Download wherever you want, unless your browser doesn't support it.Who says you can't do that?
I'm not sure what the latest version of OSX will do natively. Several years ago I got tired of limited save dialogs and installed Default Folder X and haven't looked back. Maybe it's like resizing by grabbing the left corner and things are better now.
RJM62
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Geek on the Hill
Apparently, it's not just old-timers, sophisticated users, businesses, and curmudgeonly old farts like me who are balking.
I went to Wally World last night -- not exactly the technology supplier of choice for bleeding-edge techies. I went there to buy a television with the native ability to stream Hulu Plus, mainly to give my guests something to watch besides Netflix because I'm too cheap to get cable TV, and OTA TV here is non-existent. So I wanted a TV that was both Netflix and Hulu Plus ready.
Turns out that's not as easy as I thought. Pretty much all TVs are Netflix-ready these days, but Hulu Plus, not so much except on the stadium-sized ones. I was looking for something mid-sized, and all the mid-sized TVs that support Hulu Plus sell out like hotcakes. Apparently, for whatever reason, it's a very popular service. (I must admit, I only tried it out last night, but it does seem to offer a phenomenal variety of programming for the money.)
Consequently, TVs that can stream Hulu Plus sell like hotcakes. They can't keep enough of them in stock. People want both services: Netflix and Hulu Plus. That's what the young girl at Wally World told me. They like both services and they want TVs that can stream both. They want choice. Choice sells.
The young girl at Wally World had nothing else to do (the weather was bad, so it was a slow night), so we talked for a while. She recommended that I either buy a streaming box, or else order the TV online and select the "Ship-to-Store" option, which would effectively reserve it for me. I chose the streaming box rather than make the 90-mile round trip again.
So we walked over to the streaming box section. There were several shelves, some full, some nearly empty. The nearly-empty shelf had four Hulu Plus-capable streaming boxes. Not four models. Four units. The full shelves had hundreds of streaming boxes that were not capable of streaming Hulu Plus. As with the TVs, they have a hard time keeping the Hulu Plus-capable devices in stock.
People like choice. Choice sells.
I selected a Roku box, and she offered to ring it there along with the five large bottles of Valentina's Picante Sauce - Extra Hot (only $1.97 per HUGE bottle -- woo hoo!) and the two bags of lettuce I had in the basket.
As we walked past the computer aisle, I noticed that they had only three laptops on display. I asked her why that was, and she said that no one was buying them. I pressed her for more details, and she said that people hate Windows 8. They try it out, get flustered, and ask how to get the old desktop and start menu back. When they're told they can't, they decide to stick with what they already have. (They also toss in some very colorful barnyard adjectives, which the young lady shared with me, to my surprise and amusement. I'll leave them to your imagination, but they reference mainly bovine and equine species.)
So... MS is alienating sophisticated users, professionals, and businesses; and they're also scaring away average folks who buy their computers at Wally World.
That begs the question: Who, exactly, are their target market for this wonderful new interface?
Choice sells. Taking it away and forcing unwanted change, not so much.
-Rich
I went to Wally World last night -- not exactly the technology supplier of choice for bleeding-edge techies. I went there to buy a television with the native ability to stream Hulu Plus, mainly to give my guests something to watch besides Netflix because I'm too cheap to get cable TV, and OTA TV here is non-existent. So I wanted a TV that was both Netflix and Hulu Plus ready.
Turns out that's not as easy as I thought. Pretty much all TVs are Netflix-ready these days, but Hulu Plus, not so much except on the stadium-sized ones. I was looking for something mid-sized, and all the mid-sized TVs that support Hulu Plus sell out like hotcakes. Apparently, for whatever reason, it's a very popular service. (I must admit, I only tried it out last night, but it does seem to offer a phenomenal variety of programming for the money.)
Consequently, TVs that can stream Hulu Plus sell like hotcakes. They can't keep enough of them in stock. People want both services: Netflix and Hulu Plus. That's what the young girl at Wally World told me. They like both services and they want TVs that can stream both. They want choice. Choice sells.
The young girl at Wally World had nothing else to do (the weather was bad, so it was a slow night), so we talked for a while. She recommended that I either buy a streaming box, or else order the TV online and select the "Ship-to-Store" option, which would effectively reserve it for me. I chose the streaming box rather than make the 90-mile round trip again.
So we walked over to the streaming box section. There were several shelves, some full, some nearly empty. The nearly-empty shelf had four Hulu Plus-capable streaming boxes. Not four models. Four units. The full shelves had hundreds of streaming boxes that were not capable of streaming Hulu Plus. As with the TVs, they have a hard time keeping the Hulu Plus-capable devices in stock.
People like choice. Choice sells.
I selected a Roku box, and she offered to ring it there along with the five large bottles of Valentina's Picante Sauce - Extra Hot (only $1.97 per HUGE bottle -- woo hoo!) and the two bags of lettuce I had in the basket.
As we walked past the computer aisle, I noticed that they had only three laptops on display. I asked her why that was, and she said that no one was buying them. I pressed her for more details, and she said that people hate Windows 8. They try it out, get flustered, and ask how to get the old desktop and start menu back. When they're told they can't, they decide to stick with what they already have. (They also toss in some very colorful barnyard adjectives, which the young lady shared with me, to my surprise and amusement. I'll leave them to your imagination, but they reference mainly bovine and equine species.)
So... MS is alienating sophisticated users, professionals, and businesses; and they're also scaring away average folks who buy their computers at Wally World.
That begs the question: Who, exactly, are their target market for this wonderful new interface?
Choice sells. Taking it away and forcing unwanted change, not so much.
-Rich
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poadeleted21
Touchdown! Greaser!
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I agree, I've used dozens of Operating systems over the past 25 years, various flavors of SunOS, Solaris, AIX, z/OS, SCO UNIX, DOS, BeOS, Linux, OS/2, Commodore OS, GEOS, AmigaOS, MacOS, OSX, iOS, Android, T/TOS and every version of Windows ever released. As I type this on a Win 8 box, I'm not impressed. I'm only less impressed with current OSes by the recent release of Ubuntu. It's worse than Win 8. I gave it a shot, just like I did the Win 7 start menu. I warmed up the Win 7 start menu and now think it's superior. I don't think the Win 8 one is and I doubt I ever will.
Like I mentioned before, Ribbon, BOB, Windows ME, Vista, Clippy etc.. MSFT is capable of laying an egg, I think they have again. We're about to upgrade 13,000+ desktop computers, we're going with Win 7. I'm sure there's some low/mid level functionality that's great, it's going to be ignored because of the atrocious start menu. If I wanted a "tablet experience" I'd buy a tablet.
Follow the guy that follows the legend, seems MSFT get's it right every other release.
kgruber
Final Approach
I notice that all the Win8 laptops at Costco and Walmart are also more expensive than the Win7 machines 6 months ago.
But then, I couldn't find any .22LRs either.
But then, I couldn't find any .22LRs either.
supernovae
Line Up and Wait
This is a huge problem... The only company that seems to price well with Windows 8 and deliver touch screen / windows 8 optimized experiences is Lenovo.
Samsung.. missing the boat selling crap.. Acer, backing up and re-approaching. Dell, not invested too much in this arena, trying to rebuild as services organization, HP.. hahaha. HP failtrain.
Some of the mom and pop shops and more boutique companies selling optimized solutions can't keep it in stock.
Lemme know if you find any..
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denverpilot
Tied Down
Trying to resist joking that Acer's plan expanded while one is bent over, is MSFT's entire business model. Ballmer only threw the chair because someone wouldn't bend over it for him.