Rugby View of Windows 8

My friends in Rugby: WTF is Windows 8

I just spent a lot of money on a nice new computer and it came with Windows 8. No instructions of value, nothing intuitive, illogical controls, functions in places which make no sense, apps which are for phones only, very few apps at all (no rugby apps), and so on.

Am I a Luddite in grand tradition opposing progress?
Or am I realistic/pragmatic and Microsoft screwed the pooch on this?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Are you sure you remembered to wind it up?

Honestly, you men are so hopeless!

You're welcome!

I know how to wind it up! The propeller is on the side.
Right?
At least I think it is......

I imagine as with everything from Microsoft it will be ludicrously complicated, not do things you want and randomly do things you don't need it to without your permission.

Windows 8 is Microsoft's lame attempt to hack into the phone market dominated by Apples Iphone and Googles Android. Unfortunately they targeted it at touch screens such as that on phones, Ipads etc but also the latest all in one touch screen type windows desktops.

I've got a free upgrade to W8 with my laptop so based on your comments doc and others wont be doing that. Reviews is general are that W8 for phones and tablets with touch has been very successful, desktops and non touch laptops not so, so they've achieved part of their goal and have hit the market running with it, potentially cutting into apples huge market dominance after being swamped since the first ipad release.

Thank God I am an AppleMac person.

Bizzarely enou I've always felt that Microsoft peeked with Vista, know it got slated at the time but compared to 7 & 8 it's so much better and easier to use! (plus my old copy of rugby 08 works on the earlier windows!) Currently running whatever it is my mac has & windows XP on a virtual machine.

Windows is dead and Microsoft is dying.

If you can't afford apple or dislike their "it just works" configless mantra then dump windows 8 (rhymes with hate) for Linux mint cinnamon. It's fast, it's small, it's intuitive, it's stable, its free and it doesn't pelt you with advertising.

Microsoft simply don't have a niche anymore now that the PC has been replaced by the tablet and their enterprise servers and apps have always sucked.

In 5 years Microsoft will not exist anymore, or at least they'll resemble Kodak.

ThePantomimeVillain wrote:Windows is dead and Microsoft is dying.

If you can't afford apple or dislike their "it just works" configless mantra then dump windows 8 (rhymes with hate) for Linux mint cinnamon. It's fast, it's small, it's intuitive, it's stable, its free and it doesn't pelt you with advertising.

Microsoft simply don't have a niche anymore now that the PC has been replaced by the tablet and their enterprise servers and apps have always sucked.

In 5 years Microsoft will not exist anymore, or at least they'll resemble Kodak.

Microsoft are only still on top because of support for Legacy software and games, most games with the top end graphics use DirectX(Microsoft proprietary software). However, with the Steam platform investing more interest in linux, they seem to be porting a lot of games to OpenGL(DirectX open source rival), if it gets enough support, sooner or later companies will dump DirectX and focus on OpenGL, which means more games for Mac and Linux distros.

It's over for proprietary software in general. The move to cloud storage and software as a service makes crony licensing unworkable.

The mad dash by the big software giants to buy up the small open source vendors is the death throws of that particilar dinosaur.

Of course a great time to be a small open source start up since differentiating wheat and chaff isn't the strong suit of the big boys. If it was they'd've thought of this stuff on their own in the first place.

There's a metaphor for rugby there if you look hard.

Should have got a nice shiny Macbook Air - urines all over Microsoft

There's a reason that you have to look really hard to figure out that Xbox is a Microsoft product. My bet is they'll spectacularly screw up with 720 and PS4 will steal the Halo franchise from them too.

The only value left in Microsoft is their significant shareholding in apple. My bet is they'll get snapped up in proxy licensing deal by either oracle or google.

I think any proposed combination of Google and Microsoft would be opposed by regulatory bodies in most countries.

What Microsoft employees/designers/programmers need is electroshock therapy to shock them back to the real world where real people work and play.

It has been my main gripe since the early days of Microsoft, the old BASIC and DOS days of the 70's, that I could not - and would not - let a piece of electronic circuitry dictate my logical thought processes and suggest to me how the accomplishment of tasks might best be achieved.

Microsoft has done nothing in the intervening years to change my perception of them as being little more than an interfering busy-body - personified by that bloody awful paperclip that has to effrontery to suggest to me, a student of the English language, what might be the 'correct' spelling of a word and that I 'may' have inadvertently generated a 'syntax' error.

