Windows 8

Frenzied Wombat_sl said:

Yup, because Dell and Lenovo make the majority of their sales to the corporate environment, while Apple remains stable because of fanboyz. Asus/Acer cater to consumers and hence have taken the biggest hit. Working in IT, I have yet to see the slightest sign that the desktop is going anywhere. Desktops are still king for on-site users,and with the exception of idiot CFO's and IT managers that think thin clients are the way of the future, desktop sales will continue to either grow, or at a minimum maintain the same level. The only area that is currently in flux is the mobile user, and whether they should get laptops, tablets, both, or a hybrid like the Surface.

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I have been through 3 attempts at my work where the high level IT mangers etc. have attempted to replace desktops with thin clients and reduce on site tech support- it has never worked. They honestly think that every desktop can be replaced by a full VM and every management aspect of it can be handled remotely and we only need to have 3-4 techs at a central location to dispatch as needed.

There was the small gap in time where mainframe/client model worked- it is not going to go back to that... at least not where I am because it is way more diverse than a standard office site- a standard office/corp like structure may be able to do it- but not where I am.

xadion_sl said:

I have been through 3 attempts at my work where the high level IT mangers etc. have attempted to replace desktops with thin clients and reduce on site tech support- it has never worked. They honestly think that every desktop can be replaced by a full VM and every management aspect of it can be handled remotely and we only need to have 3-4 techs at a central location to dispatch as needed.

There was the small gap in time where mainframe/client model worked- it is not going to go back to that... at least not where I am because it is way more diverse than a standard office site- a standard office/corp like structure may be able to do it- but not where I am.

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I've never see a VDI implementation "work" in any sense of the word. It always ends up being approximately 30% more than a desktop in capex costs alone once you factor in the infrastructure needed to make it work at an acceptable speed, it is ALWAYS slower than a modern desktop, and when the shit hits the fan your ENTIRE user base is down. VDI is basically taking the easiest part of your network to manage (your desktops), and turning it into the most complicated part of your network. All that for the illusion of "efficiency" because you can spin up new desktops in 10 seconds and simplify some management tasks. Meanwhile you just neutered your helpdesk guys ability to do any effective troubleshooting because your desktop now depends on things like wan latency, fiber channel configuration, and your SAN-- all things beyond your helpdesk guys' pay grade. Oh yeah, your users will hate you too now that their desktop has been replaced by some laggy POS thin client. But hey, what's an inflated capex, angry users, and a "desktop" environment riddled with performance issues in comparison to a happy IT staff with cool toys? VDI is a bullshit tech for anything but schools or hospitals where you can blow off the users when they whine that their computer is a POS.. In a standard corporate environment your users will complain endlessly (and justifiably so), and your CFO that was initially mesmerized by the bullshit ROI numbers provided by the vendor will roast your ass at review time when the reality hits that you essentially spent $1500 per thin client once you throw in all the licensing costs, storage costs, and boosts to wan link bandwith to support all the PCoIP traffic. /rant off.

Frenzied Wombat_sl said:

I've never see a VDI implementation "work" in any sense of the word. It always ends up being approximately 30% more than a desktop in capex costs alone once you factor in the infrastructure needed to make it work at an acceptable speed, it is ALWAYS slower than a modern desktop, and when the shit hits the fan your ENTIRE user base is down. VDI is basically taking the easiest part of your network to manage (your desktops), and turning it into the most complicated part of your network. All that for the illusion of "efficiency" because you can spin up new desktops in 10 seconds and simplify some management tasks. Meanwhile you just neutered your helpdesk guys ability to do any effective troubleshooting because your desktop now depends on things like wan latency, fiber channel configuration, and your SAN-- all things beyond your helpdesk guys' pay grade. Oh yeah, your users will hate you too now that their desktop has been replaced by some laggy POS thin client. But hey, what's an inflated capex, angry users, and a "desktop" environment riddled with performance issues in comparison to a happy IT staff with cool toys? VDI is a bullshit tech for anything but schools or hospitals where you can blow off the users when they whine that their computer is a POS.. In a standard corporate environment your users will complain endlessly (and justifiably so), and your CFO that was initially mesmerized by the bullshit ROI numbers provided by the vendor will roast your ass at review time when the reality hits that you essentially spent $1500 per thin client once you throw in all the licensing costs, storage costs, and boosts to wan link bandwith to support all the PCoIP traffic. /rant off.

