Windows 10!? ... I will call her Majel. <3

zebular · January 2015

Link to article.

Cortana

Cortana--or at least some of her DNA--is already in the early preview builds of Windows 10, but the feature isn't enabled yet. With this preview, Microsoft should flip the switch and add its personal assistant to the full breadth of Windows 10 devices. The big question is whether Cortana's capabilities are seen as a welcome addition to the PC platform or as a gimmick.

I will call her Majel.

Rest well, you wonderful woman. I'll never forget you.

So, what do you all think of Windows 10? Do you think Cortana will also give voice control over the computer? I hope so. I know it's early yet but I just finally fell deeply in love with my Windows 8.1 and even though that Cortana implementation will probably sell me on Windows 10, I am apprehensive about it.

charononus · January 2015

Honestly I'm not sold on it. I can't think of a windows update that didn't increase the size of the resources it needs to run. With most of the features that take up those resources being unnecessary eye candy. I don't see myself upgrading. Also most the time I try to use voice recognition software it sounds like something from a sitcom with it mis-hearing (not sure if that's the right term) me.

sprawlfx · January 2015

I do not like that they tried to turn my PC into a big fat smart phone with Win8. This is just more of that. I dislike my smartphones, yes, smartphones. What I want is an XP interface, without the limitations, bugs and security holes. All I ask of MS is that they refrain from trying to help me.

charononus · January 2015

sprawlfx wrote: »

I do not like that they tried to turn my PC into a big fat smart phone with Win8. This is just more of that. I dislike my smartphones, yes, smartphones. What I want is an XP interface, without the limitations, bugs and security holes. All I ask of MS is that they refrain from trying to help me.

If you want to get rid of some of the smart phone feel to 8.1 try classic shell. It's free and gets it to feel more like an older version of windows rather than a smart phone.

zebular · January 2015

charononus wrote: »

If you want to get rid of some of the smart phone feel to 8.1 try classic shell. It's free and gets it to feel more like an older version of windows rather than a smart phone.

I do like my live tiles but the 8.1 update allows you to boot straight to the desktop and adds right-click start menu options. Not nearly as robust as XP but it's something better for those who don't like the Live Tiles than what just plain Win8 comes with.

sprawlfx · January 2015

charononus wrote: »

If you want to get rid of some of the smart phone feel to 8.1 try classic shell. It's free and gets it to feel more like an older version of windows rather than a smart phone.

Appreciate that. I've been using classic shell since Vista was inflicted upon us.

charononus · January 2015

zebular wrote: »

I do like my live tiles but the 8.1 update allows you to boot straight to the desktop and adds right-click start menu options. Not nearly as robust as XP but it's something better for those who don't like the Live Tiles than what just plain Win8 comes with.

This is the reason I like it.

that menu was opened with a standard left click, and it gives me all the options I'm used to for control panels, programs, shutdown, etc. The shutdown etc was especially important after the amount of swearing I did right after I bought it and went looking for how to reboot.

sockmunkey · January 2015

Rule number one with ANY windows product is to wait for the first service pack. I wont even bother with 10, until 10.1 is available. Even then, It will take a lot to get me to leave Win7 behind. I'm just more comfortable with it.

zebular · January 2015

charononus wrote: »

This is the reason I like it.

that menu was opened with a standard left click, and it gives me all the options I'm used to for control panels, programs, shutdown, etc. The shutdown etc was especially important after the amount of swearing I did right after I bought it and went looking for how to reboot.

*the old mage's head explodes with nastolgia. His twitching body then vanishes and he reappears, fully healed*

Sorry about that. I may have to look into that classic shell! Thanks!

sockmunkey wrote: »

Rule number one with ANY windows product is to wait for the first service pack. I wont even bother with 10, until 10.1 is available. Even then, It will take a lot to get me to leave Win7 behind. I'm just more comfortable with it.

True true. I shall have to don a suit of "Resist Windows" armor.

ambisinisterr · January 2015

I really wish they would stop trying to re-invent the wheel.

Computers are filing cabinets. The whole windows 8 concept of turning everything into a dang picture-book was flat out stupid. Pictures are more memorable than words, yes, but you wouldn't organise a filing cabinet based on pictures.

