Windows 8 Brings a Fresh Look to an Old OS

Windows has had an interesting path to where they are today. This is an operating system that has been around a long time, in computer and technology age – Windows has got to be really, really old. From my first experience with Windows being 3.1, to the failures of Vista and ME, the operating system that inundates many of our lives took a long time to turn the corner into a vibrant, easy to use and user friendly operating system. With Windows 7 we saw glimpses of what this OS would become; with Windows 8 we have a better picture of an operating system that Microsoft is banking on to bring them closer to dominating all markets.

Full blog below:

Windows 8 Brings a Fresh Look to an Old OS

I don't agree. I see Win 8 as ultimately being another Win ME or Vista.

I have worked in computers from 1962 until I retired. So I've been around when PC's and Microsoft first started.

fireberd said:

I don't agree. I see Win 8 as ultimately being another Win ME or Vista.

I have worked in computers from 1962 until I retired. So I've been around when PC's and Microsoft first started.

Click to expand...

wow ,you have been around computers a long time .
me i have only been around them since 1996,win3.11
i never use ME or Vista on any of my own computers ,had win98se and winxp and like both so didn't bother .Got both win7 and win8 free so i switched from winxp
having sad that i really liked win7 ,and i'am really enjoying win8 .iam duel booting win7 and 8 now ,rarely using win7 .

i see no reason why win8 will not work out for Microsoft ,and i don't think it will flop .
I don't think Vista would have flopped ,had it not been released to early ,it works flawless with sp2 on my wife's laptop,burning and converting movies,watching tv[on network sites ]ect ect ,

so why is win8 going to flop ,and dont say because of the charms bar or the lack of the tradition start button because both are very easy to use after the first week of using win8 ,there has to be other reasons !!

windows 8 isn't going to flop at all, steam even reports that their are more windows 8 users already than there are mac osx users after one month of being out.

they just need to tweek the metro ui and allow desktop users to resize apps and open it on multiple screens or instances and it pretty much solves it's problems.

it's just not a well thought out front end for some markets.

Yes, this is so unbelievably fresh looking. I think I've died and gone to OS heaven. /sarcasm

symbiont said:

View attachment 12751

Yes, this is so unbelievably fresh looking. I think I've died and gone to OS heaven. /sarcasm

Click to expand...

LOL! To some maybe "YES" Different people, Different taste.

I only have Win 8 installed as I do PC support and dual boot with Win 7, so far only one client has upgraded to Win 8. A couple others said they were going to upgrade but apparently thought it over and decided not to.

There are a lot of people that don't like Win 8. Whether its "better" or not is a personal opinion. If someone has a touch screen then it may be OK, but for non-touch screen hardware it's not that intuitive. I can't use it for my recording system OS as some of my older recording hardware is not supported or does not work correctly under Win 8. The word from most DAW (recording system PC's) builders is to wait and not go to Win 8, at least not yet. Commerical business system users do not want to spend $$ for new hardware and retraining employees so it will be a long time if it ever gets generally accepted by the business community. Having been a LAN/WAN Network Manager where change is constant and accepted, a new OS will take a long time if ever to be adopted on a large scale. It was a long and major step when the Federal Agency I worked for migrated from Novell to Microsoft Client Server systems and from Win 3.1 to XP.

Finally, MS has a history of "every other" OS being a hit or flop. Win98SE was OK, Win ME was not, Win XP was a hit, Vista not, Win 7 was a hit. Win 8.....

fireberd said:

I don't agree. I see Win 8 as ultimately being another Win ME or Vista.

Click to expand...

I was thinking it was more like Microsoft Bob...

fireberd said:

Finally, MS has a history of "every other" OS being a hit or flop. Win98SE was OK, Win ME was not, Win XP was a hit, Vista not, Win 7 was a hit. Win 8.....

Click to expand...

With the exception of Windows ME, I've used every desktop version of Windows since Windows 95 and have never really disliked any of them. However, the above statement is not true from my point of view as I much preferred Windows 2000 to Windows 98 and preferred Windows Vista to Windows XP.

