Newell: Win8 is a catastrophe; Pardo: I don't disagree.

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MfA said:
Up to and including PEGI 16 allows plenty of games. In a way this just makes it a bigger clusterfuck ... providing a force to downgrade rating levels for PC games. What does Microsoft care if they fracture PC gaming and make "mature" games a harder sell on it? They only see it as competition for the XBOX after all.
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I'm not entirely sure how it fractures it. Metro app. games are an entirely different class than the traditional "core" PC game. Unless we're all thinking that Bethesda, EA, Activision, UBIsoft, etc. are all going to abandon AAA game developement and start focusing on the equivalent of Browser based games, I don't see how this is going to affect gaming in any way.

At the most we may see the more casual titles on Steam move to the Metro App. store. Hell, I don't even think an indi title such as Dungeon Defenders would be able to make it into the Metro App. store. Microsoft's own Age of Empires Online can't qualify for the Metro App. store, as far as I know.

Microsoft is deliberately making Metro Apps. (including games) small and quickly downloaded. The major demographic for Metro Apps. is likely to be WP8 and slates/tablets where devices will predominantly be downloading through 3g/4g/whatever cell phone based network is available. Hence, small and lightweight apps.

That's not going to do anything to fracture PC gaming unless you think PC gaming is only about lightweight casual/browser type games.

Anything above and beyond that is going to be completely unaffected and likely still sold through Steam, retail, or other online DD vendors.

Regards,
SB
 
eastmen said:
Its been almost a year since the first preview of windows 8 hit the web. Perhaps its time to retry ? Not only has the OS seen alot of work but so have the drivers , the first pubilc test verison of win 8 i couldn't get amd's CCC to work and i had to use my brazos as a generic gpu . But now the drivers install with no problems and its much faster than windows 7.
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Ok, recently tried Win8 RTM booted from iSCSI. Some observations:
- graphic effects of metro apps are smoother than the with the public beta, but still not completely fluent. I guess a low X300 Mobility with 64MB dedicated RAM + Pentium Mobile 2 Ghz are not sufficient for this.

- Metro apps are extremely limited in functionality; their mail application misses over half the functionality that is present on outlook.com (which has a Windows8-like design). The music app cannot play to uPNP mediarenderers; WMP12 can do that.

- The Metro apps have poor user interfaces: the area where you need to right-click to access settings/preferences is different in nearly every app. Closing a Metro app by having to drag it from the top of the screen to near bottom is a real pain on big resolution screens without touch support. Clicking a small 'x' in the upper right corner is MUCH better in usability terms with mouse... Is MS actively trying to discourage closing metro apps?
 
dZeus said:
Closing a Metro app by having to drag it from the top of the screen to near bottom is a real pain on big resolution screens without touch support.
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Wut.

Who the shit came up with that stupid idea? It's like MS *wants* people to hate using metro on a proper computer. This particular issue is new to me, but what I heard about in the past was problems multiscreen users were having with metro apps that apparantly required interacting with the corners of the screen (which is as anyone experienced understands, sometimes a bit problematic with desktops spanning multiple monitors.)

I'm thinking the same guy who designed the IE9 piece of crap UI was also assigned to develop the metro UI. They both seem to be infested with the same genius-level of incompetence.
 
Grall said:
I'm thinking the same guy who designed the IE9 piece of crap UI was also assigned to develop the metro UI. They both seem to be infested with the same genius-level of incompetence.
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Metro is really glossy and polished to look at, and probably is great on things like tablets and phones with touchscreens, but it's awful for usability on the desktop, and really has no business being there.

It's like someone taking the steering wheel off your car and replacing it with a selection of nice glossy buttons to make you go left and right - yeah, it kind of works, but it's crap to use.
 
Bouncing Zabaglione Bros. said:
Metro is really glossy and polished to look at, and probably is great on things like tablets and phones with touchscreens, but it's awful for usability on the desktop, and really has no business being there.

It's like someone taking the steering wheel off your car and replacing it with a selection of nice glossy buttons to make you go left and right - yeah, it kind of works, but it's crap to use.
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works faster for me than the old start menu. Of course i'm using 3 monitors
 
In a perhaps not entirely on-topic query (but not really worth starting its own thread about); will MS actually release IE10 for win7 or not? I've not heard a PEEP for ages about it.
 
