Windows 8 thread

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Hemi-Cuda

But why even focus on ARM at all? Atom provides the same if not better performance with the same battery life

Not even close. ARM based Chromebooks, for example, knock Atom based ones all around the park. There is nothing fast, efficient, or nice about X86. If every tablet and phone manufacturer out there could have gotten away with X86, they would have simply to retain binary compatibility and use existing toolchains.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6422/s...s-cortex-a15/6

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Rathji

I don't recall the specifics, to be honest, but there were some pretty good reasons why Atom never became a valid ARM competitor.

Intel's new Silvermount Atom chip, which is a complete redesign, will almost certainly change that though.

And interestingly, evolution of the Atom isn't being driven just at the low end (tablets, phones), but at the high end - HP and others are stuffing thousands of ARM cores into blade chassis systems now to deliver massively parallel throughput at a fraction of the threads per watt that traditional X86 servers can deliver.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by zamler

Microsoft is introducing change just for the sake of it, at the expense of concepts that have been well established and just work.

Were this the case, we'd all be running X11 on SysV, since all the facilities of a modern graphically administered OS were firmly in place already.

[TorqueDog]

Originally Posted by Hemi-Cuda

Because it's still full screen. There is no need to use up that much real estate for something the traditional start menu accomplished in a fraction of the space. On my work PC I have all my frequent apps pinned to the start menu (I don't like wasting space on the task bar), an expandable Control Panel and Administrative Tools menus, a nice search/run bar, quick links to all my documents, and as an IT admin having the ability to pin numerous remote desktop shortcuts to various servers is awesome. You simply can't do all that with the start screen

So if your real concern is being able to quick pin things to the Start screen, then say that. Complaining that it's still full screen means nothing when it goes away as quickly as it shows up because you only use it for invoking applications. There's literally nothing else you could do with the additional space it takes up. It's like Barnes said, 'people hate change'. That's all it comes off as to anyone else reading.

As for grouping things, I've done that on the Start screen with Office 2013 as an example. You can pin all the Administrative tools you want to your heart's content... though it's still faster to just type the first three or four letters and hit [Enter].

Although as a former IT admin myself, I'm a bit surprised you're not using something like RDCMan (link) or some other sort of RDP Management application for managing multiple RDP connections. Shortcuts and RDP files are a pretty inefficient way of managing RDP sessions. As your infrastructure scales out and the number of servers you need to manage rises, pinning stuff to the Start menu is not going to be a viable solution once you reach a certain point. If anything, I'd say you should probably use the 'inconvenience' of the new Start menu as an excuse to get out of these bad habits.

But if you insist...

[Hemi-Cuda]

Originally Posted by TorqueDog

So if your real concern is being able to quick pin things to the Start screen, then say that. Complaining that it's still full screen means nothing when it goes away as quickly as it shows up because you only use it for invoking applications. There's literally nothing else you could do with the additional space it takes up. It's like Barnes said, 'people hate change'. That's all it comes off as to anyone else reading.

As for grouping things, I've done that on the Start screen with Office 2013 as an example. You can pin all the Administrative tools you want to your heart's content... though it's still faster to just type the first three or four letters and hit [Enter].

Although as a former IT admin myself, I'm a bit surprised you're not using something like RDCMan (link) or some other sort of RDP Management application for managing multiple RDP connections. Shortcuts and RDP files are a pretty inefficient way of managing RDP sessions. As your infrastructure scales out and the number of servers you need to manage rises, pinning stuff to the Start menu is not going to be a viable solution once you reach a certain point. If anything, I'd say you should probably use the 'inconvenience' of the new Start menu as an excuse to get out of these bad habits.

But if you insist...

And this high horse "What you're doing is wrong, so we're going to force you to do things the way we think they should be done" thinking is why Microsoft has failed so hard with Windows 8. People don't like being told that they have to do things a certain way, they like having options. RDCman is fine for doing things like patching, but when there's only a select handful of servers that I need to access regularly I'd rather use straight RDC.

