JorgeA

Love it! Dvorak really skewers the vacuous logic around the new UI's being "modern" and "the future": And I swear I am not the author of the following in the comments section: --JorgeA

Apropos of this, I had just come across this article from a month ago: Analysts say Windows RT tablets price drop means OS has failed And there they had the price of the XPS 10 dropping from $499 to $449 (32GB model). I see that the Neowin article mentions that, but of course they ignore the elephant in the room that TechWorld points to: --JorgeA

I'm afraid that (AFAIK) the only solution for those who must use Windows 8 is @bigmuscle's Aero Glass for Win8. If anybody else is aware of other ways to bring Aero Glass back, please let us know! --JorgeA EDIT: typo!

This guy calls them "goblin farts." Oh yeah, that was a great video! Well worth seeing again. --JorgeA

http://blogs.windows.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive/2013/05/14/windows-keeps-getting-better.aspx Thanks, Andre. I'm curious to see what 8.1 actually contains, out of all the things people have speculated that it will include. --JorgeA

LOL --JorgeA

Just to be clear on this point: I wasn't complaining, I was reporting behavior that looked strange to me. If the result I got with the browser that I'm using is actually an expected result, then so be it. --JorgeA

Wait a minute -- you mean to say that there is no Santa Claus?????? Oooohhhh, nooooo!!! --JorgeA

I've hung on to IE8 on my Vista system for a couple of reasons, an informational one and an esthetic one. The informational reason is that IE8 but not IE9 gives me useful little tidbits of information along the bottom that change as I enter and leave different websites; they're always in plain view and I don't have to go looking for the notifications. I can get some of these visible bits back using Classic Shell (thanks Ivo and @xpclient ), but not all of them. The esthetic reason is that I much prefer the look of the Forward and Back buttons in IE8 over those in IE9, which have lost the permanent shiny, 3D effect. (Presaging what Microsoft was getting ready to do to Windows itself.) In IE8, the Menu bar at the top is separated from the other toolbars by a thin line, while in IE9 the toolbars are all one undifferentiated sea of blue. (In IE7 all the toolbar rows are separated by lines, with the Menu bar divider even sporting an indented 3D "groove" appearance.) IE8 already represented a regression towards Windows 2.x flatness from IE7, where the toolbar rows all had 3D shading similar to the Vista Taskbar. IE9 eliminates even the vestiges of this 3D effect; browser tabs are the only elements that retain any depth. Hope I've explained my position well enough! --JorgeA

A brief exchange about Metro apps between Mary Jo Foley and Paul Thurrott in Windows Weekly 301. Start at 16:50: Gosh, do you think that the UI problem could be with the very concept of Metro itself?? --JorgeA

Sure. B) Wow, that's a LOT of tabs open! That analysis was pretty devastating, thanks for linking to it. And yes, it does corroborate your own earlier analysis. An interesting report in the comments section: Wonder how many people are on that same boat. Maybe not stopped using their Win8 machine completely, but deterred from playing with the new toy by Win8's annoyances. --JorgeA

LOL BTW, in the image you attached -- that row of icon thingies I see running across near the top of the Opera window, are they browser tabs? --JorgeA

Unbelievable!! So, any dose of reality over there is met with derision and accusations of bias. --JorgeA

Hey ciHnoN, When I click on the link above, I very briefly see the forum site, but then right away it switches to a small image of a clown or joker in the upper left corner of the browser window -- nothing else at all to see. I tried going in directly by typing the URL, and the same thing happened. MSIE 8. Works fine in FF 16, though. --JorgeA P.S. Now that I got to see what you put in there, here's a thought. Wasn't Windows redesigned in 8 supposedly "to get the OS out of the way"? Well, the Charms totally wreck that notion. They remind you constantly of the OS, and in the most annoying, distracting manner possible. Only thing that could beat it in this category is... <drum roll> ... the Start Screen, which takes over the WHOLE monitor. At least the Start Screen only takes over when you tell it to, but then when it does, it takes over everything.

