Jump to content

Windows 8


deanb
 Share

Recommended Posts

Well, I bet it still handles the soft power button on the PC case like XP and Win7 do... but it really sounds like they've made a lot of terrible decisions with this one. Still, that's par for the course - MS makes an innovative release when everyone's pretty comfortable with what they have; a lot of the innovations turn out to be horrible and they collect feedback and flames from the users, then they release a more conservative version with many issues fixed.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thing is the consumer preview is the "fixed" version. :/ And that's the one where the start menu disappeared to the side.

 

Dev preview:https://www.dropbox.com/gallery/2066351/1/Windows_8?h=925ee1#gallery:4

 

Consumer preview: https://www.dropbox.com/gallery/2066351/1/Windows_8?h=925ee1#gallery:18

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Can't say I agree with that "missing feature" list as a whole. Too many of those are power user options. Though I would like them I don't see them at all necessary for an widely used OS. The stuff that OSX does would be nice though.

 

You have to go to settings to shut down? WTF?

 

It's less drastic than you think. It's hot corner>"setttings" button>shutdown. It's not as fast, but I think that's because they're trying to point out that you don't really need to shut down your computer all that much these days. Obviously there's still hardware keys that can handle that. Anyways, the "settings" button is just a hot corner popup. It's not a full menu.

 

Anyways, after using Win 8 all weekend and coming back to WIndows 7... I am definitely more comfortable on this side, but I miss the hot corners and overall look and feel. Windows 8 is damn smooth.

 

Also as someone who uses a dual monitor setup I didn't have any problems. With the work I do from home I was in the desktop environment the whole time and would only use metro (remember, it's the new start menu) to launch apps.

Edited by Faiblesse Des Sens
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well... I meant more in commercially released versions. There's always a bit of shifting around in dev previews (I remember when "Longhorn" was supposedly going to contain WinFS... nope - still on NTFS here a generation later!)

 

I get the feeling Windows 8 will be of the same stripe as Windows Vista, Windows ME, or even the Win95 shell, Microsoft Bob. It may work for many - a service pack may even make it mostly workable - but I bet if it releases as-is, the overall reaction will be rejection because good or bad, it's a bit too radical and people hate relearning the basics, so its successor will be more conservative to regain consumer confidence again, and will probably keep some of the best ideas from Win8, and keep others included but off by default.

 

(Personally, I'm still frustrated by Windows 7's inability to show recycle bin size or file sizes in the status bar - the details pane is massive and mostly useless... It's also bizarre how one is toggled from the view menu and the other is toggled from the Organize button. It's a mess...)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The details pane can be resized. Why do you need to see the size of your recycle bin, anyways? I know some Linux users will say that a recycle bin is unnecessary and you should just get better at deleting. :laugh:

 

Personally I only use that pane for MP3 tags. I could add it as a column but that doesn't show all of the info at once unless I use a fuckhuge window.

 

Who knows how people will react. In retrospect, Vista's problem wasn't its UI or anything, it was crap like UAC. Win 8 just needs a tutorial on launch or something to explain hot corners and metro= start menu. I've used tons of apps that tell me about new features upon booting up. It wouldn't kill MS to include the same.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well... I meant more in commercially released versions. There's always a bit of shifting around in dev previews (I remember when "Longhorn" was supposedly going to contain WinFS... nope - still on NTFS here a generation later!)

Actually Win 8 is bringing in "ReFS" http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/01/16/building-the-next-generation-file-system-for-windows-refs.aspx

 

A walkthrough would be neat, and something better than the "Welcome Screen" crap.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Viewing the size of the recycle bin can show you how much space you'd free up if you emptied it. I used to think it was a pointless feature, but that was back when I used MS-DOS and just went to Windows 3.11 when I needed it for a Windows application - now it's a way of life, even in most Linux GUI desktops. It can be nice to audit deleted files once before annihilating them.

 

The details pane can be resized - bigger at least. Ideally it would just be the status bar though. Most of the data it shows me is already in the column view when I view by details (including ID3 tags and EXIF data) but for some reason they changed Win7 so you can no longer select a group of files and view the size in the status bar - so I need to eat up an additional inch at the bottom of every folder just so the details pane can show that... or hit alt+enter to view the properties window, then close it, every time I want to see how big a group of files is.

There's a third party explorer replacement to fix the latter issue, but that's not really ideal. It's easy to find hundreds (thousands?) of people searching for fixes to both problems and lamenting these nonsensical changes. But anyway, these are Windows 7 problems - I just brought them up because they're a couple of obvious ways MS decided to change things just to change them, breaking things more than fixing them. It seems it's always worthwhile to sit back and let a generation or at least a major service pack or two roll out before risking involvement with their "innovations."

Link to comment
Share on other sites

ReFS and WinFS seem to be totally different, but I welcome what they're saying about ReFS. It sounds like ReFS is going to be pretty flexible and as they say, "resilient." I'm the type who, given the choice between faster and more reliable would pick reliable 9 times out of 10, so... that's great, if it works. File systems are about as serious as it gets on a computer though, so even though they're sure to test it like crazy, I think this is another thing worth sitting back and letting it mature for a while - assuming it'll even ship with it.

 

WinFS on the other hand... was a relational database based file system. I linked to an article on it and haven't read up on it in ages, but hypothetically such a thing could even throw out the old "file" and "folder" paradigm and just have data in different tables/records, pulling up any relevant files by tags and attributes you search for. It was not fast though, and just about every part of the project has been killed or used in something else instead.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Pardon me for not reading that novel, but the aero-less interface looks crappy to me! I like Metro, but making the windows flat like in windows 98/2000 is just so ugly.

 

If it was "Metro"-flat, i would probably like it (but how do you do that? Metro is way different). But that one seems forced. I hope there's an option. I would probably know the answer to that if I read the "blog post" but its just soooo loooong...

Edited by elev3n
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Pardon me for not reading that novel, but the aero-less interface looks crappy to me! I like Metro, but making the windows flat like in windows 98/2000 is just so ugly.

 

If it was "Metro"-flat, i would probably like it (but how do you do that? Metro is way different). But that one seems forced. I hope there's an option. I would probably know the answer to that if I read the "blog post" but its just soooo loooong...

 

For the second time... it isn't finalized. They even said changes would appear in the final version, beyond even the changes in the release candidate.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Pardon me for not reading that novel, but the aero-less interface looks crappy to me! I like Metro, but making the windows flat like in windows 98/2000 is just so ugly.

 

If it was "Metro"-flat, i would probably like it (but how do you do that? Metro is way different). But that one seems forced. I hope there's an option. I would probably know the answer to that if I read the "blog post" but its just soooo loooong...

 

For the second time... it isn't finalized. They even said changes would appear in the final version, beyond even the changes in the release candidate.

 

I didn't say it was, i was just reacting to Dean posting it. And (wrongly) assuming that he liked it.

 

As I said, it's ugly. And if it looked more Metro I would probably do!

 

Like this mockup!

 

Why couldn't they come up with something like that!?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Personally I think that looks very metro-y. It all looks like the Zune desktop app. I would love to see it look lkk that over the design they showed.

 

I want windows to change it's look, I just like a lot of visual changes (I downloaded the Bing desktop so I could have my desktop image change daily). What they showed that could be the next desktop look, looks old to me

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...