10 amazingly stupid things the 'experts' will try to tell you about Microsoft: from ZD-Net

bsayegh

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I like the article and agree with a lot of the points, but there are some things that I don't entirely agree with.

Internet Explorer isn't buggy: I have been on IE 11 since it came out for Windows 7. I think it is an amazing browser, but I have two major bones to pick with it. The first, which I don't really think is an issue with the browser so much as the plugin, is that Flash runs terribly on it. If you go to a flash-intensive site like ESPN, a lot of times it will become a clunky mess just trying to load a banner ad. I don't necessarily think this is because of IE, but it is a big pain in the but when using IE.

The second thing is browsing Youtube. I don't know what the problem is here. A lot of times when I load a video on youtube, I cant use my browser history correctly. If I click back, it takes me down to the comment section. If I click back again, it takes me two steps back in my history. Like if I had watched two videos and now im watching the third one, when I click back it takes me back to video 1.

I have had a suspicion that Google does this intentionally to make people use Chrome.

The last issue I have is that IE 11's developer tools, while certainly more advanced than it was in previous versions, is really slow. For all of the nifty functionality it offers, it takes a lot longer to load. With IE 10, for instance, I hit F12 and it would automatically load the dev tool in another window. It was very quick. With IE 11, it takes a few seconds to load. It isn't the end of the world, but I miss the snappiness of the older version.

Office Sucks: I agree that office is an amazing suite of products. Most problems that I have seen people having stem from using the wrong tool for the job. I have seen people trying to build complex menus and tables using Word, which is possible, but its a pain in the ****. Then they curse MS. My only problem with the article is that they say that these are issues that "experts" have with office, but the first paragraph in that section is about how the people who have problems with office aren't experts. That's not a problem with MS, its just an issue with the article=)

Windows RT is going away: The article suggests that RT is a part of a much bigger picture, so it wont be going anyway. Is it really not? I don't feel like RT products are cheaper enough than Pro to justify the purchase. If you can buy a full x86 tablet/hybrid for a few hundred more, why wouldn't you? I believe that RT will exist in some capacity, but I cant imagine they will continue to attempt to sell it as a separate OS on dedicated devices.

Otherwise I agree with the article. MS has been very open with their code lately. They have been taking a lot of their developer's independent experiments, like the Web API, and releasing them in to the wild with source code included.

I agree that WP isn't going anywhere, though I do think it needs to get where it is going faster than it has so far.

Xbox is the ONLY MS brand that is considered "cool", other than gaming rigs. They aren't going to break it off as a separate brand. They need their logo ALL OVER that thing.

I guess my gripes weren't as extensive as I was thinking they might be when I started typing this=)
 

Citizen X

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I know several small business owners who us RT tablets. None of them seem to have issues with them. I got my dad the Lumia 2520. Interestingly he happily uses IE, MS Office with Outlook, a full size keyboard and mouse, and a full size monitor with it... and he has never even noticed it has Windows RT on it. The fact of the matter is as long as he can access the websites he uses and has MS Office that covers everything he would do with a tablet. The guy has a job. He doesn't sit around all day playing Words with Friends. Frankly when I got the 2520 and so how it could even be used as a media center PC I was jealous. I wish it came with a nano sim card so I could have gotten one and used my 1520 SIM card with it.

Windows RT is going away: The article suggests that RT is a part of a much bigger picture, so it wont be going anyway. Is it really not? I don't feel like RT products are cheaper enough than Pro to justify the purchase. If you can buy a full x86 tablet/hybrid for a few hundred more, why wouldn't you?

Have you used the Lumia 2520? In the US there are no full windows tablets that give you 10.1", micro HDMI, micro USB 3, free battery/keyboard/case, Office including outlook, LTE, great battery life, and all for $200 plus $10-$15 a month for data.

RT=secure, long battery life, and MS Office with Outlook.
 
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bsayegh

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I know several small business owners who us RT tablets. None of them seem to have issues with them. I got my dad the Lumia 2520. Interestingly he happily uses IE, MS Office with Outlook, a full size keyboard and mouse, and a full size monitor with it... and he has never even noticed it has Windows RT on it. The fact of the matter is as long as he can access the websites he uses and has MS Office that covers everything he would do with a tablet. The guy has a job. He doesn't sit around all day playing Words with Friends. Frankly when I got the 2520 and so how it could even be used as a media center PC I was jealous. I wish it came with a nano sim card so I could have gotten one and used my 1520 SIM card with it.



