
The dumbing-down of Windows 8 - evo_9
http://www.cringely.com/2012/05/30/the-dumbing-down-of-windows-8/
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JoelSutherland
Flagged. The title is misleading and the very first sentence is factually
inaccurate.

MS is not eliminating Aero (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Aero>) they
are eliminating Aero Glass ([http://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2012/05/micros...](http://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2012/05/microsoft-sprucing-up-windows-8-to-boost-consistency-
multimonitor-friendliness/)).

Basically they just dropped transparent window chrome in their default theme.

~~~
joenathan
This article draws some truly insane conclusions, that dropping Aero Glass had
anything to do with "dumbing" down Windows to put it on phones is ridiculous.

The real key here is integration, it's more in the line of Smart Glass -
having a compatible and familiar UX on all their lines of products, and I
think it's about time.

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kozmikyak
I don't know why the article considers the only two possible options as
"Metro" and "Aero". I'd go for "Classic". I still set my Windows boxes to that
style immediately after install, along with separately turning off most other
visual enhancements in the System control panel.

I'm not a complete luddite; I know that on a modern system Aero is not going
to have a terrible effect on performance, and that UI elements can be
customized, and that I like some of the Windows 7 enhancements to the taskbar
and start menu. But the visual style of Aero is just extra visual distraction.

I can see the point of using GPU to accelerate the UI, but there should always
be an option of minimal visual distraction.

~~~
wvenable
Instead of disabling Aero, I just installed a custom theme and turned off all
the transparency. I too found Aero to be too much of visual distraction; too
many different colored elements with no consistency.

However, a subtle Aero theme is a considerable improvement of classic.

~~~
excuse-me
Goto ctrl pnl->system->advanced->performance

Select manage best performance (ie remove all the features) then turn back on
the bottom 4 options. It gives you almost all the aero look but without the
CPU/memory load

~~~
wvenable
Honestly, the CPU/Memory load is pretty minimal and disabling Aero for
performance on a modern machine is micro-optimization at best.

~~~
excuse-me
Unless you are running CUDA or openGL shader code, then anything that uses a
GPU function brings you to a halt.

It took us a long time to work out why we getting crappy performance on some
people's machines when the dev's with identical hardware were doing fine. Aero
transparency does terrible things to the texture memory

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smoyer
I can't believe the Aero interface won't be an option - Does anyone really
believe Microsoft has forgotten where their corporate bread is buttered?

~~~
ayi
After chrome.exe and eclipse, the most memory consuming app on my Task
Manager's process list is DWM. I think i can give up on some effects to gain
more memory.

~~~
MarkSweep
I don't think you will save much memory unless Microsoft is also removing
desktop composition. When I turn off transparency in Win7, the amount of
memory used by DWM.exe does not change.

~~~
ayi
Transparency is one of the features of DWM. If you want to get rid of DWM, you
have to select Windows Classic theme.

