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Well... You know. They are "native HTML5".(www.arewenativeyet.com and https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=649408)
People at Microsoft sometimes blabber out such nonsense.

This is hilarious. Thanks for the link.

I thought the exact same thing and that's really interesting.
I'm usually not a big fan of Microsoft, but I really like the graphic design of this new interface (I liked the Window Phone 7 design as well). It's just gorgeous and way better than OSX or anything I've seen on Linux.

I'm a bit more skeptical about the "works well with mouse" stuff. Doing drag and other touch-like gestures with a mouse is possible but painful, so I'd like to see what they'll come up with there.

So I would say it looks like a nice tablet UI to me. Not so sure if the whole tablet-desktop-same-os is a good idea though.

I was kind of thinking that, but I believe this is a truly new twist on multiple desktops instead.

All of those "tile" applications are actually running maximized (full screen). You can see it in the video when Excel is running: You have an entire normal Windows desktop with a maximized Excel and a task bar plus a floating window. Another "desktop" is dragged in and a frame is created to contain it, the application running on that desktop resizing to fit automatically.

If such frames are dynamically creatable and can be put anywhere (top, bottom, left, right) and further subdivided and if you can put either individual windows or whole desktops in to them, then I think you've really got something.

I think you'd also have to add focus-follows-mouse, at least at the frame level. Once inside a frame there may or may not be floating, overlapping windows. if there are you'd want to revert to the classic windows focus model while the pointer remains in the frame.

I like that you can tile and untile windows, resize the tile area and create new layouts all without editing any config files or remembering any keybindings. This is good.

Looks more like they've put the final nail in windowing's coffin and embedded two full-screen apps into a paned widget.

I know MS want to be Apple and everything but do they really have to limit your options so severely?

No not really. They would have to write a live tile portion to their program that is about it.

If Microsoft makes a .net runtime for ARM there is no reason why .NET apps won't just work unless of course they call some native Win32 code that might not exist on the ARM version of Windows.

Same story with Silverlight. I swear people don't know how a virtual machine or anything works anymore.

It might help if we appraised ourself of what .Net actually is. It is a wrapper around the Win32/64 API. That's it. That's very x86 specific, and let's be honest, it was what kept developers on Windows on a specific platform. It is all native code underneath, although heavily wrapped.

You simply aren't going to get a complete .Net runtime for the Arm platform because you'll have to port the Win API. Not going to happen.


They're not virtualising anything and this has nothing to do with virtualisation.

Edited 2011-06-02 16:54 UTC

It might help if we appraised ourself of what .Net actually is. It is a wrapper around the Win32/64 API. That's it. That's very x86 specific, and let's be honest, it was what kept developers on Windows on a specific platform. "

Eh? Win32 was written for MIPS/x86/Alpha/PowerPC (in that order I think). Very little x86 specific.



It will be at least as complete as anything Mono can accomplish. Plus, it will have access to the Windows API, it's Windows!


They're not virtualising anything and this has nothing to do with virtualisation. "

CLR is a Virtual Machine:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Language_Runtime

It's not machine virtualization in the sense of virtualizing hardware, but a virtual machine in the same manner as the Java virtual machine. All very detached from x86 and portable to ARM.

It's not that it could never be done but there is a heck of a lot that is specific to the x86 architecture because it simply has to know a lot about the processor. It's why Wine hasn't managed it, and they'd then need an emulator to be effective. It's been made clear there will be no emulation in the Arm version of Windows. It's also a monumental effort to support on a different architecture for the benefit of third party programmers - compiler, tool support etc. etc.

As it was, Microsoft just simply couldn't support a complete version of Windows on multiple architectures and it's doubtful that the Arm version of Windows will be.


As complete as Mono isn't anywhere near good enough, and I very much doubt developers will have access to the Windows API in whatever form it is in. Microsoft will have to re-implement the underlying framework - and make sure it works exactly in the same way as other versions of .Net on x86.


When that depends on a lot of native code implementations you'd be hard pushed to call it that.

Exactly. Couldn't have said it better myself. No .NET programmability = no go for the touch platform.

