Microsoft touching up Windows 8 to address gripes

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP-Excite

By MICHAEL LIEDTKE

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Microsoft is retooling the latest version of its Windows operating system to address complaints and confusion that have been blamed for deepening a slump in personal computer sales.

The tune up announced Tuesday won't be released to consumers and businesses until later this year. The changes, part of a software package given the codename "Blue," are a tacit acknowledgment of the shortcomings in Windows 8, a radical overhaul of Microsoft Corp.'s ubiquitous operating system.

With the makeover it released last October, Microsoft hoped to play a more prominent role in the growing mobile device market while still maintaining its dominance in PCs. But Windows 8's design, which emphasizes interactive tiles and touch controls, seems to have befuddled as many people as it has impressed. One leading research firm, International Data Corp., says Windows 8 contributed to a 14 percent decline in worldwide PC sales during the first three months of the year - the biggest year-over-year drop ever.

Meanwhile, sales of smartphones and tablet computers are booming. The biggest beneficiaries have been Apple Inc. (AAPL), the maker of the iPhone and iPad, and Samsung Electronics Co., which sells the most devices running on Google Inc.'s Android software. Google is also benefiting from Android's popularity through increased traffic to its services, creating more opportunities for the company to display ads.

FULL story at link.


Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20130507/DA64BT2G1.html

---

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer gives his presentation at the launch of Microsoft Windows 8, in New York, in this Oct. 25, 2012 file photo. Microsoft is retooling the latest version of its Windows operating system to address complaints and confusion that have been blamed for deepening a slump in personal computer sales. The tune up announced Tuesday May 7, 2013 won't be released to consumers and businesses until later this year. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)

[bitchkitty]

1. If I were a gambler,

I would bet that by fixing it, they make it even worse.

[RiverNoord]

3. I doubt it -

they made a colossal mistake trying to push a mobile-interface design for PCs, and they know very well that they messed up.

My bet would be a return to the XP/Windows 7 desktop interface, with a fully functional 'Start' or 'Windows' button on the taskbar. It'll be touched up a bit in order to prevent too much embarrassment, but the desktop-based design will be fully available (and the current 'start screen' will be optional.

[Kolesar]

20. I hope so

I read pages and pages of Windows 8 tutorials when I got this PC three months ago and I have forgotten where they left all the features. Last night, my network crashed and I could not find the network diagnostics.

[Occulus]

51. Make a new folder on your desktop and name it exactly as follows, including the brackets:

God Mode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

Open it up, and you'll see every configurable option in Windows, listed in categories. You'll never have to hunt for settings again!

There are tools there Microsoft built into Windows 7 and Windows 8 that I didn't even know existed, such as the system stability history graph. Some of these tools are very useful indeed, but given it's literally everything you CAN configure, it's sort of a backdoor. If you have multiple users on your machine, you might want to put it into a folder only you have ownership of.

Still, it's nice to be able to put everything in one place!

[Steerpike]

65. Thanks Occulus

That tip kicks ass!

[Xyzse]

68. Thanks... I forgot about this one

...

[RiverNoord]

73. Thanks for the tip - if I liked using the OS even a little..

I would have found it somewhere, but it's annoying to need to configure that heavily just to establish a baseline GUI that is functionally similar to what you've been using for years with OS's from the same company...

[BlueStreak]

76. Wow. That's great. Works fine for Win7

I never knew about that trick, but the real question is who the **** do they treat that like it is a trick setting? This is what Control Panel ought to do.

[Egalitarian Thug]

82. I'm still somewhat surprised that they've been screwing their customers for so many years,

that people have come to believe that this is just the way it's supposed to be and keep sending their money to one of the most exploitative companies on earth.

[dipsydoodle]

2. I'm still using XP Pro on a pair of PCs

and the laptop on Windows 7 - not that I ever see much of the laptop thanks to my daughter.

[Victor_c3]

5. I use XP still too

but I also still use the same laptop that it came installed on for the last 8+ years as well...

Windows 8 is one of the major reasons I didn't buy a laptop this last fall. I saw mixed reviews and I wanted to see how things shake out. I'm not in a hurry to replace my old-ass laptop so another year or two should be alright. I'd love to make it a decade of daily use on my IBM X-40 laptop.

I know IBM doesn't make thinkpads anymore, but I think it is a testament to the quality of laptops that IBM used to make.

