Windows 7 Extended Support date announced



  • So I was browsing the Tech feed on Google news, and I came across this:

    Windows 7 to hit Extended Support status in six months
    MICROSOFT HAS POSTED a list of service reaching the end of their support cycle, confirming that Windows 7 will reach extended support ... on 13 January 2015.

    ...

    Microsoft has advised users to upgrade or update their software as soon as possible, or contact their system administrator for further information.

    ...

    Windows 7 has a growing PC market share that presently stands at over 50 percent.

    So, Microsoft is apparently so dedicated to their flop Windows 8, that they are going to push WIndows 7 into the equivalent of a retirement home, even though Windows 7 has a growing market share. Is Windows 7 getting old? Sure, but they need to get something better than 8 out there before they start retiring 7.



  • Apparently W9 will be W7 warmed over, with mandatory online login. Yay.



  • @cartman82 said:

    with mandatory online login.

    Mandatory? What kind of fresh hell are they trying to start? I'm not so sure that Win 9 is going to be better.



  • Probably just a rumor (can't remember where i heard it). I can't believe they'd try that shit again after X-Bone and the Chinese telling them to fuck off.



  • Ok, I found this:

    Microsoft to Revamp Activation System with Windows 9

    Basically, they are looking at dropping the use of license keys in favor of forcing online activation using a Microsoft Store account. Essentially, software would literally be tied to the hardware. And it sounds like they want to do this with everything, not just Win 9. If this is the case, I can see a few problems:

    1. Want to install some M$ software on a system that won't be connected to the interwebs? Well fuck you.
    2. Let's say there was some sort of catastrophe and your system was completely destroyed, so you are working on a new build (because you don't like those boring, mass produced, off-the-shelf systems). Ready to buy the OS? Better go borrow someone else's system so you can make the purchase and download the install, because fuck you.
    3. How the hell will this work when buying physical copies? I can think of a way to make it work for software like Office, but how would you make it work for a copy of Windows you buy at the store?

    Basically, it sounds like M$ is trying to solve another minor/non-problem while telling their user base to go fuck themselves.

    Other stuff I've found indicates that there have been employee reprimands in connection to the recent leaks, so that lends some credibility to this.



  • Thankfully extended support lasts until 2020. Though this does probably mean IE 12 or IE 13 won't be available for Windows 7, causing the same situation as with IE8 and Windows XP (users stuck using an old version).



  • Yeah, that's one of my worries. And if they really are going to follow through with the online registration in Win 9, this is just a shit storm waiting to happen.


  • FoxDev

    Company stops working on old product to focus on new product.

    In other news, fire confirmed to be hot, and water confirmed to be wet.



  • Well, piracy is evil, so they have to give users a reason to do it. Obviously.



  • @RaceProUK said:

    Company stops working on old product

    which is gaining market share faster than a slightly newer, highly hated, yet still old product in the same market niche.

    @RaceProUK said:

    to focus on new product

    Which is expected to be announced this fall. So it isn't a matter of just shifting man power from one product to another, unless they want to start developing Win 10 sometime next year.

    Really, looking at this from the outside, they're starting to pull the plug on a money-maker, while continuing to support a flop. Then, to top it off, they don't even know how successful the next version is going to be. Doesn't seem like a very solid strategy.



  • @FILE_NOT_FOUND said:

    Well, piracy is evil, so they have to give users a reason to do it. Obviously.

    I hadn't thought of that! Plus, it might even make piracy easier. Remove the actual software validation from the software, and push it to a remote server. This allows pirates to host their own fake M$ stores (probably on their LAN) which automatically authenticate any request which they receive. Genius! Admittedly, you won't be getting any updates, but there will probably be ways around that, too.

    I wonder how long it will take before this happens?



  • Not connected to the internet?
    Doing it wrong.

    Buying physical copies?
    Doing it wrong.

    Computer destroyed?
    Definitely doing it wrong.



  • @Bort said:

    Not connected to the internet?
    Doing it wrong.

    Buying physical copies?
    Doing it wrong.

    Computer destroyed?
    Definitely doing it wrong.

