Windows 10 can-of-worms
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I haven't used the start screen myself, but I've grown to like gnome 3. As I understand it, the main problem with the start screen is the disconnect between desktop and start screen when applications are running on the start screen.
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Most people seem to make the complaint that it fills the whole screen, so you have to mentally 'context switch' when you deal with it.
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I could see that - gnome 3 acts more like an overlay, where the screen 'zooms out' to include the overlay controls, and move all windows to a tiled display for window/multidesktop management.
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10 has something vaguely like that. But the thing with 8 is that it's just a launcher. The desktop is almost always hidden by windows, making most of the icons useless, so they decided to make a full-screen thing you could bring up that can also tell you what sort of new emails you've got (subject lines, if you've set the tile to the correct size). It makes more sense in a lot of ways. But it's also essentially why there was a start menu before. This one is just more customizable (especially on 10).
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Yeah, and I see those arguments. The whole thing breaks down when you're running IE in the start screen. Or a full-screen calculator.
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running IE in the start screen. Or a full-screen calculator.
Only the start screen runs 'in the start screen'... other things do run fullscreen if you don't snap them to a smaller size or use a desktop app.
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Indeed, just like notepad will complain when you try to edit a config file and refuses to save in Windows 7
Actually, it's worse than what you said, because you'll get the UAC prompt, but the copy silently fails (Well, you do get a desktop notification telling you it can't be done, but that is ephemeral).
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What about memory / motherboard / disk? Any of those can be huge for user experience.
Obviously I switched motherboards. When I built the new machine, it initially used the same hard drive, until I got an SSD. I think I went from 3GB to 4GB, which in both cases was plenty for basic Windows usage, and that was sluggish on the old machine.
It's no secret that Windows system requirements tend to increase with each versions, and the older machine was built for XP in 2007, while the new one was built for 8 in 2013.
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This place is full of luddites. There's a developer who's proud that he still runs XP at home
Our lead dev here told me just a month or two ago he is still using XP. Of course as far as I know he does all of his work on a more powerful VM, but he's still an idiot in that respect.
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It's no secret that Windows system requirements tend to increase with each versions
a trend that 7 and 8 bucked (for the most part) and 10 seems about ready to keep up with requiring the same or lesser hardware than its predecessor.
it's not always a perfect transition but i've taken many a computer that was sluggish and issue laden with vista on them and upgraded them to 7 or 8 and had them suddenly begin performing miles faster than they were before the upgrade
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I can second that; Windows 7 was quite snappy compared to Vista, and 8/8.1 is a step up from 7
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It's no secret that Windows system requirements tend to increase with each versions,
That hasn't been true in a pretty long while. Windows 7 is less demanding than Vista, and Windows 8 and 8.1 haven't raised the bar from 7 one iota.
However, disk space usage is going up pretty fast.
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In terms of speed, absolutely correct. In terms of, say, motherboard features, not always correct. But anyone using a motherboard that doesn't support Win8 is using a pretty old motherboard.
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you mean BIOS versus UEFI?
win8 will install happily in BIOS mode.
it will bitch at you like crazy during the install about that, but once installed it'll be fine.
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Nope.
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You mean that 'Trusted Computing' bullcrap?
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I think that's still UEFI, and that isn't a problem.
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Nope.
well if you don't mean BIOS/UEFI then what do you mean? i've yet to meet a mobo that would run 7 that won't run 8
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There were a bunch of people complaining in the comments of some site I was on about some obscure motherboard features that caused Win8 to not work. But like I said, you have to be using downright ancient hardware to have that problem. It's your own fault at that point.
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I was on about some obscure motherboard features that caused Win8 to not work.
what features?
i'm genuinely curious.
i mean i've seen things like fingerprint sensors fail to work when upgrading because validity refuses to forward port drivers, preferring you to just upgrade the laptop to upgrade the OS, but that's about it and that's just one device, not the whole system.
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I honestly don't know, but people using hardware that predates XP are likely to have problems running anything.
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a trend that 7 and 8 bucked (for the most part) and 10 seems about ready to keep up with requiring the same or lesser hardware than its predecessor.
While that's true it doesn't apply to this specific situation.
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That hasn't been true in a pretty long while. Windows 7 is less demanding than Vista, and Windows 8 and 8.1 haven't raised the bar from 7 one iota.
Right, but the proper comparison here is XP/7, or actually XP/8. That old Core 2 ran decently on XP, but sluggishly on 8. Also, IIRC, I started with 1.5 or 2GB on XP and upgraded over the years to 3.
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If you're just going to knee-jerk against the ribbon without even considering the ways it's superior to the previous mess of menus and toolbars, well, then there's no real point bothering to listen to your opinion, is there?
Hint: the Ribbon is a fantastic toolbar. It's an AWFUL menubar. Microsoft's mistake was that they didn't realize that they had just made rarely-used functions nigh-undiscoverable.
