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#46
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Window 8.1 tablets
On 18/10/2014 9:08 PM, Keith Nuttle wrote:
On 10/18/2014 10:02 AM, Bob Henson wrote: On 18/10/2014 2:46 PM, Wolf K wrote: On 2014-10-18 5:07 AM, Roderick Stewart wrote: [...] If Windows 10 kills anything it will be my interest in using any Microsoft products at all. They*still* don't seem to have realised that whatever may or may not work with fat fingers on a tablet, millions of desktop users don't want a screenful of those tiles. [...] a) you don't have to use Metro if you don't want to; b) sales figures show that most of those desktop users are buying laptops as replacements. a) You *do* have to use Metro, unless you do a lot of modifying to make the desktop usable. There is no menu "out of the box" to use the desktop versions of programs, only the cut-down rubbish in Metro. A non-technical user would never find anything but the Metro apps. b) The same applies to laptops as desktops - they need the same extra programs like Classic Shell to make them usable. Metro only has any real value on a tablet computer or a phone. You can make Windows 8.1 useable with three simple steps. 1. Find the Desktop icon in the metro interfaces. and click it. 2. Place the cursor in the toolbar on the desktop, and right click. 3. From the resultant pop up select Properties. In the Properties Navigation tab, click "When I sign in or close all apps on a screen, got to the Desktop instead of the Start." When you reboot the computer will go directly to the Desktop. To add programs to the desktop. Right click the MS icon on the right of the Desktop tool bar, select File explorer, and add the programs you want to the desktop. After using Windows 8.1 for several months now, I go to the Metro App screen in the Metro Start screen and pin my frequently used programs to the desktop taskbar. With the Jumplist active (Properties Jumplist) I see each file I have recently opened by right clicking on the program icon in the taskbar. That does not take a Ph.D. to do. Not exactly. You missed out the most important bit, the necessity to install another program to restore a usable menu system. But why should anyone have to do it anyway? -- Bob Tetbury, Gloucestershire, UK Keyboard - standard device for generating computer errors. |
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#47
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Window 8.1 tablets
On 18/10/2014 9:14 PM, Keith Nuttle wrote:
On 10/18/2014 10:53 AM, philo wrote: On 10/18/2014 09:03 AM, Bob Henson wrote: That's correct and exactly the reason I think Microsoft got it wrong. Too many people just knows computers by rote and to even figure out how to switch from Metro to Classic is beyond their capability. I upgraded to 8.1 from 8.0, and it defaulted to the desktop, not Metro. I think I read somewhere that 8.1 checks to see if you have a touch screen. If so, it defaults to Metro. If not, it defaults to the desktop. You can *make* 8.1 default to the desktop, but as installed it defaults to Metro. True, but what I found annoying is that if one hits the wrong key somewhere, it pops back over to Metro. Installing a 3rd party program such as Classic Shell fixes that. You do not need a 3rd party program to make these fixes. Most can be done from the Properties Navigation tab on the Desktop. The rest can be changed by right clicking on the MS Icon on the Desktop Toolbar, and selecting Control Panel. Many are in the Appearance and Personalization section. How do you add back a working menu system without a third party program? -- Bob Tetbury, Gloucestershire, UK Gynaecologist - a man who can redecorate his hallway through the letterbox. |
#48
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Window 8.1 tablets
On Sat, 18 Oct 2014 15:45:13 -0400, Neil
wrote: We've still got those wretched tiles. It's possible to avoid them unless you accidentally select something wrong, then you stumble back into a screenful of them. And they're still there in Windows 10, in the Start menu. Microsoft seem determined at all costs to get us using tiles whether we want them or not. What's wrong with a list? Microsoft most likely doesn't care whether YOU use tiles or not. However, much of the world has changed the way it is working, and folks with phones and tablets have shown to be not the least bit interested in "lists" as a UI. Just ask Blackberry. Then we should use an operating system suitable for phones and tablets on phones and tablets, and an operating system suitable for desktop PCs on desktop PCs. There's no reason why they have to be the same. Even as far back as the Palm OS, users have