The 30 Best Features of Windows 470
Barence writes "PC Pro has picked out its 30 best features of Windows 8. Its countdown includes features such as the revamped Task Manager, the option to run ISOs and VHDs natively, and Windows To Go, which allows you to take a portable installation of Windows 8 with you." They've also listed ten features they'd like to see added to Windows 8, "including the return of the Start button on the desktop, virtual desktops and one-click sharing of optical drives."
The real news (Score:5, Funny)
Is that Windows 8 has 30 features
Re:The real news (Score:5, Insightful)
There's almost nothing in that list that hasn't been available on other platforms for more than a decade. One item (Kinect for Windows) has no relevance at all to the new OS, apart from being available at the same time.
Don't waste your time clicking through all the advert-ridden pages of banality. I'm sure even Microsoft will offer more novelty than this semi-article suggests.
Re:The real news (Score:5, Insightful)
>There's almost nothing in that list that hasn't been available on other platforms for more than a decade
How does that stop something from being a feature?
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I should have phrased it as "interesting" features.
Ya I've always loved that one (Score:5, Insightful)
If Linux gets something Windows or MacOS have had for years, like, day, the ability to play sound from more than one program at a time without special setup or hardware mixing, that is a major improvement, something to be lauded, etc. However if Windows gets a feature something else has had, it gets looked down on, as though the first OS to get the feature should be the only one, ever.
Re:Ya I've always loved that one (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a pretty ordinary Debian Mint desktop, and I just tried playing a video in VLC and previewing music files with Nautilus at the same time. It worked fine - both played without missing a beat.
He was making reference to something that long ago was a significant issue. IIRC as late as the early 00's it was a problem - and while the sound system was maturing rapidly at that point there were a couple of solutions floating about and were not mutually compatible, not always stable, and none were particularly widely supported.
While Linux and other unix-a-likes were ahead of the game in server related areas for a long time; there are a lot of things in desktop environments that just work out of the box now and that we therefore take for granted that either did not work at all or did not work without much user effort five or ten years ago (when they were working well enough in the Windows desktop world).
I'm a Linux fan myself, but he does have a point: the threshold beyond which something constitutes and innovation rather than imitation seems a lower in one direction than the other. This might be completely unfair though: Linux (and xBSD and others) are community efforts without the money thrown at desktop use Windows sees (most of the investment made in Linux related areas by companies is still aimed at server environments not desktop ones (I'm not counting Android here as doesn't fit in either category IMO)).
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>There's almost nothing in that list that hasn't been available on other platforms for more than a decade
How does that stop something from being a feature?
It didn't stop Apple, that's for sure.
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Re:The real news (Score:5, Informative)
There's almost nothing in that list that hasn't been available on other platforms for more than a decade.
Half of those features are actually available on my Windows 7 installation already. Support for USB3.0 devices, not rebooting / nagging to install updates, builtin antivirus, quick search, device synchronisation, 3G support, split screen multitasking, the ability to turn wifi off with a click of a button rather than a hardware switch, and the ability to auto mount ISOs, all of that works just fine on my Windows 7 install.
In fact judging by Microsoft's early attempts at WiFi integration, and CD burning I predict that Windows 8 will be shit at all of the above.
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no-one else is doing it on mobile platforms.
Android, iOS, WP7, BB and Symbian don't do it. I suppose there is WinCE, but it isn't really in the same market (i.e. phone/tablet OS).
Re:The real news (Score:5, Funny)
Is that Windows 8 has 30 features
It doesn't. Actually, the bad mouths say there are 2 features and 28 bugs.
(takes cover)
Re:The real news (Score:4, Insightful)
Where's the list of the 30 features that we wish we could uninstall, but can't?
That PC Pro site is awful (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not clicking through 8 pages, each of which seems to load a popup, just to read a list of 30 items. And judging from the first couple of pages I could stand to look at, the article is hyping up some very un-newsworthy information indeed! There's nothing worse than a site with tid bits of "information" surrounded by an orgy of advertising. Get lost!