I would dearly love to know where the programmers of predictive text and the suggesters of grammatical correctness gained their expertise. I KNOW what a syntax error is in linguistics, that is the study of the language and the written word. Syntax errors in computer programming are something entirely different.

So my hopes for the future of Microsoft is simply this. I sincerely wish that in the not too distant future they disappear from the face of the earth and leave me alone.

Rant over.

ThePantomimeVillain wrote:There's a reason that you have to look really hard to figure out that Xbox is a Microsoft product. My bet is they'll spectacularly screw up with 720 and PS4 will steal the Halo franchise from them too.

The only value left in Microsoft is their significant shareholding in apple. My bet is they'll get snapped up in proxy licensing deal by either oracle or google.

Would be hard Microsoft owns the Halo franchise

But Microsoft are owned by their shareholders...

Im slowly switching over to Linux. Far superior operating system, compact, faster and far less invasive. I use it for most everything now. Its free, its well supported World Wide. Its the future.

I´ll stay with Windows 7 Ultimate (dual-boot) for the things Linux still needs work on. Im not switching over to WIN 8. No way.

I heard it's great for their phones. May use it for that. They cant be any more invasive than GOOGLE. Im on an anti-GOOGLE drive. No more GMAIL, Im running that down. I dont use their search engine or let them control all cross-access to YOUTUBE, FACEBOOK & GMAIL.

They build up a complete profile of you (everything you search for, everything you play, everything you watch, every picture or video you post, every political or religious comment you make) and store all the data in the States. The CIA must feicin love it. The EU wants it stored in countries where data protection is taken seriously. We can live without it.

Hey Gibbo!

Have you got that tinfoil hat on too tight again?

neilthom7 wrote:I imagine as with everything from Microsoft it will be ludicrously complicated, not do things you want and randomly do things you don't need it to without your permission.

A fairly accurate description

Seriously, on a (non-touch screen) laptop, it's borderline unuseable.

I just got it today too. It is an absolute nightmare. WTF is the point of this garbage OS. I don't want apps on my laptop. I'm quite happy with a normal desktop layout. Plus I have to have a Microsoft account to log onto Skype using the Skype app that comes with the pile of dung OS. Surely that must be a breach of competition laws.

I am actually really peed off that you need a Microsoft account to access Skype. Computer rage!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’m no expert, I’ve not used Win8, just read about it, but I suspect that you are having problems with the metro (tiled, tablet like) display?

That’s really designed more for touchscreens, you can change it back to a classic desktop view AFAIK, which is basically just a slightly tarted up version of Win 7.

I use XP in work (still the best Windows OS) and I’ve a Mac at home, which is pretty good.

Say what you will about MS, but I do love a bit of excel

http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/software-and-web-apps/how-to-make-windows-8-look-like-windows-7-50009546/

Mickado. that's useful thanks. I followed the steps and I have a normal OS now. Cheers!

Mickado

Looks like my project for this week as well. Anything that makes it work like a sensible single-interface computer rather than the completely half-baked mess that it currently is...

Happy to help gents.

I am currently away from home and my blessed windows 8 computer, but will try these steps when I get back. I have not yet heard anyone (not employed by Microsoft or their advertising partners) talk about the positives of windows 8. Total pain in the lower south end.

I've not actually used it Doc, but i've read some reviews that weren't entirely negitive i must say. It's ostensibly has tight integration with their mobile OS, which i guess is one advantage, however the MS Surface isn't even on sale in the UK or Ireland yet as far as i know and i've used a Windows phone for a few weeks while i was getting my iphone repaired and i nearly feiced the thing out the window on a few occasions, really not good at all.

I prefer how Mac OS X and iOS are seperate but support many of the same features and integrate with the iCloud feature. But then, iOS is feeling a little stale these days, Android works with everything, but doesn't really integrate with anythingso, so nothing's prefect really...

mickado,
Seems the biggest complaints - and mine - is the total change in operation from Windows 7 or XP to 8. there is nothing really intuitive: Its not just using those mobile phone 'tiles', not just taking hours to figure out how to turn the computer off or to print. Using hotmail from the main screen I still can't figure out how to empty the deleted mail folder. Its things like this which make me nuts. And the 'help' menu is simply an oxymoron. Their 'desktop' screen, their pseudo Windows 7 screen, only performs some of the functions from Windows 7 or XP. So we are left in a form of computer limbo. And thats what gets sane people flippin' mad. For me, obviously, its worse.

