Windows 10 [2014 - 2017]

[Kaotik]

Installed Catalyst 14.9 and ran 3DMark FireStrike. Scored couple hundred points above my Win 8.1 result, but the Win 8.1 was done on installation that has all my usual stuff running (+ has been the same installation since launch of original Win8)

3DMark couldn't recognize my HD 7970, memory amount or the OS.

edit: http://www.3dmark.com/fs/2879701

 

[Scott_Arm]

Yeah, no. The store is still front and center as are "New UI" apps. On the surface the only difference is these apps can now appear windowed and they will be available on the start button menu as opposed to the start screen on keyboard devices.

Well, maybe I'm just not totally aware of what Metro is. I just meant that all apps share the same behaviour in terms of windowing and the way they are handled by the user. Metro may be alive in other aspects, but from the user perspective everything looks to be the same thing, windows can be moved, resized and snapped the same way. You are not forced to transition into a different Metro interface with full-screen apps to use them. The underlying APIs and whatever may still be there. I don't know what the differences are.

 

[trinibwoy]

Running under VirtualBox for now and working pretty well. The start menu is a huge improvement over the schizophrenic Windows 8 start screen.

I still don't understand the need for dumbed down "metro" versions of configuration screens. Either move all control panel functionality to a metro style app or leave it alone. The current approach is a confused mess and those metro UI settings panels are practically useless anyway.

 

[Dave Baumann]

Well, maybe I'm just not totally aware of what Metro is.

Metro / New UI, I guess, can be boiled down to two things - a "live tile" interface and app presentation with side scrolling screens to display more information than can fit on a screen: i.e.:

Both of those things still exist within Windows 10, but hybridised with desktop mode. Live tiles are still part of the start menu (or start screen if you want it back) and these apps will continue to follow the side scrolling theme, but now these can be windowed instead of demanding full screen.

 

[Blazkowicz]

There's no such thing as "every 2nd version is good", people just leave some OS'es out to make it work in their head

In my head there were several instances of "this Windows sucks donkey balls", followed by actually liking it a few years later.
Happened to me with Windows 98 (buggy, bloated), Windows XP (bloated, annoying wizards, less DOS support), and even Vista.

Vista is a more of less Windows 7 with a regular task bar, and it updates itself fine so can be left unattented to non technical users. It's slow but on the same computers (5400 rpm old drive, 1GB to 2GB memory) a heavyweight linux desktop or Windows 7 won't be much less slow.

Whatever. It's good and Microsoft finally copied it. Never understood why people give a shit who invented what feature. If something is good, take it and implement it.

I expected it for Vista, the feature was so useful and basic I took it for granted. With that major UI revamp, "3D Windows" that could be looked at on a angle and so on I just assumed it would have multiple desktops.

I first used it in 2004, on a Fedora Core 2 machine (KDE 3. looked nice back then). Then on Windows 2003 or XP I used a semi-hackish freeware to have the desktops (it would hide/show the apps, be managed from tray icon or keyboard ; I remember I added quicklaunch shortcuts as another means to switch desktops)

Why so late!
It's even coming one year after End-of-XP. Should have happened before.

 

[Kaotik]

In my head there were several instances of "this Windows sucks donkey balls", followed by actually liking it a few years later.
Happened to me with Windows 98 (buggy, bloated), Windows XP (bloated, annoying wizards, less DOS support), and even Vista.

Vista is a more of less Windows 7 with a regular task bar, and it updates itself fine so can be left unattented to non technical users. It's slow but on the same computers (5400 rpm old drive, 1GB to 2GB memory) a heavyweight linux desktop or Windows 7 won't be much less slow.

Obviously some OS'es may "suck donkey balls" someone's opinion, but the "every 2nd is bad, every 2nd is good" is BS and only achievable by dropping some major OS releases from the count

 

[Blazkowicz]

Well, maybe I'm just not totally aware of what Metro is.

Dave summed it up well but I'll add it's a run-time for managed sandboxed apps, with restrictions on things like file system access I believe.
So that's a bit like Java applets, or Flash (and somehow similar to iOS apps) : it's another subsystem for general purpose programs, effectively another platform.
HTML5 offline apps are yet another example of a platform with very roughly similar goals.

