Windows 8.1’s user-hostile backup story
edandersen.com
edandersen.com
I have given 8 a shot. You know what I've decided? That Microsoft's ideas on UI design are about as good as their ideas on advertising (i.e. head-scratching at best and migrane inducing at worst)
I'm serious. Whoever the genius was that decided that swipes on a laptop trackpad should behave the same way as on a tablet (in this case, switching applications) should be shot, and the corpse fired. Yes, I know this can be disabled. The fact that it's on, and the default, is the problem. (If you're wondering what the problem is, it's that there's no difference from a "swipe" gesture and just moving your mouse from left to right across the pad)
Same with the whole start screen business which has been discussed ad nauseum elsewhere. Suffice to say, its information density is low, its disruption to whatever you're doing is high.
And then there's this Microsoft account malarky that they shove down your throat at every other turn. I 'm already using an OS which more likely than not has backdoors for the TLAs, made by a company that admits they give new vulnerabilities to said TLAs before fixing them. I am sure as HELL not going to make logging onto my system reliant on some random cloud service!
Whatever tangible benefits 8 has over 7 do not at this point tilt the cost/benefit ratio enough in that direction for me to shell out the roughly ~$1000 it would cost to up(down?)grade my 7 enterprise infrastructure.
*ed
I really wish you'd get a real account that isn't dead. It's impossible to respond to you.
Yes, they should be. Then, you should uninstall the custom trackpad driver that does that, because that's not a built-in gesture. That was probably added by Synaptic, or the OEM of your laptop, and you should disable the gesture and probably let the OEM know that including that gesture was insane.
The rest of your complaints are, well, I think they're overstated, but I can't argue with how using the OS "feels" to someone. If you think it feels poorly done, me telling you your feelings are wrong is not going to get us anywhere. But at least factually, you should know that some of your assertions might be rooted in what OEMs have done to add crap to Windows 8.
How many people are going to be able to: 1)diagnose the problem(the driver) 2) figure out they need a new driver 3) find a driver for the bundled hardware that will work the way they want(assuming it exists) 4) uninstall the bundled driver 5) install the new one
If something isn't easily fixable for 99% of computer users its broken because they don't even know where to start.
The same thing is wrong with the backup solutions microsoft has. They are all either 1) are too heavy weight and brittle or 2) do nothing useful. People aren't going to take the time to go install third party full system backup software when it isn't clear it will even work for them and they don't know how it will work when they need to recover something. It is just another thing they have to manage on their computer.
Compare that to Time Machine. It usually just works, and when it doesn't it is better than nothing. Plus people understand exactly how it works. Lost something? Go Star Wars! Simple and effective.
As it is, the best way for users to buy a device with a Microsoft OS is probably the Microsoft Store, because they forbid those same customizations.
This is a built-in Win8 feature, not a custom driver feature. The gesture recognition is quite decent though, so I've never had these gestures activate accidentally.
its not even a new os launch... and you still cant star a download or compile, close you laptop and move to another cubicle.
have to walk around with the damn screen on.
and not even complaining about defaults. there is no way to turn that sleep on closed lid feature.
and a few decades to have second mouse click...
Are you even trying? The first google result I clicked on has a way to do it: http://osxdaily.com/2012/02/10/run-macbook-with-lid-closed-w...
(And what does "star a download" mean?)
anyway, im just flamming here. thankfully im not subject to either of those.
I'll stick to a local account per machine thanks very much. Would rather not have MS holding the keys on whether I can logon to my own machine or not, nor give them free big data for onselling to marketers.
Ike. That's horrible. Who in the world thought that hiding a standard user account would be a good idea?
I think I'm fairly computer savvy, but had I not searched on how to bypass this, I probably would have set up an MS account. For "normal" people, I'd say this will be extremely effective at increasing their "conversion" to Microsoft Accounts.
It's extremely hostile.
[1] http://news.softpedia.com/news/Windows-8-1-Preview-Won-t-Sup... (This isn't the article I read back then, but it's the first thing I found when I just searched.)