Suppose you're writing a touch application that needed to scan a bar code. For example, a sales application or a comparison-shopping application or an inventory application. Are you really going to decode that bar code in Javascript?

Ars Technica reports: "I'm told by insiders that HTML5 and JavaScript won't be the only option, and that existing applications (native, Silverlight, and WPF) will be migratable in some way, but specifics are still lacking at this time." http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2011/06/microsoft-gives-the-f...

Microsoft had better get a .NET story out, and *quickly*. Because developers are already hopping mad:

http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/A-quick-look-at-Windows-8
http://forums.silverlight.net/forums/p/230502/562083.aspx

Edited 2011-06-02 06:20 UTC

The basic design is quite interesting. They've basically taken the tile idea and metro UI design from WP7, have added tiling, and have put some gestures for multitasking and other stuff.

Now, there are some issues.

First problem is that even if they call it Windows 8, this thing is compatible with nothing. Usual Windows software looks out of place. Windows Phone 7 software would look out of place too. It's as if Microsoft created a third OS from a developer's point of view, even though from a technical point of view it obviously shares a lot of stuff with the two others.

Second problem is the gestures. They are not very discoverable (e.g. How is an user supposed to figure out about the tiling functionality ? How to quickly get out of an app ?). They don't work well with a mouse and a keyboard. They imply lots of dragging, which is far slower than pointing and clicking.

I like the split keyboard idea a lot, also, but I don't think these small keys are going to work well on a touchscreen.

Also, something that is not mentioned at all in the video is the question of how well tiles scales when lots of software is installed. Tiles are large, and take up a lot of room. On Windows Phone 7, Microsoft's answer is to only put preferred user software in tiles and put the rest in a large list. No hierarchy, so that list is going to become crowded fairly quickly, but still slower than with a pure tile-based system. Now, it looks like this time around, they want tiles to be the sole launcher mechanism. My question is : how many installed software does it take before the home screen becomes so crowded that it's impossible to find something on it ?

Edited 2011-06-02 06:51 UTC

"Second problem is the gestures. They are not very discoverable"

That is exactly my problem with most of these touch interfaces.

They make all the icons and so on really big, easy to touch and so on.

But when you want to get some work done, you have no idea how to switch between them or how to kill an application or whatever.

If you as a developer are making an evaluation based on a few demos at a consumer orientated technology show then quite frankly you should close up your company and find employment else where - it is people like that who make the IT industry as crappy as it is with the half baked software and hardware that is released on a near constant basis.

When the developer orientated conference starts in the next few months with the beta released - and all the details are disclosed, then you're more than welcome to rip Microsoft a new one but until then, sit back, take a deep breath, put on a Cat Stevens cd, enjoy a cup of tea and chill out.

The point is that it won't be inconsistent next to every other technology preview they've done. Microsoft are saying they're using standard or 'native' HTML5 and that's what they're going to be using. It was the same with .Net ten years ago and it's the same now.

I don't get this usual whine of waiting for more details when they very, very clearly stated in the video 'standard HTML5'. It's very specific.

Well, it will support .NET because it's windows, and windows runs .NET. Run your app full screen, make sure the UI is touch friendly, and there you go.

There might be some small integration required to make the app aware of the new shell, but I am sure that would be relatively trivial. They aren't going to force everything that's not HTML5/JS to run in a Win 7 like desktop box.

Yep. I love how that guy on the forum naively calls Silverlight 'cross-platform', as if that will save him from the inevitable developer nightmare that is coming.

The reason why they've gone all HTML5 and JavaScript of course is because they are nowhere in the mobile developer space. They simply can't persuade people to use Silverlight, .Net and to jump on the developer upgrade treadmill that is Visual Studio and they also need to persuade developers to port existing code and applications from iOS or the iPhone to Windows.

They did it ten years ago with that whole VB/VB.Net debacle, they did it with Winforms and WPF, they did it with WPF and Silverlight and they have no qualms about doing it again. One can only hope that people buying completely into what Microsoft produces will learn one of these days. Anyone who invested heavily in Vista and 7 only applications with the platform they chose are going to be screwed, but, they deserve it.

