It looks like Netmarketshare jumped the gun when they said Windows 8.x had overtaken XP, because apparently their figures had Windows 8.x losing 7 points in a single month... to Windows NT. After those figures were pulled the latest numbers have Windows 8.x nearly 6% behind XP.
Does this change your view of Windows 8? Are you or your company going to deploy Windows 8, or wait for Windows 10? How many of you still have XP running in the field?
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NetMarketShare Adjusts Figures, Shows Windows 8.x Losing Share
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(Score: 2, Informative) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday January 03 2015, @05:53AM
I'm not just being politically correct.
For me the beginning of the end was a client who got the bright idea that I should use the beta of Win2k to develop a Java Swing application. Nothing fucking worked, then they shipped Win2k with 64,000 open bugs.
I was willing to try Win2k again after they shipped Service Pack 2. I personally regard Win2k SP3 as the best windows ever shipped.
I never did like XP. I only used it if someone else required me to.
Now it's gotten to the point that I no longer apply to work for companies if I think I'd be using windows on the job. I'm quite good with Visual Studio, C++ on Windows, and while not an expert at .Net I'm OK with C#. There is a company here in Portland that can never find enough .Net coders, I'd love to work for them but really I don't want to deal with Windows anymore.
I've gotten to that point with Mac OS X as well. Yosemite drives me nuts, I only installed it so I could run Xcode 6, which I only installed so I could build iOS Apps for iOS 8 - Apple now requires one to build with Xcode 6 to submit to the App Store, I expect they'll require 6.1 soon.
The next operating system I install on my retina display macbook pro will be Linux Mint.
I prefer what Mac OS X used to be, to anything that Linux has yet to come up with, but I prefer just about any Linux to what Windows and Mac OS X presently are.
I've decided not to charge money for my iPhone App [warplife.com]. I'm not sure I'll even submit it to the app store. I'm going to place the source under the Affero GPLv3, and might well provide a source code-only release.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 03 2015, @06:09AM
Another Mint user here. I took Vista as an early warning and started to migrate to Linux around the time Windows 7 was announced. I have one legacy system to operate my Canon slide scanner (Win/Mac only drivers), otherwise all Linux Mint nowadays. One of my friends who is a MS-fanboi was burbling about Win8, one look over his shoulder was enough. MS are buggy and they cannot be trusted (backdoors).
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 03 2015, @06:30AM
Please tell us all about how you don't watch television either. Hip, hip, hip, hipster.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 03 2015, @07:22AM
What has not using a dysfunctional backdoor-invested slow-motion system to do with not watching TV? Id Id Id Idiot much?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 03 2015, @07:35AM
Do you need this spelled out for you? The. same. people. who. say. I. don't. use. Windows. also. say. I. don't. watch. television. Because all the trendy hipsters don't do exactly the same things. Idiot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 03 2015, @10:16AM
Last time I checked, those friends of mine using Linux exclusively were the first to set up decent mediia centers an connect them to their - surprise - TVs. Including TV-receiver card for digital recording, first with mp4 decoder, later with digital receivers.
(Score: 3, Funny) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Saturday January 03 2015, @01:33PM
I thought the no-tv hipsters were supposed to be the ones working on their novels using Macbools in trendy coffee shops. I thought they were all too busy baking post-ironic-50s-retro trilbies and hand-knitting artisan herbal cupcakes from traditional Guatamalan tribal recipes to be tinkering with operating systems, but I guess I got it wrong. Never was much good with stereotypes, maybe I'm not bitter and lazy enough.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Saturday January 03 2015, @01:59PM
I'm a no-TV guy and the problem with TV is the stereotype of TV viewers. So you take your 500 channels, and subtract the "pro sports watching tribe the emasculated everybody loves raymond middle aged white guy usually getting fat" and subtract the "political agit-prop corporatism rah rah station tribe where the average viewer is (seriously) about 70" and subtract the "reality TV viewing tribe where the content is aimed at audience maximization aka IQ of about 20" and you're left, incredibly, with pretty much nothing left. Its not that I don't want to watch, its that theres nothing left to watch. Thats partially the result of bad taste and partially the result of having only about 5 companies control everything you can see on TV.
I'd watch TV, but theres nothing on corporate owned broadcast/cable left for me to watch.
I do sit in a room on a couch in front of a big screen TV and watch videos when I'm too sick / tired / need a change. Sometimes I watch university classes and uploaded conf videos. Last night I binged on a couple "lets play" minecraft videos. I get strange ideas from the videos. DW20 and agrarian skies... you can automate soul sand production using witch water and ducts... I never would have considered it... interesting idea.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Sunday January 04 2015, @02:58AM
Thank you. I don't watch television either for the reason that it mostly just sucks. Let's be real here, there might only be about 15 hours of television a month that I find valuable enough to watch after subtracting commercial time out of it. It makes no sense to spend that much money for something that only entertains me for a few hours at most. It's also seasonal with a few months out of the year in which I have no television to watch at all, or at least, no television worth $100+ per month. We need Naked News and Naked Weather Reports 24/7 for me to pay that amount of money. The rest of it is just sports and reality TV crap.
