JorgeA

Bingo! Paul Thurrott made a similar point as you in Windows Weekly (click on the Audio link and go to about 57:20 till 59:00). Without desktop software, there's no particular reason to own a WOA tablet vs. an iPad. And Thurrott's a Windows 8 booster! --JorgeA

Another note: I went to download Classic Shell for the purpose of testing the feature to restore a functional status bar in Internet Explorer 10 (desktop version). IE10's SmartScreen Filter prohibited the download, claiming that it was malware, and offered no choice to perform the download anyway. The SmartScreen Filter for IE8 in Vista approved the download, as did the reputation function for Norton 360 v5. A N360 scan of the contents found nothing objectionable. Further scans with Malwarebytes Antimalware and with Spybot Search & Destroy indicated nothing suspicious about the Classic Shell file. So the question is -- is IE10 a limited-functionality browser, whose opinions override everybody else's and permit no getting past its imperial edicts? Or is the IE10 filter so much better than anyone else's, that we should just accept its decisions? Firefox 9.0.1 did allow the download, and scanned it at the end, no problem. However, FF did not inform me where it was downloading it to, and moreover the browser started to update itself without asking. I closed the update window; maybe that stopped the download THIS time. So IE10 gets an F and Firefox 9 gets a D+. What is it with all this removal of both awareness and choice from the user?? --JorgeA

Three more notes on Windows 8 (pre-Consumer Preview): If a Windows Update is available and you drill through the settings to see what updates are available, and then you click on the "more information" link, Metro (and not Desktop) Internet Explorer opens to the page. This means that, if you wish then to move on to other Web pages, you will do so in Metro IE, which runs without plugins and for which the security and privacy settings are unknown. This could have an impact on your browsing security and/or privacy. You can of course switch to Desktop IE, but that takes an additional action compared to the current state of affairs, where you can simply move on directly to wherever you want to go next. Speaking of Windows Updates, the Metro version of the update feature provides merely a general statement that updates are available, and the total size of the updates. There is no breakdown of what the updates are, or an explanation of what they are intended to do. Another step in the lobotomization of the computing experience. Finally, AllThingsD reports that the only desktop software that will run on Windows on ARM are certain Microsoft Office programs: A glimpse into the future of computing? --JorgeA

CoffeeFiend, Yeah, they'd have to pay ME for the time I'd be wasting on the extra clicks needed to get so many useful things done. --JorgeA

PROBLEMCHYLD, OK, here's some feedback. With respect to the USB drivers, I don't know what's what here. What it is that you're suggesting people do, and which needs to be done only once? This thread is somewhat, umm, convoluted. Just to make sure: so I could install the SP3 and it would not automatically affect my existing USB drivers? Thanks! --JorgeA P.S. Is there a way to create a wiki here, so that the most up-to-date information (and ONLY the most up-to-date information) shows?

Really? I didn't know that by now. Yeah, I didn't know that either. Reading the support page one sure got the impression that, as of April, Vista Home editions would be pretty much abandoned. Anyway, this is a big relief. --JorgeA

ROFL I, too, feel like jumping out that window. :angrym: Here's another take on the new Win8 logo. Check out the comments by "TheDissolver" and "RobL777": Win8 might be the next New Coke. Note how the negative reception by a "small," "vocal" minority of tasters was actually the more accurate harbinger of the general public's reaction to the product. Oh, and how the company downplayed those negative opinions... Oh, and how the Coke chief said consumers would not have the choice of sticking with the classic, legacy, stale old boring square formulation... EDIT: A commenter on the Ars Technica page, "Crackhead Johny," had the same New Coke take. Luckily, now it looks like Extended Support for Vista will now last into 2017, and into 2020 for Windows 7. So I won't need to learn a new OS for another 8 years or so. --JorgeA

vinifera, "Small update" indeed -- this is the BEST news I've heard this year!! "Mainstream support" is ending April 10, 2012, but "extended support" will now last five more years for ALL versions of Vista. Thanks for (finding and) reporting it! --JorgeA

Tripredacus, According to the PC enthusiast magazines (CPU, Maximum PC), this sounds like what they say eventually happens to solid-state drives: they simply wear out after so many write/erase cycles. USB keys (and CF cards) are a similar flash memory technology, so I'd speculate that that's what happened to your flash drives. And I should be prepared to find my CompactFlash card dead one of these days. To judge from the blinking light on the CF reader, the contents of the ReadyBoost drive get accessed, I would say almost continuously. --JorgeA

Tripredacus, What do you mean by ReadyBoost eating USB keys? I've been using 4GB of an 8GB CompactFlash card (via a USB card reader) on my 4GB Vista machine for about a year now; after setting it up, things definitely seemed to go faster. --JorgeA

tomasz86, Excellent graphic! B) I wonder if I can turn that into my Windows 8 wallpaper... --JorgeA

That could also mean "never change anything" or "never innovate" in some ways. I'm all for change -- so long as the replacement is at least as good as what it replaced. I guess there's a fine line between "stale or outdated" and "with excess or for no good reason". Good point. I was thinking of it in the sense of "change for change's sake." Improvements are always welcome: the Windows 95/98 desktop worked much, much better than the Windows 3.x Program Manager. But I don't see any point in making changes because a given way looks "stale" or "outdated." What makes a UI "outdated," anyway -- just because it's been around (and worked fine) for some time? It's like saying about automobiles that having the gas pedal to the right of the brake, with the emergency over to the left, is a stale old "legacy" interface, and it's so cool to use dashboard buttons instead, with the gas to the left, the emergency in the middle, and the brake over to the right. It's not "cool," just silly. When I point this out to fans of "change for change's sake," they look at me with glassy eyes and call me a "hater." No: I simply don't see any purpose in changing the way I interact with my machines, just because. I'd rather use my equipment for purposes beyond itself, than waste time relearning how to use it. --JorgeA