You are right, of course, microsoft are marrying the computer and mobile phones. They clearly see the future as a hybrid of the two. But they forgot the basic premise of evolution over revolution. Disgruntlement with Windows 8 is now truly a global phenomenon. My IT guys at work don't like it, and they are true computer guys, unlike me.

By the way, I also have an Android. Couldn't agree more - works well with almost everything, but doesn't really integrate. Strange, but I miss my blackberry.

doc

I absolutely agree with your comment above. The biggest problem with Win 8 is really that it's neither one thing nor the other - had Microsoft developed the tiles interface to operate everything, it would have made more sense than the half-baked botch job that it currently is. Hell, as an option they could have included a way to make it work in 'Classic' view so that it looked and operated largely like Win 7.

A couple of things that we've done (as people very comfortable using the 'conventional' Windows desktop) are:
1 - reassign the 'open with' relationships for things like photographs (the old preview viewer is still there, and is so much more user-friendly than the Win 8 viewer) and PDF files (back to 'Acrobat Reader' rather than the Microsoft 'Reader' app that jumps you back to the tiles menu).

2 - Downloaded Thunderbird as the mail client and totally abandoned the utterly hopeless Win 8 Mail program (it really is so lacking functionaity as to be useless).

I think the bigger problem is not 'evolution not revolution', but that they forgot that their core market is the vast majority of the world's computer users, ranging from geeks to little old ladies. The proportion of people who will benefit from the supposed integration between computer, tablet and mobile OS will be a minority (and primarily the geeks who really want to keep all their information accessible through the Microsoft version of iCloud), and in the meantime MS have totally hacked-off a lot of normal computer users by giving them something that simply doesn't work.

dummy_half,
I think you summed up Windows 8 better than I did. Your last paragraph is 100% on the money.

But, I have to ask a question. What is Thunderbird? Agree the WinMail program is sub-useless. Not sure how to download a mail client, nor what to do with it. Would love to be educated before I take an axe to my brand new I7 super slick, but useless and frustrating computer. Really would lappreciate the assist.

Thanks!

Hi Doc,

Thunderbird is a mail client made by Mozilla (of firefox fame), It's essentially just a program like any other. The difference between a client and a program is that a client relies on information coming from another source. In other words, Thunderbird doesn't provide you your email service, it just displays it and lets you set up rules etc.

So basically, you download Thunderbird, give it the details of your hotmail or gmail account, and it contacts MS or Google, downloads your mails and then it becomes your source for checking your mail (as opposed to opening a web browser, logging in etc. every time you want to check your mail).

It can be uninstalled at any time and it won't affect your email account in anyway, i.e. you can still log in via a browser from your own machine or any other machine as you always have.

I'd recommend it!

Well, I've just purchased a new laptop (which was a bargain despite needing a few upgrades. First upgrade necessary was that it only had 32bit windows 7.

When i looked to buy 64bit windows 7, its coming in at £120 cheapest. Windows 8 on the other hand is on promotion at£50 for the hard copy and less for the digital upgrade version.

No amount of hate is going to scare me away from benefiting from that price difference!

Windows 8 will be at my door tomorrow.

I shall try to embrace it!

Clive

Suggest you use the £70 saving to buy several bottles of spirits - you're going to need a lot of stiff drinks.

Let us know how you get on with it...

doc

Mickado has already answered your question regarding Thunderbird. Basically, it has most of the functions of an old-fashioned e-mail programme like Outlook Express, and so far we've been reasonably impressed with it considering its a freebie.

I think Thunderbird is open source too, so you can customise it with many different plug-ins, if you so choose, the same as Firefox.

Clive, fair play for buying the hard copy, if people stopped buying hard copies of software i'd be out of a job!

Mickado wrote:I think Thunderbird is open source too, so you can customise it with many different plug-ins, if you so choose, the same as Firefox.

Clive, fair play for buying the hard copy, if people stopped buying hard copies of software i'd be out of a job!

Funny thing about it is this. I know a few people who had a pirated copy of Windows 7 and just made themselves legal for £25 on the Win8 digital download upgrade from Microsoft.

would Microsoft ever be able to 'come after you' because you current legitimate copy of windows was upgraded from a pirate version. Would they ever be able to prove it?

clivemcl wrote:

Mickado wrote:I think Thunderbird is open source too, so you can customise it with many different plug-ins, if you so choose, the same as Firefox.