Combine that with the knowledge that were the show really any good, it will arrive on Netflix in pretty short order. So why do I need a television and a subscription when the content is largely missing now as you say? I would put at least 80% of my entire viewing hours in the last year on Netflix provided streams.
Then even got rid of Saturday Morning cartoons...
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 03 2015, @07:05PM
people. who. say. I. don't. use. Windows. also. say. I. don't. watch. television
Oooh!! THAT's what you were saying! The periods after every word make it so much clearer. And here I thought you were just being a tRoll. I bet you both use windows and watch TV, dontcha? And Roll Coal and spell moron "moran"? Hey, you're that guy!!
(Score: 1) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday January 03 2015, @07:43AM
I listen to music. TV drives me nuts.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 03 2015, @09:50AM
TV drives me nuts too.
I simply cannot imagine anybody actually paying for it.
These days, it seems way better to buy a streaming subscription to things like old TV shows ( I really love watching reruns of Highway Patrol/Dragnet/Adam-12 ), PBS, History Channel, and Shepherd's Chapel. Other than those, I have little use for the rest of it.
Don't bag on me about the Chapel... he's the only guy I have found out there in TV land that just reads the Bible. I make what I will out of it. And so it is. As far as I can tell, the rest of those TV preachers are beggars and I steer clear of them like steering clear of panhandlers clustered around supermarket doors. They haven't said five words before they will produce their begging bags. A lot of religious people like to bag on him for upsetting their business model.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 03 2015, @07:12AM
All FOSS since 2000.
No more corporations telling you how you can and can't use your software.
No more $100,000 visits from the BSA.
Burlington Coat Factory had made the switch in 1999.
Dave Richards put the infrastructure of the city of Largo, FL on Linux even before that.
A lot of folks discovered a long time ago that EULAware just isn't necessary.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday January 03 2015, @07:27AM
Don't forget the BSDs ..
(Score: 4, Insightful) by jmorris on Saturday January 03 2015, @06:08PM
It is everywhere, even Linux. Haven't you been following the GNOME3 and SystemD battles? Everywhere now, developers are building systems for imaginary new users and ignoring the actual ones. Then they tell us to shut up and 'get used to it' while proclaiming a) the new thing is better, b) they are superior and know this and c) that once we get used to it we will thank them and d) that there is no way to restore the old working code (because....blah blah) so the discussion is over anyway.
I used to enjoy riding the Fedora fast moving train. Whee! New version! Some pain during every upgrade as a few things broke but enough shiny to justify the work to sort it all out. Now it is all things breaking by design instead of accidental breakage and the broke things won't get fixed because they insist it isn't broken, I am.
Both Windows and Mac users are growing just like thee and me, dreading the next forced upgrade. Security updates are the lever they have over us. Without that requirement I know I'd probably have stayed on Fedora 14, most Windows users would still be on XP, etc. Mac and Windows users have no choice since only the vendor has source, but we really need to start thinking about a STABLE distro.
Let Pottering and the GNOME kids go play, Devuan needs to take their notion to the next level. Stick to UNIX things, port in newer versions only when they actually add things of interest to UNIX people. Otherwise just bring back the bug fixes. UNIX is a solved problem, lets stop reinventing it and get some actual work done.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jmorris on Saturday January 03 2015, @06:13PM
Does this change your view of Windows 8?
If you care what the market share of a product is when deciding to use it you are a lemming. It DOES. NOT. MATTER. Microsoft isn't going to go broke and leave the product abandoned either way and as a user that is your only cause for concern. If Windows 8 has 90% share I wouldn't use it and if it had 2% share and I actually liked the thing I'd still use it. Market share is useful if you are considering DEVELOPING for the platform or evaluating MSFT's stock price.
Of course it is also fun to rag on them about it and for those who looked at the early release and tried to warn them it is also fun to engage in some "I told you so!"
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Saturday January 03 2015, @06:17PM
Ok, something is broken. I posted the comment above via the top level reply button and it went in as a reply to my last comment. Weird.
(Score: 2) by danomac on Saturday January 03 2015, @06:44PM
I have been using Windows 10 though the technical preview, and so far I like what I see. There's still a couple UI glitches which I read they're doing something about (there's two control panels???) but other than that it looks solid.
When I first tried Windows 8 and then 8.1 I thought to myself "There's no way in hell I'm going to buy something with Windows 8 on it." Now, I typically use linux 99.9% of the time and dual-boot to Windows for certain things like games. I hated Windows 8 so much that this was the first time I've been putting off hardware upgrades. I'm still using my computer from 2008 (when Win10 comes out I'll upgrade to it, hopefully the price will be cheap) and my laptop from 2005/6 (it's really showing its age now.)
