The "Is Windows 8 a Flop?" Thread

tel said:
Ditching Metro? I'd love to do this.

Only it is't Windows 7. Windows 7 had back support for applications that were design for older systems. Such as MS Active Sync, to sync my collection of PDAs-turned-touchpads/remote-controls. Windows 8 doesn't. No more sync for me.



Windows 8: Like DOS, only worse.
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Well, I have a solution for you.....

Just reinstall Windows 7, like I had. :D
 
kingrob said:
Well, I have a solution for you.....

Just reinstall Windows 7, like I had. :D
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We should revisit the MyBB history archives and see what was said by who when Windows7 was released initially. Could make for interesting giggles.
 
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windows 8 + Classic Start application:
1. all the technical back-end improvements
2. none of the metro touchscreen crap you don't need on a PC.
 
Seriously said:
We should revisit the MyBB history archives and see what was said by who when Windows7 was released initially. Could make for interesting giggles.
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Or more appropriately... Vista!
 
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Rodent-Boy said:
You never used Windows ME, did you?

I've been using Windows 8 on my laptop and my office computer with no headaches. I'd like to try it on a touch screen, but that will just have to wait.
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Also been using Win 8 on my work laptop, and home PC since it was released to partners back in August, other than the Metro UI, Win 8 has been great so far, smaller footprint than Win 7, faster, some of my games run much better on Win 8 as well, which is a bonus, lol

Only Downside for me is, that ASUS are damn slow with regards to driver releases.
 
vinodh said:
I thought Windows ME was actually quite good. It gave me the same amount of crap (A few blue screen's of death to brighten up my day) as Windows 98 SE but it had built-in support for USB flash drives that Windows 98 did not have. That was the main reason I upgraded from 98. I really think that too many people exaggerate how bad ME was probably when comparing it to XP and not to 98 which was the OS it replaced.
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Well people exaggerate how bad Vista was too.
 
noxibox said:
Well people exaggerate how bad Vista was too.
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Ya, Vista's main flaw was the aggressive PreFetch system which was continually kicking the crap out of hard drives. Once deactivated (via reg entry), I found Vista behaved/performed very similarly to XP.
 
tel said:
Only it is't Windows 7. Windows 7 had back support for applications that were design for older systems. Such as MS Active Sync, to sync my collection of PDAs-turned-touchpads/remote-controls. Windows 8 doesn't. No more sync for me.
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Which compatibility modes are missing?

Some things are always going to be left behind though. I had to abandon hardware because no drivers were released for Vista/Windows 7. Many times I've had to abandon perfectly usable hardware because ports or slots changed. That's life in the world of computers. If some piece of hardware or software is critical, then just stick with the older software and hardware.

kingrob said:
You are basically using Windows 7 Basic, if you ditch Metro. ;-)
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Ultimate.

AlphaJohn said:
Well Sys Admin explains a lot, anything more than $ or # on a black screen and they are lost & confused :D
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System Administrators are typically ultra-conservative.

AlphaJohn said:
I just had the honor of remote desktop into a Windows 8 PC.

My word the horror - to painful for words, and I thought using it on a Dekstop PC was bad, wait till you have to do remote support it with hotspots on corners that keeps on telling you "up yours" if you move to fast. Clearly someone, somewhere was not thinking properly.
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What if someone has auto-hide enabled on Windows 7? Anyway I regularly connect to a Windows 8 machine via remote desktop and have had no issues accessing anything.
 
AlphaJohn said:
They just want a bribe. HTC and Nokia both got some marketing cash from Microsoft so I see this move as Samsung trying to get a piece of that pie.
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Meh, Microsoft has done a shoddy job of marketing RT. Samsung doesn't want to have to do their job for them.
Samsung is right, sales would have been mediocre.
All signs point to that.
 
Dvorak calls Win8 a loony OS:

I have written about this before, but cannot emphasize it enough: Windows 8 is not suited for the desktop. For one thing, it is designed for a touch screen, which almost nobody uses on a desktop setup.

What’s worse, it emphasizes full-screen applications with no “windowing” capability. That is, if you have a couple of 27-inch monitors with plenty of screen real estate to play with, an application will fill up one of the monitors completely with no way to scale it down.

