Pointless and/or Tablet-centric Appearance Changes

[Aggie]

Stinking browser....  my startup screen (already geared for touchscreens) has morphed on me.  Nothing difficult to adjust to; but the little page-jump items have gone from a 3 x 3 grid to 2 x 8, and from square-cornered to round-cornered tablet-shaped lozenges.

I wish these almighty tech gods would figure out that there are multiple viewing platforms still out there, and also realize that some users like appearances to keep static; it'd be nice to be able to download a little add-on that would allow one to skin a current browser version with previous versions. In this case, I don't have a real preference between the two layouts, but am irked by the fact that it just suddenly changed, and that it's just assumed that my brain will re-wire in a couple of days (which it will).

Ditto for webmail platforms, and social media platforms.  I suppose it's a lot of needless programming, but I hate the forced-change aspect of continual upgrades.

[The Meromorph]

A-yuh...

[Griffin NoName]

So do I. Especially when it adds nothing new from the user perspective.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Hear! Hear!

My dad's aging PC died-- the one he has connected to the living room TV.   So he wanted a new one-- alas-- the only ones available have Windoze 8. 

I thought-- "how bad could it be, really?"

..... Oh.

..my...

..... effing ... GOD! 

... "bad" cannot possibly describe the user-hell I went through to get the damn thing back to what Dad was used to (XP).

What the EFF, Microsquish?   Taking your cues from CrApple, now?  Where you change stuff just because?   No regards at **all** to the end-users? 

Idiots. 

[Griffin NoName]

I need a new laptop. I could get one with Windows 7 Professional 64-bit - there are still quite a few to choose from here. But I don't really want to invest in an old system and then have to upgrade (op.sys. = lazy re-installing everything) )so I'm waiting til Wonders 10 comes out next year (dunno when, but later than 1st quarter apparently). I just hope my laptop doesn't burn out before then.

No way would I ever ever have Winoze 8.

I'm beginning to see people who need laptop/desktop functionality as completely different from people who just need a tablet. One's a toy.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Windows 8 follows M$ proud tradition* of idiotic changes requested by marketing implemented in products that really don't work, which is why you have to use the next version when reality bites them in the @$$.

Windows 8.1 may still have the idiotic tiles but it goes directly to the desktop now and you can install a classic start menu making it a usable computer once again. The only problem with 8.1 is that to get the [free] update you must sign in with a M$ account and the system will log you in as that from that point on. Perhaps a new computer will come with 8.1 already installed and you can still use a local account but it is a problem moving from 8 to 8.1.

Once with the classic shell the system is quite usable even if it still has the hot areas showing up from time to time (and if you take the time you can configure the stupid tiles for the submormal low tech users provided they have a touchscreen**).

*you know 3.0, 95, Me, Vista and now 8

**not that you can't use them with a mouse, but really, what is the bloody point of the tiles if you can actually use a mouse? 

[Griffin NoName]

Yes, that all sounds as bad as I thought it was. Mind you, although Windoze 10 is supposed to be better, until it is out, who knows. I may be waiting for something equally bad.

[Aggie]

10? Was 9 so dismal they declined to release it?

It seems like Windows is bearable about every other release...  i.e. XP and 7 vs Vista and 8.  Does going straight from 8.x to 10 mean another stinker in the making?

I'm beginning to see people who need laptop/desktop functionality as completely different from people who just need a tablet. One's a toy.

I suppose tablets will move into mainstream computing functionality soon enough, at least in terms of raw power, but the interface isn't set up IMHO for serious work.  Touchscreens are fun to play with (I assume, I am still completely inept in actually handling them), but for precision entry and ergonomics the old keyboard and peripheral pointer device still seems better to me. A decent neural interface would make a screen-only device a little better, but that will be a couple of years still, I think.

