Giveaway of the Day Forums

1. 

   Anonymous
   Unregistered

   http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57559207-75/why-microsoft-redesigned-windows/

   Why Microsoft redesigned Windows

   New Windows chief Julie Larson-Green explains why the company felt the need to rethink the basic interface of its popular operating system.

   Windows 8 has its fans and foes, but Microsoft felt the time was ripe for a new look and feel for a product used by more than 1.2 billion people.

   Julie Larson-Green, the new head of Windows product development, recently spoke with MIT Technology Review about the reasons behind the major changes in the latest version of Windows.

   Touting the new Windows 8 Start screen, Larson-Green said that in the past Windows users worked at a desktop with a monitor. In her view, people typically launched one window, put it away, and then launched another window. But in Windows 8, all the apps and windows you might want to launch are visible through Live Tiles.

   It's no secret that Windows 8 is designed with touch screens in mind. Larson-Green sees that as simply a "natural way to interact." After using a touch-screen device, even people still using the mouse and keyboard on a regular desktop may find themselves reaching out to the screen to try to move something with their finger.

   And touch screens are the future, in her opinion. Though she concedes that there will always be some PCs without touch screens, she believes the majority will be touch-enabled.

   "We're seeing that the computers with touch are the fastest-selling right now," she said. "I can't imagine a computer without touch anymore. Once you've experienced it, it's really hard to go back."

   Windows 8 has been criticized for trying to be all things to all people. The Start screen environment is geared more for touch-screen devices, but the familiar desktop is still easier to use with mouse and keyboard.

   Microsoft made a purposeful choice to offer both environments in the new OS, according to Larson-Green. A mouse will always be more precise than your finger, while a physical keyboard will always be easier to use than an on-screen version, she said. But she feels that eventually people get more comfortable with this new way of working.

   "We didn't want you to have to make a choice," she said. "Some people have said that it's jarring, but over time we don't hear that. It's just getting used to something that's different."

   Posted 11 years ago #
2. 

   Whiterabbit-uk
   Games Guru

   I love the idea of touch screens, but what worries me is the heavy handed approach many have when pressing touch buttons on such things as printers. When I was at university the printers had to be repaired frequently because of the heavy handed approach many users had when using touch buttons. The buttons would become damaged, indented and eventually rendered useless because of the unnecessary heavy handedness that many students used, either through ignorance or through impatience. .

   The constant touching of a monitors screen could result in damage to its surface. I'm sure not everyone is heavy handed, but there are other issues to be taken account of, especially if the monitor was to be used by more than one person. The most important one that comes to mind apart from the potential damage to the monitor is health:

   Do we all wash our hands frequently enough not to leave smears of grease and other unsavoury grunge on the monitors surface (our skin secretes sebum and waste products constantly over time)

   After a talk about health and hygiene while training to be a nurse back in the 1990's I remember the lecturer saying how many people didn't bother to wash their hands effectively after going to the toilet; which could lead to the spread of some pretty nasty infections. (This subject was at the time close to my heart because my mother had died a few years previously (1995) due to a serious hospital infection following some major 'clean' surgery. (What I mean by clean surgery is that surgery with less chance of infection. Dirty surgery has a higher risk of post operative infections and involves surgical interventions to the intestines, stomach, bladder etc).

   During my training we had to give presentations fairly regularly and following the lecture on health and hygiene, I decided to do one on hand washing and the consequences when not washing hands effectively. I used to make a mental note of the number of users using the toilets who didn't bother to wash their hands after relieving themselves and was astonished to find over several months that the figures (considering we were looking at a cross section of the community that were trained doctors and other health care professionals) were in the region of over 80% not washing after using the toilets. I got a female friend to do the same with the female toilets and she reported a 65% figure. I also looked at wound dressings and observed nurses not using latex gloves while dressing wounds (horrifying, but when you consider the pressure many health care workers are put under I'm not surprised. (The last nursing position I held before returning to teaching, I'd seen 16 redundancies spread over about a year where none were replaced and those left had to do the work that the leavers had done. all in the name of saving money) I used this research as the basis for a presentation on hospital infections.

   Please excuse the extended waffle. I'm sure you get my point. :)

   All that said, I'm looking forwards to when I can afford a touch screen monitor because I have several flight simulators that are set up to use touch screen monitors (DCS: Black Shark, DCS: A10-Warthog, Microsoft Flight Simulator X, R.U.S.E., Train Simulator 2013, Take on helicopters as well as a few others) I'm not sure whether the latest Microsoft flight supports touch screen. not checked yet. :)

   Check the following videos out. the first one is amazing. Using a very large touch screen (20 feet wide) to play Fleet Commander using software that enables complex mouse controls to be ported to a touch screen environment. I'm sure this software and hardware will be available to all in the not too distant future, thus enabling many older games to be played using touch screen monitors.

   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6V0o3TjB2Tw

   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ec5klwJA_Vk (not the best video)

   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DmHCrLckKY

   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfD_5KyLpKA

   Posted 11 years ago #
3. 

   ChrisS
   Administrator

   Touch screens are great for accessing content, they're terrible for creating content.

   Back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, PCs were productivity first and entertainment a distant second. The "killer apps" email, spreadsheets and word processing allowed the PC to grow and thrive. And gamers pushed hardware and software manufacturers to produce better and faster games.

   Then Microsoft began selling X-boxes, dealing a very heavy blow to the PC gaming market. Who needs high-end graphic cards and fast processors when you're designing a game for an 8 year-old console and a 720p TV? PC gamers used to own the gaming market, now we're an after thought.
   Then Microsoft removed Outlook Express from Win7, a product that was surely used by most of those 1.2 billion users. One of the "killer apps" was killed off. That functionality, said Microsoft, was better served by a third party.

   So, over time, Microsoft has determined that PCs are entertainment first and productivity a very distant second. Of course, that doesn't explain why they removed Media Center from Win8, surely that's an entertainment "killer app"? Anyway, Microsoft is now focused on users who simply view content. If you want to create content, say for Excel, Access, Word or write a program, then Microsoft recommends Linux and LibreOffice. Linux is for creators, Windows is for viewers. Or, Windows was... why not switch to Android? You get the same functionality without the bloat.

   Win8 may well be worse for the future of Microsoft than the X-box. But good on Microsoft for creating a future where they don't exist.

   Posted 11 years ago #

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