It's also kind of like a replacement for active desktop or desktop widgets. But it's Windows-only.
Windows phones do get some favorable opinions and reviews, but on desktops people were just pissed. As it was done on Windows 8, it's another thing to learn and worry about, and to flee it you have to e.g. mash the keyboard till you get the desktop back, and when confronted to the problem I personnally relied on the win+r runbox, command prompt and navigating to C:\Program Files to launch apps.

 

[Blazkowicz]

Just updating cmd prompt a bit is not really good enough, its long since overdue that they give it a full GUI overhaul.
It should not be too hard to make a program using existing MS GUI elements to provide ability to perform any valid cmd function without typing, ie only mouse clicks or touch screen presses.
Would still be quicker to do most by quick typing but having that ability to do it by GUI is important IMO.

Wow, I didn't know that. (couldn't watch that 40 minutes or so video). Some quick info about the prompt here.

http://arstechnica.com/information-...t-finally-gets-dragged-into-the-21st-century/

Now the command line can be adequately resized?!
At last, it's not seemingly restricted as if it had to not scare DOS or CP/M programs. Funnily, the unix/linux command line was designed to be compatible with World War 2 teletypes and was more flexible in that regard.

If MS is not dumb they will bundle a ssh server into Windows (even if they do silly stuff like have it for Server / Enterprise and limit it to one session with Pro)

 

[Dave Baumann]

Windows phones do get some favorable opinions and reviews, but on desktops people were just pissed. As it was done on Windows 8, it's another thing to learn and worry about, and to flee it you have to e.g. mash the keyboard till you get the desktop back, and when confronted to the problem I personnally relied on the win+r runbox, command prompt and navigating to C:\Program Files to launch apps.

In my opinion there was nothing inherently wrong with it, its just they screwed up the Windows implementation for desktop. I've described before, but the biggest issue with Win 8 was the schizophrenia between taking you to the desktop or the start screen - i.e. Win RT invoked apps from the desktop would open full screen and then drop you back to the start screen rather than the desktop where you launched it from.

I like the live tile interface, and have already done as other have done - made Win 10 look like Win 8 with the full start screen, but I have the benefits that they have pegged the desktop as the priority for this install. I note that some apps that have been defaulted with a tile on the start screen are now "desktop" versions rather than Win RT versions.

 

[zed]

Obviously some OS'es may "suck donkey balls" someone's opinion, but the "every 2nd is bad, every 2nd is good" is BS and only achievable by dropping some major OS releases from the count

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_Windows_versions
I had a quick look (only dominant home line considered)
win 8 bad ( general opinion, i.e. not my own)
win 7 good
vista bad
xp good
me bad
98 good
95 good/bad

one thing I can't understand with win 8 is when I install a program >50% of the time no tile shows in the start screen!
ok not a biggy for me I just go win & E and go to its directory and start it from there, but how is a non PC literate person meant to start the program?

 

[Dave Baumann]

one thing I can't understand with win 8 is when I install a program >50% of the time no tile shows in the start screen!

That was a change between Win 8 and Win 8.1. Initially, when people installed applications from the desktop (i.e. non WinRT / Microsoft Marketplace apps) it would install the whole program group as tiles on the start menu, meaning you ended up with a mess of tiles not just for the app, but the help, the readme.txt, uninstall, and whatever other crap an installer might create. To stop this Window 8.1 defaults to just loading new stuff under the "All Apps" page, but at the same time making the All Apps list easier to access, having alphabetical lists as well as program group lists and clearly labelling new items with "new". Under Win 8.1 the onus is on you to select which of these icons you want to display on the start screen.

 

[Blazkowicz]

It may be easier to access "All Apps", but it's not nearly enough. You have to notice that small, dark, unlabelled circled-down-arrow icon and then click on it (or hit down arrow on the keyboard, I guess).

I had to be told it's there. If it leads to "All Apps", why not label it "All Apps"?

 

[DJ12]

Shame no one told you that you could make "all apps" display by default and even arrange for your apps to be placed before the Windows apps.

 

[Kaotik]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_Windows_versions
I had a quick look (only dominant home line considered)
win 8 bad ( general opinion, i.e. not my own)
win 7 good
vista bad
xp good
me bad
98 good
95 good/bad

one thing I can't understand with win 8 is when I install a program >50% of the time no tile shows in the start screen!
ok not a biggy for me I just go win & E and go to its directory and start it from there, but how is a non PC literate person meant to start the program?

Your list is missing Win98 SE which is considered major release (not offered as update like service pack for 98 users), as well as pre-95 OSes

 

[liquidboy]

They finally copied OSX Expose and Spaces (Task view, virtual desktops).

