Windows 8 Try Out

OK now yesterday I had a play around with Windows 8 and it is not quite as bad as I first thought.
You can get to certain things like settings and Device Manager but I still do not like it. The TILE screen was presented on a vast array of different laptops and desktops in a local store and I went to each and everyone in turn with the tiled Metro screen.

The very first thing I did is go for the monitors with my finger as this is what the Metro was designed for so it stood to reason, to my mind at any rate, that all showing this screen would be touch sensitive. Out of about 20 I tried of both desktops and laptops? ONE!

The whole idea of having bigger monitors with higher resolution is 'REAL ESTATE' but in the case of this new desktop screen that very basic fundamental idea goes out the window. That is unless they have included a setting to make the tiles alot smaller, like half the size?! I mean to say that if you think about it with such a radical new interface going on screens from as as small as 7 inches to as big as 50 inches or more, oh OK so over about 30 inch is really going to be a TV screen but its still a big thing as the HDMIs are included on up to date PCs of different forms. Even my old-ish HP Pavilion DV7 purchased as ex-demo, turned out to be refurbed and had to go back for TWO failures (one KNOWHOW did not do correctly surprise surprise), has a HDMI socket and a 1600x900 monitor built in. I purchased this in January 2012 for £370.

In fact after messing around the very naming of Windows 8 being ... well WINDOWS seems wrong. It should have been called TILING?! (chuckles).

I really do not think this will go down well over time. It feels rushed, badly designed and considering how long the interface has been 'out there' already that looks bad. A friend of mine and owner of a local store has had this interface on his phone for sometime with Windows Phone 7, or whatever they call it.

Now if they had quite simply LEFT the desktop screen as it was and as an option this would been nowhere near as bad. Later and more modern version and design of the Metro interface might have slowly encouraged those used to the classic Windows design of old to gradually migrate over.

Besides my dislike of Steve Ballmer this worries me as I do like Windows and always have done. Many years ago I was more interested in the Apple MACS but never actually ended up with an Apple though I came close in several occasions. The market share of Windows I heard about recently was quite surprising and it seems the tables have completely turned over the years with Apple and Microsoft and just like the situation with AMD and Intel you do not really want to be left with just ONE monopoly. In concentrating on their rivals on an ever consuming passion to bring in large portions of cash they have forgotten and neglected the very people they are trying to get this cash from and in these global economic bad times this is NOT a good idea and it seems that as well as government big companies still have not 'GOT IT'. See blog asaintcallesallnights.blogspot.com

Quite how it takes a large firm like Microsoft so long to implement a few design details into their Operating Systems is beyond me. The Linux community seems to do quite alright and has done so for many years. In fact since my first try at Linux which was 15 years ago now I cannot help but wonder what using Linux is like today?!

I am just hoping that if I had played around with it a bit more I might have found that some other things I complained about here were actually there. There might not be that 'Start Button' but clicking on the libraries tab and then on computer in the left pane of the window your presented you will the find Device Manager in the toolbar section on the top of the Window, just in case you are the owner of a new Windows 8 machine and were trying to find it?! (laughs)

Me? Well I have already been looking at the retina display Apple Mac Pro as my laptop replacement! My new rig, if I ever get to that stage too, will be Windows 7 based but what I keep thinking is what happens after that? With newer upgrades like DirectX for games generally being tied into to newer Windows to force people, well gamers, to upgrade may well be a shot in the foot this time around. Then there are the games developers too?! I will be watching very closely to see what they have to say about Windows 8 and I always require a very broad spectrum from a great many places before I make a decision.

I for one am hoping it is not as bad as it currently appears to me and for once I am wrong!

WINDOWS 8 or WINDOWS HATE

Well so much for what a PC technician told me on the phone about this Windows 8 (and only a release candidate too) 'it is brilliant ... oh really good'.

From the things I have read and what I have seen in videos, and BBC Click, it has me somewhat confused...

They have focused primarily on the touch screen element because of tablets and yet not all software works for it, flicking over the a desktop screen on running it.

Then they removed the Start Button from that Desktop Screen?

