Thread: Windows 8

Originally Posted by Takeovers

Originally Posted by Sucubus

Originally Posted by Fondles

Touchscreens are hand held devices not something that sits 2 foot in front of you on a desk.

How naive. Maybe for you, but there are plenty of applications where touchscreens are extremely useful, like Process Control.

There is more. Those large touchscreens for the weathermen and for election results on TV are a nice gimmick.

Those aren't touch screens - those are blue- or green-screens.

Originally Posted by Anatidaephobia

Of course, now that he's fired anyone and everyone that could have succeeded him, who's left?

Butterfly?

Originally Posted by Anatidaephobia

Those aren't touch screens - those are blue- or green-screens.

Are you sure? It does not look like it to me.

Originally Posted by Takeovers

Originally Posted by Anatidaephobia

Those aren't touch screens - those are blue- or green-screens.

Are you sure? It does not look like it to me.

Yes, I'm sure.

Originally Posted by Anatidaephobia

Originally Posted by Takeovers

Originally Posted by Anatidaephobia

Those aren't touch screens - those are blue- or green-screens.

Are you sure? It does not look like it to me.

Yes, I'm sure.

I still don't think so. They used to use green-screens, I know. But you see now a newer technology. The election board on CNN I am sure was a touchscreen and our weather report uses the same technology.

Originally Posted by Takeovers

I still don't think so. They used to use green-screens, I know. But you see now a newer technology. The election board on CNN I am sure was a touchscreen and our weather report uses the same technology.

Screencaps?

Bluescreen:


Greenscreen:


Greenscreen:

Yes those are green-screens, I agree.

But this is the CNN election board



And our weatherman uses the same type.

Originally Posted by Plan B

Touchscreen aside.


Anyone actually used it and found it to be good? Or even usable? Or just the same as 7 for desktops users.

Microsoft have good offers for it now until the end of January. Pretty cheap intro price and then they're gonna raise it. Been thinking of getting a new SSD and putting Win 8 on it.

I like it, not a massive leap from Windows 7 for non touchscreen users, but not a big cost to upgrade either at $40 US. I have a windows phone as well though and will probably be getting a surface tablet.

I don't think Microsoft are heading for voice control so much, think of this built into your laptop or keyboard:

Originally Posted by BigRed

I don't think Microsoft are heading for voice control so much, think of this built into your laptop or keyboard:

A flashy toy, good for presentations. But nothing to work with on your PC. I still go with keyboard and mouse.

I have decided WIN 8 is not for me even at that price and will upgrade the wifes PC to WIN 7. That's dirtcheap now, too.

Originally Posted by Plan B

Though all the examples in that video were of fluid movements and require holding your hands in the air for a length of time. How's it going to work on the simple things like editing in a document where precision cursor placement and highlighting is necessary?

Yes, the clicky bit is tricky. I imagine they will have to do away with the touchpad but keep the left/right mouse buttons on the keyboard. It should handle all the touch type work of a tablet just as well as the tablet, or maybe we will have a wand instead of the mouse and have the keys on that, but I doubt it somehow. Personally, in a text document I currently use the keyboard as much as possible anyway.

A lot of touch features started being added in windows 7, have you noticed that right clicking on an item on the task bar brings up a context menu, but so does dragging up from the taskbar, plus if you look at the toolbars available for the taskbar there is a tablet input toolbar.

Skip to 4:10 for the relevant 'money' conclusion -- because that is actually what is happening.

Philip Greenspun's Weblog » Christmas gift for someone you hate: Windows 8


Suppose that you are an expert user of Windows NT/XP/Vista/7, an expert user of an iPad, and an expert user of an Android phone…. you will have no idea how to use Windows 8.

What are the best features of Android? A permanently on-screen Back button. A permanently on-screen Home button. Neither of these are present on the Windows 8 “tablet screen”. Every app developer implements the “Back” feature in a manner and location of his or her own choosing (Microsoft apps seem to put a big arrow on the top left of the screen; other developers used the bottom left; many screens do not have a Back option at all).

What is the best feature of iOS on the iPad? A permanent hardware Home button. It isn’t as convenient as going “Back” on Android but at least it facilitates re-navigating to wherever you were. The closest thing to a full-time Home button in Windows 8 is the “windows” key on the keyboard (but the whole idea is that the keyboard is not always available/required).

What is the best feature of Windows XP/Vista/7? Click right on an object to get a context-dependent menu of useful functions. Android copied this feature: touch and hold an item in order to get a context-dependent menu of options. The Windows 8 tablet interface lacks this interface standard.

Microsoft has had since October 2008 to study Android. It has had since June 2007 to study iPhone. It seems as though they did not figure out what is good about the standard tablet operating systems.