    Oh, shit. Does @codinghorror work at M$?


  • FoxDev

    @abarker said:

    which is gaining market share faster than a slightly newer, highly hated, yet still old product in the same market niche.

    Since 7's ticking along nicely, it seems pointless to waste a lot of time on it. May as well focus on making Win 9/10 as good as they can. Plus it's not like they're abandoning 7; they'll still be releasing bugfixes and security patches for at least five more years.



  • Wasn't that his original claim to fame? Or was that just Spolsky?



  • @abarker said:

    but how would you make it work for a copy of Windows you buy at the store?

    The box contains a mandatory USB device to be plugged in 24/7



  • @RaceProUK said:

    Since 7's ticking along nicely, it seems pointless to waste a lot of time on it. May as well focus on making Win 9/10 as good as they can. Plus it's not like they're abandoning 7; they'll still be releasing bugfixes and security patches for at least five more years.

    Except, as @anonymous234 already pointed out, bug fixes and patches probably don't include things like new versions of IE. Since IE is the #2 browser and Windows 7 is sitting at about 55% market share, that's a lot of people to skip over when IE12 or 13 is released (depending on when those releases fall in relation to the support dates). That means that as HTML5 gains traction, everyone is going to start moving away from IE. Unless I'm being overly pessimistic about Win 9.

    Honestly, what M$ should be doing is taking resources away from obviously failed versions (Vista, 8) in order to get the resources they need to develop the new versions. All they're doing is sticking to a defined schedule without even considering the performance of each product.

    Another interesting thing to note: XP has just 1.64% less market share than Win8, 8.1 and Vista combined. (16.3% vs 7.57% + 6.7% + 3.37%)


  • FoxDev

    @abarker said:

    Except, as @anonymous234 already pointed out, bug fixes and patches probably don't include things like new versions of IE. Since IE is the #2 browser and Windows 7 is sitting at about 55% market share, that's a lot of people to skip over when IE12 or 13 is released (depending on when those releases fall in relation to the support dates). That means that as HTML5 gains traction, everyone is going to start moving away from IE. Unless I'm being overly pessimistic about Win 9.

    Honestly, what M$ should be doing is taking resources away from obviously failed versions (Vista, 8) in order to get the resources they need to develop the new versions. All they're doing is sticking to a defined schedule without even considering the performance of each product.


    Vista's not really relevant, as mainstream support for that ended two years ago, and I wouldn't declare 8 a failure as yet. True, it's nowhere near as popular as 7, but look how long businesses took to move to 7 from XP, despite the obvious superiority of 7. That, and killing support for your latest products is just a bad idea all round, as it shows you have no confidence in it at all. No matter what you may think of 8 (and to be fair it's only the Metro side that annoys people; the desktop part is basically 7 with less shiny window frames), MS have to support it, at least until 9 is released.

    The IE issue is fundamentally different; MS should never have tied the browser to the OS so tightly in the first place. If they kept it decoupled, then it'd have its own support schedule.



  • @RaceProUK said:

    Vista's not really relevant

    Sure it is. Based on actual market penetration, they should have already declared EOL on Vista. Why continue to devote any resources to a 3 version old product (since M$ considers 8 and 8.1 seperate) which is used by 3-4% of the market, when you provide no support for a product that has about 5 times the market share?

    @RaceProUK said:

    No matter what you may think of 8 (and to be fair it's only the Metro side that annoys people; the desktop part is basically 7 with less shiny window frames),

    And no start menu; and you have to have shortcuts on the desktop, or some third-party menu app, or just browse through your file system to get to your desktop apps; and then you have things like an IE app (started from metro) and an IE application (started from desktop) which behave differently even on a desktop (because who needs consistent application behavior?); and ...

    In short, it's not just the metro side. It's the fact that M$ took a reasonable idea (one kernel for all the OS versions) and decided that meant they needed one UI for all OS versions.

    @RaceProUK said:

    No matter what you may think of 8, MS have to support it, at least until 9 is released.

    I won't argue that. They do need to support 8 until they have a replacement. However, they shouldn't be putting the winner (7) out to pasture until they know they have another successful Windows version out there.