You definitely caught on to drinking the company koolaid fast though, that's for sure

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by Hemi-Cuda

And this high horse "What you're doing is wrong, so we're going to force you to do things the way we think they should be done" thinking is why Microsoft has failed so hard with Windows 8. People don't like being told that they have to do things a certain way, they like having options. RDCman is fine for doing things like patching, but when there's only a select handful of servers that I need to access regularly I'd rather use straight RDC.

You definitely caught on to drinking the company koolaid fast though, that's for sure

If you only have a couple dozen servers, RDP is totally fine but it doesn't hurt to have tools like Royal TS, VisionApp, Remote Desktop Manager, ControlUp, RDCMan, mRemote, etc.

It's not Kool-Aid, it's wisdom that you would benefit from listening to that you can save yourself a lot of time by using an effective tool to RDP to systems within one application that can also do things like password management, monitoring, troubleshooting, dashboard views, etc. also. even if you only have a handful of systems to RDP to.

I'm also a dinosaur who has a bad habit of using plain RDP all the time and wasting a lot of time because of it.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by TorqueDog

though it's still faster to just type the first three or four letters and hit [Enter].

I don't know about you guys but I find it absolutely hilarious that with all the crap modern GUIs force us to use to access our applications, most of us have gone back to typing and hitting enter like a good old command prompt (type a few letters, hit tab, enter).

[jammies]

Originally Posted by TorqueDog

So, what exactly do you do on your PC that inexplicably requires you to spend your entire time using it in the Start menu??

Who cares, it's terrible UI design. You don't need the whole screen as a launchpad, so why use it? It's not a phone, there's plenty of screen room to have my apps AND my launcher both visible at the same time.

It's called Windows, not FullScreenDows. Importing interface ideas from mobile devices, where the emphasis is on clever tricks to maximize limited screen space, is an incredibly stupid idea and remains so no matter what work-arounds you can use, or its supposedly minimal inconvenience.

[sworkhard]

Originally Posted by jammies

Who cares, it's terrible UI design. You don't need the whole screen as a launchpad, so why use it? It's not a phone, there's plenty of screen room to have my apps AND my launcher both visible at the same time.

It's called Windows, not FullScreenDows. Importing interface ideas from mobile devices, where the emphasis is on clever tricks to maximize limited screen space, is an incredibly stupid idea and remains so no matter what work-arounds you can use, or its supposedly minimal inconvenience.

That's pretty much the issue with the launch screen. However, that's something that you quickly get used to on it's own, and windows 8.1's ability to straight to the all apps page (combined with it's re-design) really reduces the full screen annoyance. A much, much bigger annoyance in windows 8's default config is how pdfs, images, etc all display in metro apps by default. If windows 8.1 allows me to specify separate apps to display these in in metro and desktop mode, it will resolve my biggest complaint with windows 8.

[Brannigans Law]

I think the 2 major concerns and gripes I have with windows were covered nicely by sowrk and jammies. This half measure of adding a button but still the same ludicrous full screen start app is nonsense. It's jarring and terrible. And all these default apps that go full screen.. wtf. Who in their right minds at MS decided it was a good idea to go fullscreen like this for everything? What nonsense.

[Hemi-Cuda]

Originally Posted by Brannigans Law

I think the 2 major concerns and gripes I have with windows were covered nicely by sowrk and jammies. This half measure of adding a button but still the same ludicrous full screen start app is nonsense. It's jarring and terrible. And all these default apps that go full screen.. wtf. Who in their right minds at MS decided it was a good idea to go fullscreen like this for everything? What nonsense.

Full screen apps make perfect sense on a tablet, I really enjoy using my ASUS Vivotab and try to spend as much time in the "new" environment as possible. Problem is that Microsoft tried to force a tablet designed OS into the desktop, which is such a ridiculously stupid idea

But yet they had foresight in other areas. If you install Outlook 2013 on a desktop, it operates almost exactly the same way that Outlook 2010 does. But if you install it on a Windows 8 tablet, Outlook 2013 rearranges itself for a smaller screen and becomes far more touch screen friendly. Why couldn't they apply this same design to all of their new apps? Make the new mail app operate like Outlook when it gets installed on a desktop and have it operate like it currently does when on a tablet. But that's another major issue with Microsoft, the left hand never seems to know what the right is doing (I could go on a major rant about the System Center 2012 suite and Windows Server 2012)

[TorqueDog]

Originally Posted by Hemi-Cuda

And this high horse "What you're doing is wrong, so we're going to force you to do things the way we think they should be done" thinking is why Microsoft has failed so hard with Windows 8. People don't like being told that they have to do things a certain way, they like having options. RDCman is fine for doing things like patching, but when there's only a select handful of servers that I need to access regularly I'd rather use straight RDC.

