How I came to love Windows again

http://betanews.com/2013/03/05/how-i-came-to-love-windows-again/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed+-+bn+-+Betanews+Full+Content+Feed+-+BN

by petrel • 13 years ago

72 82 13 years ago

betanews.com

rkalla• 13 years ago

This piece is written a little... enthusiastically. That said, I would completely agree that the "Ah-ha!" moment for me with Windows 8 was when I tried it out on a touch-screen enabled laptop (something from Acer at Costco).

Suddenly the horrible "tiles" dashboard brought up by the Windows key made much more sense to me, was more fluid than I anticipated and after about 10 mins playing on the laptop I walked away feeling "Yep, this is exactly how a laptop should be."

I was really surprised. Found it instantly intuitive and a faster way to navigate my way around the computer.

There are also a slew of more advanced keyboard shortcuts in Win8 as well that make me happy that Microsoft hasn't forgotten about keyboard-driven folks.

I know there is a lot of Win8 hate going around, but so far, I think it was a good move. Very curious how Blue Sky (8.next codename?) turns out though.

meaty6• 13 years ago

Same thing, but I dislike Windows 8 in the same way I hated the bad bits of vista. I'll live with it if my ThinkPad dies big time though. The concept is really good but the execution is a bit clunky.

I'm quite happy with the tiles concept. In fact I'm typing this on a Lumia 820...

Windows Blue I imagine will iron out these issues. I have some hopes that it will be the next windows 7.

jamieb• 13 years ago

And then I plug it into my 24" monitor and put the laptop on a stand. Bzzzt. Mind fuck. Motor cortex confused. "fluid" operations when the laptop was on my lap suddenly difficult, even painful with my deltoid injury. The keyboard is under my hands, the laptop screen in fact too far to touch without doing sit-ups.

Windows 8 is a broken frankenstein. It fundamentally does not work for anything other than a laptop-on-your-lap. The rest of us are impeded, annoyed or even physically injured by it.

Apple nailed it. Here's your tablet OS. Here's your laptop/desktop OS. Result: my house now has more Apple devices than all the Windows devices I've ever owned.

hackmiester• 13 years ago

What's to stop you from using the desktop view and navigating the start menu with the keyboard if you need to (although I rarely need the start menu)?

dntrkv• 13 years ago

When you plug it into your 24" monitor, use it like you would Windows 7. All the keyboard short-cuts are there, you can press Windows Key + Type in anything you want to run and press enter or you can switch to desktop mode.

I really don't understand all this Windows 8 hate. I switched to using Mac-only (due to my new job) about 7 months ago and when I first tried using Windows 8, it took about 5 minutes before I found everything I needed.

If you are a beginner-user, Windows 8 is even easier since you probably just use Office + Internet Explorer which are right there in front of you in big tiles.

Intermediate-users can switch to desktop mode if they need.

Power-users can work even faster since now there are more keyboard shortcuts and that same desktop mode is there if you really want it.

Can you explain what prevents you from using Windows 8 like you would use Windows 7?

dexen• 13 years ago

Strangely enough, Adblock Plus failed to filter this press-release-cum-review.

josefresco• 13 years ago

The article was pretty good, but this bothered me: "For most of February". A time frame too short for me to make any conclusions about an OS.

A few weeks is usually how long I will use a "gee-wiz" feature of an OS/app/software until I turn off the unnecessary glitz (that's probably now choking my hardware) and get down to business.

pungoyal• 13 years ago

Not convincing enough. I am staying clear of anything Microsoft.

underwater• 13 years ago

I've had a Surface RT for a few months now and the experience has been disappointing. The tablet feels slower and much less polished than the three year old, cheaper, Windows Phone 7 device I have lying around.

Maybe Windows 8 works great on the Pro, but I feel like Microsoft did a bait and switch by promoting RT like they did.

meaty6• 13 years ago

Agree with this. Surface RT is painful. Especially office.

Maarten88• 13 years ago

I'm quite happy with my Surface RT. I use it every day, mostly for browsing and watching video. I agree with the article that Metro-IE10 is very very good on the Surface in tablet mode. Good apps are coming slowly.

