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Windows 8 - Deeper Impressions


JorgeA

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Fredledingue,

Awful, just awful.

If I want entertainment and ads when I turn on a screen, I'll go to the TV set -- not to my computer!! :realmad::realmad:

And if I want news or travel info when I'm on the computer, I'll open my IE Favorites, thank you. No need to push them at me as soon as I turn on the d*mn PC. And I certainly don't need this epileptic-seizure inducing Metro screen with all those tiles constantly blinking and scrolling, vying for my attention. :realmad::realmad::realmad:

You know what? I'm going to buy quickely a w7 installation disc while it's still available.

That's a GREAT idea. Insurance for the future.

--JorgeA

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Most of the apps are complete junk anyway. They're often a plug for their services that most people don't want of (with a big emphasis on making money from them).

The news app has an incredibly low information density (form over function as usual), and the stories very much suck compared to any decent news site I've ever visited. Day and night.

Same for the weather app: one gigantic picture (I want weather information primarily, not to look at photos) and a tiny amount of text at the bottom, which again has less infos than usual weather web sites. Currently it says "Rain, 11°C" and very little more. Whereas a popular site tells me it's actually Light rain, 11°C, 20km/h wind (with 35km/h gusts), that they expect around 1mm of rain, and TONS more infos. That's so much more useful. Forget the full page photo and give me the information I want instead.

If I was ever stuck using Win8 (*shudder*) the very first thing I'd do is to unpin all metro apps.

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Sometimes I can't believe two different people are looking at the same thing.

*** nVidia shows off Windows RT on Asus Tablet ***

Of course the children immediately write comments like "Looks very fluid" and "Take my money". :lol: He must mean daddy's money.

This is what Microsoft snookered half the world into beta testing for. To sell $1000 netbooks that function as a web browser and consumer shopping device to blow even more money on music and videos played on a tiny screen with speakers that sound like crap. You can't make this stuff up. The dumbing down of the human race has been completed. This is further confirmed when the guy explains how you can have two things open at a time! All kinds of combinations! Twitter and MSIE, Facebook and Twitter! Oh my.

I just noticed something too. I have a netbook here with Win7 that looks exactly the same physical size but when you compare it against the Win8 Sesame Street blocks on the video, the optical illusion makes the Asus thing look really REALLY small, like a toy.

If you place four of the same size tablets side by side, with Win7, Android, iOS, Win8 interfaces in direct comparison (maybe we can locate four photos and place them in a comment), I have no doubt that Win8 will be the least pleasing to the eye unless you are 5 years old. I mean that. Never underestimate the power of first impression. I'd be embarrassed to buy one of those things.

Microsoft must be looking over at Blackberry and HP and praying that some of these things sell unlike the others or they will be in deep trouble I think.

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This is what Microsoft snookered half the world into beta testing for. To sell $1000 netbooks that function as a web browser and consumer shopping device to blow even more money on music and videos played on a tiny screen with speakers that sound like crap.

This ought to be quoted on every tech website, every news site, in every newspaper and every weekly magazine on the planet.

--JorgeA

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A veteran Microsoft observer gives the thumbs-down to Windows 8:

I have no idea why Microsoft would take such an enormous gamble on its cash cow like this. Incremental changes were a theme at Redmond, Wash.; this is a radical departure.

What is this departure based on? It’s based on the pipe dream that the unsuccessful user interface used by Windows Phone will turn into a success on the tablet — to such an extreme that people will also demand it on the desktop, so all the platforms can have the same look and feel.

This is insanity, plain and simple. It’s even more nuts knowing that nobody is waiting in line to buy Windows Phone in the first place, and the tablet is untested in the market. So the company jumps ahead to the desktop?

--JorgeA

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For all the Touch enabled Notebooks which are now presented by several companies:

Steve Jobs: Touchscreen Laptops Don't Work

http://articles.businessinsider.com/2010-10-20/tech/29974850_1_multitouch-trackpad-notebook

"We've done tons of user testing on this, and it turns out it doesn't work. Touch surfaces don't want to be vertical.

It gives great demo but after a short period of time, you start to fatigue and after an extended period of time, your arm wants to fall off. it doesn't work, it's ergonomically terrible.

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Great find, Andre -- thanks!

Looks like Steve Jobs (R.I.P.) knew something, a year-and-a-half ago, that Ballmer and Sinofsky stil don't know. No wonder Apple stock is at $560 while Microsoft stock has a hard time staying over $30.

Not to mention that it really didn't require "tons of user testing" to realize that your arms are going to start hurting after more than a few minutes of poking a laptop screen, let alone a desktop monitor.

I'm becoming increasingly convinced that Metro on Windows 8 is a desperation move... and people who feel desperate aren't necessarily the most clear-thinking.