Edited 2011-06-02 16:56 UTC

I remember a time when things were clearly labeled. When you knew what was clickable an what was aesthetics.

These constant switches in application interaction - from the ribbon bar to tiled touch interfaces - are just confusing for users.

I'm all for testing and moving towards new paradigms of graphical user interfaces, but at some point someone needs to tell Redmond that a little consistency is long over due.


Also, has anyone else noticed how Windows is becoming more like LCARS (Star Trek's ship computers)? hehe

That's the most insightful thing written here. Most people never get this stuff though.

Exactly...

It reminds me of HP's iMac wannabe touch screen computers, that had this rather nice looking, touch enabled UI - right until the point when you had to get any 'real' work done, and you were back to good old Windows ...

So touch based or not; I don't buy this duality as being a viable and efficient interface concept ... -Sorry, Redmond!

I don't agree with that last bit. Windows 8 is Windows 7 with another window manager running on top. It is probably an executable that people will hack out of it and run on Windows 7 for fun. It will be listed here with all the other optional, homeless creatures: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_shell_replacement

Well, as long as they have the classic interface and I can turn off the bullshit, I'm not going to bitch too much. Some folks would accuse us of not adapting to change... well, I'm all for change as long as it's a change for the better. What I am NOT for are these OS vendors' constant attempts to stupify their products so Joe Sixpack doesn't feel lost, while power users get left out in the cold, time after time.

Same thoughts here. 99% of my computer time is spent doing algorithm development, most of it (~90%) for win, (c++ and some java, no .net thankyouverymuch), small portion (~10%) for linux (c++). If win will turn into crackpot ui and push towards web-only-apps, and the 90%/10% above will swap overnight without looking back. Just a note, I notice more and more people going "back" to [or picking] linux for algo. dev. recently (I mean more than before), and I like it. Important thing is, that we still have OSes that can be used for decent dev.

Yes, of course, if your app runs in command line/terminal and you like to write code in text editors and you like to compile from command line.

Ye Gods! Writing code in a text editor? Lets get the bastard before he does unpleasant things with our children!

I view this as a more modest conservative approach: They aren't removing the standard windows UI and if you just use it and apps written for it you won't even notice most of the new stuff. However, if you choose to use apps written for the new system you get the demoed UI and it will work better for tables and phones.

I'm not sure it will work as a strategy but I don't think MS is seriously considering deprecating traditional apps or the traditional UI.

Yeah, just imagine when you watch pr0n on your 22" touch screen monitor and you use your fingers to pause/play, go forward and backward. It's going to be a dream.

Too bad there aren't too many 22" touch screen monitors out there and people still keyboard and mouse.

I can just imagine how nice will be to run Visual Studio on this new UI or using touch screen for typing a 20+ pages word document.

I don't think anyone is suggesting to use the touchscreen for typing a 20+ page document.

are you kidding me? The Metro UI is no where close to what apple has. Microsoft has combined the usefulness of widgets and the functionality of launchers into a single UI and you think it looks like the iOS UI?

Widgets combined with launchers is exactly what you have in iOS, which inherits the concept from the OS X Dock, which again is a slightly more modern version of the NeXTstep Dock from 1988.

But the Apple version has not evolved from its origin of being sized like an icon. So the usefulness of the widget is very limited, and most apps don't make use of it at all.

Sizing the launchers up to more widget-like sizes gives a much better result. Apps are more likely to actually make them more than a mere icon, and it also means that web bookmarks can be presented as thumbnails and fit into the same mosaic. I like.

looks at iOS on iPhone... hmm... not a single widgit.

You have never used an iOS device... have you.

I think what he says is that the iOS API allows software to alter its icon, in a widget-ish way, even though in practice the icon is so small that it is nearly useless, save for the little colored numbers of push notifications.

Yes, exactly. And the point was that the combination widget/launcher is not new, but Microsoft greatly improved on it by making the tiles bigger.

There is one app on iOS that makes real use of this btw - the calendar shows the current date in the icon.

The WindowMaker community has managed to come up with hundreds of ways to fit actual functionality into the tiny dock tiles [1]. Similar ones existed for NeXTstep way before that, but not in such great numbers.

