Windows 8

Xeros612 said:

OH WHAT THE FLYING FUCK IS THIS FAGGY ASS HIPSTER SHIT. Sorry microsoft guy, but I want my PC to be... A PC. NOT an oversized tablet/"smart" phone. Fuck that nonsense. I'll stick with this 7 install for the next decade if I have to to avoid this thing. Why can't technological engineers just let computers be computers and let all those other hipster devices stay as they are? What is wrong with a computer acting like a mouse-and-keyboard (with other optional peripherals like a drawing table, gaming peripherals like wheels and joysticks) driven computing machine like it was designed to be, and not some knock-off of a craptacular "phone" that all the moron "cool kids" walk around texting on all day?

Computers are no longer the hidden preserve of the hardcore. Get used to it. Besides if the fashionable, hipster interface is toggleable then all is well.

It's still Windows. 95% of the interface is toggleable if you are sufficiently motivated to bother with it.

From what I understand M$ are forking Wind0ze between ARM (tablets, phones) and x86 versions anyway, so what is all the fuss about

Johnatone said:

Also, I'd like to see the release of new technology slow down just a bit; technology is developing too damn fast. Release a damn piece of technology and then let us use it for four or five years and speand that time developing technology that's a hundred times better instead of releasing new shit every six months to a year that's only slightly better already. Goddammit.

Heh, you wouldn't like OpenBSD's release cycle (every 6 months, like clockwork). Of course, it's up to the user if he wants to upgrade or not. I'm still running 4.7 on my laptop, even though 4.9 came out just recently. Maybe I'll get next release, if it has anything interesting, we'll see. ;) Really the only time upgrade is a must is for new driver support or some major bug fix (but even security patches can be back-ported, and officially they support releases up to one year old).

If I wanted to turn my desktop into a PDA-looking thing, well there's already an X11 app for that. ;) But nothing I ever tried works better than my simple and minimalist twm setup. And over the years I tried every single desktop environment and window manager I came across. Some lasted longer than others, but they all eventually ended up pkg_delete'd. The vast majority of them felt only like cosmetic changes (and not good ones), plus a whole lot of bloat to make your machine run slow.

My favorite Windows interface was the one in 3.x and NT 3.51. This is not a statement about the underlying OS but rather the desktop's aesthetics and operation.

neubejiita said:

Is this a bigger evolution of the Windows desktop than the change from Windows 3.11 to Windows `95?

Can Microsoft pull it off without reverse engineering other people's intellectual property?

Xeros612 should have said:

Fuck that nonsense. I'll stick with this 7 XP install for the next decade if I have to to avoid this thing.

FTFY <3

Planky said:

How does a boot sector dying cause a BSOD? I can understand it not booting, but it shouldnt be referenced/access whilst its running?

Bluescreens can happen during the boot process, and Unmountable Boot Volume is just one of the possible ones.

Man I can't wait til Windows 10 in 3 years :-) You know what this means don't you? Another $200 for MS Office!

I'm still using Office 2K3.

Aliotroph? said:

Microsoft adds things to their OS so it will work with more types of devices and everybody hates it? WTF If they do a decent job with the touch interface then why not have it?

Wasn't one of the main bitching points against Vista the fact that it was too "bloated" with crap? (And considering I saw a 40 GB increase in free data space after upgrading to 7 and reinstalling all my programs, I'm inclined to agree with this.) Why is the "bloating" of the OS acceptable now? It's just adding unnecessary crap to the main OS drive to appease the easily amused by technology crowd. Besides, the general trend of tech developments is an "older" feature becoming secondary and optional, then being completely removed for the "newer" feature in the next release, like the classic start menu surviving til Vista and being removed in 7.

@Maes No, no, no. My undying hatred for XP has only grown since the family's computer BSOD'd on me TWICE while I was backing up files to upgrade it to a non-shitty Windows OS. YOUR JOKE IS INVALID

geo said:

Man I can't wait til Windows 10 in 3 years :-) You know what this means don't you? Another $200 for MS Office!

I'm still using Office 2K3.

Heh, my parents got me 2k6 with my second computer, and I'm still using it. I mean seriously, are the new versions going to have CUTTING EDGE NEW ADVANCES IN WORD PROCESSING TECHNOLOGY or something?

