Windows 8 - my verdict. - Page 15

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The reason Apple are using 4:3 displays for their tablets, is because it's a much more comfortable aspect ratio to hold in either the landscape or portrait orientation.

16:9 or 16:10 devices are very top-heavy when used in the portrait orientation, which is why there's been a trend of those devices shrinking to the smaller 7" size, rather than the full 10" size tablets.

"Full size" 16:9 or 16:10 tablets like the Surface or ASUS' Transformer series are really only made to be used in the landscape orientation, because they're uncomfortable to hold for long periods of time in portrait.

Because there is a limit on the size of the devices based on what's actually portable, the 4:3 aspect ratio actually gives you a lot more screen space, as you get extra width for the same height. The 7.9" iPad mini is just as portable as 7" Android devices because it's the same height, but has 35% more screen area, because it's got that extra width.

I don't read comics, but 4:3 is also a lot closer to the aspect ratio of traditional books, magazines and printed documents than 16:9 or 16:10 is.

4:3 is right in-between the US Letter and A4 Paper aspect ratios, whereas 16:9 or 16:10 are considerably taller.



16:9 in green.
4:3 in blue.
Paper sizes in red. (US letter is smaller)

If you were to scale based on height, rather than width, the 16:9 tablet would be a much smaller device than a 4:3 one. (which is how things are with the 7" tablets at least)

About the only thing 16:9 or 16:10 is useful for, is watching TV content. Films are 2.37:1 so they will be letterboxed no matter if you are watching on a 16:9 or 4:3 tablet.
Maybe it's just been a coincidence, but it actually seems that I'm encountering 4:3 video on my iPad more than 16:9 or 2.37:1 content. For the same width of tablet, 16:9 or 2.37:1 content is going to be the same size whether it's displayed on a 16:9 or 4:3 device, but 4:3 content will be a lot larger on the 4:3 device.

Honestly, having black bars, or the size of them, has never bothered me. I would be happy if televisions had stayed 4:3, especially now that black levels are starting to get better.


And personally, I think it was a mistake for Apple to switch the iPhone from its 3:2 aspect ratio to 16:9. Now the phone is too tall to use one-handed, just like Android devices, even though it "only" has a 4" screen compared to 5" or more.
One of the great things about the old screen is that 3:2 is the same aspect ratio the majority of cameras use. The 3.5" 3:2 aspect ratio screen had a lot of research and thought put into it. The 16:9 one feels like they just gave up and decided to conform with what everyone else was doing. I'm never going to be watching films or other long videos on my phone, why should I care if its aspect ratio is better for that?

these are the traditional book sizes. only the 2 largest sizes are closer to 4:3 than 16:9, but really, who reads 12" x 15" books or 9.5" x 12" books? in terms of reading, a 16:9 device also gets in more lines of text.

for tablets, whether it's 16:9 or 4:3, it doesn't matter because most people prop tablets on something like their lap or a table. that's why people like the smaller tablets because the bigger ones like the iPad are too heavy to free hold for extended times. so even though a 16:9 tablet is more "top heavy", you're propping it on your thighs anyway (or against your stomach or cradling in your arm against your armpit).

and movie content fits 16:9 far better than 4:3. I'm not sure how you're arguing otherwise especially at AVSforum.

part of the way products are designed involves factoring in costs. if you can't procure a part at a certain price point at a certain quantity, you redesign your product to use a different part. that's probably one of the first reasons Apple went with the 4:3 screen. the other reason I believe they went with a 4:3 screen is a tablet is designed to be rotated in either direction. In terms of designing a UI, it's far easier to adjust between landscape and portrait with a 4:3 screen because it's closer to a square. a 16:9 screen? you really have to think about your UI design because a design that best fits landscape can look bad in portrait.

