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10th December 2012, 07:17 AM | #121 |
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Aside from the usual complaints that each version of Windows makes it harder for power users and developers to interact directly with the file system, or to configure devices and network settings (mostly because Explorer isn't File Manager, and because MS keeps adding wizards and moving where controls are kept, adding layers and layers of new clicking until you finally find the dialog, unchanged from WinXP, where you can actually override DHCP, etc.), the complaints are almost 99% about the Metro.
Anyone who actually uses the system figures out pretty quickly that the new start menu stuff can be completely ignored. Some of the replacement start menus even manage to do your first click after logon, so you go straight to the old desktop. If you want to organize your stuff via a hierarchical menu system, you can -- you just can't use the Metro interface for that. It is disconcerting to launch a Metro app accidentally and find your desktop suddenly gone, with no obvious way to get back to it. One of my developer friends played a WAV file once for a demo, and couldn't get the Metro version of Media Player to de-maximize its utterly useless graphic while the song played (or even after it was done). The gestures and swipes and charms and hidden menus are very annoying. For a desktop-oriented user, there's absolutely nothing a live tile can provide that a widget can't do, and usually do better because you can place it where you want, size it, and still be doing other work. For example, I don't use weather widget type things, but I have network monitor apps, temperature probes, mail, etc., all on a side screen while I do actual work on the main two screens. If I wanted a cool clock, or a weather tile, I'd add it to the side screen. I would not want it anywhere near my menus or work selections. (I currently use three screens, set up as 1920x1200, 2560x1600, and 1920x1200.) But once you get past that bit, have all your old tools and programs installed, you find that the Metro UI is one of the least important changes for Win8. It is not just Win7 with a different face. The kernel and subsystems have been substantially improved, especially the Hyper-V performance (Win2012), timing (Win8 and Win2012), disk subsystem capabilities and reliability, thread management and scheduling, non-paged pool management, etc. All improved significantly. I think Server 2012 will make inroads faster than Win8, if only because Win2012 is such a better platform than Win2008R2. Admins tend to do most stuff with remote tools anyway, so the UI on the server is not all that important. A few of the wizards are even an improvement over the old Control Panel applets (although, to be fair to the complainers, many of them are just shells over the old dialogs, adding -- perhaps -- a useful organization to a a motley collection of tools). The "task panes" drive me nuts. They take up screen space and don't add anything that's not already on the menu, except for the few times when MS removed something useful from the menu and made it only available from the task pane. At least you can turn most task panes off. In general, I dislike wasting the screen real estate for distracting and inutile fluff. Event Viewer has become vastly more powerful and extendible, but it was far more useful in XP/2003 than since. Admins want to see the System log when looking for hardware problems, the Security log when looking at access problems, etc. Event Viewer used to pop up with Application, Security, and System within 100ms. Now it can take over a minute to start (without a wait cursor, because they moved it from an application into a plug-in for MMC), and when you finally get it, you have to click a few extra times to expand the tree to find your important information. Explorer is probably improved for casual users, but ever since they got the idea that hiding file extensions and the system32 directory were good things, it's gotten worse with each iteration for admins. I almost never use it. When I'm searching and moving hundreds of files (sometimes hundreds of thousands when looking at the mail system), I do not want pretty icons, or copy/cut then paste that loses my place. The old File Manager let you select files and launch them with any program (you just type the name of the program, and the selections are added as the command tail). It also let you select any number of files and move or copy them with F7/F8, typing the destination folder. This is much, much, much faster and useful than opening another Explorer window, click-click-clicking your way to a spot, and then trying to paste. You can use the same Explorer window, but it can only show one folder at a time, so if you navigate to the destination, you've lost the source. This complaint probably doesn't apply to most users, since dealing with the file system for them usually means launching a data file, and they don't want or need to know about data types or file associations. They just want to click an MP3 and have it play. The idea of utilities and applications that can deal with multiple types of files, and that perform work on them rather than performing them, isn't something that crosses Grandma's mind. (And to be fair, you can't actually do much real work on a handheld anyway due to the limited screen, so that part of the new UI probably makes sense for most users. It's all about posting to Facebook, checking Twitter and other social media, playing videos/songs, getting directions to a restaurant, and playing games.) I