Yet another Windows 8 / Metro argument

[Pleng]

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

Chat windows are a non issue... there's no way in the world a 3-second pause is going to change your life. And how often do you start applications while watching videos? Seriously? If you're starting more than a couple while watching a video, you probably shouldn't be watching one in the first place. And if you do face that eventuality more than once a day then it's at the very worst a minor inconvenience - not worth changing an entire OS for.

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.

I understand personal choice and preference all too well. I also understand seeking out an alternative if something isn't working. The problem is, you can't demonstrate at all that the Start screen of Windows 8 isn't working. The examples you have provided are close to absurd and sound like they're coming from somebody who's decided they're not going to like the system before even trying it, and are determined to stick to that view.

 

[Minox]

I understand personal choice and preference all too well. I also understand seeking out an alternative if something isn't working. The problem is, you can't demonstrate at all that the Start screen of Windows 8 isn't working. The examples you have provided are close to absurd and sound like they're coming from somebody who's decided they're not going to like the system before even trying it, and are determined to stick to that view.

Windows 8 provides me with next to no benefits over Windows 7 while giving me small annoyances that I would be better without. Staying with Windows 7 is not only cheaper, but also a more enjoyable experience.

 

[Engert]

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.

Really Rydian? Have a look at this:

http://www.net.princeton.edu/apple-ios/ios41-allows-lease-to-expire-keeps-using-IP-address.html

Note the part where it says:
The bug can cause the iOS device to disrupt service for other devices on the network from time to time.

And when you have 10000 wifi users, they'll be pissed.
But i can have you talk with my network admin who's been doing this for 17 years. If you can figure it out, you'll get his salary and a 20% sign in bonus.

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

No it doesn't depend on the form factor. We can troubleshoot anything made in China, Europe or wherever. Anything but Apple devices because Steve has control issues.

 

[Rydian]

OSX works with DHCP just fine.

Really Rydian? Have a look at this:
[...]
iOS
[...]

No it doesn't depend on the form factor. We can troubleshoot anything made in China, Europe or wherever. Anything but Apple devices because Steve has control issues.

"No the issue does happen, because it happens". Yeah, um, needs info.

Like, what model and what issues? Apple uses the standard x86 hardware nowadays, and has for years. The GPUs are Intel Integrated or AMD (HD 5870s and shit in the iMacs), for example.

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.

Start - Documents. Just another example of a lack of knowing what they're doing.

Don't get me wrong, I see this all the time, but it's still the people at fault. People don't go around driving cars not knowing how to turn the windshield wipers on or how to put it in reverse, but you see people using computers all the time with jack-shit info on what they're doing. If it's somebody's job to work with a computer and they can't find how to get to their documents folder between Windows versions, that's a lack of either required experience, or employee training.

Like, if somebody needs to drive around as part of their job, and you give them the keys to a company car and they can't figure out how to even start it because it's different than their personal car (the ignition is on the dash like some newer models instead of on the steering column)... you're not going to think too much of their skills, are 'ya? Somebody that knows how to drive a car would get in the driver's seat, spend all of two seconds moving their hand around, realizing they can't put the key in, then spend maybe 5 more seconds visually scanning for where to put the key. They find it, they can start the car and do their job.

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.

I'm talking GPU acceleration outside of programs. With a supported GPU, this means the whole screen can benefit from having a GPU installed, so things like moving windows around isn't such a hog on the CPU, freeing it up for other tasks (one example). Does anybody else remember trying to move windows around on XP and below with a framebuffer driver, and how you could visibly see the new window sliding up/down into place?

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

That's not how it works... Microsoft doesn't make specific drivers, other companies do. You can download a driver from Realtek or Nvidia or something and have it crash a month from now under certain circumstances. Driver stability is one of the big reasons that Microsoft made changes to the OS to separate some third-party driver types from the kernel, because they realized over the years that all these other companies would put out a buggy/crashing driver every so often, and it would impact people negatively.

There's some info I grabbed from my machine. At any given time, there's plenty of third-party drivers in use on any home computer system, and stopping the whole system from crashing when one driver does is a noted benefit. New devices that need new drivers come out all the time, and even devices sold at the same time need different drivers. The driver for my old GeForce 6200-ALE won't work for my current AMD HD 5770, the drivers for my old webcam aren't the same as my new ones, etc.

The whole driver-install process has been simplified in recent versions of Windows by having the OS search signed drivers and download/install them for you so many people nowadays don't even know about needing third-party drivers, but they are still very much in use and under active development.