I do admire how you tow the Apple line quite well. when a particular part reaches a price point that Apple can support, that's when they support the tech. It's why they don't have wireless charging. They'll proclaim that the technology is nascent and immature. And then when it hits the price point they want, Apple will include it and say that the technology and the marketplace has matured to the point that it wants wireless charging.

and you know your math is misleading about screen space.

if you constrain it by the length (which is what you're doing):

7x3.9375 (16x9) = 27.5625
7x5.25 (4x3) = 36.75

33% greater for the 4:3 screen

but let's say you constrain it by the width:

7x3.9375 = 27.5625
5.25x3.9375 = 20.671875

25% greater for the 16:9 screen
Edited by onlysublime - 12/10/12 at 9:14pm

This forum is for HTPCs and by no stretch of the imagination is Win 8 desirable for HTPC use. I see absolutely no upside for the user, only to enhance Microsoft's coffers. For desktop use it's the same story, just no upside. Why spend money on an OS that adds nothing functionally and makes you go through extra motions to switch to an interface that is actually usable.

I'm still using BeyondTV for viewing/recording OTA and XP works perfectly for it and Win 7 added nothing as far as functionality, in fact actually detracted because of the way Microsoft bastardized the audio options by disabling the ability to playback analog or digital outputs simultaneously without having to jump through hoops to switch.

On my desktop, I use quite a few different applications and utilities and the "app" approach is just not feasible. I make my own toolbars which sit nicely on the taskbar for easy access to my programs. I have my home page for the internet designed for feeds from all of my news and sports sources, again enabling easy access to content I want.

In all, I neither need nor desire the "app" interface which was designed for use by the "innovationally challenged" masses that need baby sitters.

This is one Geezer that will resist. What some of you newcomers forget is that a lot of us were quite comfortable with command line computing and still enjoy clean, neat interaction without all the graphical clutter.

This.

I have it on my gaming machine simply to try it out, and because inevitably they will tie 3D graphics extensions into newer versions of windows. But other than that, without some kind of drastic rework, 7 will be the last version of windows for a lot of people.

They even have the gall to try and shove Metro on Windows Server 2012...find me a single admin who won't go nuts when it smacks them in the face the first time.


In the long run, I have no problems with only Linux being left as the power/professional user OS (in fact I see it as ideal if the remaining stubborn specialty software firms finally embrace it) but its going to be a painful transition indeed. If it could pick up high end gaming (hey valve, don't screw it up) at the same time, pure bonus...I'd much rather have fully developed unix GPU drivers anyways.

As for market share, don't care if the new consumption-only appliances become the dominant crap, other than the impact it can have on lowering prices. But quite frankly you only need 50-100M shipments/yr in a segment or maybe 10~20% of the "PC market" to keep prices out of the niche gutter, especially considering those appliances will have a lot of hardware in common with real computers anyways. (yay for standards)

And what some of us old-timers remember is how glad we were to get rid of that stuff. I remember punched cards as well. And not with fondness.

well, then you don't remember the old times well. a lot of people still clung to the CLI. well, into Windows 95 days. happens with every platform. there's always a small minority that clings to the past for dear life.

Win 8 is different. I'm not clinging to Win 7 for nostalgia's sake or inability to adapt to change. I'm clinging because the old GUI is better. If Win 8 was actually better, I'd be all over it. I had no problem whatsoever adapting to every new version of Windows except 8 (because it sucks) and Vista (because it also sucked). I had no problem shedding my bag phone, pager and dumb phone for an iPhone because iPhone was better. Win 8 GUI is not better. It's haphazard, confusing, ugly and requires a lot more effort to use. They removed the ability to easily navigate with a mouse. I don't have a touchscreen, and my HTPC has no keyboard, so I still need a mouse. Even if I had a keyboard, I'd prefer to use it as little as possible. The mouse was invented to free us from so much reliance on the keyboard.

I'd consider myself a newcomer (guess it depends on your reference point since I'm probably somewhere in the median age for this forum)

My first PC should have been dos based, but hardware was ridiculously expensive back in the day so my first PC was Windows 3.1 (I was in high school)

I'd prefer to use the command line for a lot of things, and it has a lot of useful purposes. However, I think multitasking is a lot easier with a gui

I feel the opposite about mouse usage

When I'm forced to use a mouse (by certain apps and the OS) I go slower. This is what draws me to keyboard-shortcut-friendly apps like chrome and adobe reader

Edit: Thinking about this further, windows has supported both keyboard and mouse (almost allowing them to be used independently) for a couple decades and is beginning to add a third major input mechanism. Doesn't make any sense to hamper one of the legacy inputs, just glad it wasn't the one I favor

Favorite shortcut win+e
Edited by Dark_Slayer - 12/11/12 at 1:34pm

Don't get me wrong. I use the heck out of keyboard shortcuts (except on my HTPC). I just like to have the option of mouse navigation before I'm familiar with a new program. Memorizing a bunch of shortcuts right out of the gate is tough going, for me at least. As a developer myself, I make sure all input mechanisms work. I don't see the logic in dropping one.