UniversalTruth said:
Windows 8 not likely to restart ailing PC market

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9232959/Windows_8_not_likely_to_restart_ailing_PC_market

Windows 8 in the enterprise? Not next year, says Gartner

http://www.computerworld.com/s/arti..._in_the_enterprise_Not_next_year_says_Gartner



Yup, if there is a reason. Of course you can't love or be neutral to anything which irritates you or you think it is rubbish... ;)
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Crucially:
That does not mean Windows 8 is already on the ropes, even before it is officially introduced at an event in New York on Thursday. Large enterprises rarely move quickly to new Microsoft operating systems. Applications have to be tested on them, and some users believe in waiting for the release of the first service pack before considering an upgrade.
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I.e. business as usual. The important thing for Microsoft is to show the advantage of a Windows 8 tablet and phone, and then bring it home with the full eco-system. If they can get that to look convincing by 2014, businesses will upgrade 'en masse', especially if they don't make upgrading too expensive (that can be really prohibitive, but they don't need to do that this time, as the advantages for Microsoft to get people to move to Windows 8 are much bigger than they used to be, with the App Store and the importance of the ecosystem for making it a success on tablets and phones).
 
pretty much every MS server guy i have talked to is in deep love of server 2012. I know a whole bunch of organizations that are looking to move there domains to the 2012 schema ASAP.

so at least they are doing something right there. No one seemed in quite the same rush from 2k to 2k3 or 2k3 to server 2008
 
Yeah, Windows Server 2012 looks to be a very nice step up, in various ways.
 
There's a storage filesystem that checks itself in the background, then newer versions of stuff and better licensing if you run VMs.
Then in day to day stuff, well you can watch I/O in the task manager.

For that one reason if I have to buy or pirate Windows, I will choose Windows 8 over 7. UI concerns are overblown. Both suffer from a fatal issue nobody cares about, being unable to switch the command prompt to full screen with alt+enter (I kid you not :))
 
Arwin said:
The important thing for Microsoft is to show the advantage of a Windows 8 tablet and phone, and then bring it home with the full eco-system
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The share of Android smartphones is growing rapidly

33arwpk.jpg


Android Marks Fourth Anniversary Since Launch with 75.0% Market Share in Third Quarter, According to IDC

http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS23771812
 
Quite intriguing quiz at techpowerup. :mrgreen:

2qi4mqw.jpg


My choice is "I don't think I can live with Metro". :LOL:

lol As I change the size of my desktop Windows 7 icons, and when they get a little bit bigger, an interesting thought comes into my mind. Why did they need that awful Metro UI, instead they could have used normal desktop with different size/ style icons... Not to mention that ugly one colour background and the lack of option to put wallpapers in there. :???:
 
New version of Windows, lots of people crying about it on tech sites. Hardly unpredictable.

As a touch interface Metro is at least as good iOS or Android, and x86 desktop is faster and leaner than W7 and has other improvements too. What a disaster.
 
Yeah, but metro is crap on a desktop. It's kinda like having four different vehicles and equipping all of them with the same wheels; motorcycle, standard sedan car, a greyhound highway coach and military APC...

Ok, tablets and phones can use same UI just fine, but beyond that it just starts to crack.
 
UniversalTruth said:
lol As I change the size of my desktop Windows 7 icons, and when they get a little bit bigger, an interesting thought comes into my mind. Why did they need that awful Metro UI, instead they could have used normal desktop with different size/ style icons... Not to mention that ugly one colour background and the lack of option to put wallpapers in there. :???:
Click to expand...

Why would I hit a very small "show desktop" button to minimize all windows, still showing them in the taskbar, and use things tacked on the desktop?
That would be like me putting away the mouse and keyboard so I can scribble on my desk, then I grab the keyboard and put it back on the desk so I can use my programs and type, but I can stil see some of the scribbled notes, until I put a mouse and hand over them.

Thus a layer that takes over may be better. gnome 3 and ubuntu do something like it, using the upper left corner rather than lower left corner (at least gnome 3 uses the same Win key, too). Though these "dashes" do a less dramatic take over. But I don't find them interesting, a Windows 3.1 grid of icons is not my taste.

Desktop widgets (or a hack that puts Metro tiles on the desktop) could still be interesting but then I would at least need multiple desktops (a feature I thought Vista would have already, but Microsoft passed on it)
 
Grall said:
Yeah, but metro is crap on a desktop. It's kinda like having four different vehicles and equipping all of them with the same wheels; motorcycle, standard sedan car, a greyhound highway coach and military APC...

Ok, tablets and phones can use same UI just fine, but beyond that it just starts to crack.
Click to expand...

metro is great on my desktop. I use multiple monitors however so that could be the difference.
 
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