think MS should have offered an option during setup to choose either the new interface or the old (or a way to establish your preference later), but it's not really that big of a deal. Forget the interface for a moment, and read some of the white papers about the OS underneath. The claims are quite impressive, and (so far) my real-world testing has verified them. And making all those improvements while still keeping the Win32 core API backward-compatible is just amazing. I would, however, like to shoot the person who decided that x64 files should go in system32 while x86 files went in syswow64. I do indeed understand the reasons, but they had a chance to keep the names meaningful, and chose instead to cater to the huge quantity of programs that didn't follow guidelines and hard-coded directory names. Realistically, they probably didn't have a lot of choice, but, c'mon, 32 for 64 and 64 for 32? What were they thinking? |
10th December 2012, 08:22 AM | #122 |
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They did give XP an option to switch to the "Classic Start Menu" that came before though. I'm still using it. I've even got my Win 7 machine doing the same with a 3rd part add on. I don't mind functional changes if they're opt-in and I can turn them on gradually as I find a use for them, but look and feel changes are almost always too disruptive to me to bother with. I'd be fine if current versions still looked like Win 3.1 |
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10th December 2012, 09:33 AM | #123 |
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I was talking mostly about the Start Button and the Start Menu.
Defaulting to Modern UI apps, where available, instead of Desktop versions, when ON the Desktop is also a huge issue with the system. This is true enough. One of the problems I had with Aero Glass is that it reduced the contrast between the text and background on title bars and such. |
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10th December 2012, 12:19 PM | #124 |
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“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago |
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10th December 2012, 02:28 PM | #125 |
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10th December 2012, 03:48 PM | #126 |
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I agree completely with this and your later complaints about using Explorer as a File Manager. That's why I use AB Commander. It's a file manager that does what a file manager ought to do. Highly recommended.
I also agree with the frustration of the file system becoming more remote. The hierarchical file structure actually helps me stay (somewhat) organized. Libraries, etc. just get in the way. |
10th December 2012, 04:18 PM | #127 |
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11th December 2012, 02:56 AM | #128 |
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Benford's law of controversy - Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information available |
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11th December 2012, 03:39 AM | #129 |
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“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago |
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13th December 2012, 06:41 PM | #130 |
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Well, I just bought a new netbook that is running Windows 8, and I'll tell you one thing they finally got right: it actually streams media content on the computer to the Xbox. My last two desktops computers, running Windows XP and Windows 7, never actually managed to do that, despite everything I ever tried to do with it. Windows 8 was doing it within an hour.
I still needed to fiddle with it a bit to do it, but it actually works. |
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16th December 2012, 07:23 PM | #131 |
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I have win 8 now and I can honestly say that it's overall a great OS. I haven't had one registry error like I used to have on some of the older ones. But as anything there are pros and cons.
Pros: - Very smooth and enjoyable use - Able to recognize practically anything you put in your computer and auto update it for you. - Fast - Very pretty and bright colors - It is ridiculously good at being reverse compatible. - Has windows spell check for everything you type, including when I'm typing on this forum. It auto corrects small errors for me, and it underlines misspellings. It's very nice for e-mails. Cons: - Not very user friendly at least if you've been using windows since 98, throw out everything you've ever learned for the most part. ESPECIALLY WHEN IT COMES TO THE START MENU. MS has completely changed the start menu and how it works. It opens up like a touch screen or smart phone. This may bug some, but I can live with it. - It takes a while to learn where MS has put all the new stuff in windows. -You have to click your way around to find what you want to find. Over all, the small cosmetic errors are no reason to not go with 8. It is a much more stable OS than 7, at least in my personal experience. Very smooth, not a lot of errors, relatively easy to use after a few hours. I give Win8 4 Stars out of 5. |
17th December 2012, 01:11 AM | #132 |
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17th December 2012, 03:51 AM | #133 |
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In most spell tools you have the option of replacement words that can be set by the user. I can only assume that 8 includes this same functionality.
