Windows 8

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So I thought I'd just add a quick blurb on Win 8. Given Win 8 is due out in a day or two here's the quick report on my personal impression. I was lucky to have a little box to spare, so I dropped my SUSE Linux from there and popped on the consumer preview of Win 8...

Pluses: Fast!

It felt very smooth. Perhaps fast is not correct. But it was very smooth. I had it on a small solid state drive (you know I love those things) and opening programs and using the tool was wonderful. I particularly enjoyed Media Center even tho' I think it's hopelessly obsolete. I actually love the REMOVAL of Aero which I always thought was useless GPU time wasting fluff.

Minuses: UI (that's User Interface for those of you not into jargon).

Yes, you've heard it. No start button. Weird fancy hand jive required to even shut down the machine. (that is ignoring the power button if your new fangled machine has one!) Now the Metro stuff is fun. I'm sure that it'll be great on some brain dead small screen tablet. But c'mon! This is the one place I spend a little bit of money and that's on my hardware and Win 8 just under utilizes my screen real estate.

Worse is I can't seem to find the window border adjustment in the old desktop world. I can't even customize my desktop anymore! First thing I do when I get a new installation is bump the borders to a fat 5 or 6 whatever the units are. I do not like the standard ONE PIXEL border you guys seem to love. But that's gone. Not only did they remove my start button so I have to have a brain reset when ever I start an app and pop into primary color world to see all the wild array of things I can buy on the start screen. Sigh. That sux. I'll get a replacement start button so I don't have to go there.

I don't like how MS thinks that they've somehow finished with the desktop and it's time to move on to fleecing the wallets of every customer with a app store!

Perhaps this will encourage the development of a healthy third party desktop apps again. I can tell you they'd better damn well offer those goodies in their gilded app store! >_< I remember when I used to buy Norton goodies to spruce up my machine. All that stuff got killed. Who knows. Perhaps it's the beginning of a new age?

But then again. If Adobe bothered to offer Photoshop for Linux, I'd be all over that! And then goodbye Windows! I'm close. I've been using SUSE but I find it a bit cranky. Tho' now that Attachmate owns them I might give them a try again. I have a co-worker who swears by Gentoo. And of course Ubuntu is always the one they say grandma can use. Else, maybe I can roll my own version of GIMP! Ah the things I could do if I had time.

Buying a tablet? Now that's a whole different story! I recently bought a iPad as a gift. But I still haven't used one. So I still don't know much about that. The Nexus 7 looks interesting, but in the same way as a Kindle Fire. Those machines want to fleece you in an the a$$, erm, that is, app store. Win RT is like that too. There's nothing inherently wrong with a different instruction set of the ARM processor. But there's no backward compatibility there in a gilded cage world. I don't want to put myself into a cage.


Summery: My recommendation is...

1) Upgrade/Desktop - NO! You'll be happier with win 7. I'm from the old age. Win 8 is NOT FOR ME! It's not built for me! I like to create when I sit down at my super duper machine. Win 8 is about consumption. Buying things making MS richer and me poorer. Both in my pocket book and in my brain! But I do have one small caveat coming up...

2) Tablet - C'mon, the safe choice is Apple. I still can't see much use for a tablet and so I'm going to say no-recommendation. I'm just not vested enough.

3) Laptop - YES! Hey, you didn't think I had it in me did you? I have used a laptop this year on a contract. The tiny screen IF coupled with touch (on the screen) AND a real keyboard seems like a really nice fit for Win-8. I typically would be running one of TWO apps I would switch between: Terminal server and Notepad. It's gonna be expensive. But for the working -mobility- scenario, this seems like a sweet spot. And heaven knows it's all about mobility these days. My prediction is that Win 8 will do well here!

I've made my prediction. Let's see what happens!
© 2012 - 2024 dragonaur
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BlackKusanagi's avatar
Galaxy S3 Tablet and Galaxy Note Tablet. Argument is invalid. :P