JorgeA

Man, so much of that sounds so very familiar: Thanks for the post. I'll be going through the rest of the pages for the details. --JorgeA

Yeah, that's pretty funny, for the reasons in the post just above this one! --JorgeA

too bad (or good), this is "hear-say" as they would say in court... and to who did they sell so many licenses? - does this number include poor countries like africa where you get legal windoze for 1$ ? did they sold 50 mil licenses to running bushman and other 10 to "the world" ? I think some people have made a distinction between Windows 8 licenses that are actually in the hands of end-users, vs. licenses that manufacturers obtained for installation on PCs to be sold. Microsoft has been unclear on this point when talking about the 60 million, so the speculation is that most of those are in PCs yet to be built, or built but not yet sold to customers. That's not very flattering for Microsoft either, of course. --JorgeA

Despite what I've been told by PC store techs about how the Win8 desktop is "just like 7," and that Metro is simply built "on top of it," obviously it is not. A program (like Registry First Aid) that you used fine in 7, seems to screw up 8. Hmm, if RFA stops all Metro apps from working... ...then maybe whatever they do could serve as the foundation for a Metro killer. B) The problem that you report, may become the solution for Windows 8! --JorgeA

I'm intrigued, any particular reason for no Windows updates in years Charlotte? Yeah, in my case I was intrigued by the "running without any antivirus" part. It may be somewhat OT, but -- @CharlotteTheHarlot, inquiring minds want to know! --JorgeA

Ditto. Nice system you've got there, BTW. --JorgeA

If we can believe the reports, I note that, according to Neowin's pie charts (and the spreadsheet), Vista usage went up by as much as (and more than) Windows 8 went down. Win8 ugliness is driving people to beautiful Vista!!! Meanwhile, Microsoft Windows 8 Uptake Badly Lags Predecessor --JorgeA

Why Microsoft must become Apple and Google A disconcerting title and article. The readers' comments are MUCH better: And then there is the obligatory shill offering vacuous (when not ludicrous) comments... (emphasis added) ...well answered by a subsequent reader: --JorgeA

And the figures just keep getting smaller and smaller. By now it should be fairly clear that Surface (and, by extension, Windows RT and the whole Windows 8 concept) fills no particular market need. Customers were not clamoring for this. This is a case where a product was conceived, designed, and launched in response to the manufacturer's -- not the market's -- goals and desires. And, more specifically, the goals and desires of a couple of people at the top of a bureaucracy, possibly in a panic over the success of a rival company in a different market segment that's already amply served. Rather than playing to their strengths with a proven cash cow, they opted for a gruesome mutilation of the cow, and may even end up killing it. --JorgeA

Two great points! --JorgeA

Yes,that would b mine opinion,also..thats a salary we must 2 pay. Dont know what means 'a different Metro-style browser' ? There is only Metro IE style, no others. Yes,Ive tried to return IE's default values in Control Panel,..tried to manage with Internet Options (in a desktop IE)..to restore all prefs..but nothing happened. I was wondering if you were trying to install a different browser in Metro, like maybe Firefox or Chrome, and then as a result Metro IE got messed up. Not a big deal, just curious. --JorgeA

Not only that, but check this out; Microsoft's Office 365 Home Premium: What happens when subscriptions expire? You can save them to your local storage, but then that defeats the whole purpose of working in the Cloud. It's designed of course to get you to keep paying year after year after year. While $100/year (OK, $99.99) may sound better than purchasing an Office DVD, consider that many people use their version of Office for many years. Why, at that rate by now the cost of my Office 2007 would be going on $600. And see this shocker: It's Now Illegal to Unlock Cell Phones in U.S. Given that Win8 Metro and RT are really phone OS's, how long 'til those devices get locked? If there isn't a consumer revolt then, then we'll know for sure that ciHnoN is right about humanity. And I thought that when you bought a phone, you had... bought it (that is, made it your property via trade). Two more steps on the road to eSerfdom. --JorgeA edit: additional story, link edit 2: fixed typo

Welcome to the discussion! The Metro IE behavior that you describe is very strange. Were you trying to set a different Metro-style browser as the default, and then this happened? I guess that would be one way to try to deter users from installing anything other than the "preferred" apps. Or to drive them away entirely... --JorgeA

You beat me to it! I was going to post that, too. I won't be surprised to start hearing of p*ssed-off buyers who were getting what they were told was a "laptop replacement" only to learn that the 64GB thingy has 1/20th the storage of a low-end real laptop. And then there's the cohort of customers who bought it for the "convenience" of a "mobile device,"only to find out that they need to start attaching SD cards and external USB drives to get any kind of decent storage. But wait, they can get 7GB of space in SkyDrive -- oooohhhh, impressive!! That'll cover about 2 innings of one of my World Series games. All I could think of while reading this, was Ballmer doing his "developers" chant: --JorgeA

I went from DOS 3.x (on an 8086 machine) straight into Windows for Workgroups 3.11 (and DOS 6.21). What did they do to DOS 4 and 5? --JorgeA

I hope that @MagicAndre doesn't mind all the German-related videos we've been putting up. For a German speaker, it must be harder to get the full effect of the bunker video, since you're distracted by what they're really saying! --JorgeA

I guess that repetition could happen in a thread that's approaching 1700 posts! --JorgeA

Go figure -- Avast 4.8 updated twice today (at 6:30 AM and 10 PM) on one of my Win98 systems. (The other one is offline, but I'll turn it back on to see what happens.) --JorgeA

Loved it! My favorite line is where he says, And this one is quite perceptive: --JorgeA

--JorgeA

That was pretty funny. --JorgeA

Actually the script creates the links on the start screen, not start menu.. but still they wrote "chore" in relation to W8 here. First signs of sanity? I fully expect the guy who wrote that to be applying for unemployment within the month... --JorgeA

That looks like a pretty interesting book! I may go out looking for my own copy. Just one question, though: where was the discussion of "generic risk" that you mentioned? I couldn't find it on page 29 (or before or after), and a term search didn't find it there either. Also, when you said page 29, did you mean the discussion that ends on page 29, or the section "The Paradox of Technology" that starts on page 29? Nonetheless, it looks like a fascinating read. Thanks for bringing it to our attention! --JorgeA

FABULOUS illustration of the idea!! But then... don't you realize that that airplane interface is "cheesy and dated"? They do need to get with the times and devise a "Modern" design for cockpit controls. I suggest reversing the location of the throttle and center sticks, and then hiding the throttle under a lid that pops open with a heel kick. The pilot can discover the lid if he happens to trip over his seat. Same thing with all those distracting dials and buttons, we need a chrome-free surface. Make them discoverable by bumping your head on the ceiling. --JorgeA

I have a suspicion that the bit about Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V was a joke -- made plausible by the fact that they HAVE taken out so much other functionality. --JorgeA