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Windows Blue Confirmed, to hit RTM in june with august release

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hclarkjr said:
more speculation http://news.softpedia.com/news/The-...mation-Freeware-License-and-More-333837.shtml
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Many have called Windows Blue “the first service pack” for Windows 8, even though Microsoft insiders had previously hinted that the company was looking to completely abandon the service pack cycle and focus on a yearly update schedule, just like rivals Apple.
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Why are people not seeing that this is essentially just a service pack with a different name?
 
Microsoft moving to shorter cycles is a good thing. We will get steadier progress and have small jumps. It will require them to make upgrading painlessly with no junk left behind. If it turns out they just shoehorned a service pack into a package they sell I will shake my head that yet another company doesn't understand what shorter dev cycles are for. But quietly optimistic that this will help a lot to maintain Windows in the current market.
 
Scooby Doo said:
Can it take out those who thought this whole thing was a good idea too? :biggrin:
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I have learned long time ago you can't please everyone,besides Microsoft will do what they want,end of the day you have plenty of choices out there and free Linux Distro's but hey it does not stop the moaners lol...
 
dguy6789 said:
Service packs have almost never added features or changed the UI.
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That's not true, MS has bundled unnecessary things with SPs for a long time now. Hell, Win2K SP4 changed the on-disk format of NTFS just enough so that if you rolled back to SP3 or earlier it would BSOD.
 
Mem said:
End of the day you can't please everybody.
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How about including an option for the Win7 start menu? Nope? Too difficult?

WinXP and Vista must have been designed by some AMAZING developers to have included two Start menu layout options. 🙄

BrightCandle said:
Microsoft moving to shorter cycles is a good thing.
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Nope, I think it simply means that they'll move to a less-customer-friendly schedule for dropping support for older operating systems.

There seems to be a suspicious amount of compatibility issues that have cropped up in Win8 and I haven't heard a good reason why yet. Why doesn't Office 2003 work on it? I know why Office 2000 and 2002/XP didn't work on =>Vista perfectly, not so sure about Office 2k3 and Win8.
 
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Windows Blue is suppose to be a new kernal and IE11 is being developed at the same time. I wonder if this will break all the drivers like what happened with Vista?
 
piasabird said:
Windows Blue is suppose to be a new kernal and IE11 is being developed at the same time. I wonder if this will break all the drivers like what happened with Vista?
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The Vista driver breakage was intentional in order to move as much of the video and sound drivers to userspace for stability reasons. I don't think there's any justification for a change like that right now.
 
My main issue was not the Start Button. The OS just would not sream video correctly with the Browser. That just sucks. I reinstalled Vista. Vista works better than Win 8.
 
mikeymikec said:
How about including an option for the Win7 start menu? Nope? Too difficult?

WinXP and Vista must have been designed by some AMAZING developers to have included two Start menu layout options. 🙄



Nope, I think it simply means that they'll move to a less-customer-friendly schedule for dropping support for older operating systems.

There seems to be a suspicious amount of compatibility issues that have cropped up in Win8 and I haven't heard a good reason why yet. Why doesn't Office 2003 work on it? I know why Office 2000 and 2002/XP didn't work on =>Vista perfectly, not so sure about Office 2k3 and Win8.
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Why should they include the old style Start button especially if they want to get away for a Start button that goes back to Win95 days(thats almost 20 years of no change), Win+X covers all the basic stuff ,don't forget charm bar as well and you also have a third party mod options if you must use the old style Start button,some people can't move away from very old designs.

Every time a new OS comes out there is always some moaning of why is this missing etc...I've heard it on Windows all the time and even Linux too ie Ubuntu etc....

Wait until Windows Blue and Win9 arrives same old moaning will appear.

As to options?... why include everything for the user and make it even more bloated,then you get the others moaning about why is this OS bloated etc...you can't expect them to keep stuff they want to drop or move away from.


You know I'm right you can't please everybody ,however you have plenty of choices OS wise both paid and free to choose from.
 
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Evander said:
Actually Apple did something much worse - they introduced a new line of CPU (from PPC to Intel) that made ALL your legacy software obsolete. At first they added some sort of emulation to make them compatible but after I believe MAC OS 10.4 they dropped it.
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Not exactly.

