Kawasaki Concours Forum
Mish mash => Open Forum => Topic started by: Gumby on May 02, 2013, 09:28:46 AM
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Everyone knows that New Coke was a total disaster for Coca-Cola. Except, of course, that isn't actually what happened. Yes, New Coke, like Windows 8 for Microsoft, was a total market failure, but that wasn't the end of the Coca-Cola story, and Windows 8 may not be the end of Microsoft's Windows tale.
http://www.zdnet.com/windows-8-microsofts-new-coke-moment-7000014779/ (http://www.zdnet.com/windows-8-microsofts-new-coke-moment-7000014779/)
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Interesting read. I bought a new desktop with Win 8 installed and I hate it. I use the "desktop" mode 100% of the time and pin every program I use to the desktop or the task bar. If I could go back to Win 7 on this machine I would.
That said, seems like Win 8 was designed for touch interface like tablets. Don't know how well that works cuz I don't have one.
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The problem is, Microsoft stops supporting it's older versions. We could be stuck with 8 in five years.
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/Rant
Change for the sake of change.
This represents a huge loss of productivity in the workforce every few years that I'm surprised the corporate world hasn't squawked about. They just seem to blindly accept it as 'progress'.
MS (and others) renames things, puts them in different places on their menus when there's really not a lot of change in functionality and calls it a 'new and improved' version.
Most geeks (I'm one but am tired of all the unnecessary 'learning') can't wait to get the latest and greatest so they can spend a couple months (or more) finding out how to access what they already knew. In other words, they have to learn where its been hidden in the new version and with new fancy graphics.
Think of the real productivity that could have been realized during that time.
Take user level operating system alone: Microsoft Windows 3.0, 95, 98 2nd edition, ME, XP, Vista.
They all have a different way of getting to the same basic things for network setup, user controls, etc. They name, sort and categorize THE SAME THINGS differently in each version.
With XP they started going to iterations of versions (basic, pro, ultimate) which have differences in basic configuration and functionality between them.
Gratuitous change. Its maddening.
/Rant off
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/Rant
Change for the sake of change.
This represents a huge loss of productivity in the workforce every few years that I'm surprised the corporate world hasn't squawked about. They just seem to blindly accept it as 'progress'.
MS (and others) renames things, puts them in different places on their menus when there's really not a lot of change in functionality and calls it a 'new and improved' version.
Most geeks (I'm one but am tired of all the unnecessary 'learning') can't wait to get the latest and greatest so they can spend a couple months (or more) finding out how to access what they already knew. In other words, they have to learn where its been hidden in the new version and with new fancy graphics.
Think of the real productivity that could have been realized during that time.
Take user level operating system alone: Microsoft Windows 3.0, 95, 98 2nd edition, ME, XP, Vista.
They all have a different way of getting to the same basic things for network setup, user controls, etc. They name, sort and categorize THE SAME THINGS differently in each version.
With XP they started going to iterations of versions (basic, pro, ultimate) which have differences in basic configuration and functionality between them.
Gratuitous change. Its maddening.
/Rant off
The above is a brief synopsis of Bill Gates' new book "How To Become a Billionaire".
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It's an unwritten law always respected so far: Microsoft alternates a crappy OS with a good one.
MS.DOS (all versions): Good
Windows 3.0: bad
Windows 3.1 good
Windows 95: bad
Windows 98: good
Windows ME: bad
Windows XP :good
Windows VISTA: bad
Windows 7: good
Windows 8: bad
thus...
Next OS: good!
:)
To complete the view, history about network oriented OS's has been better:
Windows for Workgroup: so so
Windows NT: good
Windows 2000: good
Windows XP: good
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I have to agree. I bought a copy of Win8 Pro to try out. I'm a geek for a living, and figured I'd best get a start on figuring out where evereything is while I could do it at my leisure. That lasted about a month before I gave up. This thing was made for touchpads/tablets/phones and is at best clunky when using a mouse and keyboard. At worst, it's infuriating. Ballmer may not want to admit the mistake, but everyone knows it. There are a few programs out there that will let you stay in Desktop mode, but whey should I have to pay someone else to fix MS's screw ups? It's times like this I love my Linux systems more.
As ugocon said:
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I like Windows 7 and will be sticking there for the foreseeable future......or until Windows 9 comes out.
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It's an unwritten law always respected so far: Microsoft alternates a crappy OS with a good one.
MS.DOS (all versions): Good
Windows 3.0: bad
Windows 3.1 good
Windows 95: bad
Windows 98: good
Windows ME: VERY VERY bad
Windows XP :good
Windows VISTA: bad
Windows 7: good
Windows 8: bad
thus...