Danarchy said:

I mean seriously, are the new versions going to have CUTTING EDGE NEW ADVANCES IN WORD PROCESSING TECHNOLOGY or something?

Well, 2K7 was indeed a massive improvement over 2K3 on all fronts. Much more robust and stable, new docx format, much better built-in handling of formulae and bibliography etc., all things I came to appreciate while finishing up my MSc this year and comparing how much grief 2K3 had given me in those same fields just a few years ago, when I was finishing my grad. thesis. And unlike e.g. Vista/7 vs XP, it's not bloated: runs just as well on anything that ran 2003. Now THAT'S what I call an improvement an all fronts, which unfortunately tend to be very rare nowadays.

I'll wait until Win7 support is near the end of its lifecycle (Jan 2015) before upgrading.

Mr. Chris said:

I'll wait until Win7 support is near the end of its lifecycle (Jan 2015) before upgrading.

Windows 7 lifecycle is just one year beyond XP's extended support? Heh.

Quasar said:

Windows 7 on the other hand, I just regularly find that my machine has reset itself for no discernable reason.

So, in short, "most stable" it certainly is not. XP was much more solid in tons of ways.

Sounds like a personal problem to me. I'm running Windows 7 on five different machines, and I've never seen a single crash/reboot that wasn't my own dumb fault on any of them.

Maes said:

much better built-in handling of formulae

this. I miss my Equation tool when working in .doc

1) Open up Windows Calculator
2) Click on the "View" menu
3) Shit brix

Its great Windows 8 has support for touch screens, but other than that there's no logical reason for it. Windows based tablets are getting their asses kicked because its tough to use. It is a logical step... but they should've taken that step LAST YEAR!

Fuck even Adobe Creative Suite 5.0 promised touch screen stuff and it delivered, but Apple said not our touch screens!!! After everyone bought 5.0. Now a year or so later, they have 5.5 that Apple will allow. Wow.

As for MS Office, my work has Office Vista and none of us can fucking use it, because its so cumbersome.

NOW Office Word has an Office Word Starter which is like having the same program twice!!! Just like Microsoft discontinued Windows Outlook Emailer for Microsoft Windows Live Emailer. Both are free programs. Makes no sense.

Xeros612 said:

OH WHAT THE FLYING FUCK IS THIS FAGGY ASS HIPSTER SHIT.

Trying too hard to be like Apple or Android. Actually, the "Windows Phone" UI looks like a series of colored cards, so much that it reminds me of a shitty 80s boardgame, and transitioning it to the desktop looks...well....shitty. Ubuntu tried too hard with 11.x to introduce an "Android-like" look as well, but luckily you can revert to Gnome Classic.

Get over it people: just because it has big buttons that look clean and minimalist, that won't make me feel like a metrosexual New York women's magazine cosmopolitan columnist or designer.

Xeros612 said:

My undying hatred for XP has only grown since the family's computer BSOD'd on me TWICE while I was backing up files to upgrade it to a non-shitty Windows OS.

Meh - I stopped using Windows to backup Windows years ago since there's ALWAYS files the OS won't let you touch while it's running.

Bucket said:

1) Open up Windows Calculator
2) Click on the "View" menu
3) Shit brix

?

Are you talking to me?

The solution to MS Office bloatage:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiword
;)

Seriously, that's what I use to read .doc files that people email me, even though they could have sent a plain old TXT file, or even RTF or HTML if the formatting is critical (usually it's not).

Occasionally have to break out the OOo to edit some work-related document, but I try to avoid it. It chews up my preciousssss (RAM). Those filthy bloated apps! We hates them!

To write tech documentation, I use vi and possibly LaTeX, or some other editor-agnostic markup language. With the right templates and a simple makefile it's a piece of cake.

exp(x) said:

I haven't been excited about a new version of Windows since 98. It permanently jaded me.

GreyGhost said:

Meh - I stopped using Windows to backup Windows years ago since there's ALWAYS files the OS won't let you touch while it's running.

Actually, I was simply moving files to external storage devices manually. And bam, two BSODs right out of nowhere. Windows XP surely is great!

