I have always been a keen Microsoft enthusiast. Ever since I got my first computer, running Windows 95 and Office 97, I have loved Windows and Office. Since then, I have always been quick to upgrade to the latest version of Windows, and I have similarly used most of the Office versions up to and including 2010. I have always loved the improvements. Today, I use the Microsoft Windows 7 operating system together with the 2010 version of Microsoft Office. I love the OS, and despite many painful bugs in Word 2010, I really like the basic ideas in Office.

However, my confidence in Microsoft has taken some serious damage during the last year, as Microsoft has changed directions completely. A few of my issues with Windows 8 are listed below.

• Social Networking and Cloud Computing

  I dislike ‘social networking’ and ‘cloud computing’. When it comes to social networking, and sites like Facebook, Twitter, and blogs, I simply dislike the idea. After all, most of the content on these sites is complete drivel. Seemingly, on these sites you can only find teenagers posting pictures of their clothes and writing non-substantial comments to each other. Occasionally, violent ‘storms’ resembling bullying and are born on these sites, and cruel/disrespectful comments are frequently observed. The fact that you need no technical knowledge whatsoever to publish material on the Internet makes the Internet flood of nonsense.

  When it comes to cloud computing, I don’t like the idea and I don’t trust cloud storage. I want to run all my applications locally, so I can adapt the system perfectly to my own needs. Also, if I install a system with Windows 7, Office 2010, and other ‘normal’ (local) applications, then I know that the system will work exactly the same way in 20 years. If I use web-based applications, I don’t know if they are still available in a few years, and even if they are still available, they may have changed considerably. Another disadvantage of cloud computing is that it breaks if there is no available Internet connection. Finally, I wouldn’t dare to store all my important files on a third-party server.

  For those interested, I can tell you about my own data-safety procedures. Of course I have all my important files on my main computer, but I also keep a complete backup on my laptop. In addition, I have several complete backups on (offline) USB external HDDs located in more than one Swedish city. I also keep the most important subset of my data on a USB flash drive that I always have on me. Finally, an even smaller subset is stored on remote servers (on rejbrand.se) that I upload via FTP.

  Long story made short, I don’t like social networking and cloud computing. Therefore, I don’t want my OS to force me (or even to encourage me) to use it.

• Downgraded Media Center Experience

  One of my favourite components in Microsoft Windows 7 is the Windows Media Center (WMC) that I use daily to watch movies (recorded from DVB-T streams). Currently, I have more than 350 movies (more than 2 TB) stored on a local disk. Of course I have a WMC remote control and one of the flat-panel monitors connected to my computer is a 46″ wall-mounted TV. In Windows 8, WMC is no longer an integrated part of any Windows edition; instead, it has been downgraded to an ‘add-on’. This makes me concerned about the future of WMC. In addition, even if you install this add-on, you will not be able to play DVDs in WMP. Although you are unlikely to watch a feature film in WMP (you’d use WMC), you might want to watch shorter video clips stored on DVDs in it. Hence, Windows 8 lacks an important feature compared to Windows 7.

• The ‘Metro’ GUI

  In addition to the regular Windows Desktop, there is now an alternative GUI formerly known as ‘Metro’. It is not particularly elegant to have two default GUIs in a single operating system. That might be acceptable if the new GUI adds something important, but for the type of computers I am interested in, stationary desktop computers, the new UI doesn’t add anything particularly useful.

• Strange Desktop GUI

  I am somewhat confused about the new visual appearance of the desktop, most notably the removal of Aero Glass and all kinds of gradients and shades. I think I do not like it very much; it doesn’t look very good. I’d probably get used to it, but I cannot recall ever having been this sceptical about a new Windows GUI before.

• Moving Away from Win32

  As a Windows programmer, I know and love Win32. In particular, I know and love USER and GDI. As of Windows 8, the GDI appears to be deprecated; at least it is said to be ‘legacy’ on the MSDN. And the entire Win32 appears to be discouraged in favour of WinRT. This is somewhat painful for me, since I am very fond of Win32. Also, I don’t quite have the resources (time and energy) to learn a completely new way of making Windows applications, so my fear is that I will not be able to make such applications in a few years, if the deprecation of Win32 proceeds.

  After all, one of the editions of Windows 8, called Windows RT, cannot run Win32 applications at all.