(Score: 2) by digitalaudiorock on Saturday January 03 2015, @10:38PM
Couldn't have said it better myself. This ugly trend in Linux embodies literally everything that drove me from Windows to Linux in the first place many many years ago...a pile of ill designed cures for which there's no disease aimed at some imaginary new "market share" of "new users" that should probably be using Windows or Mac anyway.
Glad I'm using Gentoo and that it's still a safe haven, as long as you avoid software poisoned with malicious dependencies. And yes...more power to the Devuan guys.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 04 2015, @09:52AM
But instead they made stuff that was even worse than what Microsoft excreted. OS X is proof that if you build something that isn't that shitty, you can get significant market share.
Seems to me all the decent UI designers have left, retired or died. There are actually idiots in Microsoft who think that Windows 8 is good UI, who think that "ALL CAPS" for menu items (VS2012 etc) is good. With Windows 8 discoverability has become even worse. There are so many things that are easier for a user to discover via Google, than via the UI. For example the quick way of signing out now involves RIGHT CLICKING on where the start button would be! WTF! What happened to the people in the Windows 95 era who decided it was good to have "the taskbar", the "Send To" menu, the "recent items", and having the Start menu be a folder from which you can easily add/remove/rename items. Those and others were decent choices.
(Score: 2) by digitalaudiorock on Sunday January 04 2015, @05:31PM
Great point! Those actually were very elegant solutions that added huge functionality. I'd almost forgotten about those. I recall rather easily writing a program that I could drop into the Send To to allow me to open a command prompt in the referenced directory...great stuff.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday January 05 2015, @09:20PM
I thought Debian was Supposed to be that stable distribution...
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 03 2015, @06:18AM
XWindows 7.7 running here. I tried switching to Wayland, but some apps compiled against X had stability issues, so I'm sticking with xorg for the time being.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday January 03 2015, @07:24AM
Wayland has Red Hat ties. Which is the same corporation that gave you Poettering and systemd..
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday January 03 2015, @11:23PM
Please call it X Window System, not X Windows. Not only it confuses my parser, but given the sheer genius oozing out of Microsoft marketing (those that named a word processor "Word") I think they will name their next iteration of the OS "Windows X"
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 04 2015, @01:17AM
Wouldn't it have been more appropriate to have used the singular and called that "Window"?
Is there anything more screwed up than a multitasking OS that will only allow only 1 visible window at a time?
...and I'm definitely with you on the MSFT naming thing:
Windows, Word, Office, Money, .NET -- WTF??
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday January 04 2015, @02:32PM
Let's not forget Microsoft "Surface" for the tablet, same name formerly used for the...table [wikipedia.org]. Get it? no? neither do I...
Account abandoned.
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Saturday January 03 2015, @06:21AM
I've never believed most of the stats on usage, because they are so easy to get wrong. Usage before the holidays capture on-line shoppers that might not have logged in for months, or students returning to school after being off all summer. People are moving to mobile devices, and not updating their aging desktops or laptops. Then they realize how miserable those devices are to work with, and they fire up the long neglected machine. I've got a machine I use once a year.
Just too many sources of errors.
Most companies are still deploying site licenses for windows 7, waiting and hoping windows 10 will half as good.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday January 03 2015, @11:26AM
Indeed, stats on my site could have come from a random number generator. Yesterday showed more folks using Linux than Windows. It changes from day to day (I don't get useage broken down to flavor of OS).
Plus, people fudge. There are people using Linux or BSD sending user agent strings showing Windows and IE.
That said, I simply can't see anyone, let alone enterprise customers, going W8. Hell, I'd buy a new laptop right now if it weren't for 8. Microsoft is costing hardware manufacturers sales; they should start shipping KDE machines, I'd snap one up right now.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Saturday January 03 2015, @03:04PM
http://www.zdnet.com/article/more-weird-science-web-analytics-firms-kick-off-new-year-with-suspicious-statistics/
And the web analytics firm in question - one Net Market Share, source of the stats in this story.
More noise than signal here, I'd say it was safe to conclude.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 4, Insightful) by SuperCharlie on Saturday January 03 2015, @06:28AM
My wife got a new laptop with 8 on it and it was so un-intuitive that after a week she got frustrated and returned it for a galaxy tab pro with android and has been giggly happy since.
From trying to help her, I came to the conclusion that Win 8 is probably not **that** bad of a mobile OS, but for a desktop/laptop it is just a pain.
They basically shot themselves in the foot trying to catch up in the touchscreen/mobile market and have managed to frustrate their current users while delivering a 3rd place mobile OS behind apple and andriod.
They really should have kept Win 8 to mobile/touch only and had a seperate regular OS based on 7 imho.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 03 2015, @06:45AM
Do you understand that absolutely nothing at all is intuitive about a computer? Everything you need to know to use a computer must be learned. Do you know what learning is? It's that thing you stopped doing when you dropped out of school.