But Word, Excel and even PowerPoint are too much for it. Only good for reading. OneNote is very usable on Surface RT though, I do use that to take notes during meetings.

The Windows Mail app also sucks, and on RT you cant install Outlook.

Aardwolf• 13 years ago

I will not love Windows anymore unless they show file extensions by default, allow scrolling areas without click to give it focus first, allow changing the volume by using the scrollwheel over the speaker tray icon, don't have such a small limit for amount of characters in the command line, have incremental history in the command line, and other things like that.

I'm not their target user.

meaty6• 13 years ago

Seriously you can turn all that on if you want. My keyboard has a volume control.

And use PowerShell ISE as your command line.

Zigurd2• 13 years ago

Imagine the conversation at Apple or Google:

"We can bring a tablet to market that has file extensions in the user's face, and a command line, and part of the UI needs a pointing device."

"lolwut? You're serious? Get out of here!"

Microsoft is still dragging too much untablety legacy tail to make a successful tablet.

Courier was the right idea. Windows everywhere isn't. The result wll be a rearguard that only slightly slows the decline of the PC by dressing it up as a tablet, and leaves Microsoft without a competitive tablet product. You can see this in sharp relief in the market failure of the ARM-based, neither-fish-nor-fowl Surface.

XorNot• 13 years ago

The PC has been in alleged decline for 15 years now. The reality is its not going anywhere, other complementary technologies are simply rising to the same level of penetration.

Tablets are not replacements for a full computing environment, and never will be.

Roboprog3• 13 years ago

I'm glad that I can get a terminal to play with on my Android phone, though, to peer behind the curtain when I want to.

nnq• 13 years ago

5min to enable all that (and use this for the mouse wheel thingy if you don't have a fancy mouse driver with a zillion options config panel: http://antibody-software.com/web/software/software/wizmouse-...). The only UI that is more eye-candy-loving-power-user friendly than Windows' is KDE, but it's always buggy as hell, all versions on all systems.

illuminate• 13 years ago

"allow changing the volume by using the scrollwheel over the speaker tray icon"

Left-click the same icon, then use the scrollwheel?

wes-exp• 13 years ago

Coming from a site that has an atrocious mobile web interface, not even worth the read.

People come back to love their abusive spouses too. Doesn't make it right :)

ghshephard7• 13 years ago

Things hold me back from "loving" windows (I say this as a continuing daily user of Windows for 18+ years) as my primary system instead of my MacBook Air.

  o Add a half decent gcc/bash/posix tool chain (something built in, not cygwin)
  o Include a decent terminal/ssh client.
  o License apple's touch pad

They've got a lot of things going for them:

  o Better Games 
  o The new tablet/wacom SurfacePro blows away anything apple 
    offers for stylus digitization on the iPad.

Microsoft has a chance here - they just have to keep pushing.

rschmitty• 13 years ago

Agree on your 2nd & 3rd bullets, but I would have so very little faith in the 1st happening with any good success

What drove me to mac was the little bugs here and there when trying to do things with cygwin

What drove me to linux (both ubuntu and debian) was the little bugs here and there when trying to do things with ports/brew

I'm back on windows now (because the linux desktop is just lagging behind in areas) only I'm using a VM to run linux shell. Now I get all the nice gui but can still run shell with no hiccups. (I could have gone back to mac and done VM too, but I just prefer windows)

ghshephard7• 13 years ago

Indeed - I always have at least one Linux VM running on my Windows Workstation. I found, that when I really want the nice posix tool chain, that was a more satisfactory approach than futzing with cygwin all the time. Perhaps that should be my long term windows solution - thanks.

Stratoscope• 13 years ago

> Include a decent terminal/ssh client.

It's a commercial product, but I've used SecureCRT for many years, and it is very nice. It would be great if a decent ssh client were included with Windows, but I don't mind paying for software like this - it pays for itself many times over.

http://www.vandyke.com/products/securecrt/index.html

alexkus3• 13 years ago

PuTTY is free.

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/

mariusmg• 13 years ago

For Windows the only terminal which matters is ConEmu. SSH clients like Putty are good enough.

baby3• 13 years ago

Microsoft is full of talented developers, why have they not added all those things that make people switch to a UNIX system yet?

jfb• 13 years ago

The number of people who might switch from OS X to a mooted Windows with a POSIXy toolchain is approximately zero. Engineering time and energy are not free.