been pretty clear about their preferences for a GUI, and today, it's a no-brainer that it's the only thing that WILL sell. Thanks to the near monopoly position occupied by Microsoft, for many people in practice it's the only thing available. If it's the only thing selling, that's why. Luckily it's not the only thing selling on Ebay. Metro/Modern is the integrating UI for those devices and having "the app that you know" available on the desktop can't be that hard to understand, can it? I don't find it hard to understand that a phone works like a phone and a computer works like a computer. Trying to make them both work the same way seems pointless and can only end up with a compromise. I think it's a good thing that, even in 8.1, you can choose to use Tiles or avoid them entirely. While I had Windows 8.1 on my laptop, I tried to choose to avoid the tiles entirely, but it wasn't easy. I'd still occasionally stumble into a screenful of them, or some unfamiliar application that filled the screen and was difficult to discard. Rod. |
#49
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Window 8.1 tablets
On Sat, 18 Oct 2014 16:08:18 -0400, Keith Nuttle
wrote: You can make Windows 8.1 useable with three simple steps. 1. Find the Desktop icon in the metro interfaces. and click it. 2. Place the cursor in the toolbar on the desktop, and right click. 3. From the resultant pop up select Properties. In the Properties Navigation tab, click "When I sign in or close all apps on a screen, got to the Desktop instead of the Start." I made my windows 8.1 laptop useable in only two simple steps. 1. Use Gparted to clear all the partitions it occupied. 2. Install Windows 7. Now I *really* never see the Metro interface - because it's not there! Rod. |
#50
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Window 8.1 tablets
On 19/10/2014 10:14 AM, Roderick Stewart wrote:
On Sat, 18 Oct 2014 16:08:18 -0400, Keith Nuttle wrote: You can make Windows 8.1 useable with three simple steps. 1. Find the Desktop icon in the metro interfaces. and click it. 2. Place the cursor in the toolbar on the desktop, and right click. 3. From the resultant pop up select Properties. In the Properties Navigation tab, click "When I sign in or close all apps on a screen, got to the Desktop instead of the Start." I made my windows 8.1 laptop useable in only two simple steps. 1. Use Gparted to clear all the partitions it occupied. 2. Install Windows 7. Now I *really* never see the Metro interface - because it's not there! Rod. That's my preferred option, but unfortunately, I have to use 8, 8.1 and eventually 10 on other folk's machines. -- Bob Tetbury, Gloucestershire, UK Some days, you're the dog; some days you're the lamppost. |
#51
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Window 8.1 tablets
On Sat, 18 Oct 2014 14:25:36 +0100, Bob Henson wrote:
Certainly. For what you have to pay for Windows, it should work "first rattle out of the box". It does. |
#52
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Window 8.1 tablets
On Sat, 18 Oct 2014 07:45:03 -0700, Ken Blake, MVP wrote:
Alas, I *do* agree with that last statement. I think Microsoft has done a very poor job of making it clear that Windows 8 has two interfaces and you can use either or both. No I think they've made it clear that you can either login to the Desktop, or to a customisable Start screen. Why is that so hard to understand? |
#53
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Window 8.1 tablets
On Sun, 19 Oct 2014 10:06:34 +0100, Roderick Stewart wrote:
Then we should use an operating system suitable for phones and tablets on phones and tablets, and an operating system suitable for desktop PCs on desktop PCs. There's no reason why they have to be the same. Unless you have a transformable machine (e.g. Surface)? |
#54
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Window 8.1 tablets
Caver1 wrote:
On 10/18/2014 03:57 PM, Neil wrote: [...] For those who want to use the same apps on their desktop, with data in sync via a cloud server, that notion is completely useless. So, you're betting on the Luddites, and I'm betting on the rest of the world. ;-) You can have your data synced in the cloud with real programs not just apps. The younger generations that only want to use their phones or maybe tablets don't do any real work on them. Based on the conversation "personal cloud drives", I'd say that most people are not prepared to sync the data from their old programs between their various devices, even if they ran on them, which they don't. How interesting is it that you think you know what all forms of "real work" are, and that by definition, if one is using a phone or a tablet, they can't possibly be doing it? Take another look at the original Blackberry user base, and the absurdity of that notion becomes immediately obvious. -- best regards, Neil |
