I'm still trying to figure out the "Ribbon" in Microsoft Office 2007 at work and 2010 at home.

I might wait for a release candidate before I try Windows 8. Then again, there were some versions that I just never ran; Windows ME and Vista come to mind.

You can turn off the "cutesy" interface.

j razz

The win8 that's been released is a developer preview...so they can see how the guts work. It hasn't been optimized, and the preview for everyone else is a "this is what it LOOKS" like version.

Basically, you're looking at a sketch of Win8. I wouldn't touch it (except on a stand-alone test system) until RC1 comes out.

As for the interface, there are two interfaces...the cutsey tablet version, and a Win7-esque version. I'll be sticking to the latter...but only after RC1.

I wait until after the first Service Pack. It's the only way to be sure ... (thinking of the "nuke the site from orbit" line in ALIENS).

Win 8 in every form is going to be built on the metro UI. but there's supposed to be a desktop "app" that you can run ( and I'm sure will be able to run from the get go ). I'm not enthusiastic about win8 from a working everyday on it perspective, but I do like the idea of a full blown OS on my tablet. I guess we'll have to wait and see what comes of it.

Dave

What about Windows 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 7.4 7.5, ETC,
JJK

I would have stayed with Win XP if there were a decent 64 bit version. I have made Win 7 as XP-like as I know how. Win 8 sounds like something I definitely don't want.

"It's the only way to be sure ... (thinking of the "nuke the site from orbit" line in ALIENS)."

Its One of my favorite lines, but we all how that went...... a lot of burning, twisted metal..... ;-) just like running Beta windows or Apple products ;-)

Real men work from the command line prompt.
C:\>

:)

No, real men work with this command prompt:

$_

;)

And i must agree with Peter. Not only did i make my Win7 install look like XP, but i actually have it looking mostly the way i made XP look like 98SE Classic. While XP was better than 98SE "behind the screen", i still think 98SE's interface style was the peak for Windows and everything since then has been downhill. The peeks of Win8 i've seen look far worse for usability than Windows 2 did.

What Microsoft is failing to realize with all this is that emulating a dumb interface that looks pretty ends up with another dumb interface.

Did anyone watch the Build conference key note? They did (or are doing) a lot of things in Windows 8 that should make it better. Optimizing how sleep mode works, lowering the running memory footprint, and dozens of internal things not specifically mentioned in the keynote that bring to mind the phrase, "about dang time".

In the long run moving to Windows 8 will likely be akin to the change of going from Win 3.1 to Win 95.

Pixel, it should be, but in reality I'm very much afraid it'll be more like XP to Vista.

And as for the memory footprint and other fixes, they have to as the tablets they are aiming for have limited memory, storage and power.

> Real men work from the command line prompt.
> C:\>

Real men work from a CLI or a shell, not a command prompt.
$

And of course, they wrote that particular shell (and yeah, I did, though mine actually runs on a digital radio, not a PC, and doesn't do half of what a full PC-class shell does, on any OS).

In theory anyway, the Windows desktop is, itself, just another "shell" too. You don't usually replace this, but you can -- there have been a couple of alternatives over the years. I haven't found any really good ones in recent times, but back in the Windows 3.x days, I ran a GUI shell that made Windows more like OS/2... all for the better.

Other OSs, like Android and Linux, make this sort of thing far more common. And you can try out the "no windows, full screen" idea that seems to be spreading like a bad virus on Ubuntu 11.x Linux, via the "Unity" graphic shell. Like Steve says up top, pretty miserable... someone's trying to replace applications with "apps". Homey don't play that game.

I do like the way they do fast-boot. When you shut off Windows 8, it's a mix of actual regular Shutdown and Hibernation. In fact, all user space is shut down and erased, but the system level stuff is hibernated (unless, presumably, you install some system level thing that needs a full reboot). That's a pretty good way to make boots fast.

I think Microsoft is in a bit of a panic mode. They have seen the same problem Google saw happening several years ago. Google, not being PC-centric, maybe had a clear vision back in 2005 or so... they saw that their bread and butter, search, was moving to portable devices. And that every portable device: Palm, Windows, Blackberry (not Apple yet) was a proprietary OS. In short, they could lose the entire handheld search market, at least as a built-in, overnight. I'm sure they make other money on Android now, but the whole original purpose was to ensure Google could keep their search engine out there in portable devices.

Microsoft is looking at one version of the post-PC era. Not the total end of the PC as we know it, but perhaps the end of the PC as the primary consumer computing device. And the big, big problem for them -- they aren't really part of that post-PC era yet. And that's worse than you might think. Microsoft's power has largely been based on owning the desktop... aside from Apple's 5% and a tiny set of geeks running some other version of UNIX, it's all Microsoft. No one challenges this. But once you have other OSs becoming popular on portables, who's to say they won't start to move back to the desktop. And in fact, even while their pro market seems to be going away, Apple's doing pretty well in the USA converting iPhone users to Mac users... enough to at least not lose global market share, maybe even build it if the trend goes global.

