CoffeeFiend

Another nice article on zdnet: Windows 8: Does Metro actually work? It's on Mary-Jo Foley's page but it's written by Matthew Baxter-Reynolds, a developer/consultant who's writing a book (published by O'Reilly) called Programming Metro-styled apps with C# (not just a random hater, the guy has some insight) What he has to say very much reflects the opinion of every developer (and basically everybody) I know: He also writes articles for The Guardian (a British national newspaper), like That Windows 8 experience? Confusing. Confusing as hell. Oh, and do you like a PC free from crap? MS says it's a $99 upgrade. Edit: I'd like to quote Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple: That is exactly what happened with Win8. They tried to make a desktop OS and a tablet OS into a single OS that sucks for everybody, particularly desktop users which happen to be their only market right now. Way to shoot yourself in the foot.

Another great article by Paul Thurrott: Windows 8 Release Preview: RIP, Aero (2003-2012): I think this says it all really. Basically the same thing I've been saying here... They're killing everything that made Windows useful and forcing a dumbed-down smartphone UI on PCs where it makes no sense at all, just so they can sell tablets, while disregarding that they've always failed hard at selling such devices. It sounds like a great plan: destroy what's your only trick (desktop software) to sell devices which aren't going to sell. How could that possibly go wrong? As the Forbes article said:

The latest entry on Win8's blog (where your neowin link got its info from) goes very much in that direction as well. Some of it is blatant market speak ("Grace and power: Windows 8 apps"? More like "Lame, crippled and teh suck: Windows 8 apps"), and some points expose the main problems with Win8 i.e. pretending your PC is a gigantic smartphone that has no touch instead of a fantastic and powerful general purpose computer (e.g. "Make your PC work like a device, not a computer" i.e. a dumbed down consumer device, or "Creating an environment exclusively or primarily suited for touch input" when our PCs don't have it) Exactly what I was thinking seeing their latest screenshot: So darn bland, boring, boxy and ugly. Just imagine those ugly fat mouse cursors on top of that too Almost as much eye candy as Windows 3.1 (but now with Metro too)! Seemingly they're making the desktop (the only useful part of Windows) as awful as possible in order to force people to use Metro. Meanwhile, MS keeps suing competitors instead of making a product people want to buy, by banning the import of competing devices due to a trivial patent. Yep, forget about making users want to buy your stuff because it's great -- just sue the competition into oblivion, then everyone will be stuck with your garbage that currently no one wants of. And Forbes has has a great article. It starts with: Well worth the read. I agree with all of it. They need to fire Ballmer NOW.

It's hilarious. They're pushing a worthless update, and you have to pay for it too. I'd much sooner pay $15+ to get rid of it! And I can tell you for sure that they do censor some of the comments, even if you're not using vulgar language or anything special. I've had very mild comments that just never got posted, as many others have. Either ways, they don't care at all if we all complain or that customers don't want any of it. Metro will be forced down your throat if you have to use Win8. Yet they will still go ahead with it. It'll make Vista seem like a monumental success. The RC isn't out yet and everyone already knows it's going to fail hard. Ain't that saying something? Yep. MS couldn't sell mobile devices even if they came with a free gold ingot. They've failed hard with WinMo devices, they've failed hard with the Zune and the Kin, they're failing hard with Phones, and they're going to fail with tablets next (turning their flagship product into something no one wants to buy in the process) Seeing how well Windows Mobile phones sold before WP7 phones (they've been trying for a decade), it was very much expected that they would't sell either.

Also, it still counts as a Win8 sale, so it'll be the best selling OS ever (according to some twisted math like they've done for Vista)

Why not? Even if you don't feel like discussing things, or that you dislike that others are voicing their opinions about Win8 (if that's the case, then I strongly recommend getting rid of internet until Win9 is out), people will still reply, comment, share their thoughts and so on. That's the whole point of forums. If you don't want to discuss things then don't. Others are still free to do so. I don't really see what the big deal is here. I don't personally see how it would be annoying. It's one of those things I couldn't really care less about. Either ways, mine is set to whatever it was when you install the OS. Then again, why make such a big deal of wallpapers when you say you hardly ever see it in the first place? I understand what you said in this post (let's call it "the explanation"), but I still can't quite understand the exact sense of the original sentence (my English isn't perfect, sorry). There's no classic anything in Win8. It seems like they're doing their best to kill everything Windows was, and are only letting you use "legacy" desktop apps to "smooth out" the transition to their desktopless phone OS. Everything that remains from previous Windows versions is quickly getting Metro-ified

