Windows 8 and FSX

[tfm 169]

Not everything new is an improvement. I've tried Win8 (yes, RTM: Technet) for several hours but simply cannot see the point of it for a desktop user. In fact for desktop use it is a step backwards IMHO in several respects ranging from the significant (the loss of the start menu is a big deal: why should I have to lose sight of the document I'm working on when I hit the Windows key to conduct a search?) to the merely irritating and bizarre (why, after 15 or so years, have they removed the ability to micro-customise the display eg by choosing a thinner border for the windows - now dependent on hacking the registry instead of right-click desktop then "Personalize/Window colour/ Advanced appearance"?)

 

Mind you, I can't stand any version of Office later than 2003 either.

 

And steam ...

 

Tim

[Kosta 122]

Vista was far from a flop

 

Are you serious? Vista was nothing but failed 7. Even today with all the updates and service packs, Vista is a flop.

[Andydigital 93]

Vista was not a flop at all it made Microsoft millions regardless of how technically good or bad it was. Perhaps what you mean is lost in translation or something. Yes Vista was horrible at times (not a flop) but as you said it was basically Windows 7 before all the big bugs were squashed, are you saying Windows 7 was a flop too?

 

Windows 7 was released early purely because Vista got a bad name in the press (like Windows 8 will) but under the hood, Vista and Windows 7 are very much the same. Microsoft did the right thing from a financial stand point by killing off Vista early, but it was purely for Vista's poor public image reasons and nothing else.

[Pete Dowson 558]

Windows 7 was released early purely because Vista got a bad name in the press (like Windows 8 will) but under the hood, Vista and Windows 7 are very much the same. Microsoft did the right thing from a financial stand point by killing off Vista early, but it was purely for Vista's poor public image reasons and nothing else.

 

Odd the way Microsoft has often tended to alternatie good and bad:

 

Win 3.1 hmm. My first Windows experience, so can't rate

WinForWG 3.11 good

Win95 bad

Win98 good, very good

WinMe bad, very bad

<---- WinNT and Win2000 in here, but not really for general consumption

WinXP good, very good

WinVista bad

Win7 good, best so far (IMHO)

Win8 bad

..... Win9 good maybe? ;-)

 

Microsoft FS also went through similar ups and downs, though not so precisely.

 

I think skipping every other version looks a sensible idea! ;-)

 

Regards

Pete

[iankb 1]

Users who don't like Apple's constraints in iOS will jailbreak their iDevices.

 

Users who don't like the lack of a Start Menu in Windows 8 will add third-party products to recreate it.

 

Both manufacturers learn by their users' experience, and will rectify their OS in a future release.

 

It's just a shame that they get it so obviously wrong in the first place.

 

As to Windows 8, the performance is good, and you can work round the absence of a Start Menu. Search for 'Control Panel' and add a shortcut to it on your desktop. Then build up a set of nested folders containing shortcuts to replace your Start Menu.

 

And with Hyper-V built in, and with my 32GB of memory, Windows 8 could be quite useful. However, this computer is a test machine, and I still have three other computers running Windows 7.

[iankb 1]

Odd the way Microsoft has often tended to alternatie good and bad ...

 

Pity they haven't done that with Microsoft Office. It's getting worse on every release!

[Kosta 122]

it made Microsoft millions

 

Indeed. And made lots and lots of mad customers (I am dealing with them daily).

 

I know that VIsta is basically W7 under the hood with some serious fixes.

 

I am not saying that W8 is a flop systemwise. It is what is over the hood that will make it flop. Vista was a systemwise flop, something people could not see. But were disappointed with the instability afterwards, something you didn't see as you probably don't face hundreds of private customers buying laptops and PCs with Vista.

 

W8 will suffer the other flop, and that is that people will not convert to W8 being on W7. Not to mention the awful Metro.

 

The only way people are going to be forced to buy W8 is via buying hardware with preinstalled windows. And our hardware sales are going to drop, that I predict. And not only ours.

 

Odd the way Microsoft has often tended to alternatie good and bad:

 

 

Yes, it is also something I noticed. It must be a business plan, to push the sales of upcoming OS. See MacOSx, they barely have these problems, they never have "bad" OS... yet, their sales are not as nearly as high as Microsoft's.

