Multiple windows

I read an article yesterday, (can't find it again at the moment to link or quote ), that with Win 8 the whole point of Windows is gone because you can only view one window at a time. That you can't have multiple windows visible simultaneously.

Is that true?

It is (kind of) with Modern UI (Metro) apps, as they are designed to be full screen. But you can actually use "snap" to have more than one open at once. As far as I know strictly speaking they aren't actually windowed programs anyway.

The desktop stuff is unchanged, in fact, supports multiple windows better than previous versions, which is all you need to be concerned about really.

Edited by Pipexer (Wed 28-Nov-12 00:00:24)

Phew! Thanks .

I wish I could find it, as it went on to prophesy doom for MS. Maybe another day I will come across it. It was an article in Flipboard, but proving elusive now.

Here's some commentary:

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/windows-8.html

Lack of Multiple Windows = Memory Overload for Complex Tasks

One of the worst aspects of Windows 8 for power users is that the product's very name has become a misnomer. "Windows" no longer supports multiple windows on the screen. Win8 does have an option to temporarily show a second area in a small part of the screen, but none of our test users were able to make this work. Also, the main UI restricts users to a single window, so the product ought to be renamed "Microsoft Window."

The single-window strategy works well on tablets and is required on a small phone screen. But with a big monitor and dozens of applications and websites running simultaneously, a high-end PC user definitely benefits from the ability to see multiple windows at the same time. Indeed, the most important web use cases involve collecting, comparing, and choosing among several web pages, and such tasks are much easier with several windows when you have the screen space to see many things at once.

When users can't view several windows simultaneously, they must keep information from one window in short-term memory while they activate another window. This is problematic for two reasons. First, human short-term memory is notoriously weak, and second, the very task of having to manipulate a window�instead of simply glancing at one that's already open�further taxes the user's cognitive resources.

I reckon I'll give it a miss. It's not unusual for me to have multiple explorers, mulitple FF tabs (on more than one browser window too), multiple calcs, multiple spreadsheets and multiple MS Paints all at the same time.

It sounds as if MS and Google (per another thread) are filling their pants over the mobile device market and are forgetting the bread and butter of the market (the productivity - a.k.a. the devices which create the content for the mobile devices).

Another notch for Linux when I change systems.

I'm been giving Win 8 ago.

tried the UI, and on a wide-screen monitor it doesn't work well, I don't need everything to be full screen.
The best setting I have found is to use it like Win 7 and then it works well.

Whoever decided to remove "Start" should no longer have a job

If you look at Vista (winsxs), Office 2007 (ribbon), Google (recent thread), Win8 (this thread) there's one thing in common:

All the ideas are change for the sake of change, usually to disable the user (as opposed to enable) from being able to use certain features. Some features from pre-office 2007 are gone, and appear in separate applications (more revenue).

"We'll get you used to it, then get you hooked on it, then force you to pay more for it."

No new ideas is the common denominator. Change for changes sake, features disappearing and re-appearing elsewhere, no real direction, other than pro-mobile device (which is fine, but give all consumers a choice).

Wide screen monitors...take that as an example. Can you get a decent sized 4:3 monitor for a decent price?

Now it seems Win8 is no good for those. What's the betting we'll move to mobile or back to 4:3

Re-inventing themselves.

Having played around with WindowsRT programming, I can assure you that the writer of that article has got things completely wrong. Applications do not store their state in RAM when not the active application, as they can do in conventional Windows programming. One of the main aims of WindowsRT is to make efficient use of restricted resources; it does this very well. It also allows the state of an application to be shared across separate devices.

And, as Pipexer says, conventional Windows programs still run just fine. To make a slightly far-fetched analogy, it's a bit like if all cars were 4 wheel drive. Then someone invents a car which can be switched between 4 wheel and 2 wheel drive (and it was cheaper and more fuel efficient than the 4 wheel drives). It would be a different car, but undoubtedly a better one.

Camie - none of that applies to desktop apps, therefore not affecting your multiple FF tabs and what not. I would have expected you to have known better!

Thanks camieabz, that quote is word for word what I read, though the article you link to is not the same one. I assume it's the same author .

I haven't yet read the article you link to - it looks to have a lot more info then the other, but from other people's comments in this thread it sounds as though the guy is up the spout about it.

Kettle has boiled - back to bed now, before dismantling it! (The bed).

i find even with the desktop windows 8 is not as good at multitasking as windows 7.
sure you can open windows galore, but you try doing a few things at once and the windows 8 just stops.

I was getting Vegas to render a HD video, ok I know that rendering takes up a fair bit of processing power,, certainly on my computer as my video card is not really up to the job of hard ware rendering and my version of Vegas can't render Mpeg using hardware acceleration anyway.

Anyway, using Vegas and trying to look on the net at the same time using Dragon browser, now my computer with windows 7 will do it, ok it is a bit slow, but it will do it, windows 8, just could not cope and would not even open the browser.

that is one of the reasons why windows 7 is now back on my machine.