A user's perpective on Windows 8 from another forum: IMHO the Charms bar on a desktop PC is little more than a gimmick, something they tacked on just to show that it could be done. But "cool" and "new" are not good justifications to foist it on everyone. It serves no useful new function and IMX simply gets in the way repeatedly when you're trying to do something else. Leave it in place for tablets and stop annoying the rest of your users! --JorgeA

Nice. Reminds me a little of Mao's "let a hundred flowers bloom" campaign, where he encouraged people to speak up so that he could find out who was a "deviationist." --JorgeA

Microsoft's counter-attack against Windows 8 coverage makes it 'look weak' Good article. Among other things, it shows yet another way in which Microsoft is imitating Apple: --JorgeA

You sure did, thanks! --JorgeA

Well, with all due respect , alternate shells have existed in the windows world since WIndows 3.1, so not really a "brand new concept", though they are not necessarily a "completely different Windowing system", still they manage to convey the same idea. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_alternative_shells_for_Windows and - not so casually - a KDE for Windows is also available: http://windows.kde.org/ I'm pretty sure that, there, dencorso was responding to what I'd said in one of my previous posts that I linked to: If I have it right, dencorso was acknowledging the difficulty understanding the differences between these for somebody who isn't familiar with Linux. I'm still mystified. --JorgeA

I looked at the screenshots for Porteus and I have to say that it looks very attractive. Even the LXDE that they show sports a convex taskbar, which is one of my favorite Vista features. Will give this a whirl off a Live CD. I notice that they say that if you want to install the OS on a hard drive, they recommend installing full-blown Slackware instead. But like you said, this should be good enough to get a feel for the OS. BTW, thanks for the explanation about the sharp graphics being due to KDE. Mystery solved! Whoa! --JorgeA

Too bad he didn't practice what he preaches... I'll bet he has some kind of nondisclosure clause in his severance package that stops him from talking about Windows or Microsoft for a specified period of time. Fabulous poster you put together, BTW. Reminds me of the diner scene in one of the "Naked Gun" movies (was it the first one) where the owner has a wall of framed pictures of disasters (the Titanic, Hindenburg, and so on). A very funny visual joke. --JorgeA

Sheesh, I'm dizzy from all these sudden turns Thurrott takes! Here's a fantastic observation by "ObjectivityFirst" in the comments section. Highly quotable insights mixed in with some semi-inside knowledge -- [emphasis added] We keep forgetting about that DRM thing, don't we? Once Blue is official, I'm picturing widespread cheering and sighs of relief at the initial news put out by the compliant (lazy) media, followed by a building backlash as people discover we were given only half the baby and realize that MSFT wasn't serious about listening to us. --JorgeA

Tell me something: would it be right to say that setting up Slackware on a computer is somewhat like building your own car? That is, you get maximum flexibility in putting the system together, but OTOH you have to know what to do, what to watch out for, and how to make it all work in concert. If the information I've read is accurate, Slackware starts you off with a command line, from which you can then create a GUI. I was comfortable with the MS-DOS CLI but Linux has a ton of unfamiliar commands, thus I've been looking for something more "ready to wear," see here and here for my leading candidates and the factors involved. You will see here that I'm not averse to trying out new things, but if I need to take up a new "language" I'd rather learn Portuguese than Korean. But maybe I've got it wrong and Slackware + applications isn't that hard to put together? --JorgeA

Thanks, what do you like about Slackware vs. other Linux distros (apart from Ubuntu which we've already ruled out)? --JorgeA

Charlotte, of the almost 3000 posts in this thread, this has got to rank among the top two or three for its blend of passion and detail. Bravo, and thanks!! It's such a stunning commentary that I was going to reply simply that my mouth was left open in amazement. However, after checking out Thurrott's page I did manage to find one thing for that open mouth to say. (I hope it doesn't end up actually being a foot going in.) Thurrott writes: In the midst of all the Stalinist cr*p written before and after that paragraph (he's a World War II buff), in the middle of it there is this one nugget which contradicts everything else he says -- and which represents the core of what I (we) have been asking for all along. He says "in a perfect world," but what exactly is so technically difficult to accomplish here? Isn't it the case that, upon installation, Windows can tell (or you can tell Windows) if you're using a laptop vs. a desktop PC? So, what's so hard about being able to tell between a tablet/phone vs. a laptop/desktop, that the idea needs to be relegated to an "in a perfect world" wish list? What am I missing here? --JorgeA