Yep, I said it. I may have just committed professional suicide and may never be offered a job again and just to make it worth it I'm going to say it again.
Windows.8.Is.Not.That.Bad
Why such gleaming praise? Have I lost my mind, or been bribed by Microsoft to say nice things about their crappy OS to my two readers (hi guys)? No, but unlike most of those who bash Windows 8 for it's split personality and it's absent Start button which is allegedly responsible for the deaths of many kittens, I've used it. I've used it at home since shortly after it came out and have been using it at work for a couple of months now.
I published my first impressions here a while back and I think it's time to refine my impressions a little and add a dash of reason.
This week there has been a lot of talk about Windows 8.1 aka Blue and how Microsoft are going to put all our cheese back and beg for forgiveness. This won't happen. At most, there is going to be a minor submission, such as adding the Start button back but having it trigger the Start screen, or allowing boot to Desktop.
6 months of use has led me to the inescapable conclusion that the Start screen is an almost perfect marriage of the Start Menu and the desktop. Let's face it, most people's desktops consist of loosely related groups of icons and maybe an extremely crucial business file that can never be replaced and is not backed up in any way shape or form.
What is the Start screen but a load of groups of loosely related icons?
The start screen is the perfect replacement for your cluttered and dis-organised desktop. You can't put files on it, therefore forcing you to put them somewhere sensible, or just putting them on the actual desktop where you've always put them.
With just a little tidying up, at boot you are presented with a screen full of big icons for your main applications that are easily clickable through blurry eyes on a Monday morning before you've had your caffeine intake.
So the Start screen is the solution to the icon-explosion on your desktop. But what about the Start Menu?
The Start Menu, the theory goes, was a quick way to access commonly used applications and provided a nice hierarchical folder structure with which to access all your installed apps.
In actuality, the quick app access came true but the hierarchical folder view soon becomes a dumping ground for any amount of shit that installers feel the desire to put in there. Often, applications from the same company will have wildly differing paths so your hierarchical structured view of your applications has absolutely no structure whatsoever!
For years now, I have taken to manually organizing the folders in the start menu. This makes finding anything easy with the rather large caveat that when anything gets uninstalled, I have a dead entry sitting there for me to trip over at some point in the future.
I suppose the closest replacement for the "view everything" mentality of the Start Menu is the All Apps view, which is possibly the worst example of a UI I have ever seen. It is completely intractable to me and I steer clear from it. If I need something that isn't on start, I search. If search doesn't bring it up, I dip down to Explorer.
If I need to get to system functions, I use either Win+R to bring up Run or Win+X to bring up the new Quick Access menu.
Having lived with Windows 8 for a while now, I don't feel I've lost anything. The functionality of the desktop (link farm) + start menu is there in the start screen for me. Anything else can be served by Search or Win+R/X. Overall my workflow is quicker and more streamlined-and no more manually organizing the Start Menu.
Somehow, life goes on after the Start Menu and no kittens were killed in the use of this OS.
Well, not many.
Showing posts with label Windows 8. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Windows 8. Show all posts
Wednesday, 15 May 2013
Tuesday, 23 April 2013
Breathing new life in to old netbooks
You don't see many netbooks around these days, and for a very good reason. When they were new, their performance ranged from ok to rubbish and they were no good for any real computing. Looking back, they were more like the first stab at the sweet spot between a smart phone and a full-on laptop/desktop, a gap which has been much more successfully filled with tablets in recent years.
I have 2 netbooks, one is a Samsung NC10 and the other a Dell Mini 9. Both of these have an Intel Atom N270 @1.60 Ghz and 1GB of RAM.
The Dell ran XP (badly) and the Samsung has run XP (badly), Windows 7 (really badly), and Ubuntu (just about acceptable).
When Windows 8 was released, one of the things that I noticed the most was the very noticeable improvements in general performance. Some of this was clearly down to the removal of superfluous effects but that could not explain all of the improvement
Just after Windows 8 came out, I installed it on the Dell. Performance was much better than I expected, better than XP. The Dell's odd screen size meant some hacking to get the screen in to 1024x768, even then there is a small amount of blur. It works okay for some basic note taking and browsing, but I wouldn't stress it with anything further.
Recently, the other half graduated to using an ASUS MemoPad for her needs, leaving the Dell spare. I decided to install Windows 8 on this too and, surprisingly considering it has exactly the same processor and amount of ram as the Dell, it performs even better. Haven't put Office on yet so it could still go downhill, but so far I am very impressed.