Whats sad is Windows (NT based) has always had a way to do task views and virtual desktops ... The later (virtual desktops) was just never fully exposed in the OS to the user..

Way back in 2003 you could get these Virtual Desktops using a sysinternals tool

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/cc817881.aspx

... So now they've finally made it a feature of the OS and they've modernized it i believe with lots of the stuff they've done in MSResearch and the WindowsPhone/Windows Store advances (liked cloud compiled apps, AppV etc.)

 

[Blazkowicz]

From the description, it's hackish and with no way to migrate a window from a desktop to another. They ran multiple explorer.exe and thus as many desktops, task bars etc., perhaps abusing the provision than the OS made for that because it is needed for Terminal Server.

I guess the authors had fun, that was cool to pull some trick and make it usable.
Users might have fun too, but it's not perfect. I had two "walled off" monitors on my linux PC once, with no communication except the mouse pointer going from one to another. That's because I needed to use two graphics cards, they were different and I ended up with two instances of the whole graphics stacks (X11 server) and therefore two separate sessions (of the same user).
With some sysadmin-like work I could have created a "surface" layered over the two ones and used that, but would have lost 3D acceleration.

Well what is the link with desktops on Windows.. Yes, it's better to have some built-in feature that actually works, without special cases of the feature breaking.

 

[hoom]

Wow, I didn't know that.

To be clear: It looks like they are just doing minor functionality improvements.

I wish they would do a full GUI implementation, something similar to Excel Formula Bar.

In my opinion there was nothing inherently wrong with it, its just they screwed up the Windows implementation for desktop.

Windows8 was built fundamentally with an attitude 'fuck you desktop users, the future is touchscreen tablets so your opinions & needs don't matter to us anymore'.

Have downloaded the preview at work & given it a bit of a burl on our test PC.
I am pretty impressed.

As he says in the video: things work pretty much as you'd expect for a Win7 user & quite a lot of the stuff shown is easily discoverable with a bit of fiddling around vs I still get fucking confused & angry with Win8 whenever I have to mess with it for more than simple things.

ie this has been done with an attitude 'desktop users aren't disappearing soon, we need to make this for them too & build on the things people liked in Win7' and that is a good thing.

win 8 bad ( general opinion, i.e. not my own)
win 7 good
vista bad
xp good
me bad
98 good
95 good/bad

Yes, is the popular 'every 2nd' list.
Its not perfect or especially serious but there is some level of truth to it.
I probably should have had a on my OP

 

[Blazkowicz]

95 bad
95osr2 good
98 bad
98se good

To be clear: It looks like they are just doing minor functionality improvements.

I wish they would do a full GUI implementation, something similar to Excel Formula Bar.

Ah yes, I didn't answer your GUI cmd suggestion. What if there are over 200 commands to choose from, you show a list to pick from? then a list of 20 commmand swiches, then build a list of arguments (you might have none, one or maybe forty thousand), then pipes/redirect. It does seem very messy

I don't see the point! Read the man pages, er sorry , type "dir /?".

Though, maybe for Powershell that would be interesting : Powershell is the one that sucks for interactive use, is overly complicated and is more "computer friendly" as it's full of objects and semantics rather than characters. So nobody tries to learn it except those with a paycheck precisely tied to doing so. The GUI assistance would be akin to an IDE. Maybe you should write some Powershell in Visual Studio.
Googling does quickly return one Visual Studio plugin for writing Powershell, and some speculation built-in support will come up.

Else for easy cool stuff, see Autohotkey (and its very nice, local help file)

 

[Kaotik]

95 bad
95osr2 good
98 bad
98se good

Should ORS2 counted as release though? IIRC 95 could be just updated to OSR2 level too
IMO major MS OS releases, excluding the NT's that weren't for home use:
Windows 1.0
Windows 2.0
Windows 2.1
Windows 3.0
Windows 3.1
Windows 3.11
Windows 95
Windows 98
Windows 98SE
Windows ME
Windows XP
Windows Vista
Windows 7
Windows 8
Windows 10

Major meaning you can't update the previous one free to the "next OS"

 

[digitalwanderer]

Your list is missing Win98 SE which is considered major release (not offered as update like service pack for 98 users), as well as pre-95 OSes

THANK YOU!!!

(Long time 98se lover here. )