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.

The ability to use new programs, less crashes, third-party driver crashes not bringing down the entire computer with them, additional controls for things like audio, and if you wanted a list of added features and junk you could just check some comparison article online.

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.

And those companies are running on a crappy setup that will, one day, need to be gutted and made modern.

http://thedailywtf.com/
That site is a good example. It's full of years (I submitted a screenshot for an article in 2006) of stories like the above. There's tons of companies out there that refuse to update their systems because they have one specific program they need running that was never intended to run that long. You can read just how many issues it causes, and the companies eventually need to do a replacement, often with great benefit to themselves (such as improved employee productivity). The problem is in actually replacing it after a company has waited so long, as the people who were part of the original implementation are often long gone by the time the company finally admits it needs to update.

But this would just get into a whole discussion on what it actually means to future-proof a program, and coding for standards versus what people normally do under pressure, etc.

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.

It was an example on how the whole "I can do this basic task fine with the old stuff, so I don't need anything new" idea just encourages stagnation.

Horse-and-buggies worked fine for hundreds of years, why go to cars? The answer for this example is way easier maintenance, faster speeds, more safety, the ability to use modern infrastructure to get around, etc.

 

[Pleng]

Windows 8 provides me with next to no benefits over Windows 7 while giving me small annoyances that I would be better without.

That's an absolutely fine reason for staying with Windows 7. However when the time comes that you do need to upgrade your OS, be it for hardware support, wanting the latest DirectX game, or whatever, abstaining because you 'dont like' the new start menu is over the top

 

[Engert]

Rydian, what is the difference between iOS and OSX? I'm not an expert on Macs.
But all i see with Win8 is OS consolidation like Apple, which is backfiring on them.

 

[Rydian]

Rydian, what is the difference between iOS and OSX? I'm not an expert on Macs.

OSX is the desktop OS that runs on Macs, iOS is what runs on iPods/iPads and the like.

But all i see with Win8 is OS consolidation like Apple, which is backfiring on them.

8 is a continuation of Vista/7 (it's NT6.2 versus Vista's 6.0 and 7's 6.1), it contains all the same core technologies and is, in all aspects, the new version of Windows. It's just the Metro design choices have created a lot of controversy, which is why people are treating it like a black sheep (for good reasons or not).

 

[YayMii]

Windows 8 isn't just a reskinned Windows 7. They've optimized it quite a bit, my desktop (with an 8-year-old refurbished 7200RPM HDD) can even boot up as fast as my ultrabook (with a SATA2 SSD) now. IMO the UI is a worthy tradeoff for a speed boost (but I like Metro, so my opinion is kinda biased).

Rydian, what is the difference between iOS and OSX? I'm not an expert on Macs.
But all i see with Win8 is OS consolidation like Apple, which is backfiring on them.

iOS is iPod/iPhone/iPad. Mac OS X is Mac.
They're not the same thing, so I don't see why you would bring a mobile OS when we're talking about PC OSes.

 

[Engert]

OSX is the desktop OS that runs on Macs, iOS is what runs on iPods/iPads and the like.

And how different are these two?

8 is a continuation of Vista/7 (it's NT6.2 versus Vista's 6.0 and 7's 6.1), it contains all the same core technologies and is, in all aspects, the new version of Windows. It's just the Metro design choices have created a lot of controversy, which is why people are treating it like a black sheep (for good reasons or not).

I understand that. What we're debating here is "Will Windows 8 live in infamy like Windows ME or Windows Vista?"

 

[Rydian]

And how different are these two?

About as different as Android from Ubuntu. Both share the same kernel, but all the userland tools (including things like the entire desktop handling software, program rights management, wifi support/control, etc.) are different.

I understand that. What we're debating here is "Will Windows 8 live in infamy like Windows ME or Windows Vista?"

At this point I say "most likely". I saw the ME and Vista scenarios, and while the percentage of complainers is less, the number of legitimate (that is, not based on false info) complaints is more.

I have to mention the second type because I still, to this day, see complaints about Vista that are just complete BS and based on lies or misunderstandings from 20 years ago, like that it doesn't play DVDs, and files you make on Vista can't be read on XP, etc.

 

[PityOnU]

Start - Documents. Just another example of a lack of knowing what they're doing.