This is awkward, to say the least. But it is not only the loony OS that’s the problem for Microsoft. It’s the decision-making prowess (or lack thereof) at the company itself that should concern investors.

How many people greenlighted Windows 8 when it was apparent to everyone that it was not a good follow-on to the successful Windows 7?
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rwenzori said:
Dvorak calls Win8 a loony OS:
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I'm glad to see the likes of Dvorak making such a statement. What the hell was MS thinking?! Drag people screaming and kicking into their cave? Yes, cave. This OS is like Windows 3.1 with body putty and a layer of Duco.
 
The biggest drawback I see for Windows 8 from a developer standpoint is not the OS so much as its the marketplace.

Remember in the old days you made some software call it Version 1 and start selling only to support it with bug fixes and minor updates. When you later decide to roll out a whole new upgrade with loads of functionality you called it version 2 and sold instead, separately. The second sale helped to pay for the hours you used to bring loads of new features. Eventually you phazed out version one and stop supporting it after a couple of years.

In comes Windows 8 App store with no side-loading(ModernUI) so you have to supply your apps via the market. Great, you think now you can instantly target loads of people (funny its no more than your original desktop apps would but lets roll with it) The people now expect your app to go for $1 and have a lifetime upgrade path at no cost to them. So the incentive to bring loads of features disappear for the developer as there is limits places on how you can recuperate costs.

So yes it might look shiny but I am starting to worry about the future of computing. Yes you can try and continue to target normal Desktop apps, but I have a very strong feeling this is not what Microsoft wants you to do as they forcing ModernUI into people's faces desktop or not.
 
So what is the future then?

I'm using a Google phone, not sure I want to move over to Chrome OS. :(

Mind you, Windows 7 is still 'neutral', so guess I will be sticking with it for the foreseeable future.
 
MS should have focussed on making Office the first choice productivity solution across all OS platforms. Windows should have remained on the course it was on and not have become this confusing half-this half-that mess it is now. Let Nokia run with Windows Phone and Windows RT tablets. MS is now trying to play everywhere and even competes with Nokia. My advice to MS is to get out of the mobile business and let Nokia run with that. Focus on getting Office everywhere and on producing solid OS's for the heavy stuff. The software I use most, Corel Draw suite and Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator will never become lightweight apps for serious users. Photoshop Touch on my Android tablet is a lightweight "toy" app ... one amongst many that can do the same thing.

I honestely believe MS has gone off track and will be losing momentum fast. As I said so often already: It is a damn pity Lunix is not ready to exploit this gap with a big backer like Google to ensure we get the software we are used to on Linux with full support from developers. I cannot see corporates jumping to OS X. I wish they would but so much has been invested in MS already.
 
[video=youtube;DueEtflxSEs]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DueEtflxSEs[/video]
 
Yesterday I played with an Ativ 500t tablet/hybrid that was bought by my wife's brother. He basically wanted a tablet that he could take around the farm and do Excel inputting on, then turn into a work machine when necessary. Sounds perfect right? The device was a total nightmare from beginning to end:
1) It kept de-connecting and re-connecting the keyboard randomly, so you were never sure if you should be jabbing at the screen or using the mousepad. This was the nr1 issue, and a total dealbreaker.
2) Touchscreen in the Windows desktop environment just doesn't work. It's not made for it. Your fingers hit the wrong menu items all the time.
3) Animations between desktop and Metro were not at all fluid; especially rotating the screen
4) We couldn't get Office 2010 to activate properly after about 20 tries we gave up
5) Couldn't purchase apps from the Win8 store
6) The hardware was very poor. Plastic bendy mousepad, grainy resolution screen for an 11.6' unit. Also 11.6' feels huge for a tablet. Looked like crap next to the iPad.

The only issue was, he sent me one of his Excel files to my iPad to see if one could do it that way, and it struggled with some of the equations in Numbers and Office2HD. So I can totally see why a full fledged Windows machine that could double as a tablet would be attractive.

I'm totally convinced that Windows 8's biggest problem isn't the strategy it chose, it's the ineptness of the execution on that strategy.
 
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