InvisibleCities• 13 years ago

Microsoft is an organization made up of many of the smartest, most creative developers on Earth that has been completely hobbled by organizational bureaucracy and office politics. Microsoft stifles more good ideas in one year than most companies have in a decade.

astrodust3• 13 years ago

Would you want Ballmer flipping your desk out the window because you dared to dilute the purity of the Windows ecosystem with UNIX?

Thus, PowerShell instead of something like bash.

ygra• 13 years ago

Last time I looked the vast majority of Windows users don't need the console (or even a terminal emulator) and don't tend to compile software themselves or use large parts of the usual UNIX tools. So there are very few users who migrate away from Windows due to that and thus very little incentive to invest a significant amount of effort and money in that.

Then there is the point that Windows is very different from UNIX (even though you can support POSIX as an API layer alongside Win32). As Jeffrey Snover (one of the architects of PowerShell) once put it: They thought about that but noticed that UNIX tools won't help any Windows sysadmin as they are good tools to work with a UNIX system that's mostly based around text files scattered throughout the file system. But they don't work so well in managing Windows which is more centered around the registry and other mechanisms.

wolfgke• 13 years ago

Concerning gcc: Visual Studio 2012 Express can be downloaded for free on the Microsoft website (OK, you have to pay if you want to use the Professional edition; but since version 2012 the Express version is far less limited than the older versions). Linux/OS X lovers will hate me, but I prefer Visual Studio over the gcc toolchain (I personally miss something similar on Linux).

Concerning bash: Windows also offers PowerShell (depending on version of Windows either included or can be downloaded for free on the Microsoft website). Many convinced command-line users admit that PowerShell is better thought-out than bash or other Unix shells. Microsoft says for most things on Windows it is better to use the GUI, but if you really need or prefer a command-line shell, we offer PowerShell for free.

ghshephard7• 13 years ago

I'm almost 100% certain that anything properly designed these days will be better thought out than bash - but, 20+ years of bash knowledge in my fingertips is hard to say goodbye to.

If I was starting out now on windows - I'd spend the next 2 to 3 years training my fingers on powershell (there is a difference between book knowledge, and instinctive "finger" knowledge), and I'm sure it would serve me well. But now, I just want to leverage my existing knowledge.

And yes, I realize that makes me a relic.

With regards to "it is better to use the GUI" - scripting configuration of dozens (hundreds?) of remote servers through the GUI is probably possible, but not something I would look forward to. Once again, old habits die hard, and having 30-40 ssh sessions open to various environments is like a good fitting shoe - it's just comfortable.

lucisferre• 13 years ago

I had high hopes for Windows 8 and honestly believed the hybrid experience of desktop and tiles wouldn't be all that bad. What I fool am I. Since spending more time with it I can't believe just how frustrating the experience of constantly needing to switch between the two is.

To add insult to this injury is how badly thought out so many of the little details of Windows 8 seem to be. From creating your user account (forced to choose a password hint?) to using the system search everything feels clunky and always involved an unnecessary extra step.

I will agree that the only thing that does feel decent and well thought out is the touch experience. After trying it out on a surface if you simply use the tiles and IE10 the experience is actually quite fluid and nice. However the problem remains, Windows 8 is still meant to be the next major version of Windows and not just some tablet OS. On a desktop (even a touch desktop) and in the hands of a power user it's an abject failure.

SAHChandler• 13 years ago

> (forced to choose password hint?)

I haven't used Windows 8, but on Windows 7, when creating a user account I was required to create a password hint and could simply enter a space.

tehwalrus• 13 years ago

I favour "hah, nice try."

z3phyr• 13 years ago

Yeah, with the users point of view, 8 is stunning!!!

But what about the developers and power users? Think about those AAA game development studios, Large budget software houses? Will they develop high end software by touch?

