Windows 8 - my verdict. - Page 19

Originally Posted by kapone 

Wanna hear another funny story??

So, the other day I checked out MSDN and realized Office 2013 is available now. Yipee!! or not.... I set a restore point on my main workstation and proceeded to install Office 2013. Mind you, this is an uber stable, quite fast system (i7 960 based with dual video cards, water cooled, running at 4.4GHz with 16 GB of RAM and Windows 7). It screams and rips literally anything I throw at it, to shreds. This is also my main workstation, so I do lots of video editing, software development, 3d modeling etc on it, so I keep it fully patched, defragged etc etc.

1. Set restore point
2. Install Office 2013.
3. Play with it.

Hmm...this has the whole "Metro" feel with flat border-less Windows and as usual lots of bloatware, i.e. social crap. If I need that, I'll go to crapbook..er..facebook, I don't need that in my enterprise email client. But oh well, let's give them the benefit of doubt. Overall, I had to tweak it a bit to "my" taste....(er, Microsoft, the blue color you have chosen to display new emails, email counts in etc, just doesn't go well on large displays. Take note).

4. Patch Windows again, as it suddenly needed to installed 36 more updates. And then another 14. (uh...50 updates as soon as the product is installed??)
5. Start using it daily.
6. Day 2 - Word crashed on opening a document. No clue why.
7. Day 2 - I thought maybe I was dumb and didn't install Office properly, so uninstalled it, rebooted and reinstalled it.
8. Immediate big banner in Outlook - Your Office is not registered and Outlook will lose most of its functionality in 10 days. Ah, I need to put the product key in again. No sweat.
9. Spent an hour looking for a place to put the product key in. Nada. Zip. Zero. Can't find it. And I'm supposed to be a techie. I suck.
10. An obscure post on Microsoft forums suggested repairing the install. Ok...I can do that...
11. If you run the repair install, it gives you an option to put a new product key in..... REALLY??? SERIOUSLY?? Somebody better get fired at Microsoft.... I grumbled, put my key in and went my merry way...or so I thought.
12. Day 3 - Outlook crashed on replying to a message with attachments. I thought I did something stupid...but nope, crashed every single time on that message.
13. Then it crashed again on another message with NO attachments. Uhhh....
14. While this was going on.....something kept nagging me that my system has been feeling slow ever since.....take a wild guess. I checked everything thrice, even reverted the overclock to stock, defragged three times, checked every single startup service/registry key...you name it. Nope, everything is as it should be, other than......take a wild guess.
15. Uninstalled Office 2013.
16. Hmm....system is snappy again! weird.
17. Reinstalled Office 2013 - System back to sluggishness.
18. Uninstalled Office 2103, reinstalled Office 2010 and screamed some choice cuss words at Microsoft.
19. Opened some good 18 yr old scotch to drown my sorrows.

Microsoft - Get a grip.

Originally Posted by Mfusick 

someone posted a way to get W8 for $15 without a code...


ANyone know ?

Originally Posted by MovieSwede 

Because everything is merging. Tablets becomes laptops and desktops becomes tablets.

Originally Posted by MovieSwede 

The new UI is created for this. It works with all input devices. Something the old UI didn't.

Originally Posted by sebberry 

Tablets are primarily media consumption devices, especially with their specialized "apps", most of which are built around media consumption.

It works with "all" input devices in that it's a jack of all trades, master of none.

Originally Posted by MovieSwede 

Surface Pro is a good example that you can do more with a tablet then just consumtion.

Originally Posted by MovieSwede 

Not harder to click on a square block with your mouse then it is to click on an icon.

Originally Posted by sebberry 

True, but it's real potential as a creation device is only reached once you add a keyboard, mouse and close out of the full-screen Start page and use windowed applications on the desktop. Why spend $900 on a tablet to do that when I can spend less than half that on a laptop?

The interface is cumbersome, unintuitive and quite frankly restrictive. Take the "Charms bar" for example: On the touch screen, you swipe in from the right beze. With a mouse, you stick it in some unlabelled corner. With a trackpad, you swipe from the right, but if you don't swipe in just the right spot, you drag the cursor instead.

Closing an "app" with a mouse? Can't just click "X" in the corner, you have to drag it down and off the screen. The list of interface design and operability fumbles with Metro is far longer than it should be.

