The latest joke from Microsoft: Windows 8.1

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Well, the growth margins for Valve are a lot different than they are for HTC. Given the market share (there is a reason for quoting it after all) if HTC devoted money and time to develop a specific version for Linux, their user base would grow by about twenty users. Worse, they would open themselves up to some of the worst case scenarios a small software company could. Valve is hoping that they can help push gamers into Linux, rather than suck more Linux users into Steam. So, I disagree with you and instead believe that it is one the dumbest things Valve has done.

If a company wants to generate greater sales they market to PC and Xbox, which are the two largest markets open to sales. Valve had a good idea with Steam, but then they came around with this Greenlight idea which has stymied Indie game makers instead of spurring them on. The Microsoft Marketplace and the Desura reveals are doing much more for market expansion than anything Steam has done.

In fact, I would probably suggest the Amazon market and Google Play before even thinking about Linux, despite the fact that Linux can support more hardware. You may laugh, but there are ways to market even a complex game like AH into the Android market (limiting the interface to vehicles for instance). In the end, the profit and ROI would be much greater than the 'trend' as you put it.

Oh, and Krusty. . . Windows 8 is something I use to 'play' with things like the Star Trek LCARS interface upgrade. It really makes grocery ordering, and media center shine, but that's about it.

I agree that HTC has other issues to deal with before even thinking about a linux version. However there are a few millions of linux users who currently still have a very limited selection of game titles - that's why AH would stick like a sore thumb in the eye on the app market places. That's why it MIGHT actually make some business.

Worth the production cost? Debatable.

[Randy1]

Newegg was offering a free downgrade to W7 on their W8 machines.

[Gman]

The only reason I have Win 8 on one of my 8 PC's in my house, is to run the Netflix App, which is the ONLY way you can get 5800bps "Super HD" to work on a PC right now.  It'll work on other devices, but they aren't windows based.  So, if you run a home theater PC as I do and do most of your stuff on your main TV with it like me, and you don't want to watch Netflix in 1700kpbs "Regular HD", and want the really good picture, Win 8 is the ONLY option.  I researched this high and low before spending one of my 15$ Win7 upgrade tickets for Win8 before the expired.

Gaming systems are all still Win7, and will be until something better than Win8 comes along, or I'm forced to change in order to keep up with current tech/games.

I agree with Chalenge as well 100%, Windows isn't going anywhere, and OS's like Linux and what not will be a niche thing at best for years to come, unless all the software developers decided at once to abandon Microsoft, which will never happen IMO.

[Plazus]

Fixed. The old cliched defensive line of "people don't like change" is false. People love change... when it's good change. And they're smart enough to know the difference. When forced changes are rammed down the collective throat of the customer base that are NOT good changes it only spreads dissent and hate towards the company doing it.

Fair enough. I see your point.

Gaming systems are all still Win7, and will be until something better than Win8 comes along, or I'm forced to change in order to keep up with current tech/games.

I'm curious about your stand on gaming on a Windows 8 machine? I have Total War Medieval 2/Napoleon, War Thunder, and Sim City 4. All of the games I have are running just fine. I have not personally encountered a problem that would prevent a user from adopting Windows 8 as their next gaming platform.

[Brooke]

I think that Windows 8 can run everything.  The main reason that I wouldn't get it is because MS is trying to force people into an interface mode for the OS that is best suited to cell phones, not desktops.

[Plazus]

I think that Windows 8 can run everything.  The main reason that I wouldn't get it is because MS is trying to force people into an interface mode for the OS that is best suited to cell phones, not desktops.

Without a doubt, Windows 8 is better suited for a touch screen. I have noticed, however, that it is much faster for me to run a program in the Windows 8 environment compared to the traditional OS of 7 and earlier... For example, if I need to open up device manager, I can simply press the windows key and start typing in "device" and the Device Manager application can instantly be selected from the list. This is several seconds faster as opposed to trying to open the Control Panel and browse through the menus. No need to browse through the long list of programs in the traditional start menu.

