Windows 8: how did so much suck happen?

Rat said:
To return to my usual tactic of insulting those who disagree: I suspect I have wasted, if you want to call it that, a grand total of maybe three minutes looking for things since the ribbon was introduced, and that's despite the fact that I was having to switch between 2003 and 2007 every day for three years. If you have wasted enormous amounts of time on it, then the change from toolbar to ribbon is absolutely the least of your worries in terms of your general competence. :)
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Reported.
 
Lolly said:
...snip...

Does a factory take out all of its production machines every couple of years, just because the manufacturer wants them to buy new ones? No, they upgrade when they NEED upgrading because they are worn out, or they will stop functioning, or there's a (substantive, not just marketing-speak) better way of doing things AND the cost is justified by a REASON to change. You don't just whip em out because somebody else has decided to call you a "luddite" if you don't. There is no "requirement" to keep "updating" software, any more than there is any "requirement" to keep updating your car or any other device that is functioning properly.
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Which was what the ribbon interface did for many companies and users. It simplified the workflow and increased productivity for lots of people and companies. But of course some folk and companies don't need or want or don't want to pay for the latest stuff and there is nothing stopping them from keeping their old software.
 
Rat said:
And as ever, the whole company would run so much better if it weren't for all the bloody users.
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And there you have it, in a nutshell. Perspective. IT's is different from the WP operators' is different from the accountants' is different from sales, yada yada. IT often wants to impose things on the users because they get all excited about "improvements" which will not only not make any difference to your work but will cause disruption while it's implemented. They aren't necessarily being "luddites" or "resistant to change", they just want to get on with their sodding work. :D
 
What they fail to understand is that it's for their own good.

Seriously, we impose what the company tell us to impose. That is, the company want X; the only real way to achieve X is to (for example) upgrade the Exchange server; upgrading the Exchange server necessitates upgrading clients, which realistically means the whole Office suite. The end user doesn't know (or care) about X or Exchange servers or anything; the end user just sees that the toolbar has changed in Excel and doesn't like it.
 
Rat said:
What they fail to understand is that it's for their own good.

Seriously, we impose what the company tell us to impose.
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Either you are changing things because it's necessary or it's "for their own good"... Which is it?

How does the company reach a decision to change software? Independently of any input from IT? IT doesn't get the company to agree to change the software? It's the other way about? How does "the company" know it "should" be upgrading everything?

Don't come the raw prawn with me, sonny!
 
The 'seriously' was meant to convey that the previous sentence was facetious. IT has a say, certainly, but like in a lot of companies the sequence generally goes something like:

Company: We've been told about X. It looks like the latest greatest thing, and we have to have it to keep up with the competition.
IT: Do bear in mind that to implement X will necessitate Y and Z. Also, consequences A, B, and C will occur, and responsibilities D, E, and F will fall to senior staff. X is probably not necessary for these reasons....
Company (months later): We've decided to implement X. Do all that is necessary.

Subsequently, senior staff will not do D, E, or F. A, B, and C will occur, annoying all staff. Company will ask why IT recommended that we implement X.
 
quadraginta said:
That's reassuring.

I'm sorry you had to struggle with it so much.

*******************************

Do you have some sort of personal antipathy to opinions? Do you always have cites to support every one of your own?
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No, and no.

Do you have any more questions?
 
I'm going to be messing with Windows 8 a bit now.

My father and his wife bought a small lap top to use to keep track of the books in their church library. I told them I'd install the library software and get Windows 8 to look as much like the Windows 7 they're familiar with.

So far, we're not off to a good start. I went over to pick up the laptop yesterday and noticed there was a password to login. My step mother had just turned the computer on to see what it looked like and had stepped through the initialization process and she didn't realize that she had even enabled password protection. We tried a lot of permutations of her usual passwords and nothing worked.

I got on the internet to see how to reset the password. I found a site that looked legit that talked about a method that used an apparent Microsoft weakness that allowed you to get access to a command prompt from a troubleshooting screen. Cool, except that it looked like Microsoft fixed that weakness and now I couldn't get to the command prompt without a password. So I picked the option to restart the machine from scratch. Forty five minutes or so later the machine was back to the original state and I could login. I guess microsoft thought it was just easier to completely restore the operating system from scratch rather then restore the few files that get modified during the initialization process. A bit annoying but I suppose from their perspective they want one solution that is going to work in all situations.

When I logged in, I saw what had happened. Microsoft is pushing their cloud access common login for everything idea so you have a choice between initializing the computer as a local machine or initializing it in a way that uses a password that gets you into your Microsoft cloud account. I think this is called Microsoft Essentials now and was called Microsoft Live? Anyway I could see where they were going with this but I doubt a whole lot of 80 year old women were going to be able to figure what microsoft was talking about and make the right decisions for themselves during the initialization process. Does Microsoft ever test their verbiage on people with limited computer skills?

So I managed to set up the computer to open without a password and that was going to be it for me for the evening, except shutting the thing off. I just couldn't figure out how to power it down . I was a tad embarrassed while people stood around looking at me trying to shut off the computer. Oh well. I just closed the lid. I assume that put it into some sort of sleep mode and I could figure out how to turn it off when I got home.

Besides, my routine, ranting against the ******** at Microsoft who obviously do not give a **** about older people and other people with limited computer skills that they decided to foist their BS on, I'd like to suggest this. For people like Rat who are in the IT side of things, a change that provides zero benefit might not seem all that bad if the learning curve is fairly small for themselves. But the cumulative effect of this nonsense is massive. I was an electrical engineer when IBM was riding high with a control of the PC business that looked permanently insurmountable. I watched as IBM's hubris and excessive belief in the strength of their market position led to one disastrous decision after another. Microsoft seems to have the same misplaced view that they can screw people over and there is nothing that the sheep can do but accept their crap that IBM did. I think the Xbox one rollout looks like pretty good evidence of that. It will be interesting to see if the new CEO can do anything to reverse Microsoft's high speed move to crap company land.
 
Well, I just received an email from MS reminding me that XP support ends soon. Following their links I read that "Windows 8.1 makes it easy to do all the things you're used to doing with Windows XP while opening up a whole new world of possibilities for you to explore and enjoy."

So, what's all the fuss about? :D
 
Wowbagger said:
I don't mind change.

I've outlined several ways Win8's UI was objectively worse off, in several threads, here.
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In your opinion.

I thought your defense of that opinion was pretty weak.

Whiny and nitpicky might be a better description. Like I said in several threads, it was not dissimilar to the criticisms of XP I read when it was first released.

Much crying and gnashing of teeth. Very little substance.

At this stage I wouldn't even want to go back to an earlier version. Win8 is superior in every way that is significant to me, and the differences which seem to form the core of negative reviews are so trifling as to be meaningless. In general what they have been replaced with is superior in every respect.

Start Button? Who needs it?

People who found the transition overwhelmingly confusing weren't trying very hard. All the needed information was easily available.

The more I use it the more I believe that it has unquestionably been a change for the better.

Keep up the good work, MS.
 
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