Sorry to bring back an old thread, but I thought I would give out a
little more information.
When I wrote my last rant I was a little over the 1 week period of using
Windows 8. Yesterday was a full three weeks and I used my wonderful
weekend Saturday to cleanse my poor system of that horrid operating
system that is Windows 8.
In the last year I have grown tired of rebooting and about 8 months ago
decided to give development in Windows a real try. I am a complete
sucker for KDevelop in KDE and accessing my servers and shares via
Kio-slaves. I use Kwrite once in a while and Kate quite a bit, but I use
KDevelop daily. I did not take to coding in Windows easily. But to be
completely fair, once I got my linux boxen configured to share
everything via SMB and I mapped those drives to my Windows 7 box it
really wasn't a big deal. I replaced Kate with Notepad++ and KDevelop
with Komodo Edit 7.
I have to admit, if it wasn't for the awesome Komodo Edit I would never
have been able to settle down in Windows land. I cannot stand putty.
Putty alone was enough to almost send me back to Linux. Then I found
Cygwin and mintty and all was good again.
When I switched to Windows 8 I really thought it wouldn't be that big of
a deal. Any semi-techy type person should do fine with Windows 8, quirks
and all. And there are a LOT of them! But the absolute truth of the
matter is the Modern interface is useless. The App stores and all that
have so little in them there is no point in spending serious time
getting used to the new interface. It's just not worth it! Since 95% of
my use is in the classic desktop ( I would jump over to Modern to play
Pinball FX 2, one of the few Modern apps worth using ) and with classic
applications I had to force myself to take some time and get to know the
Modern interface. On top of the worthless interface, network data
transfer is dismal. I realize Microsoft tweaked the TCP stack and it is
the most efficient it has ever been and the new file copy/move dialog is
more accurate than ever but perception rules and perception says it is
slower. Opening the Explorer window takes seconds where in Windows 7 it
is instant. Maybe having two screens really messes with the shell
settings but the already Schizophrenic interface is making me schizo as
well!
So I have gone back to Windows 7. I will miss two things:
(1) Classic Desktop -- Believe it or not I really liked the dulled
version of the Windows 7 interface. They removed a lot of the eye candy
from Windows 7 so it is just cleaner, though I believe it is definitely
slower, I liked the look of it better.
(2) VirtualBox is Windows 8 worked better. I still use VirtualBox quite
a bit, even in Windows. Where it is flawless and awesome in Linux I seem
to have a lot of problems in Windows 7. I have the host keys mapped to
RIGHT-CRTL + RIGHT-ALT for releasing the mouse and keyboard. This worked
perfectly in Windows 8 but in 7 I often have the problem with Windows
not releasing and I have to struggle to use Windows until I reboot. Not
every time, but often enough.
I tried to be subjective with my Windows 8 use, but in the end I really
cannot even believe it would be worth it on a tablet. I have limited
experience with iPads and the like, but I have tons of experience with
Android and both completely blow away what Windows would have to offer
on a tablet. Not to mention the price difference.
What happened to paying a premium for Apple products? Suddenly the iPad
is *cheap* compared to Windows Touch Pro.
I hate to be cliche, but maybe 2013 will be the year of the Linux
desktop? ha ha I don't see many running from Windows 7 any time soon,
unless Microsoft does not allow the Windows 7 Upgrade from 8 like they
did with Vista to XP. Time will tell...
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Windows 8 demo video parody
Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2012 03:39:16 -0700
From: Nathan England <nathan@nmecs.com>
Reply-To: nathan@nmecs.com
Organization: NME Computer Services
To: Main PLUG discussion list <plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org>
That is hysterical! The first real computer I owned was a Compaq
Presario 486DX2, 66MHz with 4 MB of ram and it came with Windows 3.1?
and Bob. I thought it was a game or something and I could never figure
it out, so I deleted it. It was later that day that I found the Yahoo!
page for operating systems and discovered linux. I was hoping to find
the Mac OS like I had at school to run on my pc. I had no idea they were
such totally different beasts... That was a long time ago!
I have Windows 7 Enterprise 90 eval on a partition of my workstation for
testing and IE use when necessary, and Netflix. My wife will occasionaly
use my laptop for checking her email in Firefox. I decided to see how
realistic these stupid usability videos are with a fairly non-technical
user who is not afraid to click around, so I installed Window(s?) 8 on
my system and didn't say a word. Unfortunately, I was never able to
surprise her with the system change, as she came into my office to ask
me what all the grumbling and griping was about. I was laughing so hard,
and then grunting and moaning, then laughing, she thought I was playing
a game or something. So I had to explain what it was.
It has been a week now that I have been using Windows 8. I installed my
development tools on it and decided I would try it for a little while. I
have two screens. Any of you experience this wonderful system with two
screens yet? You think this new system is fubar when you only have one
screen? Try two!
I really do like the Netflix "app" that I was able to download from the
app store. The interface rocks. As long as you don't use it. Are you
serious? This thing is useless! Search for movies? you have to exit the
app, use the "charms" bar, type in your search, then select the Netflix
app to search in... Hello ! What usability expert approved this?
Then it suffers from the typical windows "I don't know how long this
will take to transfer, so I'll make something up" dialog box. When you
use the netflix website and you click somewhere in the video timeline it
will jump to that section and dispaly a bar or circle thing showing how
much is buffering. In the netflix app it is obvious it is depending on
windows for this info. It will start at 0 and quickly move to 100% then
suddenly its at 50% and climbs to 100%, then it drops to like 15% and
s....l....o....w...l...y... moves to about 27% and suddenly starts
playing the video... That's IF it acutally seeks correctly.
Windows 8 really is not usable as a real system. Cygwin is screwed and
not even fun to use anymore. Putty is the same old ugly putty, nothing
can make it worse.
Try setting a different browser as the default and all the "apps" that
are designed to use IE as the browser will fail, or at least kick you to
the desktop with no obvious way back to your Modern UI. How many people
know there is a windows button on their keyboards? If you don't know
that, good luck click the 60 pixel wide button to get back to Modern!!!
Just my .02
Nathan
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