[WRH2]

15. think pads are still made

have a t22, t42,t60, and thinkpad w530. with a quad core and 16 gig of ram. I am typing this on the t60

[freshwest]

43. My first computer to go online with was a Thinkpad. It was used and when I was done with it another

person took it over. No telling how long it would last. While I had the laptop, it was running Windows 7, I think.

Wasn't it after that when Vista and X Pro came out? That was a long time ago, so did they make Windows 8 to replace those or only to upgrade Windows 7?

I don't keep up, since I was converted to the Cult of Mac when someone gave me an old one a decade ago and I've been with Apple ever since.

I haven't returned to Microsoft, but the price of Dell laptops, the ability to work with other computers is appealing at times.

[William Seger]

4. Dumbest idea since New Coke (n/t)

[Victor_c3]

6. What about Pepsi clear?

or was that before New Coke? I don't remember.

[William Seger]

10. They didn't try to replace the original Pepsi with it

Nothing wrong with trying out new ideas, but replacing a popular product on the assumption that your customers will buy whatever you're selling is dumb.

[Chakab]

11. Crystal Pepsi was launched in '92

several years after the New Coke debacle.

[Victor_c3]

12. That's probably why I really don't remember much about New Coke

The only thing I remember about Crystal Pepsi was that one of the commercials used that awful Van Halen song.

[sofa king]

81. Or Windows Vista. Or Windows ME.

Microsoft has a very long history of trying to drag their users by the nose into new shit that doesn't work. It's like they come up with New Coke every six years--and get away with it.

[hobbit709]

7. Friend of mine got a Windows 8 phone-he loves it.

But he adds that there's no way he'd put it on a real computer that he does work on.

My experience is that it installs faster than XP or 7 and shuts down faster-those are its good points.
With classic shell installed and all the settings tweaked a little it's almost a decent OS.

[awoke_in_2003]

34. "it's almost a decent OS"...

ringing endorsement

[RedstDem]

8. tablets and smartphones

Are the reasons for the decline in PC sales, not windows 8.

[Thor_MN]

16. Windows 8 is awful on non-touch devices and has contributed to slumping sales

I installed Windows 2 on a 286SX, what, 25 years ago? I've used every version of Windows that has been released and 8 is, by far, the worst choices they ever made. Don't get me wrong, Vista sucked big time. If you don't have a touch screen, a tablet interface is insane. They could have opted to leave a "Classic" mode, now they are going to have to weave one in after the fact.

[RedstDem]

18. let me put it this way

Windows 9 could be the greatest thing since sliced bread, but due to tablets and smart phones, PC sales will continue to decline.

[William Seger]

38. "... blamed for DEEPENING a slump in personal computer sales" (n/t)

[Thor_MN]

58. Let me put it this way. On a non touch device, Windows 8 is crap.

It has kept me from purchasing a new laptop, therefore has contributed to the decline in PC and Laptop sales.

Maybe Microsoft's master plan is for all computers to have touch screens, but we are not there yet. As long as there are non-touch devices, trying to only have a tablet interface is insane.

[Xithras]

61. No question about that.

And there's a simple reason for it. Most computer users are actually just media consumers. They check and draft some emails, check Facebook, browse the web, read the news, check showtimes at their local theaters, watch the occasional streaming video, buy something on Ebay or Amazon now and then...that's about it. Those computer users, who comprise the majority of home PC users around the world, only owned PC's because they were the ONLY devices that allowed them to do those things.

Tablets and smartphones can more than satisfy the data consuming needs of most home users, and as Airplay/WiDi become more prevalent (and integrated into TV's) over the next few years, even the small screen sizes will cease to matter.

Content creators, business users, and gamers will always have need for a more powerful computer on their desk (and even business users may not, in the long term), but their numbers aren't large enough to sustain the computer industry in its current form. The contraction was inevitable. We're simply going to see the desktop computer industry return to its pre-Win95/Internet scale. "Normal" users will have tablets and other browsing devices. Only the power users and geeks will be nerdy enough to have actual computers at home.

[BlueStreak]

77. There seems to be a generational difference

As I see it, you cannot do any serious work on a handheld device. You can stay in touch, send some tweets, watch some videos, and so on. But you cannot compose a serious report requiring analysis. You can't effectively integrate information from multiple sources in any productive way. You can't do serious programming. You can't do real artwork. Basically you can't do much of anything. The little devices are mostly about the ego, not about actually doing any work of value.

