Topic: Let Me Know How That Windows 8 Thing Works Out, Okay?

[trapeze]

I saw some previews of the Windows 8 release several months ago and at first thought that it was a joke...sort of an Onion story on the new MS operating system. And then I realized that it wasn't.

So my second thought was that it sure looked confusing. It looked like (if I was still a Windows user) I would have to unlearn everything I knew about MS operating systems and spend several weeks learning a whole new thing that didn't even look remotely cool or worth the trouble. Could I have been wrong? Well, probably not according to this article by The Atlantic:

With less than a week to go before the big Windows 8 launch on October 26, everybody seems to be converging on the same unambiguous conclusion about the new software: bafflement. The business community is baffled about whether the new operating system can deliver the turnaround that Microsoft's stock needs right now. The technology community is baffled that Microsoft is tossing out a lot of widely known Windows conventions like the Start button and filling the screen with squares full of Facebook updates. Most important of all, consumers are just plain baffled. Nobody can figure out how to use the thing!

This doesn't sound at all comforting for people who hold MS stock. There are untold thousands of hours of development in this thing and it might not sell. At all.

Reminds me of something from my youth (well early adulthood, anyway)...

Could be the impetus for another wave of Mac users so, yeah, that will really do wonders for the MS stock price.

But who knows? Maybe it will be the exact opposite. Maybe Windows 8 will be the next really cool thing and everyone will drop their iPhones (and I am enjoying my iPhone 5), iPads and MacBooks and rush right out to get them some big cheesy looking icon based OS.

It could happen.

[ToddF]

Three words:

Why?

[radioman]

Somebody told me that this OS is designed for touch screens. if you don't have a touch screen, it will be harder for you to use. Don't know if this is true or not, but if it is, if you are still using a traditional flat sceen, this may not be good for you.

[trapeze]

Seems pretty crazy that MS would transform their entire OS to fit into the iPad world. Not that it will run on the iPad, of course, but that is what this is responding to when you boil it down. There was no touch screen computing for all intents and purposes prior to the advent of the iPad. I guess that there are some Windows based touch pads now and MS apparently sees this as the future. So they are creating an OS that is essentially a cross platform thing that works on phones, non-Apple touchpads, laptops and desktops. Very visionary.

The problem that I see with this (other than what is outlined above) is that MS has a dedicated following for a number of reasons. Chief among those reasons are 1) it is familiar...what people are used to and, 2) it isn't Apple.

Building an OS that is supposed to be like an Apple iPad without actually being Apple is not a very wise move in my opinion.

I personally think that MS would have spent their development dollars better by making their existing OS work better (fewer lock ups and crashes, or better yet, none at all) and have air tight security (virtually non hackable and virus proof). That, apparently, was either too tall an order or someone at the top is retarded.

If this bombs it will be devastating for MS. They will survive but it will be a technical milestone and not in a good way. Not for MS, anyway.

[trapeze]

FNC weighs in on the Windows 8 controversy:

The Windows 8 launch is finally upon us -- and there are a lot of nervous people in Redmond right now.

How could they not be?

They’re about to launch a new version of the flagship operating system that's such a radical departure from what PC users have come to expect that it should be called "Windows We Hope You’re Ready for Something Really Different."

They then go on to list five things that "could sink Windows 8"

4. Crummy Touchpads

Sure, Windows 8 works best with touch, but the sweet spot for most shoppers right now is $500 clamshell designs that rely on touchpads. Based on previous experience, I’m very worried that these pointing devices won’t deliver the smooth gesture support that will add up to a good user experience. On a lot of pre-production samples I’ve tried the touchpad didn’t always respond when I swiped in from the left to switch apps. And most of them didn’t support the gesture to move in from the left and quickly back to the right to see all of your open apps.

If notebook vendors can’t make pinch-to- zoom work well or two-finger scrolling, they’ll have an even harder time getting Windows 8 gestures to work reliably. I’m really hoping Synaptics, Microsoft and OEMs get it right, but it will probably take a while.

That one point alone is extremely disturbing. Disquieting. The sort of thing that should keep MS people awake at night.

I guess that sooner or later things will get sorted out but it does kind of put the whole controversy over the iPhone maps app in perspective, doesn't it?

I guess that they could give the OS away as a beta download or something but that would be kind of unprecedented and not in a good way.

Microsoft is reportedly spending $1.5 billion to launch and promote Windows 8, and the company has never been under more pressure to make sure that shoppers get the message. But what is that message? Is it that you can have your cake and eat it too with a Windows 8 PC that runs mobile and “legacy” apps? That you can get all-day battery life, iPad-like portability and Office productivity with a Windows RT device? It’s actually all of the above, which is a big part of the challenge.