Don't get me wrong, I see this all the time, but it's still the people at fault. People don't go around driving cars not knowing how to turn the windshield wipers on or how to put it in reverse, but you see people using computers all the time with jack-shit info on what they're doing. If it's somebody's job to work with a computer and they can't find how to get to their documents folder between Windows versions, that's a lack of either required experience, or employee training.

Like, if somebody needs to drive around as part of their job, and you give them the keys to a company car and they can't figure out how to even start it because it's different than their personal car (the ignition is on the dash like some newer models instead of on the steering column)... you're not going to think too much of their skills, are 'ya? Somebody that knows how to drive a car would get in the driver's seat, spend all of two seconds moving their hand around, realizing they can't put the key in, then spend maybe 5 more seconds visually scanning for where to put the key. They find it, they can start the car and do their job.

I agree with you wholeheartedly, but the confusion is still there for employees, making this a reason for a company NOT to upgrade as opposed to the other way around.

I'm talking GPU acceleration outside of programs. With a supported GPU, this means the whole screen can benefit from having a GPU installed, so things like moving windows around isn't such a hog on the CPU, freeing it up for other tasks (one example). Does anybody else remember trying to move windows around on XP and below with a framebuffer driver, and how you could visibly see the new window sliding up/down into place?

Again, I agree, but honestly how often does the average person move windows around on their desktop? And even so, if you are moving a window, you aren't interacting with anything else other than the window. I don't feel as if it is worth it to gut the whole system just so a few employees can waggle some windows around faster.

That's not how it works... Microsoft doesn't make specific drivers, other companies do. You can download a driver from Realtek or Nvidia or something and have it crash a month from now under certain circumstances. Driver stability is one of the big reasons that Microsoft made changes to the OS to separate some third-party driver types from the kernel, because they realized over the years that all these other companies would put out a buggy/crashing driver every so often, and it would impact people negatively.

There's some info I grabbed from my machine. At any given time, there's plenty of third-party drivers in use on any home computer system, and stopping the whole system from crashing when one driver does is a noted benefit. New devices that need new drivers come out all the time, and even devices sold at the same time need different drivers. The driver for my old GeForce 6200-ALE won't work for my current AMD HD 5770, the drivers for my old webcam aren't the same as my new ones, etc.

The whole driver-install process has been simplified in recent versions of Windows by having the OS search signed drivers and download/install them for you so many people nowadays don't even know about needing third-party drivers, but they are still very much in use and under active development.

True, but also in your screenshots is the fact that your drivers are signed by the Windows Hardware Compatibility Publisher, which means the drivers have all been verified through the Windows Hardware Quality Labs - aka tested by Microsoft to make sure it functions correctly in their operating system. For average use on a non-fucked system, these drivers should not crash.

In other news, Windows XP will search for and install drivers for you as well. But honestly that's a bit of a moot point because a company's IT department is who sets up all the hardware on a system. Employee Bob Simmons isn't going to be dropping a new soundcard into his workstation on his lunch break.

The ability to use new programs, less crashes, third-party driver crashes not bringing down the entire computer with them, additional controls for things like audio, and if you wanted a list of added features and junk you could just check some comparison article online.

1. I am not seeing this list of new programs you keep referring to.
2. Less crashes is arguable, especially after Windows XP installations have been in place for such a long time where as a new Windows 7 install would require the testing and ironing out of a number of bugs with things like driver and network support.
3. Third-party driver stability has nothing to do with the OS, and shit drivers will still crash your system. Especially new drivers for new hardware that works with your new OS.
4. "I'm really glad my company upgraded the OS, not I can listen to Pandora at 45% volume while I watch YouTube videos at 63% volume." Said no one ever.

And those companies are running on a crappy setup that will, one day, need to be gutted and made modern.

http://thedailywtf.com/
That site is a good example. It's full of years (I submitted a screenshot for an article in 2006) of stories like the above. There's tons of companies out there that refuse to update their systems because they have one specific program they need running that was never intended to run that long. You can read just how many issues it causes, and the companies eventually need to do a replacement, often with great benefit to themselves (such as improved employee productivity). The problem is in actually replacing it after a company has waited so long, as the people who were part of the original implementation are often long gone by the time the company finally admits it needs to update.

But this would just get into a whole discussion on what it actually means to future-proof a program, and coding for standards versus what people normally do under pressure, etc.

True! Very true! But if the system works as is, why decide that NOW is the best time to gut and rewrite everything? I guess it just so happens that retire FORTRAN programmers are all available this year, and happen to now be familiar with .NET.

