Any Good Opinions of Windows 8 To Date? 15

[kjv1611]

So far, from my perspective, I think Windows 8 is looking to make Windows ME even look good in retrospect. A month or two ago, I installed the consumer preview in a virtual machine, and had it running - did take a little tweaking but not much. However, once I had it running, it did look like I was trying to control a giant phone with a mouse - forget the keyboard at all - and frankly, what I clicked just didn't make sense. To me, nothing felt intuitive at all. I could pick up any version of Ubuntu Linux I've seen to date, and though I'm not as familiar, at least it mostly feels intuitive, even the latest one I've tried where they try to go somewhat Mac-ish. I suppose Microsoft has decided to not try to copy the Mac anymore on their interface, but rather just make a big dumb smartphone. Maybe it should now be labeled Windows Smart-top.

Any good experience so far? Any reason to try it again? I only gave it 10, maybe 15, minutes of my time.

"But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." 1 Corinthians 15:57

 

[1DMF]

I know Mike, and you are far more insightful with these things than I. I just get very frustrated as I am a desktop user, I don't own a mobile device nor do I want one. I have an Alienware MX11 with Win7 for all my portable needs and I don't own a mobile phone.

I don't like touch screen, I don't like self tagging (GPS Tracking), I don't like un-readable text on a tiny screen, I don't like... the list goes on, in fact the missus offered to buy me an iPad Air for my Birthday in Jan, I declined her generous offer, what do I need an iPad for, what can I do on an iPad that I can't do on my Alienware? I have a bigger screen, NVidia gaming graphics, a keyboard, USB!!!!

Metro apps you can't close without ALT+F4, how does that work on a touch device?

A professional desktop environment is what I want when working as do most of my users, Windows 8 has destroyed that! And so at home I now run Linix Mint - and won't ever run Windows again, until they give me back a working desktop! - but in fact, now I've made the leap, and have settle in very nicely, why do I even need to consider going back to M$?

One of the things M$ had over all the other OSses was in my opinion the best desktop experience around, awesome context aware menus, tonnes of functionality in every window, and if they could provide some GUI access to something, it was there!

Now you say we have to drop to DOS to start running command line, well if that's how it's going to be I might as well use Unix, this is partly what stopped me using Unix for sometime, and the downside I raise in that community, always wanting to type crap into a black console? everything I do on Linux I have hunt to find a damn GUI to use, it's frustrating, M$ gave GUI's to you in buckets loads, and did it bloody well, isn't that the point of WINDOWS = GUI (Thank you Xerox!).

Of course this is just my opinion and the way I use a computer, but then again, I'm capable of surviving without a mobile device, or a tweeting what I had for breakfast, or uploading selfies to facebook.... you get my drift!

"In complete darkness we are all the same, it is only our knowledge and wisdom that separates us, don't let your eyes deceive you."

"If a shortcut was meant to be easy, it wouldn't be a shortcut, it would be the way!"
Free Electronic Dance Music

 

[1DMF]

Just notice your post HughLerwill

Does

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows-8/manag...

help...

Yes, it does help, thank you, it doesn't make me happy though! There used to be a perfectly acceptable GUI for managing this!

"In complete darkness we are all the same, it is only our knowledge and wisdom that separates us, don't let your eyes deceive you."

"If a shortcut was meant to be easy, it wouldn't be a shortcut, it would be the way!"
Free Electronic Dance Music

 

[strongm]

>over-reacted so wildly to tablets and mobile phones

Er ... have you seen desktop PC (Microsoft's bread and butter) sales figures? Let's go back to 2009, around the time Windows 8 started development - desktop sales declined compared to the previous year by an astonishing 23%. There might have been a number of reasons for that, but by 2010, with sales figures still plummeting, there was good evidence that the market was being eroded by mobile devices - and Microsoft wanted to somehow get some of that market whilst retaining their legacy users.

 

[strongm]

>consolidate all of their development into one OS

Well that's certainly what their marketing seemed to suggest during the development of Windows 8. However, unless they drop all legacy support, this is unlikely, since it is pretty unlikely that the x86 architecture is going to make it onto phones ... (though Windows Phone and Windows RT could, and should, be consolidated at some point).

Of course, their 3 OSs migh look much the same - but I can get Linux to look like Windows 7, and they are clearly not the same OS ...

 

[1DMF]

Nice one Mike, you have Linux looking better than Windows 8!

What flavour you running and with which GUI / skin?

"In complete darkness we are all the same, it is only our knowledge and wisdom that separates us, don't let your eyes deceive you."

"If a shortcut was meant to be easy, it wouldn't be a shortcut, it would be the way!"
Free Electronic Dance Music

 

[strongm]

Win2-7 on Gnome

 

[1DMF]

dang thought it was probably Gnome, current rig running KDE, it doesn't like Gnome and can't seem to find Win2-7 for KDE, there is a Plymouth which I might give a go, any thoughts?

"In complete darkness we are all the same, it is only our knowledge and wisdom that separates us, don't let your eyes deceive you."

"If a shortcut was meant to be easy, it wouldn't be a shortcut, it would be the way!"
Free Electronic Dance Music

 

[strongm]

I'm pretty certain there's a version of it, or something pretty similar, available specifically for Mint - but Mint running Gnome.

To be honest not really familiar with all these skins/themes. Personally I run CentOS because corporately we run Red Hat