Windows 8 RTM and... just wow....
 

So I bought an HP Touchsmart TX2 a few years back and so far any of the touch interfaces for it have been rather non-complete. Gnome-Shell being the coolest of them so far.

So I figured I'd give Windows 8 a shot (being that it's designed for tablets/phones/touch interfaces.

And all I can say is... What a steaming pile of crap! It is the most unusable operating system I have ever used, and I use AS/400s at work. I've used Atari 8-bit DOS 1.25 way back when (anyone who has used that, knows that it sucked). I've had experience with trying to load programs from a C64, and it at least made some sense.

Windows 8 is complete garbage. In an hour of trying to figure out how to close the settings, I'm still not sure how I did it. They show this stupid animation during the install process that shows it going up into one corner, or you swipe from the side. BUT, the animation itself is wrong! It shows swiping from the right side to bring up a rather useless menu (except for the search button) but it says 'Swipe from any side' to get that menu. Well that doesn't work. You get some sort of menu bar, when you swipe from above, then you get a 'view details' button when you swipe from the bottom. And from the left side? You get.. maybe.. the application task switching? But when you drag this window from the left, you can't do anything with it but open it? Now if they had made it so it comes out and rotates around in a circle to choose which application you wanted... well that would be pretty cool.

Oh, and you HAVE to have an email account with hotmail or some other microsoft based one to even install it... not to mention that is also your LOG IN password! WTF? Then.. I installed the Solitaire Collection. Tried to play Spider and it was bugging me to log into my Xbox Live account. Guess I should go buy an Xbox, eh? I still can't find the option to change from 1 suit to 2 or 4 suits! The screen shots in the 'How to play." show that it's possible...

Anyhow, that's all for now, anyone else have some stories of this pile of poo?

slaapliedje

Re: Windows 8 RTM and... just wow....
 

Don't tell us.
Tell it to Ellop!!

Re: Windows 8 RTM and... just wow....
 

Re: Windows 8 RTM and... just wow....
 

If you have are a person who has used windows before 95,xp,vista, win7 Windows 8 becomes counter productive.

I found my self looking for things which weren't there any-more, I really felt lost and disorientated which is never nice. Once you learn it i guess it's not bad but i honestly dislike how things are done in windows 8

Re: Windows 8 RTM and... just wow....
 

http://talk.maemo.org/attachment.php...1&d=1344127628

Elop (left-hand side) ...... Ballmer (right)
Evil conquering look ....... Looks a little stunned

Re: Windows 8 RTM and... just wow....
 

Areuh-Areuh-Net already posted articles on how to survive 8 with 7 (supported for another x years...)
even on a 3960X with 32GB of 1800mhz ram, SSD RAID and SLI >¦-)

Re: Windows 8 RTM and... just wow....
 

when stupidity meets idiocy :D :rolleyes:

Re: Windows 8 RTM and... just wow....
 

It was possible to install Windows 8 previews with local account too, but if I remember correctly the skip option was not very easy to find/notice.

But yes, it really isn't that good a GUI anyway. There seems to be a rule that MS always releases a half-baked version first, and then do it right three years later with next version. Maybe Windows 9 then... ;D

Re: Windows 8 RTM and... just wow....
 

LoL, you are just amazing :) Love you fan boys. keep going...

I'm amazed you act sometimes. :eek:

Re: Windows 8 RTM and... just wow....
 

IMO it's the same everytime Windows release a new OS.
Windows "Hide and Seek" Version 8

Re: Windows 8 RTM and... just wow....
 

Well some things said are obviously too harsh. But i am just expressing my opinion. I used windows since Win95 and i just don't like the direction in which Win8 is going. Some love it and some hate it.
To each his own

Re: Windows 8 RTM and... just wow....
 

That is simply great. opinions are great and I'm not blaming anyone here, since I like pointless threads and Personal opinions and stuff. Its mostly the response that made this thread to a mess.

I'm out. I'm going to create a thread of my own about something i don't like...Big Mac's with only 4 GB :mad:

I suggest that you all create threads about stuff you dont like. That would be awesome!

and for windows 8. I like that you can switch between tablet/PC mode on Surface Pro. You need atleast one windows 8 computer/tablet in your arsernal.

Re: Windows 8 RTM and... just wow....
 

Well, I am an operating system junkie, I like to test everything out, even if it's different Linux distributions, or BSD ones.