And that is where I wonder about the generation of people who don't see that. My guess is that they have never actually been challenged to do "real work", so to speak. To many of them, jabbering on a cell phone and sending some texts is what they think is "real work".

Maybe it is in some jobs, but it seems to me we have a lost generation out there, and more to follow.

I'd like to see the court that would accept a twitter feed in place of properly researched and prepared brief. I'd like to see somebody prepare a patent application on a smart phone. I'd like to see a person do REAL sales analysis on a 4" screen. I guarantee that a person with a desktop with lots of pixels (maybe 2 big monitors) will kick anybody's butt who tries to do any complex analysis with a tiny device.

Don't get me wrong, I have owned smart phones since before Jobs ever thought about getting into the iPhone business. They are great communications devices, and great personal organizers. But I would never dream of doing serious work on them.

[Xithras]

59. Yep. There is really only one major problem with Windows 8

It was designed from the ground up to be a touch interface, and virtually all Windows 8 PC's sold today still use static monitors and mice. I really despised Windows 8 the first few computers I used it on. It was slow to navigate, the interface was confusing, and the tiles seemed ungainly and poorly designed. I eventually got used to it and found it usable, but it was still a step down from Windows 7.

My opinion really changed when I was finally able to use it with a touchscreen. Suddenly all of the changes made sense and it was easy to use. Actions that took three or four clicks, or a "hold button and drag mouse" action, or required some hard to remember key combination, suddenly only took a quick touch and swipe. The start screen was easy to organize by touch, and I could launch programs much faster than I could with 7. You don't miss the Start button once you can use your finger either. The Start button is a good navigational solution for mice, but isn't so great when you're using your finger (which is why iOS, Android, and Blackberry use tiled interfaces instead of flyout menus). Most importantly, the screen dragging controls...with are HORRIBLE with a mouse...became intuitive and precise once I could just use my finger. It turns out that there's a reason why Surface users love their tablets.

Microsoft's one real problem was that they utterly failed to coordinate the Windows 8 launch with their OEM's. The touchscreen should have been a required accessory with every Win8 computer sold, because that's the only way that it's really user friendly. Instead, they chose volume over quality and decided that the mouse-interface kludge was "good enough". If they'd required the touchscreen, the OEM's would have screamed bloody murder and sales would have been even worse. But by not requiring it, the first introduction to Windows 8 has been a miserable one for most users, which is just chasing them away anyway.

IMHO, Microsoft should have stood their ground and required OEM's to sell Windows 8 with a touch interface. They should have allowed 7 to remain on the market indefinitely for OEM's who wanted to build non-touch devices, and simply marketed Win8 as the solution for the "next generation" of PC's. The rollout would have been more gradual, but the initial experience would have been better for most users and they wouldn't be getting 90% of the negative feedback they're receiving today.

[aristocles]

9. I've owned MSFT shares for five years

I sold it all three weeks ago for a very small gain.

I have one laptop running XP, and it will forever. I have a second refurbished monster laptop running Windows 7, and I love it.

My spouse has a multimedia laptop running Vista, and we both hate it. I'm going to upgrade it to Windows 7 when I have the time.

I also have four Macs of various flavours. No complaints.

[Doc Holliday]

13. As one of those unhappy Win8 users

I have to say that my biggest gripe with it is the drastically reduced functionality of Windows Media Player and Windows Movie Maker. The screen pictured in the OP adds nothing at all to the usefulness, although I guess a kid might think it looked cool.

I'm putting 7 on my laptop. I don't think this tuneup will address my gripes.

[cilla4progress]

29. Fellow hater here!

My cheap old laptop died last fall so I had to buy one of the first Win 8 machines.

Do you really think you could install Windows 7 successfully in its place?

[xtraxritical]

41. I bought an HP laptop and they happily provided me with Win7 64 and 32 CD's free of charge.

Just call customer service. It was easy to load.

[Occulus]

52. Get VLC, the VideoLan Player. It's free!

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/index.html

It's way, WAY better than Windows Media Player (which as I understand it will now, or soon, be a PAID APP from the store ), plays partial and "broken" files other players like WMP give up on, can stream from network and internet sources, and can (with help) even play streams from web cameras and mobile cameras. It also plays audio files, .flv files, DVDs with full menu and captioning support, and many many other formats. It can even raise the volume of the audio it's playing to 200% of "normal"- a nice little touch.

