Features - QOTW: Will you be upgrading to Windows 8?

[aidanjt]

So you don't believe me it was the concensus back then that if I'd heeded I'd have not had to take a trip to Telehouse? Not sure what your point is unless your wanting to white wash history.

In the 15th century the consensus was the Earth was flat. Consensus != correct. Every scripting language, and even uploaded binaries could have compromised your box. Stupid insecure system is stupid insecure system. It's like keeping the sledge hammer inside your house just in case someone pinches from the shed to break into your own house. They can use other tools or just bring their own specialised tool for the job.

Uh hu. Your really not a dev are you. Just think about what you've said from a discoverability and Interface design pov.

It's simple interface design, mount (command which handles mounting volumes) -o (options flag) remount (remount filesystem without unmounting it to apply new option) nodiscard (the don't discard blocks option) / (mounted volume to affect)
Discoverability? man mount.

Then think how certain operations are impacted.

That would be zero (other than you no longer TRIM'ing discarded blocks).

Now, come back and tell me that is a 'good' design and not piss poor, sloppy archiac.

It's fine. You not understanding it isn't piss poor or sloppy.

This isn't a Powershell > any CLI. I'm not saying that (thou its clear you've never used the former)

I have used it, it's a horrible mess.

Its CLIs have drawbacks, discoverability is the main one.

I have a much easier time finding documentation, configuration settings, etc with Linux than I do with Windows. Walking the registry hive is an abortion.

I also suggest that seperate tools doing seperate things with seperate conventions is just plain awful.

Yeah, because we wouldn't want 100 tools doing 100 things competently, we should have 1 tool doing 100 things badly. That makes sense. Why bother with processes at all? We could have everything as a kernel module.. Oh wait, that was a terrible idea and we stopped doing that ages ago.

[Biscuit]

What I'm saying is sometimes the change is incremental leaving you with something that will be in the future pointless. The XP themed start menu was like that in a way, pinned programs, but then the same old All Programs. Looking back now its hard to describe that as anything but half baked.

Edit - forgot to put this bit in

I actually used that feature in XP and found it useful. I like to have a clean desktop and tend to use it for stuff im likely to just delete. Pinning the start was pretty good for quick access whilst keeping things clean. Pinning to the taskbar was the next step, and yeah for me they could have got rid of it from start menu and just had all programs in start aswell.

I understand MS had to make drastic changes, im just not sure they work, especially for me.

because why do you want to see the window underneeth when your doing a task that you can't chop and change between, its a 'menu' after all (this means as soon as it looses focus/context it closes, resetting state).

In my opinion, having it as a full screen rather than take up the a section of the current environment contributes to it feeling like 2 OSes. It makes the whole thing feel like its been bodged together and the process of changing to an entire fullscreen to accomplish something, then switching back to the previous windowed environment is just messy and awkward. When you are used to doing something which is easily achieved by opening a small menu and selecting it which opens up another window without major disturbance to the environment... just seems bonkers to me.

I know some of this can be avoided once you have pinned all your favourite apps to the taskbar but at the moment, when im first building up a workable environment it drives me nuts.

Now I didn't skip Vista, but I didn't try and run it on unsuitable devices either. Not sure what that makes me! But for many things it was and is much better than XP. Just a shame about nVidia.

I didnt skip it as such, i used it for a bit then went back to XP, then missed some of the features so went back to vista, then get annoyed at its buggyness and went back to XP etc etc. When 7 came out i just stuck with it and didnt look back!

On topic, I guess I get anoyed by people who obviously haven't tried what they are talking about, there is so much wrong with Windows 8, that makes me again say its half baked, my personal favourite are the purpose of the charms on the desktop, I mean why have Share there, if you can't ever use it, why the f have it there. I sure hope whoever is responsible for that wakes up in the middle of the night in cold sweats and never knows peice again.

This was one of my major gripes, its a touch feature that is nothing but ridiculous on a desktop. They can scrap the charms on desktop alltogether AFAIC.

[Blazer]

I probably will upgrade my laptop OS, but not my desktop. (windows 7 is fine for me)

[Vimeous]

Yes, right now.
I'm writing this in a break from building a new Win8 LAN rig. My main Win7 machine is lined up next and I can't wait to see if it can breathe a new lease of life into our old media server (Sempron 3100 / Rad 9800). There's another in the wings too.

However at work I'm holding back on the reigns of our aging PC fleet. I'll continue to spec Win7 there until I'm confident we can support the server updates and end users alike.
Win8 adoption at work will accelerate rapidly if home users really take to it however. If staff essentially retrain themselves in the basics of the OS we've no need to hold back for the business.

[crossy]

(TheAnimus: I also suggest that seperate tools doing seperate things with seperate conventions is just plain awful.) Yeah, because we wouldn't want 100 tools doing 100 things competently, we should have 1 tool doing 100 things badly. That makes sense. Why bother with processes at all? We could have everything as a kernel module.. Oh wait, that was a terrible idea and we stopped doing that ages ago.

