The Big Problem With Windows 8 - Windows 9

More of this "it's the new Vista" stuff. It's not, for a simple reason - the problems you have appear to be down to the UI. This is entirely legitimate, but easily fixed - install ClassicShell, or Start8 or any of the alternatives, and bang! Solved.

Vista had a number of actual core technical issues (beyond being sold on hardware that couldn't run it) - things like the period during which a large range of graphics cards were not supported with driver releases which led to DWM crashing constantly, or the issue with copy and paste taking hours for what should have been seconds worth of file transfers, or the performance problems associated with ReadyBoost and Superfetch.

Before you say "Well, XP then", XP had problems too - the SP0 release was atrocious, and even SP1 was barely comparable to Win2K. It took SP2 (April 2004, after XP went on sale in November 2001) for XP to become the OS that is today the nostalgic gold standard Windows release for so many people.

If you believe articles like this Windows 9 is just around the corner (CES 2014 for first previews, Nov 2014 release). That being said, such a short development time would guarantee that it'll be iterative, rather than revolutionary, and frankly only an overall failure of both Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 will lead to a substantial deviation from MS' current trajectory.

How businesses react will be interesting - Win8 allows for enterprise corps to deal with the big BYOD issue through Windows To Go, which sounds like a great idea to me and would actually resolve a number of real-world problems I've dealt with at work before. Tablet support means that corporates finally have an option whereby people wanting fancy fondleslabs can be given one where the hardware coverage and software support matches the rest of their environment (for those who don't know, business or corporate hardware support agreements usually work on a Next Business Day On-site support basis, but with Apple you get to either take it to the shop or have it collected by a repair service, with a 1-2 week turnaround time most of the time. And of course no support for any Windows-only or bespoke software). Windows Phone 8 seems weird to me, but that's because they were already doing quite well several years ago with Windows CE at the corporate side, until they massively fumbled their response to RIM.

Needless to say, for all the kvetching about the UI I don't think any allegation of Windows 8 being "the new Vista" carries any weight for anyone who knows even a little about the history of recent Windows releases.

Kaiser2000 wrote: »

It shouldn't be necessary to install 3rd party tools to restore basic functionality though - that's the point. And even with those 2 tools, they aren't 100% fixes (see my post earlier)

UI != "basic funcionality".

Basic functionality fails would be:

• no TRIM/SSD support
• no >2TB drive/partition support
• no native wired/wireless network support
• no native touch support

and so on.

Not having a UI you like is a completely different scenario, because there is no such thing as "a standard UI". Unfortunately the history of Windows development is such that you have generally been offered either "The New Shiny" or "What We'll Call Classic Windows", with no supported mechanism to move beyond that. The same exact problem has done the rounds in the Linux world for several years - look at the howls of outrage that have greeted KDE4, Gnome 3 or the Unity interfaces. The key difference there was that installing an alternative interface is about as difficult as "sudo apt-get install XFCE".

Nonetheless - a specific approach to the UI is not "basic functionality". I do agree that MS should've provided a "classic Windows" UI option though, and hope they'll introduce one in SP1. I wouldn't bet on it though.

Kaiser2000 wrote: »

Agreed, but that's not the point being discussed here. Win 8 is just as good with performance and driver support (for most recent hardware anyway) as 7 was.. the point is the ethos/mindset behind the changes that were implemented and the effects it's having on a lot of people - ie: this "you'll take what we give you and like it!" approach to the Metro/Modern interface. People don't like change generally, and certainly not when it's forced on them like Metro/Modern has been, at the cost of 15 years of established workflow and familiarity.

Yeah, but if you don't like change why are you upgrading to an OS about 3 months old?

If you didn't want it and had it forced on you with a new computer, ask about downgrade rights. If you upgraded to it, well, give yourself a stern talking to and stop projecting the blame elsewhere for your own decision.

Kaiser2000 wrote: »

Very possible. Let's be honest here, Win 8/WP8/Surface is MSFT's attempt to grab some of that iPhone/iPad pie.

Unfortunately they're a bit late to the party given there's already 2 dominant players and device ownership is at saturation point. Add that to the fact that both alternatives require you to buy into their ecosystems for best results and theres no real incentive for people to switch - especially as the prices are as high (or more!) than the alternatives.

Device ownership is only at saturation point for certain assumptions - one of the most interesting discoveries in recent surveys about phone/tablet/computer usage is that the increasing overlap in functionality means that device ownership is, in certain sectors, going beyond the 100% traditionally viewed as the maximum.