VLC is the only media player I ever use. It beats the CRAP out of Quicktime just for being able to go fullscreen without paying for it, and leaves Windows Media Player in the dust. Also, VLC is NOT a Metro app, so you won't have to deal with that aspect of Windows 8, either.

[onehandle]

14. And the Apple OS X/iOS world grows, and grows, and grows. Save Microsoft. Fire Steve Ballmer! nt

[ebbie15644]

17. I bought a laptop wit windows 8 and returned it!

I hated it! I will keep my windows 7 until it crashes!

[Randomthought]

19. We love Windows 8 at our house

I have a Surface and a windows 8 desktop with touch screen. My husband ( software developer) likes his windows 8 laptop. The XP desktop and the two widows 7 desktops are used some but rarely.
There is a bit of a learning curve for 8.

[cilla4progress]

30. Why do you like it?

What is it aboutit that you like?

It's working for me ok in terms of the interface, but my driver died (Costco Toshiba) within a couple months. I downloaded a "driver detective" program to fix it - never worked and now can't uninstall it!

[Randomthought]

71. the touchscreen for one thing

I find myself trying to touch the screen of the Win 7 computer at work. IMO the jump from XP to 7 was the big leap Win 8 is what 7 should have been.

[Phillip McCleod]

21. i've done a total of 4 downgrades since its release..

..brand new computers with windows 8 and people are willing to pay an extra $200 to wipe it off and reload win7.

[Sedona]

22. LOVE LOVE LOVE my W8 Asus touch screen 12 inch laptop

and my Windows phone.

I seamlessly retrieve email, contact and calendar info from home to the office and back again...

The touchscreen Asus fits in my purse with a decent sized REAL KEYBOARD and touch pad.

I run productivity circles around everyone else in my real estate office who uses 20th century software.

MS moved the start button to the other side of the screen....its not that difficult to adjust....AND its pretty!

[RedstDem]

46. didnt you get the memo?

This is an ANTI Microsoft thread, if you have anything good to say about apple, please include in your response!

[The Wizard]

23. Their pattern has been

alternating operating systems, a bad one followed by a good one. It's how they stay in business, planned obsolescence.
Microsoft Word 2007 is a nightmare. They offer a $500 course to learn it. Granted, you could use it to run a major business, but most of us just need simple word processing functions.
They also use the consumer at as lab rat. They put untested products on the market and let frustrated consumers work out the flaws or offer a fix for a price.

[zerosumgame0005]

26. seriously?

Word is "hard" for you? who offered a $500 course to "learn" just one app in the Office Suite?

[xtraxritical]

42. Try OpenOffice.org it's every bit as good a MS Office and it's FREE!

All the bells and whistles and forever free upgrades too.

[Occulus]

53. It really is just as good, but the people here who hate open source software insist it's terrible

and can't compare to the overpriced commercial packages. True, it doesn't properly handle the proprietary Microsoft macro crap those self-important business users claim to absolutely, positively need, but they just insist it's fundamentally inferior in all other ways

GIMP is perfectly adequate as a replacement for Photoshop, too; the Blender Foundation uses it as a key component in their production pipeline for their short films, which are damned impressive professional productions, by the way. You can't tell that to the graphics "professionals" here, though. They just can't seem to believe that a free application can possibly be as good as anything from Adobe- even though Blender itself is a strong competitor in capability to 3D Studio, Lightwave, and even Maya. With Blender, GIMP, and other related software, you can make a professional-quality film, all with free tools.

Some people just can't accept that they've spent money they didn't have to, I guess

[zerosumgame0005]

66. Well, yes, I use it personally

But I also have to support Office at work. But that does not really address my question to the OP...

[The Wizard]

67. Most aren't computer geeks.

[zerosumgame0005]

69. Maybe it's just me but

basic word processing has been pretty easy for em. But then again I have been working with one flavor or another of WP programs for over 30 years. I just can't see someone asking $500 bucks to teach Word. I am in the wrong business...

[GoneFishin]

24. I have held off buying a laptop for 3 months because of Windows 8.

If I knew of a store where I could pick up a new laptop with XP I would have bought it months ago, even if I had to pay a bit more. Microsoft's continuous foisting of new Windows versions onto consumers smacks of arrogant marketing with no concern for delivering better technology.
They should make XP available. Otherwise I might as well struggle with the changeover to Linux.

