JorgeA

DougB, Wow, that was a fantastic, detailed how-to! It does belong in its own thread. I would even suggest making it "sticky" so that it doesn't get buried over time. --JorgeA

jaclaz, Cool picture! Given the rollers at the bottom, we might say that that was an early version of a "mobile" phone... Hmm, I'd never heard of the Fone+. I guess I never paid attention to it -- I want my cell phone to be as "dumb" as possible. Like a cartoon I once saw, of a customer at a cell phone kiosk: "I want a phone that's just a phone." --JorgeA

belgianguy, Nice find on that Nokia video. Did you notice near the end of the video, they were shuffling off floppy disks? I think the defense for allowing only IE in the Windows on ARM version involves making an analogy to phones. The idea is that a smartphone has a built-in browser, and nobody seems to complain that it's the only browser available. OTOH, as the Mozilla lawyer pointed out, there are plans for ARM-based PCs. If IE is the only browser allowed, it puts all others at a disadvantage in the PC segment. IMHO it all has to do with this notion of unifying the user experience and treating a PC like a tablet like a phone. What CoffeeFiend said a few posts back, bears repeating: a PC is not a phone, and a phone is not a PC. --JorgeA

Tripredacus, Count me as one of those who uses the CD/DVD function in Windows Media Player. But I do admit that it's not a huge deal for me, since I don't use it that often and there are options out there. Still, I can't see buying a computer for any purpose, that didn't include an optical drive. What if the computer gets infected and I need to scan it with a Linux live system? Will a notebook or Intel tablet necessarily include the ability to boot off a flash drive? Or what if the hard drive fails or the OS gets totally borked, and I need to reinstall Windows -- how does one do that without an independent (optical) drive? More worrisome to me than the loss of native DVD support is the relegation of Windows Media Center, not only to add-on status, but to an add-on that you can get only if you're willing to shell out for the most expensive SKU. WMC has been a hidden treasure for far too long, and now instead of bringing it out and showing it off to the world (marketing), they've decided to make it even harder to get at. It was intriguing what you said about most people using the wrong OS for what they want, but they don't know that. Can you elaborate? --JorgeA

UltimateSilence, That's a great question. I've seen speculation as to what Windows 9 will be like, ranging from the resurrection of the Start button and Start Menu with a real choice of UI, to the complete elimination of the desktop in a brave new Metro world. Then again, as you suggested, maybe MS is simply speeding toward a concrete wall. This is one of those times when I wish we had a crystal ball! Thanks for the kind words. We do what we can. --JorgeA

ricktendo64, Funny you should mention downgrades. I just bought, on clearance, a tower system that was billed as "Vista Business." But when I booted up the machine, I got the XP splash screen. It turns out that the box came with separate DVD sets for both XP and Vista. So we might say that the computer was "pre-downgraded" to XP... I'm wondering how aggressive Microsoft will be about pushing Windows 8. Will they disallow downgrades to 7? Given the other crazy things they've done, nothing would surprise me at this stage! It'll be really interesting to see how the general public reacts when they unpack their new PCs and are greeted by the Metro start screen. --JorgeA

Paul Thurrott is continuing what looks increasingly like a remarkable turnaround vis-à-vis Windows 8, this time with respect to Windows Media Center: --JorgeA

Windows 98 has a native backup function (Start --> Accessories --> System Tools --> Backup) which seems to do a complete disk backup; at least the size of the archive files created seems to parallel the size of the hard drive's contents. I've used it (putting the backup on USB thumb drives), but I should say that I've never actually tried to restore a hard disk from it so I can't state for certain that it works. Good luck! --JorgeA

UltimateSilence, That was a VERY interesting blog post. Nice find! What a strange reaction from Gates to the guy's analogy. It seems like Bill assumed that, in the shower/toilet/fountain model, Windows was the toilet. Freud might have had something to say about this. Hits the nail right on the head. Esthetics is the main reason why I like Vista, and one of the many reasons I dislike Windows 8. When it comes to how I feel when using Metro, this is the best emoticon: --JorgeA

What, aren't you into upgrading your computers with an exciting new OS that does things you don't care about (Metro tiles), and doesn't do what boring old OS's do (play DVDs, record TV)? Shame on you! It sure would be interesting to hear what Bill G thinks about all this. --JorgeA

MagicAndre, CoffeeFiend has spotted the error in the logic there. According to the Metro folks, the phone may not be a PC... but the PC is now a phone. Meanwhile, check out this article from last year that I just found. Is Windows 8 a parting insult? --JorgeA

You're welcome -- I'm happy that the thread was useful! News came out just last week that Windows 8 won't have built-in support for optical drives, which puts this problem into some perspective. Maybe the old joke applies: "It's not a flaw, it's a feature!!" --JorgeA