Windows 8 just wasn't usable. One of the usability tests I always say that an operating system must pass, is that I shouldn't have to use a search engine on the Internet to try and change an OPTION. KDE3 and 4 both failed for a long time there. You couldn't just right click on the clock and change it to 12 hour mode. That was a failure, as it was buried in the languages and locales settings (or something, I always forget) they finally fixed that one though.

When I can't find a setting for changing how many suits of cards that Spider Solitaire uses? Or any options for any programs at all? That's an utter failure too.

When their crappy greeting when you're setting up the operating system fails to state "swipe from THIS side" instead of saying "swipe from ANY side" then it's an utter failure as well.

This has nothing to do with "I don't like it." but everything to do with "we're forcing this crap on people." It will be Vista all over again, and you'd think somewhere somehow would stop that from happening within Microsoft.

I have had a theory for a long time that it is Management vs Developers within Microsoft. I think Management is all scrambling for the mobile space and the developers are like 'well screw you then, we'll design this pile of crap.'

Either way, as my coworker said (I'm fighting the urge to wipe out 8 and put 7 back on it so I can show him how bad it is), "Hey, at least Microsoft is getting more people to use Linux!" Ain't that the truth.

Well, we all remember the huge uproar of when KDE 4.0 was out (they still should have just not released that and kept striving for more completion, can only partially blame KDE for that, since they did tell everyone that it wasn't complete, but the Distros didn't care..) and the huge uproar over Gnome-Shell, which I now love (and had always told people I'd wait until 3.4, but even 3.2 wasn't terrible).

Just times that by about 5,000. That'll be the uproar that is heard around the Internet when more people start getting Windows 8 computers.

Oh, fun times ahead!

slaapliedje

P.S. I need to get Nemo working on my HP Touchsmart, unfortunately when I tried the 586 version it crashed.

Re: Windows 8 RTM and... just wow....
 

Mouse to top-right, drag down, select "Settings".

Most people prefer this.

I've used the Release Preview since it came out, and I'm very happy with it. I enjoy watching you guys ***** & moan, because you're doing it in a silo. The rest of the world doesn't care; they're too busy enjoying native service integration.

Re: Windows 8 RTM and... just wow....
 

Yep, same here. I'm using it besides ubuntu and it is an improvement over previous windows systems. If not for anything else, it feels much faster and responsive. Also, if sbd can't find an option that used to be there in w95 or XP and is angry - well, this is development, things will change and users have either to learn again or stay with outdated software. Learn to new way of doing things - it may turn out to be better.

Re: Windows 8 RTM and... just wow....
 

Just wow...

http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/14/m...t-surface-199/

Re: Windows 8 RTM and... just wow....
 

I started with the local account when I installed win8 on my laptop. The problem was as soon as you try to log on to any of the windows live services, they detect that you are using win8 and the the OS forces you to go through some laborious log in process and then you lose the option to log in with a local account.

This was really annoying as it was tied in to Live and hot mail so everyone could see when you logged on to your PC z:(

Also the UEFI had locked itself directly to my hardware forcing me to perform a complete format of my laptop to get rid of it, when I tried to uninstall 8.

Re: Windows 8 RTM and... just wow....
 

Go ahead, No one is going to stop you from starting your own thread
and PLEASE, stop 'thanking' your own posts. You look like an ID-10T.

On Topic:
IMO it takes some time to familiarise with W8. But once you got to know it it's not that bad.
Closing programs wasn't a big difference for me as i always close apps with ALT+F4.
I like W8 especially because it's faster than W7. Games i installed ran very well.

Windows 8 is not what we expected but we can try to make the best of it instead of criticizing every downside.

Re: Windows 8 RTM and... just wow....
 

I think you look like same kind, if not an even bigger &@%¥# since you even care if I thank myself or not. And please, stay on topic!

you could swipe down to close applications in windows 8 simulard to n9.

Re: Windows 8 RTM and... just wow....
 

It really isn't similar to N9, since swipe down gives you a different menu then swiping up. The N9 just closes the current application, no menu needed. Most computer 'tablets' like my HP Touchsmart have a bit of dead space around the edges, so Windows 8's methods really, really suck.

I think they should just rename the product to 'Tiles 1' since they are getting rid of actual 'windows'.

slaapliedje

Re: Windows 8 RTM and... just wow....
 

Lol, nicely trolled.
I would Thank You, but you've got enough Thanks as it is ;)

Re: Windows 8 RTM and... just wow....
 

How to skip Windows 8 and continue using Windows 7
¦-)

Re: Windows 8 RTM and... just wow....
 

What that article misses is that while your applications you already have will happily keep on working on Windows 7, who is to say updated versions of that same application are going to.

Recently some friends and myself were discussing Photoshop vs The Gimp, and it became clear that Photoshop CS6 now requires OpenGL to run, even thought at it's heart, it's still a 2D program. This limits the type of hardware it'll run on, for example my little Fujitsu tablet (it's not touch screen, but works well with the stylus) won't ever be able to run the newer versions of Photoshop.

Fortunately, I use the Gimp. But still, rather a horrible way to screw over valued customers.

Windows 8 goes to a whole different level of crap. You think those people that bought Lumia phones are going to be happy that all the Windows Phone programs are going to be released for 8 and won't work on 7?

Frankly, the only reason I went with something newer than XP was because of Age of Conan, I wanted to see the DirectX 10 stuff. Which means I was forced to upgrade to Vista (which sucked bad, fortunately 7 came out shortly after I had tried out that monstrosity.)

At least on the bright side, for me the biggest reason I even use Windows at all has been games, and hopefully Valve will be able to get some pull with the developers and get everything ported over to Linux!

slaapliedje

Re: Windows 8 RTM and... just wow....
 

Microsoft is a very funny company. Media and lot of company dont like w8 and now there is rumor about windows 9 already 2013 hahahga now havent we seen this before!?

why in eArth do people never learn microsoft strategy?!?

Re: Windows 8 RTM and... just wow....
 

maybe others smoked by windows phone, but nokia is destroyed by this sh*t, :p

Re: Windows 8 RTM and... just wow....
 

Nokia destroyed itself. Nothing to do with WP.

Re: Windows 8 RTM and... just wow....
 

Probably because Microsoft are looking to emulate the upgrade cycles of current mobile operating systems and OSX. It's a good idea.

Re: Windows 8 RTM and... just wow....
 

most ppl who bought Lumiacrap did so out of curiosity; that's why after the non-upgradability was announced, prices tumbled (if not given freely away :cool:) and ""sales"" surged.
nothing to do with "commercial success"

EDIT: commercial success is when ppl are sleeping in front of the shops the last night(s) before the initial release & buy the stuff no matter the price; none of that ever happened for a m@ke$$h!t paralysed device :mad:
when ppl get the part after it was announced it won't be upgradable...

Re: Windows 8 RTM and... just wow....
 

You clearly don't remember the Windows 95 launch

Re: Windows 8 RTM and... just wow....
 

I can say I was never a part of that (I was an Atari and Amiga user, and disliked Microsoft mainly due to how much they were still playing catch up. If it weren't for the fact that Atari and Commodore sat on their awesome operating systems for so long, it'd be a completely different landscape right now. Windows 95 came out 10 years after the original Amiga and only then started to have most of the features. Dumbasses at Commodore... but I digress...)

The thing with the Windows 95 launch was that it was Microsoft's real attempt at not sucking. They haven't really done anything major as far as innovating in their operating system since, except for Windows 8. And this time around they have failed miserably.

At least they had the money to do this, as we can already see by my earlier bit in this post, if you sit on what you have for 10+ years, you're going to go no where. If there had still been some serious competition out there, MS wouldn't have survived for so long by just "ooh, now it's shiny." that they have been doing.

slaapliedje

Edit; Oh, not just money, but MASSIVE install base. All that old software that people can't do without that is Windows only.

Re: Windows 8 RTM and... just wow....
 

I do find it quite frustrating that MS are forced to Rebrand their UI again. However I would happily berate Microsoft for yet another pointless name changing exercise of their software but this time they have outside parties saying they cannot use the term "Metro UI"

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57...he-name-metro/

Bit of a bugger for MS IMO, this time they are actually trying to unify their branding and now they have to contend with this..

Re: Windows 8 RTM and... just wow....
 

It's all about MicroHard's anti competitive practices. In this case infiltration and then subversion. Killing the competing OS's, selling off patents to Vringo (which has decided to become a patent trolling company) and Mosaid so they can patent troll linux based software via proxy (put pressure on the competing OS's without actually getting their hands dirty) and if it comes down to it MS will just get up in a companies face and tell them pay or try to fight off our billions in court.
When you look at MicroHard, its former executives start companies that are trying to infiltrate linux software and add Microsoft code to it like Mono.


This move by MS, infiltrating and destroying Nokia's competing OS's and selling off patents to linux hostile patent trolls has made me anti-microsoft and I've been buying their products for years. I was there (as in that time period) as an office worker since the first windows products and I've bought PC's all the way up to the current 8 core 64 bit Windows 7 computer I have now. But now, you know what, I'm studying linux. I Just started a few days ago and plan on using linux software from now on as soon as I get it installed.

-----
“The patent danger to Mono comes from patents we know Microsoft has, on libraries which are outside the C# spec and thus not covered by any promise not to sue. In effect, Microsoft has designed in boobytraps for us.

“Indeed, every large program implements lots of ideas that are patented. Indeed, there’s no way to avoid this danger. But that’s no reason to put our head inside Microsoft’s jaws.”

–Richard Stallman
----

And check out this article about Nathan Myhrvold, the former Microsoft chief technology officer who founded “Intellectual Ventures" which is another patent trolling company. And this one too.

Re: Windows 8 RTM and... just wow....
 

Remember the failure SCO group that tried to claim property on all of Linux?
That was Microsoft backed by proxy

From:
http://www.usenix.org.uk/wiki/200906...-Linux_Lawsuit

"On the same day that CA blasted SCO, Open Source evangelist Eric Raymond revealed a leaked email from SCO's strategic consultant Mike Anderer to their management. The email details how, surprise surprise, Microsoft has arranged virtually all of SCO's financing, hiding behind intermediaries like Baystar Capital."

Re: Windows 8 RTM and... just wow....
 

Switch to linux join me
http://goodbye-microsoft.com/

Re: Windows 8 RTM and... just wow....
 

WARNING, this turned out to be pretty long rant, longer than I originally thought.

----------


Allright, so I bought an Asus Vivotab RT for my wife as a Mothers Day present. Previously I had warned her against it but she was quite sure she wanted a windows tablet. I thought it cannot be really that bad, at least HW wise Asus seemes to be pretty decent and I had prior experience on Asus Nexus7 which is a good value for a tablet.

The first impression of the thing was pretty nice, It's a solid build, feels nicely balanced on hands and the specs are OK.

On first turning it ON, however it threw a "GPF: Windows has encountered an internal error and has to shut down",
"You may need to reinstall some components".
WTF, I just turned this darn thing ON, how on earth do I reinstall it???

Well, the second time was successful, and it went to the startup routine, asking all kinds of questions and setting up the accounts.
During the end of the setup, however it gave another GPF. Luckily that was also solved with a reboot.
(When I talked to people about that, some thought that this looks fairly normal, and that maybe some people EXPECT windows to throw GPF's now and then...)

OK; I have never used the Metro UI before, and it DOES look and feel really odd first, but it's not that bad, its pretty responsive to use but I'd only expect that given the device is pretty powerful.
It takes some time to get used to but I don't think thr UI itself is evil.

So, one of the reasons she wanted windows tab, was that one popular televsion internet channel in finland, MTV3-Katsomo uses a proprietary interface that requires you to have Silverlight on your your device to watch the content, thing which bugs her as she uses an Ubuntu laptop normally. So, I figured that since it's an windows device, surely Microsoft internal protocols are implemented on it. Boy was I wrong there.

It turns out there's no Silverlight for WIN8RT, and nor is there Java. (some sites she uses have Java components...)
As far as I know either of those are not coming there, ever!

OK, lets forget Java for a minute, maybe you can install an another browser to the tablet, Chrome for instance? No way, you cannot and propably never will. You are stuck with IE forever :mad:

Actually there's some specific loophole built for Apple devices to use the MTV3-Katsomo site, and also an experimental GW for Android devices but guess what, none that works for Windows :(

My woes ended not here... She was going on a trip and wanted to have videoes for the device, to watch during the flight. I spent 2 full days trying to transcode videos from our DVB-box to a format that the poor tablet could digest... Imagine a device meant mainly for video consumption, it cannot play simple MPEG2 videos, not PES, PS, TS, nada!!
Finally managed to use some MPEG4/AVI-wrapper combination that it played, but at an ugly resolution :mad:
I tried installing alternate Video Player applications, but they are more or less useless. I tried several free ones and even 2 paid apps, but they are as clueless as the default Media Player on video formats. None of them can even recognize normal VOB from a DVD!!!

