The fullscreen apps that you mention is one more thing that got me. Even if you go into the Aero desktop, you have just 1. Every app on the PC wants the full screen. I can understand this behavior or phones or on tablets, where fingers would work differently from mice. However, importing those uses to PCs just to try & kick start that market is inane.

Like I said elsewhere in this thread, making it pretend that it's my Nokia Lumia did nothing for me. Despite owning 1 of the latter, I just found the use frustrating. Ever since I dumped it for a more traditional (non-Windows) desktop, my life has been a lot easier. Granted - all I use at home are Thunderbird, Browsers (both Chromium & Firefox) and FreeCiv.

This doesn't make sense: the legacy interfaces are the installed base for which Microsoft has a market in the first place. They are an aspect of the product that their customers like. Companies like Cigna or BofA or 21st Century or Disney are not in the business of having their employees change their computing habits every few years. So if the applications they are using do not require touchscreens, why force it on them? The applications won't have any use for Metro unless there is something about touch screens that they can use. For instance, ATMs, which would do fine w/ a Metro interface to the OS.

I agree that upstream, since Intel is changing the architecture of their CPUs, Microsoft needs to do something that makes it a good idea, say, for someone to prefer a Core i3 to an Atom. But that's something Microsoft can do w/ the underlying architecture - like moving to a more microkernel like OS, having different 'personalities' on top of those, allowing multiple virtual desktops (like KDE) and so on. But at the user level, they should change as little as possible. It's not their job to disrupt the operations of their customers, or else, before they know it, they won't have any. Rather, design the OS and future versions of the applications so that they take advantages of the newer features. At the OS level, maybe, make VMs of previous models the default for people who have ancient CDs they just have to run.

I just switched to PC-BSD a few weeks ago, and have been largely enjoying it since.

It ain't a mere question of being cheap. It's a question of overhauling existing setups, particularly in offices, where the implications are work disruptions & worse. If it was just a question of paying MS the $200 or whatever it costs, it's one thing. But coming along w/ that would be all the migration pains. Plus Windows Vista & beyond were built on a win64 subsystem, and there are a lot of XP applications that companies didn't or can't upgrade, which would not run on 7 w/o either XP-Mode or Hyper-V.

I do think Microsoft should consider a model where they sell improved kernels, w/ whatever UI customers want - be it Metro, Aero, XP or classic NT. After all, 8 is better under the hood, if the UI could be the same as before. Maybe in installation, give users a choice of interfaces - making the newest the default but traditional UIs optional, so that it can be adapted by businesses w/ minimal disruptions.

Wi-Fi support is nice to have. I do have Network support, it's there via my Ethernet. Not ideal, but functional. As for touchpad, I have tried disabling it in both Windows 8, and on a different laptop, in Windows 7. Didn't work - needed Touchfreeze. Reason I complained about Weather is that Windows 8 is the first OS that wants to know my location. I don't want it to be Windows Phone 8, iOS or Android.

I can see how Notepad is useful on both phones & laptops. I can't see the same about Contacts. Rather, they could have just made Skype the platform for sharing contacts b/w phone & laptop, assuming that it's needed.

I bought a new laptop recently that was preloaded w/ Windows 8.1. Installed Classic Shell. Here's what the problems were

1. 1. Unlike previous versions, in this OS, you have to have a hotmail/live/outlook.com account to do the first step - logging in. Something that wasn't required in Windows 7. I had a Nokia Lumia Phone previously and had no issues w/ that, but the requirements are different. In Windows Phone 8, having that profile enabled me to just transfer everything to a new phone if needed. Here, I just don't get the point, aside from being annoying
2. 2. The apps ain't much different either. Contacts - w/ phone#, just like in Windows Phone? Are they retarted - this is a PC. Yeah, one can Skype, but there's a separate Skype app for that. Doesn't need a separate Contacts list
3. 3. Weather - see #2. On a phone, it makes sense. On this, how is it any better than the sidebar that Vista had? Oh, and now PCs/laptops, like phones, want my permission to determine my location. Naah-ah!!!
4. 4. When you do log into Windows, you are confronted w/ the Metro screen. Yeah, you can install Classic shell, like I did, but that won't change that. What it does it that whenever you open an app, it goes into the desktop mode, but whenever you press the Windows button, it brings up that shell again
5. 5. For me, the last straw was that my palms would rest on the trackpad, and while typing, sometimes the charms bar on the right would pop up, along w/ a network panel somewhere in the south west of my screen, inviting me to enable the wi-fi or whatever. It's irritating if you are in the middle of something else & are forced to tap the trackpad to get rid of it

Following this, I decided to bite the bullet and install PC-BSD, a DVD of which I had gotten some days ago. I initially had some issues, since it wouldn't recognize either my mouse nor the wi-fi. So I had to get another mouse, and an ethernet cable, and then disable UEFI, and then install it. I had some rough edges w/ LXDE and KDE, but now am pretty happy working w/ Lumina. Of course, I'd be happier once FreeBSD/PC-BSD supports Wi-Fi on this laptop. Typing however is a charm, since PC-BSD doesn't recognize the trackpad, so it never comes in the way and I don't need touchfreeze or anything like it.

So doesn't Oracle's SPARC/Solaris line already cover this?

He took a 20% pay cut, which sounds like a pro-rated cut in lieu of the extra day off. I don't see how his employer is any worse off: if anything, they get to save 20% of his salary, while he gets to enjoy 3 days off. A win-win situation.

In the case of Munich, a whole new Linux distro was created - LiMux. But here, the French could get back to what was once a great Linux distro - Mandrake. They could use either Mandriva or Mageia, and go from there. I doubt that either of those 2 would have deteriorated as far as internationalization goes.

I don't think Windows would dethrone either iOS or Android by copying them. People are not gonna buy Microsoft just b'cos they're like Android.

