Windows 8 early-bird users still love Windows 7 more - poll More than half of Windows 8 users prefer Windows 7 to Microsoft's new operating system, according to a community poll. Forumswindows8, which claims to be the web's largest Windows 8 help and support forum, says it conducted a poll of 50,000 people using Windows 8 and found that 53 per cent voted Windows 7 as their favorite …
False, Windows XP had a different start menu (though you could revert to the classic one). Windows Vista/7 also have a new start menu (but now you can't revert to the 2000/9x one). Windows 8 also has a new one - and it's the start screen which is really the main difference that is forced upon people (the full screen interface being optional, with the "windowed" mode still being fully available).
Also the general UI of Windows has had changes throughout the iterations. Nothing major, but the same is true between the windowed UIs of Windows 7 versus 8.
But any early adopters of Windows 8 will be serious techy nerd type people. Asking them what they think of Windows 8 is like asking a wine connoisseur whether they prefer the £5.99 bottle of plonk from Lidl's or Aldi.
They might really know what they're talking about, but they're fussier and they're not the target audience.
As an OS X user and an occasional Windows Developer... I have been using W8 for testing for some time, I must admit I like it, but it won't show it's true colours until the PC has broken away from the ball-'n'-chain of legacy hardware and archaic MBR BIOS, W8 makes that break possable.
Having the same (look 'n' feel) OS on your server, desk-top, lap-top, tablet & phone will also help to get W8 established, it'll just take a bit of time for users to see the benefits.
I can certainly see the case for the W8 tablets and phones to have the same look and feel, but I see no reason why that should really be carried to the desktop. I think they would be better spending their time getting a more more seamless integration between the mobile devices and the desktop without attempting to turn the desktop into something it's not.
I'm a techy, and waited until the Consumer Preview version was released to test it out, and currently, I don't really see what is so whizz bang about it.
For a start, I don't like ~ (the interface formally known as Metro), it doesn't seem to bring anything new to the table, other than to confuse and annoy. Until Apps have been rewritten/upgraded to make the tiles live, what you end up with is a list of apps in boxes, rather than a pop up/down menu system.
And, once you get past the tiles, it feels like its just Windows 7 underneath with a few things relabelled.
As for the startup/shutdown speed, I hibernate W7 at the end of each day anyway, so first thing in the morning I'm up and running again within about a minute anyway.
So, as yet, I've not yet found the killer feature that should make me buy it.
> As for the startup/shutdown speed, I hibernate W7 at the end of each day anyway, so first thing in the morning I'm up and running again within about a minute anyway.
Exactly. I was surprised to see fast booting as the most popular feature. I've been using Sleep on my Windows desktop for a couple of years now, and other than the occasional patch requiring a reboot, I don't see any need to do a full boot cycle. I even thought W7's default "shut down" behaviour was hibernate, but I might have imagined that.
Are most people on Vista, W7, or W8 doing a full start-up and shut-down cycle every day?
1) What is explorer 10?
2) What does the 35% relate to?
3) You seem to think people who are able to use a beta OS, and comment it on some geeky site have never heard of firefox, chrome et al
4) Are you really incapable of googleing to find out what happened to the browser choice screen? Again, your asumption seems to be that people are quite capable of installing a complete OS but are only able to remember to not choose IE if they are prompted not to do so.
Is more commmon than anything since XP. Servers, laptops and tablets, the later when waking from sleep, the former with usb and assorted internal and external disk drives. It is nowhere near as stable as 2k8R2 or win 7. I've been using it since the first public beta through to the RTM. The laptops/tablets are always blue screening. Server, ahppy to say is much better in RTM but wil still fall down when a USB key is inserted !!!!!!
Let's face it - geeks liked Windows 2000 and moaned about XP, but years later, XP is hailed as some kind of best MS OS ever...
And whilst we might all agree that Vista was bad, it's worth noting that Vista did introduce a lot of the ideas that are now liked in Windows 7 - it was just badly implemented, or the hardware at the time wasn't up to it.
To add to that, a forum more likely to be frequented by geeks are probably less likely to care about more consumer oriented features. It also seems to be the case that people like us are more sceptical about new updates. And does not liking the MS Store mean people actively think it's horrendous, or just that they don't have any interest in it?
As for the Surface - what about all the other Windows 8 tablets and hybrids? If 35% would buy a Surface even before we consider the other Windows 8 tablets, that's pretty good going!
I also don't see why the phone survey is bad news - it's already clear that Android is way in the lead anyway, but if Windows 8 can take second place over Apple, that's surely a win.
I've been using it since BUILD and while I *love* the desktop improvements - startup time, speed, stability - I want to weep every time I hit the Windows key and end up in that stupid Duplo nightmare.