[RedstDem]

47. i think xp is ten years old or more

No software company can stay in business marketing ten year old software, and really we cant expect Microsoft to support it after that amount of time

[Occulus]

54. Windows 8 really is a good OS, and functions almost exactly like Windows 7

Please take my advice and abandon XP. Compared to Windows 7, it's a dog; 7 and 8 handle literally everything better than XP did, they're more secure (yeah, Microsoft, secure, ha-ha, but it's true), 7 is way faster and handles memory better (8, even more so), has better driver support and hardware detection, handles multitasking better, has more features for multi-user environments, etc., & etc. Really, do yourself a favor and spend some time learning how to use Windows 7 at least. I didn't think I'd like 7, either, when I came from XP, but the differences were so huge and there were so many improvements that the switch became a no-brainer once I got comfortable using 7.

The single biggest complaints I hear about Windows 8 are the Metro UI (including the "lack" of a Start button) and the way Microsoft "hid" configurable options. I posted a really useful workaround, plus awesomeness, for the latter above- Windows God Mode- and while I totally understand that some users might be confused about the fact that the start button is now a whole page, the fact is that Windows 8 really is not all that different from Windows 7 from a functionality standpoint. In fact, in a lot of ways, Windows 8 is better than Windows 7, particularly from a system administration standpoint (such as the new Task Manager, which provides a good deal more input than the Win7 version.

It just takes a little learning (or, perhaps, willingness to learn may be a better term), and I think perhaps Microsoft underestimated the "comfort zone" factor users had with Windows 7. But really, if you're familiar with Windows 7, Windows 8 feels a lot more like a major system update than it does a whole new version of Windows. There's are enough differences to make it its own animal, but enough similarities I don't feel totally lost, either, even when I first started using it.

[Sedona]

25. Word 2007 a nightmare? Really?

I was a super productive self taught Word 7 user for five years. I only upgraded to the 2010 version because it came with Office 2010 and I wanted the 2010 Outlook (which totally ROCKS my world). I'll be upgrading to Outlook 365 by the end of the year.

Now if I could only get my married couple bosses off their ass backward I-phone and android devices I could be even MORE productive.
Hello? Skydrive!

We're PROGRESSIVES here at DU. W8 is progress.

[darkangel218]

27. W8.. makes me think of V8

Yuk! Lol

[Sedona]

28. LOVE LOVE LOVE V8 too!

with vodka!

[darkangel218]

31. You have some weird taste, i tell you that :p

Lol

[RedstDem]

48. im sorry this is an anti ms thread

You can't be posting positive remarks about any ms products, for Pete's sake.
Please stick to praising apple products .
Its not hard, just follow the herd and profess your love to Steve jobs.

[Humanist_Activist]

70. OK, hate to belabor the obvious, but what is backwards about android?

I find interoperability between many of its apps and those on my Windows 7 desktop to be excellent. I can sync documents and other files using Google drive, so what is the issue?

Also, what about Windows 8 is "progressive"? I tried the RTM version, the Metro interface resembles AOL's interface from 1996. Functionality is that its "live tiles" resemble many "push" interfaces from the late 1990s to early 2000s, and its a full screen application launcher, that's it, and a piss poor designed one for desktop computers, and just adequate for touch screen devices.

People treat this as some paradigm changing system or something, "the future of computing", when in reality, its functionality is limited, particularly in cases of creating content rather than just consuming it.

[denverbill]

32. I remember when people thought the start button sucked.

"To shut down you hit the START button?"

I upgraded both my home desktops to Windows 8 when they were offering $40 Windows 8 pro upgrades. It boots way faster, allows me to remote between desktops, and buys me an extra 5 years of OS support.

I don't understand people who think the interface is so awful. One click gets you to the desktop if you want it. Or you can add any app to the start menu by selecting it from the apps list. You can just start typing anytime to find apps. And right clicking where the start button used to be pulls up a whole nice list of admin type options.

I prefer the Windows 7 format as well, and miss the clock more than anything, but to say it's the worst OS ever because the format of the start menu is different is a bit of a stretch.

[Dash87]

33. Is the service pack named "Windows 9?"

Judging by their history, I wouldn't be surprised.

[darkangel218]

50. No, windows 9 will come right after the repair pack.

Duh..

That's why they create at times bad OS, so people will hurry and buy the new "good" one.

[E-Z-B]

35. Now if they could get rid of the ribbon in MS Office and go back to classic view

And fix the excel graph feature of adding additional sets of data to a graph (you use to be able to use ctrl+v and manually change rows/columns easily, now you have to add each one painfully slow), and the auto expand in the formula bar.

