Windows 8: At least it's better than ‘not very good’
By the pricking of my thumbs, and by the noisy crowd booking out half the pub, the wickedness of office party season has kicked in big time. Certainly, 'tis the season to be jolly and to suffer the indignities of itinerant workers debasing themselves in order to get invited. Another year at the Cheshire Cheese The importance of …
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spooky
"At least it wasn’t as bad as Windows 3. What a pile of shite that was. In a way, the concept of Windows 8’s Metro is reminiscent of that arse-wipe of an interface known as Program Manager"
..this reads like Obviously!, after some remedial English lessons, and the forcible application of a spell checker.
(That probably isn't a compliment, by the way, even on a Friday)
Re: spooky
"..this reads like Obviously!, after some remedial English lessons, and the forcible application of a spell checker."
WRONG! Not that that is any surprise!
Some coward bleeting on the usual rubbish! Grow a pair or go to school!
Re: spooky
"Some coward bleeting on the usual rubbish! Grow a pair or go to school!"
Another near-legendary self-pwn. It's spelled "bleating". Maybe your local authority has an adult literacy programme?
I can tell you this much: if I ever find myself in the unfortunate position of having to use W8 then one of two things will happen. Either I'll rip out TIFKAM and replace it with a UI actually designed for a keyboard and a mouse just like I've done with Aero and Explorer before it, or, if that proves impossible of prohibitively difficult, the first tile on my screen will take me to Powershell and I'll run my computer from the command line.
Even a brand new computer has three pages of tiles already. I can just imagine how many pages it'll have by the time I get all my stuff installed, and I'd rather not deal with a desktop full of icons so that I have to minimize everything to open anything either.
$5.00 copy of Duke Nukem Forever?
You can get a free version of Duke Nukem 3D by making an account here http://www.gog.com/gamecard/duke_nukem_3d_atomic_edition
But even he isnt powerful enough to destroy Windows 8
Re: $5.00 copy of Duke Nukem Forever?
Doesn't exist any more, unfortunately.
Glad I got my new GOG account last night, instead of today, I suppose.
I am using 8
It's ok, I guess,
multi monitor support is nicer something I would like to have seen on earlier versions
storage stuff is a lot better and it mounts ISO's natively with drive letters and everything.
windows key and typing is ok, like 7 but it is too invasive, I might not want/need a whole screen to switch when searching for an app, if I am videoconferencing I might need to launch something ( not on my taskbar or in the formerly start menu start bar - I do not like having a cluttered taskbar so nothing is pinned there - the start menu was great for pinned stuff to launch, and less overall movement of the mouse if you have a screen full of icons)
the whole shutdown thing is not good, nor is getting to system settings and such, very unintuitive, the menues up the sides (which is also a tad annoying on multi monitors since it is on the sides of all monitors not just the far left/right sides) I ended up making a command prompt shortcut for faster reboots ( another darn icon) i know i do not have to reboot all the time i have not rebooted in over a week so far, but when i do i want it to be simple ( I know intuitive - go to START and select SHUTDOWN :-/ probably why it was called the windows button later not start)
i do have a lot more icons than I used to on the desktop, just quicker than windows key + typing, i fast high res mouse speeds across the screen with ease and it is often more muscle memory then observance will take a bit more getting used to with 8.
ctrl+scroll wheel zooms the app windows both tiles and all apps, useful, sort of not used much
the big thing is more keyboard use, before there may have been a time when i never needed to touch a keyboard (and vice versa with the mouse) but now it seems a lot harder to do - quickly, I do find searching through the all apps screen more difficult then the start menu, i am sure with use it will come easier, however this leads to my biggest issue:
The company i work with are going to deploy 8, we already have it and a using it, a lot of the people in my dept use 3rd party for start menu, which to me defeats the purpose, of the out of box experience, namely i should not have to install a 3rd party app to give me oem functionality even though it was the oem that changed it.
I have gotten used to 8, nearly, the 500 plus employees however is going to be a nightmare, vista was a nightmare, 7 they sort of took too, 8 is a radical change, and while adaptation is possible i feel it will result initiall in lost productivity, and, if Microsoft change the ui back or more in a future release, it will result in more frustration, remember this is not all "professional IT people" using this many people are only comfortable enough with a computer for work, some set things up in a specific way for their workflow, they will have to totally reorganize themselves when this is deployed, a situation that is frustrating for them, and us since we will have to spend out time helping them get back to at least a partial level of functionality they are used to.
yes things change, however there should simply have been an option for the "legacy" start application get people used to the new UI without ramming it on them and giving no option (and no buying the 3rd party app for every user is silly and should not have needed to be an option)
My wife, who was in level 1 support for a cable company, already has had numerous confused callers who got new pc's with 8 on them and cannot do the most basic things, even her support team were slow at helping since they had to find out how to do it too something that took 3 minutes in 7 now takes 5 plus in 8 with a lot more clicking and keyboarding, which is frustrating to none power users.