(Score: 3, Informative) by emg on Saturday January 03 2015, @06:38PM
And this is why, every few years, we change the interface in our cars. My new one uses the steering wheel to accelerate and brake, the pedals to control the gears, and the gear lever to steer left and right, for example. Only losers who refuse to learn new things have any problem with these awesome new features.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Saturday January 03 2015, @06:45AM
Madness at Microsoft runs deeper than that. They killed the Aero and switched to a new, flat theme that is impossibly ugly and bad on eyes. Then they decided that menus, where they are not yet replaced with ugly ribbons, must be in ALL CAPS. The setup screen gives you a hundred colors, asks you to choose what you want - and, after a few minutes, you realize that you don't want any of them. There is hardly anything left in stock Windows that one could look at and work with. Win8 is not a professional release of an OS, it's just a joke that was put together by the worst art designers in history.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Saturday January 03 2015, @08:49AM
You should try windows 10, its Windows 7 with the behind the scenes speed ups of Windows 8.x like WIMBoot. Also the ONLY time you could see Metro is if you buy a hybrid laptop/tablet which with those its switches to Metro when a tablet (as you suggested) and to a normal Windows desktop when the keyboard is reattached. I've got it running on the weakest thing I've got, a 2011 AMD E350 netbook and its a joy to run, much snappier than Win 7 on the same hardware despite every driver running in compatibility mode!
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 1) by German Sausage on Saturday January 03 2015, @06:40AM
I really don't get all the 8 hate? Windows 8 is just fine. If you don't like the Metro desktop - don't use it. I installed Classic Shell and never looked back. It runs a bit quicker than my win 7 box at work, and is just as stable if not more so. Except for one flaky game (BL2 pre sequel) that has know crash issues, I don't think I've ever had a crash or freeze up. Mind you, I tend to put together decent components, and I alway install too much RAM.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Entropy on Saturday January 03 2015, @07:06AM
Because it's worse in every way than Windows 7, basically. It's nice to hear fud like "It's not actually all that bad" or "Once you get used to it", but really..It's just worse, and there's no benefit to adoption at all. Windows 7 is the new XP... And I doubt Windows "10" is fooling anyone.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday January 03 2015, @08:17AM
I think 10 has a chance to be way better then 8.1, simply because they don't force that stupid UI onto you unless you have a touch screen. It was a monumentally stupid UI that only really made a lick of sense if you had a touch screen.
With a more normal UI, I think 10 will appeal to business, and it is supposed to be faster than Windows 7. It might be better than you think.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by TheLink on Saturday January 03 2015, @08:33AM
I'm disappointed with Microsoft, Microsoft Research etc, for crap like Vista and Windows 8.
With Oculus Rift-like displays, you can have very very big 2D "screens", and very many 2D "screens", and also 3D Abax/"Sand Tables" and Environments.
High powered personal computers with such screens and a suitable UI could let you do a lot more, quicker than what's possible now (I know most will just use it to check facebook in a fancier way ;) ). Add thought-macros and we might actually have what I'd call progress. If you head in this direction, the mobile devices won't be competing with your Desktop/Personal Computers, OS and UIs for quite a while yet. What is likely to happen is they become complementary or even synergistic. The mobile stuff will let you do your virtual telepathy, virtual telekinesis and virtual savant stuff (eidetic memory, fast counting/math, face/gun/etc recognition), while the desktop stuff will help you use up all the cores and power Intel/AMD can provide.
While it's true there isn't much of a market for such devices yet, but the OS and UI has to be in a position to support such devices first. You need the infra, APIs, frameworks so that developers can start building stuff.
Even if it's merely an announcement of direction with no actual tangibles yet, it'll make me more hopeful and excited. The roadmap/direction they've been announcing has been disappointing for all the supposed creative geniuses they are supposedly paying. Who gets excited about Microsoft turning their desktop computer into a more powerful tablet?
Someone will eventually do it. I doubt the present Desktop Linux bunch will or can, nowadays it seems their idea of innovation is to make a UI that's worse than whatever Microsoft shits out. They're so bad that I sometimes wonder if they're being paid to sabotage Desktop Linux.
Maybe Apple might? If Google or Apple succeed in making a decent virtual savant/telepathy/telekinesis wearable device or make a better general purpose UI for Oculus Rift stuff I'd be happy.
Even in the non GUI areas there are plenty of other improvements possible: http://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=379&threshold=0&commentsort=0&mode=improvedthreaded&cid=9518 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Troll) by Hairyfeet on Saturday January 03 2015, @10:07AM
Have you tried 10? Here let me describe it to you...you like Win 7? Want it to run 25%-40% faster depending on the task? Well there ya go. It has a couple of nice new features, all ENTIRELY optional, like the Live Tiles on the Start Menu (I tossed it but for Joe and Jane Normal that like having news and weather updates or into social sites like Twitter? Works fine) or the handy new notification center...otherwise it Windows 7, only faster.
