The snap feature in windows is great. People have difficulty with it?
When one must google “how to close an app in windows 8” then it has definitely earned all the hate it is enjoying.
Do people buy new OSes on a whim? If you can’t even be bothered to spend 5 minutes flicking around with it in the store, you deserve whatever frustration you suffered.
http://i.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/article/7/8/9/209789_v1.jpg
If Microsoft went with this, they’da had a winner.
And then what? Ask them what other operating systems they have?
I’ve noted a lot of consistency issues. There seems to be a lot of times when I’ll be doing something and get an unexpected response.
For example, I’ll be transferring files from my laptop to a backup drive. I’ll have two windows open and I’ll be dragging and dropping files. But every once in a while (I’d estimate around one time out of twenty) the computer will think I’m highlighting instead of dragging.
Most big box stores don’t offer the option to get a different OS - you need to go to a smaller place, fish around, know which questions to ask. The immense majority of people don’t know how to do that any more than I know how to change the disks in my car’s brakes.
I did not know the act of physically walking past the Microsoft store to the Apple store is as arcane an ability as car repair.
…well we’ve just put in a new computer into the lounge with Windows 8.1, and I really have to ask what the hell the fuss is about?
It booted up lightning fast (faster than any computer I’ve either owned or used), and managed to figure most things out in less than a minute. A couple of things stumped me: but a combination of google/youtube video/30 seconds answered those questions.
It was much easier than my attempt to figure out how to use a Mac. (Not that there is anything wrong with Mac’s, just not my cup of tea.)
So you’re saying that Apple products can be bought with optional Windows 7 operating system? Because otherwise your comment transcends snobbishness and heads straight for stupid.
Since the subject of preferring the old Windows operating system over the new one suggests that someone doesn’t want to re-learn an operating system why do you think that learning how to use an Apple OS is in anyway a solution?
Maybe you meant to post this in the “Let’s all feel smug about ourselves for using Apple products” thread.
OK, let’s all lighten up here.
I keep thinking of my coworker who surprised us by buying a MacBookPro…
…and then promptly loading Ubuntu, two flavors of Linux, the next Mac OS and Windows XP and 7 (absurdly customized) on it.
I’m picturing him at Best Buy picking out a laptop and saying “I’ll buy this if you can sell it to me with…”
I would feel very bad in that thread as I don’t own any apple products with the exception of itunes and I’ve pretty much stopped using that since I got OneCast for my phone.
Again, I have no sympathy for people who buy things without doing rudimentary explorations and if the ability to ask if they still will ship computers with Win7 is too difficult for you then it’s possible you are too dumb to use a computer.
Now, currently, the most prominent OSes are Win7, Win8/8.1 and whatever Apple is on. If you have tried all three and find them all unmitigated messes then yes, you will probably have to dip into some flavor of linux and that could be more difficult. That being said, if you are the type of person who doesn’t care for the Big 3 in OSes, you are probably the type of person who is not scared by linux anyway.
So does my newer Win 7 box. That’s not a function of the OS but the hardware. Your new machine has an SSD drive instead of spinning magnetic disks.
Well, yes, that’s actually the problem. People are used to Windows being fairly automatic and simple to use without needing ANY googling or youtube videos. If they didn’t mind occasionally looking up how to use a new slick machine, they should get a MacBook Pro.
…“problem” is subjective. Taking 30 seconds to learn a different way of doing things isn’t a problem at all for me. I’ve played flight simulators that have had bigger learning curves than Windows 8. They had manuals as thick as a dictionary and keyboard overlays so you knew what buttons to press.
When Microsoft decided to adopt a new paradigm of course there were going to be changes and of course there was going to be a learning curve. But it is so much easier to learn these days: rather than pouring over a 400 page manual we just have to type out question into a search engine then the internet gives us an answer.
Windows is still fairly automatic (whatever that means) and simple to use. I would argue that it is significantly easier to use for the average user than Windows 7.
Horse hockey. I’ve been working with windows since 3.1 and transitioned from 95 to 98 to XP to 7 with a bare minimum of learning curve. 8 was a whole new steaming pile of crap enchilada. And we old timers can hate it if we want to. Just who do you think the “average users” are, anyway?
…hate it all you want! That doesn’t make that hate rational. I’m an old timer too: and I choose not to hate.
An “average user” is of course subjective. I quite like this definition.
I choose not to hate. I also choose not to have Windows 8 on my desktop. I am sure that will become harder in the future, but hopefully by then it will be Windows 9, and tolerable again.
It is not only a function of hardware. Both Microsoft and Canonical made announcements on working to reducing OS boot times no matter what the hardware. Canonical’s improvements came about in Ubuntu 9.04.
I’ve been using Windows 8.1 now for quite a while. I’m a software engineer who focuses on usability and UI design. And in my opinion, for power desktop users Windows 8.1 sucks.
Try using it in a multi-monitor environment. It’s not pretty. When running in desktop mode, some applications seem to pop dialogs open under the metro interface in the window. Sometimes a file will be locked because it’s open in a metro app that is invisible while I’m in desktop mode. I still get switched out of the desktop and into metro when I don’t want to be because some file associations are now associated with metro-only apps.
The metro interface itself is fine for a tablet, but wasteful of screen real-estate on a large monitor. The flat interface means it can be hard to tell which things can be clicked and which can’t. Sometimes text is just a label, other times it’s a clickable control - and it’s hard to tell the difference.
I can’t seem to turn off UAW completely, and that causes all kinds of problems with programs that auto-start server instances and such. And the list of little ‘gotchas’ is long - little annoyances you bump into during the day that just weren’t there in Windows 7.
Yes, I’m sure there are workarounds or buried settings for changing some of this behavior, but I’ve been doing this crap for a long time and I’m not happy with having an OS foisted on me that requires me to spend hours of productive time searching around for little tricks just to get the system in a state that the OS had by default in the last version. If there were obvious benefits to the new OS, that would be fine. But since I don’t use a tablet or a touch screen, I’ll be damned if I can figure out what they are. Certainly none great enough to warrant this much disruption.
If I wasn’t required to run this OS for business reasons, I’d have switched back to Windows 7 already. As it is, all my home machines are Windows 7, and that won’t be changing. Every time I sit down at one of my Win 7 machines, the ease of use and straightforward interaction is like a breath of fresh air.
Any by the way, I’m not a Microsoft basher. I like their products, and I even liked Vista. But Win 8 is a failure in my opinion.
I hate wins 8 with a vengeance. Trying to find apps is a complete nightmare. I would love to get hold of the people who designed this piece of shit and strangle them each and everyone of them. I can’t believe how crap this is I hate everything about it. It’s taken windows back 20 years. I can’t watch DVDs on it as Microsoft wont pay for the licence so I have to download software for this function. What a piece of crap it is. No solitaire WTF…had enough of it. dickheads…Microsoft take note…:smack: