I feel sorry for anyone who received a new computer for Christmas that had Windows 8 pre-installed. Maybe “sorry” isn’t the correct word. Saying I mourn for them would be more appropriate.
Watch this. It’s totally worth the watch. Trust me on this.
That’s one way to do product testing. I do something similar myself. That, or I just hand the device to the Husbear and watch him. 😉
For several technical reasons, I am STILL using Windows XP on all but one of my seven studio computers. And the home computer is running Windows 7, albeit begrudgingly. Mostly because it came pre-installed and I felt no technical desire to roll it back to XP.
After playing with Windows 8, I have zero desire to upgrade anything to that OS. It feels clunky, at best. And the user interface is horribly ugly. Flat. Boring. It’s like taking a leap backwards and jumping into 16-bit land. Yuck. Add to that I had a similar experience as the lady in the video. I’m a tech guy, still! And I was sober!
And for all you die-hard Apple people who are thinking about saying “Get a Mac”: don’t. Unless you’re prepared to fork out for new hardware for me. To the tune of 8 machines. And don’t get me started on the lack of non user-upgradability of it. While iOS does what I need on my iPhone, as far as the desktop implementation goes I am still not a big fan. Maybe that will change in a few more iOS cycles. Maybe.
I am seriously considering switching over to some flavor of Linux, possibly Ubuntu. A slight learning curve for me, but hopefully in my advanced technological age it won’t be that difficult. And it works on all my existing hardware.
Until next time...
I use Kubuntu. It’s a flavor of Ubuntu that comes with the KDE desktop rather than the standard Gnome. I switched to Kubuntu after the Unity theme for Gnome was pushed out. I felt like I was using some kind of bizarro-world Apple UI, and couldn’t change it fast enough. KDE is a little resource heavy, but isn’t that big of a usability riddle for Windows users.
I’ll have to give Kubuntu a shot. Thanks!
“I feel like I’m being punished”. I think that just about says it all. This vid should be required viewing for everyone at Microsoft, especially that stupid slob Steve Ballmer.
Like any of them actually use Windows. 😉
I love Ubuntu. I have them running in parallel to my Win7 and I use them as much as I can.
On my non-Mac hardware (sorry), I run Ubuntu, though I have recently gone to the GNOME version of Ubuntu instead of their default Unity desktop. I’m thinking of just making the leap to Kubuntu since I hear great things about it.
As far as Windows goes, Windows XP is still a workhorse and I don’t blame you for keeping that around. Most of the systems at work are still on Windows XP. I never tell anyone that I was an active part of the Windows Vista development cycle (except for this comment) as a beta tester (sorry world), but Windows 7 is decent enough and though it’s a little bloated it still does what it needs to do.
Windows 8 is awful. I get what they’re trying to do, but if you don’t have a touch screen you’re not going to be very productive for the first year or so of trying to find all the charms and widgets in Windows 8. And it’s very flat looking. Clickable things don’t look clickable. Using Windows 8 makes me feel stupid, and while I feel a lot of things, I hardly ever feel stupid. Not a good emotion to have your userbase feel. I totally relate to this drunk woman.
I say give Ubuntu a try. With iOS devices no longer needing to be tethered to iTunes you should be good to go. Good luck!
I’m going to give Kubuntu a try. It has been recommended several times to me.
Definitely Linux if you’re savvy.
I grew up with pcs, working in a big IBM mainframe shop at a University; used one of the very first pcs that came off the line, using DOS 1.0. They have always, always been difficult and tricky to configure. and I’ve done a huge amount of that in the past 30-some-odd years.
Linux on the PC was wonderfully stable, more stable than any other UNIX flavor running on any other hardware combo – I did software at a company that fielded a UNIX application and supported almost every combination of unix+hardware. We ported our application to 12+ Unix flavors every month, tested, and issued minor and major updates. Linux on the PC was somewhat more stable than any other version of UNIX we had in-house (Solaris, SCO, UCSD, IBM, etc), and that little server stayed up without crashing for more than a year at a time of constant-duty, multiple years. It is (or was) tricky to configure initially, but once you get an executable kernel you’re usually in business.
I like the MACs because there’s UNIX under the hood and I can do some things at the command line that I can’t do with the interface. I can also diagnose problems using the UNIX tools I am familiar with.
Linux is fun – do that.
I’m still a command line guy on Windows to this day. I can do things faster with it than I can with the GUI. Hell, I’d run DOS if I could get away with it. 😉
The video should be a drunken guy, who supposedly has computer skills, seeing windows 8 for the first time…
Personally I have two desktops (2004 models) both with windows XP… Besides the hardware is so slow … I love em…
Also have two MacBookPro 17″ (2008 & 2010) and I kinda want another mini Mac just to partition the drive and install windows XP and get rid of the slow PCs…. Plus take up less space…minus the hard drives I take out of the PCs to have externally for the new mini Mac …
I think that video might be out there somewhere. Or maybe I should drink and do one. 😉
I was about to write get a Mac (written on my Mac) when I saw the warning and backpeddled.
I think you should get rid of computers all together and return to an age without these maddening things.
I can’t imagine living without a computer. Or two.