You can probably blame the demise of the 4:3 aspect ratio on the rise of HD brought on by Blu Ray and HD broadcasts albeit widescreen TVs have been around a while before that.

A lot of the generation of PC buyers now do little other than play games, watch films and videos of dogs howling along to the theme of Eastenders and they want it in HD (I don't know why)

I still have 4:3 aspect LCD monitors at work which are set at SVGA res (1024 x 768) so I can read the small text easily, on my how system I have one widescreen HD monitor running at 1280 x 720, it took a while to get used to but it is quite nice.

I still have 4:3 aspect LCD monitors at work which are set at SVGA res (1024 x 768) so I can read the small text easily, on my how system I have one widescreen HD monitor running at 1280 x 720

Good old 1280 � 1024 native on my monitor, would need a mahoosive widescreen to get the same Y dimension

Wikipedia says "A 4:3 ratio mimics human eyesight visual angle of 155°h x 120°v" but that is Wikipedia, feels about right to me though - I don't have widescreen eyes

In reply to a post by yarwell:

Wikipedia says "A 4:3 ratio mimics human eyesight visual angle of 155°h x 120°v" but that is Wikipedia, feels about right to me though - I don't have widescreen eyes

Nor me. How many websites take up the middle 50% and little else? How much vertical scrolling do you do? Lots more on a WS monitor.

I settled for a 16:10 ratio in the end. Still wasn't totally happy, but have gotten used to it. I would swap back to 4:3 in a second if I could get a 22"+ monitor at a reasonable price.

I'm not sure that eyesight visual angle is entirely relevant in this context. You do not just look at a fixed point on a screen so I can see how a widescreen that will support two open windows at a reasonable size and resolution could be extremely useful. I'm thinking of writing code in one windows whilst having documentation in the other. You don't look at both windows at once, but it's easier to flick from one to the other than having to use keyboard or mouse to do so.

I actually use a 1280 x 1024 monitor (the smallest resolution that I think is comfortable for such work) but I'm thinking of getting a 1920 x 1080 one for the reasons above. That extra 50% screen real estate would be really useful in some situations.

You do not just look at a fixed point on a screen

Right now I'm looking at the whole screen comfortably, if it was wider my eyes would have to scan left and right.

I agree the extra width can be handy for two tasks but you have to have a massive widescreen to get the same height as I have now (in mm)

if it was wider my eyes would have to scan left and right

But that's exactly what I want to do in the situation I describe. I want to look left while I'm editing the code, then look right when I want to look something up or cut and paste from the documentation. It's easier for me if I concentrate on one window at a time but don't have to use the keyboard or mouse to switch between them.

This is the way I work in real life when reading a book. I have two pages in front of me but only concentrate on one at a time; I might flick my eyes over to a diagram or table on the opposite page, then back to where I was reading. It's easier to do this than to have to turn the page to see the diagram then turn back to the text.

Personally i use a wide screen monitor as my primary, and an older 4:3 as a secondary. I find it just as easy to see a web page on both screens, wide screen is better for gaming websites, such as Battlelog for BF3 it fills the whole screen with stuff, like a friends bar on the right side and the server browser stuff on the left. Where as forums such as this only really require the 4:3 aspect ratio, so i think they both have a place in the world on modern computing.

On the topic of Windows 8, i had the RC from Microsoft technet thing, found it to be a vile looking waste of time for PC, if you have a Tablet wonderful, if you have some other touch screen device great, for a PC useless. I also note that they offer a win7 to win8 upgrade for £24.99, which shows the quality of the product, when a Vista to 7 upgrade cost £90-100 on release. Win8 will be the new VISTA, they will release win9 that will drop all the [censored] and get back to the 7 like interface.

a Vista to 7 upgrade cost £90-100 on release

Actually, it was £42 and that included a box and media. It wasn't even an upgrade but a full stand-alone version. If you buy Windows 8 that way it costs about the same. In both cases those are introductory prices.

Online updates of Windows 7 weren't offered as I guess they didn't think enough people had unlimited downloads and speedy Internet connections in those days. The situation is exactly the same with OS X, where recent updates have been offered as downloads for about £25.

In reply to a post by AEP:

if it was wider my eyes would have to scan left and right

But that's exactly what I want to do in the situation I describe. I want to look left while I'm editing the code, then look right when I want to look something up or cut and paste from the documentation. It's easier for me if I concentrate on one window at a time but don't have to use the keyboard or mouse to switch between them.

This is the way I work in real life when reading a book. I have two pages in front of me but only concentrate on one at a time; I might flick my eyes over to a diagram or table on the opposite page, then back to where I was reading. It's easier to do this than to have to turn the page to see the diagram then turn back to the text.

Similarly:-

I have a 17" laptop, 1600 x 900. Suits me perfectly, but it sounds as though Win 8 wouldn't be up to the job, though it may get the layout.

