Hello again. My granddaughters call my son's wife Joma. The also speak a few words of Chinese. I've visited Taiwan but never mainland China. You folks have something better than Windows - you have the Great Wall! :omg:

I take it English isn't your native language. :laugh:

Lordy - switch to desktop mode and enjoy Windows 7 on steroids. You can do ANYTHING you do in Windows 7 but with a bunch of embellishments. MS never intended you to use Metro on a desktop machine and certainly doesn't force you to!!!! :sigh:

I just posted in the Windows 8 bit talking about Microsoft being constantly berated but I have a very serious question. The editor of Red Gate's Simple-Talk asked me to do an article on Amazon Web Services. I'd never paid any attention until last week and I truly can't believe Microsoft didn't emulate that service with Windows Azure. If you haven't looked at Amazon Web Services please do. It's nothing short of astounding. :rose:

I actually read your entire post and - with apologies - I don't understand a thing you say! :zzz:

You're right Walt and for that I apologize. I just get bummed out when folks post negative stuff about Microsoft. I even unsubscribed from Slashdot for all of the nasty comments posted regularly about MS and their perceived failings. Microsoft certainly isn't perfect but they really don't rate all the negativity they get. My take is simple - if it works for you great. If it doesn't then move on to something that does but don't berate me for my choice. But I ramble - sorry. I really thing you'll love Windows 8. I just spent the last couple of days rebuilding my system with the Release Preview. :rolleyes:

When I see posts like this it makes me absolutely crazy! I've been running Windows 8 as my OS of choice since it was in beta. Once I hit the Metro screen I go to the desktop and I'm running Windows 7 on steroids. I have an Intel Quad core machine with 12 GB of memory, several TB of rotating storage and two large monitors. I love the Lighthouse theme and the silly sounds but most importantly, except for the lack of a Start button (which I never used anyway) I love Windows 8 as a superb place to do all of my development. :) Now I seriously wish I had some way to tell the WORLD what a fantastic job I think MS has done! Pardon me but in these case I feel obliged to treat all of you as beginners. When your machine starts click the Desktop button on the lower left and go to desktop mode. For everything you want to use, go to metro view, right click the programs you use and select Pin to Taskbar. From then on those programs will be available on the desktop taskbar and you'll never look back. More importantly - before you start posting BS like this PLEASE experiment a little so you know what you're talking about!!!!!!!!!!!!! :omg: And just to clear something up - Microsoft HAS NOT abandoned desktop developers like me. I still do everything I did with Windows 7 and more. ;P

For years the normal business model was to run your own servers to which your users connected to do day to day business. The problem with this scenario is that it becomes a huge task to manage the hardware and software for such a model. For a small company it may be one man (such as myself) managing and even then it takes many hours. As companies grow it becomes worse. The notion of Software As A Service (SaaS) has been around for a while and that is what Azure is all about. It has - for some reason - been dubbed Cloud computing. I believe Amazon was one of the first to offer it. The premise is simple - Microsoft is building out huge server farms all over the world. Companies simply subscribe to Azure services instead of maintaining in-house servers and pay for what they use. Azure can provide service for a small company or a huge enterprise. Azure can scale to 10's of thousands of users and almost unlimited storage capacity. It is based on web technologies but it is NOT just another hosting service. The user interface is through a browser but you're not looking at web pages as such. More importantly developers can program their own services or you can buy time on existing services. And it's all done on a pay as you use basis. Every developer should look at the new programming tools which run on Visual Studio 2008. If you have access to isvinnovations.com there are many hours of training videos available. It is almost certainly the future of computing so pay attention folks. :cool:

Another viewpoint - turning off UAC is about like saying just leave your front door unlocked - no one will ever know.For me it was irritating for a couple of days until I escaped a couple of nasties that asked permission to run. Since that time a few months ago I have been virus and spyware free. So sweet!!!

I have been running Vista Ultimate as my main development platform for several months now. I wouldn't go back to XP for anything but that having been said - Vista is a resource hog. I run it on my Dell Inspiron 9200 also but it is definitely slow. This machine sports an Intel Quad core processor and 4 GB of memory so Vista practically screams. One thing - USE UAC - it will save your life so to speak. I run Windows OneCare so virus scanning is always on but I've had no viruses because I have to give them permission to run. At first it got under my skin but now I wouldn't have it any other way. It will grow on you I guarantee!