Here is My Rant on Microsoft Windows 8

8/13/2019 Here is My Rant on Microsoft Windows 8

1/4

Here is my rant on Microsoft Windows 8. It may be not as detailed as possible since I no longer have aworking example in front of me as I write thisof course, I would be writing it in any case on a differentcomputer than the one with Win8, since I have found Win8 to be unusable. But the details of my travailwith Win8 are still reasonably fresh in my mind, and if I have mercifully already forgotten a few, there arestill enough to raise my blood pressure now, a month after I returned the damn thing.

(Note:This was not written for Daily Kos, and I do not see many if any computer diaries here, but we dosee diaries on everything from birdwatching to ancient history here, and I want to see what my communityhas to say about this. I would appreciate any responses, even if "You're a hopeless curmudgeon", as longas you read the whole (long) diary.)

I have been using computers since 1975; my first micro was the Commodore 64, which was also the lastcomputer I really understood completely in the sense of having practically memorized the entire kernel.Ive owned three Amigas, four Macs, and five PCs (several of which I installed Linux on) since then, an d Ihave had programming environments set up for most of those, writing in Pascal, C, C++, Forth, andseveral other languages. More recently, I have not needed to do programming, especially as the ever-changing Windows API is quite a chore to keep up with as a casual programmer. The point is, Ive hadlots of experience with quite a few operating systems.

My current computer, a Dell Inspiron 1525 running Vista, has worked well for four and a half years, butstarted to make some faint skritchy noises that in my experience presage hard drive failure. So I quicklymade sure my backups were complete, and started to shop for a new laptop. I looked longingly at thecurrent Macs, but decided I really didnt want to spend that much, as well as having some legacy softwarethat doesnt come in Mac versions.

So my choice, in mid November, was between a Win7 and a Win8 laptop. I am sorry to say I did not domuch research. My habit has been to upgrade pretty frequently, having owned (after switching from Mac)Win 98, ME, XP, and Vista machines. Ive been happy with Vista in spite of lots of negative opinions outthere. But now I thought I would skip one generation, so my Win8 machine would seem fresher longer.(Cue ominous music)

I looked at the funny tiles of the Win8 Start screen, thought they looked interesting, and with my

background was sure that upgrading would present minimal problems and little time. Bought a Win8 HPfrom Office Depot. Took it home and before installing all my existing software, started to play around withthe so-called Metro apps on the tiles.

Right away, I found myself disappointed. OK, here is an app called Travel, it is showing me an article onTuscany, but I do not know why it shows up first, or who selected it. There is no table of contents. Thereis no identification of who wrote this or what their qualifications to do so are. Is this from a magazine?Which one? Am I supposed to trust this unsourced information? OK, I see you can delete apps, so awayit goes.

Next: News. Same objection, only much stronger. Where is this news coming from? I know what newssources I trust, and which I do not. I can use a web browser to go right where I want and see a list ofcurrent stories I can select from. Here, clicking on this tile takes me to a story (selected how? And by

whom?) with no byline, and no indication of where it comes from. I can click and drag to the next story,but it too is randomly selected, no table of contents, no sections is this a way anyone on Earth readsthe news?? Sigh. Delete. At this point, the pattern is already clear, so I know I can safely delete Sports aswell.

I did not buy this computer to play games on, but by now Id like to at least do something familiar andpleasant on this new machine, so lets see if we can find a solitaire game. Heres a tile called XboxGames. I find that confusing, because I thought Xbox referred to a toy (although Ive had no occasion touse or even see one). But I guess Microsoft is now using the word to refer to a service as well as a piece


2/4

of hardware, which is their prerogative, I suppose. I launch this, and immediately am admonished that Iam not signed in to my account. What? I need an account to play a game of solitaire? Whatever for?Well, my anger is rising, but I have bought this computer, and want to get the most out of it. So, I clickcreate account and start to fill in fields my date of birth?? I only give that to financial institutions, whereI have financial accounts. Date of birth is a prime piece of information for identity theft, there is no way Iam entering that here. So, I leave this for the time being.

Over the next several days, in exploring other Metro apps on the Start screen, it becomes apparent thatto do much of anything, I need to be signed into my account. (It never says what this account is; its justmy account) A pattern is becoming clear, this seems to be Microsofts attempt to rope me into anongoing relationship with them aside from my having bought yet another version of their flagship product.