Re:That PC Pro site is awful (Score:5, Insightful)
Adblock is your friend.
So is not getting your primary information from sites that exist solely to farm clickthroughs from aggregators like our once glorious /.
Re:That PC Pro site is awful (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not clicking through 8 pages, each of which seems to load a popup, just to read a list of 30 items. And judging from the first couple of pages I could stand to look at, the article is hyping up some very un-newsworthy information indeed! There's nothing worse than a site with tid bits of "information" surrounded by an orgy of advertising. Get lost!
Any article devoted to touting the "30 best features" of any commercial product already sounds to me like advertising, without the added "benefit" of third-party advertisements.
But then, the technology press is full of advertisements masquerading as independent articles.
Re:8p for W8 (Score:5, Informative)
Features already present in previous versions (Score:5, Informative)
They also clearly haven't used Windows 7 as it has the ability to mount VHDs as well. (Windows 8 improves upon that by adding ISO mounting support) The way they wrote that "feature" is as if the VHD mounting is absent in previous versions.
Re:Features already present in previous versions (Score:5, Funny)
Windows 8 lets you install Linux!
Windows 8 throws a meaty bone to power users – namely, the ability to run ISO and virtual hard disk (VHD) images natively. It’s possible, for example, to download the ISO of a Linux distribution or another piece of software to the desktop, double-click to “mount” the file, and run the setup executable without having to physically burn the ISO to disc.
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The scroll bar lets you do it in one page.
Re:Features already present in previous versions (Score:5, Informative)
/posted using a BSD-derivitive, the One True Modern OS! OS X!!
So, BSD (which predates the mid-90's by a bit) with more pretty colors and a much larger memory footprint? That OS X?
Re:Features already present in previous versions (Score:5, Funny)
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/posted using a BSD-derivitive, the One True Modern OS! OS X!!
So, BSD (which predates the mid-90's by a bit) with more pretty colors and a much larger memory footprint? That OS X?
Obviously, you are not familiar with sarcasm. You must be new here?
sarcasm (Score:2)
Obviously, you are not familiar with sarcasm. You must be new here?
Or the sarcasm wasn't very funny or poignant.
Ten features we'd like to see in PC Pro stories (Score:5, Informative)
Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next
Print page links! (Score:3)
Use them! Although they do prompt to print or not. :P
How about discussing features that matter? (Score:5, Insightful)
To me, where BitLocker or another disk encryption tool means the difference between a hardware write-off and insurance claim versus having to report to every manager up a chain, as well as the press, I consider the basic Windows 8 security upgrades to BitLocker important.
It would be nice if they would allow non-TPM encryption without a USB flash drive, because not many machines have TPM/TCG compatible motherboards these days.
However, I can deploy images that are already BitLocker encrypted, or just tell the machine to encrypt used space in Windows 8. With the new hardware encrypted HDDs, I can have BitLocker deal with those as well.
Yes, this is boring, but anything that ensures that an attacker isn't going to get data should a laptop be stolen is important for day to day IT.
Re:How about discussing features that matter? (Score:4, Insightful)
Err it sounds like you could save yourself a few headaches with Truecrypt.
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It would be nice if they would allow non-TPM encryption without a USB flash drive, because not many machines have TPM/TCG compatible motherboards these days.
What machines are you using? I'm mostly familiar with HP and Dell, and just about every business-grade machine they sell (laptops, desktops, servers) has Bitlocker-compatible TPM built-in.
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What machines are you using? I'm mostly familiar with HP and Dell, and just about every business-grade machine they sell (laptops, desktops, servers) has Bitlocker-compatible TPM built-in.
I was wondering the same thing. I work at a school district, and every desktop and laptop the district has purchased in the last 4-5 years (meaning every computer in use other than a few oddball donated models) has had a TPM module. I know because we had consistent problems with them under Windows XP and they had to be disabled, only to be re-enabled when the machines were migrated to Windows 7.
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Lets break it down (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with number 1 (Bring back the start button) if only for consistencies sake. Windows has had a start button for years and years, and most graphical operating systems have some a main system button in one form or another. Why fix it if it ain't broken? (An argument that could probably be applied liberally to 8's new GUI...)