And why are pivot tables still limited to 255 data sets?

[TreasonousBastard]

36. Oh man, this is all bullshit-- PC sales a re falling simply because...

99% of what most people do most of the time can now be done on phones and tablets. Win8 is just a new focal point for traditional MS bashing.

Win 8 kinda sucks but it beats the XP box and the Win 7 laptop at many, if not most, things once you get past the cartoon desktop. I still use the XP box for most things just because it's been there for years and set up the way I like it, but I'm slowly moving stuff to the Win8 box and love its speed. Increased speed isn't due much to Win8, of course, but moving from a 32 bit system to a quad core processor and 64 bit OS.

Now, I don't have much to say about Apple stuff because I don't use it, but I hate Chrome and Android with the fire of a thousand suns. I am getting close to offering to kill for a Windows or Blackberry phone, but so far that means changing the service yet again for more money. Three Android phones and each with more "features" and even more "gotchas". And the more shit they pile into a phone, they seem to forget that sometimes people actually talk on them so voice quality is dropping like a stone. I finally took every Google app, browser, and other pieces of shit off all my machines and they now run a lot better. And don't spy on me. These guys want to sell us an operating system?

And a word about Word... I don't use it so I don't know enough about it to hate it. I have LibreOffice, WordPerfect, and AbiWord for all my Officey needs and they work extremely well. What I can't stand, however, is that breed of Office users who insist on sending me simple one page memos and attachments in .docx format. Do they know there are choices when you save a document? Have they never heard of .txt or .rtf? I'd rather get a PDF than docx. Yeah, I can work with them, but why should I have to deal with it?

Enough of this. I am working myself up into a frenzy much too early in the day and I have some annoying attachments yet to open.

[mrdmk]

40. Saving something other than *.docx, well um!

That takes extra work. Just for giggles, when I am able too, I will send a resume in a PDF file because you do not know what tweaks the person at the other end has in their office suite! Just a word of advice...

[L0oniX]

37. Ubuntu ...still rock'n.

[Occulus]

60. I just did the latest 13.04 update and it blackscreened after the Nvidia logo

I had to force a reboot and run the dpkg recovery option to get into the GUI. When I did that, I had to ctrl-alt-delete because it hung when it tried to mount /dev/sda6, which I think is my external hard drive. After I did that, and rebooted normally, everything was fine, and Ubuntu had me fire off an error report (which I enthusiastically sent).

It worked, but still... how many "ordinary" users would have thought to do that? I even used ps -uax | more at the console (I had to ctrl-alt-F1 to get there) when it wouldn't start, and the X server wasn't even running after the update! Luckily, I'm experienced enough and familiar enough with the unix commands to do that, but I'm wondering how many less experienced users installed this update and thought it broke their computers.

Not good, Ubuntu team. Not good at all.

By the way, what's with the persistent mouse bug in X/Gnome involving losing window focus? I have to log out and log back in every time I boot into Ubuntu- and only Ubuntu, not Mint, or Fedora, or any other distro- so I can move windows around the screen and click buttons at all, and this is a bug that's been around since at least 2010, according to various forums including the official Ubuntu forums!. There was an even more opaque workaround involving entering a window focus override command at the terminal prior to 13.04, but that's no longer necessary. Now "all" I have to do is log out and log in again, as I said, but it's still annoying and needs to be permanently patched...

[L0oniX]

62. I run 12.04 LTS because I don't want to deal with bugs from new versions.

[madokie]

39. I still think that Unity is the why they went with this os

Unity sucks if you ask me. Ubuntu 11.10 and later versions are what I'm referencing here.
linux rocks, unity sucks

[Occulus]

55. They went with Metro to "unify" Windows OS and Windows phone

Microsoft realized that more and more people are using their phones- and tablets- to do actual work, and they wanted to streamline their OS "experience" so that those people could more easily move between the two devices. I understand that, but it really wouldn't have taken too much effort to make the desktop OS "know" what type of device it was running on.

If they had done that, the majority of complaints I hear about Windows 8 would not exist. Metro confuses desktop users because it is a touch interface, and that makes no sense at all when you're using a keyboard and mouse. That said, being able to go to the start screen with the Windows key on my keyboard and just start typing to do a search that actually works and actually finds what I want to find does have something to be said for it.