I wouldn't exactly consider myself as some sort of reference regarding anything Apple really. Ah, yes. That changes the big picture a bit. I hear that a lot, but they pretty much always fail to express exactly in what way it's better. Most of them are just blindly repeating what they've heard like good sheeple. Should you ask them an explanation, they'll typically reply with "it's free/open source" which basically means "I have no idea!" or "teh M$ sux!". About 1% of the time, you'll get an intelligent answer, by someone's who's been using it professionally for years, explaining how they use bash, common userland tools (grep, sed, cat, etc) and SSH to do their job (typically things like working with a LAMP stack on Linux servers -- not your typical desktop workload). Then again, I've seen that kind of answer come from Mac users more often. Also, it's kinda funny to see this as an answer to "how much more advanced Linux is", when most of these utils are from the 1970's Unix world (that sounds so futuristic!) The same brainwashed sheeple are those who will tell you Linux has all the software anyone could possibly need (you know, GIMP is is like, as good or better than Photoshop!), that you should run all your games under WINE, and that the hardware support is so much better than Windows (which is just a total BSOD-fest, you know) -- and if you say any different then you're either a troll or a paid shill... According to them, this year will be the year of the Linux. Those delusional people have been saying that for over a decade, it's just what particular feature they talk of which changes over time (it used to be things like GNOME, not so long ago it was Compiz Fusion, right now it's things like Wayland and I'm already wondering what it'll be next) -- while totally disregarding the big picture. They'll keep changing distros every few years (you can already see lots of people abandoning Ubuntu, which was the "new hot thing" 5 years ago), or as a way to solve issues with their current distro. Meanwhile, more users who are dissatisfied with MS products move to Macs pear year than Linux has gotten in 20 years, even if it requires buying new and expensive hardware. Perhaps to some extent. I can deal with that part, but the very limited selection of software that runs on Linux is very much a deal killer for me. If I can't get work done then what good is it? I'll still take a somewhat locked-down OS that runs most useful software over one that's unlocked but doesn't. Macs seem like the new "middle ground": it doesn't run as much as Windows, but it runs more than Linux. I still find Macs very limiting when it comes to what runs on them but at least you're free from Metro. I find Win7 to be a far better option than both, but that's only going to be a viable option for so long.

I didn't really pick parts. I pretty much quoted the entire thing line by line (not that I see anything wrong with just commenting on the interesting parts either). It just makes it easier to see what one is replying to. It's very much the same thing as MagicAndre1981 said, just written in a more "structured" way. I see no harm in doing so either (it's a forum, where people can have and express opinions, you know -- just like bphlpt explained before). It's not like we're trying to convince you or anything. We're just just voicing opinions. All we're saying is that it brings very, very little outside of Metro (not that Metro is a good thing). And most of that is matched or even surpassed by freeware. Feel free to disagree altogether with everything I said. That's about the only sentence I hadn't quoted (I didn't see the point of it). But yes, that's pretty much the case according to a lot of people. I don't see why not. Nice new pics every time you peek at the desktop. You get to enjoy more awesome pics that way too (I have about 2000 of them in a folder that are on rotation). Everyone at work keeps asking about them. It's also a great way to get rid of some of the lesser ones (I have a shortcut that deletes the not-so-great ones in 2 clicks so they're never seen again, leaving you with only the absolute best stuff -- it's less work to sort them this way too). It's like a slow-paced slideshow of awesome photos. It's less of a hassle to have it change them automatically than manually changing them yourself. I'd never go back. I can't quite grasp what you meant there. Sorry.