Vista was actually a good OS, very stable and an improvement over XP. It's main problem (and it was a big problem) was the driver problem because a lot of peoples peripherals wouldn't work on it and were therefore forced to buy new ones as the peripheral manufacturers just said tough luck. The other issue was lack of understanding of UAC, so the users didn't like a box popping up asking for admin privilege's when they tried to do something, as they didn't understand what it's purpose was.

Windows 7 was just an upgraded version of Vista, so if Windows 7 was released in the place of Vista, it would have been met with the same response as Vista was.

ARC1020 said:

[snip]

Windows 7 was just an upgraded version of Vista, so if Windows 7 was released in the place of Vista, it would have been met with the same response as Vista was.

Click to expand...

I saw Windows 7 as a huge improvement over Vista. It was what Vista was supposed to be: nice UI changes but with better performance and bug fixes. I had a Vista laptop that had no end to issues, including running like a dog. I upgraded to Windows 7 and that cleared a lot of that up. Windows 7 was probably the first Windows release that fixed more problems than it created. I really like it.

fireberd said:

Finally, MS has a history of "every other" OS being a hit or flop. Win98SE was OK, Win ME was not, Win XP was a hit, Vista not, Win 7 was a hit. Win 8.....

Click to expand...

That is simply not true. While there have been a few "stinkers" like ME, in general most of their OS's have been good releases for the time and circumstances. Windows 95 was what was needed to get people off of 16 bit windows and on to 32 bit Windows. 98 began the merge of device drivers from the old dos and vxd model to the NT model. ME was never supposed to exist, and was a stopgap release because XP wasn't finished yet.

XP (the RTM release) was good in many ways, but was still the "old" security mindframe. XP SP2 was almost a completely new OS with the same branding as XP. Vista had issues at first, but these were resolved by SP1. 7 also had issues at first, and those were largely resolved by SP1 as well, though SP1 was far too long in coming.

This is one of those myths that will simply never die. I say it's a myth because the reality is much more complex, and the reality is that bad releases happened for various reasons and was not an "every other" release kind of thing.

I think Windows 8 does have potential, but it's potential would no longer be considered a Windows OS.
With Metro they are abstracting access to the OS so much that I believe they could port the APIs to a completely different OS (Like Linux or QNX) and the apps wouldn't notice any difference.
I believe that 8's evolution will be to replace the NT kernel with the microkernel they're working on.

No matter what, the next OS to come out of Microsoft will be less recognizable.

I actually liked Windows ME. Anyway, i have dual booted Win 8 on my main PC now, and after a couple of hours using it, i downloaded stuff, then realised i need a new hard drive as i have filled up 24gb already, and hardly done anything on it.I use Start bar every day as i hate clutter on the desktop screen on Win7.I think that is why i have a hard time using Metro.As too it dying, it is very unlikely, and hopefully the next update will be an improvement.

symbiont said:

View attachment 12751

Yes, this is so unbelievably fresh looking. I think I've died and gone to OS heaven. /sarcasm

Click to expand...

don't even use it like that ,maybe once or twice a month , i have all the icons i need on the lower tool bar or on my desktop .
if that looks is going to make it fail doesn't say much for the people who use computers !

fireberd said:

Finally, MS has a history of "every other" OS being a hit or flop. Win98SE was OK, Win ME was not, Win XP was a hit, Vista not, Win 7 was a hit. Win 8.....

Click to expand...

Oh boy, I need to find a post I posted a while ago of someone saying this EXACT same thing. I disagree vehemently.

I don't get the comments of Windows 8 not being intuitive or well thought out for mouse users. Point and click. Click and drag. Scroll. Is this Windows 7 I'm speaking of? Nope, Windows 8.

Even then, in the enterprise, rid the Start Screen of the apps, change a couple Group Policy settings to prevent Windows Store access, pin Desktop apps and locations and default IE to the Desktop; you have a king sized visual start menu.