As far as I am concerned the start menu was perfect with Windows Vista. It had all of your prgrams in the standard filing cabinet, allowed you to permanently set a few as favorites and had a list of your most recent/commonly used ones in front. They removed the extra click for the search/run feature and had all they key system folders on the side within easy reach. This was a huge improvement on the Windows 95 click fest through the Program Files list (or cluttered desktop of shortcuts)

To go to the start screen was such a downgrade. It looked pretty but it is not functional. Period.
I mean the best part of Windows XP-7 Start Menus was they were more or less automatic. The first thing that pissed me off was that the Start Screen not only wanted me to spend an hour figuring out how I wanted to organize it but then required continued maintenance.

Burying the key folders such as control panel and my computer pretty deep in the UI ticked me off. I mean seriously why the hell would you bury those behind four clicks...

The kicker...which is me being nitpicky at this point...was having a side to side scroll on the start screen. Who the hell likes side to side scrolling?! It feels completely unnatural to use a scroll wheel to do side to side scrolling and news flash Microsoft not only do most people not have a touch screen computer but most people don't want one unless they cost exact $0 more, came with the OS and magically turned their current monitor into a touchscreen device since people will not buy one for the OS and most any high end monitor (purpose built) don't include touch screens.

As nice as having a touch screen can be to do basic left clicks and right clicks the precision isn't there. I used one all the time at my old job but it was for quick tapping things. ANY time we needed to do something that didn't have big shiny buttons we would grab the mouse...which was quite often. For most anything beyond web browsing (such as anything you are going through the dang start screen for) is better suited to using a mouse so designing an entire UI based on the hope everybody would run out and buy a touch screen was just plain dumb from the start...

They wanted to streamline devices. They wanted the Windows Phone and Windows Computer to run the same...
The problem is that the reason why Smart Phone UI's are the way they are is because the screen is the size of your palm. It's not ideal. I can't wait for a smart phone with the capability to expand the screen on demand so that I can have the superior Computer UI on a phone. Not the other way around...

Now that my rant is out of the way...
Windows 8 is awesome as an OS. I recommend it to everybody. They did a lot of back end improvements and minor improvements to things like the search feature which make it a very good operating system./ They just shot themselves in the foot by adding the horrible smart phone UI and not giving us an option to tell that to shove it...

I had hoped they learned their lesson. From what I had already heard they had planned to bring back Windows 7-ish UI featrures and allow you to kill the horrible metro-stuff completely if you like without using third party software which was hope inspiring...

However pushing this Cortana nonsense has me scared again. I don't find the appeal of talking to computers to get them to do things. Not only would I feel stupid as hell saying "Cortana Open Google Chrome" but I guarantee I could click the chrome icon faster. Stupid. Period.

Additionally I hate the idea of broadcasting those actions out even within my own home. It's not even about privacy (although that is an issue to me in public). Noise is annoying in my books. If I am watching TV the last thing I want to hear is somebody telling Cortana what to do ever few minutes.

I don't see the appeal.

I am all for voice recognition to be improved to help the impared. I would even love the ability to turn on NON-CORTANA voice recognition on a key press in case. It would be nice to get quality voice recognition software for general purpose use. Imagine being able to click a button have sentences translated to text in NW without the need of non-OS software for instance. That would be a good feature.

"Cortana Open Google Chrome" is not. If they bury what could have been a good feature behind "Cortana Blank" nonsense I am going to scream. And if they don't allow me to Say "Cortana go <censored>" then I'm going to finally figure out how to work Linux...

ambisinisterr · January 2015

sockmunkey wrote: »

Rule number one with ANY windows product is to wait for the first service pack. I wont even bother with 10, until 10.1 is available. Even then, It will take a lot to get me to leave Win7 behind. I'm just more comfortable with it.

That's not always a very good rule. Windows 8 had no bugs. No compatibility issues. Nothing. It was completely seamless.

The only issue with Windows 8 was the horrible UI...which they never fixed...but I was so pissed when I installed Windows 8 that it only took me two hours to fix it...yay third party software.
(Note this was literally 2 hours after it was launched and such software was rarely used before. The two hours was finding out the software existed and choosing one of the options.)

If you don't count the UI there's no reason to dislike windows 8. Frankly it's the best OS they have ever released. It's a shame really because they could have had such a good reception. They could have had rave reviews. Instead they got "WTH is this 'UI formerly know as Metro' HAMSTER? Why does it sound like a washed up pop star?"

reds351 · January 2015

I like win 10 apart from the problematic explorer bugs.
The start menu is nice as well
lDvTYGi

http://imgur.com/lDvTYGi

ambisinisterr · January 2015

What does "all apps" do. Please tell me it sends out a filing cabinet and not a picture book...