It says something about discretionary spending and the availability of consumer credit that the main driver for the advance of personal technology is no longer business (the traditional foundation for OS and hardware) but personal entertainment and distracting toddlers.  One hears a lot about people being deep in debt and having much less time for what's important (family, meals, etc) these days, but I'm curious to know what the actual numbers (dollars spent and hours available) would be if the current crop of communication/entertainment technology was subtracted from the picture.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

It's easy to demonize technology, before gadgets it was TV and before radio. Besides you can't remove that tech without removing it's brothers and sisters everywhere else.

Money spent goes to the same discretionary spending that goes to everything, be it a margaritaville machine, alloy wheels or a car stereo, fashion clothing, etc.

If you are advocating going back to an agrarian society I recommend Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature for a reality check.

[Griffin NoName]

...........One hears a lot about people being deep in debt and having much less time for what's important (family, meals, etc) these days, but I'm curious to know what the actual numbers (dollars spent and hours available) would be if the current crop of communication/entertainment technology was subtracted from the picture.

It deeply irritates me that my sister has time to hang out on FB (every day) when she tells me she is too busy to phone me (by email of about two sentences). We never speak, she just "likes" some of the stuff I post like pictures of my grandchildren. My other sister is too busy with the church (? she is Jewish....) and morris dancing to ever phone me either. Basically I've had to give up having sisters. I cannot work out what is actually wrong with them, but something clearly is.

I don't think virtual keyboards can ever be equal to real keyboards. How can anyone touch type on a virtual one? I have to use a few (smartphone etc), and the number of times I get the wrong letter because my fingers are too big for the size of the letters displayed drives me nuts. Similarly touch screens quite often don't respond to my touch. It's not that I'm new to it, some of them I've used for quite a while, they just seem to be very fussy about what features one's touch actually embodies. I think this "new" technology has quite some distance to go before I will consider it as an improvement because using it is slow compared to the old interface.

[Aggie]

It's easy to demonize technology, before gadgets it was TV and before radio. Besides you can't remove that tech without removing it's brothers and sisters everywhere else.

Money spent goes to the same discretionary spending that goes to everything, be it a margaritaville machine, alloy wheels or a car stereo, fashion clothing, etc.

If you are advocating going back to an agrarian society I recommend Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature for a reality check.

I suppose that I'm not so much demonizing the technology as wondering why it seems to get an automatic free pass as a good thing, and ever more as taken for granted (if there's any real criticism of the system to be leveled, it would be at the credit aspects, and also the widespread move from purchase-oriented consumption to ongoing fee-for-service platforms). Conspicuous consumption has been with us for a very long time, and is unlikely to stop soon, so the financial side can't really be blamed on the devices, as you say. Television has been doing a pretty good job of keeping up with innovations, lately. We have moved to more of an individual-consumption pattern though; the image of the family clustered around the radio for entertainment looks pretty quaint and old-fashioned at this point.  We've become a society of individualists, although interestingly enough much of the time we spend alone seems to be in effort to connect with the other individualists around us.

However, I don't advocate a dialing-back of progress in a large way; society can do its own damned thing, and I'll do mine. 

[Griffin NoName]

Agreed. I'm not demonizing it. It's just arrived before it is a polished product(s). I'm not moving to something that is half as good as it should be, and which I don't need. I expect to purchase a tablet when it does more than show films better than laptops. I have a perfectly good TV, in fact 3, and 4 PVR's (I could upgrade dvd to blue ray I suppose) with On Demand etc., and I never go anywhere.

Purchase orientated? Don't get an iPad LoL. Always consider Open Source. My smart phone is becoming over-loaded with free apps I've downloaded. Paying is for suckers!! Mind, I am wondering whether to use M%S Word or OpenOffice when I buy a new laptop.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

I've had some sort of Android tablet for going on 3 years now.  All were 9" or bigger.  If you go back to 7" size?  It's been even longer-- I got one of the ill fated Dell Streaks-- but I loved it nonetheless.

I've had an Android smart phone for even longer-- I was an early adopter with the G1.   I now have a venerable Samsung S3, which is about 2 or 3 iterations less than cutting edge--but it Just Works for what I use it for, so I haven't replaced it.  It's at least running the latest Android, so there's that.