You definitely caught on to drinking the company koolaid fast though, that's for sure

Hey, I'm just trying to help you do your job more efficiently. I used to make RDP shortcuts all the time too and for the same reasons as you. It was a waste of time when I did it then, and given how far RDP session managers have come since, it's definitely a waste of time now.

And there's no Kool-Aid here. I'd have told you this a year ago or an hour ago. My opinions are my own, and I'm not on the Windows team.

Originally Posted by sworkhard

A much, much bigger annoyance in windows 8's default config is how pdfs, images, etc all display in metro apps by default. If windows 8.1 allows me to specify separate apps to display these in in metro and desktop mode, it will resolve my biggest complaint with windows 8.

Windows 8 already gives you this option. Right click the file, Open with > Choose Default Program... - unless you mean opening images from App Store apps in a Windows 8 app, and opening an image from the desktop mode in a desktop app. That'd be kind of nice, but one of the things it looks like the Windows team wanted to do was unify the experience between desktop and the Modern UI. 8.1's Control Panel is now supposed to be able to access many of the same settings and properties as the desktop's Control Panel. Not sure if that would be going against that goal.

Originally Posted by jammies

Who cares, it's terrible UI design. You don't need the whole screen as a launchpad, so why use it? It's not a phone, there's plenty of screen room to have my apps AND my launcher both visible at the same time.

... and you can't interact with the real estate behind your launcher while keeping the launcher open, because it'll close automatically, so why not use it? Why bother leaving all that space open?

What I do think would be cool though, if I can stop playing devil's advocate for a second, is similar to what Hemi-Cuda said about Office 2013. A touch-oriented, live-tile re-envisioning of the Windows 7 Start Menu for change-averse users.


Related: The changes in Windows 8.1: http://blogs.windows.com/windows/b/b...ndows-8-1.aspx

[Brannigans Law]

I think you're a well informed poster torque, and you have a lot of good insight. But this idea that people are simply change averse and afraid to try new things is getting a little tiresome. Just because change happens doesn't mean it's newer and better. And just because a lot of people (the majority frankly) hate the way windows 8 acts for desktops without touchscreen doesn't make people "change adverse". People don't like it for very specific reasons and people who are much smarter with technology than I am have very clearly laid out why this isn't a good OS for desktop users without touchscreen.

I have a computer, a tower. I don't want to treat it like a giant tablet. Windows 8 is so jarring and terrible if this trend continues my next home computer will be an apple.

edit: and when I say jarring I mean to say that the UI is very bad when switching between modern and old school, not that the change itself is jarring

[jammies]

Originally Posted by TorqueDog

... and you can't interact with the real estate behind your launcher while keeping the launcher open, because it'll close automatically, so why not use it? Why bother leaving all that space open?

Aesthetics, for one. And efficiency, for another. When the entire desktop is redrawn into an entirely different looking and obtrusive fashion, the mind has to pause and process the new information before proceeding, reorienting itself to grasp the new environment. It takes mental effort that is not necessary if you simply stay away from jarring changes of this type.

This might seem nitpicky, but it's at the core of what is good interface design: the more the user notices it, the worse it is. That people unnecessarily resist change is precisely why change must be carefully measured and implemented with the deftest of touches, not slapped together all higgedly-piggedly and then patched over to hide how the old and new paradigms do not align.