Also not liking that "PC Settings" button. They better allow me to nuke that and put the control panel there.

The TBH from that layout it looks like I'll still be using third party software. I wouldn't mind having the ability to place some of those "favorites" in small tiles as displayed there...

But I like the organisation of the WixXP-7 start button better where if you think about it all the stuff *you* use is on the left while all the system links are on the right. You might hardly ever use the stuff on the right but you wouldn't want to click through system files to get them like you would in Windows 95. Nice vertical columns of commonly used/useful and hardly ever used but very useful.

Even giving me the ability to create the same thing with their hideous live tiles wouldn't really appeal to me. I use startisback. Seriously all they have to do is do exactly what this software did and incorporate the option to put live tiles on it. Basically everything can be added and removed on command. You can easily change and customize appearances. It costs a few dollars but I love it for giving those few extra customization options.

frishter · January 2015

The only thing I see about win 10 is that it's what win 8 should have been more or less.

What annoys me though is that it's less hassle to crack than to reactivate a key.

dragoness10 · January 2015

It's better than Windows Vista - everything is. That was gamer unfriendly. I had several friends it'd random boot them out of games as the "auto shutdown" kicked in for "idle programs". They were active IN the game itself, just Vista wasn't registering the masses of keystrokes going on in chat, crafting, or even during fighting.

Vista sucked.

reds351 · January 2015

You can remove the PC settings for the top, its just pined there by default.
FIohPCP

http://imgur.com/FIohPCP
That's what All Apps looks like.

Also you don't need to have the live tiles at all you can remove that whole bit.

ambisinisterr · January 2015

dragoness10 wrote: »

It's better than Windows Vista...Vista sucked.

In case this was due to my Vista comments...I actually had no issues with Vista personally but I only got it at the end of the lifespan when I suspect most bugs were squashed. However my comments about Vista are only reagrding the start menu and not the functionality of the OS.

reds351 wrote: »

You can remove the PC settings for the top, its just pined there by default.

I know that can be unpinned. It's more that I want useful tools like "Control Panel" and "My PC" in the same location it has been since Wondows XP which doesn't appear to be an option unless I make it a live tile rather than a word.

Nitpicky I know but I don't want to memorize an icon for "control panel." You wouldn't organize a filing cabinet with pictures so why would you force people to label every tab with an image or clutter the user-friendly aspect of the start menu?

I actually just opened up "PC Settings" in Windows 8 and can't even find "uninstall a program." It is quite seriously not even a replacement for control panel and this is what somebody else meant earlier by saying Microsoft tried to make the UI more user friendly but in actuality they made it less user friendly.

As far as I can tell even after just looking at PC Settings it's more like "personalize" in the form of a big button phone. The buttons are big but the features are as basic as they get. It frankly has nothing to do with the actual computer settings and everything to do with shiny bling.

Basically...it seems like they still are ignoring the issue which is that the metro-UI buried anything that isn't a shiny gimmick. They wanted to make it more user friendly but they buried every tool people have to fix problems or control their computers in meaningful ways instead of designing a system to assist those who are less knowledgable.

In a nutshell, while it seems they added some buttons to disable a start screen they still have not accepted that Windows 8 UI was flawed in every way.

zebular · January 2015

Yeah, I never had any issues with my Vista PC's. Like you though Ambi, I didn't get a Vista machine until it was at the end of its lifecycle. I went from a Commodore 64 to a Win95 machine. Then to 98, 98se, XP, Vista, ME (I HATE Windows ME), back to Vista, then to Win8 and now at Win8.1 on my Desktop. My laptop is still running Vista Home Premium. While it has hardware issues, I've never had an OS issue with it.

Luckily, I got Win8 right on cusp of Win8.1 update, so the base Win8 issues were of minimal impact on me. I love my Win8.1 machine.

azlanfox · January 2015

I never utilized Vista for personal reasons. I had to develop an image of Vista for corporate workstations due to the fact that I work for a Microsoft Gold Partner. It was very poor in design, function, and resource usage. The older version compatibility and Windows on Windows functionality could not properly handle memory addressing for 16bit and older 32bit applications and did not include the proper linkages for older framework versions imbedded out-of-the-box. The only benefit from Vista was BitLocker. Windows 7 was a massive step forward, and I personally still use it, mostly due to cost and no proper upgrade or equivalency for Windows 7 Ultimate to 8.1. Windows 10 will likely force me to upgrade to keep functional and relevant.

hustin1 · January 2015

sprawlfx wrote: »

Appreciate that. I've been using classic shell since Vista was inflicted upon us.

