http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/06 ... rd_action/
Windows 8 is going down like a bucket of cold sick - but you're going to have to get used to it. It's not going away. If Microsoft has a future, this is it. Worse still, if you're a pro, you're going to have to support the thing.
Microsoft had to make this desperate, poorly integrated attempt to foist a Version 1.0 touchscreen UI on us, and do it now, even though nobody wanted it and Windows is primarily a desktop/notebook OS - precisely the type of systems for which Windows 8's touchscreen-oriented Metro Modern UI is suboptimal.
As for 8.1, it's a minor tweak - there's a Start button again, but no Start menu: the button just opens the Start page. There's an additional tile size; you can go straight to the widgetless "All Apps" view; you can keep your desktop backdrop behind the tiles; you can bypass the Start screen and go straight to the desktop on login. Feature-wise, that is it.
Why? Because the PC is dying. The next disruptive innovation is here, and it's the fondleslab. They're smaller, lighter, cheaper and simpler - but more to the point, non-techies prefer them. As a result, the decline of the PC market is accelerating - it's pushing 15 per cent a year and notebooks have joined in too.
In fact, the only category of personal computing devices that are doing well are fondleslabs and Chromebooks. Although much of the IT business doesn't yet accept it, touchscreen phones and tablets are going to replace the personal computer as we've known it for the last 35 years.
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it's why Windows 8 looks like it does, with a (slightly clunky) version of the touch interface pioneered on the Zune media players and refined on Windows Phone. Microsoft aims for the future. Windows 8 is version 1.0 of its OS for the late twenty-teens. Microsoft's management knows that it must get a stake in the new territory of touch interfaces, fondleslabs and app stores, or it will be left behind, a fading technological irrelevance. The future is small, battery-powered and keyboardless.
Yes, it's less powerful, more imprecise, slower and all the rest, but that's exactly what the text-mode fans complained 25 years ago as GUIs came in. Even in their prime and selling millions, the Mac, Amiga and ST were derided as toys by the professional, business market - until it caved in to the inevitable in the early 1990s. Only serious weirdos eschew GUIs today. The same is happening all over again, right now, but memories are short in this business.
It won't be mandatory - command lines are still around today, but most people never use them. If you're a touch-hater, there will still be keyboards and pointing devices. WIMP desktops will stick around - but mainly on FOSS systems; the mainstream will leave them behind.
In a decade, computer users won't be adjusting windows with a mouse while a box on the floor hums at them. Steve Ballmer knew this. He successfully defended his market, while also looking to the future and copying his rivals' best moves. It was a bravura performance, but it wasn't good enough and it cost him his job.
As the next five billion come online, they'll be stroking glass - and so will you.
), but Windows 7 64-bit works so well on my workstation -- dare I say "perfectly" -- that I really don't see any point in upgrading.
is on my Daughter's laptop and also the Family laptop, I find it horrible to use and struggle to navigate my way around with it. I think Windows 7 is spot on and suits my wants/needs in an OS. If there was a way to make Windows 8 look like Windows 7 and function in the same easy to use manner then I would give it a try. Otherwise I'm sticking just like I did with XP