But a problem with keyboard shortcuts is they aren't very consistent across different apps. The biggies like copy/paste/close usually are, but each program has it's own. I just upgraded one program I've been using for at least 10 years. I've been through about 7 versions of it, but this time they decided to change ALL the keyboard shortcuts. It's a nightmare. 10 years of habit is killing me. I'm constantly using the old shortcuts without thinking.

Windows 7 basically had the same UI as Windows Vista. That's why people who had Vista had little transition to 7 whereas for XP people, they spent a lot of energy making 7 act like XP.

After upgrading all my systems to Win 8 (bar an old laptop which only has 7 drivers) and a month of constant use I'd agree that the UI is retarded. It works, but it needs a lot more polish. Metro in particular will never be used anywhere without heavy changes. It needs a file manager and apps that behave like traditional desktop programs, not 2 only with an interface based on full screen tablets at the very least. I also don't have (and won't either) a tablet or smartphone so a lot of the features are completely redundant for me anyway.

I find this odd. I'm the person in this forum who probably uses a mouse more than anyone--not having a remote connected to my HTPC. I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about claiming Win8 not being mouse friendly (although I've not tried WMC in Win8, so maybe WMC in Win8 isn't mouse friendly).

Also, the fact that you think both Vista and Win8 suck make me think that you're affected more by press reports of how various Windows OS's operate than the actual operation of the OS. I've never understood all the Vista bashing either, because I've only had one problem with Vista and that started right before Win8 came out, and is possibly hardware (USB) related.

Nope, I used Vista out of the gate without reading the first review, and the UAC made it impossible to do anything unless it was turned completely off. Win 7 fixed it. I generally ignore OS reviews because the reviewer probably won't have the same requirements as me or the same experience level. The fact that you had no problems with Vista (except one hardware issue) makes me seriously question your credibility as well.

WMC in 8 is identical to 7, so no mouse issues there except launching it in the first place. But please tell me how you would navigate to say, the StartUp folder or HyperTerminal that would have been on the old Win 7 Start Menu without using the keyboard. Same goes for most everything on the old start menu. How do you find any program that isn't on the apps screen without typing?

I wasn't knocking the GUI interface per se, just what they have done with it. Everyone has gotten carried away with modular programming to ostensibly make everything easier when in essence they have made many tasks much more difficult.

What I was getting at is that a simple shortcut takes up much less space than a large block with cute pictures and accomplishes the same function. I find making my own toolbars to provide access to my most important programs is a lot easier and much less cumbersome.

I considered the complaints about UAC to be bizarre. Trading security to avoid a click here and there? Poor choice IMHO. Too bad Microsoft caved on that, IMHO. We'd probably have less malware issues if they hadn't caved.

UAC never bothered me. I'm more bothered by anti-virus programs that make all the decisions for me. I want to know if my system is being changed.

As for Startup, you can navigate to it through Task Manager now. Task Manager does so much now that I've put it on my taskbar, so it's easy to get to with just one mouse click.

I don't use HyperTerminal, so I'd have a hard time with or without a keyboard!

Why was UAC in Vista unusable? Anytime you needed to do anything that required admin privileges, a prompt came up. It's the same way in OSX and in most Linux desktop environments (if I recall correctly, the releases of KDE and GNOME out back in the Vista era also required you to type in the root password, not just hit OK).The only annoyance I recall was that you'd sometimes get a warning dialog before the UAC prompt informing you that you'd get a UAC prompt, so that you had to deal with two dialogs.

The first thing I do on Windows 7 and 8 is to turn UAC all the way to the top again. The default lowered setting doesn't make much sense.

I believe that was the issue that annoyed the hell out of me - prompts telling you about more prompts. I can't fathom running UAC at the top setting. That would drive me insane.