Have you used the Lumia 2520? In the US there are no full windows tablets that give you 10.1", micro HDMI, micro USB 3, free battery/keyboard/case, Office including outlook, LTE, great battery life, and all for $200 plus $10-$15 a month for data.

RT=secure, long battery life, and MS Office with Outlook.

So yeah, full disclosure, I have only really used a Surface RT at Best Buy a couple of times, so I cant really say that I am the best to comment on the issue. I may be wrong about the need for RT right now, but what about the future? It is only a matter of time before MS or some other OEM can come up with a compact design for a Pro tablet that includes all of the features listed. Of course those wont be $200, probably closer to $1100, so I temporarily retract my RT statement=)
 

Citizen X

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So yeah, full disclosure, I have only really used a Surface RT at Best Buy a couple of times, so I cant really say that I am the best to comment on the issue. I may be wrong about the need for RT right now, but what about the future? It is only a matter of time before MS or some other OEM can come up with a compact design for a Pro tablet that includes all of the features listed. Of course those wont be $200, probably closer to $1100, so I temporarily retract my RT statement=)

I have no idea. I am not an industry insider. I mean VHS beat Beta. I bought two tablets within a couple of weeks. One was the Dell Venue 8 Pro and one was the Lumia 2520. They both have their pros and cons. While the Dell Venue 8 Pro was more compact and ran full Windows the 2520 blew it away as far as functionality. Also I was really nervous about giving my mom the Dell Venue 8 Pro with full Windows. I honestly would have preferred RT for security purposes. My Dad's RT tablet actually has more software on it because it has Outlook. I look at my own computing habits and other than MS Office, Firefox, and vlc most of the other stuff I use is Adobe Creative Suite stuff such as Photoshop and Premier. I wouldn't use those on a tablet. My parents use office, email, and surf the web. RT is fine for them.

And yes as tech marches on I can see RT being squeezed out. Although the secureness of the OS still remains an attractive feature. I love windows because you have so many programs and ways to customize it. But on a tablet I kind of like RT because it is so secure.
 

a5cent

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The point behind Windows RT is the WinRT framework.

And, this is what a lot of people refuse to understand.

Well, I'm going to call it the WinRT API, not framework, but yeah, that can be confusing too. I suspect what trips many up is the fact that, despite its name, the WinRT API is not at all specific to Windows RT. It is also part of normal Windows, and ever larger chunks of it will also be coming to WP8.1 as it evolves (WP8.1 will add the bits from WinRT's UI stack). Basically, if an OS can run store apps, then it includes some form of WinRT.
 

Jazmac

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When I saw "ZD-Net", I was hoping you were not talking about that Microsoft hater James Kendrick. If there is anyone more technically dishonest out there than James Kendrick, I haven't read them yet.
 

Michael Alan Goff

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Whoa... hate Office? I've never heard that. I mean the price complaints sure, but I've never heard any base complaints on the program itself.

Otherwise... had a blast reading this article. I still need to make the switch from Chrome this summer. IE11 has proven to be good enough for me, but a bit of a change in the learning curve.

Yeah, I read all the time that everyone is moving to OpenOffice or LibreOffice or iWork. Anything to say that Microsoft's Office program is being phased out.

Thank you for the article. I liked it, except for #10 about Windows RT, which I think confuses things even more than they already are.

Ed Bot claimed:



I'm not aware of anyone who mistook that to mean Windows RT is dead. The confusion comes from entirely different sources. One often whispered rumour was how Windows Phone is expected to expand in features and functionality to eventually include many/most of Windows RT features, which is not the same as what Ed Bot said, but probably what he meant. The most important clue was provided by Julie Larson Green when she stated:



I'd say it's technically correct to claim Windows RT is dead (or at least not going anywhere). With that I'm referring specifically to that piece of software that runs on todays ARM based Windows tablets. However, from a consumers point of view, that fact isn't really relevant. By the time Windows RT is buried, Windows Phone will have assimilated most (if not all) of Windows RT's features, it will look and function very similarly, and it will run on tablets as well as phones. BTW: that is also when we will finally get our unified app market.

The most important part about any software are not the individual lines of code, but the thoughts and concepts that went into designing it. Those parts of Windows RT will be alive and well and better than ever.