So if you've got some old netbooks lying around that you had written off as being useless for anything, throw Windows 8 on them you may be surprised at how nippy they are as a result.
I have 2 netbooks, one is a Samsung NC10 and the other a Dell Mini 9. Both of these have an Intel Atom N270 @1.60 Ghz and 1GB of RAM.
The Dell ran XP (badly) and the Samsung has run XP (badly), Windows 7 (really badly), and Ubuntu (just about acceptable).
When Windows 8 was released, one of the things that I noticed the most was the very noticeable improvements in general performance. Some of this was clearly down to the removal of superfluous effects but that could not explain all of the improvement
Just after Windows 8 came out, I installed it on the Dell. Performance was much better than I expected, better than XP. The Dell's odd screen size meant some hacking to get the screen in to 1024x768, even then there is a small amount of blur. It works okay for some basic note taking and browsing, but I wouldn't stress it with anything further.
Recently, the other half graduated to using an ASUS MemoPad for her needs, leaving the Dell spare. I decided to install Windows 8 on this too and, surprisingly considering it has exactly the same processor and amount of ram as the Dell, it performs even better. Haven't put Office on yet so it could still go downhill, but so far I am very impressed.
So if you've got some old netbooks lying around that you had written off as being useless for anything, throw Windows 8 on them you may be surprised at how nippy they are as a result.
Tuesday, 1 January 2013
My experience of Windows 8
I think it's fair to say that Windows 8 has been the most controversial and negatively received OS since Vista. Every mention of Windows 8 invokes cries about the Metro UI and how the OS is a schizophrenic nightmare. Occasionally, amongst these voices will be a quiet statement of "it's not that bad once you get used to it".
That little voice isn't far wrong.
That's not to say that after using Windows 8 for a while that I have grown to love the Metro UI and think it's the best thing since sliced bread. No, it's just that I've learned to ignore it to the extent that I barely notice it is there.
Worth noting that, despite it allegedly only being a code name, I will be using the term Metro repeatedly in this post, it's just easier to type than Windows 8 Store app.
1. When using a mouse, hover the mouse over a mystical hotspot in the bottom right hand corner, click on Settings, click on power, and then select from shutdown/restart/update. This is such a massive pain in the ass when using a mouse that it is not even really an option.
2. Same as above but the charm bar is invoked using Win+C instead of the mystical hotspot.
3. Alt + F4 when on the Desktop - the preferred option and not a problem for a keyboard/mouse user, but absolutely impossible if you were using a tablet, which is supposed to be Metro's Raison d'être.
My wife, who is fairly technically literate, could not figure out how to turn it off. I had to Google it, expecting that there would be some ridiculously easy method that I was completely overlooking. There was not. In order to make things easy for myself, I have added a shortcut to shutdown.exe on the Metro start screen so I have the options of one-click shutdown if I'm in Metro or Alt+F4 if I'm in classic desktop. Can't see your average Joe user coming up with this solution though and this will be one of the biggest transition headaches in my opinion.
The expectation is very much that Metro apps will be consuming cloud data sources and so will not need local database access. But cloud does not work for everything, such as business applications or little apps I write to make my life easier. Microsoft have limited the usefulness of Metro apps by not doing the extra leg work to make the development experience equal or superior to writings a standard Windows app. For something so radical to be picked up, they need to make the community want to use it, not try to force them to do it a certain way and remove the tools they are used to using unnecessarily.
From my perspective, I have almost completely ignored the Metro apps as the vast majority are useless to me. I suspect that, unless major improvements are made to the support for standard .net libraries in Windows apps, that Metro apps will be relegated to time-killing games and media consumption, something that the Metro UI is perfect for.
Those are the biggest issues Windows 8 has which, for your average user, are absolutely massive hurdles to overcome and is the reason many businesses will be completely skipping Windows 8 and hoping that a future service pack or Windows 9 corrects some of Windows 8's mistakes.
But of the 3 main issues described above (Start screen, shutdown, Metro apps), 2 are largely ignorable and the other is easily worked around.
Post-upgrade, everything worked and the only issue I have had is Linqpad not showing up as an installed application in the search screen which was easily solved by a quick re-install.
That little voice isn't far wrong.
That's not to say that after using Windows 8 for a while that I have grown to love the Metro UI and think it's the best thing since sliced bread. No, it's just that I've learned to ignore it to the extent that I barely notice it is there.
Worth noting that, despite it allegedly only being a code name, I will be using the term Metro repeatedly in this post, it's just easier to type than Windows 8 Store app.