CoffeeFiend, Nice, concise rundown of the deficiencies in Windows 8 for people who do music, movie, or TV on their PCs. I've been making my way through the hundreds of comments to the MSDN blog about WMC (thanks again, @belgianguy). Overwhelmingly, they're angry or disappointed. Here's possibly the most succinct comment: I'll check out your links this weekend. Sounds like the reaction to Win8 in the computing media is getting increasingly negative. --JorgeA

belgianguy, Thanks for the link. Looks like MS has given its customer base even more reasons to give the thumbs-down to Windows 8. I've noticed that if I have a CD/DVD in the ODD when I boot into Win8, then Windows Explorer finds it; but if Win8 is already loaded and then I put a disc in the drive, nothing happens -- it's as if I hadn't put anything in the ODD. This is not supposed to be intentional, but still I have to wonder if this was a "preview" of Win8's new "feature set." --JorgeA

tsampikos, Interesting analysis. Following your lead, we could say that Microsoft have lost the phone battle, will lose the tablet battle, and -- are shooting themselves on the desktop battle! --JorgeA

Thank you for the tip, belgianguy -- I just went and created a LiveUSB for Zorin OS! It's supposed to be based on Ubuntu, but with a Windows look-and-feel to lessen the culture shock. We'll see how well the operating system works. --JorgeA

CoffeeFiend, Thanks once again for the real-life scenario. Sounds like the range of useful things that can be done in Linux is comparatively narrow. Anyway, here's an interesting take by Paul Thurrott that builds on what we said the other day about "the war on general purpose computing": And the coming Windows 8 ultrabooks are already under pressure from both ends (price and cost). --JorgeA

CoffeeFiend, Thanks for the gory details on using Linux. I just bought a new Vista box on clearance from Staples (amazing that was still possible in 2012) and it just occurred to me I could put it next to my main PC and multiboot it with Linux to see if I can replicate my day-to-day work on it. Or people who don't mind having to disassemble and reassemble their car rotated to turn corners LOL That's pretty basic usage as far as PDFs go. I commonly deal with PDFs that contain 3D content (that you can rotate on any axis and hide parts of) and layers, or running preflight checks on PDF/X files to send out for printing (and do some proofing with them), or to de-skew & OCR scanned documents (from our copier than scans in PDF format directly to a network share), making extensive use of the annotation tools on translated documents (commenting/pointing out errors), using the "edit object" tool to make some changes to PDFs (and even edit parts with Adobe Illustrator because Acrobat just can't do some changes by itself), using digital signatures in engineering documents passed around via email, and I even open them in Photoshop sometimes. That kind of stuff. If you got needs like that then Acrobat's the only game in town and that means Windows or Macs only. That could be a problem. My requirements are simpler than yours, but in my line of work I do often have to annotate PDFs for typesetters/designers (those yellow stickies are so much easier than creating an e-mail or word processing file saying, "OK, in the third paragraph on the left on page 129..."). Not having that feature would be a significant drawback. Don't PDF readers for Linux have that capability? I suppose I'll find out... I understand that. Just "1GHz" by itself means nothing at all. They're completely different processor architectures (x86 vs ARM), with different numbers of cores, etc. Of course it's no i7 but it's not like a P3 either. 1GB isn't much at all for a desktop but it's not like you'll be doing a lot of heavy multitasking on a tablet (it's enough and it's also more than any other tablet as far as I know). Storage space wise you can't expect too much from a device that uses flash memory -- just look at flash-based MP3 players. You won't mind too many with more than 64GB -- probably none (unless you want a hard drive in it). I mean, it's enough for things like 1080p video chat or playing nice 3D games like Mass Effect or Dead Space on it. It's definitely not the same as a powerful desktop but other tablets are far worse. Yeah, I guess we simply don't have any particular reason to own a tablet. If we want to watch a YouTube video or stream something, we can just do it on the HTPC and view it on a 55" screen. (Sorry, Metro team!) --JorgeA