@hex11 if OpenOffice.org (which I'm assuming OOo is) is chewing up your computer that much, maybe you should stop trying to run everything on a 20 year old computer. It's got to be absolute shite if a program that simple is using up too many resources for it.

I want a windows 7 that does things that windows XP can. Thats it.

Im not sure what this windows 8 will be like, but I'm sure it'll be full of bugs and issues and more questions will spawn such as "will it work with windows 8" "I have windows 8, will this work for it?"

on download links everywhere.

We need to stop trying to progress so quickly.

8 is looking great. Like it's been said, the new UI will be optional, so if you don't like it just STFU, you don't have to use it. Of course 99 % of people here at DW won't be using it, I'd bet, but there's a whole lot of people out there that really don't know shit about computers and will be more than happy to say good bye to directly accessing the file system and stuff like that. The new UI isn't for power users like you and me, but it's for those other normal people out there, and I'm sure it'll work fine for them.

It also looks like they'll be going for even stronger integration and similarity with WP7, so the move to adapt the WP7 UI in a PC Windows is also a try to break into the mobile phone market ("If people are already using our phone's UI on their PCs and they like it, they'll be more likely to buy our phones as well").



also, lol@lunixfagots

printz said:
ARM support? Interesting.

I, for one, welcome our new ARMed overlords.

(In that I hope it encourages lower prices and greater availability of non-x86-based hardware...)

Xeros612 said:

@hex11 if OpenOffice.org (which I'm assuming OOo is) is chewing up your computer that much, maybe you should stop trying to run everything on a 20 year old computer. It's got to be absolute shite if a program that simple is using up too many resources for it.

Let's see, 20 years ago (1991), I had an Amiga 500. Now that was a sweet machine, and very memory-efficient too!

These days, I have a ThinkPad laptop with Pentium 4M 1.8 GHz and 1/2 GB RAM. Most of the time, hardly any RAM is being used, because I stick with lean & mean tools. It's only when I (reluctantly) start up a bloated program like firefox or OOo that my response times go from "instantaneous" to "somewhat sluggish". Mostly it happens when the bloated POS is starting up, disk is spinning, and it's loading its piggy bits in RAM. Some people have become accustomed to this behavior, because over the course of years that's how their OS and programs all behaved. But I've always remained very councious and aware about this stuff. It's not that my machine can't run this junk, it's that I don't want to subject it or myself to it. That's one of the reasons I don't use Windows, or heavy desktop environments in Unix, etc. I don't support, condone, or make excuses for bad bloated software, no matter how much marketing or "pretty" screenshots are used to sell them.

hex11 said:

I SUCK AND USE A COMPUTER WITH A SHITTY PROCESSOR AND 1/8th OF TODAY'S STANDARD AMOUNT OF RAM AND IT'S TOTALLY NOT MY FAULT I CAN'T RUN TODAY'S SOFTWARE

cool story bro

Jodwin said:

but there's a whole lot of people out there that really don't know shit about computers and will be more than happy to say good bye to directly accessing the file system and stuff like that.

Heh, that's exactly the premise with which (in order) DOS Shell, Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 were pushed out of the window.

So I guess that the level of the "don't-know-shit" lusers drops as time passes? So maybe a Win 95 era "dunno shit"-type of clueless user could very well rank as a modern Power User!

I wonder what the next step will be....demotivational computing? The computer will persuade you friendly NOT to use it anymore, not attempt to do anything that might require creativity, adaptation and interaction and just sit on your ass and watch TV instead. ;-)

Maes said:

So I guess that the level of the "don't-know-shit" lusers drops as time passes? So maybe a Win 95 era "dunno shit"-type of clueless user could very well rank as a modern Power User!

How large percentage of people were using computers in 1995?

How large percentage of people are using computers today?

It's only obvious that there's both more and worse "don't-know-shit" people using computers today. And at the same time, the things that we do with computers have been only increasing. Nowadays it's not just some fancy tool for doing your work or playing your games, you also use it to listen to music, watch movies and photos, communicate with people, etc, all things which either had their own much simpler dedicated devices or no device at all back then. These are all things that we can do easily, but there's people out there who shudder at the thought of ripping songs from their own CDs into a hard drive and listening to them, or even worse, copying them to an mp3 player.