While I'm here let me kill some misconceptions...Win 10 has Metro UI...wrong it ONLY has Metro on tablets and hybrids. Not on a tablet or hybrid? You'l never see it. Win 10 has the awful Metro flat shading...wrong, even on my low end netbook I'm rocking full Aero transparency. You can't have your Windows 7 gadgets...half wrong as OOTB it doesn't have gadgets but you can spend a whole 20 seconds grabbing 8gadgetpack [8gadgetpack.net] and there ya go, even comes with all the most popular ones OOTB so its actually more convenient than the Win 7 gadgets.
Anybody who read me on Slash knows I HATED Vista, couldn't fucking stand Win Mist8ke and Mist8ke 8.11 FW, but Windows 10? I honestly can't find anything more than tiny nits to pick and the pluses far outweigh those nits. as for the nits? I like Win DVD Maker so I'll be keeping a C2Q at the shop with 7 just for that program, I haven't found an easy on/off switch that will let me kick on Metro (yes Metro is deep fried ass but as a 10 foot UI for HTPCs? Its the one place besides tablets it actually works), there may be one but I haven't had time to go hunting but...yeah that is pretty much it, everything else works nice and faster than Win 7 on the same hardware.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by cmn32480 on Saturday January 03 2015, @07:00PM
Try this for going straight to the Start Screen.
http://www.liberiangeek.net/2014/10/always-log-start-screen-metro-windows-10-sign/ [liberiangeek.net]
Disclaimer: I don't have Win 10 to try it on, but if my Google-Fu is good today, it ought to work for your HTPC.
"It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Sunday January 04 2015, @08:26AM
LOL I thought Soylent was about getting AWAY from the groupthink, yet you write a post, in a Windows article no less, that is ANYTHING other than bleating Lunix bullshit [tmrepository.com]? Here come the down mods. Anyway thanks for the heads up, I'll try that with my next HTPC build.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by cmn32480 on Sunday January 04 2015, @06:50PM
I fear not the downmodders, for I have Max Karma. Max Karma is kinda like Max Power (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GvVbIhKh-M [youtube.com]). Only he didn't come from a hair dryer.
And besides, we are all here to learn from each other in the submitted articles and in the discussion. You asked a question, and me, being one of the two or three Windows guys on this site, answered it to the best of my knowledge. I can only hope that I was helpful.
I will also say that I am in the process of pulling the Windows 10 preview to start playing with it in a VM. So we helped each other. You realize we will both likely get banned for that right? :-)
"It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Monday January 05 2015, @12:07PM
I just hate fucking cultists, because they will willingly ignore reality when it conflicts with dogma. be it scientologists, flat earthers, or FOSSies, doesn't matter because you can post a book filled with facts and figures, pages of evidence showing repeatedly they are completely wrong, what do you get? Yet another round of moving the goalposts [tmrepository.com] followed by insults and bullshit.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Saturday January 03 2015, @11:23AM
Except when it's not.
It's faster, noticeably, on same hardware and with same installed applications, even after an in-place upgrade (which was the most painless I've ever seen).
It has features that aren't in 7, that, as a developer, I happen to want - Hyper-V for one (massive improvement over vmware workstation, virtual pc, etc. without having to install Windows Server OS and find that half your laptop hardware doesn't work due to lack of drivers).
Task/resource manager, file copy, and many other small but vital things are vastly improved.
I even like the start screen (although I re-created a start button within an hour of upgrading because I had too much muscle memory for mouse to bottom left corner) - for me, with large numbers of applications installed, it renders a lot faster than the menu on 7 and is more usable (my start menu was often twice the height of the screen). Starting a new application is about the one time I don't mind the UI going full screen.
Yes, there is a lot that I don't like about it, but it is categorically not "worse in every way".
At the time it released (and before with TP and RC) I saw many people, mostly developers, try the upgrade. I saw much debate, I saw many who were disappointed with some aspects of it. I don't think I saw anyone go back to 7. YMMV.
(Score: 1) by German Sausage on Saturday January 03 2015, @09:46PM
Worse in every way? Care to give a few examples of things windows 7 does well, that 8 does poorly? I'm using both and I couldn't tell you any difference. Bear in mind I'm using a replacement start menu.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday January 03 2015, @07:34AM
Why bother with products that are bad not just soo bad and do that enough to numb you so you get used to it? Sounds like self inflicted mental pain.
(Score: 2) by Teckla on Saturday January 03 2015, @01:52PM
I really don't get all the 8 hate? Windows 8 is just fine. If you don't like the Metro desktop - don't use it.
Windows 8.1 user here (at home).
