Anticipation of 9 compared to 8

Rickkins said:

It's a little bit funny, this feeling inside....
I am anxious to see what they come up with, but despite my utter disdain for tifkam, my 8.1 behaves quite nicely and I have no major issues with it.

I perhaps might have pointed out that my 8.1 setup runs entirely in desktop mode, looking and behaving pretty much the way 7 did...

I suppose the way you followed a release and how important it was to you depends on when you started with your first pc/laptop.

Windows 95.

a real biggie for me, I was using windows 3.11 and I was a happy bunny as it did what I needed but changes were afoot, what was all the fuss with the new multimedia kits, a cdrom and soundcards, pah, if I wanted a stereo I would buy one not build it into my pc. Anyhow, said pc went tits up so off I went and purchaced one of the new windows 95 machines that were popping up all over the place...bloody hell.. where is everything, I was shocked, and also very excited, I went desktop crazy in a flash adding wallpapers daily and splashing shortcuts all over the place, I even had a new massive 15" monitor to display it all on, this was just the start.

Windows 98.

what!!, already??.... off to the local pc show as by now building a half decent set up was so cheap compared to a few years earlier it was rude not too.
I really didn't get it, ok it looked very slightly nicer and I had yet to dig deeper into it, now I had 2 pc's my first networking days were born, yup, win98 soon went on the win95 pc as well and lan gaming was in the house with win98 at the helm.

WinME.

oooooooooooohh it was sooooooooo pretty.
and that was about as exciting as it ever got for me, sure it had a restore built in but it was never going to come close to "ghost" and yes, for me at least it didn't crash half as much as 98 or 98se, but maybe it should have been called win98 3rd edition.

windowsXP.

Ahh, the one people just wont let go of.
Prob the one I used for the longest period, not because I thought it was great, just that it seemed to always be around, forever.....and ever.....and ever.
even when I had moved on to newer op systems my 1st netbook had xp, laptop had xp, it just never wanted to die.
to be honest it did do its job well and this is the point I started leaving my pc on 24/7 as it just seemed to keep going, but.. after time it became unstable and nothing ever seemed to repair it other than a re-install.

Vista/longhorn.

jeez, how many betas, leaked versions, early builds, etc...
Now wait for it......wait...... I loved it, oh yeah baby, this was made for me....lol.
it was shiny, sparkly, good looking baby and unlike everyone around me it ran like a dream although I did build a new pc just to put this on. I was an instant lover of the gadgets and still today I need to use them, I will always remember vista and all the haters can go and jump. bearing in mind by this time I had had a few years under my belt and was using the pc for everything from gaming to paintshop with (dare I say it) filesharing and torrents running all the time, burning cd/dvds with live wallpapers running and it just handled it all in its stride.

windows 7

the new cling on on the block, yes the one millions are never going to leave, vista service pack 3 ..
I cant call it I suppose but I cant bring myself to hail it either, really.. move along as there is nothing more to see here.
before you all start flaming me I think it was born out of the hate for vista, another service pack or 2 and vista would have been what win 7 is now.

windows 8.

aaahh, the haters are back, lets all relive that vista era.
funny thing is when folks start banging on about haw bad it is I always ask why, the same answers are always given and the results are often maddening,"well I havnt tried it, a mate told me" or "i just don't like it", pathetic answers or reasons from morons, I wouldn't mind if they fessed up that they had essential or important software that would not run or that the pc they had was a little old for it to be beneficial, but back to my thoughts.

i really had no idea how much i was going to like this, it was way better than i expected.
no start menu, really, you miss that little navigation box that it 10% of your screen in the lower left corner and hate it because its now a big full page that is actually useful, i don't. i do however like almost everything about it, i got a Logitech touchpad just so i could take advantage of the swipes and really get a feel for it, after using it for all this time i may actually struggle to let it go, yes a few things were in the wrong place and still are in some respect, power off/restart was/is a pain but simple 8 added that to my taskbar and getting the gadgets back was not too hard, all in all its now a beauty.
i also liked the fact that i tested the release preview and after purchasing the pro upgrade it went straight over the top so i got win8pro with media centre for a mere 25 notes direct from Microsoft with no other op sys licence required, i do hope we can get away with that on win9 lol.

all in all a great experience over the years for me, yes i have had my problems here and there but backups are the key, looking forward to 9 and will chuck all my usual prgms at it and leave it on 24/7, i intend on doing it on a slightly older pc and i will do my best to crash it and see how easy it is to break.

Windows 8 veteran here. I followed literally every single development of Windows 8 since WELL before an alpha build was leaked, like around late 2010. So that means I know some details many don't realize Microsoft has been and will be doing with Windows, like running your Desktop as a Group Policy service (that obviously will never happen anytime soon), the Xbox code that was found in a .dll, MinWin expansion, this feature that never made it but instead of booting to Windows to play a DVD you could start your PC and the DVD would automatically play, oh and even the speculation that you could hypothetically one day install Windows and choose whether or not to install Desktop code or live purely in the modern realm of Windows.

When the Developer Preview was officially launched, I obviously installed that the following day and since then, ran each consecutive build of Windows 8 as my main OS over 7; even to the point of using a Windows 8 To Go drive almost daily at my workplace. And unfortunately, I may end up doing the same with 9.....such beta fatigue...