Everybody has their preference. To each their own.

[Krusty]

Plazus, right click My Computer, properties, and right there "Device Manager"

A right click and a click. That's all it takes in Win7.

Don't discout Linux systems. They have been making strides on the user interfaces to make them more and more user friendly. You no longer even need to know how to use the shell prompt anymore for general personal computing. People will start looking around and  see that these other things work a LOT like Windows "should" work, and for a lot less money and a lot less interference from Microsoft.

Just because they don't have the popularity vote YET (which MS only gets because they literally were monopolizing OS distribution on new PCs for decades) doesn't mean they aren't a valid alternative.

[Bizman]

Without a doubt, Windows 8 is better suited for a touch screen. I have noticed, however, that it is much faster for me to run a program in the Windows 8 environment compared to the traditional OS of 7 and earlier... For example, if I need to open up device manager, I can simply press the windows key and start typing in "device" and the Device Manager application can instantly be selected from the list. This is several seconds faster as opposed to trying to open the Control Panel and browse through the menus. No need to browse through the long list of programs in the traditional start menu.

Everybody has their preference. To each their own.

Hiding the good old shortcuts like the one Krusty mentioned surely makes the Win8 method faster. But only if it works the way it should... You are aware of localized versions of Windows, aren't you? So, if I type "ohja" for "Ohjauspaneeli" in the starting window, it will find "Ohjauspaneeli" (Finnish for Control Panel), diminishing the amount of choices starting by each letter. But if I typed "Lai..." for "Laitehallinta" (Device Manager), it might not find anything at all. Before MrRipley says it works for him, I must add that I'm not 100% positive if it was Device Manager or some other sub-category under Control Panel. In any case, the Finnish name didn't work for me, Control Panel was the way to go. The typing method may cause other problems, too: You'd really have to know the name for a certain service to find it. Microsoft's way of changing the names for functions and applications can be confusing for people like myself with tweaking experience from nine versions of Windows plus several language variations inside them. I'm OK with Finnish and English, but if I had to do something to a German, Spanish, Swedish or Russian speaking OS, I'd be in far more trouble with Win8 than what I was with the XP cases I've accomplished. Partially, because I don't know the terms in those languages, partially because in Win8 the icons might look different and mostly because the owner of the given computer would not understand what I were looking for. And of course partially because I don't even know the Russian alphabet.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

The only reason I have Win 8 on one of my 8 PC's in my house, is to run the Netflix App, which is the ONLY way you can get 5800bps "Super HD" to work on a PC right now.  It'll work on other devices, but they aren't windows based.  So, if you run a home theater PC as I do and do most of your stuff on your main TV with it like me, and you don't want to watch Netflix in 1700kpbs "Regular HD", and want the really good picture, Win 8 is the ONLY option.  I researched this high and low before spending one of my 15$ Win7 upgrade tickets for Win8 before the expired.

Gaming systems are all still Win7, and will be until something better than Win8 comes along, or I'm forced to change in order to keep up with current tech/games.

I agree with Chalenge as well 100%, Windows isn't going anywhere, and OS's like Linux and what not will be a niche thing at best for years to come, unless all the software developers decided at once to abandon Microsoft, which will never happen IMO.

And this is completely artificial, a move from Microsoft to make it seem Win8 would have any extra value. Just like they did with DX10/11.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Hiding the good old shortcuts like the one Krusty mentioned surely makes the Win8 method faster. But only if it works the way it should... You are aware of localized versions of Windows, aren't you? So, if I type "ohja" for "Ohjauspaneeli" in the starting window, it will find "Ohjauspaneeli" (Finnish for Control Panel), diminishing the amount of choices starting by each letter. But if I typed "Lai..." for "Laitehallinta" (Device Manager), it might not find anything at all. Before MrRipley says it works for him, I must add that I'm not 100% positive if it was Device Manager or some other sub-category under Control Panel. In any case, the Finnish name didn't work for me, Control Panel was the way to go. The typing method may cause other problems, too: You'd really have to know the name for a certain service to find it. Microsoft's way of changing the names for functions and applications can be confusing for people like myself with tweaking experience from nine versions of Windows plus several language variations inside them. I'm OK with Finnish and English, but if I had to do something to a German, Spanish, Swedish or Russian speaking OS, I'd be in far more trouble with Win8 than what I was with the XP cases I've accomplished. Partially, because I don't know the terms in those languages, partially because in Win8 the icons might look different and mostly because the owner of the given computer would not understand what I were looking for. And of course partially because I don't even know the Russian alphabet.

