Looks like Windows 8 RT has failed

Clover trail device will Be much more then my 450 dollar infintiy, and no where as portable. I have no issues running RDP via my 3g tether using a TSG. I do most of my work this way. What is seriously lacking is the ability to interact with the desktop with Tablet. Honestly the amount of people going to use photoshop and onenote on a underpowered tablet is going to miniscule.

You can get Clover Trail devices close to the price of the TF700. Right now you can get the HP Envy x2 that comes standard with a keyboard dock for $600 from Microsoft, that's very much in line with TF700 with a keyboard dock. The TF700 package would be about 8 ounces heavier but the x2 is an 11.6" screen, lower resolution of course but also better for use as a laptop with the extra size.

Photoshop is a heavy application to run on a Clover Trail, it can work for lighter work, but I'm not a Photoshop user. OneNote however works very well on my Clover Trail, use it very day on that device and it's very responsive with the pen. And even a Clover Trail is going to blow away any kind of RDP for real time inking where any lag becomes very noticeable.

I can have a windows desktop experience on my android with out a half ass UI.

I understand that you pretty much like nothing about Windows 8 but on a device hybrid like the x2 with a touch screen it does make a lot more sense. And it's not like one can't use a remote desktops in Windows 8.
 
So proper DPI scaling, good thread scheduling (and reduction in power consumption), dumping of the hog that is registry, and a thorough approach to security are incremental changes to you?

From the perspective of an end desktop user yes, these are very incremental changes. How would these changes impact the lives of average users compared to what they already have? And who would even care about some of this stuff except in a geek thread like this? "Look, the Registry is gone in Windows!"

Again that's not to say some of these things make sense, at this point dumping the registry is totally impractical due to the zillions of 3rd party apps that use it, but how would this have any significant impact on Windows 8 sales? Heck, just adding back the old desktop UI is all tons of folks around here said they wanted to hop on the Windows 8 bandwagon that hate it now and they never asked for any of the things you mentioned.
 
The UI changes are stupid and senseless (for the desktop), but the legitimate arguments get tossed aside like you just did in favor of pointing the more idiotic and mundane UI issues -- which are just as much a matter of taste as they are of coherent valid arguments.

I'm pretty sure everyone wants better performance.

I'm also certain that everyone would be quite happy to see windows support all media formats out of the box.

Who in the world is going to complain about better security and fewer malware and viruses?

Which enterprise/business or workstation user is going to bitch about workspaces?

Heatless, these aren't small points you can just brush aside here. There are still some serious holes in Windows that have yet to be plugged, yet none of them were addressed. Instead, MS chose to almost completely focus on the tablet side of things while neglecting the desktop side. How big of a sign do you need to see that they don't give a shit about the desktop anymore?
 
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In triplicate, that's impressive. You keep ignoring what I'm saying and making some other argument, not sure why. Again, I never said the things that you mentioned were bad, just incremental from the standpoint of most end users who would see little in their day to day use of Windows and certainly nothing that would attract much media attention.

As for Microsoft not caring about the desktop, can you show me anyone that cares about the desktop so much these days and is doing all of this wonder stuff and who actually cares besides people trying to make that point that Windows sucks?
 
I've made the argument before that MS was trying to get ahead of the curve on the "post PC" hype, and if it *had* panned out, more people may have been appreciative of the touch friendly interface on devices lacking a keyboard and mouse, such as tablets. As more people switch to other platforms for primary tasks, like email, web access, photos and social media, it wasn't unreasonable for MS to steer Windows to meet this demand, or else find its consumer segment shrinking.

The Metro UI certainly has many rough edges, and for some users of the classical productivity type*, the Metro UI simply gets in the way of efficiency, particularly without a touch screen or even with one when the UI forces more effort to accomplish common tasks.

On touch screen tablets, RT with the Metro UI is a decent option, but has many problems as a platform. The competition is often the same price, and in many cases has much cheaper options available too. The lack of software isn't helping hardware sales and low installed base isn't attracting developers (DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS!...).