Normal usage is gadget bar on the right, which I find very useful. Thunderbird aligned to the left with its tight margin just inside the gadget bar. I have nine Thunderbird, most of them with sub-folders of my own creation, and for convenience these accounts are expanded. I have the accounts list vertical scroll bar 1.5" to the right of the left-hand margin.

A browser window sits conveniently between the Thunderbird accounts vertical scroll bar and the gadget bar.

So far so good - this might work. But come a Formula 1 race on Sky, which I don't have, I have a window with vipbox.tv streaming a Sky feed positioned to the left of the screen, and to the right I have the Live Timing screen from the Formula 1 website. This is ideal as I can align them vertically and just flick my eyes sideways as desired.

I get the impression from some other posts here that those two streams may fail to run concurrently in a satisfactory manner under Win 8?

The problem goes away next year as BBC has all the races thankfully.

Well, you just run two Desktop applications, exactly as you would under Windows 7. So what's the problem?

Windows 8 does not do away with the Desktop; it augments it with another paradigm that is more suitable for some, but not necessarily all, applications. For example, the Windows development tools run as Desktop applications. This is necessary because you may need to run other applications at the same time. But something like, for example, a game is quite happy as a full-screen RT application. You don't really need to refer to anything else whilst playing games. If you do want to switch to something else it is just a single keypress.

People keep wittering on about Windows 8 as if it was somehow less than Windows 7. It isn't - it is more (RT as well as Desktop) but you don't have to use that more if you don't want to. The Desktop performance alone is much improved over 7; 8 would still be a good buy if you never used RT applications.

In reply to a post by AEP:

Well, you just run two Desktop applications, exactly as you would under Windows 7.

I thought that was exactly what I described and said should be OK?

So what's the problem?

This:-

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

i find even with the desktop windows 8 is not as good at multitasking as windows 7.
sure you can open windows galore, but you try doing a few things at once and the windows 8 just stops ....

(Incidentally, I have no idea what the acronym "RT" means in this context).

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

This:-

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

i find even with the desktop windows 8 is not as good at multitasking as windows 7.
sure you can open windows galore, but you try doing a few things at once and the windows 8 just stops ....

(Incidentally, I have no idea what the acronym "RT" means in this context).

The situation Adrian reports is totally abnormal. In fact, it puzzles me as last week I upgraded some of the most rubbish spec systems you'd imagine to Windows 8 and the performance of them compared to when they were running XP is amazing. Windows 8 will beat Windows 7 at performance hands down, guaranteed. Unless, there is some weird compatibility issue at stake. As long as you meet the minimum system requirements, you are good.

Just compare Windows Server 2012 to Windows Server 2008 R2 - the performance improvements are extremely impressive.

To say that Microsoft have made Windows 8 less efficient at multitasking than Windows 7 is a total nonsense - I feel sorry for Microsoft employees and developers who have to put up with all this disinformation that floats around about their products.

Edited by Pipexer (Thu 29-Nov-12 00:11:18)

In reply to a post by Pipexer:

To say that Microsoft have made Windows 8 less efficient at multitasking than Windows 7 is a total nonsense - I feel sorry for Microsoft employees and developers who have to put up with all this disinformation that floats around about their products.

Here's a list of the things in Win XP / Vista that did not impress. Are they back in WIn 8?

Search function - Windows XP/V search requires indexing, which I refuse to enable as it spends an inordinate amount of time looking through my files for the rare occasion I want a file or folder. WHen I do want one, I have to type the filename, then hit advanced search, then click to search locations (said window is not resizeable, not does it offer the option to save custom searches), enable tickbox to seach in non-indexed locations. Verses this it's pathetic. When I want a file, I want a file. Let's use the hard drive when searching is asked for. Not before. Simples.

Winsxs - Started in Vista, continued in Win7 - Currently uses 31.5% of my 50GB C: installation. NO way to reduce it without severe (and potentially disastrous) hacking of the file system.

Office 2007 ribbon (apparently continued in Win 8) - Hard-coded and created massive loss of productivity, hence, I hacked in the old menu:

http://www.camieabz.co.uk/menu.png

After a year or so of use, the ribbon is more useful, and I have nothing against a single bar of one-click shortcuts; indeed the idea is great, but the lack of being able to disable and go back to the old system, or generally configure it at will is bad. Like having the Win taskbar only at the top all of a sudden. I like it at the bottom, and want it to stay there.

So is the taskbar gone in Win 8?

There are probably a couple of dozen others, but after 3.5 years of fiddling, I've ironed them out. I don't think I fancy fiddling for the next 3.5 years for Windows 7 / 8 or any other Windows OS. If I can figure a Linux setup with MS Office, that will be my next system.

I would love to know what windows 8 can do than windows 7 or 7 with an app can't do. My productivity is geared towards multiple windows , If I want a single window ui ill continue with froyo on my tablet or use alt-tab

Ps. 4:3 is over. Your vision is designed for binocular panoramic view - move on

So MS has wimped out of WIMP? The little IMP!

