Technology Windows 8

[masta247]

I played with the Lumia 920 and.. despite being bulky I dig the design upgrade and.. it's kind of sad that Nokia tied itself to a platform that had close to no chances to succeed. Hardware-wise (quality, not performance) the phone is second only to Samsung, HTC and Apple (I said it) and some things are really pretty outstanding. The display is almost on par with best Samsung displays and camera is also almost there. Build quality and design are kind of different than everything else which is a good thing. The Windows Phone 8 sucks, unfortunately. I don't think it's ever going to gain traction, I don't know how Nokia did not foresee this - they used to be the biggest phone manufacturer so going Android (the OS that was clearly going to become the leader) would be the obvious choice.
100 mills for an exclusivity deal with Microsoft? Stupid. As we can see no other platform gets as heavy marketing as Microsoft (not even Apple these days) and still nobody cares. Nokia and Microsoft still get no clue. I'm sure Nokia wasted much more than 100 million researching and developing products that nobody buys. In turn they are weaker with every year.
Stupid because Nokia could have as well made Android phones and I'm pretty sure they'd be at least decently successful there.

 

[ARon]

I thought the camera was the best one I've ever used on a phone, it really is great

 

[Flipmo]

I played with the Lumia as well - I love the build, but that's where it stops. I still think it's a shame Nokia didn't tie itself to Android. Imagine Google releasing a Nokia built Nexus phone.

Dat thought.

 

[masta247]

Lumia 620 is pretty freaking sexy for a low end. If only it was priced right, Nokia might have a decently successful phone.

I don't understand why those Nokia phones are so bulky and heavy though. The 920 weighs more than the Galaxy Note, and it only has a 4,5 inch screen. It was said that it's because of its camera but.. it turned out even the SGS3 beats its camera (not counting night shots though) so it's a bit of a silly excuse.

 

[Pittsey]

My mate has just installed a windows 8 running an xbmc shell on a lenovo m90. 5 second boot and into the application. Seems windows 8 is pretty rapid. Just looks shit.

 

[Pittsey]

For anyone interested this is the same thing - http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=139257

Gonna have to give it a go on mine too...!

 

[THEV1LL4N]

Windows 8 didn't look that bad. Am I right in saying that metro is the tiled interface.. I had a 1 minute browse on it, and I think the tiled interface is just the new start menu. When exiting that, it looks like Windows 7. It felt more closed though.

However, I trust the majority of reviews. But one could grow to like it, or use it properly... maybe?

 

[masta247]

I don't think you can grow to like this particular new interface, one of the reasons is it ditched so many rules of how a pleasant and functional interface should be designed (those that Human-Computer Interaction guys have researched for years) in favor of.. I don't even know what, tile consistency? So forget about such things as doing things in least amount of clicks, functionality or short distances between common on-screen objects.
The biggest problem is that it launches programs in its own way. No real multitasking etc (as in doing different things on the same screen). If it was only "just' a start menu it wouldn't be that terrible considering how it's "tablet optimized". However, some apps launch in Metro and some take you back to Desktop UI.
Actually imho they should release Metro as a different product, perhaps pararell to Windows 8 without metro because metro really does feel like a mini-system running on a decent operating system which is pretty much Windows 7 with neat tweaks under the hood.

 

[masta247]

I wonder where does Nokia still get their cash from for the ridiculously crazy amounts of marketing .
It feels like literally 50% of TV commercial time in Europe is either Nokia or Microsoft, a third of all billboards as well. All I see is Lumia, Windows 8, Windows 8 devices or Windows Phone. I don't recall any products that would get THIS much of marketing. I don't think Microsoft EVER marketed anything this much, and that means a lot considering how Microsoft is a marketing hog.
And for what, I wonder? Sure, these devices sell a little better now (like, 3% of devices sold or so are WP now), but it's still nowhere close to what they used to receive when they were actually selling good products instead.
And about as crazy is the fact that after all this tv time they get, there's not even a single meaningful ad, nothing that stands out.

 

[S O F I]

Microsoft and its employees fundamentally believe that their mobile problem is a marketing problem and not a product problem. They believe Apple is successful because it knows how to market their products better and get the public to sip the cool-aid. In some ironic fashion, the reason they believe that is partially because there's people like you who tend to explain Apple's success by bringing up supreme marketing. About a year ago, I got into a little argument with my friend's brother on Facebook, who happens to be an engineer at MSFT. He thought the only reason MSFT has failed in mobile is because of marketing. When you have management and engineers seeing it as a marketing problem, you're just completely fucked.

I haven't really played with any WP products but from what I can tell, it's probably better than people would admit and better than its market share shows.

 

[masta247]

Well, Apple succeeded because they had fabulous marketing (in its own way) mixed with products that at least have something going for them, like hardware design and functionality aimed at the popular crowd. Microsoft have a problem here, because they don't stand out with anything. They could take advantage of their business services (which is where they make vast majority of their profits) but instead they are trying to steal Android's and iOS' users, and they simply aren't as good as either of those. They don't even have any unique selling points with WP so it's really hard to pick a group of people that WP would appeal to over Android or iOS.