I do some serious work with each device (phone/tablet).   My current tablet is another Samsung, 10.1 2014 Note, which is amazing.  The screen is superior in quality and resolution than a color page from National Geographic.  Seriously, it is that good (far better than the ipads).  I forget how many processors it sports-- it's not important to me.   It's battery life is good-- lasts me all day 9.5 of 10 times, good enough.  For the rare times it konks out?  I have a monster recharger:  a LiIon battery pack that re-ups either my phone or my tab in about 20 mins or so-- at least twice in a deliberate run-it-down test.   And since the battery pack is portable?  I can keep going, if I need to.

I also have a more modest Samsung tab, the Tab 3 7".   It's as modest a Samsung tab as I could find, and pretty much all I use it for is to host music, either blue tooth or via earphone cable.  It does sport very modest speakers, but they are too quiet for what I need, so I either bluetooth to the vehicle's radio, or cable to a worksite speaker set (a little Milwakee radio that shares my tool's LiIon batteries.  Nice.  Sounds quite good for what it is too).

I was going to just get an android, phone-sized music player to replace my now useless iPod Classic, but when I went shopping?  The 7" tablet was actually cheaper than phone-sized player-only devices, and it sports a micro SD slot too (most of the phone sized players did not).  I now have a lovely 64gig card in there, which holds all my music and as many audio books and podcasts as I want.  With room to spare (my music is only a modest 30gigs). 

I love not having to choose which music to bring with, ahead of time.

Same goes for my big 10" tablet-- I have all my ebooks on it too-- in a massive 128g micro card (music too, but that's mostly as a backup).

I love not having to choose beforehand.

But-- I do serious work with this beast too-- I have a Heat Load calculator in there.  Let's me do heating and cooling analysis on a building, to properly select the correct size.  Instead of guessing as so many do (and usually guess *wrong*... meh). 

I had purchased a bluetooth physical keyboard, but I find the 10" with it's stylus, the virtual keyboard is nearly as fast, and a darn sight more handy.  I've gotten quite good at click-clicking my way around that virtual 'board.  And at 10", there's plenty of room.  The stylus makes for pin-point accuracy--even backspacing or middle-of-word edits (really really hard to do with just your finger...)

I'll never go back, willingly, to a Traditional Laptop for portable work.   My desktop?  Is a box-- again?  I'll not willingly trade the repairability/expandability of a box over a fixed-in-place laptop. 

Yes-- I have an aging Windoze laptop-- but I seldom use the thing. It's running XP, I think-- not worth bothering with to either upgrade, or even update.  I just don't use it.   I really should have sold it, when it still had modest value.  Oh well.

[Aggie]

I was thinking office work in particular (data entry, report writing, etc), but you have a point that 'work' does not always mean sitting at a desk when it comes to requiring technological solutions.  

Back in the mid-2000s, the company I was with could have used a tablet for the high-volume environmental audits we routinely performed.  I managed to put together a report generator on Microsoft Access that allowed us to produce dozens of reports automatically once the data was entered, but to record it in the field we actually had to write it on dead trees and take photos with a camera.  Smartphones were becoming mandatory as I left that line of work, and had they been a little more technologically advanced (especially with regards to camera resolution, GPS and accelerometer/gyroscope technology) I probably would have bought one circa 2008 for field work. A tablet would have probably worked just fine instead of a laptop for common field duties (viewing documents, etc).

I use a laptop full time, as I only need / can afford one PC at the moment, but would switch back to a desktop if I was doing full-time desk work and needed a work machine.  The laptop's good for music and around-the-house use.

IMHO, the convenience factor of smartphones and tablets is exactly what makes them dangerous as a cultural force.  Much too easy to carry with you, although I still protest the size of smartphones in the context of having to carry the thing around in one's front jean pocket (actually a big reason why I stick to a crappy flip phone).

[Griffin NoName]

My smartphone is not much bigger than my old flip phone. In reviews it was said to have a screen that was too small, but for the things I use it for that isn't an issue.