--JorgeA

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My comments on PCWorld's article:

Windows 8 Release Preview Impressions

I apreciate the following improvements: Smaller memory footprint, More-efficient performance and Reduced disk-space requirement.

It's just sad that MS made these improvements only because the OS was designed to work on devices less powerful than PCs, not for a clever PC resource use.

When quiet a lot of poeple demanded that they brought these improvements when developing w7, it fell on deaf ears.

They barely fixed the most blatant bugs from Vista.

Steven Sinofsky even called the disk space requierement "mundain" [sic] at that time.

Also note that disk space requierement for the release preview is 20 Gb, 4 Gb more than Vista, 18 Gb more than XP.

HyperV integration:

This advance is crucial for enterprises and businesses that rely on VMs to run work apps in a world where people want to bring their own devices to work.

I don't think that serious poeple working professionaly will want to have an OS which launches Metro at every boot-up. They will never use w8. Period.

W8 is not a usable platform for advanced users who would make use of such things.

But the technological improvement still has the merit of being there.

Let's hope it can come in the shape of a w7 update.

Built-in SkyDrive integration: Cloud storage

Cool feature. Cool on the surface. Yet' date=' there are thousands of reasons not to use it.

Poeple should be warned that they may even not know that all their files are copied to a remote server not under their control, because free Cloud storage will become part of Windows.

Use it only if you assume that anybody in the world can look at every file present on your computer.

I doubt there is a single computer in the world that doesn't contain private enough material or business sensitive material that shouldn't be shared with commercial entities.

You can choose not to back up these files but that's precisely the files that need to be backed most often!

[b']Improved multimonitor support: Hope so. According to some testers, it realy realy sucked a big deal last time they tried it.

Call it bug fix, please.

App Improvements

Now that becomes funny. "App Improvements" LOL!

They sort of forgot that existing apps for Windows PC are far more advanced and more various and offer far more choice than what comes with Metro.

Why offering new apps which still lack functionality [sic] while you already have the choice among thousands existing sotfwares, fruit of decades of developement?

The e-mail app:

OE, a 14 years old program and Windows Mail already offer access to multiple accounts and far more advanced options such as a spam filter which you can build yourself, if at least you take the pain to use POP and not a commercial online account.

If you are not using GMail, I don't see the point.

If you use GMail, then, yes, it's a cool interface for GMail and compatible mail services.

It address a need since more and more poeple make use of such services.

Unfotunately it's not as advanced as POP.

Music and Video:

They wrote it: It's a X-Box for PC.

Why having a PC if all you get is an X-Box at the end of the day?

It also helps you part with your money more easily, since it directs you to commercial music stores.

Some testors already said that it's a royal pain to find your music saved on your hard drive, that you constantly stumble on a purchase area.

Again: useless if you have no Zune Pass or similar.

The News, Finance, and Sports.

It's interresting that MS attempts to replace internet browsing, where you usualy find these informations, by a single pane where you get everything at a glance.

They forgot that everybody wants to choose their own source of information.

Not everybody is interrested in sport and finance.

Poeple like to choose the websites from which they recieve their informations from, according to their political affinities.

MS market analysts have no idea of the complexity of the PC user.

Photos

Here it's interresting that they mixed social media content and your local hard disc content.

Sounds cool, but like the e-mail app, it's a great idea to gather all online contents in one pane but I'd not want to mix it with my local drive content.

For me -and for most poeple- these are two distinct things.

Like with the Cloud, the PC is slowly becoming a space which is not supposed to be private anymore.

It's a view which will not shared by most PC users I'm afraid.

Contacts

Same as the mail app, it's a great idea to merge several social medias into one.

It's great if it remains one way, from the social media to you, it's less appealing if you know that it can go the other way. What are the garantees that you can't inadvertantly, in one click flush all you private and business contacts to a social media you have no control about whatsoever?

The idea IS great but here again, I wouldn't want to mix hard disc content and on-line rubbish.

Windows 8 Start Screen Improvements

(he means Metro but ok, let's call "Start Screen" if that makes them happier)

Microsoft supplied PCWorld with a modified Samsung Series 9 ultraportable laptop so that we could work with the Windows 8 Rlease Preview in an optimized environment. The key modification involves the touchpad' date=' which is now capable of edge detection.[/quote']

Here we are getting the full meaning of the Start Screen aka Metro: It's optimized for small sized laptop and lower.

IMO its great if you own such a device.

Unfortunately MS is decided to ship it pre-installed on new laptop no matter how big the screen is and even worse, thinks it can be installed on a desktop PC.

Needless to say that on "normal" computers with a large screen, a keyboard and a mouse, it's a total loss of functionality, information density and productivity.

Now poeple are supposed to learn how to dance with their mouse to reach indispensable functions, rendered invisible in W8. You have to remember which side or corner of the screen you must move your mouse to in order to do basic tasks, where once you had a button with a description on it.