So it's still there but you have to really look for it.
you click create account, then select local account at the bottom.
Enterprise edition also doesn't prompt for a Microsoft account.
(and under most cases during installing an OS, the internet is not avaliable)
I've done this on two network connected physical machines and a VM.
Like i said this is all FUD from emotional people who just want upvotes for shitting on Microsoft for not noticing the damn option.
For reference, it's documented as well.
Here is a blog describing how to get around it for preview but he describes exactly my experience for RTM. http://www.infobyte.hr/blog/337/windows-8-1-preview-how-to-i...
note: I'm talking about the install process. not in the OS UI after install.
Sounds like something Douglas Adams wrote. It is not _total_ FUD, it's confusing, and it's obvious Microsoft wants to hide that option and force most users into using an MS Account.
Edit: Oh, then if you create a new account, again, way at the bottom, in low-contrast text, is "Sign in without a Microsoft account (not recommended)". Clicking that takes you to a screen full of text, telling you how MS accounts are better. The default selection on that page is "Microsoft account". You must again click Local account to actually continue.
What user data has microsoft ever sold to anyone? Maybe they have.. I just dont recall any specific instance which didn't turn out to be clickbait FUD.
At install, all options on this screen were defaulted to on http://imgur.com/RP4UNhG Note the "Let apps use my Advertising ID for experiences across apps" option. Also let apps access "other account info"...what info is that?
Windows 8.1 Smart Search now renders Bing ads into the search results - so ads brought onto your desktop - not just in the browser experience http://www.pcworld.com/article/2043518/windows-8-1-smart-sea...
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/windows-8-1-pri...
Windows Search also sends an identifier to provide personalized search results based on your interactions withBing and other Microsoft products and services.
If you sign in to Windows with aMicrosoft account, the identifier will be associated with your Microsoft account.
If you allow Windows Search to use your location, the physical location of your device as provided by the Windows Location Platform will be sent to Microsoft as a part of each search request. Alternatively, we may attempt to derive your approximate physical location based on your IP address.
If you choose to use Windows Search to get web search results, we use the search term you have provided, your local and online search history, information associated with yourMicrosoft account, and the location of your device to provide relevant search suggestions, personalized search results, and personalized experiences in other Microsoft products and services
You can also clear your search history and turn off personalized search results for WindowsSearch in Search in Search & apps in PC settings. This clears your local search history and instructs Microsoft not to use any previously collected search history stored byBing that’s used to personalize your WindowsSearch experience. It does not delete information that is used by Microsoft in aggregate to improve search results and otherMicrosoft experiences. That information is retained and anonymized
So of course they screwed up the next version so bad that all the OEMs dropped their products that were based on it and Microsoft killed the product.
Then Win7 came and I started using the backup option there. But even with the full drive image I didn't quite trust it, so I also made intermittent backups using Macrium Reflect which creates a low level image of each partition. So then came the day when my wife chose the "recover my pc" from the boot menu and wiped everything. "No problem!" I thought, I will just Google how to restore a full system image to bare metal. Imagine my shock to discover that this is not a feature of Windows backup. Unless you make a "recovery disk" using a CD (this computer did not have a CD drive), you cannot reinstall a full system image!? So I installed from the Macrium partition image and it delightfully brought back our system in a matter of minutes.
I've never been able to work out if this consistent incompetence is by design (to keep the industry of alternative backup solutions alive and avoid accusations of monoply / antitrust) or if they have some strategic or tactical reason to make sure noboby on windows manages to back up their computers (hey, 20% of all users who corrupt their hard drive just buy a new computer!)
Whatever the reason, it is exacty this sort of thing that is driving regular consumers away from Windows and into the arms of Apple. I hope MS figures it out, because I am not fond of Apple either.
Our software provides both local and cloud-based backup. If you only need local backup to an external, you can sign up for a free KeepVault trial account and use the local backup forever. KeepVault Pro also provides versioning, so a file corruption or deletion isn't going to wipe your backups.