I've always hated localized versions for the reasons you mentioned. First of all the finnish namings of the functions are sometimes very hard to guess and second the interfaces may not all be fully translated.

In my experience Win8 search finds the functions both in english and finnish name versions. So if you go to localized version and type 'control p' it'll find the control panel. Also note that Win8 made the search weird - when you get the results you no longer get them all in one bunch, they're in categories. And if you happen to have the 'file' category active when you're looking for an app or setting, you may miss the small number which shows the amount of found hits behind the category. At least I did on my first search.

By the way I have run the Windows 8.1 beta for some time on my Parallels virtuali host and search is one of the things that were fine tuned in it. Now the search defaults to 'everything' and you have the option to limit it category by category.

[Gman]

It's not really artificial when the difference is much higher resolution and detail with netflix with users with net companies like mine who peer with Netflix and give me 250 megabits per second and the ability to use it.  There literally is NO other option than Win 8 for Home theater PC users and this capability - artificial isn't the right word - BS or strongarm or typical Microsoft type tactics...I can agree with that 100%.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

It's not really artificial when the difference is much higher resolution and detail with netflix with users with net companies like mine who peer with Netflix and give me 250 megabits per second and the ability to use it.  There literally is NO other option than Win 8 for Home theater PC users and this capability - artificial isn't the right word - BS or strongarm or typical Microsoft type tactics...I can agree with that 100%.

What I meant is that 4k resolutions would be fixed really easily with a simple patch even to Windows XP - but they choose not to.

[Krusty]

It's just like they held back features for Vista, because nobody wanted Vista. What do they do? They spam the hell out of the new feature set... Most of which was actually coded for XP ***by*** Microsoft coders to be released in a service pack -- only marketting decisions told them not to. They held it back and promoted them as "new features" in vista.

Among the features, previews when alt-tabbing, the ability to resize images from windows explorer, and a bunch of other stuff.

They effectively hid it all from XP, but you could manually get the tools off of MS's update site if you KNEW what to look for. And these were out years before Vista. They had a long time to figure out how to spin the new launch.

There's also a very big possibility they sabotaged the multi-thread handling in XP to make Vista look better.

I have no doubt that Win7 and even WinXP can handle those resolutions with Netflix quite admirably, maybe even better than Win8....

But that would undermine Microsoft's marketting department. And we can't have that, can we?


P.S. Had to look it up to remember the name. Windows XP "Power Toys"... as you can see a summary of the features here:
http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/microsoft_windows_xp_powertoys.html

[Chalenge]

I have no doubt that Win7 and even WinXP can handle those resolutions with Netflix quite admirably, maybe even better than Win8....

When it comes to 4k display resolutions and Nvidia (at least for now) it will require bare minimum Windows 7. Neither flavor of Vista or XP is supported at this point. And even then, not all hardware is supported on Win 7 or 8 at this time. At least this is true for the hardware I have for Win 7 (GTX 600, or 700 series drivers). Not even Titan supports 4k right now, though it's coming eventually.

[Mano]

I had Win8 for several months, decided I had enough......formatted my HD and reinstalled Win7. Waste of Money!
I liked the control panel the way it was. Also, the start button is so much easier than dragging your mouse over the top right corner.

Here is a link for the MS financial statement for 2002. Does not look good compared with the past.
Monopolies often get too big and fail.

https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:MSFT&fstype=ii