If you're running Windows 8.x, you cannot entirely avoid Metro. Sure, there are replacements for the (absolutely terrible) Metro start screen. But there are also a lot of places in the OS where you get dumped into a Metro app; e.g., a lot of different settings are configured in Metro apps.
Windows 8.1's desktop, and even the new flat UI, seem fine to me. It's anything that takes you into a Metro app that's terrible.
(Score: 2) by arslan on Monday January 05 2015, @03:32AM
I think you just made the argument why there is so much hate and yet completely missed the point.
"If you don't like the Metro desktop - don't use it"
There's the key point right there. Most of the sheeple out there are not like folks here in SN. They don't know or want to buy a device and then have to fiddle and replace the default before they get down to liking dog pics on fb/instagram or take naked pics of themselves via snapchat.
Heck, even as a geek I don't like that... umm the fiddling part that is - not the other stuff. Time is a commodity to me and I only want to fiddle at my own time and choosing.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday January 03 2015, @07:21AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 03 2015, @09:31AM
Windoze: "I'm getting better". [wikiquote.org]
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Saturday January 03 2015, @08:59AM
Don't worry, once Windows 10 comes out 8 will be forgotten about like Vista. And people who compare Vista to 8 are actually insulting Vista which wasn't that bad. Vista's problem was poor driver support out the gate. XP was 2k with a new skin and some extra features. People could use Windows 2k drivers under XP as they shared the same HAL. Vista introduced a lot of HAL changes and that was a major blow. Companies were slow to release drivers and many of the drivers were rushed and buggy as hell. Once the driver dust settled everything was normal and Windows 7 was released. Vista and 7 are very similar so by the time 7 came out they ironed out all the driver and software problems and everything was good. You could use many Vista drivers on 7 so they just had to make a few tweaks to their 7 drivers to make them windows 7 compatible.
The funny thing is the same thing happened with 2k. Though no one really noticed as it uptake outside of corporate and other commercial use was very small. The desktop users outside of corporate world were all on 95/98 or worse yet, Me. They had their drivers and everything worked. Us early 2k adopters were interested in running it on a BP6 or other dual socket/slot board to run Quake 3 and other CPU intensive apps. We didn't have any decent drivers at first either. In some cases we had to wait a long time for drivers. I had beta 2k Nvidia drivers barf on me plenty and good luck getting game pads and joysticks to work without drivers. Sound cards also had really bad 2k drivers in the beginning. It took well over a year of 2k's release before everything started to work properly. And that was primarily related to the fact that 2k was a business OS, not a desktop OS. So there were no priorities for making game pads and 3d/sound cards for gaming work during the early days. By the time XP came out, all of the 2k drivers were firmly working. No one noticed any problems because before XP, 98/Me were the standard MS desktop OS, not 2k. So moving to XP was a breeze for regular desktop users. By then, the drivers were all working for the most part. And if here weren't any official XP drivers then 2k drivers could be used without any problems.
Windows 8 on the other hand tried to do two, really stupid things: First they tried to turn a desktop OS that has looked and worked nearly the same for almost 20 years and turned it into a tablet OS. The completely different and often confusing metro interface with its full screen only apps, charms bar and start screen threw everyone for a loop. It was too big a change, too fast and pissed off a lot of people. The second screw up was when they declared all of their Win32 API's and applications legacy and that Metro was the new standard API. I have managers who still to this day refuse to even look a Windows 8 because of personal experiences with its interface, never mind technical ones.
I have tested out Windows 10 In a VM and it's not that bad. Even runs VB6 application that were written in the early 2000's under 2k. Same basic Windows desktop interface and metro apps run in a resizable window. A much more sane approach. But they sill have time to screw it up if they choose. My guess is they wont as everyone I know who is testing the 10 preview is very satisfied and has submitted feedback. My Windows 10 preview VM is still used from time to time for basic testing. Whereas the Windows 8 VM I had was deleted after only a few days of frustrating use.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Saturday January 03 2015, @10:22AM
Nope sorry, bullshit on the field, 15 yard penalty. I had Vista on what was for the time some pretty nice hardware (Pentium 4 3.6Ghz with HT, 4GB of RAM, 7600GS later replaced with X1650 pro, dual 200GB HDDs) and I'm sorry but Vista was deep fried monkey shit. Did it get better after SP2? Yeah but there was XP X64 that ran great so I didn't care about giving that half baked mess another round after 6 months of pain and suffering. I don't want to retype it so I will just paste what I did on Slash when somebody defending that mess of an OS..
Oh Vista how I hated thee, let me count the ways-1.-Network slows to a fucking crawl when I listen to music or watch videos. Yeah I really missed having to not touch my PC when I download, like good old Windows 95! -2.-Networks shares that would "disappear" even though everyone else on the network could see them fine, and only a hard reboot would fix. Yes, I really missed the days of Win9x and daily reboots, thanks Vista! -3.-The thrashing. Oh Jebus Tap Dancing Christ on a Cracker did that thing love to thrash! On a 3.6GHz, with 4Gb of RAM and a 7600GS to offload the desktop, and after applying every tweak and fix I could find, the bastard still thrashed so hard that it killed a brand new 200Gb HDD. You know, I had actually forgotten what a thrashing hard drive was like. Thanks Vista!