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Meh... I have a public lab with Vmware View using 16 HP T5745 thin clients that performs decently. They are set to auto refresh after log off to prevent any personal info from getting seen by another user. I also have around 35 thin clients at my central site connecting to a terminal server. I don't think I'd advocate using VDI to create personal virtual desktops for every user, but I definitely think thin clients to a terminal server for basic worker bees is worthwhile. They are also great for acting as terminals for Web apps and shit like that. The T5745's I'm using cost me $30-$50 a pop off ebay, and that's a hell of a lot cheaper than desktops even with the licensing. Strictly talking about VDI though I can see where needing a SAN solely for your VDI, licensing, switches, servers, and all that jazz could add up. The small VDI I'm doing is nothing but a blip in the road for my existing infrastructure, so it was just the View licenses that cost me.

I've heard some IT directors say even executives should be on thin clients which I think is fucking insane. The performance on them even with everything perfect on the back-end is just not ideal for the more vocal/picky users. Not to mention shit like no mobility, and all that jazz. In my opinion pretty much anyone making over 45k salaried that has even an inkling of desire to work at home should get a surface or laptop given how quickly the hardware would pay for itself.

Denaut_sl said:

I don't know what to tell you other than I don't understand what you are talking about, the same button is in the same place in 8.1 and it does the same things. Also, using the search primarily is a good thing, you WANT people to use the search for things that aren't pinned.

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Except that apparently Microsoft Office is aprogramand not anappso it does not appear under the start menu any longer. I have Windows 8 machines with Office. After installing it on an admin account, I can login to the user account and click 'see all programs' (as opposed to 'see all apps' which includes the shitty pre-installed and app-store applications) and POOF there it is, just like every version of Windows. When I install it on Win 8.1 machines, it straight up disappears for the user account. Not in the apps, not on the desktop. It's just gone. You have to search.

Additionally, why the fuck is drag and drop or 'touch and molest sideways' in mobile terms marginalized? I want to use the desktop, not fucking arrange tiles in edit mode which, no matter what, take up egregious amounts of space on any reasonably sized computer monitor. MS removed core functionality from the OS to make the desktop an 'expert' feature, IE, just a pain in the fucking ass to interact with. Yet at the same time, even launching IE from the fucking start menu it will give you warnings with a ton of web apps about needing to launch it in desktop mode or the page won't work. What's the point?

Yeah I just upgraded to 8.1 and I can't stand it out of the box. Fortunately Start8 / Classic Shell take care of that but it will be interesting to see what Microsoft does with 9.

Alkorin_sl said:

We use VDI at work for hundreds of people every day. It works fine. It took a great deal of time to engineer and the infrastructure isn't only there for VDI, though. It is an exceptional time saver for people who routinely fuck up their desktops. Got a problem? Log off and back on, problem is solved, move along and don't bother us with your silly shit. Your thin client died? Cool, here's a new $500 box that takes 5 minutes to configure and is completely location/requirement agnostic, and can be installed by a co-op student whose major is English Lit.

There is a time and place for everything, even VDI.

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Yes, VDI has some notable applications especially for companies previously relying on TS/RDS infrastructure. It solves a lot of configuration challenges with specific types of software (for example SIP and RTP have some real challenges without separate virtual IP addresses, IE they don't work...). However, that said, VDI is extremely challenging to setup and configure properly such that itisn'tjust as complicated as setting up remote deployment to standard desktops. The one benefit I see is that the scaling of IT support for desktops (from a purely cost perspective) climbs at a much steeper curve than expanding a well developed VDI.