It was an example on how the whole "I can do this basic task fine with the old stuff, so I don't need anything new" idea just encourages stagnation.

Horse-and-buggies worked fine for hundreds of years, why go to cars? The answer for this example is way easier maintenance, faster speeds, more safety, the ability to use modern infrastructure to get around, etc.

I cannot argue with any of your responses as they are true, but no where in your responses do you say that businesses upgraded to Windows 7 just because it was good/better for them than XP. As a matter of fact, it seems like the strongest reason you cite for a company to upgrade is because they are forced to by Microsoft or its partners who refuse to continue to support the old OS.

So is the real reason companies upgrade their OS because they absolutely have to, and that the point at which this occurs is generally every other release of the OS?

 

[Rydian]

I agree with you wholeheartedly, but the confusion is still there for employees, making this a reason for a company NOT to upgrade as opposed to the other way around.

Again, I agree, but honestly how often does the average person move windows around on their desktop?

http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/grasping.html

True, but also in your screenshots is the fact that your drivers are signed by the Windows Hardware Compatibility Publisher, which means the drivers have all been verified through the Windows Hardware Quality Labs - aka tested by Microsoft to make sure it functions correctly in their operating system. For average use on a non-fucked system, these drivers should not crash.

The testing confirms that the driver meets certain standards and requirements.

It does not indicate a lack of crashing. The driver testing is there to stop even worse shit from happening (again, stuff that hasn't been seen publicly in a while because measures were undertaken specifically to stop it). These measures were started in 64-bit XP and are either a boon or a burden depending on who you are in the chain. Things like corrupting the memory of other programs, snooping user data and sending it out, there's all sorts of things (purposeful and accidental) drivers can do (as they run above the standard user rights level) if they're not kept in check.

Of course, if companies are coding to these standards for everything except 32-bit XP, then of course the higher quality of software is going to affect anything they make for 32-bit XP as well.

1. I am not seeing this list of new programs you keep referring to.

Why should I go out of my way and make you a list just to have you say "I don't use any of those so they don't matter"?

2. Less crashes is arguable, especially after Windows XP installations have been in place for such a long time where as a new Windows 7 install would require the testing and ironing out of a number of bugs with things like driver and network support.

No, less crashes from drivers is NOT arguable.

http://static.usenix.org/event/lisa06/tech/full_papers/ganapathi/ganapathi.pdf

We found that OS crashes are predominantly caused by poorly-written device driver code.
[...]
An OS crash occurs at kernel-level, and is usually
caused by memory corruption, bad drivers or faulty
system-level routines. OS crashes are more frustrating
than application crashes as they require the user to kill
and restart the Windows Explorer process at a mini-
mum, more commonly forcing a full machine reboot
[...]
While there are a handful of crashes due to memory
corruption and other common systems problems, a
majority of these OS crashes are caused by device driv-
ers. These drivers are related to various components
such as display monitors, network and video cards.
[...]
Recently, in Windows XP Machines, Murphy deduced that display drivers were a dominant crash cause

However with Vista/7/8, a graphics driver crash (which can still happen) cannot cause a BSoD because it's not hooked into the kernel. You just get something like this instead.

I could probably find other studies and statistics as well. Whenever Windows crashes, it (by default) makes a crash dump file with info on what was going on at the time. If the issue is a driver or system file, it only takes seconds to find which one caused the crash. Hell, go to C:\Windows\Minidump\ on your personal machine, and if there's any dump files in there than that machine has crashed, and I can tell you whether it was a driver, known config issue, or hardware failure.

Basically I'm just saying that this info is easy to find out there because Windows logs it, and people use the crash dumps to find what went wrong. If something tends to go wrong for tons of people repeatedly, it's going to become noticeable. This is why Microsoft changed it with NT6, they realized that separating the drivers from the kernel itself would improve system stability by not allowing one third-party driver to crash everything else on the system at once.

There were also changes to the sound and networking system for stability, but they're not as drastic, and sound/networking drivers historically haven't had as many issues.

3. Third-party driver stability has nothing to do with the OS, and shit drivers will still crash your system. Especially new drivers for new hardware that works with your new OS.

Have you not been reading? In Vista/7/8, a graphics driver crash will NOT crash your system. I have said that multiple times already as it's one of the biggest upsides.

4. "I'm really glad my company upgraded the OS, not I can listen to Pandora at 45% volume while I watch YouTube videos at 63% volume." Said no one ever.

