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Re: [LUG] OT: Windows XP

 

On 15 February 2014 00:40, bad apple <mr.meowski@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Bad Apple - love you to bits - but you occasionally suffer from "I know
> this, I can do it, so it's not a problem." :)
Ha! Guilty as charged!

:)
 

For a concrete example, lots of people on this list have a serious hate
case on for Win8/8.1

s/Win8\/8.1/Windows/

Which isn't surprising. I've seen similar levels of hate (including unjustified) against linux by Windows groups. Just core, basic human group-racism.

I'm pragmatic and use both frequently, and recognise the positives and negatives of both. From your writings, I think you're the same.

completely disables Metro and makes it an entire non-issue. Yet *every
single damn person* capable of voicing an opinion on the matter keeps
perpetuating the same tired old nonsense.

I believe that's because a company that they trusted to release a new version, not significantly different to the previous one, did something they viewed as insulting. Microsoft launched this interface, made it deliberately non-trivial to revert (Sorry, but that's my view) and then sat back and said "Hey, this is wonderful. We know what you guys need, this is it!"

It's insulting to their customers, and their customers were upset. Microsoft also dealt with these initial feedbacks from beta and early release in a very arrogant and closed way.

It's now 17 months since 8 was officially released and you still cannot buy it without Metro enabled as default. Sales of 7 are still going strong, and in some cases the price of 7 has increased in that time. Microsoft make a buck either way in the short term, but with this kind of catastrophic mistake and the change in CEOs combined with improvements by Apple and Linux, I think MS has seen its best days.

I was amused through the first half of 2013 that many manufacturers were advertising new computers with "Comes with Windows 8 - but here's a token to downgrade to Windows 7" because, I imagine, they had to sell 8 as part of the Microsoft vendor lock-in but were fed up with fielding complaints from users who bought their kit and didn't know how to drive it.

So, yeah. I think that's why people "keep" perpetuating this. They lost trust and MS really hasn't done anything to restore it. The core problems have not been addressed and the customer base has failed to embrace Metro in the way Microsoft expected, because they naively believed people would suddenly start using PCs as mobile phones. There's a few reasons why I don't use my phone for every bit of computing and one reason is interface. (Along with speed, HIDs and real estate)

reach out and tap the screen, or pinch/squeeze for zoom, etc. I did a
code review with with a SQL DBA the other day and with both of us sat in
front of one laptop we found ourselves naturally using the touchscreen a
lot more than I would have expected. Neither of us would use a
touchscreen normally, or for any kind of our normal work, but Metro with
it's big icons and touchscreen APIs actually kind of makes sense in
certain, very specific situations.

I think you're making my point for me here with two words; "Specific situations". Metro was rolled out as "this is what you need, get used to it" - even when most computers it was being installed on do not have touchscreens which is probably where the only major advantage of Metro can be utilised.

Unfortunately, having quite serious OCD about things like smeared
screens, until someone figures out how to protectively coat glass
against finger prints I will never use one on anything that isn't my
phone or a tablet, so Metro is still dead on arrival.
 
Why don't some people /ever/ clean their monitors? Takes two seconds!  I've had users with their nose almost pressed against the screen because they can't see past the old sneezes and various biohazard blobs.

Mind, I never clean my keyboards. Never notice those, though - don't look at them.

S
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