I'm sure it's going to be great on their iPad competitors which are fat-finger centric but imposing it on the desktop world just gets in my way, slows me down and annoys me.
OSX isn't perfect (far from it, especially given how great they tout their design to be) but I'm now using it about 49% of the time (and growing) but one smart thing Apple has done is keep the bifurcated solution and not forced a touch-first paradigm (bingo!) onto inappropriate devices.
Will I upgrade my current crop of home machines? Probably one of them (but as the rest of the family don't have touch machines why should I force it on them). Will it be a factor in what new machine(s) I get? Yes... I'll get a Mac and maybe a Windows ARM tablet to play with
So the key issue is not the UI in general (as you can just still use the windowed UI anyway, as you note), but the Start screen.
I don't get it - why doesn't the Start screen work well with keyboard/mouse? On Windows 7, I hit the Windows key and type the name of the app. On Windows 8, I hit the Windows key and type the name of the app. (On Windows XP, I hit the Windows key, type the name of the app, then remember and get annoyed, and then have to faff about with the menus.) I'm generally curious here - I see a lot of criticisms about the start screen, but I don't see anyone explaining what the problem is?
If you need to find something the UI on the start screen is terrible since you have to scroll horizontally, the gigantic buttons waste vast amounts of screen space, the entire UI is designed for a touch screen rather than a mouse and keyboard.
Also, it plays into breaking the users train of thought. This is known as the doorway effect. (google this, it's quite interesting)
Say you're working on a document and you need to open something else, so you go to the start screen which covers the entire screen and you open a program you were wanting on a second monitor or side by side with the document. Only you've now forgotten what you were thinking of.
Sounds funny I know, but having something that doesn't cover what you were working on keeps it at the forefront of human memory. Ever walk through a doorway into a room and forgotten why you went in there in the first place? Same effect, the doorway acts as a "new thing, new memory" event just as the start screen does.
The title is incorrect, as the survey participants were not all Windows 8 users... According to the survey only 26% of the participants had ever used Windows 8... Therefore, as 25% of the participants preferred Windows 8, that means that 96% of Windows 8 users preferred Windows 8... a bit different then what you'd like us to believe...
it still baffles me why MS chose to not include the ability to turn off the 'Not Metro' start screen and go back to the normal Windows desktop. The previous versions of Windows, 7, Vista and XP have had the option to turn on classic start menu so that the users who only know how to do the very basics on Windows can be moved to the newest version with no retraining needed on how to use the OS. This is especially true for the pro version of Win 8 which is aimed more at business than end users this should be an option you can choose during the install. Guess we will have to wait for MS to release the first service pack and see if they fix the issue
> it still baffles me why MS chose to not include the ability to turn off the 'Not Metro' start screen and go back to the normal Windows desktop.
Microsoft have had 'consultants and experts' tell them that desktop is dying and that mobile is the new place to be, as evidenced by iThings and Android. MS have missed this and, even though they had slate and WM for years, have failed with WP7 to get any traction.
The 'expert' opinion' is that WP7 failed because of lack of familiarity with the UI (rather than it was years behind what the market wanted). The solution is to force the UI down everyone's throats until they become familiar with it. Then they will _demand_ it on their tablets and phones, and on their fridges, cars, TVs and wrist watches. Job done, world dominated.
What the experts failed to notice is that a different result may occur: "that's the interface I didn't want on my phone and I don't want it on my next computer".
been using Win8 eval version for a week now, I like the splash and the clean look which I understand is for tablets really. But what I'm missing is the 'Windows' (ie tiled look), so Win8 is basically a windowless Windows.. unless you fall back to the PC mode which for all practical purposes is Win7.
So Windows 8 is really Win 7 + the tablet interface (and as I understand crippled API to the chagrin of developers).
Obviously this, now-its-a-table-now-its-a-pc OS is targeted for its new tablet+keyboard devices. I see where they are coming from, I just think the strategy is wrong.. I think they should have focused on improving the 'windows' philosophy and interface which can work in both PC and tablet modes and which is lacking in tablets instead of a totally different interface for both.
It's too soon. A lot of us are new to Win8. Few of us have the RTM version or a Tablet to run it on, ARM or otherwise. Some of us have been fooling with it since Fen 2012, and some for longer; those mostly LOVE it, we know how to do Start Button and Desktop Only when we want to, we like fast boot, ISO mount, HyperV, and the automatic creation of a Tile for any newly installed executable, plus the organizing of Tiles by the User into Groups. There aren't too many people with the final version on a Desktop machine, there is no one with a ARM device really proven for Win8 with the RTM version, except possibly at Microsoft.
I am one who answered that poll, by the way.
The number one complaint usually is a long the lines of: where did start go? How do I do what I used to do exactly as I used to, including look and feel? Guess what, some of us have been doing that for at least six months, but not a majority, at least not amongst those polled.
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