{"id":198,"date":"2014-09-27T23:48:46","date_gmt":"2014-09-27T21:48:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/harsmann.com\/blog\/?p=198"},"modified":"2015-04-28T22:30:26","modified_gmt":"2015-04-28T20:30:26","slug":"a-not-so-bad-operating-system-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harsmann.com\/site\/2014\/09\/a-not-so-bad-operating-system-2\/","title":{"rendered":"A not so bad Operating System"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>It is now or newer for this post:\u00a0rumor\u00a0has it that the preview release of the next Windows\u00a0version\u00a0be announced in a couple of\u00a0days, after which anything but retrospective\u00a0thoughts about Windows 8 will be\u00a0pretty\u00a0meh.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Well,\u00a0Windows 8 has received a lot of criticism, especially because of the new start menu, but in my opinion, that OS was never as\u00a0bad as its was made out to be.\u00a0I have been using it as my primary OS ever since it was released and been a satisfied customer all the way.<\/p>\n<p>Leaving the start menu aside, here are some things worth remembering Windows 8\u00a0for:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>reduced hardware requirements, so that it could run well on older hardware<\/li>\n<li>as stable as any version of Windows I have tried (and that would be most of them-\u00a0I missed ME and Vista, none of which\u00a0are said to be champions of stability)<\/li>\n<li>cloud integration (in particular OneDrive in 8.1)<\/li>\n<li>challenging a\u00a017+\u00a0year old UI paradigm: Windows 95 and Windows 7 are very similar on the surface (and what is wrong with that? well, what&#8217;s wrong with writing <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cuneiform\">cuneiform on clay tablets<\/a>??)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I have actually been fond of the start menu. I\u00a0have never used Windows 8 with a touch screen like it was intended to, but for someone like me who prefers keyboard over\u00a0mouse for all tasks, the start menu\u00a0has been a powerful gate into the PC. All it took was removing the default Modern UI apps and replace them with the apps I prefer to use. When that was done,<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>my favorite browser is\u00a0two key strokes away: Window, Enter<\/li>\n<li>email: three strokes:\u00a0Window, right arrow, Enter<\/li>\n<li>word processor: three strokes Window, arrow down, Enter<\/li>\n<li>spreadsheet: four strokes: Window, arrow right, arrow down,\u00a0Enter<\/li>\n<li>Etc&#8230;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>and everything happening with easy-to-see icons and selection bracket.<\/p>\n<p>The start menu also hides the often messy desktop that many people end up having: a colorful wallpaper and 50+ icons for documents, application install packages, pictures and what not. I can&#8217;t blame Microsoft for thinking\u00a0that replacing that mess with an easy to organize start menu would be\u00a0a good idea, but apparently they were wrong (&#8220;don&#8217;t mess with <em>my<\/em> mess&#8230;!&#8221;).\u00a0Furthermore, by hiding programs and settings that should rarely be used by anyone, the change of the entire system getting messed up is also reduced (that, in my opinion,\u00a0makes Windows 8 by far the best Windows yet).<\/p>\n<p>And while the Windows\u00a08 start menu has been heavily criticized, it it interesting to see how a similar menu appear in other desktop OSs, like Linux Mint 17 (and were commonplace in mobile OS long time before).<\/p>\n<p>The Modern UI apps have not been relevant to me. Maybe the apps could have been better; but that&#8217;s also how it used to be with the selection of\u00a0Android apps compared to iOS, especially for tablets. That&#8217;s rarely said today (but I dare say it is the case for children&#8217;s games, but that&#8217;s a topic for another post);\u00a0so the apps will probably come\u00a0with\u00a0time as Windows Phone matures and laptops with touch screen become more common.<\/p>\n<p>Windows 8 is not perfect, but it\u00a0is an good \u00a0and important\u00a0step away from the old way of doing things. Not perfect, but it\u00a0has served me well. I look forward to see the next iteration of Microsoft&#8217;s OS soon, and hope they have kept what worked well, improved what should be better, cropped what didn&#8217;t work and added some new ideas into the mix.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It is now or newer for this post:\u00a0rumor\u00a0has it that the preview release of the next Windows\u00a0version\u00a0be announced in a couple of\u00a0days, after which anything but retrospective\u00a0thoughts about Windows 8 will be\u00a0pretty\u00a0meh. Well,\u00a0Windows 8 has received a lot of criticism, especially because of the new start menu, but in my opinion, that OS was never &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/harsmann.com\/site\/2014\/09\/a-not-so-bad-operating-system-2\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">A not so bad Operating System<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[22],"tags":[5],"class_list":["post-198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech","tag-windows"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5WBL8-3c","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/harsmann.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/harsmann.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/harsmann.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harsmann.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harsmann.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/harsmann.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":202,"href":"https:\/\/harsmann.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198\/revisions\/202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/harsmann.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harsmann.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harsmann.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}