Adrian Kingsley-Hughes pens a rant on Windows 8, calling it 'awful': "I'm now ready to sum up my Windows 8 experience with a single word: awful. I could have chosen a number of other words - terrible, horrible, painful and execrable all spring to mind - but it doesn't matter, the sentiment is the same." I've been using Windows 8 Release Preview on both my ZenBook and my regular desktop since its release, and here's my short review: "I like it." Issues a-plenty, but for what is essentially a 1.0 release - not bad. It's a hell of a lot better than other releases which were similar in scope (Mac OS X 10.0, KDE 4.0).
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Member since:2009-08-26
There's always a crowd people who blindly fall for new and shiny and get upset with the guy who points out that the emperor is actually naked.
Windows 8 is a waste of time for enterprise and Microsoft cannot afford to ignore that market.
We're talking about billions of dollars here. For every Windows 8 defender who takes pride in embracing the golden linen of "change" there is a hard nosed CIO who will ask what exactly will offset the increased user training costs. Sinofsky still hasn't answered this question and you can live in la-la tablet land with him until Windows 8 drops along with Microsoft's revenue. Then it will be back to reality and those who were called "afraid of change" will be seen as realistic thinkers whose concerns should have been heeded. Windows 8 defenders will be viewed as vain and completely disconnected from the financial realities of a company like Microsoft and enterprise computing in general.
Just because YOU don't mind the start screen doesn't mean a Fortune 500 hundred company with 100 start menu shortcuts in a shared system image thinks it's f--king jolly to dump them on a single screen with animated icons and then retrain each user to re-learn where their programs are. Office workers are notoriously fickle and will drain thousands hours of support costs over something like this. That's real money, not ill feelings on a tech forum.
Oh but YOU don't mind it, YOU probably spend most the time in a browser and have no consideration for these things. Well don't feel bad, neither does the Windows president.
Edited 2012-06-17 01:19 UTC
Member since:2009-03-17
Member since:2007-03-06
Because I said something related to nazis?
Ok, let me rephrase that:
"If you really want to invalidate negative opinions you could go further and state that they are also the same ones that killed Bambi's mother".
Better now? The point is your broad statement was silly.
At an event earlier today, Microsoft unveiled the next Xbox - the third model, but confusingly named Xbox One. The big focus was TV, integrated Kinect, and all the other stuff we all expected to be forced down our throats. I think it took them 25 minutes to actually come to what should be the core of the story: gaming. Nothing groundbreaking in the gaming department, except for how Microsoft intends to handle the used games market and borrowing games from friends: pay up, buddy!
The day has finally come! Jolla has finally announced the launch device for its Sailfish operating system - and by god this is a looker. It's decidedly different from other phones out there, but it has good specifications and carries a relatively reasonably price tag - EUR 399, and it's up for pre-order today, shipping in the fourth quarter of this year.
Why does Google get so much credit in the technology industry? Why, despite the company's many obvious failings, do many geeks and enthusiasts still hold a somewhat positive view on the all-knowing technology giant? A specific talk at Google I/O this week provides the answer.
OSNews is a sponsor of this year's O'Reilly OSCON in Portland, Oregon, USA. A lucky OSNews reader will win a free three-day pass, including two tutorials days. To win the pass, post a comment on this story saying something about Open Source Software or OSCON. We'll pick a winner at random next week. If you don't have an OSNews account, you may email us your entry. Part of the conference is the 9th annual Open Source Awards, and today the 16th is the deadline for nominations. If you'd like to nominate an outstanding open source contributor, do it here. Read on for more information about OSCON. Update: The 20% discount code for OSNews readers is "OSN.""Windows is indeed slower than other operating systems in many scenarios, and the gap is worsening." That's one way to start an insider explanation of why Windows' performance isn't up to snuff. Written by someone who actually contributes code to the Windows NT kernel, the comment on Hacker News, later deleted but reposted with permission on Marc Bevand's blog, paints a very dreary picture of the state of Windows development. The root issue? Think of how Linux is developed, and you'll know the answer.
This is one of those news items that's fun to write, fun to read, fun to comment on, and where no one will be able to say anything unkind. It's all just one big ball of awesome fluffiness. TuneTracker, the BeOS radio automation software, has just released something very special: TuneTracker System 5, the first version designed entirely and specifically for Haiku. In fact, it actually includes Haiku in the software package. Better yet, TuneTracker also unveiled several system-in-a-box products - which have Haiku and TuneTracker pre-installed.
Exactly twenty years ago, a document was published that played a huge role in establishing the web as we know it today. Twenty years later, and this simple and straightforward document is proof of an irrefutable fact: while closed technologies can change markets, open technologies can change the world.Oh multitasking. That staple of computing that got thrown out the window with many modern smartphones. We got some rudimentary thing in its place - but even as multitasking on phone and tablets improves, its user-visible side remains cumbersome. Windows 8 has a neat implementation, and now it's time Android follows in it footsteps.They're here! Whether that excites you or not remains to be seen, but the Galaxy S4, which will most likely become the best selling Android smartphone of the year by a huge margin, has been reviewed by all the major sites, and there's lots of interesting conclusions in there - although I think most of you will get the gist.Nokia has posted its quarterly results for the first quarter of 2013, and just like the quarters that came before, there's not a whole lot of good news in there. The rise in Lumia sales still can't even dream of making up for the sales drop in Symbian phones, and when broken down in versions, the sales figures for Windows Phone 8 Lumias in particular are very disappointing. In North America, Nokia is getting slaughtered.
Member since:
2009-08-27
Hey hey, you're getting too close to the Godwin's singularity.
What I wanted to say is that there's always people who blindly reject change, especially if it's a big one like this. One of the article arguments was that "Microsoft trained us to search for apps in a small, vertical list, and now they force us to look all over the screen". It also dismisses app search functionality, saying "every use of it is a failure".
As a Mac user who has his main apps in the dock and launches the rest through Spotlight, I don't see the downside. As a Win7 user who has his main apps in the taskbar and launches the rest through Start Menu search, I don't see the downside. Win8 launcher it's the same, and allows pinned apps to show extra information.
The article also bashes the Ribbon toolbars. Personally, I think the Ribbon is the killer feature of Office, as it exposes lots of functionality I'd have never discovered otherwise.
This article is a rant, as Thom pointed out. Metro needs some adjustments, and real, non-toy third party Metro apps are badly needed. But there's lots of things in Win8 that could potentially change relationships within apps. The Contracts feature is a really good idea. Cross-app file picking and sharing, among other things, will allow apps to be smaller and focused. That's a really good thing.