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19th December 2012, 02:07 AM | #134 |
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I'm totally in love with Win8 now. Besides the lack of user friendliness it's VERY GOOD at backwards compatibility unlike Win7. And it's a much smoother use than 7 as well. It's much better than 7 I'm convinced. Compatibility is my largest concern.
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20th December 2012, 05:07 AM | #135 |
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He bade me take any rug in the house. |
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20th December 2012, 12:46 PM | #136 |
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20th December 2012, 01:03 PM | #137 |
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Obviously, that means cats are indeed evil and that ownership or display of a feline is an overt declaration of one's affiliation with dark forces. - Cl1mh4224rd |
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20th December 2012, 06:28 PM | #138 | |||
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This video conveys the Windows 8 experience fairly well:
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21st December 2012, 01:35 AM | #139 |
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I never realised my mother was such a computer whizz, who'd have thought someone who still doesn't get what a right click is can manage so well with an operating system that is unusable.
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“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago |
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21st December 2012, 12:46 PM | #140 |
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Obviously, that means cats are indeed evil and that ownership or display of a feline is an overt declaration of one's affiliation with dark forces. - Cl1mh4224rd |
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21st December 2012, 01:15 PM | #141 |
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Benford's law of controversy - Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information available |
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21st December 2012, 01:19 PM | #142 |
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That video conveys the experience, AGAIN, of someone insisting on using the Windows 8 touch interface with a desktop machine?
Half way through the video he talks about how there's two different interfaces, yet despite KNOWING this, he still insisted on a rant against how the touch interface doesn't work very well when you're not using ... well, a touch interface. Today I had a friend tell me, just like someone said hear earlier, how in Windows 8 you can no longer have multiple tiled windows you can move around the screen. I told him it wasn't true, he said he read it in a review. Seriously what is up with all these bovine excrement reviews? The only thing I can come up with is that in the last 3 years a whole bunch of tech reviewers have all fallen in love with their iPads and just can't review MS products objectively anymore. |
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Benford's law of controversy - Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information available |
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21st December 2012, 01:34 PM | #143 |
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Windows 8 is the ONLY current operating system with these issues.
Apple's iOS/OSX does NOT have these issues. Google's Android/Chrome OS do NOT have these issues. I don't think Blackberry 10 has this sort of issue. Windows 7 did NOT have these issues, even when used on a tablet, with 3rd party tablet menu systems tacked onto it! Isn't it rather... embarassing... that Windows 8 should make its users suffer like this, no matter how trivial you might think the complaints are.... while also knowing that it easily did not need to be this way?! We're not talking about some tremendous engineering challenges that would need to be worked out. We are talking about an operating system pushing an awkward set of interfaces onto people.... for NO REASON!! Nothing is gained by having 2 interfaces like that. I think the specific issues he addresses, regarding Control, Conveyance, Continuity, Context are very objective. Either demonstrate that: 1. None of those are really important. An OS could fail, fabulously on any of them, and no one should really need to care. OR 2. That Windows 8 really does deliver on those properties, despite the specific pieces of evidence he points out. Until you do, I hardly think it is fair for you to call the review "bovine excrement". |
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21st December 2012, 02:05 PM | #144 |
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21st December 2012, 11:21 PM | #145 |
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Exactly, why should I have to purchase a new expensive touch screen monitor just to try and get the o/s working optimally? It's ridiculous and less ergonomic than using a mouse. Microsoft should have made metro optional and customisable and allowed me to make it work for me.