  Personally, I don’t understand why Microsoft feels the need to abandon old but perfectly working systems like the Win32 platform. I don’t think there is any problem at all with classic Win32-looking applications using only the standard Win32 controls. Further, for many types of drawing, the old GDI works perfectly well. And, if you need more power, you always have OpenGL and DirectX. As far as I can see, the main benefit of newer technologies like Direct2D is that applications that do not really need advanced graphics can get fancy GUI animations with less effort. I wouldn’t call that an important reason to abandon the old ways.

  By making these transitions, Microsoft makes it difficult for spare-time programmers like me to continue developing for Windows.

  Admittedly, the GDI, as well as other parts of classical Win32 GUI design, are based on raster graphics and are awkward to use on systems with different DPI numbers. There are probably also other reasons why Microsoft wants to introduce modernised APIs, but given the negative feelings I get from Windows 8, it will be rather difficult for Microsoft to convince me to use any new APIs developed for this new OS.

• The Store

  Apparently, software applications written for the new GUI are supposed to be available from a Microsoft-operated web ‘store’. This makes the platform less open, and makes it harder for third-party developers. Indeed, previously it was enough to distribute a single EXE file by any means (such as via your own personal website) in order to allow others to use your application.

• The Word ‘App’

  I dislike the word ’App’ as it used today, for instance, in Windows 8. I am perfectly fine with ‘app’ as an abbreviation for ‘application’, having used that word (in that meaning) many times myself. However, in the new usage of the word, it is no longer an abbreviation, but a short word in itself, probably meaning something like ‘small piece of software you install from a Store’. One of the reasons why I don’t like this word is that is sounds very much like children’s language, or slang, in Swedish. Also, since the term probably comes from the world of mobile phones, it has a distinct touch of ‘immature teenager vocabulary’.

• No New Goodies

  As far as I can tell, Microsoft has almost added no new features that I would benefit from. For instance, if they had included Blue-ray video support in WMC and WMP, that would have been an argument to upgrade.

I am also not a big fan of the new office suite, Office 2013. The reasons are similar to those discussed above for Windows 8. First, Microsoft obviously wants you to subscribe to Office rather than buying it. I hate that idea. If I’d invest in a new computer system today, I expect it to work the same way in 20 years, or even in 50 years. After all, the things I can do on it today, I can still do in 50 years. Therefore, I want a piece of software to be a product I install once, and not a service I need to renew annually. Imagine you have found a luxurious armchair that you want to place in your beautiful home, in which you plan to live until you die. Then surely you want to pay for the chair once and then own it, instead of renting it for an annual fee and having to worry about the survival of the company you are renting it from.

Second, Office 2013 is very cloudy. Third, the new GUI follows the radical new Windows 8 ideas, and so it only looks good on a Windows 8 system. Since I run Windows 7, I would never upgrade because of this alone. Office 2010 looks good onn Windows 7, while Office 2013 looks good onn Windows 8. In addition, I don’t think I like the new GUI. It looks very much like the GUI in Windows 1 and 2. [Maybe I should appreciate that, though, being fond of legacy.]

Fourth, I believe no new features have been added that I would benefit from, which is very sad. For instance, it is still not possible to number equations! As you all know, Word 2007 introduced a new formula editor, which is awesome, except for the fact that you cannot number equations, and except for the bugs. This is a major mistake. It’s almost like designing and building a fancy car from scratch, and then forgetting to add doors to it. In practice, this lack of a feature is not far from being a showstopper in many (if not most) types of math-heavy documents. In Word 2010, this feature had not been implemented, and we can now conclude that the same applies to Word 2013.

Apparently, the reason why they didn’t implement this feature is that they were busy replacing a perfectly working rendering system (based on the GDI) by a new one (based on Direct2D). [As an aside, I can also tell you that the new formula editor in Word 2007 came with a rather embarrassing translation mistake in the Swedish version. On the contextual Ribbon tab shown when you edit a formula, the word “Integral” has been mistranslated as “Integer”. No Swedish-speaking person using Word to edit formulae could possibly have missed that! I informed Microsoft about the issue early on, but the same mistranslation is present in Word 2010. I’d be surprised (although pleasantly so) if it is not present in Word 2013 as well. There are equally embarrassing mistranslations in WMC (“föräldraklassificering”) and Outlook (“vidarebefordra månad”).]

Many years ago, my father told me that I too would someday feel that technology is progressing too rapidly, and that I too would cling firmly to old things. This might have happened now: my current plan is to continue using Windows 7 and Office 2010 indefinitely.