[xtraxritical]

44. With multiterybyte hard drives you can partition any OS you want, have your cake and eat it too.

[steve2470]

45. You can adjust to Windows 8 with a few hacks

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10954127#post18

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10954127#post21

Sucks you have to hack it this way but works for me. M$ can be so stupid.

[Ford_Prefect]

49. Once more into the breach- of public trust.

MS has yet to release a product worthy of the hype. They only listen on the way to the bank. They have replaced a reliable, stable platform with one shot full of holes so they could capture the mobile market and then band-aided on an interface. SOP for MS. They do not care if it doesn't really work according to spec since they're effectively the only game in town. They are far more concerned with market penetration and sales. Anything resembling a problem can be patched in the update, or rather infinitely patched until the next 2 year replacement cycle. It is the largest legal Ponzi scheme.

[Occulus]

56. "Anything resembling a problem can be patched in the update, or rather infinitely patched"

Exactly what all linux distros do. If you think Microsoft doing this is a bad thing, I don't know what to say; it's what all OS developers do, as a matter of course. I have a Ubuntu update waiting to be started as I type this, probably for installed packages that I either rarely use or are dependencies for packages I do use... and linux updates happen with dismal regularity. But, they're also necessary, for security and stability reasons, so I just shrug, hit the button, and that's that.

Really, though, what do you expect? No software developer under the sun can anticipate or code for all of the possible ways installed hardware and software may be in conflict for any given user except Apple's no-you-can't-do-that, our-way-or-nothing approach, and few are willing to accept that (which is one reason Apple's market share is so much smaller and priced so much higher). It's just something users of real operating systems (which OSX/iOS are not; if you want *nix, USE *nix, NOT Apple's OS, dammit) have to accept if they want to actually use the power of the hardware they have.

And really- would you want an OS that rarely has updates and patches, and have to deal with problems that you know will rarely, if ever, be solved? That's just asking for trouble!

[Ford_Prefect]

63. What I expect is a product my customers can use and trust.

NT was the last platform delivered which came close to that definition. It is our standing policy that no MS product will be purchased until it has been in use for at least 6 months. For Operating Systems the period of 1 year post release is required.

I am not complaining about ongoing fine tuning. I am talking about major flaws and incompatibility problems in a product sold to clients with industrial level investment in hardware and infrastructure.

To those of us in the field who must make the thing work as our customers need MS has far too often promised much and seldom delivered on time or in the quality required. I recognize that the software engineers have no control over the sales force and what it promises. However the track record of MS is perennially one of sell big and deliver, eventually, a product which at most is 2/3 of what is required.

[ConcernedCanuk]

57. I only upgraded from Win98Se because new apps wouldn't respond.

.
.
.

Win 98se was one of the most stable past OS's Microsoft put out in my opinion.

Why can they not just keep upgrading one system, instead of creating a new one?

OH -

MONEY!

Ya gotta buy a new 'puter, more gigs storage, more gigs ram - (my first computer on-line was win95 with 16 MEG ram, upgraded the ram to 64 meg and ran like a bullet)

'nuff history, I suspect I'll never run a new OS - running XP professional right now, but i f I wanna buy a new computer(and I do) most are running win8 -

Our local Staples stores has laptops under $500 with win7

Win 7 is gonna be my next OS - most of the bugs are gone.

Thank the spirits MS don't sell cars!

(or HOUSES!!!!!)

CC

[840high]

64. I want XP back.

[dipsydoodle]

72. I never stopped using it.

.

[840high]

78. Bought a new pc - so

I had no choice. Hate Vista.

[zerosumgame0005]

79. Vista was MS trying to imitate

Crapple who with every update wants to force you to buy new hardware, MS's mistake was not including legacy drivers so when people still using their old dot matrix printers were high and dry if the company no longer existed (I actually still had one that sort of worked when Vista came out) so of course it sucked ass since Windows users generally don't consider it a religious experience to buy more stuff...

[area51]

74. Use Linux,

or FreeBSD.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

75. Maybe an update of "Microsoft Bob"

No relation to "Baghdad Bob".

[LanternWaste]

80. I'm glad I have neither the passion nor the feigned knowledge to either love or hate an OS.

I'm glad I have neither the passion nor the feigned knowledge to either love or hate an OS.

I simply use them.

The cola wars of the 1980's are back with nicer graphics and a much more loyal corporate fan base from all directions-- something Pepsi would have died for.