Windows 8 demo video parody

Mon Dec 31 09:30:20 MST 2012

I'll agree, I thought 2000 was actually quite great.  It was a server on 
your desktop, yes, but coming out from ME at the time (shivers), it 
fixed the perpetual memory leaks that were win95-98.  It was the first 
consumer-grade win os NOT to require nightly reboots, and thus began 
uptimes of more than 2 days with it.

I'm not so much down on their products as I am the company, and what 
they stand for.  Which sadly hasn't been much of anything in the past 10 
years.  Balmer is about the creepiest and craziest leader I can imagine, 
and the constant "drink the koolaid" chants from him for disastrous 
product launches with promises revolutionizing the world (again) are a 
joke anymore.  They've simply run in place for far too long, the world 
passed them by, and they failed to even notice.

My last shot at loving a microsoft product was their smartphone, before 
apple supposedly invented them.  For a good 3 years (2005-2008) I used a 
winmo phone, and for a time, it was good.  I was with them from winmo3 
through 6.5, about 5 "major" releases, and saw literally the same bugs 
and problems affect base usage across all of them.  They simply never 
fixed it, they only wrapped new ui's and new features across broken 
kernels and a broken base os.  The advent of the Iphone and Palm Pre, 
even immature Android then made WinMo look comical in comparison.  I'd 
moved on and never looked back.

What is comical is that Microsoft truly innovated in the smartphone 
space originally when the only competition was really PalmOS devices, or 
Blackberry.  At some point, they simply gave up, let it languish, and 
eventually faded out.  They missed a huge opportunity to capture the 
entire budding smartphone market, and now want desperately back in to 
avoid obsolescence.

Windows 8 is their attempt to make everyone want their smartphone (and 
pump ads) by making the desktop user blur the line between their desktop 
and a phone.  Problem is nobody but them wants this in a productive 
desktop.  Maybe they should have looked across the table to see how well 
that worked for Ubuntu with Unity.

-mb

On 12/31/2012 08:17 AM, Paul Mooring wrote:
> I don't think it's fair to call 2000 a bomb. It was possibly the best
> Windows OS ever released for the time it came out, pre-SP2 XP on the
> other hand was pretty awful.
>
> On a related note, why is it Linux folds are so down on anything MS puts
> out. I really prefer a *nix OS but I think there's things MS gets right
> that the larger Linux community should be learning from rather than
> laughing at (powershell anyone?).
>
> --
> Paul Mooring
> Systems Engineer and Customer Advocate
>
> www.opscode.com
>
> From: Nathan England <nathan at nmecs.com <mailto:nathan at nmecs.com>>
> Organization: NME Computer Services
> Reply-To: "nathan at nmecs.com <mailto:nathan at nmecs.com>" <nathan at nmecs.com
> <mailto:nathan at nmecs.com>>, Main PLUG discussion list
> <plug-discuss at lists.phxlinux.org <mailto:plug-discuss at lists.phxlinux.org>>
> Date: Monday, December 31, 2012 4:21 AM
> To: Main PLUG discussion list <plug-discuss at lists.phxlinux.org
> <mailto:plug-discuss at lists.phxlinux.org>>
> Subject: Re: Windows 8 demo video parody
>
> That is definitely Microsofts M.O.
>
> Windows 95 was awesome
>
> Windows 98 was a bomb
>
> Windows 98 SE was awesome (it was more than just an update)
>
> Windows Millenium was a bomb
>
> Windows 2000 was a bomb (though some really liked it)
>
> Windows XP was awesome
>
> Windows Vista was a major bomb!
>
> Windows 7 was awesome
>
> Windows 8 was a ............. i'm leaning towards bomb here...
>
> --
>
> Regards,
>
> Nathan England
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
> NME Computer Services http://www.nmecs.com
>
> Nathan England (nathan at nmecs.com <mailto:nathan at nmecs.com>)
>
> Systems Administration / Web Application Development
>
> Information Security Consulting
>
> (480) 559.9681
>
>
>
>
>
> On Monday, December 31, 2012 04:05:02 AM Derek Trotter wrote:
>
> I get the feeling windows 8 will turn out to be a bigger dud than vista
> or Bob. Anyone disagree?
>
> On 12/31/2012 03:39 AM, Nathan England wrote:
>
> 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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