On the whole, pulling the classic desktop for a worse replacement serves no purpose to a very large segment of Windows users (virtually all corporate/business users) and a noisy ;) group of consumers. If MS thinks that annoying 2/3 of its users is a good thing, it's probably time for Ballmer to go.

* I count myself in this category, and require a keyboard and mouse in most work I do. I do have an iOS device, but the benefit of it is ultra portability (few ounces and fits in a pocket)... and I have a foldable BT keyboard for when I remote into Windows or need to type a lot. ;)
 
What exactly is the problem with the registry? It's better than a bunch of scatter .conf files, that's for sure.

I've made the point in the past that MS spent all their dev resources on the tablet/Metrofication of Windows and beyond the engineering effort to port it to ARM and make a unified kernel for pc/tablet/phones, not much has been addressed in Windows.
 
As for Microsoft not caring about the desktop, can you show me anyone that cares about the desktop so much these days and is doing all of this wonder stuff and who actually cares besides people trying to make that point that Windows sucks?

I'm not sure what this means. Are you trying to say the desktop is dead? Or that no other company besides MS is working on the desktop?
 
What exactly is the problem with the registry? It's better than a bunch of scatter .conf files, that's for sure.

I've made the point in the past that MS spent all their dev resources on the tablet/Metrofication of Windows and beyond the engineering effort to port it to ARM and make a unified kernel for pc/tablet/phones, not much has been addressed in Windows.

Like a number of issues with Windows, things that used to be a problem but aren't really any longer for some reason are still seen as problems. Yes, registry slow down and corruption used to big issues but over the last two decades it's gotten much better. And yeah, it's not a bunch of config files doesn't also have it's issues.

And yes I agree, this release of Windows Microsoft worked primarily on Metro, the ARM port, and increasing performance and power efficiency. There wasn't time to do a much else.

I'm not sure what this means. Are you trying to say the desktop is dead? Or that no other company besides MS is working on the desktop?

No, I'm one that thinks the Windows desktop is far from dead because right now there's no replacement for it. Metro is just a presentation layer at this point. Yes there's other people working on the desktop but other than incremental features is there anyone out there pushing anything with any success that revitalizes the desktop and makes consumers interested in it?
 
Registry + FAT32 + semi-stable OS (ahem Win9x) = bad news.

Registry + NTFS + NT =
blh6sfi.jpg


How is it better?
It's in one location and can be managed easier. ;)
 
I'm similarly confused by that statement.


How is it better?

Short answer - in the same way a database is better than keeping your data in notepad .txt files.

Really, for the amount of vitriol the registry keeps getting, and in nearly every version of Windows people demand its removal, no one has given any reasons why its actually bad. Registry becoming too big/causing slowdown has been debunked.
 
The registry is only bad when it's misused by software devs, and there are a lot of them who do stupid things to the registry.
 
People have been debating the merits of the registry for 2 decades, there is no simple answer. However the registry is a far more comprehensive configuration property management system than simple independent configuration files and offers things like type safety, security, user level configuration, policy management, etc: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Registry

But this does highlight the point that I was making in terms of just what is Microsoft supposed to do enhance Windows. Dump that hog of a registry. Because they'd never heard that one before. And like 3rd party applications don't use it extensively. It's easy to come up with a list of things that would make sense for a technical Monday morning quarterback. Now go and do it while not breaking tons of applications. Good luck.
 
The registry isn't just some "thing" MS can just get rid of.

It's used for COM registration and other tasks other than just saving settings. Besides zero install .NET applications, which themselves don't need to use the registry (but the .NET runtime *does* use it), pretty much anything with an installer (or programs which use self-registering components) has registered components in the registry. Those funny looking 16 character GUIDs are essential to how COM works, and most applications on Windows use COM. Look at the dependencies of pretty much any application's .exe file and you'll see several COM dependencies.

Windows 10, 11, 12, etc will have a registry if for nothing more than legacy compatibility. Sorry for the disappoint, but I'm not even sure why people get so worked up about the registry. Hive mind, probably.
 
The registry makes sense for corporate/business users with business software (applications) that quite often times has to cross boundaries/integrate/read/modify other settings.

