Hotmail gone... Outlook.com is here!!

Check it out!







[windows.microsoft.com]

I really like it! So much cleaner and quicker than Hotmail too. Plus I got a fancy new @outlook.com email address

Seems that there won't be any country specific email addresses (e.g. outlook.co.uk is already owned and have their sales address as sales@outlook.co.uk)

Here's mine btw (an inbox preview)



Just thought I'd let you all know!

Thanks,
Iain.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/01/2012 01:22PM by madotter.

looks a right mess tbh, microsoft going the same way with all their products, just look at the state of windows 8 :/

A mess? I love Windows 8!! It's neat and quick and reliable! What more could you want?

madotter Wrote:
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> A mess? I love Windows 8!! It's neat and quick and
> reliable! What more could you want?


Ask Gabe Newell. He is not exactly ecstatic about it...

[allthingsd.com]

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It's only after we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything.

I didn't know you were Dave Navarro...

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GPGSL: S6 - TafuroGP Tester (14th) /// S7 - ART Tester (6th) /// S8 - Demon Driver (13th) /// S9 - Demon/Snake Driver (13th) /// S10 - Snake Driver (???) ///]
"My ambition is handicapped by laziness" - Charles Bukowski

Windows 8 would be brilliant if it wasn't for Metro. I guess, somewhat ironically, Metro is the reason for the rest of the underlying improvements. With the old start button, it wouldn't appeal to touch users and without the tablet users in mind, it wouldn't have been as heavily optimised as it has been.

It's a shame, as the speed it runs at would make it ideal as an upgrade path for many companies without having to upgrade hardware, and finally get them off Win XP. If only they'd offer the option of a start button, even bury it away as a registry option if you wanted to discourage Joe Bloggs from deviating.

What really grinds me is that they had the perfect opportunity to completely overhaul the Windows GUI. Metro would work brilliantly as a replacement for the otherwise static desktop - that way, you'd have an interface that would work benefit both touch users and rodent users alike.

As it is, it took me, a tech savvy guy who's worked in IT for a 15 years now, around 30 minutes to hook my laptop up to my home wireless (I had to change the connection type from the detected type, and Windows 8 doesn't offer a native interface for it in the way XP, Vista and 7 do). This is very much looking like another Windows ME - the public really aren't going to like it. Just look at the Youtube videos of newcomers trying to use Metro - they can't. At all.

That said, Outlook.com is pretty awesome. It's clean and fresh. The Metroness of it isn't a load of big buttons, they've just made slightly bigger gaps and slightly larger text. It still works perfectly fine on a desktop with a big screen. I only use my Hotmail (now converted to an Outlook.com email) for sites which I feel might spam me, but I'd now be quite happy if that were my main email. As it is, they've wasted too long, and I've now got 3 Gmail addresses (one personal and two work addresses using Google Apps) that I use more frequently than my Microsoft one and will continue to do so, as the spam filtering is far better, and the rest of the Gmail system is on par with or little behind Outlook.com.

Well, according to Gabe (who worked for Microsoft on Windows for 13 years!), Microsoft have turned Windows 8 into a closed eco-system, in the same vein as Apple have with their stuff. Of course they have done that to acquire more control over the content that you can apply to the system (and a share of the revenue). The problem with that, is that it will kill off innovation for the PC. He truly believes that we will see several top tier OEMs leave the market as a direct consequence of this design decision. No branch of computing is more dependant on innovation and creativity than gaming. Thus Valve are now developing Steam, and all of the 2500+ products that are on Steam, to run on Linux. In effect, Valve are dumping Windows 8. That is going to have massive consequences.

Be honest, how many of you, are going to run Windows 8, if you can only run the games that Microsoft have preapproved for their OS? How many of you are going to run Linux, if Valve can properly deal with the challenge of getting Linux to run games? How many gaming studios are going to follow Valve because they need the cashflow that Steam generates? Gaming has already been the driving force on the hardware market for decades. If Windows 8 really is a closed eco-system as Gabe says it is, I seriously doubt that Microsoft will be the market leader in the world of operating systems at the launch of Windows 9.