Of course the mistake that many companies make is assuming that theoretical benefits down the road equate to cost and time savings. From what I've seen with VDI, they must assuredly do not. You can't necessarily ignore the opportunity cost of losing the 'independence' of desktop machines or disparate RDS hosts, either. If your VDI is not 100% for whatever reason, your company breaks down...

Intel Raises Earnings Forecast on Strong Demand for Business PCs | Maximum PC

PC's dead, yo

Mist_sl said:

Did people finally realize you can't do actual work on a tablet?

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You can, after you attach a USB keyboard and mouse. Then all you have to do is use the micro hdmi port to attach a good sized monitor. The problem, of course, is that frequently the tablets cannot power high enough resolutions for a larger monitor. So the tablet has to be increased to accomodate the additional graphics hardware. Additionally, the increase in productivity causes a marked need for increased storage capacity. So you add a full sized SSD/harddisk in order to compensate for this shortcoming. Soon after the processor and bus architecture becomes a complication as multitasking increasingly productive though hardware intensive applications with additional features (demanded by the users). We found the solution was to increase the processor capabilities outside of the mobile range. With the horsepower to match, multitasking and loading in-memory applications became a priority so RAM was added to compensate. Such a device isn't energy efficient enough to run on a tiny LiPO4 battery, however. We had to add a larger battery and use an external transformer to properly resupply the battery in a timely fashion.

We've just invented the Lap-Top computer. Finally, a device that doesn't compromise usability to preserve a form-factor made for dalliances in media consumption and web browsing!

I went into the Verizon store to exchange my defective G2 for a new one today, and it was hilarious to me that the sales associates on the floor all had tablets with hand grips on the back that they carried around do do all their data entry. It took my guy about 10 minutes to type in my information on the touch keyboard. It was literally just my address, name, phone number, and a few dropdown menus, and it would have taken less than a minute to enter on a real keyboard. Instead, I got to watch him poke one letter at a time, and the screen was unresponsive enough that it took him a few tries to change fields or select from a dropdown menu. Then, he did the same thing for my wife's phone. Horribly inefficient.

Pinch_sl said:

I went into the Verizon store to exchange my defective G2 for a new one today, and it was hilarious to me that the sales associates on the floor all had tablets with hand grips on the back that they carried around do do all their data entry. It took my guy about 10 minutes to type in my information on the touch keyboard. It was literally just my address, name, phone number, and a few dropdown menus, and it would have taken less than a minute to enter on a real keyboard. Instead, I got to watch him poke one letter at a time, and the screen was unresponsive enough that it took him a few tries to change fields or select from a dropdown menu. Then, he did the same thing for my wife's phone. Horribly inefficient.

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Not to mention the fact (at least my experience) they have 2-3 associates just fiddlefucking around while you wait. And their system has never been functional when I've gone in the whopping three times in the past 2 years so I end up waiting even more while it "resets".

Alkorin_sl said:

We use VDI at work for hundreds of people every day. It works fine. It took a great deal of time to engineer and the infrastructure isn't only there for VDI, though. It is an exceptional time saver for people who routinely fuck up their desktops. Got a problem? Log off and back on, problem is solved, move along and don't bother us with your silly shit. Your thin client died? Cool, here's a new $500 box that takes 5 minutes to configure and is completely location/requirement agnostic, and can be installed by a co-op student whose major is English Lit.

There is a time and place for everything, even VDI.

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Yup, as I mentioned the only real scenario where VDI makes sense is in a lab/school/kiosk/hospital environment where users aren't entitled to the term "MY computer". They basically sit their ass at whatever computer is available to them when they walk in, and that is basically their PC for that hour. There's no need or expectation for these users to have any static aspect of a personal desktop maintained (settings, wallpaper, etc), and in fact you don't want these maintained even if the user did. Hence this "disposable" computing environment that VDI provides is perfect for a classroom. Not to mention, if the student complains about the performance of their client, who gives a shit, they're just a student.