The newish "metro" localized/roaming storage that Microsoft is pushing is great for "apps" and going to the "cloud", though I'm not aware whether the roaming storage settings actually works in Windows 8/RT OOB.
 
What MS should do to enhance Windows? The possibilities are endless. So at the risk of going off topic, I'll just list some ideas. These are all things that have been seriously considered and talked about by MS, then dropped.

- make a fresh start with Windows designed for the future. object oriented next gen file system (WinFS) and UI to match.
- move to .NET based code (this was Longhorn)
- maintain legacy support by having a sandbox layer to run old Win32 code, much like Windows has had a Win16 subsystem
- There is a TON of work done in MSR to improve the OS - e.g Midori/Singularity - next gen managed code OS
- remove all the cruft - there are millions of lines of legacy code that serve no purpose
- fix the dependency problems that lead to WinSxS growth beyond control

Bottom line: MS spends more on R&D than any other company. These ideas seldom make it into the OS, since Windows has always been about legacy support and being conservative. This changed with Win 8, but only for Metro. MS needs to be bold, really push forward, and still maintain compatibility and not force people into a narrow vision.
 
Hive mind, probably.

Very punny!;)

You brining up a good point about COM, the registry is the use to register COM objects and guess what, Metro apps are COM apps and are registered in the registry like all COM objects.
 
What MS should do to enhance Windows? The possibilities are endless. So at the risk of going off topic, I'll just list some ideas. These are all things that have been seriously considered and talked about by MS, then dropped.

- make a fresh start with Windows designed for the future. object oriented next gen file system (WinFS) and UI to match.
WinFS is dead and we will never see it. The developers who developed it were so misguided as Microsoft was quoted saying "There is no need for WinFS because "LINQ" exists. A few ideas regarding "searching applications" showed up in Metro but I'm not sure of the usefulness of that in the real world.

- move to .NET based code (this was Longhorn)
Cool idea, but alas we're probably easily 1/2 a decade away from it. I believe they EOLed both teams that were working on the 2 Managed Code OS that MS built. Metro with it's COM powered and slightly more powerful Javascript+jquery+plugins may be the closest we're getting to that. Let's build the tools that will solve humanity's problems in Javascript.

- maintain legacy support by having a sandbox layer to run old Win32 code, much like Windows has had a Win16 subsystem
Already done Windows XP Mode (though this got removed from Windows 8 - not sure if its because it got replaced or if it got removed)
- There is a TON of work done in MSR to improve the OS - e.g Midori/Singularity - next gen managed code OS
See above
- remove all the cruft - there are millions of lines of legacy code that serve no purpose
- fix the dependency problems that lead to WinSxS growth beyond control
This is already being done. By guiding users towards only using "Apps" and not "Applications" the SxS will not be used (measured by Microsoft Metrics) and could be completely removed at some point in the future. It exists only because users are silly and want to run "applications" and not "apps"


Bottom line: MS spends more on R&D than any other company. These ideas seldom make it into the OS, since Windows has always been about legacy support and being conservative. This changed with Win 8, but only for Metro. MS needs to be bold, really push forward, and still maintain compatibility and not force people into a narrow vision.
That requires Microsoft to not have a "narrow vision" which with every release of Windows they have shown that their vision grows more narrower with every release.
 
What MS should do to enhance Windows? The possibilities are endless. So at the risk of going off topic, I'll just list some ideas. These are all things that have been seriously considered and talked about by MS, then dropped.

- make a fresh start with Windows designed for the future. object oriented next gen file system (WinFS) and UI to match.
- move to .NET based code (this was Longhorn)
- maintain legacy support by having a sandbox layer to run old Win32 code, much like Windows has had a Win16 subsystem
- There is a TON of work done in MSR to improve the OS - e.g Midori/Singularity - next gen managed code OS
- remove all the cruft - there are millions of lines of legacy code that serve no purpose
- fix the dependency problems that lead to WinSxS growth beyond control

Bottom line: MS spends more on R&D than any other company. These ideas seldom make it into the OS, since Windows has always been about legacy support and being conservative. This changed with Win 8, but only for Metro. MS needs to be bold, really push forward, and still maintain compatibility and not force people into a narrow vision.