It finally occurs to me that I can go ahead with exploring these services by providing a false birth date. SoI go back and finish creating an account, sign in to Xbox and look at the games on offer there. They areall cartoonish and nothing there is of the slightest interest to me. Delete this tile as well.

Ive discovered that Chess Titans, included free in the last few versions of Windows, is no longer. Id liketo play that, at least, and by now I have figured out that the Store is the place to go for Apps. Now, t hereare several suggestions made in each category of App, but seemingly there is no listing of all the Appsavailable in a category. I have figured out the Charms by this time, so I search for Chess. There are quitea few options, but most of them you need to pay for. Since Ive had Chess Titans for free, Im not inclinedto pay. Over the next few hours, I sequentially select, install, try out, and delete, four of the free ones. Allfour are equally bad. They all make tyro blunders that make playing against them meaningless. Andwhats this? Advertising??

Im pretty allergic to being advertised to. I know many websites pay the bills through advertising, but I goto those only when there is no good alternative. By the same token, I mostly watch PBS and only listen toNPR, because I cannot stand commercials. Advertising on software I am running on my own computer isright out. It may be that the pay programs are advertising free, as well as better chess players, but how doI know before I shell out?

Well, games can wait. Lets install my email to this machine. First, I go to a new app called People. Itpromises to consolidate all information and social media updates about my contacts in one place. I am a

bit dubious about thisI have lots of Facebook friends, but I prefer to ration my Facebook use to once aday, by going to Facebook on the web, rather than by having it as a separate service. And honestly, I amalready finding the winking, blinking tiles to be getting distracting and annoying. The silver lining in findingthe news services to be useless is to be able to delete their tiles and have that many fewer things blinkingat me, trying to get my attention.

But I decide to try out People anyhow. First order of business is to import my Windows Contacts intoPeople. And there does not seem to be a way to do this. I have about 1000 Contacts. People helpfullysuggests I add my Facebook account to itself. Yeah, no, thats not what I need to do. Sigh. Yet anotherweb search, followed by my incredulous discovery that Microsoft has really not provided any way toimport their current Windows Contacts into the new People app. This takes me back many years to thefrustrations in importing Microsoft Works documents into the new Office suite.

I have often said that Microsoft has the worst case of not invented here syndrome ever. It is really muchworse than that. It is really not invented here, this year. Once again, they blithely discard billions ofperson-hours of work by their installed customer base. Delete the People tile.

Perhaps I can still use Mail even if I cant use People? I go to the Mail tile, type in my email, and get asnippy message that Mail doesnt support POP3 email. To add this account to Mail, ask your emailprovider about using IMAP or EAS. Wait a minutemy POP3 account was supported in Windows Mailunder Vista! How could it suddenly become that hard to support it? What gives? Like always withMicrosoft, there are no answers. Microsoft knows best, and you peasants should just learn to do thingsour way.


3/4

There is no way I am going to change emails, and notify 1000 people of the change, just for this bit ofcrankiness. Ive already installed my preferred browser, Firefox, so now I also install Thunderbird to useemail on this machine. Delete the Mail tile.

OK, all that is too bad, but time to install some productivity software and find out how it actually performswhen we get down to work. And now, the real exasperation sets in. Because now I am switchingfrequently from the desktop to the Start screen and back again, and while I can see the desktop as a tileon the Start screen, so that is easy enough, going the other way is a complete mystery for quite a while. Irove around on the trackpad trying to find my way back. (Flash forward ten days later, I discover inreading one of the Win8 support Forums that the Windows key can be used to switch between the two.Keyboard shortcutshow quaint. Maybe I should print out a list of them, and tape it to my wall, like I didwith AmigaDOS commandsin 1988.) After giving up, and using my other computer to look it up on theweb, I find the first way to switch is to move to the lower left corner, and click.

