Discussions

4 hours ago, ManipUni wrote

@magicalclick: In theory GPT should allow you to multi-boot operating systems without a third party boot menu/system. In practice Microsoft is working very hard to screw that up. 

Other than that GPT is really about >2.2 TB storage and making it easier to write disk management utilities. There are a few more theoretical benefits like a larger number of partitions but most systems, even enterprise systems, won't ever see those benefits.  

Keep in mind that once an Operating System is running neither GPT nor MBR is ever really used - so you'd never expect to see true performance increases beyond 1~2ms at boot.   

well there is one other thing: gpt allows more partitions on a drive than mbr.

but how many folks need / want to parttion a drive into more than 4 anyway ???

for some stuff like multi boot and linux it might be great but for just plain old windows installs the number of partitions is almost a non issue.

Heck i tried to create a GPT installed and i still got an MBR system!  and this is with a brand new ASUS P9X79 Mobo ....  or if it is GPT it's really well hidden and even windows thinks it's MBR!

also with some of the new x79 boards installing is tricky, i found a walk thru on toms hardware that helped. without it i was getting a bad install that never worked right.....

had to copy windows and drivers onto a flash drive and install from that with my dvd unpluged and only the boot drive plugged in.

trying to install from dvd wound up with a boot drive that would keep asking for windows repair.

nasty.....

but now the new system is sweet ... no ssd right now, possibly later.

17 hours ago, JoshRoss wrote

@figuerres: Is your avatar wearing underwear? For some reason, it doesn't look like it.

-Josh

Hmm .... Skyrim avatar gear, might not be.... LOL :--)

So if has been said this is not the place to post about what's wrong with things like windows 8 and VS VNext and so on then where ?

Really to be honest I have never really found much worth in many of the micrsoft forums and trying to get anything into the building windows 8 blog seems hopeless.....

so do we just not say what we think and let MS go on or what ?? 

and keep in mind i am talking about a wish to really help MS if we can!   the problem for me at times is the feeling that no matter what i say it will go nowehere due in part to the size of MS and the layers of corp. between a message and the folks who can really act on it.

I think that a fair part of the angst of late may be from that "I think i see a problem and i can't do a thing to stop it"

we often want to help / contribute but can't talk to the "right folks"

I know that MS can not give every one 15 minutes to chat .... but .... well it's an idea.

a few years back MS had a lot of local MSDN events where developers could really talk to MS folks w/o having to travel to vegas and spend $5,000 but now there are no local events to speak of for developers run by MSDN folks ....

15 hours ago, BitFlipper wrote

*snip*

The problem with "Gn" is that it automatically switches between fixed-point and scientific notation, whichever is more compact. In my case I always want it to be in fixed-point notation.

It doesn't look like you can tell it to always use fixed point.

well "floating point"  by definition is not fixed ....

what about "R"  format as that is to make sure you can get back the same value ?

seems like that is really what you want ?

32 minutes ago, Richard.Hein wrote

@Sven Groot:  His point is invalid because they didn't try to have two different UIs for the old tablets at all ... it just had some pen input features, not a whole UI. 

and .... ?

sorry Richard but i am with the other in this ....  before they did "One Size fits all" with XP on a tablet.  This time it's "One size fits all"  with a strange half and half OS that will "almost work"

i used to hear a saying gowing up "Jack of all Trades, Master of None" I really feel that more than a few folks are saying the same thing to MS but they are not listenting:

a slate / tablet device is very different from a desktop pc or a laptop and trying to make one OS and UI work on all of them is just not going to work on all of them, two different versions of the same core can work if you do it right but trying to cram it all into one will leave places where it lacks features or function or is just awkward and this will mean that it will not be well accepted and will get trashed in the popular press / by critics etc....

I really hate that i see this the way i do  but that's what i see....

I think the windows 8 / metro / startmenu thing is like the windows media center but in reverse.

Microsoft said more or less "not many folks use media center the stats show us this fact" but in the last 2 versions of WMC very little has been done to promote it.  it's a "Hidden feature" that i bet 70-90 % of users have never even seen and even if they have seen it very few of them have a cable card slot to get use of one of the key features .. or a tuner card for that matter. so now it's going to be an addon for windows 8.

I rather suspect that the folks at MS have a fear that if they did not push metro it would not take off and go mainstream and wind up like WMC soon down the road.

so they "bet the farm" on it.

problem is that for a can't even begin to count how many users  the new metro start screen will be a deal breaker as it stands now with forcing it on users.

IMHO they should have just done two versions of windows and let folks pick the one they want.

if metro and the tablet are as great as they think they are the market would show this with the sales numbers....   that's a really good "stat" to go by.

there are problems with the two versions idea yes, but I see problems with the "all in one" method also.

12 hours ago, DeathByVisualStudio wrote

@figuerres: Those were the days... I bought a C book but it didn't get read much because I changed focus to girls. I blame them for me not learning C.

I wonder how many professional programmers got their start on the Sinclair, Apple, and Commodore computers of the early 80's?

I hope you are in a much more temperate climate than Stockton; too damn hot.

well not as cold in the winter, not as hot in the summer but really humid, Tampa FL :--)

so 85-90 here is like 105-110 in Stockton  LOL

5 hours ago, DeathByVisualStudio wrote

As a kid: Commodore Pet Basic, AppleSoft Basic, TI-99-4A Basic, TRS80 Basic  (I'm sure these are all derivations of the some Microsoft Basic with extensions for each platform. Making the TI talk via voice synthesizer was fun), 6502 machine & assembly, and Pascal.

As an "Adult": DBase, FoxPro, TSQL, VB6, C#, XAML, Java 

For me no classes - ever; it all depends on the person. I was very fortunate to live in Silicon Valley as a kid when personal computing took off. Reading is good to start; building something is better. You've got a wealth of resources on the Internet -- sure beats my monthly computer magazine as a kid.

Good luck!

Hey, I grew up in California not far from "the valley"  Stockton,  had a VIC20 and a C=128 - my first two computers where i learned basic and 6502 and then C - spinnaker C compiler for the 128.

well saying that "windows networking is slow" is about like saying driving to work is slow.

where ? when? time of day?  traffic? and so on....

is this over a wireless link? or if it's wired is the cable 10 meg, 100 meg or gig e rated ?

switch or Hub?

also a large number of files in a folder can have some overhead in that the system has to create a transfer for each file, that overhead may be slower than the actual file copy time.

also speed of the hard drives on each end have an effect on things....

in generall yeah windows should handle it ok but it's not a simple to do as it may seem when you get into the works. and any os will have the same kinds of issues givien the same task. much of this is stuff like how hard drives and ethernet work.