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22nd December 2012, 08:57 AM | #146 |
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23rd December 2012, 12:56 AM | #147 |
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My dad (an IT of 15 years) hates Win8. He said they took out all of the tech related functionality and replaced it for people who never used tech before, or who were tech dumb. Personally for me it's a bit frustrating to have to sift through countless folders, or apps to get where I want to. It's annoying, and so is the color red, which is what I stupidly made my start menu color. DAMN IT WIN8! I'm thinking that Win9 is going to be coming out by next year. No way that the tech market is going to like this OS. They've made it so simple that it's now retarded.
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23rd December 2012, 07:38 AM | #148 |
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Desktop machines, and in particular laptops, increasingly have touch screens as well. There's also many hybrid tablet devices that can be used with keyboards.
Touch and keyboard are totally different types of computing interface, but there are many devices that support both, Windows 8 offers proper support for that. If people don't have a touch interface, they can just ignore that part, though I find a number of the "modern interface" apps are quite useful on my desktop too. Plus of course, if I buy a touch screen as my next screen (likely) then I'll already be OS ready.
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Benford's law of controversy - Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information available |
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23rd December 2012, 07:40 AM | #149 |
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Yes, damn Microsoft has me paying for something I may not use for decades. Like Paint! I've never used it. The should male Paint optional. And some of those card games. And all that stuff in Office I never use.
They should make it all customisable so I don't have to pay for all that stuff I don't want. |
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Benford's law of controversy - Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information available |
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23rd December 2012, 07:42 AM | #150 |
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Benford's law of controversy - Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information available |
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23rd December 2012, 07:52 AM | #151 |
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Those are his words, I think he was just frustrated last night from having to try and find everything differently. But there are things like cloning a drive that took forever to find. The cloning of the drive said, Win7 recovery, suggesting that it is a legacy component that may not have much of a future in windows. They've changed the lay out too much, and have taken away the smart menu. In other words, they've geared this device too much towards touch screens. My dad isn't the only IT that I've heard say this.
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23rd December 2012, 07:53 AM | #152 |
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None of those are trying to do what Microsoft is trying to do - a unified OS interface.
Put iOS on a Mac without a touch screen, I'm sure there'd be complaints. There are complaints about Android as a desktop operating system, and chrome as a desktop operating system is not doing well at all.
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What Microsoft has is a marketing failure, and a part from a few relatively minor issues, not an engineering failure.
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That's what he does in that video. It's like he bought a toolkit and is complaining the screwdriver is a lousy hammer. |
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23rd December 2012, 08:17 AM | #153 |
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I've spent the last few days playing with a new laptop for the house, with Win8. No touch screen. The mousepad is gesture capable, though.
I jumped to it from an old XP machine and have made a determined effort not to RTFM until I get a feeling for what it is like from a standing start. Overall I'm not particularly disconcerted. Mebbe even a bit pleased. Fast, and not too tough to find what I want. No major complaints yet. Jumping from DOS to Windows was a bigger change, and I survived that somehow. Even though I was dragged kicking and screaming into the transition. Learning to use my new Asus Infinity is proving to be a bit more of a challenge (My last tablet ran on XP, too.), but way more fun. Also using the 'don't RTFM' system. You can end up in some weird predicaments doing that. (... and yes, it's been a tech toy Xmas. ) |
29th December 2012, 01:34 PM | #154 |
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Maybe we don't need a unified OS interface. At least not until one comes along that can act as a first class player everywhere it is installed.