And btw, I hated Vista with a vengence, but I really dig Win7 x64.

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It's only after we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything.

I don't think it's Windows 8 as a whole, it's apps (games) running through the Metro GUI. Steam will continue to work fine as a desktop client (as it does currently anyway), but I guess Valve wanted a piece of the Metro pie too, seeing it as a shortcut into the mobile market.

I seriously doubt Steam are going to launch heavily on Linux. I think it's scaremongering and perhaps hedging their bets. For it to work, you'll need programmers on your side too, and that's a heck of a lot of extra work for what is still a very small market.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/02/2012 10:05AM by gav.

I don't see what the problem is here. Windows 8 is fine. I don't see Steam/Valve going anywhere while their software still works fine on Windows 8.

I can see from both your comments, that none of you bothered to read the link I provided.

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It's only after we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything.

And it goes against what we're saying how?

That is not the point.

The point is that we are having a discussion, and you are not even bothering to familiarize yourself with the input of those that participate in the discussion. The arrogance inherent in that is palpable. While I am not a fan of the overused tl:dr, at least that would have been more polite, because it would present clarity on the terms that the debate has to endure.

As it is, this behaviour reduces the discussion to a pantomine of a discussion. You guys are having a monologue, and it is up to me to figure out for myself, that what I say doesn't matter at all, no matter how much quality or value I present. You wouldn't know, because you don't read it, and you couldn't care less. So I am wasting my time.

That being the case, I have better things to do. I am out.

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It's only after we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything.

You've lost me. :\

I read the whole article, Lasse, and I think you're too quick on jumping the gun of your point there.

[gizmodo.com]

Ye that's what I meant, people will not be able to familiarize/even use 8 without months of learning. Its UI is too large and spacy, and the Start button is one of the most important things about Windows, and their just ditching it. Designing a PC OS to also run on mobiles is just plain stupid as no matter how complex mobiles become, you can't use them in the same way as a PC.

For that reason 8 is a complete mess. What is it with IT companies changing things that were not broken in the first place.

The biggest example is web design - most sites are fine and work perfectly, then they are upgraded at massive cost and the end product is a worse site, poorer navigation, worse aesthetics and the existing users can't find anything, all that when there was nothing wrong with the original design layout.

Quote
ipswich2007
Designing a PC OS to also run on mobiles is just plain stupid as no matter how complex mobiles become, you can't use them in the same way as a PC.

I think the idea is that it is essentially two operating systems in one, or more accurately, two GUIs in one.

One is a layer that sits on top, and will generally only be used by those on tablets. They'll barely see the desktop or desktop-based applications. They'll more frequently be sat in Metro, using full-screen Metro-styled apps, like Internet Explorer is currently with it's two GUIs, one touch optimised and other the standard desktop layout.

The other is the desktop we're all used to, very much like Windows 7.

I, like most I guess, have no issue with the split GUIs, if only they'd allowed the obvious ticky box to enable the Start Button and disable the Metro overlay. I know the reason why they haven't included such an option, to encourage programmers to develop Metro apps, as otherwise firms would just think that everyone will just turn Metro off and so wouldn't release Metro Apps, or release them at such a slow rate that the idea of Windows 8 on tablets wouldn't really get off the ground and be doomed to the same sort of failure that afflicted XP Tablet Edition in 2002.

I still hold on to the hope that Microsoft are just playing a clever game and haven't just abandoned the desktop user and we'll see such an option in a service pack, an addon released in a few months, a workstation release of some description (Win 8 Pro, Enterprise & Server 2012 really should have the Start Menu) or in Windows 9, but then I felt this way when the Previews were being released and hoped the Start Menu would return for the RTM.

It's a real shame, as ignoring Metro, Windows 8 looks fantastic. A subtle change to Windows 7 on the surface, but it's much lighter (in part due to the ARM fork to be used for true mobile tablets) and some of the tweaks add to up to a really nice OS. It would have been to Windows 7 what XP was to Windows 2000.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/06/2012 11:25PM by gav.

gav, stop with the monologue would you, goddamn prat i've written things here too and i want to be acknowledged