Computer operating systems

[myglaren]

Ben, you are the first person I have heard with a positive experience of Windows 8.

Mike, I find that my Asus laptop is far faster with Ubuntu 13.04 than with Windows 7 ( just as well as I despise Windows)
I have found though with a few other laptops that I have here that most are considerably faster with Linux Mint "Olivia" (Windows scrubbed off them).

Oddly, the desktop, which should fly, doesn't seem to achieve the performance that it should. Must try it with "Olivia".

I keep meaning to try BSD. One day perhaps.

[Citroening]

Ben, you are the first person I have heard with a positive experience of Windows 8.

I'm also running Windows 8 at the moment Steve - it took a bit of getting used to compared to the previous laptop which had Windows 7 however after a little while it's fine.

Best thing is probably the boot up speed - lightening quick.

[myglaren]

Ben, you are the first person I have heard with a positive experience of Windows 8.

I'm also running Windows 8 at the moment Steve - it took a bit of getting used to compared to the previous laptop which had Windows 7 however after a little while it's fine.

Best thing is probably the boot up speed - lightening quick.

My ASUS had Windows stickers on it saying the boot up was so quick that if you blinked you would miss it.
Ubuntu is much faster
Also, when it is booted, it is actually ready. Windows looks ready but continues shovelling crap in in the background.

[Ben82]

Ben, you are the first person I have heard with a positive experience of Windows 8.

I'm quite surprised by it Steve to be honest, if you go by the reviews etc it would seem like it was the worst OS to come from Microsoft.

But I think you'll find most of the negativity is due to reluctance to having things changed. Bit like when Facebook change around a bit you get a lot of people demanding to have the old one back etc.

One feature I do very much enjoy having is this:


Can have Skype docked on the side (or any responsive metro app), so I can chat to the wife and see what she says etc, whilst I get on with other things. I hear in Windows 8.1 they're expanding that feature to include being able to resize it to your liking, and having more than one app docked etc.

The thing that got me into it was my friend wanted a PC, and he decided to give it a try anyway for his new PC, I set it all up, and thought "this isn't too bad actually!". He quite likes it too, so I think if someone isn't anti-change, they can very easily get on with Windows 8.

[myglaren]

I'm on an American forum and one of the women* who run it is an absolute expert with computers and is able to handle and code many differing systems.
In preparation for her work transferring to W8, she bought her own W8 laptop and it is driving her crazy.

Both of them genius level intelligences. The other one is out of sight.

[Ben82]

TBH Steve, for a Power User, I cannot really see anything that would drive anyone crazy. Granted shutting down has been moved to a seemingly odd place (which a power user probably does infrequently)
But for anyone who used got really into Windows 7's features like pressing the Windows Key and starting to type the program they wanted I cannot really see how it makes a big difference. Maybe because it's early days for me and I need to get all my applications up and running again, certainly so far I cannot see anything that would really annoy me.

[myglaren]

If you hit the power switch (physical) does it present shut-down options?

Her biggest problem is the apparent randomness to the supposed 'organisation' of where things are kept.

I have to admit that the Ubuntu method on the new desktop was a bit baffling at first but it soon becomes simple to find things that are not frequently used.

[Ben82]

If you hit the power switch (physical) does it present shut-down options?

No, don't think asking what to do has been around since XP. It's configurable in the power options though, so you can either set it to: Sleep, Hibernate, or Shut Down. Certainly hasn't changed Win7->Win8.

I suppose if you're going Windows XP straight to Windows 8, then there would be a huge amount of changes to take in, but if they've been taken in in the bite size chunks of Vista -> 7 -> 8, I don't think the changes are that hard to adjust to.

I would say the shutdown/restart options has the most illogical place, but again not something that is hard to adjust to where it is (Mouse to the (top or bottom) right of the screen - settings - power - shut down)

Would be interested to hear what specifics drives them crazy about Windows 8.

[CitroJim]

I'm soon to have to get into Windows 2012 Server which sort of looks like W8.

I'm reserving all judgement until I have... Last Windows Server OS with a GUI apparently - the next generations will be mainly spoken to via powershell in a sort of a Unix'y way I'm given to understand...

Unix and/or Linux will win out in the end..

One of our young lads at work was heard to say the other day ' I can't see Linux catching on in the long term - it has no future..'

Out of the mouths of babes

I felt compelled to give him a lesson on the history of Unix, how Linux derived from it and how all real and critical systems use it. I added that in the real world of IT Windows Server is seen as a toy and that is the one that has no future...

[myglaren]

A bit quicker?

Graphene

Graphene is wickedly conductive, which is important. A graphene transistor was clocked at 427 GHz. Not to get all Doc Brown on it—427 GHZ!—but that’s insane in the membrane (i.e., insane in the brain). An 11-inch MacBook comes with a stock processor running at 1.3 GHz. So a graphene-based processor, in theory, could run 300 times that. Zoom-zoom, know what I’m sayin’?

[Ben82]

Unix and/or Linux will win out in the end..

Server market, definitely... Desktop, I doubt it.

The usefulness of Windows Server in the workplace has severely diminished over the past few years. Google Apps for Businesses has seen to that. Most companies I have visited recently, you notice that they're no longer using Exchange+Outlook, but have Gmail with their logo etc.
Windows Server has been reduced to user authentication, and possibly DHCP/DNS. Things that you could probably set up a Raspberry Pi to do.

[Xaccers]

Over here Exchange is still strong, a lot of companies are still wary of Cloud based services, especially when the internet goes down, but they are becoming more aware of the risk of data being lost or comprimised. We've only got one client who's showing interest in Office 365 for instance.

[Ben82]

Over here Exchange is still strong, a lot of companies are still wary of Cloud based services, especially when the internet goes down, but they are becoming more aware of the risk of data being lost or comprimised. We've only got one client who's showing interest in Office 365 for instance.

"Over here"? All my work is for British companies , but I guess my sample size is rather low, as I deal with a small select amount of clients.

Internet going down is a bit of a poor excuse really. If it goes down then you're not going to be able to send or receive emails anyway, but there is offline options anyway... And if the company is big enough to require internal emails to still be working, then the company should really have redundancy in the internet connection

Lost or compromised is a valid concern, but you're more likely to have an Exchange Server fail than say Google's Cloud lose all your emails

[CitroJim]

Ben, I'm not even sure about the desktop surviving as more and more want to work with tablets and other mobile things. Any plans to encourage users to use their own preferred device to do their work could threaten it too..

Yep, a Windows server as an authentication device, an DHCP server and DNS server is about all it's good for

[Xaccers]

It really says something when stock jumps 9% when the CEO leaves a company!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23815563" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Perhaps MS will get someone in with a clear vision of what the future could hold. Consistently MS have been ahead of the game but not realised it and so rapidly fallen far behind (Windows Mobile springs to mind).