Karyk, does task manager allow you to modify the contents of the startup folder or just see it? I haven't used Win 8 since last spring, so I can't remember all the details. Unfortunately in my line of work I have to interface with a lot of old technology (I still have to run Win NT VMs for some clients), so I use Hyperterminal and other things like it all the time. That's why I need quick, easy access to everything on my PC, hence my frustration that most everything in Win 8 has been moved, hidden or dumbed down.

Task manager doesn't work through Explorer to change things. You can add and disable startup items right in Task Manager.

BTW, I forgot to mention you can also access Task Manager by right clicking on start. If I had more items on my Task Bar I'd probably delete the icon for Task Manager.

Yes that.

Hopefully will be all right in Windows 9:D

Vista sucked too. MS got it fixed in Windows 7.

you roll the mouse wheel

or you right click and go to all apps.

you do have quick access to a lot of things. if you haven't used windows 8 since last spring, you've missed out on a lot of additions since then.

If MS had simply updated the kernel (etc) removed aero, kept the new defender, and left the start menu alone, with an option to enable "touch-screen mode", they would have had a real winner on their hands.

As it is, they think someone with dual-24" monitors is going to benefit from the horse-poo they called Metro. Thanks but that'll never see the inside of my business. Game over.

"But the live tiles is a real asset to-"

"Hold it right there professor. Active desktop was a major pain in my IT department's ass. This will be no better."

I would agree with that. And then have an icon on the desktop to launch Metro for those who want to do so. Even without the old start menu, that would have been a winner without so much controversy.

+1. Entirely. If they'd made Metro optional, or provided a hot-key to switch between it and the legacy desktop (with Start button of course!), that would have been so much better. Introducing such a radical change and forcing people to use it from day 1 was going to cause huge problems, and a big backlash (as it has). Windows 8 has split the user base. It's a love/hate thing with not much middle ground. I'm also a bit peeved they dropped Aero and Desktop Gadgets as well. It would have been easy to make the default theme the new Windows 8 one, but they should have kept 'full' Aero in there as an option. It's obvious they removed the gadgets option as they don't want people using the 'legacy' desktop. Take away all the nice things that made the desktop usable, to try and force users into the new UI. This is just such a ridiculous, naive decision it begger's belief.

My guess is Aero was dropped to increase performance. Possibly the same with gadgets. Clearly a major goal was shortening boot times.

BTW, I never used gadgets, but I think you can probably get many of the same things on the Metro interface.

I have a 3 monitor setup. works fine for me.

Show me that in Metro, then I'll be impressed.

Just for the record people did not spend alot of money to get 16:9 displays, they were simply pushed to it because those displays are cheaper to produce. I never , ever liked 16:9 yet roughly half of my monitors are that simply because I had no reasonable choice outside of dropping 2x the price. Computing is funny because most of what we do is vertical on the web yet our screens are very horizontal. The main reason this happened was because they could sell a 20 inch display for less money and most ignorant consumers just grabbed the cheaper one saying well this one is $20 less and also 20 inches.

As for the push to metro, MS knows one thing about their customers, they are creatures of habit and will usually resist change, yet they are also very lazy so they will often accept the default. So they know that without incentive no one is going to develop for metro just like no one wrote drivers and had them good and stable for vista, and on top of that no one would learn metro. You gotta make it default.

As it stands if you are smart enough to be on this forum or any hardware forum you are smart enough to install various programs that put back the old start menu and get you into the desktop so windows 8 should not be a problem for you.

That would be the windows key on your keyboard.
Gadgets were disabled by default in Windows 7, and were removed in Windows 8 because almost no-one used them. Never saw the use at all, and they were the first thing I disabled when I installed Vista. (Dashboard on OS X was much more useful, because you had a hotkey to bring up widgets - though I really only used them for calculators/unit conversion)

Other than that, what else on the desktop has been removed from the desktop that makes it "usable"?


And Metro apps are entirely optional. The Start Screen is also optional, but requires a third-party solution if you want to replace it with an old-style Start Menu.

The Start Screen is nothing more than an app launcher. Once you launch a program, you're on the desktop and never have to leave it.
Or you can install a replacement like Start8 and never see anything but the desktop.
Multi-monitor setups are actually handled a lot better in Windows 8 than they have been in any previous version of Windows. There are a lot of nice improvements.
Agreed.