The Watering Hole

I have been testing windows 8 the last couple of weeks to see how it fits with the way businesses work and ease of access within the desktop computer market.

The traditional start menu has gone, we now have a full screen that is called "the metro" which is a substitute for the start menu.  All would be great for touch screen tablet devices but for the desktop pc this is a big pile of crap.   It now takes around 4 mouse clicks to do what you used to do with one, very counter productive.

I can quite honestly see this being Microsoft's swan song. I can imagine the horror on my customers faces if they are forced to go down the windows 8 route when they buy new pc's in the future.

IE 10 is a bit of a pile of shit too, especially the way that it "breaks" nearly all existing websites in favour of HTML 5,  which is good in one way that html is moving forward, but sucks ass big time for legacy websites, of which there are billions, as they won't work correctly unless you now perform yet another additional click and select "compatibility mode".  Why the fuck they couldn't just make this automatic baffles me beyond belief.

I've had two solid weeks of getting to know Windows 8 and I have tried to like it...but I can't.  It looks pretty, but in terms of ease of use for business productivity it is pretty fucking useless.

Anyone else tried it yet ?

Every other OS offering tends to suck (e.g., who wanted Vista?  Everyone stayed on XP for years.)

CraigBert — Oct 14, 2012Every other OS offering tends to suck (e.g., who wanted Vista?  Everyone stayed on XP for years.)

The problem though is when Win 8 is shipped with new pc's as default and eventually users won't have a choice.  I can't understand what microsoft think they are doing with this version of Windows as it just is not user friendly for businesses at all.  The time is now right for another player to move-in to the market place with a brand new operating system for the x86 & 64 processor. Linux is just not very good as I have tried that before, but something like it but a lot better is the way to go.  Maybe Google will have a full operating system soon that they can give away, that would be excellent.

Jon — Oct 14, 2012 I can't understand what microsoft think they are doing with this version of Windows as it just is not user friendly for businesses at all.  

That appears to be the trend.  Just look at those useless-for-business short and wide monitors the movie industry is forcing on everyone!  I hate that aspect ratio.

CraigBert — Oct 15, 2012[quote author=Jon G link=1350162092/0#2 date=1350219550] I can't understand what microsoft think they are doing with this version of Windows as it just is not user friendly for businesses at all.  

That appears to be the trend.  Just look at those useless-for-business short and wide monitors the movie industry is forcing on everyone!  I hate that aspect ratio.

Absolutely agree with you there.  I have always preferred the standard aspect screen for business use but have had to go "widescreen" now since my last standard aspect monitor went "pop" as you can no longer get standard aspect monitors here.  

Actually something else that really pisses me off about widescreen TV. In the UK you can only buy widescreen TV's....but, virtually all the TV programmes are made for standard aspect TV so most of the time you either miss the top and the edges of the picture or you shrink it down and have huge black borders.  The whole industry is fucked.

Jon — Oct 14, 2012The time is now right for another player to move-in to the market place with a brand new operating system for the x86 & 64 processor.

Apple already has that which you desire, they just need to let go of the idea that they're a PC maker.

OS X isn't new but it could be that kind of choice IF it wasn't artificially restricted to "Apple" hardware.

I'd like (love? yes) to be able to choose (and build) my own hardware on which to run OS X.

I'm sure they have their reasons for not doing it, and they're probably very good ones from their perspective, but man, it'd be just fantastic if I could build a machine and run OS X on it without hackintosh crap.

ironsheep — Oct 15, 2012[quote author=Jon G link=1350162092/0#2 date=1350219550]The time is now right for another player to move-in to the market place with a brand new operating system for the x86 & 64 processor.

Apple already has that which you desire, they just need to let go of the idea that they're a PC maker.

OS X isn't new but it could be that kind of choice IF it wasn't artificially restricted to "Apple" hardware.

I'd like (love? yes) to be able to choose (and build) my own hardware on which to run OS X.

I'm sure they have their reasons for not doing it, and they're probably very good ones from their perspective, but man, it'd be just fantastic if I could build a machine and run OS X on it without hackintosh crap.

That's interesting. Can OS X run pc software too ?  The reason I ask of course is that I am a software developer and all of my stuff to-date is written for the PC running windows.   Just did a quick google and it looks like OS X can run pc software too, or at least some pc software.  Would be interesting to try that. I wonder if I could try OS X as a virtual machine in vmware running ontop of a windows host....hmmm, will investigate.

I run windows 7 on my iMac when necessary - dual boot (check into Bootcamp on Apple's site). I can attest to it working - no problems.

So, in that sense, I can run windows software... in windows... on an iMac - but not in OS X. I've never liked running via emulation but there are ways to do that, I think. (parallels? something like that... edit: yeah that was it -> http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/)

as for running OS X on anything non-Apple... http://www.hackintosh.com/

Just been reading up and it seems that OS X can be run as a vmware guest virtual computer with an additional bit of code that bypasses the mac restrictions.

Will give this a go soon, just got to find a download of OS X,  cough cough   ;)   .... think I know where to look.

I run parallels on my mac book pro. Has a few quirks, buy pretty reliable. Aggravating sometimes, but reliable.