[Hemi-Cuda]

The thing with change is that it should improve how you work. With Windows 8 there are a lot of changes that made a positive difference (the new Task Manager is way better than in Windows 7, having Hyper-V built-in is great, boot times are fantastic) but after 7 months I still haven't seen a single reason why the Start Screen is better than the old Start Menu on a traditional desktop. It doesn't offer any productivity enhancements at all, and in many cases causes the user to go through extra steps. I get why Microsoft did it, they wanted the same user experience no matter what device was used. But it was misguided, tablets and traditional PC's are very different environments and that has to be taken into account from a UI perspective (you don't see Apple merging MacOS and iOS into the same product)

Even after reading through the changes in 8.1 that Torque posted, all I could think was "I'm still going to install Start8 to get my menu back"

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Hemi-Cuda

(you don't see Apple merging MacOS and iOS into the same product)

Heehee!




People seem to forget that Apple is usually even more capricious when it comes to dictating change. They aren't afraid to completely subvert their previous way of doing things when it suits them. To date, their changes have been somewhat less in your face than what MS did with Windows 8, but ask long time Mac users how they felt about Lion/Mountain Lion after the excellent Snow Leopard.

"Natural" scrolling by default. Enough said. Talk about two weeks of feeling completely alienated from your own machine because it zigs when you try to zag.

[Bill Bumface]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

"Natural" scrolling by default. Enough said. Talk about two weeks of feeling completely alienated from your own machine because it zigs when you try to zag.

And it works.

It's kind of funny. They changed that one on me, along with the back/forward gestures, I hated it, I got too lazy to change it, and now it's completely intuitive and I hate using someone's machine that is set up the "old" way.

[TorqueDog]

Thanks jammies. I appreciate your reply, you gave some good reasons to consider.

Originally Posted by Brannigans Law

I think you're a well informed poster torque, and you have a lot of good insight. But this idea that people are simply change averse and afraid to try new things is getting a little tiresome.

Now you know how I feel reading complaints about something you quite literally use for seconds at a time.

It's tiresome. [shrug]

Especially when I've been using it on non-touch enabled devices (multi-monitor desktops, laptop PCs, etc.) since it was in Consumer Preview and have adjusted just fine. Hearing people complain as though it's completely catastrophic to the way they use their PCs, then hearing them purport to be technically-minded people really makes me scratch my head.

The only use-case that it has genuinely annoyed me in was windowed virtual machine or windowed RDP session, but that was the fault of having to rely on hot corners (Windows key shortcuts aren't captured in windowed mode), and nothing to do specifically with the Start screen itself.

I have a Lenovo X1 Carbon Touch now, and I think that's where it really shines. Touch-screen notebook.

[sworkhard]

Originally Posted by TorqueDog

Windows 8 already gives you this option. Right click the file, Open with > Choose Default Program... - unless you mean opening images from App Store apps in a Windows 8 app, and opening an image from the desktop mode in a desktop app. That'd be kind of nice, but one of the things it looks like the Windows team wanted to do was unify the experience between desktop and the Modern UI. 8.1's Control Panel is now supposed to be able to access many of the same settings and properties as the desktop's Control Panel. Not sure if that would be going against that goal.

That's exactly what I'm referring to. It's the transition between the two environments that jarring. Metro is and will probably always be terrible for mouse use, just like the desktop is terrible for touch use, so being forced to go back and forth between the two environments is killer. It's not a big deal in a desktop only or touch only environment, but with all the hybrid devices out there now, it's a hug annoyance.

It's too bad that not everything can work like browsers where you can create one app with two gui's and have them run with separate metro and desktop interfaces and be distributed by a single binary (you can create a common dll and two separate interfaces now, but you have to distribute them separately as two separate apps).

[Hemi-Cuda]

Originally Posted by sworkhard

It's too bad that not everything can work like browsers where you can create one app with two gui's and have them run with separate metro and desktop interfaces and be distributed by a single binary (you can create a common dll and two separate interfaces now, but you have to distribute them separately as two separate apps).

As I mentioned before, Microsoft already did this with the Office 2013 suite. But since the Office team is completely separate from the Windows team (and the team that creates the Metro apps) nothing else received that same kind of design care

Microsoft's biggest problem is their internal silo'ing. All these products being managed by different teams really suffer when they come together in a user experience when those teams can't communicate effectively