[Jim Young 2,356]

I do not plan on upgrading to Windows 8. It will be the first OS since Windows ME that I will miss. Regarding Vista, I upgraded to Vista just as FSX was being released as I had heard FSX was developed based on the Vista code with backward compatibility with XP. If Microsoft upgraded FSX with Windows 8 in mine, I would definitely upgrade but I see no advantage or reason to change from Windows 7 at this time. I think Windows 7 is the best OS from Microsoft. I hope Microsoft is not using the business plan of Adobe Photoshop Elements. A new version of Elements is released every year at something around $100. It has the many of the same features as the more expensive Photoshop (around $600) so it's a popular product. Owners who got the first version upgraded when the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. versions were released as they said there were great improvements over previous versions. Not really. Maybe a new shader, a new tool, but I saw very little improvements for about $50 for the upgrade. If you bought the first version and updated everytime afterwards, you would have paid enough to have bought the full version of Photoshop! Like Elements, it seems that these OS's are coming more frequently. It would be nice to buy a Windows version that is upgraded/improved constantly through upgrades with like maybe a subscription fee of something like $50 a year. My two cents worth....

 

Best regards,

Jim

[andyjohnston.net 617]

I really do hope 8 fails quickly like Flight did

 

What an odd thing to say, considering what a fantastic program Flight had the potential to be, and the fact that its death also likely meant the death of Microsoft's involvement in flight sims.

[Aloc 1]

Vista was far from a flop, it was used by hundreds of millions of people, and towards the end of its life it was a good OS

 

Hello:)

 

No disrespect, but this is the first time ,ever i've heard a statment like this.

 

Windows Vista was a big embarrassment for Microsoft, and the OS was almost useless,later

patches gave the os which; "out of the box" was very heavy on machine resources, just more appetite on

resource consumption. Even people in the "Senior managment for this product" came though and

apologized for all the bugs and lack of quality in Windows Vista.

 

Unfortunately, I also purchased a Windows Vista license :biggrin:

This time, i keep my Winows 7 :biggrin:

[Kosta 122]

As they say, you don't make the same mistake twice.

[theskyisthelimit 48]

I've been running Windows 8 since it was in beta months ago, now on RTM. Frankly I think its been very good. The hate for Metro is par for the course. Change of any variety will scare off and bewilder people, just like the days of Windows and DOS on the same box. Its a necessary change and the fact that Microsoft has made a leap to merge both mobile and desktop shows that for once they are taking chances that are rather outside the box. This will ultimately be a good move in the long run, as it makes developers lives easier to create apps that run on both Windows and Portable devices. I do think the whole Metro interface will change over time though (evolve). There are some tweaks that could be done to make the whole experience a bit smoother. Hopefully Microsoft will take notice and tweak things, maybe even in release updates over time.

 

Frankly, at first I didn't like the Metro Start Screen, but now I've grown to like it a lot (overall that is), as it forces you to basically use the main start screen as an are of "favorite" shortcuts, whereas right clicking and choosing all apps, takes you to the standard start menu structure (which you can customize).

 

Performance wise Windows 8 is top notch. They've added more "horsepower" under the hood, made it require even less resources than Windows 7 did (which was one reason why Windows 7 performed much better than the sluggish Vista). The file history backup tool is a welcome addition as well, just to name a few.

 

FSX runs just as well on Windows 8 for me, though I have run into an ATI driver (12.6+) issue with it causing an FSX crash when you alt enter (this was on a bare bones fsx install with only the driver).. working on narrowing down how to tweak that (I also cant confirm or deny this issue persists on Windows 7 just yet, so it may not be an 8/ati driver issue after all).

[ChaoticBeauty 6,692]

What an odd thing to say, considering what a fantastic program Flight had the potential to be, and the fact that its death also likely meant the death of Microsoft's involvement in flight sims.

 

He didn't mean that. Flight had lots of potential, but it failed nevertheless. It was received poorly by most people, and probably the sells weren't stellar.

 

Windows 8 has no potential and it should fail, otherwise Microsoft won't return back to the basics in Windows 9. And Windows is not something they're going to give up on like Flight.

[iankb 1]

Where Microsoft went wrong was to assume that all users should be restricted to the operating system required for a tablet.

 

I thing they should have provided both a Win7-style desktop and a Metro desktop, with the option to switch between the two, and with the option to choose which to start with.

 

Personally, I quite like the Metro-style of reading the news, in a full-screen window without the normal clutter of a Windows Internet browser. But I can't see why I couldn't have started that app from an old style Start menu.

 

The other issue with the Metro interface is that it doesn't appear to be able to handle multiple screens. When you switch to Metro, it leaves the secondary screen(s) on the standard desktop. Or maybe I'm missing something.

[guenseli 1,580]

I thing they should have provided both a Win7-style desktop and a Metro desktop, with the option to switch between the two.

 

thats exactly how the've done it!!!

One click and you have your beloved WIN7 desktop for the rest of the day!

I just see the metro screen for a few seconds for startup and like it for a quick overview.

 

 

I hope the day will come when this "MS has robbed our desktop"-roumor ends... :rolleyes:

 

 

The "Metro screen" IS the start menu!

It's already entitled as "start"

And if you move your cursor to the lower left, there comes a button up called "start"!