Honestly the only nice thing I an say about Vista is I made extra $$$ from all the people wanting that thing gone....just like I did with Win 8, but other than that? XP X64 (which was IRL 2K3 X64 Workstation) ran rings around the thing and both XP X64 and Win 7 X64 were simply a better experience. The only thing I ever liked about Vista was the black theme which ironically I've kept to this very day, the Win 7 I'm typing this on still runs Vista Black and that will be as close as any of my gear will get to Vista ever again!
Oh and just FYI but even the drivers provided by MSFT that had passed WHQL? Still buggy crapola. If you can't even give a decent OOTB experience then WAIT UNTIL YOU CAN instead of releasing a broken RAM sucking HDD thrashing POS!
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Saturday January 03 2015, @06:34PM
Okay, how many other people did you know who experienced those same symptoms? I never had those problems. I knew two other people running Vista Pro who also never had any of those problems. Were you running Pro? Any MS OS with Home in its name should have been called the "Fuck You Edition".
You had two problems, disk thrashing and networking. The disk thrashing certainly was a huge problem. I was also concerned my disk would die prematurely. That was fixed after a two useless services were turned off: super fetch and indexing. I also did the other steps including disabling system restore and something else that I cant remember. That stopped the disk thrashing completely. I even once jokingly said it was a conspiracy concocted by the disk makers and MS to sell more disks. You networking problem is one I never experienced so I cant comment o it. Could be shit drivers or something else entirely. Networking worked the way it was supposed to on my machine. I ran Vista on an AMD Dual core with an Nvidia 8600 video card. It had its share of problems that were promptly fixed and I never had a complaint afterward.
I'm not defending it in the sense that it was good, there were plenty of things that really pissed me off about Vista. UAC was another joke that was bypassed with days of its release by crackers. That was also disabled. Windows 7 improved upon UAC by letting you control its intrusiveness. Windows 8 is a joke because unlike Vista, there is no simple way to fix its issues. Oh, download windows shell and then ... NO! Fuck that. I am not using 3rd party free ware or payware to fix someones epic blunder. But it gives you back the start menu! Nope, sorry. Let them suffer and not make a fucking dime until that shit is fixed.
I had XP64 running on my brothers PC. It was pretty damn nice being able to finally see all 4GB of RAM but it was short on drivers as well. Video and sound weren't a problem but a few gaming devices he had did not have drivers for a few months until a buggy beta was released. Face it, any new MS OS is going to have it's pitfalls. In my experience, being an early adopter has its risks but you made that choice. And of course, everyone's experience varies. I knew a guy who hated XP and kept 2k until windows 7 was released! Why? Something along the lines of XP using too much RAM. Ever try to run XP on only 256MB? Painful is only beginning to describe it. I had 2k running on an old dual Pentium 233 with just 64MB RAM and it ran fine, not a rocket ship but it did the job. 256MB was more than enough for 2k.
(Score: 1) by rleigh on Saturday January 03 2015, @08:43PM
The network slowing to a crawl was a widely-publicised bug at the time, and a really bizarre problem. I think they fixed it in one of the service packs.
I suffer daily from broken networking in Windows since Vista. "Network drive already in use" after coming back from suspend or other transient network interruption/Windows randomly having a spasm prevents access to your mounted network drives. You can unmap and remap the drives, or reboot, but the flakiness which has gone unfixed for years is a travesty. All it needs to do is retry the operation I think! It's still broken in 7 and 8 and 8.1... Makes having a reliable filesystem quite difficult. I get this on all Windows machines, from at home with a FreeBSD Samba server to work with a full enterprise AD setup. Really annoys me.
I'm now on 8.1; got it through my employer since their site licence permits it for home working. I certainly wouldn't have paid money for it, the asking price is beyond silly even with an academic discount. It's OK once you have disabled all the metro junk, which is a one-time PITA. I can't say there's much different or missing from 7 in daily use once you've "fixed" it. It's mediocre, same as all the releases before it.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Wednesday January 07 2015, @04:05AM
As another posted the network bug was NOT an isolated incident, a LOT of people got bit in the ass by that one, including IIRC Paul Thurott who gave Vista a thumbs down review (which he never does, I swear that guy must have a winflag tattoo for all the excusing he does) and the forums was filled with pissed users.
Oh and those weren't my only problems BTW, that was just the two that were hit the most. There was the lost shares bug, the "no sound hardware detected" bug that I ended up having to get a .reg file to run every time Vista decided I didn't have a sound card,there was the "senior moments" which REALLY pissed me off and which I found out later was pretty common. That is the one were Windows just "hangs" and become unresponsive for a few minutes even when you aren't slamming the CPU, boy that one pissed me off! Don't even get me started on the wireless, the wireless was just awful in Vista it would forget settings, say I had no bars when I was right in front of the WAP..Remember this was with the baked in WHQL drivers, the drivers MSFT said "These are good enough to ship with our OS" but even those were crap...
Look I could go on all day, Vista was a mess and frankly they never did ever get it to perform as well as either XP X64 or Win 7 X64, not even close. I'm glad it "works for you" but then again I had a guy that ran WinME for a decade with ZERO problems. Does this mean WinME wasn't buggy as hell? Nope it just means that he got lucky and had the right mix of software and hardware that WinME ran well with, likewise you got lucky and didn't hit any major show stoppers. Congratulations for that bit o' luck but sadly many of us? Not as lucky as you.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday January 07 2015, @05:46PM
I guess I was lucky then. I knew one or two other people running it, maybe around a year or so. They switched back to XP for technical reasons that I forget. I think software compatibility as they did a lot of work with VB6. I recall UAC having something to do with it.
My first laptop was a Sony Vaio P3 1GHz w/64MB. It came with Windows Me and the damn thing couldn't go a day without a BSOD. Looked at it funny? It's BSOD time! I switched back to 98 and then to 2k when it matured a bit more. I maxed out the memory to a whopping 256MB and 2k ran like butter. Later on it ran Debian, might still boot as I still have it.
So far 10 in my VM looks good. I can even run VB6 code that isn't going away (ERP software that I guarantee you is written by halfwit hacks in VB). 10 might be a hit and not a miss.
(Score: 2) by unitron on Saturday January 03 2015, @10:31AM
...that 7 still seems to be selling for more than 8?
And that's just the OEM versions, if you want, and can find, the full retail version, it's an arm and a leg still.
something something Slashcott something something Beta something something
(Score: 1) by bornagainpenguin on Saturday January 03 2015, @11:01PM
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 04 2015, @12:13AM
I ABSOLUTELY HATE THE .NET Framework runtime libraries ...I don't give a fuck about rapid development paradigms and the niceties of the C-sharp programming language ......this this is not portable, it pollutes my system with thousands of extra files and registry entries like shit being thrown onto a blanket! it is a fucking joke and, as far as I'm concerned, a great way to introduce backdoors and security holes and uncontrollable obfuscated crap all over my system. If I want to run a JAVA program, all I need to do is copy the JRE "bin" directory to a single defined location and start a "jar" program with a command line pointing to "javaw.exe" in the "bin" folder, all done, nice and portable!
Given my above feelings, and the fact that Post-Windows-7 Microsoft operating systems and driver installers are designed to require the .NET Framework to function, my relationship with Microsoft Windows operating systems is ending with Windows XP, no ifs or buts about it!!!!!
Yeah, I heard recently that Microsoft has decided to release the .NET Framework as open source and has promised not to sue anybody who uses it......too late assholes, stick the whole thing up your fucking asses, not interested, fuck off! I am not interested in your products anymore, and a big FUCK YOU TOO to anybody who programs in C-sharp no matter how much you like programming with it.
When the day comes that my Windows XP system and current hardware no longer play nice with my workflow, that is the day I move to FREE non-Microsoft operating systems and never look back!
Goodbye Microsoft.....see you all in hell**
**except for the retired original engineers who created Windows2000/XP like David Cutler and company, and an honorary pass for Charles Petzold for his great books on C programming on Win32....I'll see you guys in heaven ++++
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 04 2015, @12:39AM
Microsoft has decided to release the .NET Framework as open source
To start, "open" is the antithesis of the M$ business model.
This tactic is smoke and mirrors, meant to distract you and get you to lower your guard.
1) What they released was only PART of the dotNET glob.
2) What they released had ALREADY been reverse-engineered and was ALREADY part of the Mono project.
(You could have the same capabilities -with- GPL'd code.)
3) The license M$ chose will allow them to close the source again in the future.
Embrace, extend, extinguish.
4) M$ doesn't do anything without applying for a patent, so, if you are going to swallow this bilge, be sure to find/read the files that come with your "open" code.
PATENTS.TXT [google.com]
and has promised not to sue anybody
There's a long line of former M$ "partners" who would like a word with you.
You could start each encounter by helping them pull the knife out of their back.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by EQ on Sunday January 04 2015, @05:45AM
They have 7 stable, 8 doesn't offer anything vital. Next major tech refresh in the cycle is being held back until "after the first major patch" of windows 10 (or whatever it ends up being). Reason for that is a partner company jumped on 8 early, and there was a hell of a lot of push-back from the users and admins. So it was perceived by the CIO as a "flop. Political bonus: the CIO gets to recommend the delay and that means less spending for now so he looks like a cost cutting hero.