It's totaly incomprehensible that MS decided to remove the Start Menu which everybody has been used to for decades.

The new Power User list doesn't come close, not even remotely to the normal Start Menu.

IMO the absence of Start Menu alone will scare away a good chunk of MS'consumers.

Internet Explorer 10 and Flash

This is finaly one of the best thing. Flash becoming increasingly used on the internet, it had to be integrated which means more compatibility and safety.

Conclusion:

Whether that improvement will be enough to make naysayers to change their minds is an open question' date='[/quote']

I agree. ;)

_____________________

JorgeA

________________________

Excellent article... and very well written.

It's so funny, MS is going to cover themselves with ridicule.

;)

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Internet Explorer 10 and Flash

This is finaly one of the best thing. Flash becoming increasingly used on the internet, it had to be integrated which means more compatibility and safety.

Conclusion:

Whether that improvement will be enough to make naysayers to change their minds is an open question' date='[/quote']

I agree. ;)

I read something that may not make people happy regarding Flash in IE10.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/01/windows_8_rc_review/

Perhaps the biggest change is that Adobe Flash is now baked into Internet Explorer 10, even on the Metro side which Microsoft said would be free of plugins. Technically this is still correct. Microsoft has worked with Adobe to get Flash distributed with IE 10 and updated via Windows Update. This will work on ARM as well as x86 devices.

There is a catch though: Flash support only applies to sites on a compatibility list distributed by Microsoft.

I found Flash worked well on major sites, but not elsewhere. This is intended as a compatibility feature, not for the long-term. Nevertheless, this will be a selling point for Microsoft against the iPad, although with many sites now making special allowances for Apple's Flash-free tablet in their multimedia content this is not the big deal it once was.

What is odd is that Microsoft has not done the same for Silverlight, its own multimedia and application plugin. This is particularly strange given the extensive Silverlight dependence in Microsoft's own products, such as the recently released System Center 2012 which used the plugin for most of its web management consoles. Visual Studio 2012 has a dedicated tool, LightSwitch, for Silverlight applications.

Emphasis mine.

1. Having a master control list for Flash supported websites kills it for me. I won't even bother with this. I can think of many places I end up going that uses Flash that I doubt would ever show up on that list. I'll stick with Mozilla or Chrome.

2. Typically I only use IE for MS websites, but if IE10 isn't going to support Silverlight, this could even be a problem. I'd imagine that you can't even go to Connect with IE10 then. I haven't tried it but I don't think I will try it either. :rolleyes:

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Most of the apps are complete junk anyway. They're often a plug for their services that most people don't want of (with a big emphasis on making money from them).

So it's like having an email spam folder right on the desktop. :(

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So it's like having an email spam folder right on the desktop. :(

Great point -- I hadn't thought of it that way! When it comes to the apps on the Metro start screen, my own focus had been on the effect that all those blinking and auto-scrolling tiles might have on epileptics. ;)

Irrespective of that, when I power up my PC I want to ease into the environment -- I don't want to start getting bombarded by a dozen different squares clamoring for my attention all at once.

--JorgeA

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Typically I only use IE for MS websites, but if IE10 isn't going to support Silverlight, this could even be a problem. I'd imagine that you can't even go to Connect with IE10 then. I haven't tried it but I don't think I will try it either. :rolleyes:

Huh, that would be weird (but not surprising anymore). Microsoft's own creation, not supported on its own websites? I think I'll try that and see what happens next time I boot up the RP. Would that be Metro IE10, or Desktop IE10, that's lacking Silverlight support?

--JorgeA

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Ars Technica has published an insightful, evenhanded analysis of Windows 8's prospects on the business side:

Windows 8 could gain a foothold in businesses by coming in on tablets, which would theoretically combine the convenience of the tablet form factor with the Active Directory management features IT admins are used to on desktops and laptops. There are two problems with this: the first is that Windows RT, the ARM-enabled Windows 8 variant that is likely to ship on many Windows tablets, doesn't support Active Directory management in the first place. The second is that tablet and smartphone usage in businesses is increasingly dictated by the users themselves, not the IT Establishment.

We've covered most of this territory in our thread, but it's interesting to see our impressions backed up in the tech press.

--JorgeA

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Typically I only use IE for MS websites, but if IE10 isn't going to support Silverlight, this could even be a problem. I'd imagine that you can't even go to Connect with IE10 then. I haven't tried it but I don't think I will try it either. :rolleyes:

Huh, that would be weird (but not surprising anymore). Microsoft's own creation, not supported on its own websites? I think I'll try that and see what happens next time I boot up the RP. Would that be Metro IE10, or Desktop IE10, that's lacking Silverlight support?

I think the only one that really makes use of Silverlight is Connect, probably others. But there are even some MS sites that do not work properly with IE9! :angry:

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