Windows 10

There is little reason to upgrade from Vista to Seven, the things that sucked about Vista (rather than Windows in general) have been mostly fixed. 7 and 8 are a little faster, but the main thing is that hardware got more powerful while OSes stayed in the same weight class... a lot of hardware that shipped with or was upgraded to Vista early on wasn't up to the task.

While I like the OS, I'm not really too impressed with the new desktop-focused stuff on Linux. Bloated, limited and developed in a questionable and unprofessional way. A well-configured old school window manager runs rings around them all and is much more usable.
 
Well I wouldn't upgrade any Windows to any other Windows. I always thought I was just being lazy but according to Zelig I've actually been following the best upgrade strategy all this time. If you're using an XP machine then you should buy a new computer rather than upgrading the OS.
 
The 32-bit memory limit was punishing to me even in 2005, so when I moved from XP x64 to Vista 64-bit, it was a huge boost in compatibility to everything.

Local search works fine for me in Win8. I never use the Bing search, not sure what the problem is.

Competition with Apple has already yielded nicer results. File History is on par with Time Machine, Bitlocker is now free for any devices supporting Connected Standby, Bitlocker on devices supporting edrive is hands-down the best full-disk encryption solution on any platform, Onedrive integration and settings sync is awesome. Come to think of it, these desktop changes alone are more of an improvement over Win7 than anything Win7 introduced over Vista.
 
I wonder what MS will be calling their cloud storage service next year? TheDrive perhaps? :crazyeye: And Zelig every time I read your post I hear you singing 'awesome' in a falsetto lol.

PS. I would like Aero with my Windows 9 please. :p
I'm serious.
 
There are many small problems with Windows 8: The Flattening.
They eliminated some UI fluff that actually had a good reason for existing.
Drop shadows you can actually see (OSX may be overdoing it, but Windows 8 ones are too small to be useful) are an intuitive way to denote window hierarchy, pseudo-3d buttons would look a bit tacky in the given aesthetic but they're good at guiding the eye.
At the same time, they left in some gratuitous bling that's equally out of place and fulfils no useful function (taskbar is a big offender).

Designers: We want something clean and visionary and devoid of cruft. Simple, elegant, modern.
Users: We want our shinies back!
Microsoft: Let's compromise and put some of those shines back in, but neutered to a point where they no longer fulfil their original function. Everyone has a good part of what they want, right?

A better way would have been to consider alternatives that fulfil the function of the removed bling and mesh better with the overall aesthetic. If you want to do away with the fake 3d, you could progressively dim inactive windows instead of using drop shadows to denote hierarchy.
Maybe consider subtle gradients if people find brightly coloured solid squares hard on the eyes... but don't mindlessly fall back to glassy and glossy because that doesn't fit.
 
I've never noticed the drop shadows on windows before and was wondering what you were talking about. Perhaps it's subconscious, but I certainly don't use drop shadows as an indicator for window hierarchy consciously.

I agree that a lot of the 3D elements in UIs serve a useful purpose, and I'm not too happy about this trend to flatten everything. Fortunately, in modern UIs, they've got rid of things you can see but can't click for the most part, so you can usually click on everything your eye notices.
 
Good riddance to useless decorations. I don't want any UI details implying you can do something that you can't. Where applicable, I'm also in favour of showing useful stuff only when it's useful (OSX style scrollbars come to mind).

I find cues about window hierarchy helpful when not using dynamic tiling (this depends on working habits) and pick up on fake 3d automatically (probably varies from person to person), so shadows give me something useful without adding excessive clutter.
Because I pick up on them so easily, I don't want shadows on static stuff that doesn't need to guide the eye. Like desktop icon labels, although I usually turn off desktop icons anyway.

It's shallow and should be irrelevant, but the lack of cues about window hierarchy turned out to be a persistent annoyance. I wasn't sure for some time why I felt slightly lost on the Windows 8 desktop.
Is this common enough that MS should care? Not sure, and my complaint isn't that they fail to cater to my personal preference.

But it makes no sense to almost eliminate "dated and cheesy" pseudo-3d in a place where it's potentially useful while keeping it elsewhere where it's gratuitous. Good interface design doesn't come from fads and fashion, but the interplay of usability and aesthetics.
 
I wonder what MS will be calling their cloud storage service next year? TheDrive perhaps? :crazyeye: And Zelig every time I read your post I hear you singing 'awesome' in a falsetto lol.

