Posted on 01/21/2015 6:27:53 PM PST by smokingfrog
Today’s Windows event was the flashiest to grace Redmond in years. The company pulled a number of projects, like HoloLens, out of its skunk works in an effort to convince finicky geeks it isn’t out of ideas.
Whether this gambit was successful is hard to say (the Twittersphere seems impressed), but in a few weeks it will also be irrelevant. Microsoft’s problem has always been execution, not imagination. Kinect, Courier and even Windows 8.1 are examples of ideas getting ahead of reality.
Yet this event wasn’t entirely about concepts and prototypes. Alongside holograms and room-sized tablets, the company also displayed a number of improvements and innovations that could once again give Windows an edge. Practicality, not pizzazz, will win back the confidence Windows 8 lost.
The Windows 10 Technical Preview is only the latest in a long line of beta builds used to test out new editions, but its rollout has been different than those prior. Built-in feedback tools have helped users direct their concerns to the people in Redmond who can actually fix them.
It’s easy to see the results. At the event, we witnessed a refined Start Menu that works better with tablets, an easy way to switch between tablet and desktop mode, and a blending of the control panel and Metro settings menu that finally resolves a core conflict between the old-fashioned desktop and the modern Windows interface.
(Excerpt) Read more at digitaltrends.com ...
If it still has those ridiculous ribbon menus, I have little interest.
The main thing Win 7 offered over XP was the capability of using more memory. Had they come out with an XP edition that would do that, XP would still be THE desktop software.
Newer is not always better. And with Windows and many Windows programs, newer is seldom better.
I have no use for "Apps" I want icons. Had Windows 8 on a laptop a couple of years ago. Hated it, wiped the drive clean and installed Windows 7. Much better.
What do you think of the new “Task Manager”?
Tried it, hated it. I don't want to build my own car. I just want to drive one.
Why couldn’t you fill your desktop on 8 with all the icons on it you wanted? Not the start menu, but the desktop itself.
Look down in the lower right corner of that screen shot. They put the date in the wrong order, like the military, or in Europe.
They just cant be normal, can they?
Absolutely poetic, Terry. I agree wholeheartedly with you on that.
fine but do you like 10 better than 7?
I wouldn't place such a bet. Win7 was a barely visible improvement of Vista, primarily in optimization of background processes that belonged to two nasty services. The GUI of Vista was similar to Win7 (both are Aero,) and the largest difference was in the shape of taskbar icons. Hardly something to complain about.
Win8 and its successors significantly changed the very process of working with a computer. Now you have additional modes (start screen, the side bar, full-screen configuration panels, and mouse gestures.) Modes are expensive because each time you have to switch your way of thinking. The start screen is not popular because it is cluttered with items that the customer does not need. The sidebar is not popular because it requires a gesture to invoke, and because it doesn't work well, and because it has flat buttons that are hard on eyes. Metro configuration panels are an abomination. Mouse gestures are not something that *anyone* wants to do, as they have zero discoverability.
Removal of Aero and forcing the Metro style, with its flat buttons, is also a bad thing. I cannot even comprehend how stupid Microsoft's art designers had to be to even propose such a thing. There is a technical reason, though, for all this flatness: Aero requires a sufficient GPU to render. This is not a problem in a PC, but it is a concern on a mobile device. So Microsoft sacrificed one of most important usability improvements of all times for sake of tablets and phones - who are not selling well anyhow.
Businesses are not in any hurry to embrace Win8+ because Win7 does its job, it works very well, and there is no need to retrain hundreds of millions of workers all over the world. As businesses use licenses that allow them the right of downgrade, they will continue to run Win7 for a long, long time. Perhaps Microsoft will realize by then that they need to hire someone with a clue.
On a desktop, Win 10 boots to a desktop with icons and a start button. The latest build that I’m working with now handles multiple monitors on my Nvidia card. Unlike Win7, it puts the task bar and start button at the bottom of each monitor, not just the primary.
i would bet that date style is user-configurable.
” and just hate it cause it’s different”
That is why I hate it. For no good reason (for me) they crammed the office environment into 8. Productivity took a full month to become normal. Some people still have a hard time with it.
In one fell swoop, they negated all the institutional knowledge of people who knew how to do a thousand small things. Now everyone is lost trying to figure out something Microsoft loves because they can put it on phones and tablets.
You have valid points on the user interface being simplified for the Surface Pro. I don’t find the mouse gestures to top or bottom right corners for the charms to be a problem. In fact, now when I use win7 I have to relearn how to get to things on it.
Well 8.1 is far from perfect and it at least looks like they are fixing a lot in 10. Especially having pull outs for the control panel stuff instead of half being in charms and rest in 7-style.
Unless something terrible happens I think 10 looks really good so far.
aaanndd?
The weather icon is for Bucharest (with Celsius temperature), so I bet it is a screen shot of a European version.
I do not like the idea of a vocal interface.
“I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
I just checked ... it is, with multiple options. Time can also be selected 12/24hr and how many digits to display.
In Win7 everything is available in the same single mode. You don't need the charms bar because you have those controls either directly in the Start menu, or in the Control Panel. All those mouse gestures are a self-inflicted pain. On a PC they are not necessary. On a mobile device - perhaps; and that's why I always insisted that Microsoft made a huge mistake when they chose to gut their desktop cash cow to support the mobile market. They should have made two OSes, as they ended up doing anyway.
There were separate NT 5.x editions for 64-bit computers—Windows 2000 had Itanium support, for servers.
Windows XP introduced an AMD64/EM64T edition alongside the IA64 variant.
Needless to say, all three editions were WAY too ahead of their time...
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