CoffeeFiend, Thanks for the rundown. I've heard it said that Linux is for people who'd rather put their own cars together out of parts... My needs aren't (it seems) as specialized as yours, so I may be able to get away with some flavor of Linux. I'm definitely going to give this a serious try and see how well the "ecosystem" works for me. Possibly the most exotic thing I do on a computer (other than Windows Media Center) is the occasional but still important need to edit PDF files or extract specific pages from a PDF. Fortunately there appear to be a lot of distros that aren't trying to fit onto a tablet screen, so with any luck that won't be an issue. That's definitely one area where competition among distros does help. It has the fastest CPU/GPU of every ARM-based tablet out there (faster than both the quad core Tegra 3 or Snapdragon S4), it's responsive, the OS and most apps are well designed (good usability and meant for touch usage), it has tons of apps, the current version is far more featured than any other tablet on the market, good battery life (not just on paper), good build quality, etc. They are definitely pricey but sadly you still won't find a better tablet at the same price point. Here's the exact way in which I formed my impression of the new iPad: As I was browsing through the new issue of Maximum PC (bear the name in mind), my eyes chanced on a gray box labeled "Specifications" at the bottom left of a page. Before looking up to see which machine the specs were for, I immediately scanned for the major values -- CPU speed, RAM, and storage. In that spec box, these were, respectively, 1GHz, 1GB, and 16GB (up to 64GB). So before I knew what machine they were talking about, my instant reaction was, "What a piece of cr*p! These are specs from, like, 2004!! Why are they wasting any space on this???" That was my exact sequence of thoughts. Then I looked up and saw the headline: "Apple iPad." --JorgeA

I just found this theme for Cinnamon. Notice that it features a Vista-like "convex" taskbar. Depending on how well it works, I could come to like this a lot! --JorgeA

CoffeeFiend, Thanks for filling me in on Linux repositories. I'm not thrilled about it, but given the huge variety of distros, I guess I can see the point of each one having its own set of programs that have some chance of working on it. Otherwise it'd be like a needle in a haystack to find versions that work on your particular Linux distribution. I wouldn't say so. If you asked me to describe how it works (generally speaking) I'd give you a whole 'nother story (more like a long-winded rant, really). I definitely would like to know that 'nother story (what it's like to work in Linux). Maybe we can move this part of the discussion to the "Other Operating Systems" subforum. Edit2: MS caught lying with statistics about their market share (If you actually believed that, I've got a bridge to sell you): Slow Uptake of Windows 8 Preview Hints at Users' Lack of Interest. I for one, unless there are major changes (namely making Metro optional), won't even bother downloading the release preview. Both good reads. Regarding the push to get Windows 8 on tablets, we (or MS) tend to forget that Microsoft isn't Apple -- that is, they don't enjoy a cult-like following of folks who seem to be happy to line up at stores overnight to pay an arm and a leg for underpowered, underfeatured devices with little screens. (I've tried iPads at two different friends' houses, and each time I've been underwhelmed: "THIS is what all the buzz is about??") Apple commands the inscrutably faithful, whereas Microsoft has always sold to a more, umm, hardnosed audience. --JorgeA

Another glowing (not!) reaction to Windows 8, this time from Katherine Stevenson, editor-in-chief of Maximum PC (June 2012): --JorgeA

CoffeeFiend, Thanks for the rundown on various aspects of using Linux. I'm itching to try it out and see how well it suits my purposes; you gave me a good idea of what to expect. One thing I'd never heard of: What was that part about restricted/universe/multiverse? --JorgeA

CoffeeFiend, This is unbelievable! I mean -- I believe you, but I can't believe what they're doing. There MUST be some plausible explanation for all this. Most disturbing is how they seem to be pushing desktop software development to the back of the bus, if not all the way off it. That makes for a strong rebuke to Win8 apologists who say we have nothing to complain about since there's still a desktop. If the trend continues, there may not BE a desktop in Windows 9 or 10. Apropos of what you said, check this out. It's a good listen. It really boils down to what do you want or need to run on your computer. Hmm <thinking>... I dunno, I guess that, as a user, there isn't much that I don't do. I'm not a developer, so I don't need programming tools, but I do use office applications (word processing, PDF editing and creation, spreadsheets), system utilities, players, and media converters. I do like the fact that in the DOS/Windows universe I can simply download a little utility from any given website -- I'm not very familiar with how the Linux world works in this respect, but it makes me leery to see that they have "repositories" for these sorts of things. It makes me wonder if those are the only places where I can find Linux programs, instead of being able to go to a given website and download directly from them. OTOH, if it is possible to just download stuff in Linux, then it makes me wonder what the purpose of a "repository" is. Enlightenment is welcome! --JorgeA

Thanks for the links and the screenshots, Andre. Cinnamon looks very attractive. Zorin OS was my first choice for a Windows alternative, but I had trouble registering for their forum, as the e-mails that they sent (I tried it three times) promised to send an activation link in the future, but it never came. If that's any indication of the level of support that that OS enjoys, it makes me wonder if I should go that route. I finally managed to get the membership activation link by registering via my laptop. It's good to know that Linux Mint with Cinnamon offers a start menu and a desktop visual layout comparable to what we know in Windows. I will look into that one, too. --JorgeA