    @RaceProUK said:

    The IE issue is fundamentally different; MS should never have tied the browser to the OS so tightly in the first place. If they kept it decoupled, then it'd have its own support schedule.

    However, because they did tie it so tightly to the OS, it is a valid point. Not being able to upgrade IE on Win 7 is going to make things very difficult for web developers in the coming years. The fact that XP can't go beyond IE8 is already a pretty big PITA,and I be that there will be a similar Win 7/IE11 issue in the coming years.



  • The fun fact is that all signs point to Apple homogenising their desktop and mobile offerings. Make the change gradual enough and you'll get people to evangelise it for you.

    It's been clear since Lion (2011) that this was the plan when they added Launchpad that looks suspiciously like the iOS launcher but biggerer.



  • Honestly, I have no problem with the UI's having a similar look and feel. What M$ forgot is that there are significant differences between how a user interacts with a tablet or phone, and how they interact with a desktop. They forgot that you can make the desktops look and feel connected, while tailoring the interaction to the specific environment.

    Basically everything they forgot can be summarized as: M$ forgot that not everything is a mobile device. They were infected by the everything-is-mobile brain worms. That's why 8 was such a flop.



  • Well, yes, there's that, but the fact is that they're slowly homogenising over a period of years. Change little by little, rather than trying to do it all at once. If MS had introduced 8 over successive editions, little by little, we wouldn't have been nearly so repelled by it.


  • FoxDev

    @abarker said:

    @RaceProUK said:
    Vista's not really relevant

    Sure it is. Based on actual market penetration, they should have already declared EOL on Vista. Why continue to devote any resources to a 3 version old product (since M$ considers 8 and 8.1 seperate) which is used by 3-4% of the market, when you provide no support for a product that has about 5 times the market share?

    MS aren't killing all support for 7; it's basically going to the same level of support as Vista i.e. bugfixes and security patches. And I imagine they'll still be fulfilling their paid support obligations, like they did (do?) for XP.
    @abarker said:
    @RaceProUK said:
    No matter what you may think of 8 (and to be fair it's only the Metro side that annoys people; the desktop part is basically 7 with less shiny window frames),

    And no start menu; and you have to have shortcuts on the desktop, or some third-party menu app, or just browse through your file system to get to your desktop apps; and then you have things like an IE app (started from metro) and an IE application (started from desktop) which behave differently even on a desktop (because who needs consistent application behavior?); and ...

    There is evidence they've learnt from some of those mistakes, with a form of Start Menu staled for return in 9, if not 8.n. And let's face it: the programs you use most often are pinned to the Taskbar already 😛



  • That sounds too horrible to be true. They already backpedaled with the Xbox One always-on DRM, hopefully they won't implement a system like that.



  • @RaceProUK said:

    @abarker said:
    Sure it is. Based on actual market penetration, they should have already declared EOL on Vista. Why continue to devote any resources to a 3 version old product (since M$ considers 8 and 8.1 seperate) which is used by 3-4% of the market, when you provide no support for a product that has about 5 times the market share?

    MS aren't killing all support for 7; it's basically going to the same level of support as Vista i.e. bugfixes and security patches. And I imagine they'll still be fulfilling their paid support obligations, like they did (do?) for XP.

    Not sure how that applies to what I said about Vista being relevant ...

    Anyway, as I've pointed out (repeatedly) the big issue is that this means there will probably be no more IE development for Win 7. This is an issue as IE11 is not very far along with HTML5 implementation compared to other browsers. As HTML5 gains traction, this means that IE is likely to get pushed out. Because of the tight linking between IE and Windows, it's a bad business move to push Win 7 to extended support when the latest version is so clearly not accepted.

    @RaceProUK said:

    And no start menu; and you have to have shortcuts on the desktop, or some third-party menu app, or just browse through your file system to get to your desktop apps; and then you have things like an IE app (started from metro) and an IE application (started from desktop) which behave differently even on a desktop (because who needs consistent application behavior?); and ...

