Windows 8: how did so much suck happen?

Brian-M said:
I gave up on Windows ages ago. There are other operating systems available if you don't like it.

It doesn't even have to cost you any money to check out the alternatives. I went the free route and tried out several different versions of Linux and BSD until I found one I liked. I'm now running Xubuntu on my desktop. You can download it for free here if you're interested.

(Just make sure to backup your important files before installing a new OS, to be on the safe side.)
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You forgot the caveat there: Many programs don't work on these systems.
 
Here's a theory I heard (I'm no tech guy BTW).

One of the big problems MS is facing is relatively empty app store.
One of MS's big strenghts is it's power in the corporate desktop/laptop market.

By integrating the touch interface with the PC software, they forced third party software developers to make their software usable in a touch-screen environment.

I have little experience with the OS, but it was a bit clumsy when I tried it out.
A programmer I know couldn't figure out how to turn the system off. She actually had to Google it.

I understand that when you leave the touch-screen environment, it basically works as it used to?
 
Charlie Wilkes said:
You can tweak it and get it to the point where it is as serviceable as XP. But, yeah, you have to deal with a lot of nuisance changes that have no value. It's Microsoft.
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And this is the real point.

I expect a new OS to work "out of the box" exactly like my old OS. I expect everything in the same place as it was before. I expect ALL the software I have on my current OS to transfer seamlessly to the new OS and work exactly the same way as it did before. I don't expect to have to search for common items or run the mouse up against the corner of a screen to find stuff that used to be plain sight.

Steve Ballmer has even admitted that Vista was his biggest mistake. I wonder how long it will be before he admits the same about Windows 8.


And folks, the START menu is likely on it way back in Windows "8.2"

http://www.winbeta.org/news/start-menu-could-return-windows-thresholds-release-windows-81-be-updated

http://winsupersite.com/windows-8/further-changes-coming-windows-threshold

If this really happens, then that is a clear admission from Microsoft that they have blundered. They have folded to user demands.
 
Travis said:
I just got a new computer. As is to be expected it came with Windows 8.

And boy do I hate it.

I mean my reaction can be summed up as: why did they change this? Why did they do that? Have they not heard of multitasking? Did they think everyone just loved the clunky interfaces of smart phones? Who possibly thought any of this was a good idea?


So many things I used to do on Vista (itself notorious for being clunky) are now harder. How did this happen?
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Make sure to upgrade to 8.1 It's a bit friendlier.
 
Eddie Dane said:
I have little experience with the OS, but it was a bit clumsy when I tried it out.
A programmer I know couldn't figure out how to turn the system off. She actually had to Google it.

I understand that when you leave the touch-screen environment, it basically works as it used to?
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Yes. It's pretty complicated to do though. You click Desktop. :cool:

In Windows 8.1, right click the taskbar for properties, then Navigation and you can set it to start at the Desktop instead of Start Screen.
 
Biggest problem from my perspective is that W7 actually works and works well.

Why fix it?

They should have just changed the user shell in W7 to know when it's on a tablet or phone and act accordingly, and then sold it as Windows 7.5. Then people wouldn't be afraid of it, and though you won't get hoards of upgrader sales with an approach like that, I bet they would have shifted more units off the shelves anyway.
 
Windows 7 was good, so the next release had to be bad. This is the normal Windows release cycle.
 
smartcooky said:
And this is the real point.

I expect a new OS to work "out of the box" exactly like my old OS. I expect everything in the same place as it was before. I expect ALL the software I have on my current OS to transfer seamlessly to the new OS and work exactly the same way as it did before. I don't expect to have to search for common items or run the mouse up against the corner of a screen to find stuff that used to be plain sight.


...snip...
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I bet you hate mice then.
 
I've been dreading the upgrade and I must confess, it's not as bad as anticipated. It's worse. :mad:

If it was possible to have section-specific sigs, my sig for Computers section would honor MS with a quote from the excellent Steely Dan tune Going Out of Business:

SD said:
Talk about your major pain and suffering
Now our self-esteem is shattered
Show the world our mighty hidey-ho face
As we go sliding down the ladder
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My IT friend claims that Win8 is not as heavy as Win7 in terms of resource usage. My old dual core Dell XPS laptop runs fine on Win8. I have not noticed any difference in performance from Win7
 
In my experience. It was quick and fast to boot and looked nice. User interface was terrible and had no logical or common sense approach to it. The finding out how to shut it down was a common one to me also. I was really looking forward to the 8.1 update until it broke my PC. Boot time was horrific and some drivers were screwed up. Finally managed to figure it out with changing drivers for some items. Spent a whole night on it. Now back to fast boot and good performance with a slightly better user interface (although still crap)

W7 was great. They screwed up with this W8.

The usual suspects will say "but it is the same underneath". That's not the point, most people dont work underneath.
 
smartcooky said:
I expect a new OS to work "out of the box" exactly like my old OS. I expect everything in the same place as it was before.
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So presumably you must have hated every previous version. No version of Windows has been exactly like the previous. As far as I can tell, the same is true of Mac OS and the major flavours of Linux.
 
Travis said:
I just got a new computer. As is to be expected it came with Windows 8.

And boy do I hate it.

I mean my reaction can be summed up as: why did they change this? Why did they do that? Have they not heard of multitasking? Did they think everyone just loved the clunky interfaces of smart phones? Who possibly thought any of this was a good idea?


So many things I used to do on Vista (itself notorious for being clunky) are now harder. How did this happen?
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You can set it to have the classic desktop, I am still on Win7 but now 3 of my coworkers like using Win8.
:)
 
Charlie Wilkes said:
You can tweak it and get it to the point where it is as serviceable as XP. But, yeah, you have to deal with a lot of nuisance changes that have no value. It's Microsoft.
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I spent quite a bit of time tweaking XP when I first started using it. I continued to tweak it over the years.

I have never started it with a stock installation of any OS that didn't require tweaking to bring it in line with my preferences. When I got my first XT clone with DOS 2.11 I had to go in with debug and patch the environment space to expand it because it was hard-coded to 256 bytes. This was plenty for most people but not enough to handle the batch files you needed to work with Fidonet well.

I never expected Win 8 to be entirely perfect for my tastes out of the box. I really don't understand anyone thinking it should be..

Perhaps your experiences are not the same as mine, but I certainly had no problem aligning Win 8 with my preferences. Less so than XP was initially if I recall correctly.
 
rickps said:
I use whatever works best for me and, right now, the OS that works best for me is Windows 8.1. No Start Menu app, no 'fixing', no 'chiding'. I haven't enjoyed an OS this much since the days of the Atari ST and Amiga machines. Does that make me a fanboy?
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Yes ... and stupid, by extension, probably.

My experience has been that if you say anything whatsoever positive about Win 8 without quickly following with a "but ..." then you are, by definition, a fanboy.

Disagreeing with anything negative gets you there too.
 
Like Skeptic_PK I say Classic Shell.

My new work laptop came with OS8

First things I did was update to 8.1 and put on Classic Shell.
 
Rat said:
So presumably you must have hated every previous version. No version of Windows has been exactly like the previous. As far as I can tell, the same is true of Mac OS and the major flavours of Linux.
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There is difference people like and accept, and difference people hate and reject.

That W8 has been so totally rejected tells me that it is the latter.
 
BenBurch said:
There is difference people like and accept, and difference people hate and reject.

That W8 has been so totally rejected tells me that it is the latter.
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If you mean 'some people', then yes, but that doesn't really change what I said, considering what I was responding to.
 
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