Looks like a real pain if you do not have a TOUCH SCREEN MONITOR AND I DO NOT WANT ONE, as I do not relish the idea of wiping my screen every 180 seconds?! Maybe a wait until anti smear surfaces are applid to touch screens?! Anti-smear I hear you ask well Oakley have bloody sunglasses that do not smear so what better excuse than to put it in the things you are SUPPOSED to touch?!

Groan!! LOL!

I am not a big fan of the design of the tile interface it must be said. I liked the sound of it all when the little snippets of info were coming out and quite how they removed, or I should say did not provide, the option to go to a normal desktop screen like every other Windows has done previously I will never know.

IT LOOKS HALF FINISHED?!?!

This might be OK for tablets but for desktops I would not go near it.

I come from an industry and an academic background where Microsoft was disliked. This was mostly in part to what people heard about Steve Ballmer and his string armed tactics. He is seen by many as the sole reason there have been these actions against Microsoft with anti-trust, anti competitive law suits and I hear another one is on the way in Europe, once again over browsers. YAWN.

What is with that Steve Ballmer? Is he on drugs? Leaping around at a conference like a demented animals and I always think 'MADMAN' when he is ever interviewed. Those glaring eyes do not help his cause much!

He has spent years at Microsoft and behind many believed that his bludgeoning method with Microsoft and competitors purely came from what was reported at the time as his military background. This would be hard for me to say one way or the other as I do not know the man and they were purely rumours.

However the end results are just the same never the less...he comes across as insincere whenever I see him on BBC Click and find myself wincing and reaching for the remotes mute button until he disappears. He also talks about the products but he is clearly not an engineer or a technical man and sounds like a really bad and really over the top travelling salesman for shower curtain rings and would fit right in playing the spare wheel in that old comedy hit Trains Planes & Automobiles with veteran comics John Candy & Steve Martin!

I also die a little inside when I think f the things Microsoft could and should of done, as well as the things they should NOT have done, if he were NOT at the company. Despite his ape like leaping and banshee like screaming at the conference about how much he loves this company?! Anyone else wonder who he was trying to convince?!

LMAO.

So Windows 8 is not not only looking like another one of those Microsoft Balls-Ups they seem to do every now and then but just may well be the biggest one of all in my book.

They had better pray every night it takes off in tablets but against the competition, oh dear .. no.

This is typical Microsoft and Steve Ballmer as it seems they have now deserted desktop owners, I cannot see many being happy with Windows 8 in all honesty, because the market has shrunk a little and they think they can now barge there way onto tablets and phones. No Mr Ballmer, you cannot!!

What they should have done is released TWO versions as they obviously are miles away from achieving what they had planned but no, get it out, do not worry about usability, intuitive interfaces and therefore our customers let us just make a load of cash again and force people to keep upgrading.

It has taken its time but I now wonder what the desktop percentages will be in a couple of years between Linux & Windows?! My god I might have to migrate over the the dreaded rotten Apple?!

WINDOWS ATE MORE LIKE.

HEHE.

AMD FX-8350 TESTS: LACKING UNDERSTANDING?!

Well I have perused a number of sites benchmarking the new AMD FX-8350 Piledriver and I have to admit that firstly the results are even MORE confusing than that of its predecessor, the AMD FX-8150 Bulldozer chip.

I have checked out, or dashed through would be more accurate, those at Tom's Hardware, Anandtech, Hexus and a few others.

Even more confusing than the results are the statements made by the testers and even their conclusions?!

I have suspected for sometime that there are too may CPU testers out there simply running a series of programs errr ... programmed by others and therefore not understanding the CPU core entirely nor the software and the algorithms employed. This can sometimes show up in statements they make that, on the face of it, do not match the overall numbers.

I think from now on I am going to totally ignore what these suites state in the benchmarks results, they are far too inconsistent for my liking and are causing people to make utter idiots of themselves. See the following, lol.

AN EXAMPLE...

One well known site states that the SINGLE THREADED (that is one core and in all honesty a MOOT POINT and pretty pointless today to harp on about - sorry but true) IS STILL DIRE based on one benchmark.

DISCREPANCY?...

Well hang on a minute as the latest Piledriver based FX-8350 beats the 8 threaded Intel Core i7 in several tests?

YOU JUST CONTRADICTED YOURSELF, SMART ARSES!!

