JorgeA

--JorgeA

Thanks for the kind words! Can you track down a Web page or site (preferably from Microsoft) that comes out and says that Windows 7, or Aero, is the best UI ever? That way we can plaster it all over the place, for a contrast to what they're telling us now. --JorgeA

Thanks very much for the graph, that's remarkable. Wonder how they'll try to spin that one. Maybe they'll blame it on the alignment of the stars or the phase of the moon at launch. Happy New Year to you and all! --JorgeA

FWIW, I just tried it in IE8 and it worked fine. The last comment at the bottom is dated May 22 from a Metro fanboy who barks about "those winning [sic] about Aero's fall." --JorgeA

That first desktop (the beautiful one) looks like it's Vista, is that right? (The image bleeds off the right edge of my screen and I can't scroll over to that end to see what the "For testing" legend says.) --JorgeA P.S. Never mind -- as soon as I submitted my post, the image was resized and I could read the whole legend. So then, a new question: What did you do to get that convex Taskbar, and the Power and Lock buttons for the Start Menu, in Windows 7? Or is that because it's an early Win7 build?

Something that occurred to me as I was saving my reply to Servelius: As we've noted many times in this thread, the problem stems from the growing popularity of tablets and Microsoft executives' desire to have a horse in that race. Therefore they have consented to wrecking the UX for the hundreds of millions of people in their established base, for the sake of speculative gains in the tablet segment. But as we know, tablets are an inherently limited and limiting environment. Seems to me Microsoft might instead have played to its strengths by undertaking a marketing campaign focusing on all the things you can do with a PC that you can't do on a tablet. Picture a father adding special effects to a home movie of the kids' birthday parties; an architect designing a futuristic-looking building; a novelist putting the final touches on his opus; kids selecting an upcoming children's series for recording on Windows Media Center; a financial analyst at her coffee table performing complicated calculations for her clients (maybe while her mind-numbed boyfriend is watching inane YouTube videos on his iPad ). "I'm a PC, and I can do this." "I'm a PC: I don't just surf the Web, I create the websites that others surf" (cue in cool animation). "I'm a PC. I'm not a spectator in life, I'm right onstage." "I'm a PC, and I create." --JorgeA

Yeah, despite Bill's recent cheerleading for Windows 8, I have to think that if he'd had a hand in it, the product would have come out much better. I'm with you on those visual enhancements like Aero and Flip3D. IMHO, using Windows on the flattened interface they've designed, is like watching cartoons instead of movies with real people. --JorgeA

Good points throughout (and I loved the spoiler!), but I want to focus on the paragraph above. This is what makes the difference between a "real journalist" and a mere blogger. Thurrott has authored a number of books about Windows, so maybe he qualifies as a prestigious blogger, but not quite as a journalist. I'm waiting for a major newspaper exposé on the dirty details of Windows RT branding. I'm not expecting to read about it first on Ars Technica, Neowin or any other tech site. If a newspaper or other "general news" source loses access to Microsoft insiders, it's just one company that'll no longer talk to them, out of thousands. But if a tech news site gets shut out of Microsoft, it's a disaster for that site. --JorgeA

Wow, I had no idea that anybody had ported the TNG computer interface over to Windows -- let alone that there were so many of them! --JorgeA

Are you sure about that? I just tried to get to Windows Defender via the Control Panel, and couldn't find it. In Vista, Defender was already available via Control Panel: click Start --> Control Panel --> Security --> Windows Defender. But when I follow the same route in Windows 7, no "Windows Defender" option shows up. At least, none that's labeled that way. It does show up if I switch the Control Panel view from "Category" to icons, but why should a user have to change the way they approach the Control Panel just to find a particular item in it? (Especially since the default view is Category, where you don't see Defender or any way to get to it.) It doesn't make sense, as it would mean that the different view types are not equivalent routes to the same places. Which Category does Defender come under? (It's not in System and Security.) Sorry if I sound frustrated. It's not you of course, it's Windows 7. I'm keeping that Vista listing under my avatar over there on the left. --JorgeA

I'm working with my first fulltime Windows 7 system, and it's become an annoyance that here, unlike in Vista, Windows Defender does not appear in the Start Menu under All Programs. Seems like Microsoft has buried it -- you kinda just have to know (somehow) that it's there so that you can type "def" in the Start Search box. Is there any way to get Windows Defender to show up in All Programs? I would rather not create a Desktop icon or pin it to the Taskbar: for my taste, there's quite enough permanent stuff in those places already. And if possible, I would prefer not to pin it permanently to the Start Menu, either. I just want it to be listed like a regular application alongside the others in All Programs (but it's OK if it shows up in the Start Menu as a frequently used program). BTW, this failure to list Windows Defender in All Programs -- doesn't it make a mockery of the name of that feature? It's not like it's some obscure process that only the people who wrote Windows ever heard of. --JorgeA

sucks to be them just imagine to be forced to use Vista and Win 8 (at their time) not to mention Zuuuune hahah LOL I'm glad that I never did yield to the temptation to buy a Zune when we were choosing an MP3 player. --JorgeA

I had written something else, but it now appears that this happened because the app developer is a Win8 fanboi enthusiast. Maybe the response was too overwhelmingly negative... --JorgeA P.S. Went into my favorite office-supplies retailer this afternoon, the one with the big PC department in the middle of the floor and all those purple Surface screens blinking and giving passersby epileptic fits. While I was there, the only people I saw entering the PC department were on their way to the other side of the store.