Number 2: Blu-ray support would be nice, but I actually like how they have removed most of the optical media licensing crap to the media/media pro packs (or whatever they are called). By the time 8 is out, I would bet a majority of consumer-grade computing devices won't have an optical drive. Blu-ray should be supported in the media pack, but I have no qualms if it isn't in the default stack of cards.
As for number 3 (One Click Optical Drive Sharing), I think this might be the most valid criticisms on the list, mainly for the same reasons stated above: optical drives are going away. I currently have one optical drive in the house and have it shared via samba and few other ways, but this is a read-only approach.
Number 4 (Drag to open) doesn't seem like a very harsh criticism, it feels more like list padding. I don't use drag and drop for just about anything after having found the keyboard is much faster though, so I should recuse myself from commenting on this one.
As far as Virtual Desktops go (Number 5), it is technically unfeasible, for reasons I don't quite remember. Something to do with the way Windows handles windows which has escaped me for the moment. Nevertheless, there are third party applications of varying quality that already implement this, to a varying degree.
Bring back visualbasic? (Number 6) No. Just no. That thing was a mess. Friends don't let friends script VB, drunk or otherwise.
Number 7: Fonts preview app: I have the win8 consumer preview running in vmware right now, and the font folder looks pretty much untouched from win7. It still lets you preview installed fonts. More list-padding?
I've got an easy fix for 8 (Dual-pane explorer). Use two explorer windows, one on the right one on the left. Or feel free to use something like Total Commander or its variants. They still make those, right?
As for 9, I'm sure Microsoft is going to give a little polish to the out-of-box-experience. Just cause the alpha doesn't have it, doesn't mean it won't be there.
10 is valid. I don't like where the shutdown button lives on win8. Move it up one level, just so that it is a little easier to find. I don't like to hunt and peck for a basic system function.
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Actually, virtual desktops should be trivial to do, and I'm surprised it hasn't been done yet. The key is Remote Desktop. Since XP/Server 2003, even your local console login session is essentiall
Re:Lets break it down (Score:4, Informative)
Click with the mouse wheel or the middle (centre) button, this will trigger a new instance or right click then click the app icon just above unpin.
I don't care if it has 100 new features (Score:5, Insightful)
That abomination that is Metro is enough to kill the deal for me. I will use Win 7 until it's end-of-support. Meanwhile, I'm dual-booting Xubuntu so that when 7 comes to an end, I'll already be comfortable with a different OS.
Re: (Score:2)
>If they don't have a metro kill switch on windows 8 laptops/desktops - their done.
There was one. It was removed.
HTH.
--
BMO
Re:I don't care if it has 100 new features (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow.
Are you really THAT hateful toward a redesigned Start Menu?
Yes. When it's designed for use on tablets with touchscreens and I'm sat at a desktop machine then it's going to suck rocks.
Poorly written article (Score:5, Informative)
Half of those "new" features are already in Windows 7, like AppLocker. I have USB3 support now. Sure, it's not "native", but it works, so who cares?
A lot more interesting are the new features under the hood of Windows 8 server. Take a look at this article for example: Optimizing for Latency-Sensitive Applications: scenario overview [microsoft.com].
Sure, it's not visible or shiny, but wow those are some big changes!
Too Bad... (Score:3, Funny)
Revolutionary idea I'd like included... (Score:2)
Some sort of integrated 'Games' service 'for Windows' that I could connect to 'Live'. Just so I could play such popular games as 'Shadowrun' with my many friends (but no more than 100).
But I'll understand if that technology is currently unworkable.
Re:Revolutionary idea I'd like included... (Score:4, Interesting)
Handy ISO run feature (Score:2)
In other words... (Score:3)
...features that have been in every other operating system for years.
I can't believe people get excited for this. Now we have to deal with all the fanboys who every time they see these things in other operating systems are going to yell about people ripping off Microsoft.