Edited by XRaySpeX (Thu 29-Nov-12 07:06:20)

Adrian's experience is not mine. I wouldn't rely on anecdotal evidence from a single user (self included).

If independent benchmarks show Windows 8 multitasking to be slower than Windows 7 then I would agree with you, but I know of no such benchmark (and it does rather go against common sense).

Well, for starters, it can maintain the state of an application across multiple devices.

In reply to a post by AEP:

Well, for starters, it can maintain the state of an application across multiple devices.

Can you give a real-world example of that?

In reply to a post by kamelion:

Ps. 4:3 is over. Your vision is designed for binocular panoramic view - move on

Your skeletal structure is designed for standing and bearing weight, so get rid of the chair and carry the monitor; move on.

Think about it. The eyes maybe pan well from left to right, but for many the data goes from top to bottom. Most modern webpage content areas don't take up more than 50% of a monitor screen anyway and are...centred.

Progress isn't adopting the new fashion and telling advocates of the old to move on. Progress is having a better design than the previous one.

An example would be an eBook reader. You are reading a book on your laptop and the application knows what page you were last reading. (That happens already with a single computer.) On the train to work you open that application on your phone or tablet. It opens at the page you were last reading on your laptop.

Or, you have a favourite game that you play on several devices; the high score is the same on all of them. I'm sure you can think of other examples where maintaining the state of an application is useful.

A real-life example is that I installed a trial of Windows 8 in a VM on my desktop and set up the mail application with four email accounts. When I installed the retail version on my laptop I opened the mail app ready to go throught the setup again, only to find that it was already configured. I just needed to confirm the passwords for the accounts (probably a good idea). Nice!

So it's a great toy, but not a great tool.

If you say so, Camie. I think you need to brush up your imagination a little.

Even if you don't see the value of preserving the state of an application (and I'm sure you could if you tried), it adds to the capabilities of the OS rather than detracting from them.

I understand that there are people who still prefer XP (God knows why; it was always inferior to 2000 and isn't a patch on 7). There are many still using 95 or 98. That's fine by me; I'm not trying to convert anyone. But I do like to correct some of the misinformation being put around about 8. I don't think misinformation is a good thing in this business.

In reply to a post by AEP:

A real-life example is that I installed a trial of Windows 8 in a VM on my desktop and set up the mail application with four email accounts. When I installed the retail version on my laptop I opened the mail app ready to go throught the setup again, only to find that it was already configured. I just needed to confirm the passwords for the accounts (probably a good idea). Nice!

Whilst I'm minded to accept most of your points in the thread, just an incidental point. The correction of a basic flaw that should never have been present in the first place is nothing to do with the ongoing day-to-day advantages or disadvantages of a particular operating system.

The correction of a basic flaw that should never have been present in the first place is nothing to do with the ongoing day-to-day advantages or disadvantages of a particular operating system.

You have lost me. What is the basic flaw that you refer to?

That updating a pre-release version of an OS to a release version should lose user settings.

I've always been appalled at the way MS used to, and maybe still do, send users through complex lists of manual instructions to delete beta or similar pre-release software in order to install the release version. Simple cost-saving!

I'm not talking about updating. I'm talking about a new install on a different machine.

When I installed 8 on my laptop it picked up the mail settings (for the same user account) that I had configured on my desktop machine. That is not correcting an error; it is behaviour that has not existed in the past on any Windows machine unless you are using Roaming Profiles on a Windows network. Some of the advantages of enterprise Windows is now trickling down to home users.

As for deleting beta software; that's standard procedure from almost all software publishers. Beta software is intended for testing, not production work. It would be foolish not to clean a beta off a system before installing the final version of a software product.

I missed the change from "desktop" to "laptop" in the post I replied to .

As for the beta point, they should provide a cleanup routine of what they have installed. They tell you what needs doing, so not automating it is slipshod.

I'll grant that users may have added some directories (folders for the youngsters) of their own which are pertinent, but that will rarely be insuperable, and probably not covered in the manual instructions anyway.

When the beta in question is an operating system, the only cleanup needed - and the only safe course of action - is to wipe the disk.

That is usually automated anyway, and as you know isn't what I was referring to.

Anyway, we seem to have strayed from what I am finding a useful and informative discussion about the pros and cons of Win 8, occasioned by what seems to have been a needlessly scary article that I started the thread querying.

The inter-kit link you describe does sound rather neat. However it's a bit scary in that it seems likely to completely remove the facility for a non-techie user to have a private system - techie ones being able (or not any more?) to protect themselves from everything they have being up an a MS/Google/Amazon system.

I'm not sure that isn't even scarier than GCHQ wanting it. Which is something it will make far easier anyway. Plus the CIA of course.

Now there's a question - would the CIA stop GCHQ getting access to MS Cloud? Seeing as they are losing their faith in British secrecy.