This will sound a little off-topic, but I would like to bring this to notice, anyway... -- GNOME 3 --

Yes, the open source community made a similar move like metro some days ago... And to be honest, I will not like to use a touch based UI for development until someone forces me with iron fists!!!

k-mcgrady• 13 years ago

Have you used Windows 8? You don't need to use a touch UI for development. Devs use Visual Studio which works exactly the same way it has for the last 10 years.

liotier• 13 years ago

Microsoft may be bringing innovative UI to the market. They may even have a technically mature infrastructure. But how are they going to regain the trust they lost by breaking API and promises time after time in the last twenty years ?

Roboprog3• 13 years ago

I love the quote in the article about the 90s being the dark ages of personal computing. What happened in the 90s? Oh, yes, Windows 3.x and Windows 9x.

For some of us, though, it was an age of enlightenment, having to work on various unices and then picked up Linux at home. (I started work in the 80s on MS-DOS & Novell environments)

What I have found the last 2 years or so is not that Linux is so awesome, but that Windows is, by itself, simply really bad. Having picked up iOS, MacOS and Android devices recently, they all work pretty well. Windows simply sits by itself in being a remarkably sluggish turd that cannot decide what it wants to look like. Of course, I have not actually had to use Windows 8 yet, but 7 was bad enough of a WTF U/I change (and slow as ever, with klugy programming environment).

RANT ENDS.

jackalope• 13 years ago

I haven't tried Windows 8 on a desktop, yet (I couldn't get the consumer preview to work on any of my machines or in a VM). But I did switch from an Android to a WP8 phone and couldn't be happier. In that form factor, WP8 is exactly what I want and the UI is really well designed. I haven't used Windows since XP (and keep an XP VM for any work that requires Windows), but I'm actually quite interested in trying out a touch-enabled Windows 8 laptop based on the positive experience with my phone.

Edit: I should add that my main environment is Linux running dwm in monocle mode on a 17" MacBook Pro. Noone could be more surprised than me that I would be intrigued by a new UI coming from Microsoft.

yuhong• 13 years ago

Ah, the MS OS/2 2.0 fiasco: http://yuhongbao.blogspot.ca/2012/12/about-ms-os2-20-fiasco-...

meaty6• 13 years ago

Are you serious?

I wrote an x86 NT utility back in 1996 on NT4 (with no service packs). It still executes and works perfectly on an x64 Windows 8 machine.

That's a mere 17 years ago.

There are two APIs now. The old one isn't going away either.

AnthonyMouse3• 13 years ago

I don't think the OP was talking about breaking backward compatibility with Win32. More like releasing a version of "Java" that produced bytecode that wouldn't run on anything but Microsoft's virtual machine. Or just the general and continuing behavior of Microsoft's developer tools to produce and encourage developers to write software that only runs or runs properly on Windows.

rayiner• 13 years ago

So I got a Surface RT recently, and as someone who hasn't used Windows since XP came out, I came away pretty impressed. I think the weakest aspect of the Windows experience has always been the hardware that it runs on, and Surface gives us glimpses of what Microsoft can do when it keeps the OEM's at arms-length.

It's a deeply flawed product in a lot of ways. I don't know why Google can make a $300 Nexus 4 with Quad-Core Snapdragon + Adreno 320 graphics and 320 ppi display, while Surface RT at $500 comes with an aging Tegra 3 and 150 ppi display. And contrary to what all the apologists on the internet were saying, you miss that extra measure of power when you see simple animations drop frames or when you realize you just don't have enough horizontal pixels to comfortably view a pdf while holding the device in portrait mode (the Surface Pro's screen is a huge step up in that regard). Windows 8 isn't fully baked yet. It doesn't have the reassuring visual solidity of iOS, which comes from a painstaking attention to avoiding redraw flicker. The apps in the Microsoft Store, with the exception of some great ones like the Netflix app or Fotor, are of almost uniformly shitty quality. The gestures are well-implemented, but so undiscoverable I'd never give a Win 8 machine to my mother... There are instances of the "old Microsoft" peeking through--things that make you go "did anyone even use this?" For example, the background level of the headphone amp is very noisy. It's not a problem for music, but if you're listening for the keypress feedback, you hear the background hiss come on and off as Windows turns off the sound-card between bouts of typing.