Clive, fair play for buying the hard copy, if people stopped buying hard copies of software i'd be out of a job!

Funny thing about it is this. I know a few people who had a pirated copy of Windows 7 and just made themselves legal for £25 on the Win8 digital download upgrade from Microsoft.

would Microsoft ever be able to 'come after you' because you current legitimate copy of windows was upgraded from a pirate version. Would they ever be able to prove it?

I can't specifically speak about how MS run their brand protection, but i would imagine that at the stage where they try to upgrade, there should be an element of verification (i.e. is this person allowed upgrade, do they have a legit copy of Win 7), so if they got the upgrade, then they're probably safe enough.

I'm not sure how pirated copies circumvent the whole digital rights managment thing to be honest, unless it's as simple as someone has stolen the DRM keys and made them available to people for free, i don't understand how someone could generate the keys themselves...

It must be something like that Mickado. I've tried to buy cheap OS before and got my hands burnt. One of my desktops at home suddenly starts telling me I'm not genuine after like 6 months. I've done two reinstalls and the serial key is accepted every time.

It was sealed and genuine as far as I could see when I bought it. But it wasnt from a respectable seller.

I suspect my same serial key is floating about the internet and being attempted by other people.

Its annoying, because its not like i bought an illegal copy, it cost me £80.

A friend gave me some mystery executable file the other day and suddenly Windows says I'm legit again.

I'll ask no questions, he'll tell me no lies.

They call it the gray market.

I work in the manufacturing department of a software company, which for years was very simple, not much to making a box and a CD, but the activation key part of the business is getting very complicated, we're doing something nowadays called POSA (point of sale activation) so the key that's printed on your card in the box isn't active and useable until it's scanned at the till, and in some cases the system is being set up so that there is no key in the box at all, instead it prints on your till receipt.

All proving to be very challenging from my side of things, interesting none the less.

Mickado wrote:They call it the gray market.

I work in the manufacturing department of a software company, which for years was very simple, not much to making a box and a CD, but the activation key part of the business is getting very complicated, we're doing something nowadays called POSA (point of sale activation) so the key that's printed on your card in the box isn't active and useable until it's scanned at the till, and in some cases the system is being set up so that there is no key in the box at all, instead it prints on your till receipt.

All proving to be very challenging from my side of things, interesting none the less.

I do find that interesting Mickado! Although I imagine most do not!

Oh good god no. I don't usually talk about this type of thing outside of work, but as Father Todd Uncious once said "that's just the way things were going..."

Thanks gents for the assist. To take a famous line out of context: This is great stuff. And, by the way, I do find your conversation fascinating. I enjoy reading how buisiness and technology evolve, even if I am only semi-computer-literate.

I am in Asia on a business trip. When I get back on Wedneaday or Thursday I will start with Thunderbird first. If I have questions, I know where to direct them. One quick question, tough. When I install Thunderbird, will it give me a new tile on the Win 8 desktop, or will there be another way to access the email? This is something I am very anxious to try as the win 8 email program is a particular rage button for me.

Once through that, then I can start with some of the suggestions made in the Cnet link you (Mikado) sent.

Besides, who can focus too much on that kind of thnings now? Saturday is one of the holiest days on the calendar........

Grey

Spoiler:

Here's what it should look like Doc (just under IE, which i would also recommend replacing )

Windows 8

It's like the barsteward hybrid devil spawn of Vista and IOS...... the end is nigh. Microsoft have created an operating system that can't be switched off, can't bargained with or reasoned with and absolutely will not stop until ....

rodders wrote:Windows 8

It's like the barsteward hybrid devil spawn of Vista and IOS...... the end is nigh. Microsoft have created an operating system that can't be switched off, can't bargained with or reasoned with and absolutely will not stop until ....

Largely sums up my feelings. I presume the bit after the ellipsis should say 'you put it in an industrial crusher and flatten the b'stard'.

Seriously, every time I use it I contemplate how much damage an axe would do to a laptop.

Microsoft have lost the plot with this OS. Really is bad.

Interesting though that MS is changing roles with Apple, MS are now the ones coming out with a completely new OS which looks like nothing that anybody has seen before (not always a good thing, but it's at least different!) and Apple are releasing a new OS every other year which is just a marginal improvement on what went before.