    There is evidence they've learnt from some of those mistakes, with a form of Start Menu staled for return in 9, if not 8.n. And let's face it: the programs you use most often are pinned to the Taskbar already 😛
    [/quote]

    But this hasn't been a discussion about what they are including in Win 9 (which at this point is only rumors based on leaks from unnamed sources). This is about the extended support date for Win 7. You brought up Win 8, shortcomings, so I expanded on that. Right now, I don't give a shit about what might be in Win 9.

    As for pinning programs to the taskbar, I only do that with my top 5 programs. I have another 10 or so on my desktop. That accounts for my 15 most common programs. Everything else I go to the start menu for. I do that to minimize clutter on my desktop and to leave space in the taskbar for less common programs (when I need them). If I were to switch to Windows 8, I would be getting a third party plugin to give me a menu. It makes the less common applications much easier to find and access without causing clutter.



  • @anonymous234 said:

    That sounds too horrible to be true. They already backpedaled with the Xbox One always-on DRM, hopefully they won't implement a system like that.

    I hope so as well. We'll just have to wait and see if that leak pans out.



  • God I feel so smug right now for being a Linux user and not giving a f***k about what MS does or doesn't.


  • BINNED

    @veggen said:

    God I feel so smug right now for being a Linux user and not giving a f***k about what MS does or doesn't.

    I don't. Because as long as Windows has the majority of the market share Linux users will have to adapt to Windows users on the business front.

    To pull out IE again, if IE 13 (or whatever version, really) adds support for <insert feature here> and you need that feature for your new webapp, you're boned because 30% of your potential users still use Windows 7 which means they can't run IE 13.

    All numbers are an asspull. Feel free to replace IE with .NET or library/feature X.

    Edit: Fucking "we-support-html-but-not-really", I keep forgetting I can't use < > freely.



  • @abarker said:

    Oh, shit. Did @codinghorror work at M$?

    FTFY



  • @RaceProUK said:

    but look how long businesses took to move to 7 from XP Completely skipping over windows vista, despite the obvious superiority of 7

    FTFY as well.


  • :belt_onion:

    @abarker said:

    Basically, it sounds like M$ is trying to solve another minor/non-problem while telling their user base to go fuck themselves.

    Too bad everyone else has already made 30 @codingwhorror jokes about this thing already.


    Filed Under: Doing things the Discourse way!


  • It's like 5, tops.



  • @abarker said:

    Essentially, software would literally be tied to the hardware.

    Except for the bit where you can log into your MS account from any PC and deauthorise it, like the iTunes model.

    This is actually offering more freedom than the old system, because you can transfer your license whenever you want.

    I don't see any mention of it being "always on" either. More likely it will just handle the activation and do checkins when you go to install stuff from the store or get upgrades - I think MS well and truly learnt their lesson with the reaction to the always-on DRM in the Xbone.

    @abarker said:

    Want to install some M$ software on a system that won't be connected to the interwebs? Well fuck you.

    Connect it once, activate with your store account, job done.

    @abarker said:

    Let's say there was some sort of catastrophe and your system was completely destroyed, so you are working on a new build (because you don't like those boring, mass produced, off-the-shelf systems). Ready to buy the OS? Better go borrow someone else's system so you can make the purchase and download the install, because fuck you.

    Or you could log in to your MS account with your phone/tablet/friend's computer/school computer/library computer and remove your existing activation and just reactivate the new device with your store account once you've reinstalled with your recovery media. As for where you get said recovery media, that is TRWTF.

    @abarker said:

    How the hell will this work when buying physical copies? I can think of a way to make it work for software like Office, but how would you make it work for a copy of Windows you buy at the store?

    Same as Steam activation for boxed video games, probably. You install the software which complains about being inactive, you log in using your store account and it prompts you to either enter your credit card details or your single-use product key, which permanently attaches that purchase to your MS account.

    This whole thing is basically a Steam/iTunes hybrid for Windows. I don't see why people are so unhappy about it.



  • @dfcowell said:

    This whole thing is basically a Steam/iTunes hybrid for Windows. I don't see why people are so unhappy about it.

    Well duh, how will we pirate it if they do this?