The processor change was announced to developers in 2005. The first OS that couldn't run PowerPC software (through Rosetta) was 10.7, which shipped in 2011. I think six years ought to be plenty of time.

I've used Macs since before that transition, and the only piece of software I had that hadn't been updated when I installed 10.7 was the mediocre CanoScan software that came with my Canon LIDE 30 scanner. There were plenty of easy options for replacing it. Everything else I had, from shareware to commercial stuff, had been recompiled for the Intel chips.
 
Mem said:
Why should they include the old style Start button especially if they want to get away for a Start button that goes back to Win95 days(thats almost 20 years of no change), Win+X covers all the basic stuff ,don't forget charm bar as well and you also have a third party mod options if you must use the old style Start button,some people can't move away from very old designs.
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Forgive me for stating what ought to be obvious, but giving customers a choice is a good thing. Especially considering the 'new and improved' version offers no improvement whatsoever over the Win7 start menu.

As to options?... why include everything for the user and make it even more bloated,then you get the others moaning about why is this OS bloated etc...you can't expect them to keep stuff they want to drop or move away from.
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Yes, because Win7 suffered so very badly from bloat, and as far as I'm aware, Win8's system requirements are no different from Windows 7's.

Win8 also breaks the user interface standards used by MS by having one set of standards for Metro apps and another for the rest. Also, the DPI setting no longer affects the whole of the user interface, for example I've seen the DPI setting not affect Explorer's ribbon interface or the Metro interface.
 
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mikeymikec said:
Forgive me for stating what ought to be obvious, but giving customers a choice is a good thing. Especially considering the 'new and improved' version offers no improvement whatsoever over the Win7 start menu.

Yes, because Win7 suffered so very badly from bloat, and as far as I'm aware, Win8's system requirements are no different from Windows 7's.

Win8 also breaks the user interface standards used by MS by having one set of standards for Metro apps and another for the rest. Also, the DPI setting no longer affects the whole of the user interface, for example I've seen the DPI setting not affect Explorer's ribbon interface or the Metro interface.
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Choice is one thing and you do have a choice ie stay on old Win95 design and get left behind or try and except some things will not come back like I did long time ago...

Old style Start button is not a new idea(we all know it started in Win95 so was long overdue to be phased out) or even needed for that matter so lets be honest here,as for Win7 well its based on Vista and only offered two things over Vista IMHO ie speed and less nagging with UAC so nothing really new in Win7 ie same old rehash of Win95 OS UI wise,at least Win8 is going in a new direction with new UI etc,sure its not perfect but improvements will come in Windows Blue.


Microsoft more or less stated both Aero and old style Start button are going way of dodo,so either except it or stay on Win7 forever your choice.

I'll say Win8 offers a lot more over Win7 then Win7 ever did over Vista and far better value for money,I was one of the first to use Vista and Win7 so don't say it lightly.


Btw if I was like you I would still be moaning about DOS being removed from Windows,but I have excepted that things change with regards to Windows(at least I've DOSBox oh thats right you have third party options for Start button etc so we are even 😉 ).
 
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Mem said:
Choice is one thing and you do have a choice ie stay on old Win95 design and get left behind or try and except some things will not come back like I did long time ago...
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So, if choice is over-rated, why allow users to customise how Windows looks and works at all? By your rationale, the 'ease of access' options should be there and that's it.

at least Win8 is going in a new direction with new UI etc,sure its not perfect but improvements will come in Windows Blue.
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Please specify how Win8's new UI increases productivity on a laptop or desktop.

Btw if I was like you I would still be moaning about DOS being removed from Windows,but I have excepted that things change with regards to Windows(at least I've DOSBox oh thats right you have third party options for Start button etc so we are even 😉 ).
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Yawn. That's a pretty juvenile tactic. Please argue based on what you've got to argue about rather than trying to imagine new positions that I might have on other things.
 
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mikeymikec said:
So, if choice is over-rated, why allow users to customise how Windows looks and works at all? By your rationale, the 'ease of access' options should be there and that's it.

Please specify how Win8's new UI increases productivity on a laptop or desktop.

Yawn. That's a pretty juvenile tactic. Please argue based on what you've got to argue about rather than trying to imagine new positions that I might have on other things.
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Choice and customization are two different things,end of the day Win8 is good with regards to customization.