The problem is when this shit is rammed down the throats of any standard corporate environment and they struggle to try and make it as quick as a normal PC, and usually utterly fail. Believe it or not, a VDI environment with a remote data center will use approximately 3X the WAN bandwidth of standard client/server setup. A dual monitor VDI terminal playing video in a window can ALONE easily burst up to 15mbs of bandwidth usage. Then you've got your SAN performance to work about, and what scripts might be running at a set time that was once distributed amongst 300+ PC's, and is now bringing your SAN to its knees whenever they kick off. Keeping VDI running WELL is a constant game of whack a mole, and once innocuous network changes like a fucking timed script can have huge impact on all your users. I have a friend that works in an almost pure VDI environment and for two years now they've been chasing an issue where users screens "flicker black" a few times per day. Thousands of dollars in consultants later, more network captures than I can count, an iSCSI to FC migration, VMware view upgrade, and replacing thin clients and they still haven't managed to pin down the reason. But what's all that in comparison to the time IT saves in not needing to patch 150 workstations and being able to spin up a new desktop in 2 minutes?

To boil it all down, it's more expensive than a standard desktop environment (the $100/year MS VDA license alone kills it), performs worse, and is more difficult to maintain. The only time the benefits outweigh the drawbacks imho is when the efficiencies gained in administration are so valuable (like say in a school) make it so.

So I got a new macbook pro from work, as I'm not an OSX user the first thing I did was install Windows. I thought given win8.1 is supposed to handle DPI scaling with multiple monitors I thought it might work out better than Win7.

Overall the experience still sucks from when I ditched Win8 from a laptop a year ago. The first annoyances are more Microsoft related, there is no way to download a Windows 8.1 ISO despite having a valid Windows 8 license. I was forced to install Windows 8, then update to 8.1. Further, I've never had an issue activating WinXP, Vista or Win7 but Win8 I'm stuck calling a half-assed phone system that doesn't work properly where I'm transferred to some jackass and forced to read 70-numbers from the screen at which point I'm transferred back into the aforementioned shitty automated system which reads off another 70-numbers that I'm expected to type. There is no reason at all to have 70-numbers, are we counting atoms in the universe or attempting to uniquely identify a windows installation with an activation issue?

Once I got the installation going I discovered that the primary reason I chose to use Windows 8.1 doesn't actually work. Unchecking the box "use a single settings for all monitors" still only provides a single slider ranging fromSmallertoLarger. UsingSmallerresults in large print edition of Windows with clowny oversized text and icons on both 27" 2560x1440 monitors and microscopic text on the laptop screen (typical house keys are thicker than the height of fonts used on web pages).

Random issues:

• I use top taskbar and have since Windows 95 was released, periodically now I have two start buttons, one at the top and another that randomly appears floating in the bottom left corner of the screen.
• the start screen will not launch a second copy of an application, need two instances of paint? too bad go fuck yourself.
• Windows refuses to remember my wifi connection, despite selectingConnect automaticallyI need to manually initiate the connection and enter the password every boot
• Disabling hot corners doesn't appear to completely disable them, periodically while mousing through corners random shit occurs
• Interact with a start screen or metro application on a non-primary monitor, hitting the Windows key triggers the start screen on the primary monitor instead of dropping back to desktop (like it does with apps on the primary monitor)

With WindowsXP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 everything worked reasonably on a fresh install, but I've had to spend hours googling to find settings (super annoying when its controlled through metro as I can't see the bloody webpage at the same time w/o an external monitor attached),registry keys, andgroup policyto make the system barely usuable. Its like a return to the era of Windows 9x where you need to micromanage the bloody OS, if that was what I wanted I'd be using Linux as a desktop.


tldr - Windows 8.1 just as shitty as Windows 8 which took the title from WindowsME as the worst edition ever.

Fun side note, unclear to me whether this is Apples fault, Microsofts or Intels but thunderbolt displays must be attached at boot (or won't work) and prevents Windows from sleeping.

