JorgeA

I finally got a chance to spend some time looking into this issue of Windows 8 BSOD's. Unfortunately, it didn't do much good. There seems to be no special pattern for blue screens appearing in Win8 (that's what I was hoping to find), they happen for all sorts of reasons. But I can say that a Google search for "windows 7 bsod" gave back 5.78 million results, while a search for "windows 8 bsod" produced 4.9 million results... and Windows 8 has only been out for 17 months, if you include the preview versions. (A search for "windows vista bsod" came back with 3.46 million results. ) I thought we were told that Windows 8 would be so much more stable than any previous edition of Windows? Sorry I wasn't more help. --JorgeA

Hey, Laurence! I think that @sgj may actually be the creator (as opposed to the finder) of this Start Menu replacement. Now that it's available in English, we can add it to the list. (Not that I have anything against the Polish language, of course -- Spanish is my native tongue, and I wouldn't list a Start Menu that was available only in Spanish, either. The idea is for as many people as possible to be able to use it and know what's going on with the utility.) --JorgeA

Man, oh man -- the parallels to "1984" do keep coming. This is an exact, digital-era version of the memory hole. Wow. --JorgeA

Dear Microsoft, sorry to nitpick, but I just noticed a mistake in that Windows 8 logo. If that is really meant to show perspective, the horizontal line in the blue Window panes should be tapered thinner to thicker from left to right. As it stands, the blue Window is tapered for faux-perspective with a normal "+" sign superimposed. So just who was the child using Microsoft Paint that scarfed up this contract? And they paid what? You just don't get it, do ya? Perspective -- or anything that's evocative of the real world, like 3D depth graphical elements -- is skeuomorphism and must be banished!!! (Incidentally, make sure to check out the section, "The Limits of Flat" in that long and generally fair discussion I linked to.) --JorgeA

I'm very glad that this thread has made a difference for you. That's one of the values it's come to serve. And I'd be willing to wager that this thread is the most extensive and wide-ranging critique of Windows 8 and of Microsoft's corporate strategy anywhere on the Internet. Cheers! --JorgeA

Well, I for one wouldn't want to see you drop out, you're one of the new players who've reinvigorated the thread with additional perspectives (sorry for not including you on the list earlier, I suspected that it wasn't complete and I was in a rush). --JorgeA

+100 !!! --JorgeA

Hmmm. Maybe we could start a petition here : http://www.thepetitionsite.com/ "Please don't cannibalize this poor thread on MSFN" I guess an initial target of 180 signatures could be adequate. If we can borrow MSFT's bots, we can get that target to quickly grow to 18,000. B) --JorgeA

Loved that parody ad, BTW. --JorgeA

But that's precisely what's great about this wild and woolly thread! It certainly has developed over time. Because Microsoft insists on foisting the same uniform UI on users of all of its devices, what started as a critique of Windows 8 specifically grew out to WOA/RT and the Windows Phone, and from there has come to (also, but not only) encompass what's wrong with Microsoft. If the topics get split off mandatorily, they will each become that much less prominent. The thread has gained renewed and great vigor recently (see attached screenshot, taken as I was preparing this post), thanks immensely to @ciHnoN and @Formfiller, in addition to those of us who've been keeping it going all along. It will die a natural death when there's nothing more left to say -- please, don't euthanize it!! --JorgeA EDIT: New screenshot seen just after posting:

PCWorld redeems its earlier Windows 8 boosterism with the following gem: How to banish Metro from your Windows 8 PC forever --JorgeA

Extra! Extra!! Paul Thurrott endorses a 'skip Metro' utility!!! In Windows Weekly episode 293, Thurrott and program host Leo Laporte have the following exchange (starting at 1:35:28, excerpted below): (links added)So, no Start Button yet for Paul, but he's come part of the way with the endorsement of a tool to boot directly to the Desktop. --JorgeA

Anyone going to calculate probabilities that two different people in NY will think, write and post in 2 minutes timeframe this same EXACT sentence? Excellent work, jaclaz! --JorgeA

Apropos of '1984' and Microsoft... NYPD and Microsoft build hi-tech crime fighting 'dashboard' (emphasis added)We may say that this system is intended to deal with a problem, but IMO the cure is worse than the disease. If I had the time and the fiction-writing talent, I'd write a '1984' prequel showing how they got there from the purest of good intentions. --JorgeA

Ahh, OK, it makes more sense now. Thank you! --JorgeA

Ho hum, maybe it has something to do with WIndows 8? The amazon bestseller listings are pretty obvious. Even refurbished P4s with Windows XP sell better. Man, even DOS devices sell better! One would think this would tell the CEOs something.. apparently not. But even let's tout strictly the party-line and assume W8 had nothing to do with it, and it's really all just because of tablets.. wasn't Windows 8 supposed to repair this? PC sales are tanking more than ever, and W8 tablets are flopping even harder. So even if we go strictly by the party-line argumentation, EVEN THEN W8 IS A FAILURE. Bingo! --JorgeA

Oh, that's it <slapping head>. I must have tried out the Win8 DP, CP, and RP on imaginary hardware. Silly me!! If Microsoft were to put out something that we liked, we WOULD give them credit for it. And we DO give credit where credit is due: while not perfect, the UI's from 98 to 7 were logically structured, eminently functional, and (after some tweaking in XP's case) visually appealing. Office 2000 and 2003 were highly useful and easy to work with. Flight Simulator was an absorbing experience, and a wonderful introduction to the possibilities of the PC platform already in 1982. Start putting out good stuff again, Microsoft, and you'll start getting praise again. Stop it with the arrogant foisting of unwanted, devolutionary, restrictive garbage like Windows 8, Metro, and Office 2013, and you'll feel the love coming at you once again. You got the cause and effect backward. If you actually listened to your customers, you wouldn't be getting all this heat. --JorgeA

Fantastic set of questions there. Now, if only there were a journalist with both the tech knowledge and the guts to ask them... Of course, NOT being asked tough questions was in all likelihood a condition for Gates granting the interview. This is the only one that left me scratching my head. What does it mean to say that "activation has reinvigorated privacy instead of reducing it"? (I do understand the rest of it about not supplying install media or downloadable ISOs.) --JorgeA

Thanks very much for the info and advice. I've done what you said, and here's the update. The whole thing is pretty bizarre. Soon after disconnecting the new laptop, the old laptop was once again able to go on the 'Net. I then checked all the settings as you suggested, and everything seemed to be in order so no reinstallations were apparently needed. The SSL and TLS settings in IE6 were as you indicated, too. Powering down and rebooting didn't bring back the logon screen, though -- not at that point. I left the new laptop disconnected overnight and let the old one connected and working. As everything (except for the logon) seemed to be working, I re-connected the new laptop to the network this afternoon. Some time later I went to check, and the notices from ZoneAlarm had resumed. This time, I couldn't close the ZA alert balloon -- it wouldn't respond to my actions, although I could stop the DC program with no problem, and open and close the ZA window itself just fine. But the alert balloon stayed, getting in the way of everything, so I shut the laptop down again and rebooted once more. This time, and for whatever reason, the network logon screen came up as normal before Windows loaded. First thing I did after it finished booting was to go into the ZA firewall and tell it to trust the new laptop. The notices have stopped coming. It's all very strange and I don't understand how one computer could suppress another computer's logon process, but everything looks like it's OK now. Thanks for your help, I suspect that just checking with the instructions you gave somehow got things sorted out. --JorgeA

I get the same sense. Thurrott's view of Windows 8 seems to turn around 180 degrees unpredictably, and then he makes up for his negative assessments by being especially shrill when in a positive phase. --JorgeA

Another pertinent couple of quotes from that article: Good to know that not everyone is a sheep eager to accept whatever they're given. MS may have understimated its customer base. And they're still casting about for anyone to blame other than themselves. For how long have they been touting that same 60 miliion figure now? And the last sentence we know to be false. Win7 took off steeply at once and never looked back. Win8 -- umm, not so much. --JorgeA

Ahh, the wonders of automated enforcement -- like red-light cameras that give YOU the ticket even if the driver is actually a thief who took your car. Brave New World indeed. To mix authors, even Orwell couldn't have dreamed this up. --JorgeA

I'm hoping someone has a clue as to what might be going on here. I have several computers participating in a distributed computing project. The DC program is set to connect to the project server every so often to issue progress reports, and also when it's first loaded or when it completes an assignment. Last night, I noticed that the program had slowed down enormously. Closing the program and relaunching it didn't help. So I shut the laptop down and restarted it. At that point I noticed the next thing -- the logon screen that I had set with a password to join my home network did not appear as Win98 was loading. Today, I discovered that my Win98SE laptop could no longer access the Internet; every place I tried via IE6 got a DNS Error. And the DC program isn't able to communicate with the project server. Powering down and restarting hasn't helped this or the lack of the logon screen. The only thing that's new in my network is that, a couple of weeks ago, I purchased a Windows 7 (yes!) Lenovo laptop, set it up, and connected it to the network. In recent days, I'd noticed that ZoneAlarm on the 98SE laptop was issuing an enormous number of notices about the new laptop trying to access it. At one point it stopped counting at the maximum value, 500, but it seemed to keep working normally after that. Now I'm no longer getting those notices from ZA, but I can't access the Internet. The two events (new laptop + this problem) could be totally unrelated, but as this is the only change I've made to the network lately, I have to wonder. Any ideas as to what may be going on, or what I can do?? What could cause the logon screen to stop showing up? Device Manager doesn't report anything wrong. I'm running ZA version 6.1.744.001 (the last one that worked on Windows 98). --JorgeA

Is the target audience of your post (this site) buying cheap computers? I'm not sure who @bpalone had in mind, but <raising hand> I confess to buying some cheap computers in my time. One of my best purchases was a quad-core AMD system by H-P just about two years ago, which we are using as a DVR for cable TV via Windows Media Center (and it's contributing spare CPU cycles to a DC project). Cost just over $400 back then and it's not exactly doing simplistic, mass-market functions. Although in the last few years I've learned how to tinker with the insides of a PC, I've never built my own system. But I never say never... --JorgeA

I fear that your analysis is on the money: computers are going to rise in price as they become more of a specialized or "niche" product and tablets take over the low/consumer end. The only imaginable ray of hope I see in such a development is that eventually Microsoft will feel secure enough about Windows 8 to give buyers a choice of UI. One of the major factors for forcing Metro on every new system was said to be their desire to jumpstart the market for Metro apps so that developers would get on board. As they feel better about that thanks to (presumed) success in the consumer sector, but with business customers still resisting downgrading to Win8, maybe they'll finally start offering that choice in a year or two or three. --JorgeA