daniel1980 • User • The Register Forums

Windows 8 'bad' for desktop users - Gartner's one-word review

Wednesday 1st August 2012 07:48 GMT daniel1980

Re: History repeats itself

Your post was clear but I can't help but feel that your implication is that the new paradigm is the better one. It _is_ a new paradigm but I do not necessarily think it is a better one.

As some have pointed out, one big motivation seems to be the desire to funnel people through Microsoft's marketplace so they can be like Apple and get a cut of everything. Another is the need to compete with Apple in the consumer space.

It would be very nice if there was a real backlash (though effected how I do not know) against MS for Windows 8. Not because they should be punished or, like some posters, I want the world converted to Linux, but because I want them to take customer feedback seriously. The stock response to any criticism about new interfaces is always the same mix of meaningless 'statistics' like increase in efficiency or deployment cost savings and reduction in TCO, glossy images and words about new features and changing the way you live and bringing your virtual world together, and dismissive comments about the 'vocal few' who just don't want to change.

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Wednesday 1st August 2012 07:46 GMT daniel1980

Re: WINDOWS 8 works great for me

I'm fine with new OSs, just not with new interfaces. Even then, I'm fine with well thought-out, logical improvements. I Like many of the OS changes in Windows 7 - it is hard not to see the benefit in a more secure OS - but the interface annoys the hell out of me and it slows me down.

As a tech,I use both XP/2003 and Windows 7/2008R2 - probably an equal amount - and the simple truth is that, for me, XP/2003 is a more efficient interface overall. That means that I am able to work better and with less stress when using XP than 7. It's not good enough to simply say "you'll get used to it" or to dismissively blame users for their unwillingness to change.

Windows 7 is the clear technical choice but I nothing about the deep-down OS changes requires a new interface. That's the problem with Windows 8 - the interface change.

As an outsourced IT provider, We manage thousands of users across dozens of different companies. Many of these companies are too small to warrant rolling out entirely new PCs for all staff and simply replace PCs as needed. That means that at any one time they will have 3 operating systems in the mix. That's OK, until they have three different interfaces.

As for us, is is ridiculously annoying to have to talk clients through issues or create instructions when we have figure out which OS they are on first and then connect to a similar machine to talk them through issues.

It's my opinion that the biggest driver of the Metro UI and the related changes is Windows 8 is the desire to get in on the 'apps' action. Microsoft want to make your easiest option the one that involves paying them more, even if it is to get something that is elsewhere available for free.

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AIIA takes the ‘Australian’ out of price-gouge concerns

Tuesday 31st July 2012 08:23 GMT daniel1980

". . . because, of course, warranty support is not offered in markets such as America."

Chirgwin pretty much says what I scream every time I read these half-arsed 'justifications'. Almost every expensive that is blamed for the increased price is one that is paid in every other market as well. A product made in China must be shipped, have import duties paid, be transported to the distributer, be inventoried and warehoused, be ordered, processed and handled by staff for distribution, transported again to a wholesale vendor, stocked, stacked and processed again, ordered, shipped and finally sold. It must be supported by local sales and technical staff and warranties must be provided and honoured.

NOTHING in this is different between Australia and the US. There is consensus that costs associated with selling products in Australia are indeed higher than those in the US but every estimate I have seen puts that difference somewhere between 5-20%, depending on the product.

Those with vested interest never actually put figures on the extra costs they blame, merely saying things like: "market factors", which is just a way of saying: "we charge more because we can".

It's been said before, here and elsewhere but it's not just IT. I play guitar and the markups can at times be extraordinary. One particular pedal I was keen to try retails in the US for $10 (assuming parity) than in Australia. Seems completely understandable until you take into account the fact that the pedal in question is MADE IN AUSTRALIA!!! Seriously. When I can buy and Australian made product cheaper overseas than I can here (DIRECT from the manufacturer - no 'middle men',) there is something dreadfully wrong.

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The Higgs boson search continues ... into ANOTHER dimension

Wednesday 25th July 2012 09:40 GMT daniel1980

Re: If you knew SUSY like I know SUSY...

It's my opinion that even those most intimately familiar with these theories and the experiments don't understand them. At least not in the way you're trying to.

The thing is that when you get this deep into it, you can't explain or understand it in terms of familiar, everyday examples and analogies and if you try to then you get an imperfect picture which breaks down very quickly, leaving you more confused than when you started.

I think one of the finest (and most essential) talents of physicists is the ability to just trust the numbers without needing to 'understand' them in the traditional sense. In the end I think that's what all of this is - a bunch of numbers and equations. The numbers and the equations work (and work very well) but they don't do you and me much good.

That's not, in any way, to lessen the achievements of this field - quite the contrary. Humans just aren't equipped to understand these things 'properly' so we do what we can which is to understand the sub-atomic universe through mathematics. It's a spectacular testament that, even faced with an impossible task (the understanding of reality on a fundamental level,) these scientists persist anyway and in doing so, advance our knowledge and quality of life.

SO I suppose the upshot is to just not worry - no one understands these things in that way - if they did then they could explain it to the rest of us without having to use long strings of otherwise unintelligible words. Like this from the wikipedia article on something to do with String Theory:

"These conditions imply that the first integral Chern class c1(M) of M vanishes, but the converse is not true. The simplest examples where this happens are hyperelliptic surfaces, finite quotients of a complex torus of complex dimension 2, which have vanishing first integral Chern class but the canonical bundle is not trivial."

That's a part of a description of a mathematical concept (a 'Calabi–Yau manifold') used as a part of string theory and is in itself something that is impossible to visualise and with no acceptable real-world analogies. The fact that such a concept even exists and its mathematics understood and in use it as mind boggling and impressive to me as (theoretical) object itself.

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