PS. I would like Aero with my Windows 9 please. :p
I'm serious.

Hopefully Aero comes back, the Windows 8 UI is just unappealing visually. Aero looked cool, Windows 8 UI just fails. The start menu coming back is a nice step in the right direction. Now to just get rid of Metro completely in Windows 9.
 
Hopefully Aero comes back, the Windows 8 UI is just unappealing visually. Aero looked cool, Windows 8 UI just fails. The start menu coming back is a nice step in the right direction. Now to just get rid of Metro completely in Windows 9.

I have some excellent news that you'll be thrilled with!

Metro has in fact been completely optional since Windows 8.0 RTM, and will continue to be optional for the foreseeable future! :cool:
 
I wonder what MS will be calling their cloud storage service next year? TheDrive perhaps? :crazyeye: And Zelig every time I read your post I hear you singing 'awesome' in a falsetto lol.

PS. I would like Aero with my Windows 9 please. :p
I'm serious.
Windows was forced to change it due to copyright infringement, it wasn't something they wanted to. Not like the name really changes anything. But I'm guessing you don't use OneDrive because if you did, you wouldn't complain. It is awesome - particularly if you also have Office 365 so you can use office programs in a web browser on any computer.

Well I wouldn't upgrade any Windows to any other Windows. I always thought I was just being lazy but according to Zelig I've actually been following the best upgrade strategy all this time. If you're using an XP machine then you should buy a new computer rather than upgrading the OS.

This is the advice I have been given by several people in real life as well.
 
OneDrive is just tightly integrated cloud storage with monopoly written all over it. Why would I want any part of that?
 
Because it's tightly integrated cloud storage. Why wouldn't you want a part of it?

What do you even mean by "monopoly written all over it"? Other than OneDrive I've got cloud storage accounts with Box, DropBox, SpiderOak, Google, Amazon and Wuala. Depending on usage, I'd recommend any of them non-exclusively, and would love for any of them to reach feature-parity with OneDrive, but I hardly see any benefit from a Windows user avoiding OneDrive.
 
It's basically being force-fed to Windows 8 users and when you contrast the tight integration to other 3rd party offers the choice is clear which one mainstream users will go with. Far as why I wouldn't use it.... let's just say that for me privacy takes precedence over convenience.
 
It's basically being force-fed to Windows 8 users and when you contrast the tight integration to other 3rd party offers the choice is clear which one mainstream users will go with.

So what's the problem?

I mean, Google Drive is basically being force-fed to Android/Chrome OS users, iMessage is being force-fed to iOS users, etc.

Far as why I wouldn't use it.... let's just say that for me privacy takes precedence over convenience.

So then use SpiderOak or Wuala.
 
Force fed to Win8 users? You have to pay for it I'm pretty sure - that's hardly force feeding it. And if it is even offered for free, then the free version certainly has less storage than the paid. Even then, that's hardly 'force fed'.

I also have dropbox but I have to say OneDrive is so much better I've been actively trying to get my friends to buy Office365 subscriptions so we can share documents on OneDrive instead of Dropbox, which can be kind of derpy at times.


And and and tight integration is a form of force feeding? Dude, dropbox and the others could offer that kind of integration but don't because they're derpy. Of course they couldn't offer Office Online programs...oh wait, they can and do. Ever try google docs? Those are derpy too.
 
MS has rapidly improved and integrated OneDrive in large part because switching between cloud storage services is so easy. If I wake up tomorrow and decide to switch to DropBox as my primary service, it literally takes me less than five seconds to drag everything from my OneDrive folder to my DropBox folder.

Hobbs: 7GB free to anyone with an MS account, online Office is free.
 
MS has rapidly improved and integrated OneDrive in large part because switching between cloud storage services is so easy. If I wake up tomorrow and decide to switch to DropBox as my primary service, it literally takes me less than five seconds to drag everything from my OneDrive folder to my DropBox folder.
I actually did this last night. Stupid easy and fast. Well, not everything in OneDrive was moved over, because Dropbox won't give me that kind of space.
Hobbs: 7GB free to anyone with an MS account, online Office is free.

Online office is free to anyone or free to anyone with an MS account? Do you have to pay anything for an MS account?

And 7GB is both much better than dropbox's standard (like 1.5 IIRC) and also much less than OneDrive with a paid account (107 GB).

And at the end of the day, hardly force feeding. :lol:
 
Top Bottom