KeepVault backups are also fully encrypted end-to-end and incremental.
I wrote about it in some detail previously:
Loads more listed here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_features_removed_in_Win...
> The problem is that they are actively removing excellent features from 7.
... is a little ambiguous in reply to a comment saying they will stay on 7.
> The Aero Glass theme is replaced by a new theme with a flatter visual appearance in line with the Metro design language. Aside from the taskbar, the new theme uses fewer transparency effects than the previous Glass theme.
In other words, unattractive, resource-intensive, usability damaging transparency effects are out and simple, efficient, usable flat design is in.
Subjective, compared to what, subjective
> simple, efficient, usable flat design is in.
subjective, subjective, subjective.
I don't know where this utterly moronic "flatten ALL THE THINGS" design meme comes from, but I wish it would die in a fire.
Flat UI, at least Microsoft's implementation of it, has a great deal of fail about it. It's hard to tell what's clickable and what's not, things are not organized in a logical or easy to reach manner, and on and on.
Have a look at this if you have about 20 minutes to spare. Someone goes into a great deal of depth on the 8 UX: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTYet-qf1jo
The biggest obstacle that tech journalist faced was his own perceptions on how Windows should work.
You mean, like it's worked for the last 10+ years? You don't jettison a decade of muscle memory and UI conventions on a whim. At least with 3.1 -> 95 it was more or less obvious that the changes were a step forward.
With their behavior in 8, the desktop UX, where real people are getting real work done, is made a second class citizen to the touch UX, which is primarily consumption oriented.
I think that, behind all the aesthetic complaints, is where a lot of the animus comes from.
- The interface is lying. Last time I had 'system image' checkbox enabled and it only kept the totally useless image of the last backup, probably only a few hours back in the backup itself. All the other images were just stored locally.
- The pre installation environment used for restoring has barely any network drivers - you need to somehow come up with your own CD or USB drive for providing your network drivers, often needing to extract the right ones out of some subfolders that you draw from an unzipped setup.exe, since manufacturers nowadays often don't offer them separately anymore.
- The interface for logging in to your network drive is totally bugged. If you get a network error you will only recognize after you've hand-typed the location, user account and password (on different windows).
It's a total mess.
One thing I don't get in this whole ordeal though: Doesn't Skydrive store previous versions and deleted items like Dropbox (I've never used it)? From experiences with Dropbox it's still not what I'd call a backup (too much can go wrong when synching), but I at least expect it to preserve versions and deleted items, such that in normal operation one can undo everything. If MS has omitted that I really don't understand what they're thinking.
There are rumors that with Windows 10 and beyond they will also try to turn Windows's license model into a subscription model, which will completely kill Windows for just about any "regular consumer", and will turn it into a mostly enterprise OS, because only the enterprise customers will (probably) agree to that kind of model.
Consumers already believe Windows is "free" with their laptop purchase, and that they don't have to pay anything else after that. A subscription model will be a huge turn off for consumers, not matter how little it costs (even $1 per month).
We can only hope that before Windows 7 gets too long in the tooth, Ubuntu or some other multi-OEM OS (Android? Chrome OS?) will become popular enough in the mainstream, and mature enough, to make it a viable alternative five years down the road (I think they will be).
So, Microsoft is taking enormous risks in all the markets: mobile, desktop, consoles... Well, they still have Office going well I suppose. For now.
It really hurts to see that after so many years of searching itself microsoft finally got things right again with 7 and made a great OS, only for them to throw it all away in the hopes of trying to do a OSX-like thing which ended up being subpar, unsurprisingly, and on top of it most of their regular desktop lovers such as me hate them for it.
My dislike of windows 8 however is not on broken features but on the paradigm changes they made. I don't want to focus on one app fullscreen at a time, or be always connected and sync'ed, or use my computer as a tablet, that sort of things.