All that out of the way, it's the first non-Apple devices that I've actually found charming. From the magnesium case to the felt of the type/touch covers, it feels like a device that's worth $500. It looks nothing like an iPad but it manages to look great. It's something you want to touch and turn around in your hands and the PC OEM's have never been able to bring that to the Windows ecosystem. Once you figure out how the gestures work, they are efficient and fluid to use. At least as long as you stay in Metro (and ignore the desktop bolted onto the side like some weird monstrosity), the UI looks coherent. It looks like someone actually designed it, instead of having a bunch of engineers do whatever the hell they wanted.

I'm not surprised it's not selling well--I wouldn't recommend one to anyone unless they have very specific needs, but at the same time I'm actually excited to see what the next iteration looks like. I haven't been able to say that for a non-Apple product in years.

pmikesell• 13 years ago

This whole article was gushing over how beautiful and modern his experience was, but the one and only actual example he uses of it actually doing something for him was that it found printer drivers. This was written like a fashion article.

Kluny3• 13 years ago

Without intending any disrespect to elderly British homosexuals, I read the whole article in the voice of an elderly British homosexual. One who is easily impressed.

Rudism• 13 years ago

How I came to love Windows 8 involved installing ClassicShell to bring back my start menu and disable all of the cray Metro stuff entirely.

S_A_P• 13 years ago

I have been using windows 8 on my MacBook and frankly, I hate the work flow. I can, however, see how a tablet form factor would suit the os nicely. For most things I use windows for(visual studio, ssms, file manipulation and some occasional web dev) the context switch DRIVES ME BANANAS! I often start new processes with cmd + r and it seems win 8 doesn't like my timing because half the time I get a run dialog and the other half I get the metro screen of reduced productivity.

Some other complaints about win 8- the metro apps all seem to take FOREVER to launch. You get this giant c64esque splash screen for 10-15 seconds. Feels confining to me. The task switching needs improvement. Wish I could see a screen of all my running apps and click the one I need. Anyone that can provide advice would be owed a beer.

baby3• 13 years ago

I just bought a Lumia 620 and the tiles system is just that good. I do miss the possibility of Android (widgets and number of apps) but I really really dig where Microsoft is going lately. Metro looks great, their last products (Bing, Office, Internet Explorer, Surface...) do too. I'm waiting for their new Xbox announcement but I really feel like they're getting back into the game.

I'll still be a bit skeptical on the Windows 8 until I try it myself. But as we always say, better skip a version every two windows.

EDIT: I almost forgot what they did with the kinnect those past years.

blt• 13 years ago

I think this overuse of italics is almost as annoying as the post with every other word bold from a few days ago.

calinet6• 13 years ago

Honestly, an article a day about "hallelujah, Windows is back"—Good job on the covert social marketing Microsoft.

ibudiallo• 13 years ago

Although it is nice to see people are using Windows 8 and like it, these articles do not bring anything to the table.

I remember the first time I figured out Windows xp, Windows 7, fedora , ubuntu , mac OS 10 , yes I was very excited for each occasion. But it was not worth an article . Every OS is useful for some needs so let's move on.

Bud• 13 years ago

What I notice is, although the author compares the gloriousness of Win8 to various other products, he takes very special care to not mention iOS or a single Apple product. Not once.

itsbits• 13 years ago

well there are Windows 8 users!!!!..the main feature as a web developer i like in Windows8 is its native support to JavaScript...wen i get free the next task is to make some JS apps for Windows8..also i got to know that UbuntuOS and FireFoxOS does give JS as native support...and hopefully in future they together improve HTML5 support than their own API in JS..

bitwize• 13 years ago

It reads like a testimonial for a questionable health product.

I have difficulty believing that anyone can wax so rhapsodic about Windows 8's UI. It's so clunky and frustrating that the best you can expect to be is "resigned to your fate".

Me, I couldn't wait to scrap that shit off and load me some Slackware.

mal3x4u• 13 years ago

dude.. go to ubuntu or mountain lion and then write another article...

I don't like windows because:

1. I don't have terminal 2. I can't configure it easily 3. I don't like to have lots of things in taskbar 4. I want multi-workspace and easy to switch between them 5. I want more fullscreen stuff.. 6. filesystem built not ok! viruses in windows are a big threat! I don't want antivirus

How I came to love Windows again

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