One thing that Android and iOS do not address is how to handle the requirement of offering a legacy Xerox Alto-style mouse and windows environment. Microsoft here integrates the tablet and the standard Windows desktop in the most inconvenient and inconsistent possible way. Due to the desperation of the average consumer to watch television at all times on all devices, the typical computer screen is fairly wide. One would think therefore that it would be possible to use traditional applications in the left-hand two-thirds of the screen while running a tablet environment on the right-hand one-third of the screen. Windows 8 does not allow this. It is either the old Windows XP desktop or the new Android-like tablet environment. As far as I can tell they cannot be mixed except that a tablet app can be set to appear in a vertical ribbon on the left or right edge of the screen.

A reasonable user might respond to this dog’s breakfast of a user interface by trying to stick with either the familiar desktop or the new tablet. However, this is not possible. Some functions, such as “start an application” or “restart the computer” are available only from the tablet interface. Conversely, when one is comfortably ensconced in a touch/tablet application, an additional click will fire up a Web browser, thereby causing the tablet to disappear in favor of the desktop. Many of the “apps” that show up on the “all apps” menu at the bottom of the screen (accessible only if you swipe down from the top of the screen) dump you right into the desktop on the first click.

Confused about how the tablet apps work and want to Google for the answer? You go to a Web browser in the desktop interface and can’t see the tablet interface that you’re getting advice on how to use. Keep your old Windows 7 machine adjacent so that you can Google for “How to use Windows 8″ on the old computer and have the pages continuously visible.

The only device that I can remember being as confused by is the BlackBerry PlayBook. I would find this machine a lot more useful if it simply ran Android as a sub-environment and did so in the right-hand third of the screen. Comments from those who love Windows 8 would be especially appreciated.

To end on a high note, some of the supplied apps are wonderful, e.g., the Bing Finance app. Swiping back and forth on a 27-inch screen is a great way to get a comprehensive picture of a lot of information quickly. (Of course, this would be equally true if one had a similar app on a 27-inch Android tablet… it is just that there aren’t any high-res 27-inch Android devices of which I am aware.)

[This article is based on using Windows 8 on what may be the best current hardware: Dell XPS One 27 computer with a quad-core i7 CPU, 16 GB of RAM and a solid state hard drive accelerator ($2600). I will try to write a bit about the Dell hardware in a subsequent posting. The screen is beautiful. The supplied keyboard is tiny, as if made for a clown. The display tilts down easily, making it easy to get up from one's chair to read a web page while standing.]

[Separate issue: Given how misguided the whole design of Windows 8 seems to be, why have tech journalists given it basically positive reviews? My theory is that journalists love anything new, different, and complicated. Windows 8 is all of those things.]

Bad News for Microsoft .... XP still rocks

How Ballmer manages to stay in his job is a mystery, Vista, Vista 2.0(aka 7) and now this?

Excluding the Windows releases, you have to include:

- asleep on the job when it came to tablets and ceding that market, and losing the netbook and laptop market to Apple.

- completely losing and ceding the windows mobile market to Apple (his only answer was to famously laugh at iPhone, yet do nothing)

- firing Robbie Bach, Ray Ozzie and now Steven Sinofsky - ie the only guys that knew what they were doing (and could have been seriously considered as his replacement)

- oh yeah, and Windows 8 (Windows 7 was actually decent) and having overseen zero stock growth under his tenure. None. At all.

The list goes on.

I suspect next year Ballmer will be shown the door.

hmmm....I have been programming with touch screen GUI's since the early 90's....

They do not have to have an OS designed specifically for them.....

MS without Bill and Ozzie is a sinking ship, Ballmer is a drunk and a bully and he will run thee company to the ground

hopefully the board will see it coming and fire his ass,

Originally Posted by Butterfly

MS without Bill and Ozzie is a sinking ship, Ballmer is a drunk and a bully and he will run thee company to the ground

hopefully the board will see it coming and fire his ass,

If the board hasn't seen it by now, they won't do anything until the death spiral is unrecoverable.

Originally Posted by Neo

A main stream company would probably tell you Windows 8 is selling very well

Which is what Microsoft is claiming, but they aren't telling you that these are just the regular Windows licenses packaged with brand-new PCs (which the same customers option for Windows 7 are also paying for - surprising, when you buy a Windows 7 installation on a new PC, it is actually being counted as a Windows 8 deploy by Microsoft. Shocker!

if users were given the choice between Win7 and WinXP, they would choose WinXP

the problem is that MS is doing the choice for you these days,

most brain dead users don't even know why they need to upgrade to Win7, let alone Win8

Most users are new PC buyers.

Originally Posted by Butterfly

if users were given the choice between Win7 and WinXP, they would choose WinXP