Next OS: good!
:)
To complete the view, history about network oriented OS's has been better:
Windows for Workgroup: so so
Windows NT: good
Windows 2000: good
Windows XP: good
FIFY
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I like Windows 7 and will be sticking there for the foreseeable future......or until Windows 9 comes out.
+1 7 is great. I've only played with 8 a few times and I hate it. It's so non intuitive and it's just a total mess. >:( :pukeface:
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I needed a new laptop a couple months ago. All I could find was windows 8. I ordered a left over HP machine from tigerdirect that was still windows 7. I am glad I did. I was in bestbuy to get some cords and talked to the same kid that tried to (unsuccessfully) demonstrate the windows 8 products. He said that they cannot give away the windows 8 laptops.
I have a couple of friends that do IT work for the hospital. They both think that apple is now the way to go for personal computers. I guess apple doesn't change things just because they feel like obsoleting your old one. I have no experience with apple, but may give them a try if MS keeps making my life complicated.
I did have Google force a download on my computer that left it inoperative. It acted like it was google chrome 1/2 installed. Kind of angered me because I do not use google and want nothing to do with them or their spyware infested "services". I did a back dated system restore and all is well, at least for now.
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I bought a Windows 7 machine a month before Windows 8 was released. Very happy I did.
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It's an unwritten law always respected so far: Microsoft alternates a crappy OS with a good one.
MS.DOS (all versions): Good
Windows 3.0: bad
Windows 3.1 good
Windows 95: bad
Windows 98: good
Windows ME: bad
Windows XP :good
Windows VISTA: bad
Windows 7: good
Windows 8: bad
thus...
Next OS: good!
:)
To complete the view, history about network oriented OS's has been better:
Windows for Workgroup: so so
Windows NT: good
Windows 2000: good
Windows XP: good
Give Microsoft credit......GREAT Strategic Marketing. Get a bunch of crap out in the field and then sell the corrected product to all that bought the junk.
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Give Microsoft credit......GREAT Strategic Marketing. Get a bunch of crap out in the field and then sell the corrected product to all that bought the junk.
Sounds like fedgov. Create a crisis then provide the cure.
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the few times I played with W8 in Costco left me frustrated...lets face it Microsoft is quickly being passed by since Bill Gates left.
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I have a new expensive laptop I use for work, and it is Win 8. My nickname for it is Windows H8. It almost completely blows. My cursor jumps around by itself, the screen resizes by itself. Things open themselves. It is totally unstable. Do not buy any Win 8 until they "fix" it.
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Win dose ate good. Solid like rock and wheel. Push button, color change. Play music, sound like wind. Much happy, much smart above owner, you like.
Rick
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I bought a MacBook yesterday. I will spend some time learning the differences and the new features on a Mac, but I moving my personal stuff to the Mac. I decided not to wait for Microsoft to fix their screw up.
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I don't like apple mostly because of the prices, they think highly of thsir stuff. I prefer to buy generic hardware to my spec/preferences and load Win 7, Xp or Linux depending on who the system is for.
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Just found this: http://www.stardock.com/products/start8/download.asp (http://www.stardock.com/products/start8/download.asp)
$4.99 and you get the Win 7 start menu back and you can ignore the Win 8 tile start menu. This is a great product for people like me who needed a new desktop and got a Win 8 machine and now stuck with it. Gives you back about 90% of the Win 7 feel. For more info on how got get Win 8 to be more like Win 7: http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2013/03/how-to-make-windows-8-look-and-feel-like-windows-7/ (http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2013/03/how-to-make-windows-8-look-and-feel-like-windows-7/)
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I just installed Classic Mode... gratis... works nice so far!
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I bought a MacBook yesterday. I will spend some time learning the differences and the new features on a Mac, but I moving my personal stuff to the Mac. I decided not to wait for Microsoft to fix their screw up.
Congrats.... when a second best product "just won't suffice"
(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XP4-8iw5Oxk/TjZBCvec5rI/AAAAAAAAACw/lDLQZi5BVNM/s640/mac-apple_wallpaper.jpg)
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Win dose ate good. Solid like rock and wheel. Push button, color change. Play music, sound like wind. Much happy, much smart above owner, you like.
Rick
Did you write the owner's manual for the C-14?
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There are three of us in my office. Two of them got forced by our idiot IT dept to Win 8 and they hate it. Today, we were doing a class and Win 8 chose to reset the monitor settings on our laptop by itself. Stopped the class cold for 10 minutes until they found me to fix it. I saw an articlein the Wall Street Journal recently that attributed the accerating collapse of PC and Laptop sales to the Windows 8 system. Yes, it was designed as a touch screen system that they thought would allow them to muscle in on the tablet and phone markets. It sucks.
