Windows 8 is far less of an operating system than Xerox Star or AmigaOS.

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neubejiita
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I have tried Windows 8 "Profesional" on my computer and after installing updates it goes to a black screen on boot with only a mouse cursor on the screen. Games run very well on this "operating system" but why the fuck does it not work very well? Is this the best that Microsoft can do after all these years? Back to Linux Mint 14 for me I guess. I will have to go back to dual booting with Windows 7 Ultimate if I want to use Doom Builder 2 and use MS Office. Although Google Docs is taking over in terms of creating documents. But I digress, Windows 8 is shite. I will try rolling back with the system restore and then disabling updates.

Btw, you press F5 now for that..,. Why they changed it I have no idea.

02-16-13 10:33 #

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Bucket
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Clearly something went wrong, but your tone suggests Windows normally acts like that. It doesn't.

02-16-13 19:27 #

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Bouncy
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Posts: 123
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Yeah, i'm one of Windows 8's criticizers, and even I can clearly recognize something is seriously borked there. That's not normal Win 8 at all.

02-16-13 19:28 #

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Jodwin
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neubejiita said:
I have tried Windows 8 "Profesional" on my computer and after installing updates it goes to a black screen on boot with only a mouse cursor on the screen. Games run very well on this "operating system" but why the fuck does it not work very well? Is this the best that Microsoft can do after all these years? Back to Linux Mint 14 for me I guess. I will have to go back to dual booting with Windows 7 Ultimate if I want to use Doom Builder 2 and use MS Office. Although Google Docs is taking over in terms of creating documents. But I digress, Windows 8 is shite. I will try rolling back with the system restore and then disabling updates.

Btw, you press F5 now for that..,. Why they changed it I have no idea.

Having used Win8 for half a year on my development box at work, and knowing something about your OS history, I can fairly safely conclude that you're both wrong and biased.

02-16-13 23:28 #

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exp(x)

Posts: 2459
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neubejiita said:
I will have to go back to dual booting with Windows 7 Ultimate if I want to use Doom Builder 2 and use MS Office.

Ever hear of virtual machines? They're pretty cool.

02-17-13 00:57 #

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neubejiita
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Posts: 541
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I managed to fix it, but is still very frustrating. Still, the ability to install Media Centre makes Windows 8 just as good as Windows 7 on the desktop and the Metro start screen is a fast way to access your critical applications.

02-17-13 05:39 #

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Maes
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Why the hell would someone want to jump on a new, untested OS bandwagon, when a much stabler and mature OS is available? Yeah, that includes Windows XP if you're so inclined, but Windows 7 is also just getting started flexing its muscles.

Unless you buy into that Metro and mobile integration fairytale, Windows 7 is where it's at for at least a good 5 years to come, taking XP's place as the "workhorse" OS. Windows 8 is clearly a transitional gimmick, just like Vista was.

02-17-13 15:56 #

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printz
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I like Windows 8 more than Aero Glass. Doesn't it consume less power? (relevant for laptops) Yeah I know you can easily turn off Aero Glass without making Windows 7 look like 98. But wasteful things need to go.

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02-17-13 16:07 #

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Graf Zahl
Why don't I have a custom title by now?!

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Maes said:

Unless you buy into that Metro and mobile integration fairytale, Windows 7 is where it's at for at least a good 5 years to come, taking XP's place as the "workhorse" OS. Windows 8 is clearly a transitional gimmick, just like Vista was.

Sadly, buyers of new computers have no choice. It's Window 8 only unless you buy at a small shop that custom builds its systems and sells the OS license separately.

Aside from that I agree. Nobody needs Windows 8 and it looks like the customers realize this. Hence bad sales numbers.

Microsoft really believed that people would like Metro and upgrade in masses...

02-17-13 16:11 #

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Jodwin
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Maes said:
Windows 7 is where it's at for at least a good 5 years to come

DirectX disagrees.

02-17-13 17:24 #

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Bucket
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Microsoft will bend on DirectX support, just like they did with plenty of other things that the market didn't like.

02-17-13 17:51 #

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Graf Zahl
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Jodwin said:

DirectX disagrees.

We see how it went last time: Non-adoption of the newer version for years. Who honestly thinks it's different this time.

Even now most software makers still use DX9 to support XP.

As long as Win 8 remains at single or low double digit market share nobody will produce commercial software that depends on it.

02-17-13 18:55 #

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Maes
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Jodwin said:

DirectX disagrees.

DirectX 10.0 has been hardly a "killer app" or decisive factor for the desktop scene moving on to 7.

For one reason or the other, 9.0 remained the booty daddy of the industry, and will remain so until you stop seeing "Windows XP" on the compatibility list of all newly released games (at any level, not just AAA titles).