That is my biggest gripe, ok if you are new to windows/computers like say a young kid great! i think 8 will be good for them and they will do awesome ( and equally be frustrated with the "legacy" interfaces, however we are not all new to computers, and relearning how to walk again can really take the wind out of your sails, not to mention waste time for all the IT staff trying to help the users do their jobs!
for the moment I am not recommending 8 to anyone who is not overly familiar with using them, for new users I do and for IT people, whatever, you are in IT stuff changes quicker than the postman hearing the husbands key in the front door. (however change is still frustrating and the change to 8 has made my job less satisfying for now).
Some of it is an improvement
I've only seen the Start screen after boot, and then I click on the desktop tile and forget about it - I haven't even been back to tidy up all the junk on the Start screen. If I sleep or hibernate with the desktop open then that's where it wakes up to.
My laptop screen and separate monitor have different backgrounds and both desktops have a task bar, which I like. Another laptop syncs to the same settings, which is kind of potentially useful but I'm not sure about that yet.
Keyboard shortcuts like Win-X for a bunch of important stuff like Control Panel, Task Manager, Event Viewer and even an administrator version of Command Prompt is handy. In fact the Windows key gets much more use now for a variety of shortcuts.
Overall I'm finding it an improvement over 7, except for the stupid TIFKAM screen which I just don't use. Neither am I interested in the new full-screen apps, I use real hairy-chested programs like Photoshop, Hugin, AfterShot Pro and so on. So 7 did all that, but 8 seems faster and seems to have done away with a few glitches.
Give it a week or two
Give it a week or two and you will begin to see that actually Windows 8 is quite good.
On of my last gripe with it is that it was really designed with one screen in mind: it doesn't work well with multimonitor setups, I hope Microsoft will improve the situation in the xnext few months.
Also I like some standard apps a lot (mostly news apps) but other standard apps are still borderline crap, such as the Music / video apps.
As expected, the double IE + limited flash support in IE Metro is a pain and cause a lot of confusion for new users.
There are many positives though, Win + X completely negated my need for a start menu, the 2-app on a screen window is surprisingly useful, Windows 8 is really fast and stable, hardware support is outstanding, and anytime I can get my hands on a touch device the experience is fantastic.
In the same way I won't go back to a non-touch smartphone, there is no way my next notebook won't have touch. Which is a pain presently with most systems not delivered before mid-end of january 2013.
Windows 8 is a schizophrenic piece of crap, forever stuck trying to satisfy both desktop and tablet users and not even coming close to achieving either.
Without a touch screen, Metro is useless... if you like it, good for you but you are the exception so stop assuming you're better than everyone else by telling people to "grow up", "accept change" etc etc... . Don't fscking act like everyone who hates is just isn't as cool as you... that just makes you an ass.
Metro doesn't even come close to filling any parts of what I NEED to be able to do on a computer.
Classic desktop... yes, it could be great... IF I could set it, forget it, and never EVER have to go back to metro ever again... EXCEPT maybe on a tablet. but NOOOOO.... half the time I need to do anything, like the Net, or a metro app, of system tools... WHAM! I am violently yanked out of my environment and into the Metro one... which I do NOT want to see on my desktop.
It just plain sucks.
If you love it... good for you. But please stop trying to convince me that I do too....
Start 'button' on Win 8
I recreated a start 'button' on 8 without using any addons.
Just create a folder somewhere on your computer. I named mine 'Start' for easy identification.
Right click on the task bar and go to Toolbars > New Toolbar
Choose your 'Start' folder.
If you set your 'start' folder to have as little room as possible it has a >> symbol on it, clicking that works like the start button.
Now in your start folder put shortcuts to everything you Want to access easy. Subfolders work just like you'd expect them too on the old 'XP' style start menu.
I'm pretty sure this works on 7 and XP too, I've just never needed to do that on those operating systems.
Re: Start 'button' on Win 8
That's the same hack you use to re-enable the Quicklaunch area.
Unfortunately it doesn't quite work to replace the Start menu in Windows 8. New program installs do not put their icons in the folder tree, instead spewing their guts all over TIFKAM. All you're left with is a virtually empty, gutted start menu with no commonly-used-programs section, and a stylish look straight out of 1991. It even looks like the awful kludge that it is.
It ain't bloody any good
We need to back to a command prompt interface....
Re: It ain't bloody any good
You did that on purpose! :D
All this talk of W8 reminds me...