But let's be honest, if microsoft can pull a 7 with windows 9, I'm all for it and will eat my own words.
It really isn't an apples to oranges comparison (no pun intended). It also comes up as a security reason, which it both is and isn't. You're skipping nuances of things here by equivocating a browser install in an os.
Microsoft used it's monopoly with Windows to edge out competitor browsers and practically killed Netscape's business. When you have a monopoly, there are special laws that apply only to you so you don't abuse the market.
I'm pointing out that it seems like MS is using its monopoly with Windows to edge out the Dropbox service.
Apple can be prosecuted under the same exact anti-trust laws as Microsoft, regardless of market-share, if they've managed to cause harm per the government's findings.
Using a quasi-monopoly to create another quasi-monopoly is not illegal. Owning a quasi-monopoly is also not illegal.
I find people are often extremely confused about anti-trust law and the actual laws (and relative lack thereof) related to monopolies.
Microsoft is not operating under a government consent decree any longer.
Microsoft using Windows to compete with Dropbox is not inherently illegal. It has absolutely nothing to do with market-share, it has to do with whether the government, on a case-by-case basis, decides that a company's actions caused harm, and it is purely a subjective decision.
Anti-trust law, I'll note, does not specifically or exclusively govern monopolies. The majority of anti-trust cases that have been brought forward by the government have nothing to do with monopolies.
It can't be relied on, basically.
This is a new feature they have added that allows sync between devices. It doesn't stop any of the old ways of doing stuff from working other than windows backup which was a piece of shit that didn't work properly anyway.
Sync is always notoriously problematic at the best of times so YMMV always with that approach.
Realistically, most people just drag stuff to a USB stick periodically and that's good enough for backup. That's how it really works.
The basic options were:
1. System image backup. Backs up your fucked system with fucked files.
Oh that's it. Not very helpful.
As before, everyone just buys 3rd party backup software, sticks it on a USB stick or doesn't bother.
you don't need an app for that.
It's also the simplest solution that fits in the head space of a user.
Linux doesn't come with a backup app either. You have some tools (dump/tar/dd) from which you can build one or you buy one in (bacula, Amanda etc). Same with windows (powershell, vhd cmdlets etc).
False. Most linux distributions comes with free backup tools included in default installation.
How many versions are kept?
Is it possible to 'revert' all files or do you have to do that file by file?
People really need to read the SLAs etc.
http://www.edandersen.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/image.p...
Notice it says that your files are "automatically backed up to the cloud"?
Most of my friends and colleagues say 'what is a backup?' when I ask.
So a sync to a skydrive account may be better than what they have already, but I think the OA was saying that Win 8.1 could have made a genuine backup easier to do and less 'technical', thus improving data safety.
Instead the Microsoft people chose a different approach. The OA thinks that once people lose files because of an infection or corruption of storage, and if those files are synced large scale data loss will occur, and users will blame it on Skydrive.
I understand your point, but as the OA was arguing, the changes may render the Windows 8 'brand' toxic.
Edit: but apparently this article is wrong and skydrive does have version history?
He lost his recent work which was a big deal for him, as it was a whole chapter in a book he was writing that he believed turned out really well..
I suggested using Dropbox instead.
I get that it's underhanded for Microsoft to call this backup when it's just sync.... but honestly, for 99% of people, that's better than the nothing they have now.
I would have once been mad with this Microsoft feature removal. However, I've come to realize than neither Microsoft's or Apple's backup solutions satisfactory for my needs. Time machine is arguably better... until it decides to stop working. Since I've been on CrahPlan, no problems on any computer. I've had one laptop that shorted since then and it was easy enough to recover my files.
Most apps fail because they store crucial data in various undocumented directories, plus the system registry. Even worse, some like to store critical data in hidden directories.
Backing up an app and its data, and restoring, on Windows should be as simple as a single xcopy command.
Personally, I've been on Ubuntu for about 8 years. I have never regretted it. But the more time passes, the less I regret it, if you know what I mean.