    Filed under: they better hurry up with that 9 thing before my Dreamspark runs out



  • You're not tied to Internet Explorer though - other browsers are available, and for that matter preferable!


  • BINNED

    Please refer to:

    http://what.thedailywtf.com/t/windows-7-extended-support-date-announced/1491/28?u=onyx

    It's not a problem of stuff being available or not. It's the fact that I have to either force users who might be perfectly happy with IE to another browser, or gimp my web application so it works in the older version of IE.

    Again, <insert MS-maintained component / library here> instead of IE.


    Filed under: Pulling an Atwood



  • how come they are closing on windows 7, when some of our application is running in a citrix hosted environment with windows server 2003, which I think is XP. if we move that to 7, our printing is impacted.



  • This should not be a surprise to anyone. Windows 7 came out in 2009, its support life cycle seems to be pretty much in line with the standard MS support life cycle, 5 years mainstream, 5 years extended.

    And http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifepolicy

    Its mainstream support ends in 2015 but it will continue to get pretty much all of the updates that it gets now until 2020... just no new features which I don't personally find to be an issue.




  • @D3vy said:

    This should not be a surprise to anyone. Windows 7 came out in 2009, its support life cycle seems to be pretty much in line with the standard MS support life cycle, 5 years mainstream, 5 years extended.

    And http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifepolicy

    Its mainstream support ends in 2015 but it will continue to get pretty much all of the updates that it gets now until 2020... just no new features which I don't personally find to be an issue.

    ------------------------------

    Like they close all bugs in windows 7.



  • @dfcowell said:

    Or you could log in to your MS account with your phone/tablet/friend's computer/school computer/library computer and remove your existing activation and just reactivate the new device with your store account once you've reinstalled with your recovery media. As for where you get said recovery media, that is TRWTF.

    Personally, I always make a backup of all large install files. Assuming that said freak accident didn't destroy said recovery media, I'd be covered. However, what If you wanted to upgrade to the newest OS, which you hadn't purchased/downloaded yet? In that case, you're probably best off finishing with the old OS (or using a Linux boot disk) and then getting online and downloading install image for the desired OS.


    @D3vy said:

    This should not be a surprise to anyone. Windows 7 came out in 2009, its support life cycle seems to be pretty much in line with the standard MS support life cycle, 5 years mainstream, 5 years extended.

    And http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifepolicy

    Its mainstream support ends in 2015 but it will continue to get pretty much all of the updates that it gets now until 2020... just no new features which I don't personally find to be an issue.

    Personally I'm surprised that they are following their schedule so strictly, instead of doing a bit of market analysis and saying, "You know, 7 is our workhorse right now. We ought to keep it going."

    As has been noted up topic, this means no more new versions of IE for 7, as happened with XP after IE8. This is a PITA for web developers who can't put anything out there unless it can be handled by IE8, unless you're willing to cut out about 6% of internet users. Once XP fades out, this current issue will push the earliest to IE11 (maybe 12, if it's released before Jan 13). As has been shown, IE11 isn't that great when it comes to HTML5. And that's not even taking into account all the standards changes that are likely to come along in the time that it will take for XP to finish dying.

    And Win 9's pending announcement doesn't even come into play. The biggest reason that XP is still around is that businesses are still using it. I doubt that they are going to switch to a new, unknown Win 9. They'd be more likely to go to Win 7. In fact, that is probably part of why Win 7's market share has been growing recently. And if recent events are anything to go by, The businesses currently on Win 7 probably aren't going to change until Win 7's EOL in 2020.

    I'm not saying that Win 7 should be kept indefinitely. I'm just saying that M$ should be actively supporting it until they have a viable replacement, and no one knows how Win 9 is going to stack up.

    tl;dr: Due to the massive market share that Win 7 has, moving it to extended support is going to make it a nightmare for anyone to seriously begin using HTML5.



  • @dfcowell said:

    Except for the bit where you can log into your MS account from any PC and deauthorise it, like the iTunes model.

    So if I can get into someone's MS account, I can effectively break their computer remotely? Fuckin' neato!