Of my mother (94 this year!) telling me to eat my vegetables. My reply is: "but I don't like them", and life goes on. Sometimes my wife does the same thing and I respond (autotomically) "yes dear" and proceed to gulp them down with a glass of soda or milk.
W8 seems to be similar. We have all the sales people (or Microsoft) saying that it is going to be good for you, and people who actually USE their computers for productive purposes, saying "no thank you", or "yes dear" and doing it the old (W7/XP) way.
Unfortunately, at some time, the diet will only have the W8 vegetables and we will all need to subsist on them after the alternatives run out. My? I just grow my own food over here on this Linux tree that tastes just fine and keeps me alive quite well. Yum yum.
Life goes on (*SIGH*).
Biggest heap of sh*t I've used
£25 for an ugly interface that is not intuitive; slow as smell and totally useless unless it's connected to the internet all the time. I'm glad I only ruined my laptop with it and reverting to Win 7 because it's going in the bin where it belongs. Even Vista is better than Win 8.
Why should you have to get another program just to add a proper start button? as in Start 8?
No DVD playback as standard. Sorry MS but you've lost the plot completely. I won't be upgrading from 7 as it's taken me 3 years just to get my existing software and hardware to work together properly.
Windows 8 = 0
Apple OS = 10
Re: Biggest heap of sh*t I've used
All the Apple-user Windows worry is becoming more evident as Surface Pro gets close to delivery. Apple better come out with a real computer in tablet form versus the IPad, otherwise they will eventually lose some of their market share as they did in the 80's and 90's. If it wasn't for the IPhone, Apple would still be sucking hind teat. IPhone and IPad users are more gadget oriented than high-demand computer users. Granted, Surface RT isn't what I want with the Pro around the corner. I've been using 8Pro for a couple of months and find it a good upgrade (the 3rd of my personal computers last week). Its faster than 7, with both OS for computer users and a tablet touch screen for gadget users. For those who think I don't know Apple, I was an Mac OS expert and users for over 10 years as an IT program manager providing mixed services (Unix servers, PCs, and Mac).
I like it!
I had a painless and cheap (£25) move from Vista to Windows 8 and I'm very impressed with it. There were a couple of bugs I ran in to namely search/indexing seemed to get stuck and stop me being able to setup File History, plus after a sleep it wouldn't connect back to the internet (Hyper-V ethernet issue). But the rest has been plain sailing. Multi-monitor support is excellent as I was having constant screen rotation issues with the old nVidia drivers on Vista.
I do think it helped that I used Ninite to install most of my software in one go which including the wonderful Classic Shell Start Menu. Because of that I've only seen that dreadful Metro interface once or twice. And I've never run an 'app', just 'programs'. It boots up in 25 seconds into a lovely three-screen desktop.
But I suppose haters gotta hate.
Re: I like it!
"But I suppose haters gotta hate." - why the reverse psychology attempt? >downvote!<
Re: I like it!
I still don't get the "this operating system is fantastically, orgasmically wonderful... once you gut the whole point of the operating system and replace it with something that looks like the previous version" attitude.
As for Vista, well that was pretty universally panned as being shit. UAC was about the only semi-useful thing it brought over XP, and even that was soured by Microsoft's attempt to pretend they invented it and didn't just rip sudo/kdesu/gksu off wholesale.
Of course, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but then getting a patent on it and beating other companies around the head with it.. well that just stinks.
Re: I like it!
@M Gale, I agree with everything you say except that you imply UAC is a good idea. It's a terrible idea (though possibly better than nothing at an attempt of papering over windows security holes. UAC simply taught people to say "yes" every time a warning pops up. Even today I regularly see computer users baffled when the warning comes up.
It's incredibly intrusive. And it is only there as a way of shifting blame from the underlying OS, which, if it was designed with real security, wouldn't need UAC.
Sudo is superior to UAC (though UAC is a dodgy attempt to ape it, true).
Is it just me?
Or are these shortcuts being bandied around just new fangled command line prompts? Highly castrated command line prompts. No idea how you do pipes from one application to the other, or run a command in a loop … ksh makes that a doddle.
I'm not a fan of gestures for controlling computers. Yes, they have a place, but they're not the whole story.
As for magic corners… Android does something similar. I was recently faced with the task of setting up the boss' Asus Transformer tablet up for a business trip away. His laptop had faulty USB ports that needed seeing to, and so the tablet was a tie-me-over until we got that sorted. (This too was to be my task; except delhi belly kept me home the two days that was to happen. *sigh*)
I found it was a case of the blind leading the blind around the interface, as I knew roughly what needed to be achieved but no idea how to achieve it, he knew some of the basics but wasn't overly advanced in his usage. Adding a bookmark was one task that came to mind — I went looking for a menu, turns out you stick your finger on the left-side of the screen and a menu pops up. Not unlike the Windows 8 charms I suppose, but not exactly intuitive.
