There is so much stuff in Windows 8 that I have no idea how it got out of the building. Really incomprehensible. Clearly a cancerous culture in Microsoft ala BlackBerry letting small but insane design choices out the door
I used a Windows 8 machine the other day. I've used OSX the last few years, but used Windows for a couple of decades prior.
I was so confused. It was difficult to work out how to open apps. I also got stuck in the full screen start menu replacement (whatever that's called) and I had to ask for help to get back to the desktop.
Give me XP over 8 any day. Security issues aside, that was a gem of an OS.
Seems like the Microsoft OS team hit the panic button soon after iOS & Android gained traction and have been clawing for innovation without considering actual use cases
I think the security issues are exaggerated (MS certainly has a motivation to get people to buy their latest OS), especially for advanced users and developers who have a good idea of what their system is doing. A lot of the exploits being patched now are based on "user is tricked into doing X", and OSs are increasingly designed to be secure against their users.
XP is more hackable (in both senses of the word), but it also gives more freedom.to the user.
I stepped into the Microsoft store yesterday - they had the Microsoft band front and center and it lured me in. Every time I go into the store I keep saying "this is cool!" at every station. But I still find myself struggling with the usability of Windows 8.
The final station I stopped at in the store was the HP Sprout PC which uses a digital projector mounted on top of the monitor to project a virtual touch screen input device where the keyboard would normally be. So it can appear as a piano, a drawing surface, etc. Once again I said "this is cool!". I've never even heard of this thing.
I used it for 5 minutes before I somehow put it into a buggy state where it stopped responding to input on the virtual touch screen.
I'm always amazed at how crappy Microsoft stores are. Oh, they're pretty and welcoming and there are always happy people playing games in there (often the employees, because they have nothing to do), but nothing works. I go to actually try out a device and the games won't run because they need me to log in to some MS service, the machines aren't connected to WiFi, or stuff is just locked up....
And how much do you want to bet that they just can't figure out why the Apple Store across the corridor is packed from open to close and theirs is a relative ghost town.
I was so confused. It was difficult to work out how to open apps. I also got stuck in the full screen start menu replacement (whatever that's called) and I had to ask for help to get back to the desktop.
Give me XP over 8 any day. Security issues aside, that was a gem of an OS.
Seems like the Microsoft OS team hit the panic button soon after iOS & Android gained traction and have been clawing for innovation without considering actual use cases