On this dark and lonely evening, the temptation to let rip at various enterprises going wrong is all too great. Monday came the vow that at last some posts on this epic tome of the digital damned would move away from all hatred inducing bile that would be occurring in the news and instead focus on the other things which matter not.

It’s alive….it’s ALIVE!

Like Sunflowers and err….pictures of cats photo-shopped to have eyes which piece your soul. But ladies and gentlemen, there will be some bile on this post after all.

But alas it’s not aimed at Natwest and the Royal B*llocks-up of Scotland, who had to say sorry to another failure to perform (happens to the best of us…) their banking duties (oh that failure…err..) at which point the villagers rose up and vowed to destroy Frankenstein’s monster aka Stephen Hester (pictured left, terrorising people on a bus) who has to console himself through this hard time with the £700,000 bonus due from three years ago.

No this time, it’s aimed at Microsoft and not for the browser choice thingy no-one aside from the EU cared about.

A long time ago, in a land roughly 3,500 miles away from merry old England, it came to pass that the PC overlords at the Redmond campus saw that the fruity shiny shiny (Or Apple) was in fact doing rather well at selling tablets which had mobile shops to allow people to buy lots of rubbish like never before. The lord master Steve Balmy thought: “Daddy gotta have some of that.”

That surely has to be part of the reason why Microsoft went with the direction they did with Windows 8 (or perhaps Windows Hate as it will known by others for the time being), to going through the motions of creating an Operating System so shiny and wizard, that would work on multiple platforms in the same way and allow people to leave marks over screens on something that the ghost of Steve Jobs would be haunting forever and a day.

What MS got right
Before we go into the myriad of complaints, there are some changes to Windows Hate, that actually were jolly good ideas, but which could have just been put into a service pack for Windows 7.

• Pausing of file copies if you need to without having to start it all off again afterwards (really really good feature to be honest if you copy things lots around the place)
• The return of the little up arrow to go up a folder level in the Windows Explorer
• ISO Image support within the OS (anyone else understand what the hell I just wrote?)
• It starts quicker.
• Sign in to something which saves settings in….the cloud….(everyone go ooooooohhhhh…)

Ok, not a massive list.

What MS got wrong
Hold on to something, this will be rough.

The UI
Oh…..dear. Seems we made a bit of a boo-boo here, didn’t we?

It’s just Start now.

Remember that tried and tested menu we all laughed about, going to Start to shut down the computer? (well some of us did…) Well that’s gone now. What we now have is: Start (no menu, it’s just Start.), which looks like a game of Space Invaders which went a bit wrong, but there’s no way to reset the game.

The sad fact is, that in some ways, the new Start does make some sense. How often do you all open up loads of random programs and see the full start menu like in the good old days of not that long ago? Having the key programs popping up first that you do use often is a very good idea, and then just a search bar to find everything else you’re after? Sounds like an excellent idea, doesn’t it?

It’s just a shame, that idea was implemented fully in Windows Vista, and even then you still had the “All Programs” option in case you wanted to see how much crap you had actually installed and would never use.

The fact that it occupies the full screen (and only the first screen, you still see the desktop on any other screens) betrays the fact that it was not really meant for desktop machines at all, but instead the new world of Windows tablets and touch sensitive screens that hardly anyone actually have.

What makes it even worse, is the bodge job of putting desktop components into the new tile system to be accessed, instead of where people got used to them to be. You access Windows Update via the Bathroom tiles and you get chucked back out to the desktop area, with the old window for the updates show up, looking exactly the same as Windows 7 does. What was the point of that?

Also, here would be a good question to pose: How many of you knew how to shut down the computer in Windows 8….without using Google to find the answer?

If you want the Start Menu of old back and not ever have the Start come up, in essence using the PC like you did with say, Windows 7, the only way at present, is to get a “replacement.” Yes, a replacement for the replacement of the start menu.

And that’s magic, or just what worked.