#55
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Window 8.1 tablets
Bob Henson wrote:
On 18/10/2014 8:57 PM, Neil wrote: On 10/18/2014 10:02 AM, Bob Henson wrote: On 18/10/2014 2:46 PM, Wolf K wrote: On 2014-10-18 5:07 AM, Roderick Stewart wrote: [...] If Windows 10 kills anything it will be my interest in using any Microsoft products at all. They*still* don't seem to have realised that whatever may or may not work with fat fingers on a tablet, millions of desktop users don't want a screenful of those tiles. [...] a) you don't have to use Metro if you don't want to; b) sales figures show that most of those desktop users are buying laptops as replacements. a) You *do* have to use Metro, unless you do a lot of modifying to make the desktop usable. There is no menu "out of the box" to use the desktop versions of programs, only the cut-down rubbish in Metro. A non-technical user would never find anything but the Metro apps. There are so many options to address this without "a lot of modifiying" that by now every Win8 user should know them, whether or not they are, like myself, completely uninterested in going that route. b) The same applies to laptops as desktops - they need the same extra programs like Classic Shell to make them usable. Metro only has any real value on a tablet computer or a phone. For those who want to use the same apps on their desktop, with data in sync via a cloud server, that notion is completely useless. So, you're betting on the Luddites, and I'm betting on the rest of the world. ;-) No, you're betting on what you would like to see - but it's not actually like that. What I see is that sales of iPads, Android tablets, and smart phones are trending upward, and sales of desktop PCs are tanking. I'm just not in denial about those facts, so I base my "bets" on the implication of those trends. It looks to me that MS is in agreement with that perspective. -- best regards, Neil |
#56
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Window 8.1 tablets
On 10/19/2014 4:46 AM, Bob Henson wrote:
On 18/10/2014 9:14 PM, Keith Nuttle wrote: On 10/18/2014 10:53 AM, philo wrote: On 10/18/2014 09:03 AM, Bob Henson wrote: That's correct and exactly the reason I think Microsoft got it wrong. Too many people just knows computers by rote and to even figure out how to switch from Metro to Classic is beyond their capability. I upgraded to 8.1 from 8.0, and it defaulted to the desktop, not Metro. I think I read somewhere that 8.1 checks to see if you have a touch screen. If so, it defaults to Metro. If not, it defaults to the desktop. You can *make* 8.1 default to the desktop, but as installed it defaults to Metro. True, but what I found annoying is that if one hits the wrong key somewhere, it pops back over to Metro. Installing a 3rd party program such as Classic Shell fixes that. You do not need a 3rd party program to make these fixes. Most can be done from the Properties Navigation tab on the Desktop. The rest can be changed by right clicking on the MS Icon on the Desktop Toolbar, and selecting Control Panel. Many are in the Appearance and Personalization section. How do you add back a working menu system without a third party program? What Menu System do you want. When you right click on the MS icon you get a complete menu of the computer functions. In the Control Panel if you click View By in the upper right corner and change to large/Small Icons, you have a screen quite similar to the one in Windows XP. In many of the screens from the Right Click MS Icon menu, have the ability to change the display to another view, Another eexample is Network Connections |
#57
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Window 8.1 tablets
On 10/19/2014 5:06 AM, Roderick Stewart wrote:
On Sat, 18 Oct 2014 15:45:13 -0400, Neil wrote: We've still got those wretched tiles. It's possible to avoid them unless you accidentally select something wrong, then you stumble back into a screenful of them. And they're still there in Windows 10, in the Start menu. Microsoft seem determined at all costs to get us using tiles whether we want them or not. What's wrong with a list? Microsoft most likely doesn't care whether YOU use tiles or not. However, much of the world has changed the way it is working, and folks with phones and tablets have shown to be not the least bit interested in "lists" as a UI. Just ask Blackberry. Then we should use an operating system suitable for phones and tablets on phones and tablets, and an operating system suitable for desktop PCs on desktop PCs. There's