Mostly stuff that I agree with. But let me clarify that I meant enhancing current desktop Windows. Of course starting with a blank slate and no need for backwards compatibility many things would be different. My point is that when it comes to current desktop Windows with current applications and with a UI that is as old it is, very little beyond incremental enhancements is really feasible.

Again these are cool, but again there's clearly resistance to change that Microsoft has to deal with, more so than many tech companies because Microsoft built its business on actually quite remarkable backwards compatibility. That may not be serving that well these days.
 
Again these are cool, but again there's clearly resistance to change that Microsoft has to deal with, more so than many tech companies because Microsoft built its business on actually quite remarkable backwards compatibility. That may not be serving that well these days.

That's because Microsoft's path "of no backwards compatibility" was to give business who operate on non-touch hardware (for a very good reason) a Touch Optimized / keyboard an afterthought , "barely more powerful than Javascript/jquery/plugins" framework that by default has almost zero user accessibility and the software runs on no existing platforms.

All of this ultimately was 100% built on the world's oldest and quite possibly most widely hated technology: COM
 
That's because Microsoft's path "of no backwards compatibility" was to give business who operate on non-touch hardware (for a very good reason) a Touch Optimized / keyboard an afterthought , "barely more powerful than Javascript/jquery/plugins" framework that by default has almost zero user accessibility and the software runs on no existing platforms.

Huh? What you said is nothing but incorrect gibberish.

All of this ultimately was 100% built on the world's oldest and quite possibly most widely hated technology: COM

I love hyperbolic statements like this because of how meaningless they often are. The world's oldest and most hated technology happens to be the heart of soul of the most successful pieces on commercial software ever, Windows and Office. Not to mention that virtually every PC gamer on this forum is enjoying games at the fastest frame rates, highest resolutions and visual fidelity on a COM implementation known as DirectX which also happens to be the heart and soul of one of the most successful gaming consoles ever, the Xbox.

Yeah, DirectX/C++, barely more powerful than JavaScript. Tell that to Vega who just spent $15k on his latest puppy with 4 GTX Titans. All to run the world's most hated tech that's barely more powerful than JavaScript. Guess that's why he need $4000 in GPUs alone.

I may be the Microsoft fanboy but damn, some of the stuff said by the anti-Microsoft crowd is just beyond stupid.
 
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Metro apps are COM apps and are registered in the registry like all COM objects.
I thought Metro apps were based on something similar to WPF (XAML), running under a .NET-like "Windows Runtime". I'd be very surprised if the applications themselves needed to register in the registry a la COM.
 
If COM is 'hated' then a special place in hell must be reserved for CORBA, Enterprise Beans and all the other pretenders.

I guess people like to hop on the 'MS sucks' bandwagon and don't realize how amazing it was that you could have things like a fully working embedded word document in a spreadsheet, or write code that could then be reused by other companies etc, all thanks to COM/OLE.

COM wasn't the prettiest thing to code for, I'll give you that, but it had solid design, and is the spiritual father of .NET.
 
I thought Metro apps were based on something similar to WPF (XAML), running under a .NET-like "Windows Runtime". I'd be very surprised if the applications themselves needed to register in the registry a la COM.

Microsoft built a sand boxed API based on COM, that's the Windows Runtime, which is a bit of a misnomer because it's native code. The compilers use the usual suspects in the development world and Windows development in particular C++, C#, VB and JavaScript. The tooling does indeed look and work like .NET for C#/VB developers and some of .NET is available but I don't understand why some people are upset about not building Metro on top of .NET when that would just be overhead. And a lot of top tier developers want and demand native code anyway.

But if you have Windows 8 just open up regedit and search on the name of an app, you'll see tons of entries for all of the Metro apps. And they have COM classids like any other COM object.
 
If COM is 'hated' then a special place in hell must be reserved for CORBA, Enterprise Beans and all the other pretenders.

I guess people like to hop on the 'MS sucks' bandwagon and don't realize how amazing it was that you could have things like a fully working embedded word document in a spreadsheet, or write code that could then be reused by other companies etc, all thanks to COM/OLE.