So Microsoft has to move to the handheld. And they're kind of late to the party, just as they were with the Web. To date, Windows tablets are overpriced, under powered, and still need a stylus. So the big point of Windows 8 is to make things work on tablets that are not much different than the iPad. Even to the extent of supporting ARM in some way.

And I think the Metro interface is part of this. Windows applications can be built in anything, and many are built on virtual machine languages like Java or C#/.Net. But lots of stuff is native x86 code from C++ or other compiled languages. These aren't going mobile any time soon... and it's not just the code. It's the UI -- no mouse, no fun. And the size of the apps... I have a few that are well over 1GB installed, and others even larger. That doesn't fly on a device with a total of 16-32Gb storage.

So I think Metro is like the second layer of Windows apps. Your desktop still runs "classic" windows applications, and you pretty much expect Vegas 12 or 13 to still be a full fledged application. But easy stuff, the real Metro code, is written in Web technologies: JavaScript, HTML, CSS, and Silverlight. Which makes it inherently slow for complex things, but also very portable: it's all interpreted, so it runs on 32-bit, 64-bit, or ARM unchanged.

This would, in theory, let Microsoft leverage Windows on the desktop and Windows on the phone (if that gets going) to drive Windows 8 on the tablet and maybe elsewhere. They have to be worried... they're still a year or more away from shipping Windows 8 (maybe faster if Windows 8 is really just Windows 7 plus the Metro stuff from W7P), and they're far behind already. Android and Apple rule the phone and the tablet, and they're not going away just because Microsoft finally discovers these things.

Anyway, I think all that says it's not even a slight shock that Windows 8 smells like an iPad. Problem is, the iPad's not being designed for professional content creation, but easy consumer content consumption...

> Pixel, it should be, but in reality I'm very much afraid it'll be more like XP to Vista.

Lately, Microsoft OSs have been like Star Trek films... only every other one is good. So Windows 98, ok enough. Windows ME... they had lost control of the code base, and added two bugs for each one they fixed. Windows XP, pretty good... it had the stability of Windows 2000 under it, but the consumer friendly stuff from Windows 9x. Vista... not so good. And largely because Vista was made not to solve any end-user problem, but to advance Microsoft's dominance in many ways. Windows 7, on the other hand, was built with Microsoft actually listening... and one big problem to fix: Vista.

So now comes Windows 8. Microsoft is using it to advance (or retain) their dominance. They are definitely looking toward mobile users, but does that mean regular PC users (eg, their entire installed base) get thrown under the bus? Hopefully not. But Microsoft has shown a powerful inability in the past to really understand what's going to be good for existing users, and what they nearly universally loathe. Like Vista. Like the Ribbon. So I dunno... we may be waiting for Windows 9 to upgrade. Which is just dandy in my book... I'm happy with Android on my phone and tablet anyway. No possible way I'm putting Windows on either of those.

Posted by: dxdy; Date: 9/15/2011 3:44:30 PM
Real men work from the command line prompt.
C:\>


AHEM!
Real men (geeks) work from root:

bkk@localhost:~$ su
Password: !m-@-633K
root@localhost:/home/bkk#

((;



Reply by: john_dennis; Date: 9/15/2011 7:46:41 AM

I'm still trying to figure out the "Ribbon" in Microsoft Office 2007 at work and 2010 at home.


OMG, don't get me started on Office 2010. We were forced to use the upgrade at work. ):

ALL my toolbars that were easily accessible at the top of the window are now hidden under layers and layers of tabs and clicks and tabs and clicks and... SHEISTA!

It screwed up my Macros w/ "smart" text like smart quotes automated formatting and automated hyphens, uhh, the horror!

I don't know where Micro$oft is going but sounds like 8 is the ME of 7. ((:

Posted by: hazydave Date: 9/15/2011 7:57:12 PM
Anyway, I think all that says it's not even a slight shock that Windows 8 smells like an iPad. Problem is, the iPad's not being designed for professional content creation, but easy consumer content consumption...

I don't have or plan on owning an iPad but there's so many gizmos, accessories and software just for the iPad it will be interesting if / how Microsoft will break into that market much less catch up.

Here's something interesting a friend showed me... Video shoot and editing all in one...
http://www.iClarified.com/16773

"Here's something interesting a friend showed me... Video shoot and editing all in one..."

Sounds like bolting fat wheels on a Mini Minor!

No, real men work in Hex
A9 FF 02 55

hehee.

Windoze 8

Paul.

I cut my teeth in octal.

Windoze 10

I saw recently on a tee shirt:

There are only 10 sorts of people, those that can read binary, and those who can't.

@Peter, haha, seen that one before, brilliant. Looking forward to Vegas 0x0B .

Paul.