How long do you think it will take for 11.0 to reach "entry level minimum standard" status, given the above?

02-17-13 19:55 #

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Jodwin
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Maes said:
How long do you think it will take for 11.0 to reach "entry level minimum standard" status, given the above?

Minimum standard? Probably the graphics card generation after the next one. But regarding visual fidelity the difference between DX 9 and DX 11 capabilities is huge, and no "PC gamer" building a new machine today would limit themselves on DX 9 with XP.

@Bucket: Tell that to WinXP. ;)

@Graf: They don't need to create Win8-only games, nowadays a lot of games come with both DX9 and DX11 versions. Adding one more for even more advanced Win8-only DirectX isn't that big of a change.

02-18-13 11:31 #

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The Doomist
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Windows 8's desktop looks like an edited version of the XBox desktop.
Anyways, I think I'll stick to my trusty Windows 7 for a while, just like my XP which was about 7 years. Like many people, I didn't like their big leap from the start menu to a bunch of squares. I did not try 8 yet, nor do I really want to, and the start menu and task bar have been with me since Windows 95. Microsoft screwed up twice already when it came to OSes (I think), which is the ME and Vista. This time, it seems it's just the market. Who knows what's next in the PC world? Heck, many schools still use XP. I got my trusty Windows 7 laptop for school, and the desktop for gaming and everything else. Windows was practically with me my entire life!

Microsoft just wants more and more money in these coming years. Although, I want to stand by their side anyway.

02-22-13 23:38 #

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printz
CRAZY DUMB ZEALOT

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One more thing I like about Windows 8: updates seem to happen in the background now, they no longer pester you.

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02-22-13 23:52 #

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Graf Zahl
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Jodwin said:

Minimum standard? Probably the graphics card generation after the next one. But regarding visual fidelity the difference between DX 9 and DX 11 capabilities is huge, and no "PC gamer" building a new machine today would limit themselves on DX 9 with XP.

@Bucket: Tell that to WinXP. ;)

@Graf: They don't need to create Win8-only games, nowadays a lot of games come with both DX9 and DX11 versions. Adding one more for even more advanced Win8-only DirectX isn't that big of a change.

Who knows? Maybe the game developers finally get sick of Microsoft's antics and migrate to OpenGL - provided that AMD finally manages to get their act together with their drivers.

02-22-13 23:56 #

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Caffeine Freak
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Maes said:
Why the hell would someone want to jump on a new, untested OS bandwagon, when a much stabler and mature OS is available? Yeah, that includes Windows XP if you're so inclined, but Windows 7 is also just getting started flexing its muscles.

I always wait until the new Windows OS is at least at SP2 before I upgrade.

02-23-13 07:55 #

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Aliotroph?
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Maes said:
Why the hell would someone want to jump on a new, untested OS bandwagon, when a much stabler and mature OS is available? Yeah, that includes Windows XP if you're so inclined, but Windows 7 is also just getting started flexing its muscles.

When I worked in tech support I did it with Vista so I'd be intimately familiar with the thing and the various sorts of issues customers might have. It was pretty painful at times.

This was the only real reason I could come up with. Vista a few nice UI features (the bread crumbs in the address bars come to mind), but even DirectX 10 wasn't worth the trouble. It took forever for hardware vendors to support Vista properly and lots of software broke for strange reasons.

Vista is somewhat better now, but 7 is better still. 8 is up in the air. The one person I know who uses it regularly managed to find a tool to drop a regular Start Menu back in. It hasn't proven at all popular among my friends so far.

02-23-13 08:56 #

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printz
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Why is classic start menu where you either:

- have to open several layers of submenus (XP)
- have to click and scroll through some folders in a small space (7)
-> both of them with shortcuts grouped by vendor, and not by purpose

is considered better than a large screen of easily located buttons?

Note that you can easily configure the Windows 8 start screen to only include the icons that interest you, and you can group them in categories (click the minus sign on the lower right, then right-click the clusters of tiles to name them). Adding and removing shortcuts on the Windows 8 start screen is much easier than doing the same on older start menus. Just let that thing die already. I hope Microsoft releases a Windows update that breaks it.

Of course, the start screen is not right up there. I can pin folder shortcuts to it, but not documents or web pages (and the menus allowed that). I really wish I could put full widget applications there, like in Android, but I can't. At the most which can be considered "widgets" are the wide metro tiles which might show some informations or notifications, but they're not interactive enough; all they do is launch their metro app.

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02-23-13 09:52 #

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DoomUK
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printz said:
-> both of them with shortcuts grouped by vendor, and not by purpose

Is it just me who arranges their start menu folders in a sensible fashion?

02-23-13 10:08 #

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Graf Zahl
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printz said:
Why is classic start menu where you either:

- have to open several layers of submenus (XP)
- have to click and scroll through some folders in a small space (7)
-> both of them with shortcuts grouped by vendor, and not by purpose

is considered better than a large screen of easily located buttons?

