Microsoft, It's Time To Retire Windows

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NightLight

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Good toughts and Bad toughts here. I like win 7. I do. It's the most user friendly Os I ever had. I love my explorer, my taskbar etc. I also love having control over my pc. that's why i'm not a mac user. If they "macify" windows, it will go down the wrong pipe with a lot of loyal users, this could hurt ms in the long run. On the other hand, I've come to trust them. Even if they had the odd "bad" os (not really bad, just, not right). I think there is a global need for "the next step" in computer usage. I hope I'm not the only one that thinks we should have been much further along by now, what with touchscreens, 3d interfaces, tactile inputs... all the tech available. I think ms is trying to come up with something completely new. It's hard to do that without stepping on some toes. Some will like it, others will not. Do I like the sliding and bubbly things: NO. But I doubt that we are seeing the full picture here. I hope they step up the game, and maybe pick up some lost macsheep on the way...
 

climber

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Sorry if this is a double post, but it wasn't refreshing...

This new interface, may be great for pretty little tiles, or mini-windows of icons for programs, or live feeds of video, web cams, TV shows and movies, which is great eye candy. But how the heck is someone doing CAD or Geographic Information Systems supposed to use MS Kinect supposed to be able to access all the buttons which are quick links to all the tools we use. I have a 30" monitor and hundreds of buttons that I can see and use in my GIS system all on the "ribbon bars". In this new environment, software designers would have to either just use the text menu system or to use more counter-intuitive icons (if I know the developers well enough from past experience), for the icon approach this means endless nested "gestures to get to the commands you want to do what you want. For simple software, it may be fine, but for complex software that has thousands of separate tools within it, it just is a nightmare and cardio workout just to do you daily work. I'm going down the road of total body repetitive strain injury in order to use a computer. MS Kinect I doubt will be as precise as a mouse or wacom tablet with it's high precision pointing capabilities. The day that MS Kinect will be able to tell which individual pixel we're looking at when looking at a 2560 x 1600 pixel monitor... well that's impressive. I'm not saying it's impossible, but arriving for Windows 8, not likely.
 

cadder

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I like my current interface just fine, and don't like the tiles. The tiles would be fine if everyone used the same apps for the same things, but we don't. We as users can put our own apps on the desktop, where we want them. It is up to the app writers to implement tiles or widgets for their apps, so we could easily semi-minimize an app to a small tile or icon and still see what is going on with it. But for people that don't want that, they can have the current interface.

Nothing wrong with the start menu- it gives you access to features and controls that are not used as frequently, without cluttering up the desktop.
 

jimmysmitty

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[citation][nom]gatesjr[/nom]"Windows" might not be the most accurate name for Windows 8. But then there's Apple...[/citation]

Its still Windows, just with an overlay.

As for Apple, they will see this, put it into a OSX version before MS gets 8 out and claim they had the idea first.
 

awood28211

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Let me SCREAM that I do NOT want to STAND in front of my PC. Give me a visual interface, that is one that looks at me while I look at it, that can watch and interpret hand and face movements and gestures. If I slide my hand around like a mouse, it moves the cursor like I would with a mouse. If i tap with a finger, it clicks, double tap, double clicks. Allow me to program gestures to do actions. Spreading all five fingers out to to their extent and closing into a fist might mean "save my current file" for instance. Watch my face. If i close my hand into a fist and move my head to the right, turn the page to the right.... If I spread my fingers out and double tap the desk while extended, bring up my running app list and then go back to tracking my hand like a mouse so I can select another app.... etc. etc. etc. This will entice me to adopt this technology for my desktop. I already loathe the amount of "games" for kinect that force me to stand. Can I not get a game that lets me play with JUST my hands?
 

PCGOD

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a couple people touched on it but i'm pretty sure this is just an overlay. remember, this OS will cover a wide range of devices and so whatever your particular device needs/ doesn't need, the OS will install/run accordingly. at least that's been my understanding so far.
 

gm0n3y

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They should call it Windows Tiles. Then the next version could be Windows Tiles 2 and then eventually just Tiles 3. Similar to how Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare turned into Modern Warfare 2.

I'm going to give M$ the benefit of the doubt until I try it out myself. While I'm not sure how easy gestures / touch screens will be for navigation, I can see how we are moving towards that. Soon we'll have Minority Report like interfaces.
 

raurelian

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On an unrelated note, have you heard that Codemasters` servers were hacked and user data compromised? I wonder when Toms will report this news..
 