At my work,, everybody has UAC disabled by default. The guy who manages things like imaging new PCs doesn't like it, so it gets turned off for everyone
You shouldn't even need UAC in the first place in a corporate environment...although for personal use, I'm with @RaceProUK:First thing I'd do if I got a machine set up like that? Turn UAC back on. Seriously, it's one of the best additions to Windows in recent years, and since being refined in Windows 7, is about as annoying as dropping a penny on the street.
But the measured improvement is most likely an aggregate and doesn't mean that some people won't be losers WRT the change. Dismissing these people as clueless is just you being a dick.
Quite true -- statistics don't lift all boats.You mean that 'Trusted Computing' bullcrap?
Yeah...whoever thought that TC was a good idea was deluded. Trying to make it so that the user doesn't have control over the hardware sitting in front of them, at the end of the day, isFUTILE
I think that's still UEFI, and that isn't a problem.
No, it isn't -- UEFI is a whole another ball of wax.
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Yeah... whoever thought that TC was a good idea was deluded
Thinking from a corporate standpoint, it is a good idea though. And even the majority of end-users won't care.
I'd rather see TC as an optional component for, say, corporate workstations or severe paranoiacs, but oh well, it's no worse than like half of current smartphones with bootloaders locked shut.
And there's always gonna be workarounds.
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Thinking from a corporate standpoint, it is a good idea though.
In the same way the media conglomerates think DRM is a good idea, that is.
And even the majority of end-users won't care.
True.corporate workstations
This I can sort-of-understand, maybe?severe paranoiacs,
TC, sadly, does the least for those folks -- the idea behind the key management in it is to protect things from the user sitting at the computer, which is wrong.it's no worse than like half of current smartphones with bootloaders locked shut.
No better, if you ask me...
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Thanks, that does seem to work on W7 (though, I've yet to try it out on my W8 computer).
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no problem.it makes sense when you think about what the keyboard shortcuts do.
ï…º+D focuses the desktop
ALT+F4 closes the focused windowso it does make an odd sort of sense. ;-)
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Thanks, that does seem to work on W7 (though, I've yet to try it out on my W8 computer).
Writing a "shutdown Windows" program that you could put on the desktop is trivial, too, and works on all versions of Windows.
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still bitching about the Ribbon. The Ribbon from 2007. This guy's hopeless.
Things that suck as badly as The Ribbon don't magically stop sucking just because it's been 8 years since they first began to suck.
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it's no worse than like half of current smartphones with bootloaders locked shut.
And that's a good thing how?
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You shouldn't even need UAC in the first place in a corporate environment
Depends on the responsibilities of any given user. Safest to just leave it on.
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TC, sadly, does the least for those folks -- the idea behind the key management in it is to protect things from the user sitting at the computer, which is wrong.
It always seemed to me that the aim of TC is to make things trusted by Big Media. All its suck follows from that.
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It always seemed to me that the aim of TC is to make things trusted by Big Media. All its suck follows from that.
Exactly! Big Media can go FOAD in that respect, because apparently they are too thick-skulled to respond to the cluebats and clue-by-fours that have been used on them so far when it comes to DRM struggling against a wall of mathematical impossibility.
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Performance # of Cores 6 # of Threads 12 Processor Base Frequency 3.6 GHz Max Turbo Frequency 4 GHz TDP 130 W
Memory Specifications
Max Memory Size (dependent on memory type) 64 GB
Memory Types DDR3 1333/1600/1866
Max # of Memory Channels 4
Max Memory Bandwidth 59.7 GB/sNow if someone called that low end, I would raise an objection....on the other hand, it is not (by itself) a cutting edge system either...
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a wall of mathematical impossibility
But... but... surely security by obscurity can work, if we just make it obscure enough? I know! Let's build obscurity right into the hardware! Nobody is ever gonna take that stuff apart, amirite?
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Let's build obscurity right into the hardware! Nobody is ever gonna take that stuff apart, amirite?
It's possible to do that, you know. You just have to plan for it from the start; you build the hardware in a totally different way, e.g., make the security module all out of delay-insensitive balanced TTL with much more vertical stacking and plenty of detection of attempts to pry while live.
But you also use real crypto as well.
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brings up this dialog on all versions of windows i'm aware of: (confirmed on 7, 8, 8.1 and 10. believe true of Vista and XP as well)
Trying to quit the desktop has brought that dialog up in all versions of Windows since 3.0, though the dialog changed from "Exit Windows? [Yes] [No]" to that form in Windows 95, and the addition of ï…º in Windows 98 made selecting it easier.
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Hint: the Ribbon is a fantastic toolbar. It's an AWFUL menubar.