Start screen
It wasn't until I had used Windows 8 for a few weeks that I realized how little I used the old Start Menu. Since the ability to pin applications to the taskbar was added in Windows 7 and the addition of a fantastic little application called Bins which allows me to have 4 apps in one 'slot' of the taskbar, everything I need is in the taskbar. This relegates the Start Menu to two things - Search and shutdown.Search
One thing that Microsoft have gotten right in Windows 8 is the search experience, which is superior to that of previous Windows versions. I get a big full page list of search results which covers files, settings, and applications and also the ability to search things like eBay from the same screen (not a feature I see myself using, but a nice touch anyway).Shutdown
Shutdown/Restart is the biggest thing that has frustrated me about Windows 8. There are a couple of ways to do it:1. When using a mouse, hover the mouse over a mystical hotspot in the bottom right hand corner, click on Settings, click on power, and then select from shutdown/restart/update. This is such a massive pain in the ass when using a mouse that it is not even really an option.
2. Same as above but the charm bar is invoked using Win+C instead of the mystical hotspot.
3. Alt + F4 when on the Desktop - the preferred option and not a problem for a keyboard/mouse user, but absolutely impossible if you were using a tablet, which is supposed to be Metro's Raison d'être.
My wife, who is fairly technically literate, could not figure out how to turn it off. I had to Google it, expecting that there would be some ridiculously easy method that I was completely overlooking. There was not. In order to make things easy for myself, I have added a shortcut to shutdown.exe on the Metro start screen so I have the options of one-click shutdown if I'm in Metro or Alt+F4 if I'm in classic desktop. Can't see your average Joe user coming up with this solution though and this will be one of the biggest transition headaches in my opinion.
Metro applications
The other biggest issue with Windows 8 is Metro apps. I work with Windows and C# on a daily basis and I must admit that I have found it really difficult trying to work with Windows' new paradigm. Local database usage is incredibly difficult, with portable libraries not allowing you to use some of the standard data libraries. Microsoft has tried really hard with their samples, but some of them fall short, such as the settings sample which shows how to use the settings flyout but does not show how to retrieve or save settings the "Metro" way.The expectation is very much that Metro apps will be consuming cloud data sources and so will not need local database access. But cloud does not work for everything, such as business applications or little apps I write to make my life easier. Microsoft have limited the usefulness of Metro apps by not doing the extra leg work to make the development experience equal or superior to writings a standard Windows app. For something so radical to be picked up, they need to make the community want to use it, not try to force them to do it a certain way and remove the tools they are used to using unnecessarily.
From my perspective, I have almost completely ignored the Metro apps as the vast majority are useless to me. I suspect that, unless major improvements are made to the support for standard .net libraries in Windows apps, that Metro apps will be relegated to time-killing games and media consumption, something that the Metro UI is perfect for.
Those are the biggest issues Windows 8 has which, for your average user, are absolutely massive hurdles to overcome and is the reason many businesses will be completely skipping Windows 8 and hoping that a future service pack or Windows 9 corrects some of Windows 8's mistakes.
But of the 3 main issues described above (Start screen, shutdown, Metro apps), 2 are largely ignorable and the other is easily worked around.
But it's not all bad...
Those not withstanding, Windows 8 has some plus points.Upgrade experience
I upgraded from Windows 98 to ME, and regretted it for weeks after until I finally bit the bullet and did a complete reinstall. The upgrade experience from Windows 7 to 8 was as smooth as it could be. The upgrade adviser told me which applications would be incompatible ahead of time and uninstalled them for me as part of the upgrade, the upgrade itself was paid for without ever leaving the upgrade application.Post-upgrade, everything worked and the only issue I have had is Linqpad not showing up as an installed application in the search screen which was easily solved by a quick re-install.
Faster than Windows 7
Owing largely to the removal of superfluous visual effects but I suspect there has also been some serious optimization work done under the hood. The improved Task Manager is also a nice touch.Hyper-V built in
I haven't made massive use of this yet owing to having an almost-1 year old in the house and generally having less time to tinker than I used to, but when I have done some work requiring a VM, it has been more than adequate. My virtual server hasn't been fired up in almost a year now.Great upgrade offer
I haven't paid for a Microsoft OS in a very long time, apart from as part of a new machine purchase. Despite the controversy over Windows 8, the cheap upgrade price of £15 and the possibility of being able to write applications and publish them through a store that would gain my applications exposure and possibly even make me a few quid, was enough for me to bite. The ecosystem possibility seems a little less likely now, but I still think the upgrade was worth it.
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