An extended review of the Surface RT. The writer wants to like it, but the device's limitations simply rule that out. --JorgeA

Sure , JFYI, I personally "abandoned" quite a few distro's the exact moment they became "gnome" only, as I personally prefer (and have always preferred) KDE (though what I actually use is blackbox and/or Enlightenment, even on Windows I use bblean on quite a few machines) Also, not really "news", in the sense that Linus' perplexities (IMHO well justified) on Gnome date to at lest more than one year ago: http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/linus-ditches-kde-and-gnome-so-what jaclaz Thanks for the article link, it provided good historical background, although I admit that despite looking into the matter I remain mystified by the conceptual differences (if any?) between a "UI," a "DE," and a "shell." A couple of days ago I tried Fedora 17 and Linux Mint 13 off the live DVD that came with the "Genius Guide" Linux & Open Source magbook, volume 3. I didn't like either one. I'd have to get back into them to provide details, but as I remember one of them provided a taskbar but no way to put anything on it. Instead, you had to mouse up to the top left corner and click, or something like that, to bring up large thumbnails of the open windows. That may have been Linux Mint 13 -- come to think of it, I believe that it was Fedora 17 that looked so alien that I didn't even bother looking around. --JorgeA

It sounds as though Microsoft isn't the only one infected with the compulsion to wreck a well-functoning UI, and that its own fanboys aren't the only ones afflicted by the attitude that there is one single optimal way for everyone: --JorgeA

Thurrott's "Fixing Windows 8" series is up to Part 5. His approach to Windows 8 does seem to have taken another turn for the better: [emphasis added!]This is very welcome, of course, but Paul doesn't seem to have put 2+2 together yet: if the OS warrants a multipart series on how to fix it, doesn't that tell us that there is something fundamentally wrong with the OS? Still, Paul makes a lot of cogent observations and the series is well worth reading. Here (http://winsupersite.com/windows-8/fixing-windows-8-part-4-evolve-metro-pro-apps) is a thought-provoking one: But Paul has said (or predicted) that "the Desktop must die." If that is so, and if complex feature sets aren't suitable for Metro apps, then does that mean that we are doomed to a future of limited program functionality? Form should follow function -- but with Metro, function (or the lack thereof) follows form. Oh, and check out the commenter in Part 5 who's already looking to sell his Surface... --JorgeA

This was brought up earlier. Even Windows 95 to XP has a "how to use movie" when it booted. Well in that "welcome" screen that would appear you could find out how to use Windows. At bootup my Vista machines have the Welcome Center, too, where you can watch demos and mouse around to learn about the shiny new OS. --JorgeA

Paul Thurrott reports a continuing "lag" in sales of Windows 8 PCs, relative to Windows 7 last year. But check out the new excuse: :lol: Gimme a break -- netbooks were way overpriced for what they were (and still more expensive than some of those alternative tablets). A likelier explanation is found deeper into the article: In other words, Microsoft is completely missing the mark. --JorgeA

@SearanoX @DonDamm Wow, after a month of no replies, I come back after Christmas and there are two good responses. Thanks, guys! SearanoX: what you said jibes with what I found in my research as I was waiting to hear back on the forum. I guess what we can do is to move over the PST file but not the account settings, which for some reason getting them to work right has always been a huge pain in the neck for me. DonDamm: Funny you should mention solid state drives and the size of the PST file. My Outlook file is about 4.5GB in size and the new PC has a SSD, so this is actually the one data file that I've been planning to put on the SSD, in the hope that it would speed up loading. (In my work I find myself often searching for stuff in old e-mails, and -- depending on the number of archive files -- searching has turned out to double or triple the amount of search steps I need to take.) With what I've learned about Outlook in my web surfing, and the info both of you provided, I think i'm finally ready to make "the big move." --JorgeA

best indeed, if he'd gone more into detail of metro crappyness it would've been better the ending also shows how worse things have become of PC industry in past you could buy PC with free dos (atleast in my country) these days you can't, all win 8 crap is pre-installed and forced on so basically who ever buys PC, has to pay for win 8 licence, and then if available NEW licence for another Win OS to downgrade I just hope MS gets blown in the face this time, much more than with vista fiasco they don't deserve to get money with this kind of "product" Time will tell, although early indicators for a Win8 fail are encouraging. Regarding Metro crappiness. does this video by the same guy do the trick: This is the one where I said I was ready to throw the laptop out the window, even though it wasn't even my laptop, but only a video! --JorgeA

This is a mantra that Steve B. and Julie L.-G. should be required to repeat every time they answer the office phone, as a condition of receiving their stock options. I've always been dubious about the official "security" reason for abandoning Gadgets. All of a sudden, after all these years they discover a vulnerability that can't be fixed?? And just as Windows 8 is getting released??? Methinks it has more to do with promoting Win8 with its live tiles... --JorgeA

Very well done, this demonstration. Best critique I've seen of the Win8 experience. That weird thing about the Control Panel showing up under Desktop in Explorer, also happens in XP, Vista, and 7 -- I just checked. It's just that we never had any reason to go looking for the Control Panel because up till now it was so easy to get to it via that hokey, obsolete, old-fashioned Start Menu. Check out the same guy's follow-up video that comes up as a choice when this one ends. It's even more frustrating: by the time the video ended, I too wanted to throw the stupid Win8 laptop out the window! See how Metro apps seem to randomly pop back in and totally take over the guy's screen while he's trying to do something else. :angrym: --JorgeA

Pretty impressive! Does Classic Shell make it possible for the user to disable showing desktop applications in the Start Screen, and/or to disable Metro apps in the Start Menu? That's what @ozaz wanted to know a few posts back. --JorgeA

You're welcome -- glad to see it's making a difference! I'm not aware of other Start Menu replacements that can do this, but then I haven't really focused on that feature. Can anyone else weigh in on this? Huh, weird. Sounds like it may be a FP. I keep one antivirus and two anti-malware programs resident, and none of them gives a warning for that or anything else on that page. Maybe VirusTotal could shed some light on the matter. --JorgeA