For MrRipley

[MrRiplEy[H]]

I cannot help that you do not get the point I was trying to make, and I am passed the point of trying to get you to understand it.


Microsoft has pretty much stated they are going to get rid of Windows 8.  That is was a mistake.  The user interface was not appropriate for a desk top.  End of story.

What Microsoft has claimed, is what I have been saying all along.

I cannot help but wonder how you can't see that if Windows8 performs as fast OUT OF THE BOX as the older generation that you have spent all your knowledge tweaking, it can't be called worse but better.

Microsoft has pretty much stated that they'll change the user interface slightly and have no intentions of getting rid of Windows 8. The new release scheme will mean a new OS version every year from now on and this was planned right before Win8 was even released.

You of all people should know that it's a point and click tweak to windows 8 to return the missing start menu...

[RTHolmes]

Has anyone here properly tested it? I mean booting vanilla installs on the same box from identical HDs and running some kind of suite of tests?

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Has anyone here properly tested it? I mean booting vanilla installs on the same box from identical HDs and running some kind of suite of tests?

About 100+1 tech sites on the web have benchmarked it and published the results already.

[Skuzzy]

The designer of the Windows 8 user interface said the user interface was a mistake and does not work well for a desktop, without a touch screen.  They will be changing the user interface to something else.

It cannot get worse.  I hope.

By the time that change is done, maybe they will have addressed many of the issues with Windows 8.

From my perspective, Windows 8 is pretty slow, out of the box.  I am not going to mess with it though.  It is not worth the time with that idiotic user interface they installed.

[guncrasher]

win8 does seem to boot pretty fast, up until when the annoying "log in" screen shows up then you lose all the advantage.  after you log in then it's the dreaded "where's my %^^%%$#@ desktop" function.



semp

[MrRiplEy[H]]

win8 does seem to boot pretty fast, up until when the annoying "log in" screen shows up then you lose all the advantage.  after you log in then it's the dreaded "where's my %^^%%$#@ desktop" function.



semp

You can disable the login just as in any windows version. You can make Win8 boot directly to desktop if you wish. None of those are problems of any sort.

[RTHolmes]

I think its about time MS did the right thing and wrote a decent OS from the bottom up. Its not like there isnt the talent out there to do it, or that they dont have the cash to do it. This continued patching of decades old code, which wasnt that great to start with is really tiresome. And unproductive. I remember the first time I installed Win7 and had a poke around hopefully (yeah I know, but I'm an optimist!) only to see the dog's dinner that is the control panel(s). Not only the same pig, but with the same same lipstick for the most part. Made me feel like the woman who goes back to her wifebeating husband for the nth time thinking "this time ... this time ..."

[MrRiplEy[H]]

I think its about time MS did the right thing and wrote a decent OS from the bottom up. Its not like there isnt the talent out there to do it, or that they dont have the cash to do it. This continued patching of decades old code, which wasnt that great to start with is really tiresome. And unproductive. I remember the first time I installed Win7 and had a poke around hopefully (yeah I know, but I'm an optimist!) only to see the dog's dinner that is the control panel(s). Not only the same pig, but with the same same lipstick for the most part. Made me feel like the woman who goes back to her wifebeating husband for the nth time thinking "this time ... this time ..."

The problem is a two sided sword. MS could easily write up a new OS from scratch (like Apple did). That would however mean losing some if not all backwards compatibility (like Apple did). Windows versions piggy-back code that's in some cases from the DOS ages all to maintain backwards compatibility. This method of working also introduces vulnerabilities in the old code which have not been found. IIRC It's not that long ago that a 16 year old bug was exploited and it still worked in Win7

[Bizman]

No offense intended, but if we follow that logic we would all still be on DOS or Windows 3.1.  Technology can't advance at the pace of the slowest adopter or it will never advance.

In general I think most people are letting their personal preferences and natural resistance to change bias their opinion.  Does Windows 8 need more work?  Of course...what Windows OS since 95 didn't need additional tweaking and improving.  Is the interface different and hard to get used to?  Absolutely, but the desktop is only a click away and otherwise the interface is very customizable.  Is it the worst/most mediocre ever?  Hardly.  Anyone remember Vista or Millennium?

My personal experience with it so far has been that it is faster and more stable than Windows 7 machines I have compared it against.

I don't see how any of this is accepting or defending mediocrity.  It is what it is.  It will be improved upon as every other release of Windows has in the past.  No, it isn't Windows 7 or even Windows XP (which was a pretty strong workstation OS), but it is far from junk or bad (regardless of what the pundits say).

