Anyone else excited by Microsoft's new direction?

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networkn

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Reply # 597238 19-Mar-2012 16:09
I guess my problem is that I am just not that "socially orientated". I have no facebook account, I don't twitter much and have no real interest in "following people". I want quick easy straight forward business and gaming functions and Metro gets in my way. I don't want tiles with peoples faces on them! I don't want a touch interface if I have no touch screens. W8 feels like a toy and I want tools!

Kiwipixter

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Reply # 597258 19-Mar-2012 16:39
MS got it right with WP7 by ditching Window Mobile altogether and went with an OS that was written for mobile devices, albeit the Zune music player, from the ground up. This was the defining moment when their "Windows Everywhere" on every devices strategy had passed its used by date. Apart from the XBOX console Windows OS variants has not been successful on any other device form factors that doesn't operate with keyboard and mouse/stylus/pen. Win8 is definitely a backward step from WP7 in terms of strategy. They haven't learned from their past mistakes where Windows could not be a single OS that runs on different devices with different form factors and different uses. Android, Web OS, BlackBerry OS/QNS, are all failing to establish themselves as the 2nd alternative to iOS on the tablet form factor. Why should Win8 be any different?

networkn

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Reply # 597261 19-Mar-2012 16:41
Kiwipixter: MS got it right with WP7 by ditching Window Mobile altogether and went with an OS that was written for mobile devices, albeit the Zune music player, from the ground up. This was the defining moment when their "Windows Everywhere" on every devices strategy had passed its used by date. Apart from the XBOX console Windows OS variants has not been successful on any other device form factors that doesn't operate with keyboard and mouse/stylus/pen. Win8 is definitely a backward step from WP7 in terms of strategy. They haven't learned from their past mistakes where Windows could not be a single OS that runs on different devices with different form factors and different uses. Android, Web OS, BlackBerry OS/QNS, are all failing to establish themselves as the 2nd alternative to iOS on the tablet form factor. Why should Win8 be any different? I would suggest in terms of sales Android is most definitely 2nd to IOS on the tablets and a few years from now, it will be first, unless they avoid the mistakes of the first time around, and license their OS to other hardware manufacturers)

paulmilbank

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Reply # 597263 19-Mar-2012 16:46
Mmmmmm... Fair enough on the business front. Admittedly, I cant speak from there or from an IT point of view. Kind of weird it would be on the server OS too. I do wonder if a range of touch mice or mac style touchpads are going to be released to make up for the lack of desktop touch hardware. If gestures are needed to control the OS, then something needs to be done. They just need to keep it simple. Sad to hear some things are not working such as getting out of the calendar. Hopefully they will be fixed in a coming build. Annoying it wont work on a netbook though. That was one of the reasons I was looking forward to it was the functionality it could bring to my netbook.

mattwnz

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Reply # 597264 19-Mar-2012 16:48
lyonrouge: This is all speculative, but I believe this is a pre-emptive strike for MS. It would make sense for the OSX and iOS to merge (OSX deprecate) into a single platform. The Mac strength is it's applications. Knowing this, MS would want to reduce the maintenance costs and have a unified OS to roll-out and gather more apps as Dev can write for mobile and desktop in a single hit. Unified OS may loose Power Users but gain operation expenditure savings. The Desktop?fanatics will still have Linux to play with. ?? Yes but there is a reason apple haven't merged them, at least not yet. If anyone can sort out the best solution, it will be apple. Not to mention the fact that if it was merged, you the OS you install on your iphone would be huge, and take up most of the diskspace on it. Windows 8 is about 10GB in size, while ios is only about a 10th of the size. A desktop is a multi windowed environment, with a mouse. While a tablet is a touch device that is usually just single windowed.

lyonrouge

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Reply # 597271 19-Mar-2012 17:06
A desktop today is a multiple window, Win8 is challenging that proposition (from this thread, unsuccessfully). Note: I've not decided if I think this is a good idea or not, just putting it out there. I have no allegiance to MS or Apple.

mattwnz

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Reply # 597278 19-Mar-2012 17:42
lyonrouge: A desktop today is a multiple window, Win8 is challenging that proposition (from this thread, unsuccessfully). Note: I've not decided if I think this is a good idea or not, just putting it out there. I have no allegiance to MS or Apple. It's a bit like MS DOS, where PCs used to be one program at a time. Windows then allowed multiple programs running at the same time. The tablets have brought back single app running, mainly due to screen size, and portability.

Dratsab

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Reply # 597287 19-Mar-2012 17:55
lyonrouge: I have to logoff quite often as I get stuck in a place I can't escape (recent example is a calendar entry I opened to look at and it want to resend the invite or delete the appoint, but there was no way just to close it. I'm trying to give this a fair shake of the stick before I make a call one way or the other. If you're having trouble with closing metro apps, you could always smack them down with alt+f4 - ugly but effective :-) Chuck Norris has abolished the periodic table of elements. The only element he recognises is the element of surprise!

lyonrouge

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Reply # 597474 20-Mar-2012 09:15
In my calendar example it was a complete lockup, could force shutdown of the app or logoff, ended up powering down and restarting. Going to download and install the server version today.

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