January 30, 201511 yr Had to chime in because I watched the vids of this just the other day and Eric and I were just talking about it too. The two big technologies now that I'm excited about are Oculus Rift and HoloLens. I think the Oculus is going to be "full immersion" VR where as HoloLens will be more correctly referred to as high definition augmented reality. Point is, they already beat Oculus to being completely wireless, but Oculus will get there. Now as far as Win10 being free upgrade, it's because they need to regain market share. Apple and Google have been encroaching on multiple fronts for years. First they took over new markets in mobile and tablet computing before MS even had a viable offering, and then when MS did deliver, it was BLEH (and that's being nice). Now don't get me wrong, Win 8 has some flaws, but 8.1 was a bit redeeming and as far as the start screen, you know what I say to that? Meh. Who cares. There have been mods for years to change that to a classic start menu and yes, 10 is bringing that back for traditional desktops, but in the end, I think that was a giant distraction from the fact that the underpinnings were really just a better, leaner, faster Win7. The OS is solid as far as functionality and reliability goes. I've been running 8.1 on my VMs for a while and they run great. So MS is fighting in multiple fronts right now, but they have one area they have a HUGE lead and that's gaming. Google being reliant on mobile developers to work with limited hardware/input control and gaming developers all aligned to either consoles or Windows, Microsoft has a big lead over Apple and MS there. They are hoping to maintain, but they are messing up things for Windows gaming a bit that hopefully they will correct with 10. So the point of all this is that MS is trying to win by converging all their platforms into a common interface, something Apple still hasn't completely done, but has made some strides with in each revision of OS X since the iPad came out. MS wants to truly unify the look, feel, and experience between platforms, but it's a lofty objective. They want to win in both the business and the consumer markets, which they dominated in forever, but now have lost their footing to cheaper cloud solutions for businesses (Google Docs, Salesforce, etc) and better consumer offerings from competitors in mobile computing (Macbook Air, Google Chromebook, etc.). The key is in ONE interface and making it look and feel the same naturally. The concern is that Microsoft becomes a jack of all trades but a master of none. Only time will tell...
March 3, 201511 yr ... 10 is bringing that back for traditional desktops, but in the end, I think that was a giant distraction from the fact that the underpinnings were really just a better, leaner, faster Win7. And Win7 was just a better WinXP... And WinXP was just a better Win2k... And Win2k was... no, Win2k wasn't "just", it was first one that really worked.
March 3, 201511 yr ... 10 is bringing that back for traditional desktops, but in the end, I think that was a giant distraction from the fact that the underpinnings were really just a better, leaner, faster Win7. And Win7 was just a better WinXP... And WinXP was just a better Win2k... And Win2k was... no, Win2k wasn't "just", it was first one that really worked. Totally agreed. Win2k revived my faith in Microsoft's ability to create a desktop OS. Before that it was all blue screens and driver crashes.
March 3, 201511 yr Win2k was indeed a superb OS ... I used it well past the release of XP. It was (as already noted) the first really "industrial strength" OS Microsoft provided ... and it was VERY well done.
March 3, 201511 yr Win2k was indeed a superb OS ... I used it well past the release of XP. It was (as already noted) the first really "industrial strength" OS Microsoft provided ... and it was VERY well done. Yes. After that, Microsoft only had 1 really bad is release and that was Windows vista (as far as reliability goes). Win 8 haters just hate the start screen and that's honestly just an aesthetic issue, not so much a functional one. As far as reliability goes, 8 is rock solid for the most part.
March 4, 201511 yr My Win8 installation looks a lot like my Win7 installation, all things considered and thanks to Start8 One of the reasons I upgraded to Win8 was the new Task Manager
March 5, 201511 yr My Win8 installation looks a lot like my Win7 installation, all things considered and thanks to Start8 One of the reasons I upgraded to Win8 was the new Task Manager Oh yeah, I agree. Win 8 task mgr is way nicer.
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