No, it's very easy to set up local, rather than roaming profiles. It's the sort of thing that I expect would be covered in a "for Dummies" type of book. You have the choice of using a Windows Live account or a local one. I suspect there are far greater security risks in using Facebook, Twitter, etc. than this.

Anyway, enough of Windows 8. I like it and appreciate its new features and it is of no matter to me whether others like it or not. I don't have shares in Microsoft!

In reply to a post by AEP:

An example would be an eBook reader. You are reading a book on your laptop and the application knows what page you were last reading. (That happens already with a single computer.) On the train to work you open that application on your phone or tablet. It opens at the page you were last reading on your laptop.

There's nothing particularly clever or revolutionary about that though. Web based applications have been doing that for ages because they run off a central server (Amazon will maintain the contents of your basket across many computers). But even standard applications can do it - MS Outlook can remember what you've read if it's talking to Exchange and not in offline mode. I often use Outlook at home and work and the web client and applications on my two workstations are always in sync.

So with Win8 they have perhaps implemented an application agnostic synchronisation service and maybe linked it to Windows Live. But it's only a feature of Win8 because they are choosing not to back port it. It's typical of so many 'inventions' these days. Very few of these new features couldn't be implemented on existing hardware or older OSes. It's just that companies are choosing not to so as to drum up trade for new products.

I guarantee that given enough time you could write applications and services for XP that made it do everything that Windows 8 does. A tablet is just a laptop without a keyboard. It worries me sometimes that people seem to be taken by the idea that such things indicate technological progress.

In reply to a post by AEP:

I'm not talking about updating. I'm talking about a new install on a different machine.

When I installed 8 on my laptop it picked up the mail settings (for the same user account) that I had configured on my desktop machine. That is not correcting an error; it is behaviour that has not existed in the past on any Windows machine unless you are using Roaming Profiles on a Windows network. Some of the advantages of enterprise Windows is now trickling down to home users.

Not entirely true

I work with Exchange and there's this thing called 'Auto Discover' which has been present since Exchange 2007(*). You need an email client that can use it but that's also been available for many years. I got a new machine at work last month and all I did to set up Outlook was run it and click 'yes - I want to configure' and 'It's an Exchange server'. It did everything else for me including getting my inbox sync'd. That was on Windows 7. It would have done the same on Windows XP.

Exchange also now has Outlook Anywhere so you can access your server from anywhere.

It's nice if the OS is now providing synchronisation as a service to every application to avoid re-inventing the wheel but it's still a wheel. We've had data synchronisation for years. So..nice. But no cigar from me

(*)http://www.msexchange.org/articles_tutorials/exchange-server-2010/management-administration/exchange-autodiscover.html

I particularly know about it right now because that's the project I'm working on. Updating our software to support Exchange 2013 which mandates the use of A/D.

Edited by Andrue (Thu 29-Nov-12 13:54:33)

In reply to a post by Pipexer:

Camie - none of that applies to desktop apps, therefore not affecting your multiple FF tabs and what not. I would have expected you to have known better!

That's true but the message from Microsoft appears to be that Desktop apps are 'legacy'. The desktop already feels like an unwanted step child. A bit like the way DOS applications felt/feel. I can almost imagine Windows 8 cringing and thinking 'Oh gawd, no. Not another one'.

It remains to be seen and of course there's too much money invested in the Windows desktop to kill it off overnight but I do think the writing is on the wall. I'm not sure how much longer Microsoft will be prepared to keep both 'Metro' and 'Desktop' going.

In reply to a post by DavidFinbarr:

Whoever decided to remove "Start" should no longer have a job

Undeniably. It's even worse on Server 2012. It ignores presses of the button on the front of the computer so you have to shut down using 'software'. I resorted to opening an elevated command prompt and typing 'shutdown'.

But the really silly thing about WS2012 is that everything is launched from 'Metro' but everything runs as a desktop app. Although half of it is inside the browser anyway. To be honest it feels like the GUI is just an afterthought bolted on at the last minute.

BTW: To shut down WS2012 move the cursor to bottom right. Click on the settings 'cogwheel' icon. Select Shutdown. Obvious, huh?

Edited by Andrue (Thu 29-Nov-12 14:04:28)

In reply to a post by AEP:

Even if you don't see the value of preserving the state of an application (and I'm sure you could if you tried), it adds to the capabilities of the OS rather than detracting from them.

But it can be done in any OS. It's not something only Win8 can do. Merely something they have only written for Win8.

In reply to a post by GeeTee:

The problem goes away next year as BBC has all the races thankfully.

It had all the races this year, it just wasn't allowed to show all of them in full as Sky bought the full TV rights.

I guarantee that given enough time you could write applications and services for XP that made it do everything that Windows 8 does.

It's been done. It's called Windows 8.

In reply to a post by AEP:

I guarantee that given enough time you could write applications and services for XP that made it do everything that Windows 8 does.

It's been done. It's called Windows 8.

Hehe ! Nice.