[1] http://www.dockapps.org

7 has bloat?

where?

Yeah brother! I have to agree on that. Who needs proprietary crap when one can have a free GNU/Lunix stack?

Who needs Photoshop and MS Office when we can run the completely free Gimp and Emacs? And Gimp and Emacs are much better and faster than ugly Photoshop and Office.

Running programs from terminal is pure awesomeness. Just think of lynx (powerful web browser), Mutt (powerful email client) and Vim (powerful text editor).

And writing powerful BASH scripts is insane, it's like an orgasm!

I'm glad that you are here and using Gnu/Lunix, bro, that means there are still some true FOSS believers, that means not all people sold their souls to proprietary pigs.

Yeah brother! I have to agree on that. Who needs proprietary crap when one can have a free GNU/Lunix stack?

Who needs Photoshop and MS Office when we can run the completely free Gimp and Emacs? And Gimp and Emacs are much better and faster than ugly Photoshop and Office.

Running programs from terminal is pure awesomeness. Just think of lynx (powerful web browser), Mutt (powerful email client) and Vim (powerful text editor).

And writing powerful BASH scripts is insane, it's like an orgasm!

I'm glad that you are here and using Gnu/Lunix, bro, that means there are still some true FOSS believers, that means not all people sold their souls to proprietary pigs. "

Actually, on any of my Linux systems, if I wish to do editing/enhancement/management of digital photos, I run digikam.

http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/reviews/digikam-2-0-beta-review/
http://www.digikam.org/drupal/about/features9x

If I wish to do raster graphics composition (painting) I run Krita

http://www.calligra-suite.org/krita/

The web browsers I typically use are Firefox 4 and Google Chrome.

If I want to use an Office suite, I run LibreOffice

http://www.libreoffice.org/features/

If I want to do plain text editing, I run Kate

http://www.kde.org/applications/utilities/kate/

For file management, I use Dolphin:

http://www.kde.org/applications/system/dolphin/

This set of free (both as in liberty and as in zero cost) GUI desktop application is paradoxically far better than what is available to me on any Windows desktop I am obliged to use from time to time. In addition, on a Linux system, I also enjoy a far better CLI environment if I wish to use that. Best of both worlds, for free.

Edited 2011-06-02 13:00 UTC

He was taking the piss.

Anyway, this ...

is a matter of opinion ... one I and I sure other will disagree on. Sometimes you get what you pay for.



Again a matter of opinion ... Powershell has the ability to deal with objects and leverage the power of the .NET platform.

If you are talking about cmd.exe ... well you are quite out of date ... since Powershell is included with Vista and 7 in the default install.

Edited 2011-06-02 14:18 UTC

Minor correction: Powershell is included in Vista SP1 or above.

I was stupefied that they didn't include it and .net framework in Vista RTM.

It was those two things that really caused me to separate myself from the whole windows development environment. .Net framework should have been included in Windows XP.

Powershell is great, but its about the whole of the cli environment not just the shell itself. Unix has a more mature set of tools, and many popular applications for the platform are written with a cli interface as well.

Fair point (just checked Wikipedia you are right), I started using Vista after the first service pack, so I just assumed it came with it .. since I saw it on first boot when looking through what was included with my Business Edition I got through MSDNAA.



Again Fair point ... The only thing is that they might as seen powershell as a developer/admin/power user thing and left it out of the default install and assumed that users that really wanted it would download anyway. But I do agree it certainly wouldn't have hurt to have put it in, even as a optional OS component.



A lot of it is personal preference ... I do like some of the unix tools don't get me wrong. I have a Sun Blade 100 sitting next to my feet running OpenBSD ...

But I really don't like mucking about with piping text all over the place ... I prefer working with Objects, whether that is JSON, POCOs or XML ... it just easier IMO (if done right as with many things) to work with.

Also Powershell's syntax is not dissimilar to C# so the learning curve for me is gentler.

I am fairly familiar with unix like CLIs since I been working with various Unix like systems since IRIX at University, I just prefer Microsoft tools ... I use them quite a lot at work ... so it maybe just familiarity.