Windows 8/Metro might be OK for a tablet, but it needs to be kept far away from tablets and desktops. And let's not forget Microsoft plagued Windows Server with the full screen start menu too...

Originally Posted by kapone 

Seriously?

I am also wondering what this means for WMC. If M$ is going to be changing Win8 isn't that a new OS whereupon they could drop WMC altogether?

Originally Posted by cybrsage 

I wish they would return the X to close the application. When a Metro app is opened, it takes the entire screen...how do you close it? I go back to the desktop and right click on the upper left corner (where the app is hiding) and click close...many steps for what used to be only one click.

Windows 8 has been a financially successful but rocky transition for Microsoft. The company said Tuesday that it has no regrets about the major changes it made to Windows, but it is working to fix some of its most glaring mistakes.
Microsoft has sold 100 million Windows 8 licenses since the launch of the completely redesigned operating system in late October 2012. Windows sales were relatively flat last quarter -- no small achievement during a period in which PC sales were in a tailspin.

Still, Microsoft acknowledged that early complaints about Windows 8 are loud and legitimate.
"We need to work to address a real learning curve with Windows 8," said Tami Reller, chief financial officer for Microsoft's Windows division. "That's a big challenge for us."

Many users have found the new operating system difficult to pick up. Some of the top complaints: The lack of the "Start" button that had been around since 1995, hidden menu items and multiple locations for settings.
More than 2,400 different devices now run Windows 8, but many still lack touch capabilities that make the operating system really shine. The Windows 8 device lineup is also scant on smaller tablet options, including the seven-inch and eight-inch varieties popularized by the Apple iPad mini and Amazon Kindle Fire.
Related story: Don't blame Windows 8 for slumping PC sales
Microsoft said it has a plan to address all of those problems. Here's the biggest piece: The company will launch an update to Windows 8, codenamed "Blue," by this year's holiday season. Microsoft was skimpy on details, but rumors include the return of the Start button and changes to make apps easier and more intuitive to use. The company said it will reveal more about that update in the coming weeks.
That's a change from Microsoft's attitude back when Windows 8 first launched.
In October, Microsoft claimed that its users would enjoy the experience of learning a new operating system. The company's market research indicated that customers didn't want to be given too much instruction before diving in, so Microsoft simply told users where the new menus were located and let them figure the rest out on their own.

Oops.

Though some have characterized the forthcoming Windows update as a reversal, Microsoft said it is simply responding to feedback, while sticking to its commitment to modernize its software -- despite the complaints that kind of radical move usually sparks.
"We always reserve the right to get wiser," Reller said in an interview with CNNMoney. "We have to be principled, but we're not going to be stubborn."
Giving users more instruction improves their confidence, even if it's technically not the best way to learn a new operating system, she added.
Some analysts who have been critical of Microsoft's approach to Windows 8 think Blue will be a welcome change.
"If you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water it will jump out," said Jeff Kagan, an independent technology analyst. "However, if you drop it in a pot of room-temperature water and turn the heat up, bit by bit, it will eventually cook. You can't change too much, too quickly without customer push-back."

Originally Posted by vladd 

I figured you had found it by now. For pure speculation, I don't think they will do away with WMC in the next version but I don't think there will be any significant changes to it. From my observations, WMC seems to be the single driving factor of Pro Pack sales. Businesses certainly aren't flocking to it.

Originally Posted by bryansj 

All that is needed is cablecard support outside of WMC and I'd have no reason to bother with it.

Originally Posted by Sammy2 

I did not know this. I'd like to read up on that or at least look at some charts.

Originally Posted by Sammy2 

You are probably right as I don't think that there is widespread corporate support for Win8 at all and the typical home user doesn't need the propack unless they are doing more with it than typical, such as Win8.

Originally Posted by Sammy2 

You are probably right as I don't think that there is widespread corporate support for Win8 at all and the typical home user doesn't need the propack unless they are doing more with it than typical, such as Win8.

Originally Posted by slowbiscuit 

So if Blue fixes what most agree is wrong with Win8 (forcing a tablet UI motif on desktops and laptops), this will continue the long line of every other MS Windows release being good, the other being bad.