You said it better than I could. I couldn't care less what OS others want or don't want to use. And there's nothing one could say that will make me want to use Win8 in its current state, ever. It's not a rumor, MS said so on their site several times. No WMC, no DVD playback. You get to pay extra for Win8 Pro, then extra for the WMC pack (and even then, WMP still doesn't play DVDs, only WMC does, and still no Blu-Ray support either) Much like MagicAndre1981 said, I never change it (that'd be a real pain too, considering my wallpaper changes every 15 minutes). In fact, I've never seen anyone change it manually. That's hardly a feature worth paying $150 for, let alone suffering Metro hell for. I always disable Defender in the first place, and I'd rather MSE be optional too. Either ways, you already had defender, and the exact same AV (MSE) was free. It just took a couple clicks to install. All you gained is saving those 2 clicks. That's one of the couple features that are somewhat nice. But like MagicAndre1981 said, ProcessExplorer and ProcessHacker are both free, and arguably better in several ways. I have nothing against it, but I'm going to use the keyboard regardless. If anything the best part of it (and arguably the best part of Win8) is explorer's new file copying dialogs, but even then something like TeraCopy already does basically the same thing for free on other versions of Windows. Like MagicAndre1981 said, it has its fair share of issues, and it's very much feature-light, even compared to a version of Daemon Tools that's a decade old (or a number of other free tools). Like most utilities they add to the OS (e.g. zip file handling) it's very much half-as*ed and barely manages to replace the minimal feature set of similar utilities. So you just pretend it doesn't exist anymore (except for when you're forced to use it against your will). You basically lost the start menu and are willing to just accept it. As MagicAndre1981 said, Windows is heading in that direction regardless. Even other parts of Windows are going to be that way by the time the next "beta" (RC) is released. Various dialogs and seemingly also some really ugly super-wide mouse cursors (see the pic below). Oh, and seemingly they're going to make activating it more of a pain. Forget about just reusing the OEM's key like you could on Vista and Win7, that option is now gone. Seemingly they're taking lessons from Hollywood execs, and making their paying customers (and IT folks) suffer, because extreme DRM will kill piracy, like, for sure this time. Yet another reason not to buy Win8:

+1 to all that.

Same here. I just want a phone that can make phone calls. In fact, I only have a landline. It's definitely easier on the wallet! Unlimited calling, including long distance for $20/month flat. Getting cell phones for me and the kids on a shared plan, with some daytime minutes, some long distance, unlimited text and some data would cost me like ten times that. Sandboxing sort of makes sense for a web browser and dinky apps. But yes, for regular old software it just gets in your way. So yeah, dinky apps sold online (no matter which device they run on) will run sandboxed. I mean, just how much access a dumb twitter client or weather app should need on your PC? That's not one of my real concerns. Like they said, you can still install software that's not sandboxed, and most likely it'll always stay that way. I can live with that. That's not my main issue with Win8 either (simpleminded Metro apps run sandboxed, but everything else isn't) Too bad there's nowhere else to go I guess. Yes, Windows and OS X may possibly one day be entirely sandboxed, as unlikely as it seems, and that would make running some software a real pain or downright impossible. However the main alternative to both is fundamentally incompatible with commercial software, so it'll most likely never be a viable platform for a lot of us. ...which isn't what I'm after. It's all about being able to run the software you need, not "thinkering". For what it's worth, Linux can also be very much locked down (file permissions, sudo, chroot jailed apps, SELinux, etc). And if everybody else does it then they'll probably follow. All I want is to be able to run the software we need to get the job done. Right now that means running Windows, and OS X to a lesser extent (it still has FAR less useful apps, by a LONG shot, but it's still usable for a lot of tasks). However, even if Windows has more software going for it, they're going "full retard" with the UI, so I'd rather work on a Mac (not so much because it has an outstanding UI, but because anything and everything is better than Metro), and Macs stand a chance of getting more commercial software in the next few years (especially if MS screws up this badly). Linux offers an UI that's somewhat lesser than OS X (IMHO), but that's mostly irrelevant as it doesn't run the software we need and it most likely never will.

Wow. Just when it thought it couldn't possibly get any worse...

Such as? There's barely anything new feature-wise (slightly improved explorer, somewhat nicer task manager, and that's it really), and it basically fixes none of the things I'd like to see it address. It seems to me like so chuck full of serious problems that it might as well be closer to "just a large collection of problems" than "an operating system" (some parts copy/pasted from a previous post) : Win8 is making everything useful about Windows "legacy", only to force an ill-suited touchscreen interface on mouse/keyboard users which is a gigantic setback in usability and which will just confuse everybody. It'll take some time for most users to adjust to this tacky interface and its gaudy icons, gestures, hot corners and screen edges (which are a real pain with VMs and multi monitor setups, while also taking away familiar elements like the start button to do so), hidden elements (less visual cues), reduced discoverability, scrolling up/down with the mouse that actually scrolls sideways, everything running maximized (and with no chrome), the desktop being just another application, multitasking being very much neutered, the disjointed combo of metro and desktop environments, etc. The new start menu replacement is a gigantic step back over what we had, WMC is now a paid-for extra that even requires you to purchase a more expensive version of Windows (yet it had zero updates), DVD playback and the MPEG2 codec are gone (no Blu-Ray support either), WMP lost the ability to play DVDs even if you buy the WMC pack which makes it a even worse media player than it already was. Also, customizability has been thrown out of the window, they're forcing crappy MS cloud services on users, ARM devices throw 20 years of backwards compatibility out the window (and they also introduce locked bootloaders), the app store that can remotely deactivate apps you paid for, the existing Metro apps are of incredibly bad quality and are very much feature-light (most are also useless without an internet connection), Metro apps in general are rather dumbed-down, etc. At best it just gets in your way, it's an obstacle to getting work done and it slows you down. They've reinvented the wheel by making it square. It creates countless major problems rather than solving any, just so they have a laughable chance at selling a few mediocre tablets (I'm sure it'll sell as good as the Zune or Windows Phone). But hey, explorer now has a ribbon, and task manager has heat maps! That'd be a whole lot easier to do if the ratio of advantages to serious problems wasn't so darn close to zero (barely any improvements, but an unfathomable amount of serious problems)