Here is another point, if a benchmark is doing badly on a particular CPU core, and lets so its on of these suites like SiSoft's Sandra or Cinebench then that pretty much renders the benchmark unfit for purpose and badly programmed!

You cannot have it both ways, either that ir you have to change your benchmarking and ONLY USE real world programs and games. SIMPLEZZZ!!

If the core performance was as dire as suggested in the FX-8350 and the Intel's so bloody brilliant like everyone one of them harps on about then even with the TWO extra threads, oh no wait a minute you all keep insisting they are only FOUR ANYWAY, would in no way allow it to beat the i7s by any stretch.

Especially as you keep on harping on about how you change everything so that the benchmarks are CPU bound?! Can you smell the stuff you are shovelling? Or is it a case that you are trying to rush the benchmarks online so fast to get hits, and therefore cash from advertising, that you write these things without going over the numbers?

On one lot of testing I was like 'OHHH YEAH NOW I WANT TO BUILD A RIG QUICK SHARP!' while on another I was then thinking 'OH NO THAT IS CRAP. I WILL WAIT FOR STEAMROLLER?!'

Then I started thinking 'NO HANG ON A BLOODY MINUTE HERE!!' LMAO!

Then another said it only matched the Phenom II cores, K10.5, when a couple of others said the it was faster and this was also said about Trinity, AMD's laptop intended APUs with four cores and a graphics chip built in. No wait! TWO CORES and a Graphics chip built in?! LMAO.

Steamroller is the code name for the next generation of AMD's cores. though some have stated April 2013 or around that date it has been a year since the Bulldozer FX-8150 and as much as I would like it to be April I think a year, so next October, is far more likely.

Here is my two penneth, it does reasonably OK for an 8 core, it does BLOODY FANTASTIC as a FOUR CORE?!

Now as I have since seen the AMD FX-8350 for £165 on Scan.co.uk and the FX-8150 launched at around £240 i think that is not all that bad. My only problem with the chip at all is though they improved the power consumption it could have been a little better.

My only gripe is that I would like to see the next motherboards out, to improve things a little further and ready, or better suited, to the Steamroller AMD CPUs when they are eventually launched...

...so a 1090FX motherboard, 990FX currently, and possibly even combined with a new socket so AM4 or AM3++, lol.

If I purchase one I just hope I get lucky with the silicon, or maybe this time round they might have released a slightly improved one by then, like they was going to do with the rumoured release of an AMD FX-8170 which did not materialise.

AMD FX-8370 anyone? Now that WOULD be cool! Well lets hope that is literal too?!

Drop the single threaded harping on too for the love of god, I was doing Access to Computing to get into my BSc Applied Computing and Pentium II's were the latest thing and even then I was talking of a motherboard with TWO sockets and XEONS! That was 1996 for the love of God and 3D Studio MAX already used as many cores as you could throw at it.

There is no PROBLEM with coding programs to run concurrently, it has been about for over ten years and as anyone would tell you in computing ... well that is an EON!!

If coders state there is a problem well... I know what I would say to that but they would not like it. Let us just say that they need time to get... their heads around it but others have long since done that.

As I stated previously four cores has been the norm for sometime now. I cannot see it being that long before games, no MOST games, launched will run on 3 minimum but 4 or even 5 cores. As Windows works best with at least two and something else might be running too.

For an eternity I have seen the statements to others asking advice 'oh you do not need this and do not need that, that is too much for what you want' and EVERY SINGLE TIME they have regretted going smaller and cheaper. though I dare say some times there will be people that do not.

I read about people buying the FX-4100 and FX-6100 and despite wanting AMD to do well I could not help but think, why would you do that? Especially as even the 8 core was struggling, I would have looked for a cheap Phenom 2 X6 1100T myself if I could not get the FX-8150 or FX-8120.

But maybe that is just me?

LOL.

LOCK ON FLAMING CLIFFS 3 :|.... DROOL!!!

If you are like me and long for a state of the art flight simulator you might want to check out ...

LOCK ON: FLAMING CLIFFS 3

...over at YouTube...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ut7bQSCkgyA


NEW PANTS PLEASE!!!