Windows 1.0 (Score:2)
Scroll Volume Control (Score:2)
Why cant you mouse over the volume status in the system tray and roll your scroll wheel to change your volume? Linux has had it for over a decade.
Really Microsoft, people would not mind it you implement this feature.
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I'm fine with click the tray icon and roll the scroll wheel. You make it sound like that extra click is a tragedy. Given how tray icons work, this makes sense, btw. Otherwise explorer would have to catch what your doing and pass it to the tray icon.
My long awaiting features (Score:4, Interesting)
It is so annoying everytime if I just want to look at a file or to open it in different editor, or delete I file I need first to search the app that opened it. In Linux you just open the file with whatever you want, move it, delete it, etc. no problems.
#2, virtual desktops.
If I work on a project and then want to look something up, or someone comes with an USB stick and I need to copy it, and open the files, I just switch the desktop. It's like you have one table full of stuff, then you go to a different table to eat your pizza, and then you go back to your work table. You don't put away your work stuff so you can eat the pizza, you just go to the kitchen table.
#3 Fast file system checks.
The fsck on Linux takes only 20 seconds for 100GB (ext4) why does Windows need minutes for a check?
#4 A good command prompt
I really hate the 1990 DOS command prompt. Can we please have a modern command prompt in the year 2012? A modern cmd prompt is: any true type font, any size also full size, completition of commands with tab key, searchable history of cmds, different background, different text color, etc. For an example of a modern cmd prompt, see Konsole (KDE).
#5 Ease change of the desktop environments
I mean a complete change, not just like a theme. I really like to replace the whole Windows desktop with KDE.
#6 Good SSH integration.
In Linux I can type in anywhere: ssh-add and it adds my ssh key for every program. Why can't it be that easy in Windows?
Third party FTW (Score:2)
Virtual desktops, desktop environments, Good SSH integration - I was doing that with X Windows on the Win2k desktop. Any X program that supports the extensions available can run across the network and a Window Manager is just another program to X. I was running KDE and Enlightenment on the remote hos
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Using X on MS Windows is very common even today in environments with high performance computing in the server room. There's a huge number of applications related to mineral exploration that were never ported to MS Windows and are run remotely using exc
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ReactOS replacement explorer.exe has 4 desktops from memory, though the file manager needs work.
Works on xp
Hide The Features (Score:5, Interesting)
Clearly Microsoft hears complaints from users that computers are too complicated. Their solution, unfortunately, is to keep hiding things. Like that helps.
I think it started with "personalized menus": the menu items you haven't used in a while get hidden... which rather defeats the purpose of menus, because you're less likely to remember seeing those less-used features to know they exist, and when you go looking for them, they're concealed. Filename extensions apparently confused some people, so now they're hidden... making it easier to trick people with trojans disguised as Word documents, befuddling them when they see two files (of different types) with the same name, and rendering files "unopenable" if they get saved somehow with the wrong (hidden) extension. They've been doing it with IE in a big way: taking buttons off the standard toolbar, removing button labels, and recently hiding the whole damn pull-down menu bar! The MS Office "ribbon" left me scratching my head trying to find the "print" button (or menu option) the first time I encountered it. The Start button has lost the word "start"... not exactly hidden, but no longer as easy for newbies to find when told to click on it. In Win7 (maybe it was Vista), the "log off" and other I'm done-using-the-computer options are now hidden under a non-descript arrow button. And now in Win8 (which I've looked at in preview only long enough to get frustrated trying to re-orient myself) they've hidden the Start button altogether, and made Shutdown even harder to find.
Instead of actually simplifying the system, what they're doing is the equivalent of sweeping the complexity under a rug. It's still there. And often you still need it. But it's harder to get at. They're shoving more and more features into the system... then hiding them away. Along with a bunch of the old ones. Eventually it will get simple enough for my aged mother to use it... but by then I will find it totally unusable.
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An overabundance of options to choose from is definitely off-putting to people, and it makes sense to avoid that. I'll even concede that Microsoft's past-and-future treatment of IE as the web browser has some small benefit to the unsophisticated user. But hiding features - things that people are forced to go hunting for - is a different thing, and it's what I'm getting rather sick of.