There are complaints about everything. Android is still objectively better in most regards than its competitors. The Chrome OS is not doing well largely because it has limited scope of usage at the moment (web-based apps), not because of its interface. Windows 7 required more powerful and expensive hardware than iOS or Android tablets. THAT is a key reason why it is not doing well in the tablet market. Not the UI. None of your arguments address the UI issues in Windows 8. There is no reason why Windows 8 could not have worked just as well as Windows 7 without a touch screen. Why don't you refute that argument? Why are you trying to hide behind red herrings and non-sequiturs. You are failing to actually address the issues I am raising. They took out the Start menu. There was NO REASON for that. None at all, what-so-ever. Refute my main points. Do not try to move goal posts. I did not claim there was an engineering failure. I was claiming there was a LACK of one. They are solving "problems" for us, rather awkwardly, that we did NOT need solved. Pay attention to what I am actually saying. Maybe it is a lousy phone. But, that has nothing to do with Windows 8. It is quite possible that other things, in other OSes, are lousy for certain purposes. That does NOT excuse Windows 8 from being lousy at things, especially those it USED TO DO WELL on. His points about Control, Conveyance, Continuity and Context do NOT go away, simply because they are more present in one way to use the OS than another. You have, thus far, not even begun to try to begin to refute those points, for some reason. You seem to have no actual arguments here. I think getting used to Windows 8 has a LOT more in common with Stockholm Syndrome than any actual usability improvements. Sure you can get used to it. But, a hostage can also get used to hanging around with their captor. |
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30th December 2012, 01:31 PM | #155 |
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[quote=Wowbagger;8879107]None of your arguments address the UI issues in Windows 8.
There is no reason why Windows 8 could not have worked just as well as Windows 7 without a touch screen. Why don't you refute that argument? [/quote Easy - Windows 8 DOES work just as well as Windows 7 without a touch screen. That's how I've been using it for months.
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I have actually begun to understand the criticisms in that video though. I upgraded an ASUS laptop to Windows 8 and the user started reporting the same issues as he did in the video - unwanted apps taking over the screen at inopportune times, things like that. What I discovered happened was that the Win 8 installation installed an ASUS trackpad app that made the trackpad simulate a touch screen - so if you "swipe" a finger from the left, then it acts if you'd left swiped a touch screen. An absolute disaster. Simply using the track pad to move the cursor from left to right was getting interpreted as a left to right swipe and swapping to whatever Modern UI apps might be running. I'm sure this might be useful if you completely retrain your trackpad usage, but there was no notification of this during the upgrade, and no real way of even realizing what the heck was happening. I'm not sure if it's just the ASUS upgrade this happens with, I suspect not, but it really did make the machine almost unusable until I accessed the touchpad app control panel and disabled some of it's functions. So now I understand some of these bizarre reviews! |
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30th December 2012, 01:54 PM | #156 |
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Surely the options for Win 8 could have been determined at each install depending on the primary interface/hardware. Same OP - different config on install. Then MS could have covered all options.
eg: Install: This device primarily uses a touch sensitive screen, (for pads etc) Install: This device uses a keyboard and mouse. (for Pcs) Install: This device uses a trackpad: Configure fully after install (for laptops etc) Install: This device uses a combination of the above -- for advanced users (eg for Asus transformer, Surface, hybrid type devices. or am i missing something here? |
30th December 2012, 03:21 PM | #157 |
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I'm using a keyboard and mouse with no touchscreen and had no issues at all. I also have an upgraded Packard Bell laptop, and again no problems.
This ASUS laptop (not a transformer) is the first where I encountered the touchpad as touchscreen interface and it's a disaster. Note that the touchpad app is branded ASUS, so it seems to be their doing even though it was installed by Windows. All of which means the install does detect what you're using, just in at least one scenario the decision tree is flawed. |
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Benford's law of controversy - Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information available |
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30th December 2012, 07:32 PM | #158 |
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Ever walk into the kitchen and forget what you were going there to get?
