Windows 8 Preview

[engine]

Windows 8 was demonstrated and here's what Microsoft said.

Windows 8 Preview [microsoft.com]

Here are a few aspects of the new interface we showed today:

• Fast launching of apps from a tile-based Start screen, which replaces the Windows Start menu with a customizable, scalable full-screen view of apps.

• Live tiles with notifications, showing always up-to-date information from your apps.

• Fluid, natural switching between running apps.

• Convenient ability to snap and resize an app to the side of the screen, so you can really multitask using the capabilities of Windows.

• Web-connected and Web-powered apps built using HTML5 and JavaScript that have access to the full power of the PC.

• Fully touch-optimized browsing, with all the power of hardware-accelerated Internet Explorer 10.

[wheel]

The only people that like it are those clinging to 10 year old computers.

Planned obsalescence. And you're buying into it hook line and sinker. My computer, and my OS need to do little more than they did a few years ago - as do probably 99% of computer users. The reason everyone needs new computers and new OS's is because they're being sold a bill of goods by MS and their bedmate the hardware companies.

[incrediBILL]

Planned obsalescence. And you're buying into it hook line and sinker.

I've still got one active buggy XP box, it's slower than hell, too slow to be a production machine, and painful to use, but "i'm buying into it", yeah, right, I should still be using a TRS-80 or Commodore-64 with that logic or using that old brick analog cell phone.

Sorry, XP was crap, it's mostly gone from my life, I've rebooted less in the last 2 years than ever before in my life, the machine stays up months at a time, I couldn't be happier.

End of story.

FWIW, I didn't upgrade the OS, I bought new hardware and it was just there. I sure as hell wasn't downgrading this fine new box to XP garbage, what would the point be? Stupidity.

[J_RaD]

yep, i've moved on to muli core 64 bit processors and couldn't even think about sticking to some old outdated 32bit chip.

yes i ran XP 64 but c'mon that was like a science experiment.

my computers do the same thing they did a few years ago...they just do it a heck of a lot faster now! I even built my current system with overhead... as soon as 6-cores drop in prices im swapping chips and getting faster, and maybe adding more screens :-D

[aleksl]

"First thing you see is a mosaic of tiles..."

Oh, NO. No. F**ing no, not another DASHBOARD....


Microsof, here's an innovative though: dashboard is NOT AN INNOVATION. It is a mid-management compromise on poor design and no vision.

Try again, I suggest maybe instead of designing by a committee, fire the committee and hire a great UI designer, like maybe learn from Apple?

[wheel]

my computers do the same thing they did a few years ago...they just do it a heck of a lot faster now!

And as I noted, for MOST people, current computers actually don't do anything noticeably faster than they did a few years ago.

My web browser is no faster or slower, my documents don't open or type any faster than before, and so on.

Power users, maybe. But that's not 99% of the uses. For the regular home user or business user, technology from 5 years ago ran fine.

In fact, MY computer ran fine, and I ran on a PC that was 5-7 years old up until very recently. And I only updated because of hardware concerns.

The only thing we've needed more speed for in my home and office usage in the last 5+ years was virtualization - clearly a high end need. There's been no new uses in that time that meant a need for new hardware.

Oh, unless you count needing to move to the latest MS OS. That's the only reason for new hardware, and the reason stuff runs slow - every new OS is more bloated and slower than the last, and requires ever faster hardware.

Thankfully, my OS doesn't take that route.

[J_RaD]

like a huge grid of icons is any better?

[aleksl]

J_Rad, are you referring to my comment on dashboards?

Combined right, huge grid of icons is better.

Dashboard has its usefulness to, for instance for @ of unread email. The problem though is that with spam, and because most people who use email for work keep important emails unread (or so I see), that feature is effectively useless except for home users who get 2-3 emails a day.

The other is to see who's online when I am online, but any instant messenger is doing it perfectly, I don't want it to be embedded in OS.

Other than that, why do I need a dashboard? Enlighten me. To see latest pushed propaganda news article from CNN or Faux news? Why would I want weather to be integrated into OS? Why would I want Social Network integrated into OS, heck no, I want it OUT of my computer for privacy concerns, and only enabled as an option.

I'd say, keep the feature as a option and let user choose if they want to see it.

[wheel]

I'd buy that we could use something innovative and new in the way of a GUI. I just don't see that coming from MS.

Every new OS from them is less intuitive than the last, not more intuitive.

Yet I picked up an ipad, and have never once had to go looking for how to do something.

[incrediBILL]

]Oh, unless you count needing to move to the latest MS OS. That's the only reason for new hardware, and the reason stuff runs slow

No it isn't - other new software and MY need for speed.

The other points were silly, the faster the machine the faster the browser loads, the faster the games play, the faster the video and you can play higher-res video, compile software quicker, upload download a little faster, load files quicker, its just speed.

Arguing a bad point to argue is silly, stop it. ;)

[J_RaD]

Yet I picked up an ipad, and have never once had to go looking for how to do something.

its a consumption device not a computing device (technically).... do kids ever ask how to turn on the xbox and play games?

[J_RaD]

The only thing we've needed more speed for in my home and office usage in the last 5+ years was virtualization - clearly a high end need. There's been no new uses in that time that meant a need for new hardware.

huh what? it really depends on what you do.... work with video much? just simple video conversion can take HOURS on old hardware.

even burning DVDs for friends that aren't up with times goes by much faster.

i guess some people actually put their hardware to work and some don't.

[Hester]

I just scanned a 500Gb external hard drive for errors using Windows XP on my ageing single-core AMD-based PC. It took NINE AND A HALF HOURS! I imagine with a USB3 interface (or even better, Thunderbolt) and a modern PC running Windows 7 and an i3, i5 or i7 processor, the speed would be a lot faster.

The same would go for anything intensive like converting video files, WAVs into MP3s (takes me ages) and so on. Even just backing up files is a pain on an old machine like mine that does not even have SATA hard drives.

Having said that it runs the web smoothly and everyday computing tasks. If XP wasn't so capable I would have rushed to get Vista when it came out. But the truth is, even now, it still works fine. Of course I am tempted to upgrade, but there's no point until I get a whole new PC.