I like the article and agree with a lot of the points, but there are some things that I don't entirely agree with.

Internet Explorer isn't buggy: I have been on IE 11 since it came out for Windows 7. I think it is an amazing browser, but I have two major bones to pick with it. The first, which I don't really think is an issue with the browser so much as the plugin, is that Flash runs terribly on it. If you go to a flash-intensive site like ESPN, a lot of times it will become a clunky mess just trying to load a banner ad. I don't necessarily think this is because of IE, but it is a big pain in the but when using IE.

The second thing is browsing Youtube. I don't know what the problem is here. A lot of times when I load a video on youtube, I cant use my browser history correctly. If I click back, it takes me down to the comment section. If I click back again, it takes me two steps back in my history. Like if I had watched two videos and now im watching the third one, when I click back it takes me back to video 1.

I have had a suspicion that Google does this intentionally to make people use Chrome.

The last issue I have is that IE 11's developer tools, while certainly more advanced than it was in previous versions, is really slow. For all of the nifty functionality it offers, it takes a lot longer to load. With IE 10, for instance, I hit F12 and it would automatically load the dev tool in another window. It was very quick. With IE 11, it takes a few seconds to load. It isn't the end of the world, but I miss the snappiness of the older version.

Office Sucks: I agree that office is an amazing suite of products. Most problems that I have seen people having stem from using the wrong tool for the job. I have seen people trying to build complex menus and tables using Word, which is possible, but its a pain in the ****. Then they curse MS. My only problem with the article is that they say that these are issues that "experts" have with office, but the first paragraph in that section is about how the people who have problems with office aren't experts. That's not a problem with MS, its just an issue with the article=)

Windows RT is going away: The article suggests that RT is a part of a much bigger picture, so it wont be going anyway. Is it really not? I don't feel like RT products are cheaper enough than Pro to justify the purchase. If you can buy a full x86 tablet/hybrid for a few hundred more, why wouldn't you? I believe that RT will exist in some capacity, but I cant imagine they will continue to attempt to sell it as a separate OS on dedicated devices.

Otherwise I agree with the article. MS has been very open with their code lately. They have been taking a lot of their developer's independent experiments, like the Web API, and releasing them in to the wild with source code included.

I agree that WP isn't going anywhere, though I do think it needs to get where it is going faster than it has so far.

Xbox is the ONLY MS brand that is considered "cool", other than gaming rigs. They aren't going to break it off as a separate brand. They need their logo ALL OVER that thing.

I guess my gripes weren't as extensive as I was thinking they might be when I started typing this=)

I'm going to answer both of these at the same time. Windows RT isn't going to die, it is going to be merged into and become the basis for Windows on Phones as well. How do I know this? They're talking about "not having three operating systems" and it is much easier to remove features for phones than it is to add features to Windows Phones to catch up to Windows RT. Microsoft isn't stupid.

Yeah, he's a hater too. zd-net seems to breed them. But I think Kendrick got him beat.

At least Kendrick didn't start off a Linux reporter. SJVN supposedly is, and that's what makes him seem more hateful.
 

a5cent

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Windows RT isn't going to die, it is going to be merged into and become the basis for Windows on Phones as well. How do I know this? They're talking about "not having three operating systems" and it is much easier to remove features for phones than it is to add features to Windows Phones to catch up to Windows RT. Microsoft isn't stupid.

Yes, MS is not stupid. That we agree on ;-)

However, the opposite of that claim, as it relates to WP/RT, is true. It was even stated in a recent article on this site, that it is far easier to add to an OS, than it is to remove from one. This is true of any runtime environment, as removing any feature, even the smallest insignificant little thing, is very likely to break the software that runs on top of that environment. That makes it very hard, often impossible, to remove things, at least not without compromising compatibility, which is usually deemed unacceptable.

The thing is, not all the concepts in RT, which are partly leftovers from a two decades old Windows, will end up in MS' mobile OS. Particularly the security model will more closely reflect WP's, meaning things would have to be removed from RT. As a result, MS will end up porting features from RT over into WP. Then, the bits we currently call Windows RT, will die.

This is what MS calls merging, which isn't necessarily wrong, and also has the added benefit of being politically more acceptable than the more detailed description, where one OS goes away.

But just to be clear, this won't matter much to consumers. It is of more importance to MS and devs.
 

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