Some have bandied around the Windows 3.1 interface; Windows 3.1's Program Manager had one thing over what I've seen of the Windows 8 Start screen: it had one layer of grouping. The top level was program groups, within that, the actual application icons. What I've seen of Windows 8, it's a flat structure. Workable for a small number of applications, but given how every application I've seen in Windows insists on creating its own program group/directory within the program manager/start menu, and how many icons some applications generate, I can see this becoming a sea of icons very quickly. With animations to boot!
A well organised hierarchy is good. Take a look at the menus in most Linux desktops (except Gnome3/Unity, which does its own thing). On my computer under Graphics, the system automatically put things like Gimp, Inkscape, Okular (KDE's document viewer), XSane, … etc. Under Games, they're divided into types such as Strategy, Logic, etc. All programming related things hide under Development. It's logical.
Okay, sometimes an application gets installed and you've got to hunt for where it got put, but you then learn that place, and it stays there. It beats everything sticking itself near the root of the tree or one branch below and having clutter everywhere every time however.
Maybe if they introduce some levels in the start screen (doable I think with some imagination) Microsoft are in a good position to make that happen. The question is though, will the industry give them the chance?
do tell me.....
exactly **HOW MANY** surrender monkeys work at el reg????? MS got you nice and drunk, gave you lots of money, so you would even look at an overcooked, mushy cabbage, and give it 5 stars??????
as for you, TIFKAM you FDGFBN .... I guess you are just lovin your new free toys, and cannot give a **damn** for the poor 'non tech aware' sods that will have to use it.... :( :( :( to say nuthin about us, who have to repair their mistakes!!!!
Re: do tell me.....
We don't award stars on El Reg. My column doesn't award anything.
@Sean Tomato Buggerme
You are a geek, potentially with Asperger's or similar. Your patience for other, normal human beings is non-existent and you fail to accept that GUIs were principally invented to make things easier for normal humans. Now be a good boy, put your Red Bull down, stop eating those crisps, step outside and have a look. That yellow thing in the sky is called 'The Sun'. Try and get more of it. Tell Mum and Dad you are off out somewhere, and try to spend less time hating people who are clearly inferior to you with your clever keypress combos and command line shennanigans. I have used various computers with different GUIs for a very long time (Atari, Amiga, PC, Archimedes, etc) and still believe that shortcuts like that should not be necessary. It's OK anyway I have created shortcuts on the desktop for the most useful stuff but still feel that shouldn't be necessary and I'm fu**ed if I'm going to try remembering those keyboard shortcuts, so there. Troll.
Re: @Sean Tomato Buggerme
Good grief, Dave! Makes me pine for the old days on the csa groups, does that! Haven't seen that sort of thing since the various flame wars with Chocky et al!
Dammit! Still no Acorn button!
Had a play - aghhhh!!!!!
Caveat - I am a developer.
I put a lot on the desktop, different dev environments, I use start programs quite often to find things I want, I know what I want, but I can see which version. XP start menu in compatability mode is the best I have used for finding a program from a list, 7 is claustrophobic.
What really annoys me is the dropping back to Tiles rather than Desktop.
Win8 would just annoy me too much
Linux Improvements
I think the time has come when the big organisations like Microsoft and Apple cant afford to make mistakes. The latest Linux distributions such as Ubuntu 12 and Puppy Slacko 5.4 are pretty good and cost nothing. In the case of Microsoft it will always have to support legacy applications, however many people are content with running Windows XP.
I like Windows 8
I've been using Windows 8 as my main machine for about a month now and i'm really starting to like it even on a non-touch screen desktop. It's fast, especially when connecting via remote desktop. It was a little frustrating at first, but when I started making use of the windows key it really took off. finding stuff is a breeze, just hit the windows key and type the first few characters...windows key + cal + enter...calculator is up. same with any other app. easier than clicking START, All Programs, Accessories....
Dual screen support is great too, the start bar is on each screen, rather than just on your main one.
On a 4 year old semi touch screen laptop, the metro interface is fast and snappy. it's like a new lease of life.
The built in Anti-Virus seems pretty solid and MSE was about the only AV product I've not seen an infection on.
Got no complaints so far and getting a lot of positive reviews from customers too.
What a shame ..
this is a typical "Windows Court-Jester Article"!
The Windows Ecosystem has reached the highest level of decadence!
This is the actual status: Microsoft + W8 * WP8 = Kodak 2.0
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