The List (Score:4, Informative)
Here's the list not spread over 9 pages. I'm surprised there are 30 new things worth commenting on.
#1. Interactive tiles
#2. Task Manager
#3. Run ISOs and VHDs natively
#4. No new hardware requirements
#5. Airplane mode
#6. SkyDrive integration
#7. Windows Store
#8. Interactive lock screen
#9. Split-screen apps
#10. Split touch keyboard
#11. App contracts
#12. Fewer surprise restarts
#13. Cross-device synchronisation
#14. Improved 3G support
#15. Built-in antivirus
#16. Picture passwords
#17. Instant search
#18. Windows To Go
#19. Secure Boot
#20. Revamped Explorer
#21. Restore PC
#22. Thumbnail previews
#23. Metro groups
#24. Kinect for Windows
#25. AppLocker
#26. Reset PC
#27. File copy revamp
#28. Faster boot times
#29. Native USB 3 support
#30. Panoramic background images
Re:The List (Score:5, Informative)
Thank you for your enumeration. I will respond to these one by each.
#1. Interactive tiles
"The Metro start screen may not be everyone's cup of tea," Well, that's putting it very mildly.
Metro specific. Start screen specific. Who cares. Just get that start screen out of my way, plox.
#2. Task Manager
Improved. Decent. One of the nicest task managers I've used. Now if only someone could port htop to Windows.
#3. Run ISOs and VHDs natively
About friggin' time. Linux has been doing this since forever ago. But you won't be able to play DVDs out of the box. Noooo.... You need to buy the Plus Pack for that. It's as if it's really 1998.
#4. No new hardware requirements
Well, considering the bloat going from XP to Vista/7 one would hope not. It's still too big for virtualizing.
#5. Airplane mode
Woopdedoo. Here is my airplane mode: Put on headphones. Listen to music. Sleep. Ignore person in seat next to me as much as possible.
#6. SkyDrive integration
This should be expected. SkyDrive doesn't suck.
#7. Windows Store
But forget about buying non-metro apps in it.
#8. Interactive lock screen
Tits on a bull useless. A lockscreen should show nothing but a prompt for a password and possibly the screensaver. It's a lockscreen for a reason.
#9. Split-screen apps
Don't we call these things windows? *looks* OH REALLY. IFRAMES ON THE DESKTOP. KILL IT WITH FIRE.
#10. Split touch keyboard - an on-screen keyboard that is divided up into left and right sides
Saying this to a touch-typist gets you nothing but ridicule.
#11. App contracts
KDE has had something like this since forever ago.
#12. Fewer surprise restarts
How about none? Please? The only surprise restart should be a STOP error, and at that point, it's a hardware/driver issue. All other restarts should be optional, like in sane operating systems.
#13. Cross-device synchronisation
Marketing fluff that means "rsync"
#14. Improved 3G support
But how does this help me as a desktop OS?
#15. Built-in antivirus
It would be nice to not need this, wouldn't it?
#16. Picture passwords
Only useful on touch devices.
#17. Instant search
Oh, you mean like what Linux has had since forever ago. Also, see Dolphin, Semantic Desktop etc.
#18. Windows To Go
Live distribution. "Innovation" as if Knoppix never existed.
#19. Secure Boot
Something that is designed to lock out other OSes from "windows certified" devices, enabled by default and unable to remove. Also: the army is always fighting the last war. Most malware runs in userspace now.
#20. Revamped Explorer
It still sucks.
#21. Restore PC
Only Windows users think it's normal to re-image the machine every quarter.
#22. Thumbnail previews of active applications
Woop, de, doo. old news, even on Windows. "But it's android style!!!!!" Wait, who is doing the innovating here?
#23. Metro groups
UI specific. Metro sucks. Therefore MetroGroups sucks.
#24. Kinect for Windows
This is actually useful and a Good Thing (TM)
#25. AppLocker
Listed, but article does not describe what it is, something to do with policies, therefore it is meaningless to the end user. This is a stretch, especially in an article targeted toward end users.