WP is like the worst of both words - you have an extremely closed platform that prevents you from doing stuff more than Apple does - you can't even transfer files or use file browser and you can't even 'jailbreak' it to make it more functional. Of course you can't customize anything or play with the device running it because there's nothing there other than the apps.
On another hand the "closed" ecosystem is really poor, with little amount of apps or even alternative, low quality clients for popular services. The UI is basically 1 screen with tiles and that's all there is. So I don't believe it's better than its market share shows. It's funny because for example Samsung has their own little closed OS - Bada, that sells about the same despite lack of marketing. It's just.. better, lol.

I think Microsoft is failing because they don't have a reasonable vision for something that people would like. Instead, they want to force their weird products on people and frankly, their ideas are really bad lately.
First Windows 8 - if only they enabled a choice between the metro interface and desktop interface their sales would probably be much higher. Instead it's the worst selling Windows OS to date amongst business users, which is where Microsoft gets most of their money from. Windows phone was also killed from the start by weird limitations and by bringing nothing new to the table, which isn't quite what people would expect from a new player trying to gain a piece of a market dominated by really innovative products. If the next Xbox will have some weird shit going on Microsoft might sink in its own shit and their business partners might not be enough to keep it going.

 

[ARon]

I bought a new laptop and it has Windows 8. It's not bad at all. It's quite fast and responsive. Haven't had any hang ups so far. There is a bit of a learning curve but it's nothing serious. I thought switching between apps and windows would suck but it doesn't. Most of the time my pc stays in desktop mode so it's cool. I'm most likely going to install the app to get the start button back but I'm gonna hold off for as long as I can, just to see if I can get used to it. I like the metro shit though, having my gmail, messaging, weather etc all right there is pretty cool and convenient. I haven't hooked up my printer or hard drive yet so I can't speak on that but so far I've had no problems. This seems real easy to use and get used to, I think I'm going to like it.

First thing i did when i got on the comp is rest my comp using the reset pc feature on windows 8, fucking dope. It's like reformatting but super super simple, such a nice, long overdue, feature

 

[THEV1LL4N]

I bought the Samsung Series 3 Chromebook for my parents. But I'm thinking of returning it (I have 12 days to do so), and I'm thinking of the Lenovo Ideapad S206 - which is a great budget laptop that has Windows 7 on it, but the review says it has poor battery life (2 hours; Amazon says up to 4 hours). The Chromebook has 6 hours. But Chrome OS is no match for Windows 7 - it's more basic and almost useless when offline.

Then I saw the Acer Aspire One (with Windows 8 and 5 hours battery life) - thing is I'd rather get a Windows 7 machine. I think it's the best desktop OS we currently have.

• Samsung Series 3 Chromebook (£219)
• Lenovo Ideapad S206 (£199 or £249)
  • 4GB RAM + AMD Dual Core E1200 1.3GHz (£199)
  • 2GB RAM + AMD Dual Core C50M 1GHz (£249)
• Acer Aspire One (£229)

Any thoughts?

If the Acer had Win 7, it'd be a done deal - i'd buy that. But on the other hand, if the Lenovo had a significantly better battery life that would probably be a done deal. One or the other.

Lenovo Ideapad S206 review:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Lenovo-Ideapad-S206-M898UGE-Netbook.82007.0.html

Acer Aspire One review (although this review was on the Win 7 version):
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Acer-Aspire-One-725-Notebook.78724.0.html

 

[THEV1LL4N]

The price of the Lenovo went up to £250.

 

[masta247]

Which Acer One is it? There are a lot of models and it's a line up that started in 2008. It's hard to find a small laptop in this price range.

If it comes to the very base, Windows 8 is basically Windows 7 with metro slapped over it and some tweaks. You should be able to install Windows 7 on any Windows 8 laptop if you wish to.

 

[Pittsey]

I'm in the process of upgrading all my HTPCs to Windows 8. It boots very, very quickly. It is just the UI that is shit.

 

[ARon]

I just randomly picked up an Acer S3 for 250 brand new in the box. They're going for around 600 at stores. I'm thinking my friend stole it from wherever but yeah, probably flip it for 100 or so

 

[THEV1LL4N]

Which Acer One is it? There are a lot of models and it's a line up that started in 2008. It's hard to find a small laptop in this price range.

If it comes to the very base, Windows 8 is basically Windows 7 with metro slapped over it and some tweaks. You should be able to install Windows 7 on any Windows 8 laptop if you wish to.

Acer Aspire One 725
http://www.tesco.com/direct/acer-as...laptop/664-9971.prd?pageLevel=&skuId=664-9971

See the specs on the website. Looks pretty decent. It says over 5 hours battery life. But I'm thinking that it'd be more like 3-4 hours on wifi when using the internet.

Do you think it'll be a stripped down version of Win 8? Also, did Microsoft block the installing of other web-browsers? I remember that there was a hack needed to get Google apps (like Chrome) to work on Windows 8.

 

[ARon]

Chrome on Windows 8 is simple thanks to Google


http://www.google.com/homepage/windows8/

 

[THEV1LL4N]

That's it. Not a hack then, just a change.

Is there anything else that Microsoft has removed by default that we can get back? Can older programs be installed on Windows 8 or do they need to be coded differently because of Metro UI? I know that some programs run in Metro and some run in the usual way... I'm not so sure about Windows 8.