In reply to a post by CurlyWhirly:

In reply to a post by GeeTee:

The problem goes away next year as BBC has all the races thankfully.

It had all the races this year, it just wasn't allowed to show all of them in full as Sky bought the full TV rights.

Yup. And then showed in them in full, without ad breaks for no extra cost to anyone with an HD subscription. At a higher bitrate which was quite noticeable.

I didn't watch any of the build or post-race stuff but the race coverage was very good. PQ-wise better than the BBC. It'll be interesting to see if it's free again next season but this season I think Sky stepped in and did a good job. My only complaint is they way they had a single series link set up. That pulled down every qualifying session as well as the two main events.

Not quite in full. They had ad breaks during some of the track action.

In reply to a post by GeeTee:

The problem goes away next year as BBC has all the races thankfully.

Have they? I thought they sold it all to Sky and only having the highlights.

In reply to a post by Pipexer:

The situation Adrian reports is totally abnormal. In fact, it puzzles me as last week I upgraded some of the most rubbish spec systems you'd imagine to Windows 8 and the performance of them compared to when they were running XP is amazing. Windows 8 will beat Windows 7 at performance hands down, guaranteed. Unless, there is some weird compatibility issue at stake. As long as you meet the minimum system requirements, you are good.

Just compare Windows Server 2012 to Windows Server 2008 R2 - the performance improvements are extremely impressive.

To say that Microsoft have made Windows 8 less efficient at multitasking than Windows 7 is a total nonsense - I feel sorry for Microsoft employees and developers who have to put up with all this disinformation that floats around about their products.

Aw, the poor things, where are the violins? they most lose a lot of sleep over it.

the problem I had with windows 8 may be abnormal, but it is still a problem and to be honest I can't be bothered to muck around with it at the moment, so windows 7 will stay on my machine until I can be bothered to sort out the problem.

Never had this problem with windows 7 and it also most a different Os than windows Xp, window 8 is pretty close to windows 7 even using the same drivers.

In reply to a post by kamelion:

I would love to know what windows 8 can do than windows 7 or 7 with an app can't do. My productivity is geared towards multiple windows , If I want a single window ui ill continue with froyo on my tablet or use alt-tab

Ps. 4:3 is over. Your vision is designed for binocular panoramic view - move on

Nothing apart from the fact that Ms wants you to be connected to their cloud permanently so they can spy on you. thankfully you can have a local account, which my windows set up, but only because I did not have nay internet acess when I installed windows 8

the only thing you can't do in windows 7 that you can do in windows 8 is use the metro interface and the silly apps.

It is SOP here to disconnect from the internet when doing a fresh Windows install until you have have been able to install your preferred firewall and AV.

In reply to a post by gomezz:

Not quite in full. They had ad breaks during some of the track action.

No they didn't. Not once. Not even during lengthy safety car periods. They ran adverts during the build up and post race but they never had adverts during the qualifying or the race. They didn't even run ads between each qually session.

I don't know what you think you were watching but if there were adverts between the start of Q1 and end of Q3 or between the warm up lap or podium then it wasn't Sky. Sky were true to their word and never once interrupted the two main events with adverts.

Edited by Andrue (Fri 30-Nov-12 20:49:19)

Agreed, at least as far as qualifying and the race are concerned. (I didn't watch practice). Probably the relaying service that did it, but vipbox.tv doesn't.

In reply to a post by Andrue:

No they didn't. Not once. Not even during lengthy safety car periods. They ran adverts during the build up and post race but they never had adverts during the qualifying or the race. They didn't even run ads between each qually session.

If you didn't notice the ad breaks then you weren't trying to follow *all* the on track action.

In reply to a post by gomezz:

If you didn't notice the ad breaks then you weren't trying to follow *all* the on track action.

How were you watching this? Sky TV claims no ads, so if there were any all hell would have broiken loose at the start of the year.

Andrue and I both regularly watch complete races on Sky relayed by other sites, with no interruptiion by adverts, (I stream the F1 website Live Timing in a window next to it), and there are no unexplained or strange "inserts" where Sky could have placed ads.

You and the other poster would seem to be using dodgy relay sites, inserting their own ads.

In reply to a post by gomezz:

It is SOP here to disconnect from the internet when doing a fresh Windows install until you have have been able to install your preferred firewall and AV.

Windows 8 have got AV and firewall, while I would not trust it long term, it be ok for short term.

The reason why mine would not connect is because windows 8 don't have any drivers for my wireless network.

Must have a play with my homeplugs again and see if I can get them working.

I am only reporting what Sky viewers have reported. And they say there were ads and no-one was disputing that.

So you haven't seen any ads yourself, and by the sound of it you don't know what they were watching. Maybe it wasn't the Sky F1 channel itself, but extracts on another Sky channel, or as I said - a pirate stream with its own adverts.