no reason why they have to be the same. Even as far back as the Palm OS, users have been pretty clear about their preferences for a GUI, and today, it's a no-brainer that it's the only thing that WILL sell. Thanks to the near monopoly position occupied by Microsoft, for many people in practice it's the only thing available. If it's the only thing selling, that's why. Luckily it's not the only thing selling on Ebay. Metro/Modern is the integrating UI for those devices and having "the app that you know" available on the desktop can't be that hard to understand, can it? I don't find it hard to understand that a phone works like a phone and a computer works like a computer. Trying to make them both work the same way seems pointless and can only end up with a compromise. I think it's a good thing that, even in 8.1, you can choose to use Tiles or avoid them entirely. While I had Windows 8.1 on my laptop, I tried to choose to avoid the tiles entirely, but it wasn't easy. I'd still occasionally stumble into a screenful of them, or some unfamiliar application that filled the screen and was difficult to discard. Rod. That is the biggest drawback to Windows 8.1. Once you open a Metro program in in nearly impossible to close that program. YES MS brought the Upper X to close the Window, but that does not close the program. Working with a mouse exclusively the only option is to kill it in the Task Manager. If you hit the Windows Key on the key board it will get you out of most Metro programs. |
#58
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Window 8.1 tablets
On 10/19/2014 7:53 AM, Neil Gould wrote:
Caver1 wrote: On 10/18/2014 03:57 PM, Neil wrote: [...] For those who want to use the same apps on their desktop, with data in sync via a cloud server, that notion is completely useless. So, you're betting on the Luddites, and I'm betting on the rest of the world. ;-) You can have your data synced in the cloud with real programs not just apps. The younger generations that only want to use their phones or maybe tablets don't do any real work on them. Based on the conversation "personal cloud drives", I'd say that most people are not prepared to sync the data from their old programs between their various devices, even if they ran on them, which they don't. How interesting is it that you think you know what all forms of "real work" are, and that by definition, if one is using a phone or a tablet, they can't possibly be doing it? Take another look at the original Blackberry user base, and the absurdity of that notion becomes immediately obvious. I run many programs that do not lend them selves to a small screen tablet. Have you ever tried touch type on a tablet? What a bout do anything on a large spread sheet, more than reviewing and making minor corrections. When working on the net I have my browser and email programs open so I can see them in different parts of the screen, you can not do the well on a tablet. I also work with genealogy and use Family Tree Maker. When things get going I may end up with a dozen windows open simultaneously on the screen with each screen positions so I can see the information I need in its portion of the scree. And no Family Tree Maker is not the same as working on a tree on Ancestry. Just in this folder on my computer I have nearly 8 gigabytes of data, larger that the memory on some tablets. Finally having it all on my computer, I am not tied to changing cell towers, atmospheric interference, and to an unreliable ISP. |
#59
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Window 8.1 tablets
On 10/19/2014 7:58 AM, Neil Gould wrote:
Bob Henson wrote: On 18/10/2014 8:57 PM, Neil wrote: On 10/18/2014 10:02 AM, Bob Henson wrote: On 18/10/2014 2:46 PM, Wolf K wrote: On 2014-10-18 5:07 AM, Roderick Stewart wrote: [...] If Windows 10 kills anything it will be my interest in using any Microsoft products at all. They*still* don't seem to have realised that whatever may or may not work with fat fingers on a tablet, millions of desktop users don't want a screenful of those tiles. [...] a) you don't have to use Metro if you don't want to; b) sales figures show that most of those desktop users are buying laptops as replacements. a) You *do* have to use Metro, unless you do a lot of modifying to make the desktop usable. There is no menu "out of the box" to use the desktop versions of programs, only the cut-down rubbish in Metro. A non-technical user would never find anything but the Metro apps. There are so many options to address this without "a lot of modifiying" that by now every Win8 user should know them, whether or not they are, like myself, completely uninterested in going that route. b) The same applies to laptops