As to your second second productivity on Win8 is good as Win7 ie you can still customize desktop and pin all your important stuff etc.. even takes less then a second to switch between Metro and old style Desktop via mouse,I pin all the desktop stuff I need on old style desktop so can avoid Metro for non Metro stuff and my old desktop still looks neat.


I consider myself a gamer and desktop user first,end of the day productivity for me is just as quick as Win7,Vista etc..



Last question was not juvenile since I was trying to make you see Microsoft always remove and change things with different operating systems (they have been doing this for decades etc..)but you still want to live in the past and not even try to except things change,even if you think they are for the worst.


I stand by Win8 is very customizable and easy to use if you can be bothered to learn it for more then a day.

I see Windows Blue with improvements in Win8 UI,still early days remember since Win7 UI was based on Win95 UI so they have had decades to refine it,Win8 however is a whole new ball game going in a new direction designed for everything and not just desktop users so give it time.


All I see is you asking for old things to remain like old style Start Button,end of the day its not a major issue IMHO.

I can except anyone that does not like Win8,what I can't except is users that want things not to change or remain in the past forever,its unrealistic and we would not get any progress,sure Microsoft may make a mistake or two along the way but change is something that can't be avoided.

Anyway think we have covered everything so rather then go around in circles we can beg to differ on the last few posts etc...
 
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Mem said:
Choice and customization are two different things,end of the day Win8 is good with regards to customization.
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So allowing users to customise the UI isn't giving them a choice?

As to your second second productivity on Win8 is good as Win7 ie you can still customize desktop and pin all your important stuff etc.. even takes less then a second to switch between Metro and old style Desktop via mouse,I pin all the desktop stuff I need on old style desktop so can avoid Metro for non Metro stuff and my old desktop still looks neat.
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That's not what I asked. I asked how Win8's "UI improvements" increase user productivity.

Last question was not juvenile since I was trying to make you see Microsoft always remove and change things with different operating systems (they have been doing this for decades etc..)but you still want to live in the past and not even try to except things change,even if you think they are for the worst.
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Win9x wasn't very stable. Microsoft paid a group of developers to come up with an alternative. They did, it was labelled Windows NT. That's change for the better (rather than the game called "let's try to hide MS-DOS" that MS played with WinME). There have been more since then, but not that many.

As far as I can see, Windows 8's UI is there for the sole purpose of pushing touch-screen devices.

One thing I haven't yet figured out with Win8 is an easy method of accessing recent documents. Win7's jump lists and Win95's "recent documents" lists were pretty useful.
 
mikeymikec said:
So allowing users to customise the UI isn't giving them a choice?

That's not what I asked. I asked how Win8's "UI improvements" increase user productivity.

Win9x wasn't very stable. Microsoft paid a group of developers to come up with an alternative. They did, it was labelled Windows NT. That's change for the better (rather than the game called "let's try to hide MS-DOS" that MS played with WinME). There have been more since then, but not that many.

As far as I can see, Windows 8's UI is there for the sole purpose of pushing touch-screen devices.

One thing I haven't yet figured out with Win8 is an easy method of accessing recent documents. Win7's jump lists and Win95's "recent documents" lists were pretty useful.
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Win8 has longer better life on portable gear so you could say can get more work done so longer productivity, its fast in general use,choice and customization are not the samething for example no Aero so thats no choice,no big deal for me.


As to recent documents,

Yes, there is a way to do this: Just open the run dialog box by pressing Win + R and type in "recent". There you can see your recent activities.
Note: "Recent places" can be access under Windows Explorer's under "Favorite".
Also you can create a shortcut of the "recent" at your desktop and then pin it to start menu. For this just right click on desktop and seclect New>Shortcut. In file location type the path
C:/users/username/recent
​
and click the Next button, it will prompt the name and now click Finish. You will see the shortcut on desktop now and you can pin it to start menu. Also you can define Hotkey for this from properties now.
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http://superuser.com/questions/4922...quivalent-of-recent-items-my-recent-documents


I see Win8 as hybrid OS ie covers everything.
 
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Maximilian said:
One can only hope lol.
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Metro I'm neutral on can take it or leave it,however I hope they will allow more customization with columns/tiles etc in Windows Blue.

I do prefer Ubuntu UI however in 12.04 LTS.
 
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