Windows 8 do we want it? Do we even need it?

Thanks for clearing that up I did first think that this meant X360 games running on PC. Now that would get me to look into upgrading. What will Microsofts trick be this generation to make me upgrade? Last time it was DirectX 11. If its only Xbox live then I think most of us could probably go without.

My other question is whether or not this allows PC players to play something like COD with Xbox players. I imagine the so-called Xbox elite would be slaughtered by fairly average PCers.

 

or could just amount to a rebranding of GFW live

 

x

 

If it's anything like Vista, it'll probably change significantly. I was able to try Longhorn (beta version of Vista) like a year before Vista came out, and it changed radically. If you can believe it, it was actually worse to begin with.

 

And you won't be getting "apps" it's just a buzz word. All they've done is repackaged existing programs with a fancy icon and a new way of accessing them.

People said the same shit about Lion "I don't want my Mac to turn into an iPad" it was never going to, the Appstore is just an integrated online program store and launchpad is just a fancy way of displaying short cuts which doesn't have to be used. This new GUI that Microsoft is rolling out is in all likelihood a response to the "i" generation.

One thing MS have to be really careful of is not fucking with the core appearance/functionality. It confuses lay people beyond words. One example which caught me off guard was when they brought out Vista, they changed the name of "add/remove programs" to something else entirely in control panel. It's a simple thing but taking away what people are familiar with can have drastic consequences.

I'm a Mac user and I can go as far back as Puma and just be as familiar with it as I am with Lion now. People bitched and moaned at Lion being an upgrade and therefore not worth the hype, but in my belief apple are firmly sticking with the "if it ain't broke" attitude, but throwing in "here's a few features you might like, although you don't have to use them."

I do love my Apple products but I'm not part of the MS vs Apple war. I couldn't give a fuck what OS people use, however IMO Microsoft are losing the plot. It's like they've got a design team consisting of 6 people and every two years somebody gets a chance for the public to see their version no matter how out-there it may be.. There's no consistency at all in Windows.

 

So we are turning our computer to mobile operating system? thanks but no i just stick to Win7

 

Because that is most likely what will happen, as large/expensive features sometimes become default so that the development becomes "justified". There were plenty of optional things in Vista that became permanent in Windows 7 that many people don't like (loss of the classic Start menu for instance). Cleartype is another good example of things being "forced down our throats" that are poorly thought out (my opinion) and highly despised (fact).

 

I like clear type!

 

Windows 8 has a 'normal windows GUI' mode, which makes it exactly like Windows 7.

 

Then you have poor eyesight, in my opinion.

 

It was specified that you can switch between the "tablet/touch layout" mode and classic layout mode on the go.

NO WORRIES HERE.

 

There are quite a few actually. I'm one of them. I didn't really like Windows 7 very much. I'll have to change over soon though.

 

I have perfect eye sight. I just like it! Not that I use it anymore of course unless OS X does something similar that I'm not aware of.

 

M$ is going to ARM because every OEM out there is

Even apple seems to be considering to move to ARM since intel chips are too expensive while you can buy a license from arm holdings and make your own chips (which they do, see the A4 and A5)

I liked the idea of the metro dashboard until they pulled the apple shit: dont know if ya heard this but IE10 on metro CANT RUN FLASH, just like the ipad they're keeping flash out so they can save on the battery.

And it gets worst: apparently IE10 has no plugins at all, and ITS THE ONLY BROWSER AVAILABLE WHEN RUNNING ON METRO:banghead:

Guess I'm moving to Ubuntu, permanently

Dual-boot is your friend: I got a custom win7 install for games and a separated install of Ubuntu with Wine for everything else.

The W7 install is crystal clean and tuned to get the most out of my rig, while the ubuntu install is pretty much bulletproof and never fails

 

The thing with vista, I often compare it to dell. Fantastic at anything above casual user level.

Too many took vista and when it wouldn't work well on 2gb of ram acer shit boxes decided that it was a hunk of shit.

I got vista originally because it was unused and ridiculously cheap (old OEM type) but ditched it when it struggled to run a fair bit of old software I needed.

 

I'm really looking forward to this.

Hopefully we won't have to download those basic programs we all start downloading immediately after a clean install.

I also hope other web browsers follow in the footsteps of IE9, with GPU enhanced graphics.

 

That's the most orgasmic news I've heard in a while. You mean the new XBOX will run a Metro UI capable of acting in tandem with a TV like a wall-mounted iPad? Kinect and everything?

 

For now. The idea of Metro is not only to look nice and be touch-friendly, but to make an interface which can be really easy to program for. From what I've seen you can make metro apps (or metro interfaces for bigger programs) in a huge array of languages, even if you don't have a lot of programming experience. This means that for the moment Windows 8 gets shipped, there'll be a lot of Metro-ready apps and programs, probably including all common web browsers.

Back to the topic, I've tried the Windows 8 developer preview (I'm using it right now) and in my opinion it's a great OS with huge improvements in speed and resource handling (it feels way smoother and is REALLY faster than W7), but the integration between Metro and the classic interface feels weird and uncomfortable. It feels like it's an extremely powerful and flexible interface that needs A LOT of work.
For example, the Start menu was completely removed and looking for a program can't be more confusing. If it took me a while to find out where standard Windows components like Wordpad or Paint are, for a beginner (which probably will be lost enough) can be a nightmare.

 

All my old everything better still work with it