WinXP: still WIDELY used, stable platform.

WinVista: yeah, really, who remembers this one?

Win7: Again, widely accepted, stable, even being moved to in the VA where I work.

Win8: seeing a pattern?

 

I was going to talk about that as well... There seems to be a pattern in their fails and successes.

 

Same applied to the Server-side O/S. They get one right, they try to improve or make drastic changes and it fails. Maybe someday they can break the cycle, but I don't see it happening now.

 

I can't see businesses upgrading to Windows Server 2012. The crappy Metro UI thing is there as well:

 

 

They might as well just stick to Windows Server 2008 R2...

 

 

EDIT:

Also, I've been reading that you CAN disable the Metro UI via the registry editor. So it seems that, since Windows 8 hasn't released yet, they may add an option for people to use Metro UI, or not. (This hasn't been confirmed yet)

Edited June 7, 201214 yr by linux731

WinXP: still WIDELY used, stable platform.

WinVista: yeah, really, who remembers this one?

Win7: Again, widely accepted, stable, even being moved to in the VA where I work.

Win8: seeing a pattern?

 

You could go even farther back to see the trend:

 

Windows 95: Okay and widely accepted (after SP2)

Windows 98: Shameless money grab, not much different than 95 with SP2

Windows ME: Disaster

Windows XP: FTW!

Windows that which shall not be named: Disaster

Windows 7: FTW the Sequel!

Windows 8: Impending Disaster

Windows 9: Windows 8 minus Metro (at least in my prediction, like Win 7 is Vista without the bloat)

this is nothing new. The tech world for YEARS has used an "every other release we'll take it" approach....at least in the shops I have worked for! Every other OS release from them sucks. Follow the lineage back, I'll even only go so far back as XP:

 

WinXP: still WIDELY used, stable platform.

WinVista: yeah, really, who remembers this one?

Win7: Again, widely accepted, stable, even being moved to in the VA where I work.

Win8: seeing a pattern?

 

Same applied to the Server-side O/S. They get one right, they try to improve or make drastic changes and it fails. Maybe someday they can break the cycle, but I don't see it happening now.

 

You could have gone back a little further in time

 

98; good

ME: totally useless

Wndows 95 - OK

Windows 98 - OK, but not much changed from 95

Windows ME - problematic

Windows 2000 - good (still have it on my older PCs and use it along with Linux Mint)

Windows XP - good (still use it)

Windows Vista - good grief, what were they thinking........

Windows 7 - OK - apart from the whole protecting the user from themselves part, if it wasn't for than I'd write 'good' here

Windows 8 - things don't look good and from what I've seen so far I can't help but feel that this is a bad attempt to copy Apple

......

 

Guess everyone thinks the money is with tablet type of devices. But I disagree with that.

The iPad is great (and I'd love to have one so I can do my AVSIM work on the go) but its still no replacement for a PC.

 

Don't understand why everyone wants to copy Apple. I feel it would be better try to come up with something different and better instead. The Apple concept doesn't work for everyone and all their products are ridiculously overpriced. Plus I don't think at the moment its possible to effectively compete with Apple and beat them at their own game. Only way to beat Apple would be though innovation and coming up with something better than them. My view is that in the long-term copying Apple and coming up with stuff like the current Windows 8 concept is not the answer.

 

Even Ubuntu went down this path with their Unity interface, which resulted in many (including me) dropping Ubuntu completely and going with Linux Mint (and other Linux distros) instead; and now its Linux Mint that's on top and leading the way amongst the Linux desktop distros (where as previously it was Ubuntu in the lead by miles).

People still want a good desktop OS, a big part of the market doesn't want to see everything swamped with tablet and phone types of OS. There are many things that are just plain awkward on these.

The harrasment to customer seems to continue and now expand adding Windows itself into the frail. Someone in the organization thinks it can bullie their customers to death this year. They might end up doing the dying and the pain that comes with. Someone better shake that tree starting from the top. There is no inovative imagination left up there if ever. Bill come back.

From using win 8 CP seems like metro is just a start menu replacement. To do any work you immediately drop into the desktop, looks just like win 7 without the orb.

 

I'm installing the RP, but NVidia pulled the WHQL driver they had planned for it.

 

scott s.

.

You could have gone back a little further in time

 

98; good

ME: totally useless

 

even farther back: 95, good.

even farther back: 95, good.

 

I'd disagree, out of the box, 95 was pretty awful and buggy, it wasn't 'good' until OSR2 (although OSR1/SP1 fixed a lot of the major bugs 6mo after release), it was 'great' at OSR 2.1/2.5. But USB rapidly took off to the point where the partial support in OSR2.1 wasn't enough.

 

A lot of people seriously held off and stuck with Win3.11/DOS for games until OSR2.1 or '98.

 

As far as everyone bashing ME, it wasn't a BAD OS when compared to 98, the problem was that 2k was around by then, and ME vs 2000 was a complete slam dunk for 2k, apart from one thing: some key drivers and games still didn't run on 2k.

 

If you had a serious need to run a 9x OS, like say Jane's F15, then ME was definitely the best of the lineage, barring that one thing about lacking format.com (but seriously, how often did you really need to format disks by then?)

................

As far as everyone bashing ME, it wasn't a BAD OS when compared to 98, the problem was that 2k was around by then, and ME vs 2000 was a complete slam dunk for 2k, apart from one thing: some key drivers and games still didn't run on 2k.