That's NOT what we're after. We're perfectly happy with anything that's an actual improvement, or that is at least no worse than what it replaces. It's not that it's different, it's that the new version is horrendous (everything Metro, specifically) and that it can't be disabled. Just make this Metro garbage optional and the problem is solved! If you see people who try to get back what was there before, it's because that's a vast improvement over what Win8 has. That's what we'll do, for sure. It's still sad to see Win8 is so ridiculously awful, and a step back in *so* many ways.

Some people do?

I have no problems with that I don't mind VS2008's interface either. I use VS 2010 mostly for .NET 4 support, and not because I prefer its GUI or theme (the new window manager is nice to have though). So long as it's not the "everything in drab, depressing gray with ALL CAPS EVERYWHERE" I'll be OK. I didn't think of searching for articles in languages besides English (mainly because I thought pretty much all new infos would be released in English primarily -- I hadn't looked recently either). It's ridiculous not to have XP support in the RTM, but if they bring it back for C++ and also .NET 4.5 apps (which currently don't run on anything older than Win7, but nothing is final yet) then it would make VS 11 a viable option. On the C++ side, benefits are fairly obvious (some C++11 features, which will get used if we can finally target XP) but on the .NET side it's not so clear cut. The nicest thing I've noticed so far (besides async) is that the System.IO.Compression namespace now contains classes to handle zip files natively (instead of having to use SharpZipLib, the J# classes or something similar). I'd still like to see a LOT more improvements but at least it wouldn't be a step back from VS 2010 anymore. Mein Deutsch ist nicht sehr gut (par contre je parle bien français). But it does sound like the odds of getting XP support are pretty good.

It looks less bad now. The beta UI was horrible, now it's just somewhat worse than VS 2010. But then again, they're only addressing minor issues. It still has far more important problems, like compiling code that doesn't run on half the computers that have Windows as their OS (compiled apps don't work on XP and prior, and as much as I dislike XP we simply can't abandon half of our users yet!) and pretty much not offering a single reason to upgrade in the first place. C# has pretty much zero improvements besides the very minor async language feature. And I must be thick, because at that price (CDN$15,939 which is USD $15,926 at the current exchange rate) for Ultimate with MSDN I'd expect C++11 support at least equal to freeware (open source) GCC. Also, the free Express editions are now absolutely worthless (you'll need to buy VS to make any simple Windows application in C# or VB) How about making Visual Studio good enough not to require Resharper/CodeRush/Refactor Pro!/Visual Assist X (much improved refactoring and code navigation for starters), adding a LINQPad-like tool (debugging LINQ queries would be fantastic too), improving CPU & memory profiling (like ANTS), including nice language improvements (supporting more C++11 features, or things like XML literals in C#), including something like Roslyn and its REPL, ideally including a tool like Reflector/dotPeek/ILSpy/JustDecompile, having some out-of-the-box SVN/Hg/Git support (because no, we're not going to suddenly start using TFS -- it's simply not the kind of tool most of us need or want), substantially improved SQL Server support for tasks like database versioning/schema comparison/script generation and such (intellisense in SQL Server Management Studio without SQL Complete would be nice too) much like Redgate's tools provide, maybe making their testing tools as good as freeware alternatives (e.g. NUnit with TestDriven.NET and NCrunch, or even Resharper's test runner), including a basic regex tool (doesn't have to be quite as fancy as regex buddy), better code documentation tools (like sandcastle help file builder), more advanced/improved/highly polished controls (like those from Telerik, DevExpress, Infragistics and others), or even C99 support more than a decade late (yes, I do know it'll never happen), etc. There's a VERY long list of things that still very much need improving and that most developers would agree on (so we rely on a lot of 3rd party tools for a lot of things). But instead of working on that, we now get a regression on the UI side and supporting less Windows versions as our main new features. Shut up and take my money! No sarcasm at all there No siree! Much like for Win8, they chose to make the UI suck instead of adding new worthwhile features or improving what was already there. Thanks, but no thanks. We'll keep using Win7 & VS 2010. I'd sooner pay again to keep using what we have now than to use the new stuff for free.