Microsoft had a unique selling point that they could offer a tablet that could potentially run the vast legacy of Windows apps to date. So let's say someone bought something like a Visio, or a Acrobat that they would have liked to have been able to use w/ their tablet, either the same way (w/ an attached or wireless keyboard) or an enhanced tablet experience (if the underlying OS could modify the way the application worked w/ the new input types). Then one could have said that there is value added.

But just trying to come up w/ a better phone interface, and in the process, totally screwing up a much loved interface that people had grown used to over the last ~20 years was no way to do it. Even for people who were comfortable w/ both, there is something seriously lacking in Windows 8

I just wish there was a way that I could still boot into UEFI while running PC-BSD/Linux/whatever. Right now, I have it disabled, and enabled the legacy boot. But it's nice to be able to boot from USB sticks

I don't quite get you. I've used Windows 8 in 2 environments - a Lumia and the laptop that I described above. In fact, I used the phone first. The experience of the 2 was totally different.

I had a Lumia 520, which I loved. OneNote alone demonstrated to me how handy that phone was - I could make shopping lists that I never forgot, or travel plans. Nokia's HERE was perfect for finding places. Above all, the typing experience on a Lumia was superior to both that of an iPhone as well as an Android. I currently have an iPhone and a Kindle - a Verizon deal that I got that included both - and while I like both of them, the typing on them ain't as smooth as the Lumia was. Also, Lumia's touch experience was fantastic - the entire phone seemed to vibrate when you touched it. Anyway, those 2, plus a few more apps - things like unit converters, currency converters and some other utilities really made that phone handy. I gave that as a gift to my neice before my job brought me back to the US.

Now, as I described above, I bought a new Dell Inspiron 17. It had a keyboard wide enough like the old classic keyboards, complete w/ a backlit numeric keypad. The trackpad is huge. As described above, I started using it out of the box. The first thing that I saw ticked me off. Unlike in Windows 7 or XP or 95, it forced me to either log into a Microsoft account (Hotmail/Live/Outlook) or create one - something I never had to do previously. Since I already had my Live account from my phone, I just used that and got in.

That was just the beginning. The Windows Start button threw up a lot of icons, and I used a few which I had used on the phone, like Contacts. Do these morons really think that everybody will use their laptops to make calls? One only has Skype sessions when needed. Otherwise, if I want to see my relatives, I use FaceTime. Even the other apps - like the news - has preselected channels, and doesn't let you exclude all and just use the websites you like. My other grudge.

I then decided to play about w/ their App Store. I downloaded their version of FreeCiv, one of my favorite games. Boy, does it suck - the native Windows 8 version! Yeah, yeah, I know, the Android version on my tablet sucked as well, which is why I deleted it, and I did the same w/ the one I got from the Windows 8 store, instead going to the FreeCiv website and downloading it. Then played w/ it a bit.

However, both when I was playing, as well as when I was working, the charms bar would sometimes appear w/o warning, sometimes threatening to totally disrupt my work. I had had enough. I painstakingly sat down one weekend, put in the PC-BSD disk and finally, deleted the Windows 8 partition from the laptop. I was done.

In short, Windows Phone 8.1 is great. Only shortcoming - a market one - is the lack of apps like the Apple or the Play Store. But aside from that, if you don't have to have the latest & greatest games, then Windows Phone 8.1 is great. However, even if you have that experience w/ the phone and go to a PC/laptop, w/ experiences of both Windows 7 in the past, and Windows Phone 8.1, you'll find that Windows 8.1 still sucks. (Granted, I had a non-touch screen, but guess what? When I pay $800 for a toy, I really don't want to smidge the screen. My kindle already looks pretty bad, despite having a screenguard.)

On a tablet, I suppose Windows 8.1 could be okay, if you are not forced to deal w/ crippled apps from the store, but manage to use original applications written for Windows 7 and installed via disk or zipped files.

I bought a Windows 8 laptop as well - a rather large Dell Inspiron 17. One w/ a Core i7, 8GB of RAM, 1TB of hard disk. Installed Classic shell & tried it out. Problem was that even when I went into the desktop and was working on an application there, the Charms bar would just pop out of nowhere. Also, despite being the latest & greatest, from the Metro screen, there was no way of starting multiple desktops, each w/ 1-2 apps, so that I could avoid clutter. Oh, and also, the trackpad was getting in my way.

Finally, I took the trouble of trying to Install PC-BSD. At first, the UEFI kept ensuring that it kept going to Windows only, so finally I hit F2 and disabled UEFI. The first few times, the PC-BSD seemed to be in a permanent loop, but after hitting F12 to select the boot from device and selecting the DVD, the installation happened. Unfortunately, it failed to recognize the Wi-Fi, so I had to keep it connected to the router w/ the ethernet cable. Also, adding another user was tricky, and PC-BSD doesn't install root as a loggable user, despite prompting one to create a root password during install. So addition of another user had to be done via the CLI.

Finally, I had the thing completely set up w/ PC-BSD. It does what I need, so I'm liking it. Yeah, it has some rough edges, but nowhere near as ugly as Windows 8. Also, I'm using Lumina - KDE still has Akonadi running in the background, and sometimes KLaunch doesn't work, whereby the Logout doesn't work.

So for now, PC-BSD and Lumina is it for me.

But if animals ain't gonna be eaten, why're they made up of meat?

Precisely! Wind & Solar are good for low power devices, but for heavy duty applications, such as air-conditioning or transportation, it's just the dirty fuels for now, and nuclear whenever it's ready (as in the environmental wackos not opposing it)

As for the headline, I'm one of those who don't cut energy use. But then again, I'm not concerned about global warming - so I duck the 'hypocrite' label, and instead embrace the 'callous' one