Well, sure you can BUY videos from the MS Store, right? Tried to get something for her to watch; OK, there's "Life Of Pi", prized something like £9,99 or so... Hmm, pounds, why on earth?
Turns out when she first activated the device she incorrectly selected UK as the location, and you had to create an somebody@outlook.com address to make the account...
Well, no problem, but when I try to buy the video, I am prompted to make an XBOX-Live account?? HUHUU, I already have an MS account now for the store, why do I need another?
Well, I create it and sure, it asks for my location and now I set it to "Finland". After that, I hit "Purchase" and guess, what, the bloody thing complains my location is wrong :mad:

I could not find an easy way to modify either of the accounts, it well might be you cannot change your location once you are done with account setup. So, no videos for the tablet.

Now, as I have undrerstood that WP8 is pretty much same as WIN8RT, is that really so, is the phone OS as useless, strange, crazy and cludegy as this? Are the Lumias similar to this Vivotab?
I am amazed, please tell me I have done something wrong, surely?

Re: Windows 8 RTM and... just wow....
 

Same story with location on WP7 too. I chose UK as marketplace was not available for Greece but then it didn't accept my credit card as it assumed UK. The other awful thing is that it forces your account location language even if you explicitly set it to english.

As for the video, I just read that VLC are starting a port for RT so you might have some luck there. I also heard about Metro firefox but not sure if that is going to be available on RT.

I hope you can hack it and install plasma active on it :)

Wp 8 is slightly better than Rt lol but as far as changing locations go, you can do it online through a desktop. Just log into your outlook/Ms account and change it in settings.

Your first mistake was getting an Rt tablet. I would go regular windows if possible since pretty much any app would work on it

Re: Windows 8 RTM and... just wow....
 

What I don't get is why do you need separate accounts to download applications and to download media, what's the big idea here?
It just looks like they have not thought this through, like it's some half-baked cludege. Have they made no usability studies at all?

VLC would be good, at least it can digest just about anything you throw at it. I am still struck about the MPEG2 thing... Its tha oldest thing you can have, and there's no support...

AFAIK it's locked down pretty bad, no other OS possibility there.
When my better half comes back from London the tablet's going back the way it came. Lucky I bought it off mail-order, I have 14 days to return it too get a refund.
Propably I'll try to convince her to swap it to an iPad, even tlhough I hate apple's guts. I have heard the user experience is better engineered on Apple devices.

For myself, I like something that I can tweak to make it work my way, but for her a simple device that just works is better.

One thing I did not like about the WIN tablet is that to transfer any files to it, I need to first copy the stuff to an USB stick, I cannot connect it doirectly to my PC. How is it with iPad, I think it's fairly deifficult to copy my media files there?

Using N9/N900 is so simple, I just sftp or rsync my files in and out of the device. Same method works over WLAN or over USB. Why can't everything in this world work so easily?

On another note, sometime back I argued it does not matter how fluid/smooth/whatever the UI is, if the thing undeneath is closed the overall thing is a failure.
Mind here, I am trying to set up this tablet as "user only" device, not a "developer device" and still it feels like I am anging my head against a brick wall... :mad:

Re: Windows 8 RTM and... just wow....
 

Why I wanted RT, I assumed it has better protection against viruses and malware as you cannot install anything on it outside the store.
Seems it is also protection against normal device use :mad:

Also the longer battrery life is important.

Re: Windows 8 RTM and... just wow....
 

Plex is what your after if you want afaik, the best dnla/upnp server/transcoder. The server software (win/osx/linux) is free, and the android app was a few bucks on the play store. They also have clients for windows phone os, ios, and a bunch of other devices.

Its not streaming mpeg2, since i can stream a transcoded video over a wlan to my nook color, which doesnt do that with other mpeg2 exclusive transcoding servers (twonky, UMS, PMS, etc, etc). Lots of customization as well, as far as video settings, and resolution, bitrate, etc.

Pretty well designed solution that allows me to stream any video i have, from mkv 1080p's, to avis, etc, to my nook color flawlessly. The # of devices they have client apps for is quite impressive as well.

def worth checking out if your frustrated with the all to common mpeg2 only transcoding/streaming not working on your client device.