Anyways, I remember that week in October 2012 when the Developer Preview was launched. There was SO much media coverage online about it and SO much hype and anticipation over Windows 8 because finally, for once, a software giant like Microsoft is making an operating system to combat the ipad and android tablets. Windows 8 was offering so much improvement over 7 and such new features and the new WinRT coding environment and even a new Windows Store. That in itself was a big deal because for once, there is now a central place to get apps and run these modern apps that use modern functions that look modern and can be used modernally with touch input. Some parallels were drawn that it was "Longhorn Reborn" because before vista, it was Longhorn and it was to have a HUGE focus on like C++ programming than before.

There was an image of a Samsung tablet running the preview build that Microsoft gave attendees the day of launch that were in the audience. I think it was a tech news writer that took the picture of his ipad hooked up to this tablet...

This right here was the zeitgeist of Windows 8's initial launch.

It was the platform that was to end all other tablet operating systems, it's full fledged Windows in a tablet designed with tablets and touch in mind. Not only was it Microsoft's official stance against the ipad, but the utterly dramatic redesign of Windows. It's not a menu anymore, it's was intended to be the modern Desktop of sorts as everything you care about has a place to be on Start, whether it's your news or Desktop programs. It also was the start of Microsoft's epic turnaround as "One Microsoft" versus several major development teams pointing a gun at each other and not working together pushing out disparate technologies that at times didn't even work together nicely. Everything about Windows 8 was to be huge, not only for Windows itself, but the WHOLE company altogether. Windows 8 was the final domino to fall over for all of this happen, Windows Phone was the first that started this all.

Then came using Windows 8 on every other PC... That was mixed. Some people loved it, some people hated it, very little in between. Some didn't like all the animations and movement and moving your mouse around to navigate around the UI when the start menu was easy and simply for them. Believe you me, the Developer Preview is SUCH a far cry from what Windows 8 ended up being, especially compared to 8.1.1. Once everyone used it, the media attention went to immediately about usability concerns on desktop PCs, or anything nontouch. On touch screens and tablets, 8 was fantastic. On nontouch PCs, that experience was iffy. For me, it was fantastic as I had no bugs or issues and used my old nontouch mouse with it. Only problem I had was the Hybrid Boot feature and moving files from my PC to a target hard drive that had the DP on it. The hibernate function and adding files to the hard drive caused file system corruption on that drive...

As time went on, the Consumer Preview was released and THAT was more of a controversial release because that removed the Start button from the Taskbar and introduced the sidebar Charms that we know today. In the DP, the Start button was there and was basically a flat version of 7's Start flag on a blackish square. That caused the obvious issue of not knowing where to go for some people. In this build, the Desktop was regarded like an app unlike the DP where the Start Screen was just more overlaid on the Desktop. You can close out the UI but it doesn't close out anything on the Desktop which seems counterproductive. I bet the thinking there was that the new apps still kind of run in the background, so it seems fitting for the Desktop to kind of act like that.

The Charms bar and hot corners were also controversial because with a mouse, that isn't so obvious to do isn't as easy if you're a first time user. I was rather against those two moves at the time, because I knew that was going to be an issue for usability, but made sense once you figured it out. They were trying to get ONE single interaction method to work across the mouse and touch inputs versus making it two distinct input methods as they are going to be with 9. The reason being is because on PCs like the Surface Pro, you have both input methods so you have now two interaction models and two UI models you would have to work with. I'm still kind of wondering how PCs like that are going to work with 9.

But as the year progressed, all sorts of videos were being made primarily by everyone that didn't like 8 that showed it's too hard to figure out. It's kind of an oxymoron because the UI of Windows 8 is so simple but so tricky to figure out if you don't know what you're doing. I was rather upset they didn't have an initial how-to interactive guide in the RTM build that showed the user how to ACTUALLY use Windows 8's new UI. The updated drivers for my Microsoft Touch Mouse went over better how to use Windows 8 than Windows 8 itself. When you first booted 8, it was just, "Check out how to use the new Windows, move your mouse to the corner." with an animation doing just that and that's it. Ok. That's not how you use the new Windows AT ALL. There's SO much more that needed to have been covered, especially on new PCs that had touchpad gesturing, when are you supposed to use the gestures and how? No answer to be shown or said of. So that obviously caused a LOT of frustration for new users that were completely unaware of Windows 8, hence why there is a tutorial thread over on Eight Forums I and HippsieGippsie co-authored to set up and use 8 because it's so new and different.

I find if Microsoft had set Windows 8 up like it is in 8.1.1 and had File Explorer locations from the old start menu onto the Start Screen in view with the Desktop wallpaper as the background along with the navigation tips, all of this would have been avoided. There would have been no, "Where's My Computer at? Where's the Start button at? How do I do this? Where do I go?!" It would have been, "Oh, here's My Computer. Documents are all right there. Shutdown button is here. Ok, cool, I just need to move my mouse pointer here." Every single time I've deployed Windows 8 to someone's PC, I ALWAYS give them a tutorial/run down/explanation of Windows 8. In about half an hour, they know how to use Windows 8 properly, questions are answered, and they go on using their PCs quite happily. Out of literally over 50 people I've done this for, I've only come across like three people who don't want any part of this. So something I'm doing is right.

Jody Thornton said:

Cool. We're just northeast of Yonge and Steeles (near Bayview and Proctor). I'm doing traffic this afternoon on Newstalk 1010.

I lowed my Weston better (Weston Rd and Lawrence), nice quiet neighborhood, Rosemount Av. 24 years there until I left Canada.