COM wasn't the prettiest thing to code for, I'll give you that, but it had solid design, and is the spiritual father of .NET.

LOL! CORBA, yeah everyone loved that. The distributed object models have pretty much all been dumped in favor of web services, including DCOM. But as a local native platform, really, what's done better than COM?

Like you said, bandwagon. It's easy to hate on Microsoft when they do controversial or dumb things then take it a step too far and rag on them for something that's been hugely successful, like COM.
 
I guess people like to hop on the 'MS sucks' bandwagon and don't realize how amazing it was that you could have things like a fully working embedded word document in a spreadsheet, or write code that could then be reused by other companies etc, all thanks to COM/OLE.
Neither fundamentally contingent on COM. That's just how they've been achieved in some specific scenarios.
 
I thought Metro apps were based on something similar to Silverlight (XAML), running under a .NET-like "Windows Runtime". I'd be very surprised if the applications themselves needed to register in the registry a la COM.

Corrected for you. The same exact team that brought you Silverlight brought you Windows Metro, a lateral move edition of Silverlight, lost a bunch of useful features gained some useful features. Not even remotely capable of being compared to WPF, however.
 
If COM is 'hated' then a special place in hell must be reserved for CORBA, Enterprise Beans and all the other pretenders.

I guess people like to hop on the 'MS sucks' bandwagon and don't realize how amazing it was that you could have things like a fully working embedded word document in a spreadsheet, or write code that could then be reused by other companies etc, all thanks to COM/OLE.

COM wasn't the prettiest thing to code for, I'll give you that, but it had solid design, and is the spiritual father of .NET.

There's a special place for BEANS because It still actually still has a lot of in-uses today from my understanding. CORBA however is mostly dead. You don't reserve special places for things that actually mostly have died.
 
Corrected for you. The same exact team that brought you Silverlight brought you Windows Metro, a lateral move edition of Silverlight, lost a bunch of useful features gained some useful features. Not even remotely capable of being compared to WPF, however.

You left out the important part, Windows RT apps are native code, Silverlight/WPF apps aren't. Having a native code platform was a must since many top tier developers often require it.

I don't understand why people are complaining about not needing another layer on top of native code when you have native code, that makes no sense.
 
Yeah, DirectX/C++, barely more powerful than JavaScript. Tell that to Vega who just spent $15k on his latest puppy with 4 GTX Titans. All to run the world's most hated tech that's barely more powerful than JavaScript. Guess that's why he need $4000 in GPUs alone.

I may be the Microsoft fanboy but damn, some of the stuff said by the anti-Microsoft crowd is just beyond stupid.

Hah, A Windows Metro App that takes advantage of 5k in hardware, that will be the day. You are correct, you are way more a MS fanboy than I am.

There is a reason why in 1/2 of Microsoft's public dev push for Windows Metro they constantly talk about HTML/Javascript and how everything can be done in JS/HTML (and at RTM MORE could be done in Javascript than in C#/XAML).
 
There's a special place for BEANS because It still actually still has a lot of in-uses today from my understanding. CORBA however is mostly dead. You don't reserve special places for things that actually mostly have died.

BEANS might have a few more uses than DCOM but distributed objects are almost completely legacy at this point, it's pretty much all web services now.
 
Hah, A Windows Metro App that takes advantage of 5k in hardware, that will be the day. You are correct, you are way more a MS fanboy than I am.

Nice try, I was talking about DirectX, you know, the thing based on the oldest and most hated technology in the world according to you. And Metro apps, wait for it, can use DirectX and easily use 5k in hardware.
 
You left out the important part, Windows RT apps are native code, Silverlight/WPF apps aren't. Having a native code platform was a must since many top tier developers often require it.

I don't understand why people are complaining about not needing another layer on top of native code when you have native code, that makes no sense.
Sandboxed is generally not considered native. :)
 
Nice try, I was talking about DirectX, you know, the thing based on the oldest and most hated technology in the world according to you. And Metro apps, wait for it, can use DirectX and easily use 5k in hardware.

I didn't say it couldn't happen.I just s aid that to see it would be quite laughable.

And games are so valuable and productive to the humanity moving forward.
 
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