So now about 15 days in to my ownership of this beast I have a project to complete in Excel. I open myfile and proceed to move between cells using the track pad. Suddenly, and without warning, I am kickedout of Excel back to one of the Metro apps I had opened (at this point, I had not discovered how to closethese, just minimize them). What? What just happened? I navigate back to Excel, try to remember what Iwas doing, and it happens again! This happens about 12 times in the next hour as I am trying to get mywork done. I stop trying to work on my project, and do a web search on what could be causing this. I

quickly realize that Windows 8 is interpreting the move I am making on my track pad as a swipe, that is,a request to switch applications. The problem iseven though I now know WHAT is happening, that is nohelp. If I want to continue using Excel, there is no way to avoid this behavior. I do a web search on turnoff Windows 8 swipes. I find a number of others with the same question I have but no answers. (Note:subsequent to returning my laptop, I see this question has been answered. There is a way to turn offswipes, but it involves creating a textfile to edit the Registry!) And try as I might, there seems to be noway to alter my motion so as to avoid triggering the dreaded swipe. I try and try, but it keeps happening,until I am thinking more about when it will happen next than about the work I am trying to get done.

This behavior is so depressing that I lay the Win8 laptop aside for a few days, because I have to do someactual work. During this time, I reflect on the situation and realize that what Microsoft has done is toattempt to create one operating system for dissimilar categories of computing devices traditionalmicrocomputers, both desktop and laptop, tablets, and phones, in spite of the fact that these devices are

used in radically different ways for different purposes. But in fact, what they have accomplished is tostaple one OS, with one set of conventions, on top of another OS, with a different and in fact incompatibleset of conventions.(credit to Brian Boyko:http://www.youtube.com/... )

And my swipe problem is just one among many symptoms of this basic incompatibility. This is a massive,colossal failure for one of our premier technology companies.

Well, a Board meeting is coming up. I am a local elected official, and one of the things I use my laptop foris to look at the documents in our Board packet in preparing for the meeting, and during the meeting. Idont bother getting printed copies any more. I am able to have multiple documents open at once on theDesktop, looking at the Agenda, and say two supporting documents involving the issue at hand, all sizedso I can take in at a glance the relevant parts of each document. At least, I could do thatbefore

Windows 8. Now, when I open one .pdf file, it launches in the native Metro app .pdf reader, which takesup the whole screen, cannot be resized, and allows you to do nothing. You can move to the next page,and you can swipe it away. Thats it. It occurs to me that Microsoft Windows is now a misnomer. Theyneed to rename it Microsoft Window.

Yes, I know I can download Adobe Acrobat Reader, install it, then go in and change the .pdf fileassociation to Acrobat. But how many times must I go through this routine? Ive now spent about 50hours struggling with Windows 8, and figuring out ways to fix things so I can do what I already could inVista.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDpwKiRKmZchttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDpwKiRKmZchttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDpwKiRKmZchttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDpwKiRKmZc


4/4

And so far, exactly none of the new features, either in content (the new tile apps) or in the basic behaviorof the OS, is an improvement. There is literally not one thing that I can look back on and say, yes, that iskinda cool.

My last attempt to do something with the Win8 machine was to download some pictures from my niceCanon Digital Rebel XT SLR camera. This has worked seamlessly under Vista. I plug it in, the computergives a little I sense a new device noise, then sits there. I cant add the camera from within the OS,attempts to do so end in the message A driver for this device either is not needed or is not available which if you think about it, is a pretty nice metaphor for the cluelessness of Win8 in general. Attempts toadd it from the Canon website are similarly fruitless.

By this time it has been 34 days since I bought the thing. I really am afraid that Office Depot is going tobalk at my returning it. Im turning over in my mind who I really hate that I could give it to as a Christmaspresent. A previous trip to the store has confirmed that they dont have Windows 7 available anymore,and they cant load Windows 7 onto this machine even if they did. Fortunately, the manager did not bat aneye and refunded my money, without even a restocking fee. Well, Ive been a good customer over theyears. Wonder how many Win8 returns she has had to deal with?

I still need a new computer (my Vista Dell has soldiered on, thankfully, but it must be on its last legs), andOffice Max can no longer sell me a Win7 machine. The University (where I teach in the PhysicsDepartment) computer store can order a custom-built Win7 Dell. I take a long, wistful look at the lovelyMacsand give Microsoft a few more of my dollars. For the last time?

ORIGINALLY POSTED TOMEMILLERON TUE JAN 15, 2013 AT 12:58 PM PST.
http://www.dailykos.com/blog/memiller/http://www.dailykos.com/blog/memiller/http://www.dailykos.com/blog/memiller/http://www.dailykos.com/blog/memiller/

Documents

Here is My Rant on Microsoft Windows 8