Although having a hero device helps, Windows 8 will succeed or fail not based on how well the Surface fares. Just as with every other Windows launch, Microsoft will once again rely on an ecosystem of app developers and hardware makers to make its software sing. All of the above five obstacles are not insurmountable, but they’re very real.

Well, that's certainly putting a brave face on it.

[Libertas]

This could prove to be a better boon for Apple than any new product release could hope to achieve.

[Alphabet Soup]

I'm not a Microsquash fanboy but I am a heavy user. I tried Win8 and don't like it (I'll spare you my top 10 dislikes). I saw a thread over at the freepers and was lurking on it when I saw a fanboy's defense of the new GUI:

Here is an example of the difference between what lots of people still use to Win8.



This is considered to be "productive":



But this is considered to be "hard":



My response to him (if I thought it was worth the effort) would be to say:

1. Is there any software that you haven't installed on your computer?!
2. With those idiotic tiles hogging up the screen and no start button, how do you access those other programs?

Win8 is designed to provide a similar user experience cross-platform. That is, the layout and functionality is supposedly the same whether you use a desktop, laptop, tablet, or smartphone.

Color me skeptical.

[trapeze]

This could prove to be a better boon for Apple than any new product release could hope to achieve.

That's what I'm thinking.

I left the MS world...I don't know...something like five years ago for a variety of reasons.

One was that I wanted a higher quality piece of hardware. I was willing to pay more for a laptop that, despite the best of care, would mechanically fail in two years. The aluminum body MacBook has more than fulfilled that requirement. It cost me about a grand at the time and I had been paying a couple of hundred bucks less for my PC based laptops. Not much more to pay but a huge difference in hardware quality. The price of cheap, crappy PC based laptops has come way down in the years since...you can now get one for $500 or less while the MacBook entry level laptop is still around a grand.

The second issue was that I was really tired of an OS that would get progressively slower regardless of how well I maintained it. Every single year I would have to back up all my data, wipe the hard drive clean with a reformat and then re-install everything. About a day's worth of productivity-free work. That sucked. I don't have that issue with Apple products. They just work. My MacBook is every bit as fast at five years of age as it was the day I bought it. Also, the MacBook requires no anti-virus, firewall, etc. nor do I need to personally maintain it with defragging or anything like that. Not having to deal with these things all save me time.

Obviously, other people were happy to live with these issues where I was not. And, I am told, Windows 7 is not nearly as crappy a product as previous versions of the OS.

I would not be surprised, though, if this move by MS does not prompt more than a few PC users to take a look at Apple products.

[Alphabet Soup]

My employer still uses XP. It will still be a year (or better) before we completely migrate to Win7. It all comes down to money. Why so slow? Simple-  (multi) millions of dollars replacing software that is incompatible with Win7. I can confidently state that we will never go Win8. We will either stick with 7 and wait for 9 or walk away from MS altogether.

Their upgrade path is currently around eighteen months and a complete killer for the medium to large enterprise. We can't keep up and times are too lean to pay through the nose for change for the sake of change (Win8).

[Alphabet Soup]

BTW:

As a followup to this thread (and other conversations I've had about Win8) I grabbed a laptop that I occasionally use, slapped a fresh hard drive in it and loaded it up with an evaluation copy of Win8 that I downloaded from MS.

I then did some of my usual tweaks to set the user interface up more to my personal tastes. Then I downloaded and installed Classic Shell (http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/) which is a 3rd party app that replicates the "Start" menu that we are familiar with. You can set it to one of three modes (depending on your preference) of a "Windows classic", a WinXP, or the Windows Vista/Win7 start menu system.

It's very close to the original on looks and works flawlessly.  (I'm posting from it now)

Now my laptop looks and feels identical to a Win7 machine. There are differences to be sure in the features and in the way it does some of the basic utilities but at least I'm not spending all my time fumbling about trying to access my stuff 

I have noted that, unlike the Win7 hard drive, this one appears to be more CPU intensive. The Win7 box seemed to use RAM to process application more than processor. This configuration is working the opposite way and taxing the system more. Granted, the machine is four years old and wasn't designed for Win8 (or should I say that Win8 is designed for more powerful computer hardware). How this plays out is heat generation. As the name implies, we typically use laptops on our laps. If the machine is working overtime then it will be generating heat as a byproduct. Sometimes that heat can become oppressive - especially when it's on your lap!

Bottom line is that the Win8 architecture works harder to do the same things. That (in my opinion) is a step back, not forward.

[Libertas]

Hmmm...

If it is working harder with the operating system...God knows what performance will be like for other program we'd like to run?!  Is Master Gates giving free RAM upgrades with this launch?