"I don't need something so I assume nobody else does!"

I bring up the volume mixer every single day to individually lower the volume of and mute games and certain programs. For example I play Warframe online while skyping with friends, and one of them keeps his mic volume low because he's in a college dorm. Because of this, the game's sound overpowers his voice. With the volume mixer, I can quickly reduce the game's sound so it doesn't overpower his voice and we can communicate while playing. In addition, sometimes I leave games running in the background, and will want to lower to mute them in order to watch a youtube video, without having to kill the game totally and then bring it back up after.

The benefits to multiple volume levels holds true for recording as well. I often have to tweak the volume levels of individual programs when I'm making a tutorial, recording server gameplay with people over teamspeak, showing off a game hack I made, playing a private session over Skype, filing a bug report, showing off a ROM hack somebody made, or any number of things where I don't want one audio source to overpower another.

True! Very true! But if the system works as is, why decide that NOW is the best time to gut and rewrite everything? I guess it just so happens that retire FORTRAN programmers are all available this year, and happen to now be familiar with .NET.

It has to happen eventually. People tend to only cave in and change something when it stops working at all, which is why it often takes so long that nobody remembers how it worked in the first place.

I cannot argue with any of your responses as they are true, but no where in your responses do you say that businesses upgraded to Windows 7 just because it was good/better for them than XP. As a matter of fact, it seems like the strongest reason you cite for a company to upgrade is because they are forced to by Microsoft or its partners who refuse to continue to support the old OS.

I'm not talking about additional Microsoft software, but there's other things that need the new systems. New VM software, new VPN software, things like that that even businesses would require.

So is the real reason companies upgrade their OS because they absolutely have to, and that the point at which this occurs is generally every other release of the OS?

For the first one, it holds true for software in general. Replacement is a costly job in general (time, manpower, etc.), and becomes multiple times more costly and time-consuming if you only hire tech-illterates.

On a more serious note, Windows doesn't have a set release schedule, many places upgraded to Vista, then started moving machines to 7 (due to the relatively-short timespan between them), and will have a mix of the two, for example.

 

[PityOnU]

http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/grasping.html

The testing confirms that the driver meets certain standards and requirements.

It does not indicate a lack of crashing. The driver testing is there to stop even worse shit from happening (again, stuff that hasn't been seen publicly in a while because measures were undertaken specifically to stop it). These measures were started in 64-bit XP and are either a boon or a burden depending on who you are in the chain. Things like corrupting the memory of other programs, snooping user data and sending it out, there's all sorts of things (purposeful and accidental) drivers can do (as they run above the standard user rights level) if they're not kept in check.

Of course, if companies are coding to these standards for everything except 32-bit XP, then of course the higher quality of software is going to affect anything they make for 32-bit XP as well.

Why should I go out of my way and make you a list just to have you say "I don't use any of those so they don't matter"?

No, less crashes from drivers is NOT arguable.

http://static.usenix.org/event/lisa06/tech/full_papers/ganapathi/ganapathi.pdf

However with Vista/7/8, a graphics driver crash (which can still happen) cannot cause a BSoD because it's not hooked into the kernel. You just get something like this instead.

I could probably find other studies and statistics as well. Whenever Windows crashes, it (by default) makes a crash dump file with info on what was going on at the time. If the issue is a driver or system file, it only takes seconds to find which one caused the crash. Hell, go to C:\Windows\Minidump\ on your personal machine, and if there's any dump files in there than that machine has crashed, and I can tell you whether it was a driver, known config issue, or hardware failure.

Basically I'm just saying that this info is easy to find out there because Windows logs it, and people use the crash dumps to find what went wrong. If something tends to go wrong for tons of people repeatedly, it's going to become noticeable. This is why Microsoft changed it with NT6, they realized that separating the drivers from the kernel itself would improve system stability by not allowing one third-party driver to crash everything else on the system at once.

There were also changes to the sound and networking system for stability, but they're not as drastic, and sound/networking drivers historically haven't had as many issues.

Have you not been reading? In Vista/7/8, a graphics driver crash will NOT crash your system. I have said that multiple times already as it's one of the biggest upsides.

"I don't need something so I assume nobody else does!"

I bring up the volume mixer every single day to individually lower the volume of and mute games and certain programs. For example I play Warframe online while skyping with friends, and one of them keeps his mic volume low because he's in a college dorm. Because of this, the game's sound overpowers his voice. With the volume mixer, I can quickly reduce the game's sound so it doesn't overpower his voice and we can communicate while playing. In addition, sometimes I leave games running in the background, and will want to lower to mute them in order to watch a youtube video, without having to kill the game totally and then bring it back up after.