DISCLAIMER: My experience with Windows 8 is limited because I just started working with it last week.  Perhaps I haven't run into all this terrible badness and mediocrity that is being talked about...

I'm not against technical development, on the contrary. What I am criticizing is the dumping of working tradition in favour of a mobile appearance. Anyone could quite easily find ways to do their regular stuff with any Windows version between 95 and 7 with some experience of any of them. In the localized Finnish version of Win8 even the desktop tile has the word "desktop" on it instead of the common Finnish translation of it. Tweaking? Sure yes. I work for people who need tweaking like renaming icons to such as "Internet", "e-mail" and "typewriter". Updating flash player or java is beyond their limits because of the language and because of they really don't know if it's safe to update anything including Windows. The plethora of preinstalled programs in any computer available in supermarkets carries the same problems: Tech hype in a foreign language without any clue what the programs are supposed to do. Just the other day I did a major tweak by adjusting the screen resolution to be the native one. Today a client called for help, her Win8 computer had an all black background with blue text. While I was driving I couldn't help her any better than to find the themes which she changed from high contrast black to high contrast white. Somehow she could not find any "normal" themes. Our mileages vary and too drastic "improvements" might even hinder the desired development.

[RTHolmes]

the difference is that MS can easily afford to continue supporting their old OSes for quite a few years during the transition, which Apple couldnt. It was a brave move for sure, and although it was annoying having to junk my ADB wacom tablet I got over it


edit: and before everyone jumps in I'm sure Ripley is aware that Apple didnt create any flavour of *nix, but they did do a very nice job of making a decent UI for it

[Skuzzy]

The problem is a two sided sword. MS could easily write up a new OS from scratch (like Apple did). That would however mean losing some if not all backwards compatibility (like Apple did). Windows versions piggy-back code that's in some cases from the DOS ages all to maintain backwards compatibility. This method of working also introduces vulnerabilities in the old code which have not been found. IIRC It's not that long ago that a 16 year old bug was exploited and it still worked in Win7

Actually, they cannot write an operating system from scratch. They have never had to do that.  Even DOS was not written from the ground up.  They started with a lot of code from others work.

They do not have the talent, nor the management skills to do it anymore.  It would take a huge shakeup in the infrastructure, of the corporation, to be able to even think about starting from scratch.


Yes, any number of vulnerabilities have been caused by trying to maintain backward compatibility.

If they were to start over today, they would probably start with Linux and bastardize it.

[RTHolmes]

They do not have the talent, nor the management skills to do it anymore.  It would take a huge shakeup in the infrastructure, of the corporation, to be able to even think about starting from scratch.

as very much an outsider this is the impression I get. It would take about the best minds out there to achieve it (BSD ...) and given that *nix does everything that we currently need of an OS (apart from really good UI) there doesnt seem much point. Could it just be corporate pride thats stopping MS doing what Apple did so many years ago? (ie. the obvious ...)

[MrRiplEy[H]]

as very much an outsider this is the impression I get. It would take about the best minds out there to achieve it (BSD ...) and given that *nix does everything that we currently need of an OS (apart from really good UI) there doesnt seem much point. Could it just be corporate pride thats stopping MS doing what Apple did so many years ago? (ie. the obvious ...)

Imagine the mess it would create if MS nixed (pun intended) the current code and everyone would find their existing software uncompatible... It would create a lot of work for developers also, think of AH2 rewrite...

There are already alternatives for anyone who wants to jump ship. Even on gaming side things are really picking up on linux - Steam support, L4D2 beta and other games from Valve, I'm hoping they opened a can of worms.

[RTHolmes]

I dont have to imagine ... Ive already been there (Carbon/Cocoa) I guess as long as people are prepared to put up with/pay for junk and there is no strong competition MS will keep going with it.

There was a brief period in the late 90s when game developers were happy to write reasonably portable coad and personally I loved being able to game on Linux for obvious reasons. I say they were happy to ... they spent almost nothing and relied on committed but doing-it-for-almost-nothing developers and most importantly NVidia who bothered writing decent Linux drivers. They must have had some spare $$s and a bit of a skunkworks culture going on there. The gaming culture is different these days - back then we gamers had to geek it up to some degree just to get acceptable performance out of our hardware, so installing Linux wasnt such a big thing. These days most gamers use appliances - xboxes, phones etc and expect their PC gaming to be the same.

[Skuzzy]

NVidia's Linux drivers are not officially supported and developed.  They are done by two NVidia software engineers who just want to do them.