WMD by EPSON SX-535WD

After years of admiring their products but ending up owning and using printers by just about everyone else I have now been using a combo printer and scanner I adore...

...in fact whenever I look at it I think about getting something higher up the scale?!

This was an EPSON SX-535WD Printer.

Wireless works extremely well, last one was ... tricky and a different company.

I have had all the major makes over the years and all were good in varying degrees, though they did all suffer from the exact same problem and I hope this model is NOT affected by it.

My first printer was a Lexmark and over they years I have owned HP's and a particularly nice Canon PIXMA (wireless).

I always wanted an A3 Printer and would by one tomorrow by Epson if I could and these were even considered the number one brand way back when I was at University!

This was one of the necessary things I simply had to buy and at the price I found it for, around £70, I just had to buy it then and there as it was less then half price?!

Had I had the funds, mind you, I would have bought the up to date model that had just been launched and maybe in the Spring of 2013 I might just do that!!

First time I would have updated a product BEFORE it died!!

EXAMPLE OF EXEMPLARY SERVICE at AMAZON RE-SELLER

I purchased a game, attempts to keep me occupied AND grounded, called DCS Black Shark. You can see from my other blogs that one of my interests is gaming and on the PC.

Well I purchased this game on Amazon but through a re-seller and after some time and alot of trouble getting it installed I then set the resolution to match my screen, 1600x900, and the mouse pointer VANISHED?! It was there just ... invisible! I then spent several more hours moving the mouse and GUESSING where the pointer was on the screen in an attempt to change the resolution down to 1280x740 in the hope that the pointer would re-appear! You can guess from the time this took I was that successful but I eventually achieved it and my pointer e-appeared!

I then went back into options and maxed out all graphics and then stupidly tried again with maxing the resolution out and oh back to the guessing games again.

Eventually and after what must have been four hours or more and now late I hit the instant action button after plugging in my Thrustmaster Joystick. Then I was presented with a dialogue box requesting a code! Grrr!!

I searched high and low but there was no code and I was now 'chomping at the bit' and got to that stage where you have an irresistible urge to turn your laptop into a Frisbee?! Turns out after a search on the Internet that there was supposed to be a paper based Quick Start Guide in the DVD case with the disc that contained the Serial Code and was missing.

Very miffed about this I contacted the seller and was somewhat sarcastic while trying to remain calm.

The guys name was Daniel and although he reacted a little to me sarcasm to which I reacted a little too he then made some offers and did en exemplary job of customer service.

I still cannot and have not played the game I have had my eye on for over a year now but it matters not, lol. I Was that impressed with the fact that the conversation did not degenerate into some spat and his handling of it that I decided that I would use Daniel and his Store, called Trade-N-Go, on Amazon of a fine example of what CUSTOMER SERVICE SHOULD BE LIKE, even in a worst case scenario and a miffed off customer.

Now we only need to clone Daniel and each one in charge of the Energy Companies, Mail Order Catalogues, eBay, Public Offices and a long list of OTHER organisations and we will be sorted.

You might want to read my other blog, asaintcalledallnights.blogspot.com, to see what the hell I am on about on that subject, lmao.

DCS Black Shark Problems

OK after a long wait DCS Black Shark finally turns up...

Freezes several times trying to install it! Then manage to get it to install and takes forever and I am thinking I hope this is good for the wait and trouble?!

Then it runs fine and I go into options and set resolution at 1600x900 only to find my mouse pointer then disappear and I have to GUESS where the mouse pointer is?!

Not solve that problem as yet and downloading a patch for it but turns out it is 450MB?!

Manage to go to instant action only it asks e for a serial number that the product has not got WITH IT?!?! GRRRRRR!!!!! Supposed to be printed on back of Quick Start Guide but not included in the case nor the envelope, what you get for saving £2.00?!?!

Email the seller on Amazon and rip a few shreds and god help them if they say anything stupid?!?! LOL, especially as I paid a little under the full price and have now discovered there is a DCS Black Shark 2?!?!

Emailed the publishers about both issues and hoping they will provide a serial but I seriously doubt it so likely going to have to return it for a refund?!?!

That is what you get for doing things the CORRECT WAY?!?!

Man alive, why do I bother?!?!

LMFAO!!