Microsoft spruces up crap apps in early Win8 update When Reg contributor Tim Anderson reviewed Windows 8 in August, he described the built-in Metro Modern UI Windows Store apps that ship with the OS as being "a bit rubbish." Microsoft must have agreed, because it's already planning to deliver updates for at least 13 of those apps, most of which should ship before Windows 8 even …
Windows Live Mail doesn't integrate with standard Windows applications - if you have applications that want to send using email, you need Outlook (or something like Thunderbird). Removing Outlook Express significantly reduced the basic install functionality. I wonder if this has been restored (doubt it somehow).
Umm, when you say standard applications I assume you mean MS produced. Actually no real problem installing a localized IMAP server, (i.e. hMailServer), to serve up mail stuff to appropriately compliant applications - probably not MS in that scenario - but they do the O/S and leave the rest to everyone else - oh Wait!?
PS
As an outlook POP3 receiver, I really quite like Live Mail Desktop 2009. Bog all integration, but has menus and splits up the different accounts into "different accounts" on the desktop in the desktop application. Later releases are horrible. It's subjective like, but then again I have to daily explain to bog standard users why Windows 7 file explorer doesn't do what XP file explorer did. Go figure that the office based bods can't get with the "program".
Does this mean that in the new hotmail app you can delete more than one email at a time? Fucking incredibly useful app that one, worth every penny, as was the ten second delay between touching / clicking an app and it displaying ... well, anything, especially funny on the pictures app.
Oh, and give me a Start Button! I want it, the customer is always right.
FYI, you could always (since the first public release with the Windows 8 Consumer Preview) delete multiple emails at a time with the Mail app - just select them (by right-clicking) and then Delete. What may have thrown you off is that the mouse sign for selection (both single and multiple selection, standard across all Windows 8 apps and the Start screen) is now right-click instead of Ctrl-click. This is different from desktop and requires a bit of relearning, but it has the advantages of
1) Requiring only a single mouse button press instead of keyboard + mouse
2) Combining several things which were disparate concepts in desktop - context menus, menu bars/ribbons, single selection, multiple selection, and "hide/show the tools mode" - implemented differently in every app - into a single consistent action - right click - that means "show the contextually relevant commands" wherever it's used
In the RTM you can also Shift-click for contiguous multiple selection in a number of apps - at least Mail, SkyDrive and Music - though unfortunately not on the Start screen.
So contextual menu are gone? O my god - they are so useful to avoid to move the mouse all across the screen to reach the toolbar/ribbon between selection and command! Maybe it's not a problem on a 10" screen, it is on a 30" one. I wonder who Sinofsky hired to design the new GUI - probably someone who has never used a GUI but for using Facebook I guess. The "dumbsizing" approach is going very well at Microsoft.
"Why not just use a web browser?
You know everything in one place. All these different apps for different things just seem a bit arse about face."
Because with a web browser you can do naughty things like blocking ads, preventing scripts and cross-site scripting, etc.
The Mail app isn't intended to compete with Outlook. The better comparison would be for someone currently using a freebie app like Live Mail or Thunderbird. Both of those are much better than Mail in its current state but the nature of Windows 8 allows for rapid evolution of the apps without much effort on the users' part.
I've been running the RTM for a while now and it seems hardly a week goes by that doesn't have updates for nearly everything I've installed.
Security issues aside, from an usability point of view Outlook Express was far better than any "* Mail" from Microsoft, while Thunderbird should stop thinking *unix users have a better understanding on how a mail client should be designed - and stop thinking most people like a SMTP settings separated from the IMAP/POP ones, most user want to send mail through the same server they read it from, especially if that is a company one and security policies dictates so.
Sorry, you want Thunderbird to make all my configuration choices for me?
I can configure Thunderbird the way I want. Or is that the meaning of the dig at Unix users? "People who like things set up their way, not how some UI designer thinks they should have them"?
I have a Windows7 phone, I've installed Windows Server 2012 and configured the shiny new box.. I'm even coming round to the dumb ribbon.
I like my phone & the apps on it, and I like the snappy W8 UI for remote access.. and I thought Vista was fine if you had enough memory.. but Windows8 is utter utter shite.
I accept simple apps on my phone because I know its limits, but a shite apps takes me back to Windows2.. But that's not why W8 is shite..
The start screen was so familiar to my phone, that I found myself looking for the start icon because there's one on my phone (despite weeks of WinServ2012).. along the way I discovered something about the way my brain works.. I'm either in visual mode or code-mode & need somewhere click.
Windows8 is not the new Vista.. it is the worst desktop OS Microsoft have EVER produced.
Windows--all versions--is now a yawn. Most of my machines still run XP, others run Linux.
For Windows devotees, sure newer versions have better reliability and security but frankly I couldn't give a damn, as XP does what I've become to expect of Windows along with all its faults and limitations. For me, newer versions add absolutely nothing of practical value except inconvenience and I don't need to pay for that. (And stats say 40% of the world's still with me.)
'Real' new features such as a new filing system, integrated database filing--once promised as WinFS with Vista; user-designable and user-reconfigurable UI (someone strange may even want Metro); ability to totally nuke dross such as Media Player, Internet Explorer and all other useless garbage that contributes to O/S bloat--with a bloated price; user-installable file systems (additional to NTFS), attributed (coloured. bolded, italicized etc.) filenames, directories and indexes; ordered/prioritized (user-definable) file displays; ability to modularize and use only parts of the O/S as the user needs; superuser status for Administrator together with full user control over the security system--not with Microsoft as it is now--only to mention a few of the sorely needed--are still light-years away from Microsoft's moribund thinking. Even the proposed support for longer filenames in the new Win 8 server's ReFS filing system was dropped at the last minute (for me, it was the only tiny ray of hope Win-8 ever had).
I expect XP to be my O/S of choice for some years yet, even if it makes selecting hardware more difficult (which I know it will). Perhaps XP will turn out to be my last Microsoft O/S--although years back, it may well turn out to be my last purchase from Microsoft!
Having spent some months and considerable time evaluating Win 8 and Metro, I and others involved wouldn't use this operating system even if it was free.
As far as I'm concerned, Microsoft lost the plot long ago. Win 8 won't be the end of Microsoft by a long way but clearly it's stamped the beginning of the end of Microsoft's dominance of the O/S market.
Frankly, a few ago I'd have never ever expected to see that in my lifetime.
...the terrible font support.
In some apps it looks wrong in desktop mode. I think they have screwed around with Cleartype to make it work better with some monitors pixel setups but not others. In some instances it looks like they just switched it off. I have tried 'tuning' it.
In Metro/Modern land they decided to make the whole area run by DirectX so if you have AA/AF and MSAA etc. enabled for games on the GPU then it transfers that to the fonts in Metro Apps making them look awful. Basically your screen looks like a poor colour photocopy.
Switch on all the bells and whistles your GPU can do then pop into Metro land and see what it looks like.
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