Posted on 03/05/2013 8:24:48 AM PST by ShadowAce
I think the usage increase is artificial and forced (i.e. you cannot buy anything new without win8 on it). I recently bought a new acer netbook to replace an 10 year old XP machine, and it was a struggle to get functional with win8. Took me about 4-5 days to get things working like I want. (And I am not a newby, as I work in IT.)
Coming from XP on the home machine, it is a lot like win7, but with a clunkier interface and with all the unfixed bugs of a new OS. I get BSODs about 2-4 times a week, and it appears to be bugs in the OS, not hardware.
I don’t have any win7 disks to replace this install with, and I cannot use Linux/BSD/Solaris on this machine, as I need to connect to the corporate VPN where windows is required. I guess I will learn to work around the weirdness and bugs of win8...
I absolutely HATE being part of a forced beta test...
I have mixed feelings on Microsoft -- they have been very instrumental in getting things standardized to some degree, and have provided market pressure to other companies spurring innovation. On the other hand, they push out inferior and buggy products (Visual Studio** vs, say, Delphi 7 for IDE [sadly Delphi went toward VS in its IDE UI {especially help-system} rather than improving on their superior design]; or C/C++ instead of Ada for the API*). So I believe it's not exactly just to not acknowledge the good they have done; that said, I do agree that the push toward "own everything"*** is detestable.
I have a generally positive attitude towards Windows itself [though I'll agree 8 is a failure that provides me no incentive to upgrade] -- as opposed to things like the linux [GNU] toolchain†, where it always feels like the system is working against me rather than helping me to get things done. {I get the same feeling when I use a C++ compiler instead of my preferred Ada or Delphi/Pascal.} That alone convinces me that the "throw everything you knew away" ideology of 8 is the same as working against me.
* Visual Studio is easy to crash/confuse when porting a large project to a new computer with a new/different version of VS.
** Ada allows for the declaration of subtypes, which can restrict the valid values of variables/parameters. This means that if the API for a function needs non-negative values you could use Natural and let the parameter-passing raise an exception when invalid values are passed in. Additionally, using Ada for the underlying kernel would likely have drastically altered (1) the perception that Windows was weak to things like buffer-overflows {Ada allows for proper Array index checks} and (2)the early multitasking system to be much nicer than it originally was {using the rendezvous instead}.
*** The "own everything" is certainly not limited to Microsoft. I have a friend who left Google because they instituted a new policy/contract which effectively stated that all work by an employee was the company's -- he happened to have developed a method to detect cancer from MRIs with a better accuracy than most Radiologists -- and Google was trying to basically steal it. (Fortunately he had documentation that he'd been working on the method for years before he joined Google.)
† Why do you never work, autoconf? Why?
Its the same tired line that was used for 7:
“OMG, it’s STILL behind XP! Win7 = FAIL!”
It took years for 7, the “perfect OS” according to the average Win8 basher, to overtake XP. 8 will likely pass Vista by the end of spring.
And all of this is an improvement from the nonsense we heard before...
“no one will ever buy this”
That then went to:
“The only reason people bought it is because it was cheap”.
Some people are literally sitting around PRAYING for some flimsy evidence to prove out their deranged reaction to this OS.
In all fairness, Vista was released six years after Windows XP. Windows 8 was released only three years after Windows 7. So naturally, it’s going to catch on far more slowly.
So, you disagree that having a slower adoption rate than Vista is a bad thing?
I keep hearing this, while using 8 on a desktop, and never having an issue with any of these so-called touch features.
People seem to use games on the internet with a mouse and keyboard with no issue. People can use a multitude of websites too.
What exactly are these UI element that are impossible to use with a mouse and keyboard?
When you make a post on FR, there is nothing there that is made for a mouse and keyboard. All of the buttons and input boxes are huge, and half of the screen is blank. But for some reason if this was a Metro app, the thinking is that it is impossible to use on a desktop and is an abomination in usage.
I went from Vista to Win7 to Win8 with my Dell Inspiron, and my card slot works fine. The 64 bit Dell is great for most things except using PaperPort. For that I have to go to my 32 bit Toshiba Win7. I hope they fix that soon.
