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Windows 8 Arrives

microsoft.com

111–120 of 223 posts

Re: Windows 8 Arrives

#112
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upgrade copies of Vista and Win7 can be installed on an empty hard drive with minimal tweaking, but I guess being kosher with the licensing is important for some users.

If you're not willing to honor the license, what possible point would there be to paying for the software in the first place? I'm willing to be a Win8 crack is live on thepiratebay within the week. The discussion was about whether or not MS has decided to reduce their retail OS price from the ~$100 it is at right now. AFAICT, they have not.

Does the license really need the installation itself to be an upgrade? That would be silly, as everyone who has tried knows that a Windows installation upgraded from a previous version is never as snappy as a clean installation. And in that case, reinstalling the OS would require user to install the old Windows first. That wouldn't much make sense, would it?

Re: Windows 8 Arrives

#113
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upgrade copies of Vista and Win7 can be installed on an empty hard drive with minimal tweaking, but I guess being kosher with the licensing is important for some users.

If you're not willing to honor the license, what possible point would there be to paying for the software in the first place? I'm willing to be a Win8 crack is live on thepiratebay within the week. The discussion was about whether or not MS has decided to reduce their retail OS price from the ~$100 it is at right now. AFAICT, they have not.

Because I don't know what sort of bonus addons are included with the pirate edition?

Re: Windows 8 Arrives

#114
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're not willing to honor the license, what possible point would there be to paying for the software in the first place? I'm willing to be a Win8 crack is live on thepiratebay within the week. The discussion was about whether or not MS has decided to reduce their retail OS price from the ~$100 it is at right now. AFAICT, they have not.

Does the license really need the installation itself to be an upgrade? That would be silly, as everyone who has tried knows that a Windows installation upgraded from a previous version is never as snappy as a clean installation. And in that case, reinstalling the OS would require user to install the old Windows first. That wouldn't much make sense, would it?

You can do a fresh install, but only if there's already a licensed version of windows on the hard drive. If you previously replaced the OS, then the upgrade won't let you register until you run a command from the shell and say it's ok.

Re: Windows 8 Arrives

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Taskbar and Start Menu have worked so well in the past, why change? Perhaps the price might be a hint that it's worth less than previous versions..

Microsoft wants to leverage their desktop dominance to introduce people to their mobile offerings. The change from start menu to start screen fits right into that strategy. However you can get back the start menu by installing classic shell, pokki etc.

You don't have to install anything. Click the giant button that says Desktop, and woah, it's like Windows 7 all over again.

Re: Windows 8 Arrives

#116
post #12
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Exacerbating this is the fact that Windows 7 is arguably at full stride right now and has almost no points that I really want changed. Sounds like another anti-innovation/change comment on hn. If this is not, please tell me how?

How is changing the desktop we currently have, which works for most people and everyone is used to, for a completely new system that is clearly meant for a device other than the PC, innovation? Change != always good.

I think everyone is getting stuck on the design decision concerning the start menu. Windows 8 is more than just a new start menu. There are a number of other changes that I believe sound very interesting, and are very much PC innovations and changes not made for tablets.

Re: Windows 8 Arrives

#117
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That pattern only holds if you think that the world started at Windows XP. Going back another few years: Windows 3.1 - Success Windows 95 - Success Windows 98 - Success (moderate, whatever) Windows NT 4 - Success Windows Me - Failure Windows 2000 - Success

We're talking about Microsoft here! What about DOS?

I was talking about Windows, actually. I do remember some versions of MS-DOS being marginally better than others, but I don't think it had any predictable cadence.

Re: Windows 8 Arrives

#118
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows XP - success Windows Vista - failure Windows 7 - success Windows 8 - potential failure Just following a pattern.

I see Vista characterized as a failure over and over again, and Win 7 as a success. Win 7 is somewhat better than Vista, but the distance between them isn't that great. Besides the fact that UAC prompts were more frequent in Vista, was there some particular problem with Vista? For a year or two there I was running workstations with both, and didn't see much difference. I think Vista took the heat for imposing securit…

I ran both Vista and Windows 7. As far as I was concerned, in terms of usability they are both pretty much the same as long as you turned indexing off on you Vista drives.

Re: Windows 8 Arrives

#119

Microsoft has a problem with not specifying fallback fonts for non-Windows machines: http://wsld.me/KPlc Looks like they're setting the font explicitly to 'Segoe UI' and nothing else in many spots. Telerik, a .NET CMS provider does a similar thing.

I suspect they believe only visitors with Windows machines will ever visit their site.

Re: Windows 8 Arrives

#120
post #22

I've been running Windows 8 since they release the RTM version to TechNet subscribers on my primary laptop (about a month now). Short version - outside of Metro it's basically Win7SP3 and it works great. Metro is every bit the usability disaster that people have claimed when not running on a touch screen. The good news is that you really don't have to interface much with Metro at all. It replaces the start menu, but…

I can recommend Start8 which brings the start menu back and boots straight to desktop (one of my annoyances was going straight to the Metro home screen on boot). It's $5, but worth it in my opinion: http://www.stardock.com/products/start8/
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