Alkorin_sl said:

So much QQ.

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No shit.

And as has been mentioned 500 times in this thread: Freakin' installClassic Shell/Classic StartthroughNinite. Literally takes 15 seconds, is free, and solves a lot of your QQ while being a better task bar anyways. If you're feeling REALLY adventurous you can right click the start menu on Classic Start/Shell and tune it to your liking. *gasp*

I just opened up two instances of Paint no problem. Metro fucking sucks for PC use, everyone knows that. Never had that wifi issue before with 8/8.1.

TLDR: Windows 8/8.1 + Classic Shell/Start = no more qq.

To set different DPI settings there is a chcekbox in that menu that opens up more detailed options. I have my TV and Monitor set at different DPIs and it works fine.

Luthair_sl said:

Random issues:[*] I use top taskbar and have since Windows 95 was released, periodically now I have two start buttons, one at the top and another that randomly appears floating in the bottom left corner of the screen.

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That is just the hot corner, it only appears when you move the mouse to the lower left corner of the screen. My girlfriend uses her taskbar the same way and I've never hear her complain about it (she even uses it there sometimes).

[*] the start screen will not launch a second copy of an application, need two instances of paint? too bad go fuck yourself.

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Sure it will.

[*] Windows refuses to remember my wifi connection, despite selectingConnect automaticallyI need to manually initiate the connection and enter the password every boot

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Hmm, haven't heard of this one, have you Googled it? Might be related to the network adapter drivers.

[*] Disabling hot corners doesn't appear to completely disable them, periodically while mousing through corners random shit occurs

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There are 3 hot corners, you can disable the 2 large ones (Charms and Application Switch) but not the start button.

[*] Interact with a start screen or metro application on a non-primary monitor, hitting the Windows key triggers the start screen on the primary monitor instead of dropping back to desktop (like it does with apps on the primary monitor)

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Not sure what you mean, if I have both monitors in the desktop and I hit the windows key it pops the start screen on my primary. If I have an app open and press the key it opens the start menu on that monitor, pressing it again closes the start menu and goes back to that application. If both are on desktop hitting the key a second time closes the screen on my primary.

Denaut_sl said:

To set different DPI settings there is a chcekbox in that menu that opens up more detailed options. I have my TV and Monitor set at different DPIs and it works fine.

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Side by side of what the checkbox does....


There are plenty of topics on the internet talking about it. I'd hazard your monitor/tv DPI+ size isn't sufficiently for it to club you over the head. You can't individually control the monitors and whatever its doing isn't working.

Denaut_sl said:

That is just the hot corner, it only appears when you move the mouse to the lower left corner of the screen. My girlfriend uses her taskbar the same way and I've never hear her complain about it (she even uses it there sometimes).

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The problem is it shouldn't. The start button is not there, the taskbar is not there so its randomly floating over application elements. Its also inconsistent sometimes its not there when mousing into the corner /shrug.

Denaut_sl said:

Sure it will.

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Thats fucking absurd. Requiring a context menu to trigger another instance deviating from all previous versions, isn't this a launchernotthe app switcher....

Denaut_sl said:

There are 3 hot corners, you can disable the 2 large ones (Charms and Application Switch) but not the start button.

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Despite the charms being disabled it still triggers via some motion around the bottom right hand corner of the screen. (All monitors in fact, so if I'm mousing from primary to secondary or secondary to tertiary random shit flies out, to my knowledge I disabled gestures)

Denaut_sl said:

Not sure what you mean, if I have both monitors in the desktop and I hit the windows key it pops the start screen on my primary. If I have an app open and press the key it opens the start menu on that monitor, pressing it again closes the start menu and goes back to that application. If both are on desktop hitting the key a second time closes the screen on my primary.

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/shrug doesn't work that way for me.


Another two stupid things I discovered:
- Centered window titles
- detach laptop from screens, reconnect and every application/dialog will open first on the laptop screen which is not the primary.