Yet another Windows 8 / Metro argument

[The Milkman]

Sarcastic? No not at all. I am not sure if you're studying or working but several companies will not adopt Windows 8 for the simple fact that there is "too much pain with no gain".
And when companies do not adopt Windows, there's a pretty sure bet that they will change their ways. Which is what they are doing with Windows 9.

Huh, didnt know that. But personally I wouldnt use Windows computers for businesses in general. Macs are more built for that kind of thing, not only tgat but theres a reason its called a Personal Computer. And they are reintroducing the Start menu in Blue.

 

[Engert]

Huh, didnt know that. But personally I wouldnt use Windows computers for businesses in general. Macs are more built for that kind of thing, not only tgat but theres a reason its called a Personal Computer. And they are reintroducing the Start menu in Blue.

Look, i'm sorry but you would have nothing but problems if you use Macs in Enterprise environments. Apple is not designed for Enterprise use. Microsoft is.

 

[Rydian]

I've seen Macs in enterprise use all the time. Hell, one of the desktop iMacs I saw was hosting a VM with a temporary server on it on the main screen while a second screen plugged into it was being used to remote into the physical server to restore it to working condition.

 

[Engert]

Rydian, yes they exist. Many of them in fact. But in many areas are incompatible in Enterprise use. Their main weakness is incompatibility with DHCP servers, than calendar issues with Exchange, inability to troubleshoot hardware in-house (you'd have to take them to an Apple store) and a few other areas. They're just a headache but many people use them in Enterprise enviroments, yes.

 

[The Milkman]

Look, i'm sorry but you would have nothing but problems if you use Macs in Enterprise environments. Apple is not designed for Enterprise use. Microsoft is.

Im talking about business, on employee level use. Not hosting servers that hold your corporations entire system or anything like that. That would seem more for Windows server rather then 8.

Also, I think were slipping off topic a bit here, then again the topic seems to be going no where.

 

[Engert]

Im talking about business, on employee level use. Not hosting servers that hold your corporations entire system or anything like that. That would seem more for Windows server rather then 8.

Also, I think were slipping off topic a bit here, then again the topic seems to be going no where.

You changed the topic to Macs. I just responded.

 

[Rydian]

Their main weakness is incompatibility with DHCP servers

Son, you be trippin'. OSX works with DHCP just fine. My college buddy had a Macbook Pro and brought it around tons of places, including my home, and DHCP always worked just fine.

inability to troubleshoot hardware in-house (you'd have to take them to an Apple store) and a few other areas.

Depends on the form-factor, and this goes for other manufacturers as well.

 

[The Milkman]

You changed the topic to Macs. I just responded.

Which in turn Rydain responded to in which you then responed to, I just mentioned it as clarification.

 

[PityOnU]

Would someone explain to me the logic of enterprises upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7?

I've seen the argument that the fact that businesses have adopted Windows 7 as a sign of its goodness, and that they willingly upgraded over XP. But, I mean, what does any business stand to gain by upgrading its OS? Aren't newer OS's inherently more unstable, and generally different by design? And think of all of the money that needs to be spent on compatibility testing of old apps to make sure they still work. Employees got really confused when switching from XP to 7 as well, and needed lots of training.

What did the companies actually gain, then? I'm not arguing a point or anything here, just 100% curious. I can't see any reason why a company would (at this point) ever willingly upgrade their machines. Average Jo Blow worker maybe uses Outlook, a web browser (most people are too cool for IE anymore, so you can't argue that), and a spreadsheet program. You don't exactly need 32GB of RAM, a quad-core processor, and the latest and greatest OS for that.

 

[YayMii]

I don't think optimized is the right word there. Geared towards touch screens is more correct. That's why the tiles are so big in the Metro screen.
Do you know that Windows 9 will bring back the trademark Start Menu which has defined Microsoft for more then two decades?

IMO I'd rather have easily-accessible large graphical buttons on the whole screen to click on instead of small text in the corner. I know people will disagree with me, but IMO it's faster to access my programs that way.
I pretty much use the Metro Start Screen the way I use Mac OS's LaunchPad, as it's faster than looking through the whole app folder.

And FYI, the next version of Windows just has "boot to desktop" and "show Start button" options and a somewhat improved Metro Start screen (with resizable tiles). No traditional Start menu though, they're really trying to convince desktop users to get used to the Metro Start screen.

 

[Rydian]

But, I mean, what does any business stand to gain by upgrading its OS?

All the new features and compatibility with new programs. In the case of NT5 (2K/XP to NT6 (Vista/7/8) there's an extremely large number of changes for the good, including full-screen hardware acceleration, updating multiple APIs, new driver models, and more. There's modern programs that require Vista/7 to run because the technologies they use did not exist in XP and below, in fact.

