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This topic comprises 4 pages: 1 2 3 4
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Author
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Topic: Windows 10 ?
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
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Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 06-03-2015 06:34 PM
Microsoft are clearly anxious to retire earlier versions of Windows ASAP and rid themselves of the ongoing cost of supporting them. If they weren't, they wouldn't be offering 10 as a free upgrade and undertaking to support it for the lifetime of any device it's (legally) installed on.
If they really wanted to earn some kudos, they'd extend the offer back to Vista and XP as well. Very few people would be likely to want to take that offer up, because there aren't many PCs out there that are of a good enough hardware spec to run 10, have owners who know how to install an OS update and are motivated to do so, but currently have XP or Vista on them. So that gesture wouldn't cost them much, it would be very good PR and it would enable them to retire (as in, cease supporting) every pre-10 version of Windows within a year or two of release, assuming that 10 is another XP or 7, and not another Vista or 8.0.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
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Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 06-04-2015 09:38 AM
quote: Mike Blakesley I think the problem is more that computers and software are so capable now that it's impossible for them to put in new features that mean anything because the software already does everything imaginable.
When you dig into particular applications there are always new improvements that can be made. I have a list of things I'd like to see incorporated into Adobe Illustrator, CorelDRAW and Adobe Photoshop. Sometimes the development team will listen to feature requests.
If there isn't anything that can be improved or added in terms of features the development team can always go back and make the application run better and faster. Unfortunately few companies bother with that even though "better & faster" is a pretty easy thing to sell.
quote: Mike Blakesley I remember when Pagemaker went from 5.0 to 7.0 sometime in the 90s. They added things like the ability to rotate text, floating palettes and other real new features. I'm still using that program today if I want to create a simple sign or something.
At one point Adobe was selling full versions of PageMaker 7.0 for only $99 to registered Illustrator & Photoshop users as a competitive side-grade. It did little to chip away at the market share of Quark Xpress at that time. Adobe may have already been at work on InDesign anyway.
BTW, are you running PageMaker 7.0 on a Win XP PC? I'd be surprised if you were able to get it to run on a newer version of Windows. Even older versions of InDesign have problems running under Vista, Win 7 or 8.
quote: You might want to look at Scribus, which is also available for Windows. I've been using it for years to create ads and whatnot, and friends of mine lay out a weekly newspaper with it.
Scribus, like most open source graphics programs, is good for casual use, but lacks a number of features to make it productive in a professional graphics production environment.
From what I can tell Scribus still isn't a fully OpenType-aware application. Neither is Inkscape for that matter. Most new OpenType fonts, especially ones that are commercially sold, offer at least some OTF-specific features, like ligatures, context sensitive alternate characters, swashes, etc. I have a few fonts that are staggering in their OTF prowess, such as Bookmania, Mark Simonson's revamping of the classic Bookman type family. Each weight in this type family has over 3000 glyphs.
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
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Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 06-04-2015 11:02 AM
quote: Bobby Henderson Unfortunately Microsoft has to make computer manufacturers happy...
Therein lies the issue. Windows is designed to be an operating system that will run on a huge array of hardware setups. If you add up all the possible motherboard/card/peripheral combinations, it probably goes into millions of individual configurations. Windows has got to work reasonably reliably with all of them for it to be a credible platform.
Apple took the easy route, by only allowing their OS to be used with their own hardware, and most Linux distributions don't have the reputation issue that Microsoft does, because they are given away to end users (hence you can't really complain if it's glitchy on your specific hardware setup). Microsoft, however, is sold and proprietary, and so the end customer (even if they bought Windows involuntarily, bundled with hardware and pre-installed) has a contractual right to expect it to work. Furthermore, it's got to be viable for a "non-geek" user to work with.
So, given the software engineering challenge Microsoft set themselves, I sometimes think they get a bit of a bad press. There are negative side effects of their business model, the ever increasing hardware spec of new versions (as Bobby points out, probably to appease the hardware giants) and the crapware that typically comes on bundled Windows images being probably the two biggest. But Microsoft is trying to avoid going down the "You want my software? You have to buy my hardware as well, pal!" route, which I appreciate.
In response to Ken, Windows 8.0 was a total disaster, but 8.1 was a vast improvement that went out with a reputational millstone around its neck. I've got 8.1 on my 2007-build home PC, and although I have a slight preference for the 7 desktop, there are good things about 8.1, e.g. its software RAID function, which on my machine (running a RAID of five 4TB drives) is just as fast and reliable as the 3Com hardware RAID card I was using previously. And furthermore, there's no risk of data loss if your RAID card goes south and you can't find a replacement of the same model.
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