 

If you had a serious need to run a 9x OS, like say Jane's F15, then ME was definitely the best of the lineage, barring that one thing about lacking format.com (but seriously, how often did you really need to format disks by then?)

 

Windows ME wasn't so bad indeed, except for one major flaw - instability and unreliability problems. I've had it crash on me lots of times and 2 of those crashes were so bad that the only way to make it work again was to re-install the whole thing.

 

The other thing ME was criticised about at the time was the restricted access to real mode MS-DOS it incorporated (Microsoft said this potentially speed up system boot time). You have to understand that back then there was a lot of stuff around that still required DOS, some games especially. Applications that needed real mode DOS to run wouldn't work. Only way to try it was to use a bootable floppy disk to boot the system into real mode DOS and then run the software, but this was awkward (it also required good knowledge of DOS) and could give problems too. Getting some DOS games and utilities to run in Windows ME was a bit of a nightmare sometimes, especially with games and getting the sound and music in those to work properly (I remember battling to get Dark Forces, Duke Nukem 3D, Tomb Raider, Tie-Fighter, X-Wing and others to work properly in ME with sound and all). Of cource running DOS stuff in Windows 2000 was also problematic, and there was a lot of stuff that would work in ME but not in 2000.

Nowadays we have DOSBox, which can run most dos programmes and games from inside Windows, MAC and Linux. Sometimes I use it to run those old DOS games and I still think they're great :)

 

At anyrate if it wasn't for the instability and unreliability issues, I'm somewhat positive Windows ME would have been received better, but with these problems many people quickly switched to Windows 2000 as soon as they could.

......

 

"Guess everyone thinks the money is with tablet type of devices. But I disagree with that.

The iPad is great (and I'd love to have one so I can do my AVSIM work on the go) but its still no replacement for a PC.

 

Don't understand why everyone wants to copy Apple."

Momtchil

 

 

 

You say you don't have an iPad. Well, that may be a reason why you don't see the money being spent in such enormous amounts on this venue. I have had all 3 iPads and the potential I see (like many others) is staggering!

I am a PC guy, but I also have an Apple laptop, an iPhone, and an iPad. I fly on my PC, but if Apple ever decided to make a computer that runs FS flawlessly and with the accommodations that FSX requires, I would ditch the PC in a New York Minute, and be "totally Apple". That's my opinion.

 

Stan

One thing to consider about Win8 is that the market is changing. The Desktop is dead and the gadgets are getting smaller. Most of us on here still use a Desktop because we use Flight Simulator, and for us bigger is better, we like upgradeable components and a very large screen.....that is the opposite of the majority of the market.

 

The rest of the world are buying smaller. The city I live in doesn't sell desktop PC's anymore because their is no demand for it, if you want one you have to get one through a special order. Microsoft is of course taking Windows in this direction. It is designed with the small portable devices in mind.

 

Right now I am using an Acer Aspire One with a 10.1" Display on Windows XP......This O/S wasn't designed for a machine as small as this. Windows 8 will have better features for the smaller machines so this is the direction it is going, as well as the touch screens.

 

Desktop users will hate Windows 8 but MS will overlook that because Desktop users are now probably around 10% of the market share. Gadgets are smaller and their are now more of them.

I actually have Windows 8 installed on my laptop and I'm loving it a lot. It boots up faster than Windows 7, restarts faster than windows 7, the task manager is VERY detailed now, at times it uses less resources, etc, etc. The only thing I miss is the start menu but there are easy workarounds for that if you look them up on the net and Metro UI can search programs just like the start menu easily. I love how smooth everything is though and with the release preview released a week ago they removed some eye candy and plan to remove Aero maybe. I like this because it centers the focus on the applications themselves. I don't have FSX on this laptop unfortunately because I had to clean install but I'm pretty sure it will work well. Haven't run into any problems with any DirectX or OpenGL games and all my programs have worked normally.

here's my take on this whole microsoft os thing.

they release a flawed os touting it as the greatest thing since the wheel. 500,000 people buy it and complain to them about whats wrong with it. so they fix it and release it as the next version. people pay to do microsofts r&d work. 98 better than 95, xp better than me, win7 better than vista. see the pattern.

smart business plan by microsoft but eventually it'll blow up in their face.

 

just my opinion though.

The corporate market is still very large, though, and MS can't afford to ignore that. They laid a big egg with Vista. My company, very conservative in IT, never adopted it and I was using XP until late last year. Now I've got Windows 7, which keeps me from getting much done, but isn't that the whole purpose of corporate IT, anyway?

 

Yes, the machine boots up a bit faster, but it's also a newer, faster machine with more memory. My XP Flight Simulator machine at home leaves this thing with Win 7 flatfooted.

One thing to consider about Win8 is that the market is changing. The Desktop is dead and the gadgets are getting smaller. Most of us on here still use a Desktop because we use Flight Simulator, and for us bigger is better, we like upgradeable components and a very large screen.....that is the opposite of the majority of the market.

 

The rest of the world are buying smaller. The city I live in doesn't sell desktop PC's anymore because their is no demand for it, if you want one you have to get one through a special order. Microsoft is of course taking Windows in this direction. It is designed with the small portable devices in mind.

I wouldn't say that the desktop is dead by any means. As Captain_B notes, corporations still use them, and most serious (none-console) gamers use them, and that's a big market. The thing about the latter group, though, is that they won't buy their machines from mainstream retailers, rather they will build their own or get them from specialist game-machine suppliers, and this most likely explains your observation regarding the lack of desktops on sale in your city.