The Windows Volume Mixer works off the new sound drivers and now allows programs to record the entire computer and/or mute certain programs instead of having just a single volume level for the whole machine. Recording programs that work off of those features need them to exist. This is something that makes game recording in Vista/7/8 much better as a single program can do something like record your game's sound, Skype's sound, and your microphone at once. Otherwise you'd need to record all three separately at the same time and then mix them later.

Aren't newer OS's inherently more unstable, and generally different by design?

First, no. As far as instability, some of the changes to the driver model in Vista/7/8 make it so that when something like your sound or video driver crashes, it no longer causes the BSoD and shuts down the whole computer. Instead Windows unloads that driver (halting it's execution) and reloads it. So this is one example of the newer OS being more stable, because a bug in a third-party driver won't break everything else when it decides to go bad.

Second, yes (obviously new stuff is different), but people have to get over their innate human fear of !!!DIFFERENT!!! at some point in their life, and hopefully it happens well before they go off and take part in a business. A business that refuses to upgrade something merely because the new thing is different... that's stagnation.

And think of all of the money that needs to be spent on compatibility testing of old apps to make sure they still work.

Step 1 - Fire it up.
Step 2 - Use it.
Step 3 - Does it work? Y/N

As a less-snarky response, if a program does not even have compatibility with NT6, either that's an old version you need to update, or if there are no updates then there is likely no support either, which is a big issue in a business, and a sign that an alternative may be needed.

For example the older version of Deep Freeze in use by my college on their XP machines (which had been set up some years ago) had some small bugs with 7. So what did we do? We downloaded the latest version from Faronics, stuck a copy on the servers, and started using that version on all the machines. Problem solved (and it even took one less click to do a commonly-done task).

The question should not be "is my business suitable to use this program?" The question is "does this program work for my business"? If the answer is no, look into alternative products. Software is a business as well, and there are competitors out there. In almost every case there's a number of different companies that make programs aimed to solve the same problems. Hell, even for more technical tasks like OS virtualization there's VMWare, Virtualbox, MSVPC, and more.

Employees got really confused when switching from XP to 7 as well, and needed lots of training.

If the employees only had the most basic of computer know-how, then I could see this being an issue... But that's a problem with your employees. If one of your employees is unable to do his job anymore because you painted a machine a different color or replaced a sign on a door with one that has a different font and a colored background, you might want to re-consider who you're hiring. Perhaps only hire highschool graduates, GED holders, and other people who can show they have learned basic modern skills, such as problem-solving and pattern-recognition that everybody is expected to have once they reach workable age.

I'm being demeaning towards them because the differences are not nearly large enough to confound anybody who... you know, knows how to use a modern computer. There's still three buttons in the upper-right of programs, they're still in the same order and still have the same function. The task bar is at the bottom and has the start menu on the left, and notification icons on the right with programs in the middle. The desktop still has icons. Browsers still have their task bars at the top of the page. So on and so forth.

What did the companies actually gain, then? I'm not arguing a point or anything here, just 100% curious. I can't see any reason why a company would (at this point) ever willingly upgrade their machines. Average Jo Blow worker maybe uses Outlook, a web browser (most people are too cool for IE anymore, so you can't argue that), and a spreadsheet program. You don't exactly need 32GB of RAM, a quad-core processor, and the latest and greatest OS for that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-DOS_Editor
Ever used that program? It's a text editor.

"Why would somebody ever upgrade to something newer? As that program shows, you don't need a whole 64MB of RAM for a text editor!"

 

[The Milkman]

IMO I'd rather have easily-accessible large graphical buttons on the whole screen to click on instead of small text in the corner. I know people will disagree with me, but IMO it's faster to access my programs that way.
I pretty much use the Metro Start Screen the way I use Mac OS's LaunchPad, as it's faster than looking through the whole app folder.

And FYI, the next version of Windows just has "boot to desktop" and "show Start button" options and a somewhat improved Metro Start screen (with resizable tiles). No traditional Start menu though, they're really trying to convince desktop users to get used to the Metro Start screen.

Funny, if they had put this in from launch, threads like this one all over the internet wouldnt exsist, people would just think Metro is what it is, a full screen Start menu. Oh well.


EDIT: Dear god Rydain you set up a fortification of text XD

 

[PityOnU]

All the new features and compatibility with new programs. In the case of NT5 (2K/XP to NT6 (Vista/7/8) there's an extremely large number of changes for the good, including full-screen hardware acceleration, updating multiple APIs, new driver models, and more. There's modern programs that require Vista/7 to run because the technologies they use did not exist in XP and below, in fact.