as desktops - they need the same extra programs like Classic Shell to make them usable. Metro only has any real value on a tablet computer or a phone. For those who want to use the same apps on their desktop, with data in sync via a cloud server, that notion is completely useless. So, you're betting on the Luddites, and I'm betting on the rest of the world. ;-) No, you're betting on what you would like to see - but it's not actually like that. What I see is that sales of iPads, Android tablets, and smart phones are trending upward, and sales of desktop PCs are tanking. I'm just not in denial about those facts, so I base my "bets" on the implication of those trends. It looks to me that MS is in agreement with that perspective. You are seeing the results of metoism. Once the fad changed from the cell phone, the numbers will become closer to the way things are in practice. The person who has bought every new apple phone skews the statistics. People who use their computers for actual work are the ones not upgrading to the newest computer release and the newest operating system. When computers were new, the same group of people increase the sales numbers for new cell phones/tablets were the same people buying the next fastest processor as it was released. Metoism. |
#60
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Window 8.1 tablets
Keith Nuttle wrote:
On 10/19/2014 7:53 AM, Neil Gould wrote: Caver1 wrote: On 10/18/2014 03:57 PM, Neil wrote: [...] For those who want to use the same apps on their desktop, with data in sync via a cloud server, that notion is completely useless. So, you're betting on the Luddites, and I'm betting on the rest of the world. ;-) You can have your data synced in the cloud with real programs not just apps. The younger generations that only want to use their phones or maybe tablets don't do any real work on them. Based on the conversation "personal cloud drives", I'd say that most people are not prepared to sync the data from their old programs between their various devices, even if they ran on them, which they don't. How interesting is it that you think you know what all forms of "real work" are, and that by definition, if one is using a phone or a tablet, they can't possibly be doing it? Take another look at the original Blackberry user base, and the absurdity of that notion becomes immediately obvious. I run many programs that do not lend them selves to a small screen tablet. Nor should they be required to do so. That does not disqualify the apps that *are* usable on small screens. Have you ever tried touch type on a tablet? Yes, but if typing is important, keyboards work just fine, and have been available for tablets for decades. Even my old Palm had one. What a bout do anything on a large spread sheet, more than reviewing and making minor corrections. Hopefully, one wouldn't have to do more than minor changes to a spreadsheet on a smart phone. The point is, with Win8.1, you *can* do that, and even if it's only to read the spreadsheet/database/word file etc., that too, is a good thing. When working on the net I have my browser and email programs open so I can see them in different parts of the screen, you can not do the well on a tablet. That is a personal preference, and it just may be that your personal preferences aren't well-suited to "the new ways", but that doesn't invalidate the new ways! ;-) I also work with genealogy and use Family Tree Maker. When things get going I may end up with a dozen windows open simultaneously on the screen with each screen positions so I can see the information I need in its portion of the scree. And no Family Tree Maker is not the same as working on a tree on Ancestry. Just in this folder on my computer I have nearly 8 gigabytes of data, larger that the memory on some tablets. I'm familiar with FTM, as my wife has used it for many years. Just because that app is currently oriented toward desktop users does not mean that it won't adapt in the future, or that another alternative won't come along that does the job even better while using fewer resources. After all, it is just a database app with a restrictive UI. BTW, your "8 gigabytes of data" does not mean that it is all loaded into active memory when the app is opened (it is not, in fact), and storage of far more than that amount has not been a problem on tablets for many years now. Finally having it all on my computer, I am not tied to changing cell towers, atmospheric interference, and to an unreliable ISP. OTOH, you can't carry it with you! 8-D Once again, your personal requirements do not invalidate others' personal requirements. -- best regards, Neil |
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