JorgeA

ROFL -- I loved the way you highlighted your points with the strategic use of illustrations! --JorgeA

Well, to be fair, the (fairly) new Lenovo Windows 7 AMD x64 Desktops are pretty awesome. Cousin bought one for his daughter last year and it rocks! submix8c, No doubt Lenovo makes good computers. But that's what I'm saying: it's not IBM anymore. I remember reading or hearing, at the time of the sale of the PC business to Lenovo, that IBM didn't want to compete in what had become a commoditized (low-profit) PC market. --JorgeA

Paul Thurrott proposes on Windows Weekly that MS leave PC users the choice to install Aero Glass on their Windows 8 systems. Hear the discussion starting at about 35:23. The key section starts around 39:39, but the historical background that precedes it is worth listening to. I do disagree with his assessment of the "muddy" effect -- that truly became the case only with the Win8 DP and CP, which are hardly translucent at all. A black desktop produces dirty-looking brownish window edges. But not on my Vista machines! --JorgeA

IMHO, this is the core of that blog post: That would be ironic, given that Microsoft first got big because (supposedly) IBM decided back in '79/'80 that the real money was in selling the hardware. (How did that work out for them, ultimately?) Here's another report of how the OEMs are taking the news about Surface. --JorgeA

Glad to see the writer suggest that PC buyers could save themselves the $99 charge by using Decrapifier. OTOH, he reports that MS would put bloat back into users' computers by installing all sorts of Windows Live software on them. --JorgeA

Windows 8, panned again: The writer offers a different take on Microsoft's "No compromises" slogan. Well, yeah, THEY'RE not the ones who must compromise, YOU are: --JorgeA

xpclient, Nice find. A work in progress... In theory, do you think it would be possible for them to tweak their application so that it doesn't disable the network pane, or is that now too tightly integrated with Metro? --JorgeA

Just came across this analysis of the prospects for Windows tablets, which echoes some of the things CoffeeFiend has said in this thread. EDIT: Oh, and also this review of Surface. --JorgeA

xpclient, Tune in at the 10:45 mark, that's where the fun starts. Shortly after that, he says: Audience members are heard laughing and clapping in the background... It's also interesting to see throughout the video how aggressive the Metro Start Screen is, impinging repeatedly into the user's consciousness. --JorgeA

Thanks, CoffeeFiend -- this was totally new and revealing information for me. I'll follow up on it... but not in this thread. --JorgeA

Word is that Microsoft is coming out with its own Windows RT tablet. A follow-up piece includes this quote from Steven Sinofsky, who shows he doesn't understand the difference between a PC and a tablet: Reports The Wall Street Journal (June 16-17, 2012): --JorgeA

Huh, how weird. Maybe Win8 is fussy. (Just to be clear, for the sake of other readers: it's an HP machine brand-new last summer, so it's not like we're dealing with some obsolescent hardware here.) Glad that it worked for you, though. --JorgeA

Tripredacus, This question may be OT, but what you wrote above caught my eye because I've been toying with the idea of switching to Linux if Microsoft persists in foisting Metro on users beyond Windows 8. The question has to do with the relative security of Windows vs. Linux. Linux advocates like to say that their favorite OS is much more secure than Windows. Is that true, or just propaganda? Or perhaps "mainly true vs. mainly propaganda"? Seems to me that if the security problems attributed to Windows are actually the result of bad habits by users (as you suggested in the quote above), then maybe PC security wouldn't really improve even if there were a mass switch over to Linux. What do you tbhink? --JorgeA

Tripredacus, Very informative post, thank you! Do you remember (or are you allowed to say) who (i.e., person/organization) put forth the idea that --JorgeA

Thanks, Tripredacus. I was wondering if it was a sneaky way to leave 32-bit OS's off the plane. --JorgeA

Excellent discovery, thanks! In light of subsequent developments, that sure made for absorbing reading. There does seem to be some inner confusion as to what the audience is supposed to be for Win8. Not only do they depict the use of a tablet as you show, but Goals slide 2 gives the intended form factors as "slate," "laptop," and "all-in-one." Where does that leave the enormous desktop slice of the market? At the same time, the Target slide identifies "mainstream consumers" and "enthusiasts" as the target audiences. Yet "enthusiasts" are the likeliest segment to be using a DESKTOP computer, and because of their deep interest and advanced skills they are NOT going to want a dumbed-down interface, at least not for their primary machine. Possibly the biggest joke in the slide deck: Umm, what was that about customers being "able to choose [their emphasis] a Windows 8 PC that matches their personality, interests, and lifestyle"? Sounds like somebody at MS forgot that part when they baked Metro into the OS and made it impossible to dispense with it. --JorgeA

+1 !! It's part of the process of infantilizing the computing experience, in the name of making it more accessible to more people. A mistaken idea, as the sales of literally billions of computers over the decades attests to. We the public are neither that stupid nor that simple-minded, thank you. And not only a mistaken idea, but also a shortsighted one, IMO -- it's precisely the PC's complexity that so many people find both fascinating and a challenge. If the dumbing-down process succeeds, it will be terrible for computing in the long run, as fewer and fewer novices will have either the chance or the inclination to really get into the inner workings of PC's, learn about computing, and then go on to become programmers and developers. At any point in the history of computing where the "PC as an appliance" attitude had been taken, innovation would have slowed down at that point and eventually stopped as precious few new "techies" were fascinated by the machine and entered the field. It's to them that we owe the fantastic variety of things that we can do with our computers. But what if the Apple I or the IBM PC had adopted the Metro "ideals" back in 1979-81? That is, uncustomizable closed systems (think WinRT), with their workings opaque to the user, who would only see a few simplified choices featuring a few adjustable settings. Who would have -- or even could have -- delved into a PC's brain and guts, and explored what made it tick? --JorgeA

Hmm -- I guess that they would prefer that you shell out another $500 for a new iPad instead of trying to keep the old one clean. How long do you think it'll be before many customers start feeling that they're simply getting milked, and abandon the whole touchscreen idea? Great find! I know very little about the Nintendo system. Do you know if the NES "start screen" looks like that, with tons of squares to select from? --JorgeA

Ahh, so we may have located the mastermind of the whole Metro outrage!!! Thanks for posting the link, the article was informative if depressing. No, Ms. Larson-Green, I have zero desire to be connected 24/7. I want to keep a mind of my own, and you know -- believe it or not, there ARE things "out there" beyond the Internet, which I prefer to focus on when I'm out of the office or out of the house. Don't change my PC experience to cater tho those who can't bear to live without their smartphone or tablet. Is she open to suggestion, or just trying to protect her creation against all objections? We shall see... --JorgeA

That's interesting -- I wonder how long it'll be before the whole tablet craze cools off because people get sick and tired of trying to keep the screens clean? I can tell you that's one reason that we haven't bought one: my wife would be disgusted by a smudged, food-encrusted tablet screen, but cleaning it would quickly become just another tedious chore. As for the rest of your post: --JorgeA

Knowing that the first two of the three in that image went off into oblivion within a few years, gives me hope that a similar fate awaits the third... :angrym: --JorgeA

Good find -- and thanks for the heads-up! --JorgeA

You don't REALLY want me to tell you. http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?s=&showtopic=16534&view=findpost&p=125036 Oooohhh, OK... I won't ask again!! BTW, very true what you said there about project descriptions in Sourceforge. More often than not, I feel like I know LESS about the program after reading the description, than before! --JorgeA

jaclaz, How DO you find all this stuff?? (Pretty funny, BTW.) --JorgeA

Tripredacus, So I gather that motherboards with UEFI can't run 32-bit OS's? I didn't know that. --JorgeA