The Windows Volume Mixer works off the new sound drivers and now allows programs to record the entire computer and/or mute certain programs instead of having just a single volume level for the whole machine. Recording programs that work off of those features need them to exist. This is something that makes game recording in Vista/7/8 much better as a single program can do something like record your game's sound, Skype's sound, and your microphone at once. Otherwise you'd need to record all three separately at the same time and then mix them later.

First, no. As far as instability, some of the changes to the driver model in Vista/7/8 make it so that when something like your sound or video driver crashes, it no longer causes the BSoD and shuts down the whole computer. Instead Windows unloads that driver (halting it's execution) and reloads it. So this is one example of the newer OS being more stable, because a bug in a third-party driver won't break everything else when it decides to go bad.

Second, yes (obviously new stuff is different), but people have to get over their innate human fear of !!!DIFFERENT!!! at some point in their life, and hopefully it happens well before they go off and take part in a business. A business that refuses to upgrade something merely because the new thing is different... that's stagnation.

Step 1 - Fire it up.
Step 2 - Use it.
Step 3 - Does it work? Y/N

As a less-snarky response, if a program does not even have compatibility with NT6, either that's an old version you need to update, or if there are no updates then there is likely no support either, which is a big issue in a business, and a sign that an alternative may be needed.

For example the older version of Deep Freeze in use by my college on their XP machines (which had been set up some years ago) had some small bugs with 7. So what did we do? We downloaded the latest version from Faronics, stuck a copy on the servers, and started using that version on all the machines. Problem solved (and it even took one less click to do a commonly-done task).

The question should not be "is my business suitable to use this program?" The question is "does this program work for my business"? If the answer is no, look into alternative products. Software is a business as well, and there are competitors out there. In almost every case there's a number of different companies that make programs aimed to solve the same problems. Hell, even for more technical tasks like OS virtualization there's VMWare, Virtualbox, MSVPC, and more.

If the employees only had the most basic of computer know-how, then I could see this being an issue... But that's a problem with your employees. If one of your employees is unable to do his job anymore because you painted a machine a different color or replaced a sign on a door with one that has a different font and a colored background, you might want to re-consider who you're hiring. Perhaps only hire highschool graduates, GED holders, and other people who can show they have learned basic modern skills, such as problem-solving and pattern-recognition that everybody is expected to have once they reach workable age.

I'm being demeaning towards them because the differences are not nearly large enough to confound anybody who... you know, knows how to use a modern computer. There's still three buttons in the upper-right of programs, they're still in the same order and still have the same function. The task bar is at the bottom and has the start menu on the left, and notification icons on the right with programs in the middle. The desktop still has icons. Browsers still have their task bars at the top of the page. So on and so forth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-DOS_Editor
Ever used that program? It's a text editor.

"Why would somebody ever upgrade to something newer? As that program shows, you don't need a whole 64MB of RAM for a text editor!"

Thanks for the detailed response. Again, I wasn't arguing anything, I was just curious.

I can see your points, but in response to some of them, my mother is an electrical engineer and works for Verizon Wireless. When they updated to Windows 7, she called me from work to have me walk her through how to find her documents. She's definitely not an idiot (electrical engineer), but she still got really confused. They should have given them training.

With the new features you listed, I'm still not quite sure what tangible benefit a company would derive from full screen hardware acceleration. Again, the average employee doesn't do Maya modeling at work. And the more stable driver models, yeah, that's great, but there probably weren't any driver issues left on an operating system that, at the time of the Windows 7 launch, was 8 years old. They were probably all pretty done and sorted at that point. Obviously, things such as the above were marked improvements that Windows 7 brought to the table, but my question still remains regarding what your average company stood to gain from upgrading.

Regarding the software compatibility, for a consumer program, yes you can just fire it up and see if it runs. If not, just get a new version. However, very many (large) businesses have bespoke applications they use internally that were developed 10+ years ago. Maybe of these are line of business applications which, were there so much as a hiccup, could cost the company money. I have worked at places such like this, and those places, at the time of this writing, are still using Windows XP. Upgrading breaks their system, which works fine as is, and which does not need anything like graphical acceleration or driver improvements.

Finally, while your example of the MSDOS text editor is very good, I'm not sure it really applies to XP versus Windows 7. It's not like Windows XP is stuck in a terminal or something. Windows XP can run Office 2010, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, etc. without any problems whatsoever. It's not like you actually gain the use of any important business applications for upgrading to Windows 7.

Thus, my confusion continues.

 

[Pleng]

Im talking about business, on employee level use. Not hosting servers that hold your corporations entire system or anything like that. That would seem more for Windows server rather then 8.

Windows Server 2012 also has the full screen Metro-style start menu. So you're stuck with it. Deal with it.