The Sky F1 channel does not have ads during the qualifying or the race. So you can "go by" what someone else says, or you can go by what we say and what Sky advertise - without being reported to the ASA or any other widely publicised or authoritive contradiction.

So you only watch the qualifying and the race? How would you know then?

In reply to a post by gomezz:

So you only watch the qualifying and the race? How would you know then?

You seem to have lost the plot .

I replied to this post of yours. The quote you give there is entirely to do with the qualifying and race sessions. There are no ads in those, but you tell Andrue he couldn't have been watching all the track action, (implicitly of those sessions).

If you are talking about practice sessions, fine. I don't know about those. That isn't what I challenged.

If you step back up the links in the thread, you will see you started by contradicting Andrue's statement about the race coverage, which he then expanded to include qualifying.

There were no ad breaks in Sky F1 race or qualifying coverage. End of. You shot off at a tangent and that's all there is to it.

I was so intrigued by your query that I popped into local John Lewis to have Win8 demonstrated.

Yes, you can get to a "normal" desktop with multiple windows visible and running but via a lengthy navigation for every program launched by starting from the tiled Start screen, pulling up some bar from the bottom to be able to click om "All Apps" and then be presented a sectionalised menu of all the programs (here called "Apps") indexed.

What I found missing missing here is that you cannot have a hierarchical (foldered) structure to this menu, where you would see a list of only the programs under a certain heading, like Games. All you do see is a list all the programs, well a whole screenful, divided by the section headings, and you have to cast your eye over all of them to find the section, say Accessories, and then the program, say Notepad, that you want.

I notice on the MS Windows web pages and videos it shows none of this, but just peeps pointing at the tiles on the Start screen.

Did you, personally, watch anything or just 2nd hand reporting?

Can't remember exactly but there may have been adverts between the practice sessions. So no "Track Action" missed at all.

Or you can just type the program name at the Start Screen.

In reply to a post by AEP:

Or you can just type the program name at the Start Screen.

Indeed just what my initial thought was.

Crazy!

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

What I found missing missing here is that you cannot have a hierarchical (foldered) structure to this menu, where you would see a list of only the programs under a certain heading, like Games. All you do see is a list all the programs, well a whole screenful, divided by the section headings, and you have to cast your eye over all of them to find the section, say Accessories, and then the program, say Notepad, that you want.

Actually, any apps you use frequently you just need to right click their icon and pin them to the start menu, then you can indeed put them into groups and name them..

Getting a bit confused about this thread, interesting as it may be!
RobertoS asked about multiple screens in Win8, which is the purpose of the thread, and suddenly Sky F1 and adverts seem to have been infiltrated the thread! Shouldn't a post for the Sky F1 have been posted separately and thus let those of us who are interested in the subject of Multiple windows in Win8 continue discussing this important subject without interference from Sk F1 and adverts?

Judging by most of the posts today, XRaySpeX, AEP and Pipexer have brought it back on track (unintended pun).

The Sky F1 thing came about because I gave that as an example of two simultaneous Windows streams that I use. Zyborg seems to have difficulty in such circumstances, but no-one has backed him up yet and a few have disputed it. So forgetting Sky, that principle is still possibly in need of more opinions.

Connection speed is of course also relevant in this context.

Edited by RobertoS (Sat 01-Dec-12 12:59:20)

How can anyone remember over a hundred programme names?

If you can't remember the name of the program you want to open you probably have greater problems than dealing with the new start screen.

How long before someone comes up with a menu app .

You can't even remember part of a program name? That's all you need. To find "Blend for Visual Studio" I just needed to type "V"!

About minus 60 days.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

There are no ads in those, but you tell Andrue he couldn't have been watching all the track action, (implicitly of those sessions)

So you erroneously infer something that was not implied. Can't help that.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

How long before someone comes up with a menu app .

I think they already have, but if users want to install software which is altering the "core" of the operating system's GUI, and is probably against Microsoft recommendations, then more fool them.

In reply to a post by broadband66:

Did you, personally, watch anything or just 2nd hand reporting?

I certainly did not miss anything as I did not watch the Sky partial coverage.

In reply to a post by Pipexer:

Actually, any apps you use frequently you just need to right click their icon and pin them to the start menu, then you can indeed put them into groups and name them.

Sure, if you use them frequently, but what about that rare program whose name you can't remember but you just want to use it now and you know it appears somewhere under a certain heading. How many apps can there be anyway on the tiled Start menu? Do the tiles get smaller or do you have to start scrolling?

@AEP: Again, you can't always remember the name of a rarely used program and, anyway, you don't always want to start typing.

Call me old-fashioned but you can't beat a well structured hierarchical menu covering all your programs that you can hone into to find your desired one by just moving the mouse pointer over.

Yes, there will always be other ways to skin the cat, but such suggestions are more workarounds than actual solutions.

In reply to a post by gomezz:

I am only reporting what Sky viewers have reported. And they say there were ads and no-one was disputing that.