I'm still using the only shell available to me, the one that comes with Windows 2000.

Yes, I'm *that* stubborn.

azlanfox · January 2015

hustin1 wrote: »

I'm still using the only shell available to me, the one that comes with Windows 2000.

Yes, I'm *that* stubborn.

I once stood up a box with Windows 2000 and connected it to the internet. It instantly acquired 300 viruses and became completely unusable. You should at least use Windows XP or abandon Windows and move to Linux.

hustin1 · January 2015

Not to worry. I'm behind two disparate firewalls and AV software. To the best of my knowledge, my OS has never been infected.

zebular · January 2015

hustin1 wrote: »

Not to worry. I'm behind two disparate firewalls and AV software. To the best of my knowledge, my OS has never been infected.

Software Firewalls and AV Software will not protect against attacks on an OS that has vulnerabilities. Penetrate the OS and software firewalls and AVs mean nothing. That's good though that you've never been infected but you really should upgrade, as 2000 will eventually go unsupported like past Windows OS's.

zebular · January 2015

Wow, Windows 10 will be a free upgrade to Windows 8.1, Windows 7, and Windows Phone 8.1 users for the first year!

I guess that sells me! Hmm, well I mean "frees me?" lol

For those with other systems, now's a great time to find a great deal on 8.1 or 7!

ambisinisterr · January 2015

Can't beat free.

And what Windows 8 taught me is that no matter how trashy the UI is there'll be somebody willing to fix Microsoft's mistakes. More importantly any such fix is worth every single penny it costs...within reason.

henry404 · January 2015

One of those Windows 10 screenshots remind me a bit too much of something....
If I ever get so much as a hint that a paper-clip might be about to advise me, help me or otherwise offer suggestions then the PC is going out of the window and I shall return to the abacus.

My first experience of Windows 8 was successfully installing LibreOffice and then failing to find it. Really. I work with PCs for a living and I could not locate the software I had just installed....

charononus · January 2015

zebular wrote: »

Wow, Windows 10 will be a free upgrade to Windows 8.1, Windows 7, and Windows Phone 8.1 users for the first year!

I guess that sells me! Hmm, well I mean "frees me?" lol

For those with other systems, now's a great time to find a great deal on 8.1 or 7!

Free beer Free beer it's the greatest beer in the world.

I'll probably upgrade since it has the magic word. I rarely turn down something that is free.

reds351 · January 2015

They released a new build today changed the look of the start menu.. i don't like it
and all the icons in explorer the settings menu and notifications
http://imgur.com/a/EOn5i

Also this version is using DX12

ambisinisterr · January 2015

Ugh...even the location of Shut Down is just so wrong.

Mouse movement should be limited...and they need to accept the start button is something people generally don't (and don't want to) use. It's there to find new programs and rarer used programs. The most common use of the start button is to turn off the computer so why the hell is it way up at the top of the menu?

It's just all wrong...

codyk1 · January 2015

reds351 wrote: »

They released a new build today changed the look of the start menu.. i don't like it
and all the icons in explorer the settings menu and notifications
http://imgur.com/a/EOn5i

Also this version is using DX12

Actually I really like this new build of windows 10 and I removed all those useless icons. I use that to launch games instead like neverwinter and minecraft and I customize where the tiles are I think its pretty neat much better then windows 8 I hate windows 8 was always a 7 fan but I prefer this over 7. Also where does it indicate this is running DX 12? I didn't think that was released in beta yet

burkaanc · January 2015

azlanfox wrote: »

I once stood up a box with Windows 2000 and connected it to the internet. It instantly acquired 300 viruses and became completely unusable. You should at least use Windows XP or abandon Windows and move to Linux.

i once tried to install 2k on a box connected to internet, i had about same collection of viruses by the time install was done

about Cortana - she is on the new build - 9926, though i havent tested her on pc on phone she works fine and understands my non-native english, though there are some trouble with non-english names on phone book

Windows 10!? ... I will call her Majel. <3

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