#26. Reset PC
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda ; walk away, get lunch.
#27. File copy revamp
A user interface deal that does nothing about the suck-ass throughput when copying non-trivial amounts of files, like moving movie archives from one drive to another.
#28. Faster boot times
Yeah, well, this will be nuked by the user as soon as he or she installs $BONZIBUDDYCLONEOFTHEDAY from the app store. Purple gorillas for everyone!
#29. Native USB 3 support
In modern operating systems, this is pushed out with a kernel module update on existing systems. No idea why you would need an entire OS upgrade just for usb3.
#30. Panoramic background images
Oh my fucking god, we need this. We need this so much. TAKE MY MONEY ALL OF IT
--
BMO
Windows to GO... (Score:2)
#1 (Score:2)
The best feature of Windows is that it's FREE!
Empathy for the Start button (Score:5, Funny)
ten features they'd like to see added to Windows 8, including the return of the Start button on the desktop
It's called the Stockholm syndrome [wikipedia.org], an "apparently paradoxical psychological phenomenon in which hostages express empathy and have positive feelings towards their captors, sometimes to the point of defending them"
MyCleanPC! (Score:2, Funny)
I really hope Windows 8 includes MyCleanPC by default!
What Billy Gates Could Do It (Score:2, Insightful)
Otherwise? It's Mothers Day, appreciate the one that loves you; even when you search for a Start Button.
Task Manager (Score:2)
Is it a good idea to make Task Manager consume even more CPU cycles? Especially if you're using it to find an application that is using 99% of the CPU9s) in the first place?
Microsoft is ignoring me (Score:2)
At first I thought Microsoft was drinking soo much of their own metro tablet coolaid it had melted their collective brains and caused them to go insane.
Then I quickly realized a deeper truth. In their rush to emulate Apple MS no longer cares about me or my needs. A list of 30 useless features and a big fuck you over start menu makes my point for me. It is not about "new" or changes.. It is about flushing their existing market in an attempt to make more money in a different one currently saturated by App
Re:Oh, yeah! (Score:5, Insightful)
I was honestly not aware that Windows doesn't have "virtual desktops." Stunning. It's like a TV with one channel.
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Virtual PC is support on other versions, it's just the XP mode that required Pro or better. I prefer VirtualBox myslef, although it does still have a few quirks under Windows and the really powerful features are only accessible via command line (like making a virtual disk immutable).
Speaking of virtual disks, Windows 7 supports booting a to a VHD. The functionality is there but not exposed or easily setup. So technically it's not a new feature.
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3d party tools? All of them are either slow, buggy or have some very weird behaviours.
Oh and I plugged my second monitor on my Ubuntu box, didn't even had to configure anything, it detected it. Took me a whole 5 seconds to get it running. Flawlessly.
Re:Oh, yeah! (Score:4, Informative)
Even having used them myself, I don't get the appeal of what basically amounts to a poor-man's alternative to having multiple monitors.
For me, the problem is that multiple monitors don't give me enough real estate compared to virtual desktops. I run the Microsoft-written "TopDesk" at 11x3, so that means my total desktop space is 21120x3600 pixels.
I can have a dozen programs maximized without having to hunt through them (one keystroke plus one mouse click gets me to any open window). In addition, it's easy to group sub-tasks together onto one desktop. So, I can have 3-4 terminals open to a Linux machines to configure nfs client and server, and video and audio editing software also open, yet neither group of windows interferes with the other. In addition, my e-mail client, web browser, and a spreadsheet are also open without getting in the way of any other tasks.
I can also easily configure windows to always open in the same location, which can be a problem with multiple monitors. Then, too, moving windows around from one desktop to another is much easier, as I have the overview of the whole workspace, and can move the window using that (and that has shortcuts that allow me to snap the window to special places).
There's nothing wrong with multiple monitors (although it can be an issue when you use a KVM as I do), but adding virtual desktops gives you another whole level of window management tricks to employ.