Smartphones are too much like a computer OS? Ok. I'd really like to know how making the computer OS just a smartphone (what they've actually done with Metro) was the answer to that. Or in other words: phones are too much like a PC, so we'll turn PCs into phones Do they put LSD in the water over there? Win8 is such a train wreck of an OS. Its only value seems to be comedic.

I would have hoped for built-in Blu-Ray support if anything. Instead, we get: -No support for Blu-Ray built-in -No support for DVDs built-in -No support for MPEG2 files or streams built-in -No WMC built-in, you have to pay extra for the addon (Zero day DLC, if you will), on top of having to pay extra for Win8 Pro (or Pro Pack, still paying both both but as one item) -Seemingly even if you have Win8 Pro and the WMC pack, then WMP still can't play DVDs! -WMC in Win8 gets *zero* new features (is it being abandoned?) -Still laughable support for common formats such as FLAC or MKV (or subtitles for that matter) -No syncing WMP with the most popular mp3 players (iPods) -WMP smart playlists are still kinda dumb compared to many other players -Intentionally crippled TV recording for some countries, and also recording in a non-standard format with DRM -Playing mp3's with the awful Metro player by default ... Sounds like it's going to be a fantastic OS for audio and video content! When you offer that kind of experience to your users (don't forget Metro), you can't be surprised Apple's eating your lunch and that most of your users won't upgrade. Meanwhile, everywhere on the internet, people are voicing their opinions about it, and it's not praise. FAQ - DVD playback and Windows Media Center in Windows 8 has some nice comments. PCWorld has a couple related articles:Like Windows Media Center? Don't Upgrade to Windows 8 and Windows 8 Dumps Default DVD Playback. Edit: more nice comments on anandtech's article.

That's exactly what I'm thinking too. I don't really like Macs all that much, but they're certainly nicer than win8.

"Get back" as workarounds, using 3rd party tools and messing with the binaries. What I meant is more like "You know that MS won't give it back to you, not in Win8 at least.

They've lost at the mp3 player battle, they lost the smartphone battle, they're losing the tablet battle, and to do so they're turning their desktop OS and developer tools into something nobody wants of (and killing the Live brand as well). It's going to be a spectacular failure like we'll probably never see again.

/thread. This says it all. And since it's almost the only new feature Win8 has and that it can't be disabled... Agreed (they also lost for other mobile devices like the Zune). The tablet battle is already lost as far as I'm concerned. Most OEMs have zero experience with ARM tablets, they're used to make cheap and heavy laptops instead (mostly being incapable of competing in the ultrabook format, let alone tablets). Now they have to make a portable device instead, with an expensive touch screen, and using an OS that a lot of people are already showing strong aversion to (and isn't custom tailored for tablets), and without all the apps iDevices have, etc. I don't see them making a dent in iPad or Android tablet sales. If anything, I'd say it's going to be worse than both PR-wise.

I can't tell you for sure that no PDF app on Linux can do this specific task as I haven't tried all of them, but even "alternative" PDF apps for Windows are extremely limited when it comes to supporting things like I had listed (some of them even struggle with very basic tasks like printing documents). For us it would be impossible to live without Adobe's Creative Suite (and *so* many other things that Linux just doesn't have). It's pretty common for designers to use InDesign (with content from Illustrator and Photoshop, managed using Bridge) and typesetters to fill in their part with InCopy, then doing PDF/X output via Acrobat (and preflighting with Acrobat and addons for it like PitStop Pro or pdfToolbox). Just today again I had a small request for a company logo in a specific format (Illustrator CS3, with fonts converted to outlines, using Pantone spot colors for accuracy -- instead of a PDF/X file). It was a 10 minute job but I have absolutely no idea how I'd even try to do this on Linux. Nor would I know if the file would be accepted for output (delays, wasted time and iterations costs us money), or what the end result would look like (that's clearly not an option when you print lots of something). I'm not what you'd call a huge Apple fan, but at least I could accomplish this kind of task on a Mac (you got the entire Creative Suite, an OS with proper color calibration, Outlook 2011 to use my Exchange accounts for the relevant emails, etc) as well as pretty much every basic task Linux can accomplish (browsing, playing mp3's, etc). It's still mostly useless for programming (doesn't run most of the tools we need) and CAD work though (two things we do a lot of).