JorgeA

Nice find, thanks! Wow, that really was who I thought it was in the first commercial!?! Note the line in the ad starting at about 2:40. Considering the direction Windows 8 is pointing toward, we could modify the statement there a little bit. "It used to be difficult for personal computers to do more than one thing at a time. Starting with Windows 9, it's impossible. Stop multitasking, it's dated and cheesy." --JorgeA

Please take into consideration that a number of people may not like to be treated as demented by kids (please read as Geniuses) in an Apple Store and resolve to buying their Mac on Amazon.... Point well taken. Still, considering the historical ratios of total PC vs. Mac unit sales, this ought to be telling the 'Softies something about how Windows 8 is being received. --JorgeA EDIT: missing word

I think that the issue is specific to Windows Defender. Today I booted into the Windows 8 Developer Preview, Consumer Preview, and Release Preview. In the DP I could scan an individual file by right-clicking on it and selecting Spybot Search & Destroy or Avast!. In the CP I could scan an individual file with Spybot, but not with Defender. In the RP, which only has Defender installed, there was no choice offering to scan an indivual file or folder. I don' t know about the commercial versions of Windows 8. For what it's worth, none of my PCs regardless of the OS (XP/Vista/7) include Windows Defender (I know, it's not the same as the one in 8) in that right-click menu. I suspect it's a generalized Microsoft (lack of) "feature," not one specific to Win8. --JorgeA

Thanks, Mike. Have you tried this on Windows 8? Does it provide this capability to right-click to scan an individual file? The original poster wanted to know this with respect to MSE/Windows Defender in Windows 8, but I'm curious to know if the same thing (no right-click to scan a file) also happens with other AV programs in Windows 8. --JorgeA

That's pretty remarkable -- and a good find, too (thanks!). Four of the six top sellers there are Apple computers, and the only Win8 system is the last one on the list. --JorgeA

I'm with you. And more than that, it's really a dangerous game for Microsoft to play (accusing Google of invading people's privacy), as we have seen time and time again in this thread. It's truly the pot calling the kettle black. It's too late at night even for me to start combing through the thread for links, but Google could shoot back with ads warning people not to put risqué photos on their SkyDrives, or informing the public that MS is helping to build a network of government surveillance cameras. Apple could very fittingly (though probably itself hypocritically) revive the famous "Big Brother" ad from 1984. --JorgeA

Does this (the lack of an option to scan a file from the right-click context menu) apply to Windows Defender only, or to ANY antivirus program that the user may have installed on his system? --JorgeA

LOL, that's a good point. Probably all of us have, at some time or another, served as phone tech support for a friend or family member. The structure of the Start Menu, where multiple items are nested within alphabetized category folders, is much more predictable than that of the Start Screen where apparently it's all a big jumbled mess and the hapless relative at the other end of the line is blindly sorting through screens and screens of tiles. --JorgeA

Basically you're only allowed to make your homework with it! And... given that customers' files will be (more likely than not) stored in MS's SkyDrive, what do you think are the chances that they'll rifle through them for evidence that the customer is using 365 for these kinds of unauthorized purposes? --JorgeA

If I were the maker of an alternative commercial office applications suite, I'd be budgeting extra advertising $$$ right now. This is the time to pounce, the moment when the shock is biggest. One can hope. I tried LibreOffice recently ( and had a few versions of OpenOffice previously ). I just cannot shake the feeling that it is not ready yet, but that may just be me. Still, I have all the MS Office versions and frankly doubt Microsoft will ever develop something further in Office requiring a purchase of a later version. They'll have to do much more than a fancy ZIP file disguised as an Office .XLSx to get me interested again. Yeah, I tried LibreOffice too, and found it lacking, especially on the documentation side. But I'm getting more and more intrigued by the SoftMaker Office suite, which has received good reviews for feature set and high compatibility with MS Office: http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/review/2137376/softmaker-office-2012-review http://notebooks.com/2012/12/31/softmaker-office-2012-an-affordable-alternative-to-ms-office-review/ Oddly, one of the chief complaints about the program is its "dated" interface (meaning, no annoying and unnavigable ribbon). When it comes time to get a new office suite, this will be my top candidate. I hear you. It's like a talented adolescent who's bent on frying her brain with intoxicants for the sake of being with the "in" crowd. And if the whole strategy does make MS crash and burn, you can bet your bottom dollar that there'll be a book (or two, or three) written about the disaster. --JorgeA

If I were the maker of an alternative commercial office applications suite, I'd be budgeting extra advertising $$$ right now. This is the time to pounce, the moment when the shock is biggest. --JorgeA

Thurrott's statement makes zero sense on its own terms. If I read this correctly, he's saying that HP should follow Microsoft blindly down every technological rabbit hole (Thurrott's words). Umm, last time I checked, "blindly following" someone down a "rabbit hole" implied that it was a bad/stupid thing to do. So Paul, tell me exactly why HP should keep doing this?? Far from a "betrayal," it's a sign that HP finally got tired of going along with Microsoft's folly and is at long last coming to its senses. I'm going over there to see what people have said about this. Maybe I'll even register on his site so I can make this point. --JorgeA

If the PC dies, Windows 8 will be its killer, says analyst The logic IMO is somewhat different from the way it's described in that article. Windows 8 may well manage to kill the PC -- but it would do so because so many people would rather hang on to their current PCs with an acceptable OS, than buy something preloaded with Windows 8. --JorgeA

Welcome to the discussion! Yeah, MS has been taking a beating over the used-games issue. Imagine if, in previous decades, you couldn't lend or sell your used records or CDs to your friends, or even take a stack of them over for a party, because the things wouldn't play on other people's equipment. Hardly a selling point. --JorgeA

Apropos of smartphones: There is little room for a third smartphone platform Note the guy in the comments section who touts Windows phone sales growing. Well, iOS, even as it lost market share (thanks to Android's runaway lead), in 2012 actually saw total sales go up by more than the totality of Windows phones. --JorgeA

Sounds like what it would be like to live in a surrealistic film... Real , but not "persistent" : http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704681904576317781140034982.html http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11474311 or maybe it is: http://en.daringtodo.com/2012/10/l-o-v-e-the-finger-will-grace-piazza-affari-for-least-40-years/ let's say that s provisional for some 40 years. Amazing, just amazing. Now, just to give this topic a connection to the thread -- can we take up a collection to move this monument to the entrance of Microsoft headquarters in Redmond? Or maybe they should make it part of their logo... --JorgeA

Oh this is gonna go over like a ton of bricks. Hey if you don't like it, tough. Get Office 364. Go to the cloud! This is from TechSpot, it is not yet over at NeoWin. Looking forward to see the creative rationalizations from the MicroZealots. Another post chock-full of information! I'll keep to commenting on just one item (the one quoted above): This news about Office 2013 reinforces my decision to stay away from it. And it increases my interest in eventually making the switch to SoftMaker (thanks, @Formfiller). Preliminary tests on my own machines suggest that it can indeed read and write to .DOCX files, including change tracking and comments, without a hitch. (I've yet to create a new file in SoftMaker and load it on MS Office.) Some time ago I reported on MSFN about how long it takes MS Word to load a large, complex document file (the time-to-load discussion starts in earnest on page 2). Even my Ivy Bridge PC takes almost two minutes to finish loading the test file. SoftMaker's word processor was totally ready in 16 seconds. --JorgeA

Update 3 makes things better from a privacy/security perspective, but Update 2 makes things worse. Totally OT, but Nadim's page contains the following little Twitter tidbit and link: Is the picture real or photoshopped? I thought you might know... --JorgeA

Thanks very much for the report... and good luck!! And of course, thanks very much for all the work you put it to keep MSFN going. --JorgeA

The Forum was down again for a while today. What's going on? I'm concerned that the habit of visiting will be broken and some people may stop seeing our posts as a result. --JorgeA EDIT: Explanation here.

Time will tell. I know that I don't always answer right away (and sometimes the system doesn't even tell me that I have a PM in my box). I just hope I didn't tick Charlotte off with my sentence about "great deductive work, Sherlock." Which was meant in all sincerity as praise for a great piece of detective work, but later that night I realized to my horror that it could be interpreted sarcastically, and I went back to clarify. --JorgeA

One way to try making contact would be via a private forum message -- assuming that the Forum isn't down... Check out the gray convex stripe, near the top of the page, that starts across where it says you're "Signed is as _____" Hope this helps! --JorgeA

Yeah, sure, dont' forget to put your tin-foil surprisingly better hight tech material hat on. Nice try, jaclaz. --JorgeA

That was funny, I'd never seen that video. Somebody expert should investigate your issue with all the Windows 8 BSOD's. I would be curious to know what's causing them. --JorgeA BSODs r not so frequent, but in regard of w7, they r.. e.g., in W7 BSOD never occurred. Also, there is no rule, simply it happens without any logical conclusion, i.e. clue . btw,I expect a 'BLUE' thing or SP1 would b a solution. I'm no expert on such deep technical issues, but I'll look around and see what turns up with respect to Win8 and BSODs. --JorgeA

MSFN was down all day today (Monday). Gotta wonder if it didn't have something to do with word getting out to Win8 fans over at Neowin about our critique of Windows 8 here... Hoping it was only a coincidence, but it's the second time this month that we've had SQL problems. --JorgeA