Re:Oh, yeah! (Score:5, Funny)
My problem with multiple monitors is they seem to be contageous. They are like a herpes or something. In the office and soon as one person hooks up the second monitor, it starts to spread amongst their department and then others. Eventually someones symptoms get worse and they spring up a 3rd or someone presents differently with a 90* rotation... soon it's this big pissing match of who has the most productive workspace. Next thing you know, you have a 2x3 grid of 30" super high-res monitors and your open gl screen saver won't work because some limitation at 4096 pixels... and all windows in the center monitor because it strains your neck to look so far left or right.
Re:Oh, yeah! (Score:5, Insightful)
The third party tools don't work very well, primarily because they are hacks and 99% of software isn't designed to work with them, including the base window manager...
OSX used to be the same, under 10.4 and earlier the virtual desktop hacks were buggy, didn't fit in well with the rest of the system and most apps didn't expect them to be running. Since spaces was included by default in 10.5, osx apps awareness of multiple desktops has improved massively.
X11 has always had virtual desktops, so its support for them tends to be the best of the 3 by far.
I can understand how you would find virtual desktops less useful, having only used very poor implementations of them...
As someone who has access to a desktop with 4 screens, i actually find virtual desktops to be better than physical screens in most cases... Off the top of my head:
Less head movement, all the virtual screens are in the same physical place so i dont have to keep adjusting my viewpoint and dont get distracted by movement out the corner of my eye...
Works on laptops - i use a laptop for a lot of my work, and it would be impractical to carry a second screen around with it..
Lots more - you can have many virtual desktops - i tend to have 16, a similar number of physical screens becomes completely unwieldy both to physically look at, and to drive (you'd need a system full of videocards, or a cluster using something like xdmx).
Re: (Score:3)
How are they a nightmare to get working flawlessly under Linux? With KDE/XFCE/Gnome/WMaker, they seem to work just fine immediately.
Also, MS provides their own multi-desktop. You don't need to go to 3rd parties. It's not the greatest (imagine the *nix variants, but somewhat sucky), but it's free, and does the job... mostly.
Also, am I the only one who thinks the vast majority of these great new features have been on available in FreeBSD, Linux, and probably every other *NIX system out there for at least 10 y
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Of all of the things I could dabble with on Linux, this is something I've just never managed to get around to. Beyond the cost and bother of having and extra GPU and monitor to try it with, the ability to manage windows with virtual desktops has kind of made the point moot.
There are window managers from the early 90s that still do it better than anything Windows or MacOS has to offer even now.
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Re:Oh, yeah! (Score:5, Interesting)
X is awesome but seems nobody knows how to really use it. I run Cygwin with X on Windows and everyone keeps asking me what operating system I am running when running Unix apps and Windows apps at the same time.
Re:Oh, yeah! (Score:4, Funny)
It's Netscape, isn't it? ;-)
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I'm honestly in doubt as to wether this is an attempt at being funny, or plain old spam.
Re:Oh, yeah! (Score:4, Informative)
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That's clearly another Windows feature - opening up the market to sell unnecessary software to suckers.
And let's not forget its capability as a host for bots.
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Windows 8 (Score:3, Funny)
Computing redefined for people who REALLY like glossy magazines and coffee table books.
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Re:Oh, yeah! (Score:5, Insightful)
It has to be a joke. First because some are quite funny (my favorite is the one where the guy had cancer and his family left him, but then he found MyCleanPC and everything was dandy). Second because creating multiple accounts to post on /. is a bit time consuming, especially given that this is arguably the worst site for spamming that sort of scam - it has a very high incidence of tech-oriented nerds, way too many running OSX, Linux or something weirder, and very few grandmas.
Re:Oh, yeah! (Score:5, Funny)
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How do you know? Have you used it?
It's a bit soon to be calling it "the next Windows ME or Vista 2.0" - that's what people said about Windows 7 and that has been pretty good. I mean, yes, there's be a lot of hate for the Metro interface, but no more than for Unity on Ubuntu, and no one is claiming that's dying.