The benefits to multiple volume levels holds true for recording as well. I often have to tweak the volume levels of individual programs when I'm making a tutorial, recording server gameplay with people over teamspeak, showing off a game hack I made, playing a private session over Skype, filing a bug report, showing off a ROM hack somebody made, or any number of things where I don't want one audio source to overpower another.

It has to happen eventually. People tend to only cave in and change something when it stops working at all, which is why it often takes so long that nobody remembers how it worked in the first place.

I'm not talking about additional Microsoft software, but there's other things that need the new systems. New VM software, new VPN software, things like that that even businesses would require.

For the first one, it holds true for software in general. Replacement is a costly job in general (time, manpower, etc.), and becomes multiple times more costly and time-consuming if you only hire tech-illterates.

On a more serious note, Windows doesn't have a set release schedule, many places upgraded to Vista, then started moving machines to 7 (due to the relatively-short timespan between them), and will have a mix of the two, for example.

Very well.

Believe it or not, I'm actually a Microsoft Certified System Engineer, and a Windows 7 Technology Specialist. I've attended the //build/ conference for the past two years running, and am currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Computer Engineering.

I am well aware of all of the benefits of Windows 8 over Windows 7 over Windows XP. I am also aware that in an ideal environment, businesses and consumers should try their best to adopt the new OS as quickly as possible. I just get sick of hearing how people justify Windows 7 as being "that good" because businesses all adopted it.

Businesses didn't adopt Windows 7 because they loved it and wanted to make sweet sexy lovetimes with it! They did it because they absolutely had to. They had no choice! New hardware and *some* new software no longer supported XP, and the maintenance costs of their old workstations were too high because of it. Also, at the 5 or 6 year mark, things start to physically break.

Businesses would have adopted Vista just as much if Windows 7 had not come out when it did! Wake up people!

 

[The Milkman]

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.

You are aware that all they are adding is a Start button that opens Metro righ?

 

[spinal_cord]

You are aware that all they are adding is a Start button that opens Metro righ?

And thus no longer forcing metro on the many people who dont like it.

Metro would work fine, if it was a second menu, rather than the main screen, that is, a user would launch metro to select an app, rather than a user having to launch 'desktop' to do traditional tasks. The launchpad on osx is a good example of how to use such a menu without forcing it on the people that dont want it.

 

[The Milkman]

And thus no longer forcing metro on the many people who dont like it.

Thanks for pointing out the obvious good sir.

 

[YayMii]

And thus no longer forcing metro on the many people who dont like it.

Metro would work fine, if it was a second menu, rather than the main screen, that is, a user would launch metro to select an app, rather than a user having to launch 'desktop' to do traditional tasks. The launchpad on osx is a good example of how to use such a menu without forcing it on the people that dont want it.

1. They're still technically "forcing Metro", since the Start screen will still be the same.
2. Metro isn't really the "main screen" (especially on a desktop/laptop). The desktop is always open in the background, it just happens that Microsoft decided that the Start screen should open first upon login, which seems to be confusing a lot of people.

 

[Pleng]

it just happens that Microsoft decided that the Start screen should open first upon login, which seems to be confusing a lot of people.

Interesting isn't it? Pretty much every other multi-function device in the world boots up straight into the menu. Yet people are confused when a computer, the most multi-functional device of all time, does it?

And pretty much the first thing you need to do when you get to desktop is click 'start' anyway (so you can actually, you know, DO something)... actually having the start screen first *removes* an unnecessary step (clicking 'start' for the first time)

 

[Rydian]

Android and IOS boot into a desktop last I checked.

The devices I can think of that don't boot into any sort of desktop or icon-based thing immediately are single-purpose devices like camcorders, digital cameras, etc. They know that they should boot to their main use as soon as they can.

 

[The Milkman]

Android and IOS boot into a desktop last I checked.

The devices I can think of that don't boot into any sort of desktop or icon-based thing immediately are single-purpose devices like camcorders, digital cameras, etc. They know that they should boot to their main use as soon as they can.

Metro also posses the same functionality as those devices menu offers them, the only difference with them is they also lack a need of searching for respective programs, as often they are either a flick or button press away.

Also, I think on iOS its called the Springboard.