My favorite bit from that article: Amen to that! --JorgeA

LOL The tiling and limited multitasking in Metro remind me of Windows 1.0. So we've "advanced" into the past either 22 or 26 years. --JorgeA

The locked-down Metro interface is a salvo in what's been called "the war on general computation." Intentionally or not, computers are slowly turning into appliances that customers can use only as the makers wish. --JorgeA

Two wrongs (Metro and IE) don't make a right (yes, but three lefts do) LOL Thanks for another interesting link. At first I thought that Mary Jo Foley (or Simon Bisson) made a mistake in writing about, "the new plugin-less IE Desktop in Windows 8" as only Metro IE was going to be without plug-ins. (I've already added a plug-in to desktop IE10.) If the final Desktop IE10 would also make no room for plugins, then things would be even worse than we thought. But it turns out that this is desktop IE for Windows on ARM, whew! --JorgeA

CoffeeFiend, I'm one of them. My preference for Vista stems as much from esthetic considerations as it does from functional ones. The first time I saw the default Windows 7 desktop, my first thought was -- ugh, how plain and washed-out. And the first word that came to mind when I saw that fat taskbar with the big icons was, "gaudy." (Well, OK, it was a choice Spanish word, but I can't post that here as it would violate at least two Forum rules. ) I also generally dislike hieroglyphics, finding writing much more immediately informative, and so those wordless taskbar icons on the left are annoying. (There's a reason that picture writing fell out of favor millennia ago, isn't there?) To this day, the first thing I do when setting up a new Win7 system is to only "combine when full" the taskbar icons and cut the height of the taskbar in half, so that I can get my preferred written (and discreetly sized) labels back. Now, if there were a way to recreate the "convex" Vista-style taskbar without resorting to error-prone hacks like they have in DeviantArt... I have found no particular use for "libraries" and I tend to view them as another step (like the "Favorite Links" in Vista's version of Explorer and the "My Documents" link in Win98 Explorer) in the direction of encouraqging the user away from knowledge of the actual locations of files. Just show me the directories where the files are, thank you. All that said, I do recognize that Windows 7 does feature a number of improvements, and so I view Win7 as a worthy successor to Vista -- and light-years ahead of Windows 8. --JorgeA

I spent some time with Metro Internet Explorer 10. Has anybody found a way, within Metro IE10, to download files from links in Web pages? How about to tell it to print pages? I right-clicked on a link to an MP3 file, and it started downloading right away, but I had no way to choose where to or how to name the file. Also right-clicked on a link to a text page, and it took me to the page showing the text, but there was no option to download it. --JorgeA

Hmm, interesting theory. Maybe I'm falling into the trap, but you know what -- if they come out with a version of Windows 8 that allows you to turn off the Metro interface and work exclusively in the Desktop, when the time comes to update/upgrade my PCs I won't mind paying the premium for it just to not have to deal with that annoyance. Also, I'm not in a hurry to do that upgrading, so I can be patient and cautious like you said. --JorgeA

CoffeeFiend, What a great bunch of links, thanks! Here's another quote to call out from that article: There will be hell to pay if they ever get rid of the desktop completely. For example, if there is a way to see (let alone use) other hard drives and their contents from within the Metro interface, I have yet to find it. (Suggestions welcomed.) There's probably not much of a need to back up the contents of a tablet's drive, but that underscores the fact that tablets are toys and tablet interfaces are not intended for serious work. So why cram it down users' throats? I've run into this annoyance a number of times. On the desktop you can easily move the cursor to the right place on the taskbar to get directly to the program you want. Going back to your first link -- the only way I can see using a tablet (Windows or otherwise) is if I'm sitting in the kitchen or the family room and get an idea to write down, or decide to look something up on the Web, then printing it later or saving it for copying it to my main PC. If there isn't any way to do these things, then a tablet is just an expensive plaything. That's precisely what it is. I'm looking at Metro as Microsoft's most aggressive attempt to date to implement an "active" desktop. Most aggressive, because this time we may not be able to turn it off. (While I never understood or cared for the Win98 Active Desktop, I do use the Vista Sidebar.) The most cogent comment from the "Making lame excuses" blog post: Keep those insightful articles coming! --JorgeA

Any thoughts on the following: In Windows 8, MS can remove your apps AND data The comments section is particularly enlightening. Sounds like a step toward changing the computer from a wide-open instrument of personal exploration and enrichment, to a "black box" appliance controlled by strangers from afar. --JorgeA

CoffeeFiend, Yeah, in my case it would be a relief if MS offered a way to disable the Metro interface. I have yet to buy a new PC that wasn't factory-assembled, so with the possibility of a Metro-free Windows 8, come time for a new PC I wouldn't have to worry whether it would be possible to buy a "downgrade" Win7 license and have the machine arrive with it preinstalled. --JorgeA

Yup. The other day I wrote in another thread that Vista offered (IMHO) the prettiest interface of any Windows version I've used. For example, the Windows 7 taskbar is flat whereas Vista's has a convex look. I recently heard someone describe Win7 as "Vista Lite." --JorgeA

ND22, Thanks, that table gives the information in a much neater package than Microsoft's own pages. --JorgeA

John C. Dvorak's take on Windows 8: "My advice to those at Microsoft who think Metro is cool or groovy is to quit software design and get a job at Old Navy."