I am a Sky viewer. I have Sky HD. I am refuting it. I detest and loathe adverts. I reach for the remote to FF even when it's my girlfriend watching and I'm ignoring. Trust me. If there were adverts during the race or qually I'd have seen them and I'd have been yelling at Sky about them. I'd rather record the race/qually than suffer through adverts.

Edited by Andrue (Sat 01-Dec-12 19:12:11)

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

If you are talking about practice sessions, fine. I don't know about those. That isn't what I challenged.

I would also concede that I don't know about the practice sessions. Although I am a major fan of F1 I was at work for most of the practice sessions and preferred to read up on them via the web. I'd also re-iterate that I don't know how many adverts there were during the non-racing bits.

I soon learnt when to start watching so that the first thing I saw was the FIA intro. boring chat in studios and rehashes of old races don't interest me. I started viewing when the FIA feed started and stopped after the champagne was thrown around.

I've never considered myself to have a good memory, but I can honestly say that there are no programs I use that I couldn't find with a simple search like this. But, granting your assumption that you have no idea what the program is called, I honestly don't think it is appreciably more difficult to hone in on a program than in Windows 7.

And we are talking here about rarely used programs; the ones you use commonly will be far more accessible than having to click through a menu hierarchy. Each system has its advantages. Having given Windows 8 a good investigation - rather than 5 minutes playing with it in PC World - I prefer it.

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

Yes, you can get to a "normal" desktop with multiple windows visible and running but via a lengthy navigation for every program launched by starting from the tiled Start screen, pulling up some bar from the bottom to be able to click om "All Apps" and then be presented a sectionalised menu of all the programs (here called "Apps") indexed.

Windows+R still works though so you can use that route to launch applications. Also you can put icons on the desktop as you would previously. Lastly there is third party software that gives you back a start menu although that's 'cheating' I suppose.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

How long before someone comes up with a menu app .

Rofl! I think I still have the source code somewhere for one that I wrote for Windows 3.1. It was a shareware application. I think it put a ribbon across one edge of the screen and a right-click menu extension that listed applications and documents.

Maybe I can make my fortune at last. Way to go Microsoft!

Edited by Andrue (Sat 01-Dec-12 19:16:31)

You'll need to adapt the code considerably to make it run as a Windows RT app. And you'll have a hard time making a fortune when you are competing with free apps.

The answer is "you haven't a clue"!

In reply to a post by gomezz:

I certainly did not miss anything as I did not watch the Sky partial coverage.

I certainly didn't miss any of the Sky full coverage of the qualifying and races. Same as Andrue. Who for some reason you accuse of being wrong when he says that about himself. Apparently on hearsay evidence you have about the practice sessions.

As has just been said - you haven't a clue. Possibly about the structure of an F1 weekend as well. That at least could explain your ingorance.

"Ignorance" I assume you mean?

So. Do I believe the hardcore F1 fans who say there are ads or a couple of dilettantes who don't follow all the action?

In reply to a post by gomezz:

"Ignorance" I assume you mean?

So. Do I believe the hardcore F1 fans who say there are ads or a couple of dilettantes who don't follow all the action?

How about you ask them about the qualifying and the races.

In reply to a post by Andrue:

In reply to a post by CurlyWhirly:

It had all the races this year, it just wasn't allowed to show all of them in full as Sky bought the full TV rights.

Yup. And then showed in them in full, without ad breaks for no extra cost to anyone with an HD subscription. At a higher bitrate which was quite noticeable.

I didn't watch any of the build or post-race stuff but the race coverage was very good.

So Andrue is there talking about the races. The races are not practice sessions.

In reply to that, you posted

Not quite in full. They had ad breaks during some of the track action.

I'm sorry, but that reply to that post is just tripe.

If Andrue had said the practice sessions had no adverts (during the track action), maybe he would have been wrong. But CurlyWhirly referred to the races, the track action to which Andrue referred was the races, therefore by implication your reply refers to the races. Your reply is therefore simply wrong. Ask your beloved diehards. Complain to the ASA. Just shut up talking rot here because you have misunderstood both what the diehards may or may not had said, and what CurlyWhirly, Andrue and I have said.

Or is a combination of English grammar and logical thought a bit beyond you?

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

therefore by implication your reply refers to the races

Wrong. I recommend a retake of Logic 101 and English 101. Or slow down so you actually read what is written rather than what you think is written.

Bottom line: Sky *do* show ads during on-track action. And that's a fact.

In reply to a post by gomezz:

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

therefore by implication your reply refers to the races

Wrong. I recommend a retake of Logic 101 and English 101. Or slow down so you actually read what is written rather than what you think is written.

Bottom line: Sky *do* show ads during on-track action. And that's a fact.

Not of qualifying or races. That's a fact. Your hearsay "fact" about something that wasn't claimed is simple trolling.

Put it to bed! F1 season all over bar this shouting

That's where I have now gone. Perchance to dream.

We so nearly got the thread back on topic as well. I shouldn't let twits wind me up.