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Thats because its trivially easy to change desktop managers in Ubuntu, for free. But if you must know, I hate Unity. Dont particularly like Gnome 3 either. I keep trying to like KDE, but I keep having a bad experience with font sizes.
With that being said, I kind of like Metro. Maybe because I only use windows for gaming, but for a system where you only use 5 or six programs regularly, its not bad. Though I couldnt get the network to work in a VM when I tried the consumer preview, so maybe I would hate it to
Re:True #1 Feature! (Score:5, Informative)
I tried it, and it really is the worst product Microsoft has ever made. Metro is awful, and the Win8 desktop is a step backward. And it's a memory and resource hog.
Please, don't take my word for it - download it yourself. It makes Unity look almost good.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:True #1 Feature! (Score:5, Interesting)
As a Linux user, let me say, this is not insightful, interesting or informative. It's flamebait.
#1 Feature: You *don't* have to run it!!!!! Stick with Win 7, or Linux, Mac OS X!
Gosh, how clever.
Remember, Windows 7 is really Vista ver. 2.0.
Remember that thing that's not true, you mean? Think of what made Vista a failure before opening your mouth.
Windows 8 will be another Windows ME, or Vista...
It might be a failure. You could check out the missing features, if you'd like to try R'ing a FA.
Don't pay to be a Beta tester for Microsoft operating systems!
You can do that for free. It's called a developer preview.
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Come on people, fix your spam filter.
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That's odd. I was using KDE just today and its equivalent of a Start menu didn't use a shitty tablet UI.
Almost virus and malware free? (Score:2)
It sounds like they want to copy KDE.
Let me know when the copy the almost virus and malware free feature offered by KDE/Linux - it's not quite the same as the free virus and malware feature they seem to have in the current versions of Windows.
Re:Almost virus and malware free? (Score:4, Interesting)
No sorry, I am not. I wish I was because I am sure to get down modded for my blasphemy.
Entry points:
http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/search-results?query=LINUX&search_type=all&cves=on [nist.gov]
Hooks:
any shell script/start-up script (many execute with user write permission out of your home folder) do you have a compiler on your system?!
The only thing saving linux from beeing rooted often is its userbase. Does Linux have anything like windows SFC? No not really. At least there are only a handful of auto-run methods in windows and a subsystem that does a somewhat decent job of enforcing no new hooks are created.
Sad fact is because Linux is so open it's mostly a race between white hats and black hats. Add desktop users and desktop apps into the mix and there will be more black hats and a longer delay between applied fixes.
You may argue that most linux problems are third party software or configuration, but I can argue the same for Windows.
That said, I use both... but in by no means is my descision to use either based on this false sense of securtiy about the mal-ware eco-system.
And? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would you be looking for new features in an article about the best features? You are aware they're not the same, right? And often, new features don't work very well right? So, from a logic standpoint, I'd expect many of the best features of most OSes to be anything but new.
Re:Not a single *new* feature (Score:4, Informative)
Perhaps you read the title as "The 30 Best New Features of Windows 8", as I did, which is not what it says. Regardless, I found some interesting:
* Split-screen for Metro-style apps
* Trial periods built in to the Windows store
* Picture passwords
* Windows To Go booting from removable drives
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Re:features won't matter (Score:4, Informative)
You just showed that you know nothing about modern versions of Windows. DOS is long gone (the command prompt is not DOS) as are some of the old Windows APIs. In fact XP Mode is free for the Professional, Ultimate, and Enterprise versions so that businesses can run legacy apps.
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1. Proper CLI. Enough is enough, just fucking give up and port zsh and ship the OS with a suite of unix-like CLI tools.
Ahem, zsh doesn't hold a candle to PowerShell. PowerShell being truly object oriented ties in much better with Windows than any unix-like shell ever could. Already it is much more powerful than even the feature-rich zsh. Instead of special case galore, PowerShell has more generic features and very high consistency.
Examples of generic features: Commands do not have switches or options to control their output, like e.g. ls or ps. Instead PowerShell includes a few "formatting", output and conversion cmdlets su
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