Windows 8

Hmm, so instead of dragging the screen with your mouse, you right-click the start screen and then all apps to access the comprehensive list of installed programs?
 
What amuses me is that Windows 8 gets singled out so much for criticism of the interface - yes it has a few warts but on the whole it's a step up from a sorry state of affairs.

Compared to a properly powerful Window Manager (like FVWM or Sawfish) configured to the user's preferences, all modern interfaces suck.
 
I thought you were a proponent of char searching for them.... Why would you ever need to see the "all programs" menu in your case?
Irony abounds.
 
Why would you use pinned items instead of the keyboard?
 
So I was looking at some stats (http://www.netmarketshare.com/) about OS use, which has 8 almost overtaking Vista right now, at around 4%, but XP is still HUGE (like 38%). Is this because of fake copies in China? Does anyone have a better source that shows usage in Europe/US only?
 
Even there, XP is still surprisingly big.
 
I went to the local dentist yesterday, it's a moderate size operation with around 12 chairs. All the PCs there are still running windows XP.
 
Specialised low-volume stuff like medical equipment and software can be a compatibility nightmare. Upgrading the OS may not be practical.
 
I went to the local dentist yesterday, it's a moderate size operation with around 12 chairs. All the PCs there are still running windows XP.

Well that's because they don't have an IT department, they're doubtlessly outsourcing their IT, and don't want to pay the few thousand dollars it would take to upgrade their PCs.

Specialised low-volume stuff like medical equipment and software can be a compatibility nightmare. Upgrading the OS may not be practical.

Well, that's fine, but if anything is specialized enough to warrant this, it shouldn't be connected to the internet, so won't show up in any usage stats.
 
Assuming the OS-dependent things are at least well designed, IT knows what they are doing, users are able to ignore apparent complexities they don't understand and willing to accept limitations they don't understand in the name of good practice...

There are good reasons to stick to something that works until there's a clean transition.
That said, it's sad to see a practice exercise downgrade rights so everything is certified to work, then swap out PCs at a high rate mostly because badly maintained Windows XP develops gremlins.
 
I work at a rather large organization and a lot of people still use XP. Nobody wants to upgrade because it would cost a ton. I use windows 7 because I'm a developer and need access to the latest and greatest, but most other people don't.. so our ITS department doesn't really push upgrading, because like I said before it would cost a fortune.

Plus it's kind of silly to roll out organization wide OS upgrades every couple years.
 
I work at a rather large organization and a lot of people still use XP. Nobody wants to upgrade because it would cost a ton. I use windows 7 because I'm a developer and need access to the latest and greatest, but most other people don't.. so our ITS department doesn't really push upgrading, because like I said before it would cost a fortune.

Plus it's kind of silly to roll out organization wide OS upgrades every couple years.

The latest and greatest would be Windows 8.

Upgrading from XP wouldn't cost a ton by any reasonable measurement at this point in time, the ROI on an upgrade to any modern OS is going to be far less than a year. And really, any company that doesn't have migration plans in place to stop using XP within the next year is really in some trouble, IT management should be fired for incompetence.

And nobody suggests upgrading operating systems every two years. Windows operating systems are only released every three years - it's not totally unreasonable for an enterprise environment to skip every other release, if your IT management can't push through an OS upgrade every six years, again, they don't deserve their jobs.

It's been twelve years since Windows XP was released - continuing to use it at this point is equivalent to using Windows 3.1 in 2004. (Notwithstanding there's still ~11 months before MS kills security updates for XP.)
 
Top Bottom