As for "2 dominant players" - so what? Five years ago there were no dominant players. This is an area of technology; and competition fosters change. More players is a good thing, and what MS bring to the table with 8 is the ability to have an entire corporate environment that runs Windows stuff and interoperates out of the box. If you've ever dealt with Apple support on a corporately-owned piece of equipment you'd know what a complete ballache they are compared to every other corporate vendor - no other company things that they shouldn't offer corporate customers any support upgrade over what consumers get, or that corporates will be happy with a 1-2 week turnaround on hardware repairs. Having MS compete with them in this arena with Windows-based tablets that can be domain-bound and therefore work with GPOs and all the rest of it is, to my mind, a huge potential sell. It will take 5 years for this to percolate down through the larger players though, so we're nowhere close to seeing how it'll be received.

But speaking as a windows sysadmin, I can tell you right now that the choice of End-to-End Windows in a primarily-MS environment over Windows-on-the-server-and-desktop-but-bloody-iOS-on-the-bastarding-tablet is hardly a choice at all - the key is whether the end users will use a WinTablet over an iPad. Ie whether they can convince their workplace that there's a work benefit to spending money on fruity tech over MS tech.

Kaiser2000 wrote: »

I think that a lot of businesses who have just recently finished a rollout to Win 7 (or are still in the middle of doing so) will sit this one out myself.

Paying again for Server 2012 (which of course is also needed for full Win 8 support) + new touch hardware + training required to support these isn't something I can see a lot of companies investing in - especially as many of these decision makers will already have iPhones/iPads or their Android equivalents

That's true of every major Windows release. Hell, I saw the same exact thing said about XP in the large corporate for whom I formerly worked - it took them something like 5 years after the release of XP to get around to migrating off Win2K to XP, and the same again with XP to Vista according to friends of mine who were still working there.

Big Corporates are slow to change, but they retain their Volume License agreements anyway because the upgrade treadmill is cheaper than the alternative. Microsoft know this and plan accordingly.

From an administrative and support overhead perspective, iDevices are the devil's own arsehole. Apple's software and phone support is pretty good, but their turnaround times for hardware are diabolical by business support standards - everywhere else will offer Next Business Day On-site support, Apple give you either "take it to the shop and see what they can do" or "a repair centre will collect it and fix it in 1-2 weeks". When I've raised this with them, their response has been "why don't you buy a few to keep as spares?" and my answer to that is "Because I don't want $%^&ing spares, I want NBD on-site service!" So once MS has their products out and has shown that they can easily integrate into mainly-MS environments, it should be easy to make the business case for consolidating onto WinTabs from iOS devices because the costs of maintenance will be reduced by doing so.

If they fumble that aspect, they'll deserve (and get) an absolute shoeing. But I don't think they'd be stupid enough to get it that badly wrong.

Kaiser2000 wrote: »

Lets not forget that RIM is rapidly going the way of the dinosaur too, and WP8 is further behind again. As I said, too late to the party I think.

On a personal note I'd be inclined to agree, but it's too early to call I think.

Kaiser2000 wrote: »

Vista failed because of how it was perceived - as you pointed out by the time SP2 rolled around, most of the hardware/performance issues had been fixed, ditto with XP before it.

Unfortunately by then the damage had already been done and Win 7 was out which is widely acknowledged as "what Vista should have been" hence its success.

With this in mind, stripping back features in Win 8 (Start Menu, Aero etc) is just a step backwards - hence "the new Vista"

Err no. Vista failed based on how it was perceived because for the first 18 months of its lifecycle, when people used it, it was crap. Win 8 has a disorienting UI for a few minutes, and after that a mildly frustrating UI - if you're buying in a shop, they either show you around the UI as part of the pitch (see Overheal's posts elsewhere in this forum) or they're crap salespeople. (Seriously, if the difference between making a sale or not is "here, let me show you something called ClassicShell" and you don't spend 30 seconds making sure you've got that bit of your pitch down, you're in the wrong job).

Ten minutes in front of Win8 on a desktop and I can show someone how to use it enough that there's no greater difference between it and Win7 (with a couple of tricks) than there are between any two Windows releases. I think people here are turning "I don't like Notro" into an enormous landmine when at best it's a pothole, and an easily resolved one at that.

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

For some people ebook readers are indespensible devices. I wonder if there is a market for an ebook reader that incorporates a basic mobile phone - no apps just SMS / email / maybe camera and a battery that lasts all month. Stick a solar panel behind the display and you can live without wires.

Drop the camera, have the rear of the phone as an eInk display for low-power book reading and a monochrome front screen for text-based stuff like sms & email, and I think it's achievable. In fact, tell some of the bods in electronics might view it as a challenge