  • @abarker said:

    Sure it is. Based on actual market penetration, they should have already declared EOL on Vista. Why continue to devote any resources to a 3 version old product (since M$ considers 8 and 8.1 seperate) which is used by 3-4% of the market, when you provide no support for a product that has about 5 times the market share?
    Personally I applaud Microsoft to sticking to their support timelines. They have pre-set minimum standards of how long they will support a product after its successor product ships. They are just following their previously announced timelines for Vista, and the same timelines for Windows 7. The timers are started based on when the next version is fully released.

    @abarker said:

    @RaceProUK said:
    No matter what you may think of 8 (and to be fair it's only the Metro side that annoys people; the desktop part is basically 7 with less shiny window frames),

    And no start menu; and you have to have shortcuts on the desktop, or some third-party menu app, or just browse through your file system to get to your desktop apps; and then you have things like an IE app (started from metro) and an IE application (started from desktop) which behave differently even on a desktop (because who needs consistent application behavior?); and ...


    Ok, if you are going to bash on a product, at least have your facts straight. Maybe you do and are just not being clear about it. In any case, lets make sure we bash Windows 8 and 8.1 for what they are, not what people say they are.

    First off, the Start Screen does basically everything the Start Menu did, but takes up more room. Hit the start button / windows key and start typing and you get a filtered list off all of your applications just like in Windows 7, but with better results and including more settings items as well. You can add desktop items to the start screen just as easily as you can to the desktop or pin to your task bar. I cannot see any reason that you have to have shortcuts on the desktop except for personal preference.

    True, there are two sides to the GUI -- the desktop and the Modern/Metro interface, but they play ok side-by-side, and even better in 8.1. The transition and blending between the modes needs work still, but it is not horrendous... I just want to have my full-screen modern app on one screen with my desktop on another without it switching so bad. It almost works on 8.0 right.

    @abarker said:

    @RaceProUK said:
    No matter what you may think of 8, MS have to support it, at least until 9 is released.

    I won't argue that. They do need to support 8 until they have a replacement. However, they shouldn't be putting the winner (7) out to pasture until they know they have another successful Windows version out there.


    Right... they should never have moved Windows 98 into extended support just because people were not buying XP... and they definately should not have done the same to XP because people were buying 7.

    On that note, notice the pattern. Between 98 and XP there was ME. Between XP and 7 there was Vista. Between 7 and 8.1 there was 8, and yes, they treat 8 and 8.1 as seperate OSs for support, maitenence timelines, etc. And, while Windows 8 and Windows 7 are about flat right now in their ussage, Windows 8.1 usage is increasing.

    @abarker said:

    @RaceProUK said:
    The IE issue is fundamentally different; MS should never have tied the browser to the OS so tightly in the first place. If they kept it decoupled, then it'd have its own support schedule.

    However, because they did tie it so tightly to the OS, it is a valid point. Not being able to upgrade IE on Win 7 is going to make things very difficult for web developers in the coming years. The fact that XP can't go beyond IE8 is already a pretty big PITA,and I be that there will be a similar Win 7/IE11 issue in the coming years.


    IE is interesting, and it has been less and less coupled with the OS. It is possible they will update IE for Windows 7 beyond IE 11. We will have to wait and see.

    What I am most interested in is to see if they backport some of the OS stripping/cleaning they did with the Win8 Kernel used on Xbox One. From what I understand, they found things tied together that should never have been tied together and broke a lot of code to fix it... but the result is that they can clean it up better. If that gets folded into the main OS, it could mean a whole lot faster, secure, and maintainable OS going forward.



  • @The_Bytemaster said:

    They have pre-set minimum standards of how long they will support a product after its successor product ships.

    Note how I add emphasis to your argument to make my point. They are blindly sticking to the minimum standards for 7, without considering how it will affect the user base.

    @The_Bytemaster said:

    On that note, notice the pattern. Between 98 and XP there was ME. Between XP and 7 there was Vista. Between 7 and 8.1 there was 8, and yes, they treat 8 and 8.1 as seperate OSs for support, maitenence timelines, etc. And, while Windows 8 and Windows 7 are about flat right now in their ussage, Windows 8.1 usage is increasing.