For the simple reason that it's fullscreen and obstructs the view on any other window you might have opened.

The other big problem is lack of folders. Any serious power user got so much stuff installed that on this idiocy of a start screen it just becomes an endless list of useless options.

This becomes especially troublesome if you need most of this stuff only on rare occasions but still have to wade through all of it to find what you need. No, thank you!

I'm on Win 7 and still use Classic Shell to get the old Win95 style start menu which is by far the one that serves me best.

It's typical Microsoft to remove and replace old options instead of complementing them with the new.

And I think the amount of hate and ridicule the new start screen has received on the net speaks volumes. If it was generally considered a good option things would look different - but no matter where I look, it's just negativity plus a handful of annoying company plants trying to disrupt it.

02-23-13 10:44 #

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printz
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Graf Zahl said:

For the simple reason that it's fullscreen and obstructs the view on any other window you might have opened.

Indeed, it could be better by looking like a popover that's not fullscreen, but with the same interface. I could say the thing of all the metro apps, which indeed are useless and slow right now (unless there's no desktop equivalent as good).

The other big problem is lack of folders. Any serious power user got so much stuff installed that on this idiocy of a start screen it just becomes an endless list of useless options.

For what it's worth, you can group the mess that appears after normal app installations into categories; however they're not collapsable like folders.

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Last edited by printz on 02-23-13 at 11:42

02-23-13 11:31 #

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Aliotroph?
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Graf Zahl said:

For the simple reason that it's fullscreen and obstructs the view on any other window you might have opened.

The other big problem is lack of folders. Any serious power user got so much stuff installed that on this idiocy of a start screen it just becomes an endless list of useless options.

This becomes especially troublesome if you need most of this stuff only on rare occasions but still have to wade through all of it to find what you need. No, thank you!

I'm on Win 7 and still use Classic Shell to get the old Win95 style start menu which is by far the one that serves me best.

It's typical Microsoft to remove and replace old options instead of complementing them with the new.

And I think the amount of hate and ridicule the new start screen has received on the net speaks volumes. If it was generally considered a good option things would look different - but no matter where I look, it's just negativity plus a handful of annoying company plants trying to disrupt it.

The only difference between what you described and the classic start menu is the presence of folders. The Windows 95 start menu was frustrating once a lot of programs were installed because it would span the screen in a way that made it hard to find stuff.

I don't care that it's fullscreen. The chance you need to look at anything else while you look for the icon you want is usually zero. I haven't had the chance to use it on a PC for a while and decide if I dislike it or not. It may lead to navigation problems because of the general (lack of) organization, but every iteration of the start menu has had issues with that. I can see it was designed for tablets, and maybe it's idea for that (it's easier to see than the iPad's icons).

What pisses me off about Windows 8 is areas of the screen that activate different modes when the cursor meets them. I hate every UI that does that and I hate when Mac users turn that stupid feature on. It's easy to send a mouse pointer drifting into a corner and I don't expect to see some menu appearing at random because that happened. That device really only works well on touch screens.

As for programmers changing things, they all do that. Developers in general are good at deciding they have the right idea and just building it. MS has only kept certain things for as long as they have because they've been told to. Apple changes features of their OS frequently and Linux people do it so often I never know what I'm about to encounter. Keeping the old options often makes things harder to maintain, even if it would be ideal. Maybe MS has less of an excuse because they have so much money.

MS has been trying to encourage the use of more features in their software. That was the genesis of the ribbons in place of the menus. Time will tell if it will work out, and those of us who prefer text to pictures will probably learn where stuff is just in time for them to change it around again.

02-23-13 12:01 #

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Graf Zahl
Why don't I have a custom title by now?!

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Aliotroph? said:

The only difference between what you described and the classic start menu is the presence of folders. The Windows 95 start menu was frustrating once a lot of programs were installed because it would span the screen in a way that made it hard to find stuff.

Not if you do a little maintenance yourself.
Nothing dictates that you have to leave all entries where they are put initially - I don't because most vendors do the same crap, creating a 'vendor' folder first and putting everything in there, regardless of what the software does.

I prefer an organization where the top level only contains groups of functionality and subfolders with the various programs. That way the start menu will not grow too large.

That part's not that important anyway. For me the most used parts of the start menu is not the 'programs' folder, but 'settings', 'documents', the most recently used list and a few select tools I pinned in the start menu itself. All stuff that's either not doable with Win8's ridiculous start screen or only with a major disruption of work flow.

02-23-13 12:22 #

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Doomworld Forums > Misc. > Everything Else > Windows 8 is far less of an operating system than Xerox Star or AmigaOS.

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