I'm going to agree with both of you - having separate conventions on various tools IS undoubtedly a bad idea. On the other hand the monolithic master-of-all tool is also a horrendously bad idea. At the risk of incurring the wrath of the Windows fandom, the Linux CLI tools are sysadmin objects - each as a clearly defined (man page or --help/-h options) input and output along with modifier switches. It's also a standard that tools that might be used as filters (can) take input from standard input unit and output to standard output. This object basis means that - as I'm sure that aidanjt will agree - that you can EASILY replace a tool that displeases you with a "better" one. From what little I've seen PowerShell also seems to follow some of the Unix way of thinking - which is no bad idea in my book.

And while your exchange/argument is undoubtedly very interesting, I've got to wonder if we're not getting slightly off track here?

I might actually try it on my media center to test the UI in a more ideal scenario. wonder if the modern UI has Kinect support........

Hmm, you've got me thinking now. I'm sure I remember some discussion that MUI was also designed to be driven in a manner akin to the XBox dashboard (with Kinect). In which case having a Kinect-for-Windows (or whatever the product's to be called) would remove one of the obstacles to MUI being used the way it was meant to be - via touch? Basically add a K-4-Win box to your normal monitor and thereby not have the expense of a touchscreen monitor.

Plus, of course, if Windows8 does follow the XBox dashboard manner then a Kinect driven one also has elementary voice control as well - something you can't do with a touch screen.

Apologies if this is a bit off topic.

[peterb]

I have to agree with aianjt about cli especially in *nix. I remotely administer and configure a couple of servers remotely, using the cli. Its one of those things that the more you use it, the easier it becomes - to the extent I'll often use a terminall window rather than a graphical tool.

It makes me smile seeing people debate the merits of disk cloning or disk security wiping tools when the dd (or dcfldd if you want to be clever) tool does both those functions (and a whole lot more) on a single cli command.

[shaithis]

Well, tried it on the media center last night.

Volume keys cannot use Media Center.......will be restoring back tonight.

[Biscuit]

Well, tried it on the media center last night.

Volume keys cannot use Media Center.......will be restoring back tonight.

Buttons? You dont need buttons you need a new touchscreen TV

[dangel]

Well, tried it on the media center last night.

Volume keys cannot use Media Center.......will be restoring back tonight.

Bugger.

I've a friend who's did it last night on his HTPC but i've yet to speak to him to find out how it went (and if things like Media Browser work OK).

[TheAnimus]

Volume keys cannot use Media Center.......will be restoring back tonight.

I don't understand?

Do you have a Remote or Keyboard which has hardware volume keys, which are being ignored? If thats the case they should also be ignored when in the Desktop.

Is it the same accross different devices, or is this a self descriptor HID fubar thing, if the latter, it might be worth checking which input langauges you've got installed.

[shaithis]

Media browser works perfectly (i have most of the add-ons as well, all seemed to work fine). I re-install retail with the 30 day keys just to try it after finding the "Add features" function missing on VLK.

Volume keys are non-retail product keys.

[TheAnimus]

Ah lol, yes VLKs, not volume controlling keys on a remote.....

[nat327]

They could only tempted me to upgrade if they provide better compatibility for software that previously works on Windows 7. Many of the software and games I'm currently using on Windows 7 doesn't work on Windows 8

[TheAnimus]

They could only tempted me to upgrade if they provide better compatibility for software that previously works on Windows 7. Many of the software and games I'm currently using on Windows 7 doesn't work on Windows 8

Can you name some of them, out of curiosity?

I mean I can imagine boat loads that don't on Windows RT. But not any on 8.

[Andcog]

Just installed on my desktop and im actually impressed. Runs so smooth and fast and if you install start 8 then you can boot into desktop with a start menu. im happy i upgraded and for £25 you cant go wrong. impressed so far but smartscreen is a bit of a pain in the backside at times.
I have just installed warz, crysis 3 alpha, f1 2012, shogun 2 and AoE and had no issues at all so games installs are not a problem and so far not found a program i use on 7 that does not work with 8. SO much unfair negativity on the net.

[aidanjt]

Just installed on my desktop and im actually impressed. Runs so smooth and fast and if you install start 8 then you can boot into desktop with a start menu. im happy i upgraded and for £25 you cant go wrong. impressed so far but smartscreen is a bit of a pain in the backside at times.
I have just installed warz, crysis 3 alpha, f1 2012, shogun 2 and AoE and had no issues at all so games installs are not a problem and so far not found a program i use on 7 that does not work with 8. SO much unfair negativity on the net.

The fact that you had to install (an albeit cheap) 3rd party application to make it usable doesn't make you wonder why it has so much 'unfair negativity' on the net? Having a start menu wasn't a problem in Windows 7, it is in Windows 8. Microsoft regressed the desktop OS to railroad their Metro agenda over everyone to make it appear to be a viable platform for developers to get on board. That's a pretty damn good reason to be negative about it.