    Who cares about their fucking pattern? So far, you and @Nagesh. The pattern is just an indication that Microsoft goes way beyond what the users will accept and screws things up, or they just screw up, then they make it more palatable in the next version (usually). There's nothing to say that the pattern will hold in the future. They can always break the pattern, so forget the $DEITYdamn pattern.

    As for 7 v 8 v 8.1: Of course 7 is nearly flat, you have to look for it to buy it, and since most people are buying off-the-shelf systems, it isn't an option for them to get right now. 8 is pretty much in the same boat, plus: why buy 8 when you can get 8.1 and get basically the same thing with some added bells and whistles? 8.1 is the only one being actively sold by M$, and since most consumers purchase pre-built systems, they take what they can easily/cheaply get.Point in fact: I work closely with my company's IT purchasing team, and it actually costs us about $100 extra to get Win 7 on a replacement box because it's a custom order. Most people/businesses won't pay that extra money.

    8.1 also has the benefit of XP's recent EOL. 8.1's market share hasn't reached levels that indicate that it's liked. And the market stats seem to only indicate that 8.1 is being used to replace XP boxes that no longer have support. Nothing more, nothing less. Now, if 8.1's market share was increasing and 7's market share was decreasing, then there might be a different story.



  • @The_Bytemaster said:

    Ok, if you are going to bash on a product, at least have your facts straight. Maybe you do and are just not being clear about it. In any case, lets make sure we bash Windows 8 and 8.1 for what they are, not what people say they are.

    Let me clarify:

    • On the IE thing: Launch IE from the Start Screen, you get a dumbed down version with no plugins (unless that's changed in the last few months). Launch IE from the desktop, you get the full IE experience, with plugins. App vs. Application.
    • As I was speaking of 8, any time I've touched an 8 system, I've never found a way to easily launch a desktop app from the start screen. Maybe that's changed in 8.1. Even then, that is a huge waste of real estate. The start screen uses tiles that take up large chunks of space, because it is designed for a touch UI. Having to side-scroll through multiple pages to find the desktop application I want to launch is a PITA and even less desirable than crowding my desktop with shortcuts and folders.


  • @abarker said:

    so forget the {$DEITY}damn pattern

    FTFY


  • BINNED

    I actually kinda like the fullscreen thing. Tiles are too large though. For desktop something like this is perfectly acceptable IMHO:



  • This appears to be on a tablet, which is actually what 8 was designed for. I don't have a problem with it on tablets. Just on desktops.

    And that's not even Win 8, is it?


  • BINNED

    That's Cinnamon, with a custom menu applet. On a laptop.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinnamon_(user_interface)



  • Still, not bad. It's still a lot better than the Win 8 start screen. After looking over the wiki, it looks like you still have a menu, it's just full screened. Whereas with Win 8, it's a menu/mini OS with big ass tiles that are in some {$deity}awful color scheme that hurts my eyes.

    If Win 9 ends up a flop, I'd consider switching to some Linux distro if it weren't for the fact that I develop mainly for Windows systems. Maybe I just need to have a Linux system with a Windows VM.


  • BINNED

    @abarker said:

    After looking over the wiki, it looks like you still have a menu, it's just full screened.

    As I said (maybe not clearly enough), the one I posted is a custom applet. The one in the screenhot on the wiki is standard.

    As you can see from the screenshot, it's a small-ish screen, and since I use the touchpad a lot I like the slightly bigger targets in the fullscreened version.

    My point was that it's possible to use a fullscreen menu on a desktop, with proper scaling depending on resolution and/or user preference. I myself chose to use it willingly. The problem with modern UI is there is no scaling - you get the big rectangles no matter what.

    Also, despite all the animosity towards it, I think that Ubuntu's Unity is damn near close to almost perfectly hitting the soft spot between touch and mouse driven interface. The menus would need to be scaled up for touch, but the general idea of big icons for shortcuts, combined with a reasonably scaled menu for less used stuff is damn sure closer to being an universal interface than modern UI, which is a poster child of inefficiency on a large screen.


Log in to reply