As many things with using a computer ... you need to use the right tech for the job and there is no one-size fits all solution.

Edited 2011-06-02 17:50 UTC

... and sometimes one gets an expensive bare-bones OS that is plagued with malware written to compromise it, saddled with ancient legacy encumberances, illogical, inconsistent eclectic GUI, un-auditable, having next-to-usless lack-of-management of application installations (actively increasing the effectiveness of attack vectors such as trojans and phising), includes anti-features, has generally very expensive applications, and perhaps worst of all, one which carries a legal risk of attracting a lawsuit through one's mere use of it.

Yes, that horrible, horrible OS sucks big time. Everybody should see the light and switch to GNU/Lunix and enjoy the power and freedom of CLI, BASH and Emacs. Until is too late.

... and sometimes one gets an expensive bare-bones OS that is plagued with malware written to compromise it, saddled with ancient legacy encumberances, illogical, inconsistent eclectic GUI, un-auditable, having next-to-usless lack-of-management of application installations (actively increasing the effectiveness of attack vectors such as trojans and phising), includes anti-features, has generally very expensive applications, and perhaps worst of all, one which carries a legal risk of attracting a lawsuit through one's mere use of it. "

It seems the truth annoys you?

There is so much misinformation there it is difficult to know where to begin.

For my requirements the Open Source alternatives are insufficient in features that I require and I am quite happy paying for software that does meet my requirements.

However this seems to upset you so greatly?

PowerShell is incredibly bloated too.

No Windows 2000 through 7 have been pretty good tbh, Most changes other that purely aethestic have been introduced in a evolutionary fashion.



MSE has pretty much buggar all overhead.



Don't need to run it since I don't download any spyware ... research for the win.



They are only run on occasion rather infrequently ... so what is the problem exactly?



Not really a problem when most don't use any CPU or memory overhead unless actually doing something ... apparently someone doesn't understand how an OS schedules tasks.



Haven't rebooted for a least a week.



Only if you let them.



No it isn't, My GPU does the "Graphics Bit" while my CPU does the "processing bit" ... my system is more responsive as a result. I find Windows 7 to feel faster than XP running on the same hardware.



Heard of GConf?



Yawn ... what you call bloat I call features ... depends whether it is of any use to you.



Nobody is forcing you.



These are only any good if you actually organise your Windows ... I don't, many users don't.



Yeah because only geeks should be able to use computers ... elitism much?



Looks pretty good for casual users .. but apparenty guys like you scorn people for not being able to use a Unix Terminal like second nature ... you can live in your Ivory CLI tower pretending to be l33t whilst the rest of the world uses something that they can use easily.

What you would consider "Normal users" are probably in the minority. I know quite a few users that use the file open/save dialog from microsoft office to do their file management. My Documents/ Desktop are the only two folders they are aware of.

I'm sorry but I just can't let that go by

Vista is by far the worst OS ever the GUI is vile almost everything about it is vile - the search is OK and don't mention ME Vista is worse.

Edited 2011-06-02 17:08 UTC

Bugger all overhead is not the only test of an AV - only time will tell if MSE is a good AV. I personally would not uncritically trust MS with making an AV.

Edited 2011-06-02 17:11 UTC

How dare we use our Hardware to make out computer faster by using the really fast 3d accelerator card.



I write code for a living, I rarely have to do much in "housekeeping" with Windows. I just use it.



I don't care whether it is a design flaw or not ... I don't notice it happening, and I can carrying on working.



Good for you. I find Windows is perfect for my needs. I spend less time housekeeping and more time working and using my computer.



Elitism again ... Also Windows doesn't just randomly break. The only time I have had Windows break ... is ironically when I installed Linux and it killed my bootloader or HW failure.



I know how tiling works, I just don't care.



Unfortunately the same features that make Windows great for running hundreds of programs is the exact same features that make it great for malware ... as I keep on saying user education is the key to security.



I have always said that user education is the key to security.



Enough with this bloat rubbish ... Nobody cares anymore, even the cheapest Laptops and desktops come with multi-core-multi-GHZ processors and thousands of megabytes of ram ... it is a non-issue these days.