The full-screen Start Screen will do that to you, too. It TOTALLY elimates context, man. (This is not necessarily a problem for me, right now, but I hear it happens. And, it didn't have to.) ETA: This is referred as "The Doorway Effect" or "Doorway Amnesia". They DID take out the taskbar button. The "new look" you are referring to does not grant as much access to OS features (aside from applications) as the "old look". It generally takes more time to find what you need, until you "get used to it". Those with desktops are finding Start8's start menu much more productive than the Win8 Start Screen. This is NOT merely about "not liking the look". There ARE objective reasons, spelled out in countless videos, as to why Win8 is inferior. You have not addressed those. Well, except for one.... I think it only gets worse from there. I've been using Win8 for a few things, for a while, just so I can compile a list of weird things about it. And, I have a few I have not seen touched upon yet. I don't have the whole list handy, right now, but here is one recent thing I am adding to my list: The Windows Store was giving me a generic error message that "something happened", so the install did not complete, and it gave an option to "Try Again".... with NO details, what-so-ever!! NONE! Googling for answers mostly gave me Internet connection diagnosis tips, but my Internet connection was fine! The few other ideas it had were also not issues for me. So, now I can't use the Windows Store, not even for free apps, and I HAVE NO IDEA WHY. |
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31st December 2012, 01:47 PM | #159 |
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A good grief. If anyone forgets what they're after a few milliseconds after they want it, then Windows 8 start screen is the *least* of their problems.
It TOTALLY elimates context, man. (This is not necessarily a problem for me, right now, but I hear it happens. And, it didn't have to.) ETA: This is referred as "The Doorway Effect" or "Doorway Amnesia".
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I don't have the whole list handy, right now, but here is one recent thing I am adding to my list:
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Benford's law of controversy - Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information available |
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31st December 2012, 05:05 PM | #160 |
The Infinitely Prolonged
Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: Westchester County, NY (when not in space)
Posts: 15,612
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It is just another piece of psychology Win8 fails to handle well. That, I might add, no other OS on the desktop has to deal with. (Though, it is a known issue on smartphones, with their premium on real estate and such.)
Might only be a small issue for a small number of people. But, there is no reason it needs to be that way. There is no visual queue. And, once you do know to click the corner, it STILL does not present everything the Start Menu did. You either have to use the Charms bar or Search for those. And, the Search tool sometimes doesn't even show you the results you were looking for, until you learn where to find them. The whole concept of "finding where the search results are" is a particularly amusing issue with Win8. But, with fewer on screen prompts. A better operating system would have the best of both worlds: The *quicker* access to things you like, plus the easy-to-find access others might enjoy. I just described most of Windows 7 to you. How about that! It is not the milliseconds to carry out tasks that matters. It's the minutes required to figure out how to use the operating system. That is no excuse. Power Users will use them. IT technicians will use them. Developers will often use them. Courses in learning the OS will teach a lot of them. We are talking about the difference between a single column of items one can easily scan down vs. a lot of blocks that are often in disjointed shapes. Since a lot of them use transforming images, it takes a little more effort to figure out which tile actually belongs to what application, sometimes. And columns, in All Apps, awkwardly end on the bottom and continue on the top of the next one, which actually detracts from any intended organization on that screen. I will admit grouping on the Start screen is easier in Win8 than the menu in Win7. But, that is hardly a task one needs to deal with too often. And, it is not like Win7 was a total loser: Keeping items pinned to the Start Menu was actually less cluttered, anyway. If it matters: 1. I am talking about a product that is out, now. Not making predictions about a product coming in the future. 2. More importantly: I am NOT making a statement about sales. It happens that sales of Win8 seem to be disappointing to Microsoft. But, that's beside the point. I never claimed it would be a flop. I am pointing out design flaws that could impact productivity and usability, independently of whether or not they make any impact on sales. Even if Windows 8 sold like hotcakes: software and devices flying off the shelves faster than even the iPads, these issues I am pointing out would NOT just go away. If I had empirical, independently verifiable, evidence that the items on my list are unique to Windows 8, and are NOT issues on any other major operating systems (except a small number of them where screen real estate is a limiting factor), nor any previous versions of Windows going back to 95... ...how would that constitute confirmation bias?! That is true. My list is being organized into different categories, with "included apps" being one of them. But, it does remind us about few things: 1. The OS was pushed out the door prematurely. 2. The more you use it, the more issues unique to it you will find. |
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WARNING: Phrases in this post may sound meaner than they were intended to be. SkeptiCamp NYC: http://www.skepticampnyc.org/ An open conference on science and skepticism, where you could be a presenter! By the way, my first name is NOT Bowerick!!!! |
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