I know this is from more than a week ago, but I'm scanning through this thread and saw this. This statement is exactly the reverse of what I think. I feel like I'm one of the few people who are actually fairly indifferent to the ribbon in Office. (Disclaimer: I am not, and have never been, a heavy Office user. I use Word for a good portion of ~3 weeks or so every few months, and make an occasional PPT presentation, and make an occasional graph in Excel.) I feel like common tasks are made a bit slower than they were, and uncommon tasks are made a "lot" faster. The reason for the first half of that is that, especially in Powerpoint, I find myself switching between tabs a ton. I would guess a little more than 1/3 of my ribbon commands require changing tabs. With a traditional menu/toolbar UI, I can show multiple toolbars at once and have most things there at my fingertips, and there's no changing.
(I haven't put in the time to figure out how to customize tabs to put things I use a lot in once place. I probably should do this, and I suspect it would alleviate that comment (I hesitate even to call it a complaint), but like I said I'm a pretty light user of it anyway.)
You shouldn't even need UAC in the first place in a corporate environment...
What? Why not? Only if you don't give people "admin-ish" accounts. (I use "admin-ish" to mean an account that is allowed to elevate.) In that case, it wouldn't matter if UAC is on or not because they couldn't elevate anyway. But if they do get admin-ish accounts, then they should be protected just as much -- perhaps more than, certainly from the business's perspective -- as when they are at home.Yeah...whoever thought that TC was a good idea was deluded. Trying to make it so that the user doesn't have control over the hardware sitting in front of them, at the end of the day, is FUTILE
I actually think Secure Boot, in principle, is a great idea; it has the potential to stop a lot of hypothetical attacks. I feel like for once it's a bit ahead of the security curve. The key though (no pun intended) is that the user should have control over the keys. Make it require a jumper to change them or something -- that's fine, or even a great idea -- but not providing key management to the users is problematic from a bunch of different perspectives. And unfortunately, as was discussed above, the motivations for adding it don't necessarily seem to align with "give the user control"...
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I find myself switching between tabs a ton. I would guess a little more than 1/3 of my ribbon commands require changing tabs. With a traditional menu/toolbar UI, I can show multiple toolbars at once and have most things there at my fingertips, and there's no changing.
Then move things! That's one of the main advantages of the ribbon.
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Because Windows Explorer still has the annoyance where if your RB has got thousands of small files in it, You are TRWTF
FTFY.
I mean, seriously?!? Recycle Bin it, come back in a week/month/quarter and if you haven't needed it, whack it. Problem solved.
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Only if you don't give people "admin-ish" accounts. (I use "admin-ish" to mean an account that is allowed to elevate.)
Yeah -- "admin-ish" accounts should be quite strictly controlled in an AD world.
I actually think Secure Boot, in principle, is a great idea; it has the potential to stop a lot of hypothetical attacks. I feel like for once it's a bit ahead of the security curve. The key though (no pun intended) is that the user should have control over the keys. Make it require a jumper to change them or something -- that's fine, or even a great idea -- but not providing key management to the users is problematic from a bunch of different perspectives. And unfortunately, as was discussed above, the motivations for adding it don't necessarily seem to align with "give the user control"...
My thoughts exactly -- if you can take a box apart and fiddle with jumpers, you shouldn't be forbidden to do something as simple as analyze how a program works or install a different OS on the box.
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The kernel is rocksolid.
Yeah...I don't know about that. I get BSODs somewhat frequently. I don't think I ever saw one on Win7.
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@Rhywden said:
The kernel is rocksolid.
Yeah...I don't know about that. I get BSODs somewhat frequently. I don't think I ever saw one on Win7.
I got exactly one over the whole installation time of 8 and 8.1 combined on my desktop. The cause: A 3rd party driver which was to enable me with monitoring all USB data traffic.
The best stable kernel doesn't matter if you throw shitty hardware or drivers at it - especially if the drivers need pretty extensive access.
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Note to Microsoft: I don't have permission?? IT'S MY F***ING COMPUTER!! Whoever is responsible for this nonsense should be killed to death repeatedly.
That would be the Linux fanboys who insist on separating normal users and root, and some who insist on giving every program its own user. And then spread the word that operating systems without these features are fundamentally broken and should never be used.
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There are good reasons for and against it. It depends on your situation, but you seem to paint it like a white/black scenario. Your arguments are welcome.
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The best stable kernel doesn't matter if you throw shitty hardware or drivers at it - especially if the drivers need pretty extensive access.
Hmmm, does EFI count as Linux hardware?
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Are you the kind of persons or talking bullshit about Toyota because they have removed the start key and your are used to drive a Honda and starting it using your keys?
Just learn to drive all cars and stop complaining
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Hmmm, does EFI count as Linux hardware?
Electronic fuel injection?
... sure why not.
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EFI
Enlightenment Foundation Infrastructure? Tizen't hard to see why you might think that…