If you are complaining about "bloat" then apparently it is a problem to you and I was outlining why it really isn't.



No they wouldn't when they update the system and something breaks (which is does frequently), they will have a computer they can't use. If they want to install some software for a third party device they have bought it won't work because most software is written for Windows or Mac ... People will just get frustrated and ask for Windows.



I have checked out the alternatives, I have used Redhat, Suse, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Solaris, IRIX etc ... and I chose Windows ... and I am pretty good on a Unix command prompt.



Elistism again. I used to admin Linux ... and I hate them.

I have used pretty much everything. I just can't be arsed messing about configuring crap anymore with text files (I do enough of that for a living) or messing about with software repos to install 3d drivers or any of the other crap that I had to do over the years to have a working Linux system.

I used to spend more time housekeeping than actually working when I used to muck about with Linux and you know .... I am just too lazy and fed up of it.

Edited 2011-06-03 10:34 UTC

Nice long post some interesting points - but if you think Vista is a good OS how can we take anything you say seriously.

"Nice long post some interesting points - but if you think Vista is a good OS how can we take anything you say seriously."

I installed Vista after a year it was released... You know what... I thought it was a huge improvement from Vista. I had zero problems running it on my laptop.

It is hard to believe, but people did like Vista.

"Aero is bloat"

Memory wise it isn't a very lightweight window manager like the original.

Address your thank you notes to:

Mark Shuttleworth and the Unity Team
Canonical Group Limited
27th Floor, Millbank Tower
21-24 Millbank
London SW1P 4QP
United Kingdom

Yes very nice. You still haven't explained how serious work will be done using a touch interface. Don't get me wrong, I think tablets are awesome and for casual data interaction and light data creation tasks they work great, but think about what you work on all day. How much of that could feasibly work on a touch screen? 10%? 20%?, Maybe even 50%? I don't think we will ever get to 100%, because touch interaction is not suitable for a "sit down at your desk and work" use-case. It just isn't, no matter how clever the interface is.

How much of the work that I do all day could feasibly be done on a touch screen? I'd say 100%.

I'm a programmer, web developer, user interface designer, and mobile app developer. There is nothing that I do that could not be done on a touch-screen based computer as efficiently as I do today using a keyboard and mouse.

I'm not saying that it would be feasible for me to swap to a touch-based computer today - I'm talking about what will be possible in a few years. I'd like a large screen, as big as my plasma telly but with at least twice the resolution, that's either horizontal covering a desk top or angled up a little like a drafting table. Given that I don't think I'd want a physical keyboard getting between me and the screen, or a mouse and pointer getting in the way of me more directly interacting with the UI.

Fingers will obviously be the main interaction method for touch UIs, but for fine details you'll grab a pen. I rarely need to do such fine work myself though.

What will make this practical is redesigned user interfaces that bear touch interaction in mind. UI controls that are small and fiddly don't work - things need to be bigger and more tolerant of fat fingers. Using apps made for today's desktop UIs with fingers isn't going to fly - it didn't work too well for pen-based tablets either.

To restate, I firmly believe that 100% of my work could be done using a touch-based computing environment. Were I a graphic artist, a movie editor, or a musician I'd say the same. Pessimistically I'd say that in 10 years time this will be norm for all of these use-cases. Optimistically I expect that within 5 years touch will be dominant for all new machines and software.

The more pertinent question is what work do you think cannot be done feasibly on a touch screen, given a suitably designed UI?

Basically, all work which implies having lots of features at once or working on a detailed object. Flat finger-based touchscreens will never be good at this, due to their terrible input resolution. Haptic feedback or pen input would be required before they become suitable for it.

As an example, drawing and handwriting with fingers is needlessly tedious and complicated, because either you use a finger-sized brush and have terrible precision, or you use a pixel-sized brush that writes at a random place on your finger's surface and must be ready to endure terrible headaches.

Coding is another example : the coding workflow (at least mine) implies seeing lots of code at once and being able to select/copy/paste code snippets quickly and easily. These goals are contradictory on a finger-based touchscreen : to allow for fast finger-based freeform selection, text must be really big, and even if you have a gigantic-sized screen it will still feel uncomfortable to visually parse lots of big text at once.

On the feature side... I can't imagine using something like a word processor on a finger-based touchscreen beyond a wordpad-like workflow where formatting is only a matter of changing font size and using underline/bold/italic functions. Packing that much features in an UI that can be used with big fingers while still being able to see what you're writing would mean that the interface would offer only little immediate access to the software's functionality. Tables, styles, pdf export, subscript/superscript, and other "minor" functionality would require switching interface tabs or going through kilometric menus.

Again, all these problems can be solved through use of a pen-based interface, even though in that case text input becomes an issue (as good as pen is for pointing, selecting, and drawing, it's horrible for inputting text, so you need to put down the pen each time you write). A pen + haptic feedback to make text input on a touchscreen comparable to a keyboard experience could do the trick and make touchscreens an acceptable universal interface for tomorrow. But touchscreens as they stand today ? No. Not good for my work.

Edited 2011-06-02 17:59 UTC

All things productive. From programming to writing 20+ pages in Word. All things that take many hours of work and requires to write a lot and use many buttons. Even gaming will be a nightmare with touch screen only.

What I hate about most of these interfaces is discoverability. They should add arrows to the interface so you can see where there is something you can try.

And if you do that, I think it would help with making a touch interface work with keyboard/mouse as well.

Hmmm... Please state your definition of a full featured OS.

For me, an OS is an interface between hardware, users, and developers.

Android runs on a wide range of phones, so it abstracts hardware away. Users interact directly with it. It provides developers with an API that allow them to interact with the abstracted hardware and the user without reinventing the wheel. So in my opinion, it's a full-blown OS.

Edited 2011-06-02 11:09 UTC

While enabling experienced users to be much less productive.

Disagree. As twitterfire mentioned, porn + touchscreen = ew !

More generally, touchscreens are probably the dirtiest general-purpose computer interface ever invented. People were not satisfied enough with what hides under their keyboard keys, so we have created an interface where the finger must be consciously dragged on a surface in order to enforce better unhygienic coating, and which is left exposed to exterior dirt when not in use.

Edited 2011-06-02 12:10 UTC

You are aware that the human body has an immune system?

Many people touch my desk during the day, however I am not constantly wiping it. Many people are touching door handles but they are not constantly cleaned and nobody really worries about it.

Who really cares if there are other peoples germs on a surface? It not like there is killer plague on every screen ... it really doesn't matter.

Edited 2011-06-02 14:23 UTC

I know that, but you must admit that touchscreens easily end up looking quite ugly after a few months of use.

And since there's electronics underneath, you can't use anything but a dry piece of tissue to wipe that, which in turn is not fantastically effective.

There's a reason why some people are maniac about people who touch their computer screen : newer screens attract stain and make it stick.

Edited 2011-06-02 14:40 UTC

I must be a lot different than most computer users ... I see my kit strictly as a tool ... so most of my stuff is pretty beat up and dirty ... with various hacks and bodges to keep them going.

Edited 2011-06-02 15:39 UTC

There are various products available for cleaning LCD and or touch screens. They work really well.

Although, I'm still a maniac who doesn't let other people touch my ( non touch) screens.

That the difference ... I still have all sorts of finger prints, dust etc all over my kit ... then again most of kit seems to work forever (still apparently have an Athlon XP 1400+ that I sold to some guy still working absolutely fine.

You are aware that the human body has an immune system?

Many people touch my desk during the day, however I am not constantly wiping it. Many people are touching door handles but they are not constantly cleaned and nobody really worries about it.
"
Really you missed it. A keyboard and mouse is harder to proper clean than a touch screen. Good grade touch screen devices have very few groves and other locations for infections to hide. Also good grade stand isopropyl alcohol. Generally a highly effective kill anything solution in high enough concentrations. Packages up into nice sealed throw away wipes.

Basically touchscreen beats keyboard and mouse. Of course no touch is better again. But using no touch interfaces has really not be sorted out.