The only thing worse than Windows 8 is the commercials they use to try and sell their Windows 8 driven Surface tablet. The actors are all doing their version of an epileptic RiverDance with the castinet clicking of the tablet as they attache into their keyboards.
Well, maybe they are being smart to not show the new, innovative features of Windows 8 at work since there are none.
Yes, because it is being adopted. The thinking is that if it isnt being adopted at the same rate of X then it is terrible. Windows 7 had a slower adoption rate that took years to top XP. Years as in it didnt until a few months ago.
It’s nothing more than people looking for some artificial yardstick, based on specious reasoning, to try to bash an OS they hope no one will use, especially considering how both OSX and Linux or Android users are not completely using the most current versions of those, and have not all went out and bought it, or got it, en-mass.
But Microsoft HAS to be at X % or else people whose whole MO is to just trash them will just say it failed? Please.
As HP would not sell me the laptop I wanted with Win 7 I did purchase it with Win 8 and the very first thing I did was to install Classic Shell to give me close to a normal desktop for someone who does more than read e-mails and wastes time on Facebook.
While Classic Shell works very well, Win 8 still tries to make itself known if the cursor gets close to the right side of the screen. I detest that. If I wanted large children style play blocks I buy a bag of them.
I will admit the Win 8 OS loads faster than Win 7 on a similar laptop. All and all I would rather wait for the OS to load than to deal with the childish desktop of Win 8.
I know I am bucking the headwinds of the crowd who is all too happy with phone with marginal performance, a audio device playing overly compressed audio files through a piece of crap speaker, looking at a way too small screen, surfing the net slightly better than dial-up speeds....
I despise the “cloud”.
It is unsecure for client data. No way to guarantee privacy. It is just a marketing game that windows has been stuggling for years. How does MS may an OS that has a monthly bill for the regular consumer.
All these OS competitors are trying to replicate the closed system of itunes. It is a no sale scenario.
I understood win 8 had a win 7 skin available.
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, aka sjvn, has been writing about technology and the business of technology since CP/M-80 was the cutting edge PC operating system. SJVN covers networking, Linux, open source, and operating systems.
Got Bias?
> Apple Derangement Syndrome
>
> Which seems to seriously infect FR.
At the corporate level, Apple supports virtually everything we oppose and opposes virtually everything we support.
Apple, Microsoft, and Google are all big-time commie backers. They wear their sickle-and-hammer on their sleeves.
Lenin said, “The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.”
Today, the communists are selling us goods so they can buy the politicians and policies with which to enslave and kill us.
Microsoft must be stupid liberals doing the same thing over again and expecting different results. I wont buy anything with a Windows 8 OS. Whats with the awful screen replacing desktop? What a joke— pushing me over to an Apple Mac OS more and more.
Should I just stay on Windows 7?
I’m about ready to invest in a new computer and my friends who have them tell me to get an IMAC......they’ve pretty much got me convinced.
My new desktop doesn’t have touch so Metro is a pain to use. I especially don’t like the fact that when you open something in Metro there is no option to close the window. You have to return to your tile screen point to the left corner of the screen with your mouse, open a mini window, right click then choose close. What happened to the “X” button?
What I do is keep it in desktop or classic view. I downloaded Firefox (IE 10 is garbage btw). FR hasn’t changed for me, at least not in desktop view.
Hey, it was wonderful. Gave me the opportunity to reprogram all my VBA menu control macros in excel. Just had to learn XML and how to control it with VBA. Simple!!! /sarcasm
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Frankly, yes. 7 is only three years old, and is right in the peak of it’s adoption cycle. Vista was 6 years after XP - which meant that when Vista came out - XP was already on the decline.
8 has already been labelled as the tablet OS - which is fine. But desktop/laptop users are not going to migrate.
Full disclosure - I own a nice shiny new win7 laptop and a cheap vista laptop. I also own a full copy of win7 for backups/reinstall purposes.
Since I started using Win7, I have had exactly zero BSODs.
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