LordConrad

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The Tiles interface should be limited to Windows Phone OS, which should be used on phones and tablets. The standard Windows OS should be kept only on PCs and laptops. There is a reason the iPad is so successful: Apple didn't cram a heavy Mac OS into a light-duty tablet.

Microsoft still hasn't learned from it's PC tablet mistakes.
 

K2N hater

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I still think the best OS ever made by MS was NT 4.0. Back when it was released MS decided it would carry minimal 16-bit/DOS compatibility for the best stability and low resource usage. A typical NT 4.0 install takes 70MB disk space (the swap file often takes several times the whole install but it can be disabled) and it works great even on PCs with 64MB RAM or lower.

They could do the same again, with a "pure" 64-bit OS with no slow legacy software or flawed services: a new OS with minimal system requeriments which fits cheap low-end PCs and the powerful enthusiast boxes.

Making such a change is not easy but it's not only viable but to my eyes it's the last chance for MS to survive Google and Apple. The media claims ARM is better but X86-64 is much more powerful in any aspect and with the dawn of Brazos and the constant improvements on Atom there's momentum for X86-64 to dominate tablets, phones and several devices alike. All they need is a good OS which runs fast, takes minimal CPU time and disk I/O.
 
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I think the reason they are going to tiles is because Microsoft has figured out that the average computer user has the intellect of a McDonald's cashier. The next time you're at McDonald's take a look at their registers, their all big buttons with pictures on it.

As for control through Kinect, it becomes really amusing when you start to imagine all the ridiculous gestures people will have to perform to do the simplest tasks. Y M C A anyone? If you really want to get a laugh watch the Ghost Recon - Future Soldier demo from the Microsoft E3 conference. To sum it up: the player was holding one arm outstretched to aim, opening his other hand to shoot (closed his hand to stop shooting), and to reload he waved his hand behind him like he was fanning away a fart.
 

pocketdrummer

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[citation][nom]thearm[/nom]I think people just have ADD. I think people just get tired of the usual start button, task bar ect... and want something new. That doesn't mean the current interface isn't intuitive, user friendly and the best solution so far. I always thought XP was the best version so far and they should just improve on that. Or rebuild XP from the ground up know what we know today.[/citation]

What do you think Win 7 was? It has the speed of XP and the looks of Vista. Not to sound excessively fanboyish, but it's the best Windows OS yet.
 

MarioJP

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You guys do realize you still have the traditional desktop right? What they are trying to do is one size fits all windows including support for ARM now. For the past history its the same moaning and griping about every release. when xp came out nobody wanted to upgrade. when vista came out even less wanted to upgrade. When I upgraded to vista I had no issues to most were claiming. But then again Did not upgrade right away either. Now windows 7 Comes out people still complain about changes. Windows 8 well history repeating itself.
 

waethorn

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Tablets can work fine in vertical positions. If you can hit a light switch on a wall, you can use a vertical tablet - it's just not easy to type on, like you do on a keyboard. Why? Because "touch-typing" (that's what they call typing with all your fingers) requires using your thumbs, which also requires that your wrists be bent, and on a vertical surface this is completely infeasible. However, single-tapping and simple gestures aren't exactly strenuous. Kinect is proof of that. Apple must think that all of it's users are limp-wristed.

I think the HTML5 shell would be awesome for server monitoring and management applications. Imagine being able to have the flexibility to custom-code something easily in HTML5 and have it set up on a tablet in a rack room to monitor your network infrastructure. A tap here or there and you can pull up reports on server usage and other IT stuff....
 

pocketdrummer

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Microsoft needs a unified operating system for all new platforms as Windows 7 just does not work on tablets very well.

NO IT DOES NOT!!! I don't know a single person who has bought a tablet, largely in part because they are next to useless for any legitimate computing needs. It's just an expensive, over-sized smartphone without the phone.

However, if they insist on making them, then they need to create a new OS optimized for those platforms. Don't dumb down the PC experience because a select few want to pay $500 for a netbook sans keyboard. I'm not a fan of Apple, but at least they understood that the iPad needs a separate OS from their laptops and "desktops".

It seems, once again, that Microsoft is behind the curve and playing catchup. Unfortunately, they don't know what they're trying to catch up to...
 
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