Exterior dirt coats keyboards and mice just as badly in some cases worse. Hand does not drag across mouse so areas of mouse just builds more and more build up.

So the wiping actions of users on a touch screen is part self cleaning. Ok not ideal that the cleaning material is another human. It reduces what the infections have to grow on.

Yes door handles have the same self cleaning system. Yes ugly. Touch screen is not much worse than door handles. Of course in case of major surface spread infection out brakes I don't recommend touching either directly.

Also depending what the final coat of the touchscreen is and the backing light. Yes its possible even if slightly unhealthy to intentionally fit a back light that gives of bacteria and virus distributive light.

Now that is the thing touchscreens don't have a rating on how anti bacteria and viruses they are to the general public. Their are medical grade ones surface and back-lighting makes them a lot safer than a keyboard and mouse.

Name your first user account root. Give it a password. On your first login as root, create a standard user account, and log out. From now on, you run as a standard user, and when you actually need escalation of privileges a UAC password dialog pops up. This setup is exactly what UNIX does. The only difference is that the Windows installer is borked and doesn't force the user to set this up automatically.

Name your first user account root. Give it a password. On your first login as root, create a standard user account, and log out. From now on, you run as a standard user, and when you actually need escalation of privileges a UAC password dialog pops up. This setup is exactly what UNIX does. The only difference is that the Windows installer is borked and doesn't force the user to set this up automatically. "

Not quite, there is a difference. When my Linux system requires escalation of privileges a password dialog does indeed pop up (one way or another), and I must supply a passwrod. I must type it in, and in order to do that, I must know the password. Presumably, I must be me.

On Windows as you described, the UAC prompt is merely a dialog box on which anyone at all may click the "Allow" button. It doesn't ask for a password to be entered.

Well Lunix does stupid things. When someone has physical access to a box, he owns that box, no matter if password is asked or not. What UAC does is let the user know that some program wants to access some resource.

Oh, and Lunix is secure by design. Someone Who Is Not Me, when was bored owned a lot of Lunix boxes by remote exploiting them. Is funny how Someone Who Is Not Me exploited those boxes, even if they had Selinux/Apparmor and another "advanced" security features enabled in the kernel, in a hastily manner.

I guess there aren't too many viruses on Lunix because of its inherent security and its huge success.

Wrong. If the account does not have admin privileges, UAC asks for a password.

Believe me, there's such a setup on my PC.

No, right. If the account of person who logged on initially does have admin privileges (e.g. it was the first account created on that machine), then if that machine is left logged on by that person then anyone else can install anything, without knowing any password, merely by clicking the UAC "Allow" button at the appropriate moment.

Oh, I see what you're talking about now, but that's not what the OP was talking about. The OP's idea was to use the initial admin account to create a limited user account and then bury the admin account forever and never use it again.

Kind of like on Unices, where logging on as root is never, ever, recommended.

Thanks, Yes, this was my point - Windows setup is borked (sorry not to be clearer, I should have just said that!). For a power user, who doesn't mind occasional prompts to enter the admin password, Windows 7 security model is OK (except for a few apps which require a full admin desktop session to update!). However, the vast majority of average computer users simply do what Windows setup tells them. Therefore malware writers can generally just assume the user is running as an admin UAC account, and so can use one of the techniques to bypass the UAC prompt and own the user's machine. Of course, if Microsoft enforced complex passwords, and refused to allow the desktop to run in admin mode, they would get loads of tech calls from users unable to remember their passwords - and this is probably why they don't have the guts to do this. However, I find it annoying that this basically makes malware so easy and profitable. I want Microsoft to destroy their business model dammit!
Of course, even restricting users to standard user accounts and requiring complex passwords will be inadequate - it would certainly help against the recent surge of Java and Adobe-based attacks. But malware writers would just get clever at cajoling users into entering their admin passwords. That's why I recommend more use of sandboxing as well.

It's still going to have Windows... You can use the Win7 UI still.

Because it's easier for the casual user..

A casual user can do all their stuff in a web browser(Using MS Office Web App, Facebook, GMail, and their companies in house web apps).

Plus you can set it to be just like Win7, it's not going to be like ChromeOS.