1. What if you don't want it to disrupt your workflow by it going fullscreen but still want to launch your applications in a convenient manner?

What exactly is disruptive about: Press start on keyboard ---> begin typing name of application --> Click?
It's EXACTLY the same thing you used to do before. Only now it's full screen.

Even if you don't believe it to be a better solution (everything bigger and easier to find vs... 'I dont like full screen for no reason whatsoever...') than Windows 7, then you just need to adapt. If you can't adapt then you're not cut out for technology. I suggest you find another hobby/career because you're going to have to deal with much bigger changes over time. In fact, if you really can't adapt to such a minor change, I fear for your general survival as a human being!

 

[The Milkman]

Windows Server 2012 also has the full screen Metro-style start menu. So you're stuck with it. Deal with it.

Deal with it...? Have you read any posts ive made in this thread at all?

 

[Minox]

What exactly is disruptive about: Press start on keyboard ---> begin typing name of application --> Click?
It's EXACTLY the same thing you used to do before. Only now it's full screen.

It obstructs absolutely everything I have running for the sake of opening an over-sized full-screen menu that previously only took up a really small part of the bottom-most left side.

Even if you don't believe it to be a better solution (everything bigger and easier to find vs... 'I dont like full screen for no reason whatsoever...') than Windows 7, then you just need to adapt. If you can't adapt then you're not cut out for technology. I suggest you find another hobby/career because you're going to have to deal with much bigger changes over time. In fact, if you really can't adapt to such a minor change, I fear for your general survival as a human being!

Quite frankly, piss off. I usually don't have a problem adapting to things but that doesn't mean that I have to adapt to new design choices I disagree with just for the sake of adapting. If there's something I disagree with then I have the right to stay on a previous system or find an alternative solution that suits my preferences without anyone going around slandering me by saying that I either have to adopt or stop using technology altogether as I'm supposedly a human unfit for living.

Not to mention the fact that it's rather ridiculous for you to use personal attacks as a way of attempting to further your argument.

 

[spinal_cord]

Funny, if they had put this in from launch, threads like this one all over the internet wouldnt exsist, people would just think Metro is what it is, a full screen Start menu. Oh well.

One of peoples main issues, is that it WAS there in the pre-release, then MS in their ultimate wisdom, removed it, taking away peoples choice, a choice that they had expected to be there in the final release because it was shown to them.

 

[Pleng]

It obstructs absolutely everything I have running for the sake of opening an over-sized full-screen menu that previously only took up a really small part of the bottom-most left side.

And what do you need to be seeing on your screen in the three seconds it takes you to launch an app?

Quite frankly, piss off. I usually don't have a problem adapting to things but that doesn't mean that I have to adapt to new design choices I disagree with just for the sake of adapting. If there's something I disagree with then I have the right to stay on a previous system or find an alternative solution that suits my preferences without anyone going around slandering me by saying that I either have to adopt or stop using technology altogether as I'm supposedly a human unfit for living.

Not to mention the fact that it's rather ridiculous for you to use personal attacks as a way of attempting to further your argument.

It's not a personal insult, it's a genuine sentiment. Yes you have the right to stick with an older system or find an alternative. This (certainly seeking out an alternative) is what we refer to as cutting off our nose to spite our face. Assuming that Windows is you're choice of operating system then you will one day for one reason need the latest version and it's start menu will be a variant of what we see in Windows 8. So kicking up such a fuss is pointless. It's not a big thing to adapt to. There's no good reason for you to be so anal about it. So yes, you clearly have issues with adapting.

 

[FireGrey]

If it's not broken, then why are Microsoft 'fixing' it?



I once had that attitude, however after actually using a Mac, I find that it does a lot of things better than Windows (somethings not so good though). Brainwashing doesn't come into it. Also Apple hardware is a similar price to PC hardware and the OS is much cheaper.

It does a lot of things better than a PC when said PC is cheaper than the Mac.

 

[Minox]

And what do you need to be seeing on your screen in the three seconds it takes you to launch an app?

Chat windows and videos I'm currently watching for one.

It's not a personal insult, it's a genuine sentiment. Yes you have the right to stick with an older system or find an alternative. This (certainly seeking out an alternative) is what we refer to as cutting off our nose to spite our face. Assuming that Windows is you're choice of operating system then you will one day for one reason need the latest version and it's start menu will be a variant of what we see in Windows 8. So kicking up such a fuss is pointless. It's not a big thing to adapt to. There's no good reason for you to be so anal about it. So yes, you clearly have issues with adapting.

Seeking out an alternative when something isn't working as you want it to is what I'd like to call problem-solving.

Nonetheless, I'm going to end it here. It seems fairly clear to me that you don't understand the concept of personal preferences and tolerating the choices of others.