The best replacement found was to be Stardock’s Start 8 which you could configure to respond just exactly like the start menu from XP, Vista, or 7. The best choice for all to be sure. There is also another very good free replacement called Classic Shell which could be used for Windows 7 in addition to provide older functions back into the interface.

Those little apps of mine…

Bit more like “Crappy” now….

Windows now comes with an App Store built in, and on no account is it to try and make billions like the fruit based oppressors do via their own one stop shop of which you are forced to use and have no other choice.

That’s the problem with Windows, as it stands, you do still have choices if you’re running on full fat Windows Hate for PCs (cut down versions for the tablets, no no, you’re out of luck there boy) like Valve’s Steam or EA’s Origin for gaming.

That will not help the Microsoft Store here, as a lot of what they do have within said App Store is complete b*llocks to anyone again with a PC and not one of those tablets no-one has. The Skype App for example has one of the biggest flaws over it’s normal desktop version. If you go to something else even, just by going to Start, it just stops. This is how the apps have been designed to function, they go to sleep in the background. In the case of Skype, this meant you wouldn’t get calls or IM messages until you went back into the app.

Bit sh*t really, as even the client for Smartphones stays in memory on those smartphones people use to ignore other people, allows you to get a Skype call when in something, Skype just being brought to the foreground instead and you can start talking with your bestest ever friend about Amazon’s Keep calm and Rape clothing.

The horror, the advert based horror….

Even if we were to forget that tiny fact of apps not running in the background which makes some of them pointless, as we embark around the app store and yes, even Xbox on the system, a lot of what is available is utter rubbish, with far better equivalents for news, just being on standard web sites through the Internet.

The variety of apps on offer as well as number of apps is at best, poor and mostly forgettable, although the library of apps can only surely grow as time goes on, we can only hope MS actually give a people a reason to use anything from the App Store, as right now, it’s providing a service no-one needs. People are also worried that in future, Microsoft will restrict any other services with store components on Windows, and this is the start of it. Only time will tell on that score.

DVD Playback be gone (ish)

Computer hate humans, want to kill all humans with error messages…

Admittedly, I may be in a minority on this one. Yes, everyone feel free to mock me more than usual in not using VLC player for everything, but Windows Media Player, was actually pretty good for me, played everything I wanted and more. Even DVDs, which worked with a remote control from MS without breaking once.

And then, they took away DVD playback…

This came from http://nooooooooooooooo.com/ (i’m not kidding)

Granted it was for a very good reason. The license fee to have DVD playback with your OS, is rather large it turns out. In order for Windows 8 to be a lot cheaper, they removed all the costly bits, which included those pesky MPEG codec things which are used for said DVD playback.

The only way you get it back without installing the free VLC player, is to get hold of Windows Media Center, which they also chucked out of Windows 8 by default and of which now the free period has passed, you have to pay £6.99 (which is odd really as we’ll get to in a minute about pricing)

Even then after installing Windows Media Center, DVD playback won’t work in Windows Media Player. So…VLC it is after all.

The Pricing (before and after)
Rather odd to bring up how much it costs, but up till the end of January 2013, Microsoft wanted people to part with cash for the system as much as possible. Their strategy was, cut the price to Apple OSX levels of around £25 and offer the Windows Media Center as a free incentive in addition.

Now, Windows 8 starts at £99 retail for upgrade, with Windows 8 Pro selling for £189.99 for a retail upgrade. Now given the fact that they now also charge £7 for the DVD part of the package too, what is the rest of the price hike going back towards? For that price, you really would get more with Windows 7 than 8 if you’re on a PC.

Epilogue

So in essence the moral of this epic tale, is new is not always better. Sometimes what you have is what you need. Microsoft seemed to have gone a bit crazy with this version of Windows. They may need to go back to the drawing board and start again. Maybe this time, just remember that there are different devices and they all work differently. As do people. And biscuits.

What was my point again?