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I have an expensive A3 size scanner that became obsolete with WIN7 and probably also worthless with WIN8.
I reinstalled WIN XP on a barely working laptop (has only one working USB port) to keep using the perfectly good scanner. I decided to install XP without access to the Internet, NO Service Pack 1, 2, or 3. The thing is so friggn fast, it does circles around WIN7 with all the upgrades. Amazing what an older OS can do when it's not bogged down with so much overhead. WIN XP is dedicated to scanning my drawings and so will probably never be a problem from this point on.
My newer laptop with a whopping 4GB of memory is now running Ubuntu just fine thank you.
MS has killed it for me. No new MS OSs after WIN7. I stopped drinking Coke a long time ago. Beer tastes better.
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I know on Windows 7 that there is a virtual XP environment. That's how I'm running my Fujitsu Fi-4120C at the moment without any issues. The scanner was too expensive and did not have any issues. The XP environment took care of keeping it still operational. I don't know if Windows hate as the same function.
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I know on Windows 7 that there is a virtual XP environment. That's how I'm running my Fujitsu Fi-4120C at the moment without any issues...
No matter how hard or how long I tried, WIN7 in XP mode could not drive my scanner. WIN XP is now forever married to my scanner. If I sell the scanner, it will come with a free laptop ;)
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Hmmm, there's an XP compatibility function and the XP virtual environment. They're different. Are you saying the virtual environment didn't work?
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I'm saying XP mode didn't work. When I looked at the instructions to install XP virtual environment, I went into convulsions. I decided it was far easier to revive an older laptop with a fresh install of a stripped down copy of XP. I don't use XP/Scanner everyday, so it's a match made in heaven.
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I certainly can understand that. I've done it twice. Once on my home pc and once on the laptop. Second time wasn't so bad.
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Ha...my current laptop is running Ubuntu. Even more pain to reinstall WIN 7 just to install XP VE. I have yet to try WINE to see if that would run the scanner HW/SW. It's a cruel world.
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Especially with technology...
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I've had to use XP virtual environment (XP mode) several times at work on Win7 machines with some older VERY specialized software and it worked great. It's not hard to set-up.
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I've got a program from VMware that runs a stripped down XP on a 64 bit Win 7 machine.
http://www.vmware.com/ (http://www.vmware.com/)
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The more that I use Windows 8 the more I hate it. I just bought a new laptop and thank goodness that I was able to get it with Win7 installed.
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8 or 8.1? Sorry, wrong thread..
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Dunno, all I know is that it sucks.
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I'm waiting for 12. I've always liked that number. If you add it up, it comes to 3 which is another number I like or you could just subtract 1 and get 1....it's all good.
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I'm waiting for 12. I've always liked that number. If you add it up, it comes to 3 which is another number I like or you could just subtract 1 and get 1....it's all good.
That's the spirit!
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My wife was forced into Windows 8 by her IT department. She complains about it all the time. Are they doing anything to fix this? I did send my wife the link to the Gizmodo article. That looks like a good place to start.
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I went for it and bought a new PC with 8.1 installed. Now that I've been using it for a while I'm staring to get the hang of it. I may even like it before too long.
One problem that I'm having is playing embedded youtube vids on this forum. If I attempt to play a vid here the audio plays just fine and the status bar moves along as it should but I can't see the video. If I go to youtube's site the vid plays just fine. Embedded vids play fine on other sites as well.
Any ideas?
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Put on your glasses....?
I once had an idea, but then I lost it. So far no luck finding it again....sigh.
I don't play vids through the 8.1 tile interface. I play them from the 'normal' desktop, through a normal browser (Firefox). I'm also using Stardock software, specifically Start8. Don't know if that has anything to do with how things work on 8.1, though. I'm not having any issues with playing embedded vids. You do have the latest Flash software, don't you?
I think your best bet will be look behind the keyboard for the loose nut. Typically that's the root of most Windows issues.
Here's something similar with IE. Don't know if you are using that or not..
http://forums.adobe.com/message/5799534 (http://forums.adobe.com/message/5799534)
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Keep looking for the idea Jim, it may be laying around someplace in the garage. Maybe on that shelf? :)
I'm not using the tile interface much either and I only seem to be having issues playing embedded vids on this website via IE 11. I'll check on the flash player though, good tip thanks!
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I just tried my IE 11 and the vids play fine.... I'm sticking with the 'loose nut behind the keyboard' ploy.
Keep looking for the idea Jim, it may be laying around someplace in the garage. Maybe on that shelf? :)
:doh: