Windows 8: Is Microsoft's new OS too odd to handle? The big question. You are happily trundling along with Windows 7 and everything is fine. Should you upgrade to Windows 8, at Microsoft's tempting price of £24.99, or $39.99, for a downloadable copy? There is always the safe option of leaving well alone, but tell that to anyone who regretted installing Windows Vista and had to …
I've never shot myself in the foot, but I'm pretty sure it's an incredible bad idea.
Just because someone hasn't tried something doesn't mean they can't hold an opinion. I've NEVER owned an apple product. But I hold the opinion that I would never own one because they are too locked down for my usage patterns.
Similarly, I've tried WIndows 8 (extensively, and professionally) and I don't like it. There. Suck on that. You're welcome to disagree but just because you've tried something (especially if you HAVEN'T touched it because you disagree with it entirely) doesn't mean you can't hold a valid opinion.
And what does using a particular version of Windows have to do with someone thinking that MS is trying to ruin the PC as an open platform? I don't need to "try" UEFI-boot-key-locked-loaders in order to know that they aren't an "open" platform.
"If you don't like it and have tried it that's fine by me. I don't care enough to suck on anything you have to offer."
Ahh, but you can't say that you don't want to suck on anything Lee has to offer, because you haven't tried it. When you've tried a good long suck, then it will be fine for you to declare that you don't like it?
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Working backwards: What has UEFI got to do with what people are calling an Open platform. Most programmes still work on Win 8, as stated.
I held an opinion about Apples shiny-GUI-on-a-UNIX platform before I worked with a Mac. I then worked with it. I now have had that reinforced. I can now say with some authority that it sucks as a platform and, if Apple do not move from it in the next couple of years, it is going to be a 'what's that OS called again? OS2, no OSX, yes that was it. Named it after cats, that's right. It's a pussy now init...'
And if locked down is your problem, then hold on, money dictates that lock down is the way to go. Ask Google - they know everything!!!
If no one were allowed to voice and opinion about something until they had had direct personal experience of it, then I doubt we would have many comments here on anything. The sensible option is to agree to a variation of what Pericles of Athens is reported as saying: "Although only a few may have the skills to initiate or decide upon a policy; all may comment on it."
Upgrading as soon as its available on my subscription - running the release preview and have become used to its changes - a small learning curve, but like the live email and calendar tiles, the screen snapping is well thought out and very useful on a large display... battery life when undocked is a little better, boot, hibernate and restarts are slightly faster, all in enough small tweaks to make it a good update.
Even though I can get it now from MSDN.
Reasons?
1) I don't do touch. My stonking great finers really don't work all that well with tough interfaces.
2) If I did install it then the first thing I'd do would be to install a start menu app and get rid of metro.
3) Why bother when I'll be working with Server 2012 and there is no way any of my customers would let 'metro' or whatever it is called and all its crap media/social apps anywhere near their servers. None of the mare 'connected' to the internet anyway so why bother?
4) If it ain't broke don't fix it. Win 7/Server 2008 is fine. There are no compelling USP's in win 8 that would make me want to upgrade.
5) not impressed by their 'cool shiny, me too, press here and let me take over your whole screen' approach to desktops.
(yes I know I can get round most of it. I did spend a week with it but it failed all of MY, repeat MY usability tests).
My experience is the diametric opposite. I write software, so use the keyboard and mouse a lot, even forgetting to do touch on my Samsung Slate when really absorbed in work.
All of the apps I use a lot are pinned to the task bar. System tasks are accessed through shortcuts I've managed to memorise quickly (http://www.wittenburg.co.uk/Blog.aspx?id=fb1c365c-dbd7-45ef-be95-03b294fe4697).
Apps I use occasionally are in the first group of tiles in the Metro UI. My bookmarks in the second, and the remaining odds and sods follow. Games bring up the rear, because I only go over there when I'm bored (not often). The upshot is that hitting the Windows key and typing works well to find an app, but I never seem to use that. Apps have familiar locations, and the mouse almost goes to the right tile without me even looking too hard.
The best thing about W8 that I only just discovered is being able to create an image that includes my drivers, network config etc, and then restore to that image by clicking a button (I rebuild my dev box *at least* 4 times a year).
Each to their own, obviously.
1) I don't do touch. - Yes, i occasionally pick my nose also.
2) If I did install it then the first thing I'd do would be to install a start menu app and get rid of metro. - Me too.
3) Why bother - nuff said.
4) If it ain't broke don't fix it. Win 7/Server 2008 is fine. Agreed
5) not impressed by their 'cool shiny, me too, press here and let me take over your whole screen' approach to desktops. & take over everything else. Agreed
Im grateful Microsoft only interfere with the computing industry, in any other discipline I think they'd be laughed out of court instead of all the way to the bank.
And the most childish and unusable too.
Forcing the MetroUI on Windows Server 2012 shows just how out of mind people at Microsoft under Steve Ballmer control really are.
WindowsPhone7.x had 2-3% market share at best... and Microsoft is telling lies that everyone loves Metro and everyone wants Metro ?
WindowsPhone8/WinRT8 on smartphones and tablets is just another big Zune failure... actually worse than that.
Microsoft deserves to go bankrupt on the whole Metro fraud thing.
"Microsoft deserves to go bankrupt on the whole Metro fraud thing."
No they don't. If they did, the disruption on the lives of the employees that lost their jobs would be far greater than the disruption caused to your life by a UI you don't like. Also, if you think MS being overzealous with metro rollout and marketing is a crime worthy of bankruptcy, then god knows what consequences you would suggest for other businesses (and MS) that get up to things far, far worse than that.
If you don't like it, then don't use it. Simple. If everyone else takes the same approach, then the market will speak for itself and MS will either be rewarded for giving people what they want or punished for not doing so, as has happened with several of their products that have failed to catch on (fortunately without bankrupting them).
Far better companies went bankrupt for no real reason and had much better products.
Microsoft employees the majority of them only deserve to be fired.
The minority that can make products like Windows7 working will surely find a better job in other Companies/Corporations.
The other ones are just suckers. Lazy suckers.
Apple had 0% of the smart-phone market and the tablet market, and decided what everyone needed.
I applaud MS for taking the bold move and pushing what they think is a step forward, even if it IS crap. If nobody tried to revolutionise for fear of failing, we would not get anywhere.
F hate this site, Do Not F wipe the text out when you press forward or back by mistake (it goes grey just to take the Pss when you click on it gets deleted)
users do not like change, they take the system back and get an windows 7 system (not typing all what i just did)
Having used Window 8 preview for nearly a year now I can say I won't be recommending anyone to downgrade to this poor version on Windows. Like all even numbered version, wait until Windows 9. I rarely used the Metro/modern interface as it clogs up 50% of the screen with awful colored blocks and makes the other 50% completely useless. Ribbons do not make things easier, they merely waste time with their illogical ordering of useful commands. I'll be sticking with Windows 7 unless 9 shows improvements.
Hate MetroUI, and don't want to be railroaded into a Microsoft dependency for my movies, music, apps, games.
That is what they are trying to achieve with this. Windows 8 will introduce Metro apps, Windows 9 will remove Win32, and everything Microsoft makes will then be reliant upon it.
No thanks. I won't be part of their statistic that they give to developers to try and convince them that writing for this years runtime is what they want to be doing...
"That's the thing here, like it or not, Microsoft Windows is a monopoly.
Thus if you don't like it, you're pretty much ****ed."
Errm... There are _lots_ of people who aren't dependent on Windows. I, personally, have quite a few computers, most of which don't run Windows. And of the ones which do run Windows, one is still running XP (and will continue to do so until it dies; as it is a well-constructed and well-maintained box, I suspect that it will continue to serve for a long time) and others are running Server 2003 and Server 2008 (all the servers are, like the XP machine, hand-built systems so I know _exactly_ what's where 'cause I'm the one who put it there, and all of which are also unlikely to die any time soon) and the others are running Win 7. Unless and until there is some software which requires Win 8 I simply will keep using the existing systems. My non-Windows systems mostly run BSD and Mac OS X 10.6; Apple can kiss my ass before I contaminate my machines with 10.7 or 10.8. Yes, this means that I have no support from them. Look real hard and see how much I care.
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The two Betas will be upgraded to the full version and the Windows 7 machines will stay as 7.
If you have a Windows 7 machine there is pretty much zero reason to change unless you need to smear fingerprints over a new glossy touchscreen monitor, but that's your perversion not mine.
If however, you have an older laptop dual core laptop with 2GB+ of ram running XP or an older copy of Vista then I think its worthwhile to upgrade that for the better performance and security features alone.
Once you repoint all the default Apps to the desktop ones its fine to use.
I don't know, lots of techy people who pride themselves on being smarter than average PC users still can't figure out the Ribbon. I'm sure the same people will deliberately not learn how to use W8 so they can complain about it for the next 5 years.
They won't have to wait 5 years. Within nine months, that fuck-ugly abortion of an interface will look about a 'hip' and 'groovy' as one of Jimmy Saville's old shirts, and Microsoft will be struggling to rush a new de-Metroised Windows 9 out to market.
The Ribbon isn't really *that* different from a Toolbar. If your "techy people" honestly can't manage to use it I think maybe they need to pick up a copy of "Computing for Dummies" and stop considering themselves smarter than the average PC user (or hamster for that matter).
Which shows the problem. Any toolbar is instantly removed on my system. Unless it's a creativity program, in which case it might be well laid out with a line of icons. If you mean a "menu bar", I'm fine with those, but they have text, not icons. I NEVER mix the two. It makes navigation a horror.
We use MS Orifice 2010 at work. My problem is *predicting* which part of the ribbon a certain feature will be found in. I can't seem to grok it at all. Lines are in 'basic shapes', making a table have equal column widths across a page gets me every time. And I find the maths formula editor a real pain. I just use the portable version of Open Orifice (actually LiverOrifice) on a usb stick.
MS Orifice 2003? No big issues. Works on Wine as well.
Talking of which, another glass....
Why should I go to the effort? I have been able to use MS Word since it first appeared in Windows, I use it occasionally, like once or twice a week.
Where is File Save, File Saveas, something I am used to on lots of programs?
I have much more important things to do with my time than waste it on learning a tool I only need to use very occasionally, and one I knew how to use before they messed it up.
If I am going to sit there learning, I would rather learn something usefull, like improving my C knowleage. Now what is more useful to me, learning ribbon and what each pretty little picture does,or XML and JSON.
On my new work PC (Win7 64bit) I wanted to look at newsgroups, but I could not make head nor tail of the Win 7 Outlook Express replacement, so I took the easy route and downloaded Thunderbird. Most ribbon infected programs have non ribbon infected shareware or freeware alternatives
The techies will quickly apply every available hack and revert Win8 back to something they like. In effect they won't be using Win8 as MS reimagined it and won't need to complain.
MS will make their usual mistake of assuming folk are still using the bad features and must love them to not complain.
"MS will make their usual mistake of assuming folk are still using the bad features and must love them to not complain."
Yes. Running the Enterprise 90 day trial (third time I've run 8, so vague impressions are coalescing into firm opinions). This is the first time I've run with 'Classic Shell', the installation of which made me think 'Windows 8 - any colour you like as long as it's black' (to paraphrase). Next I thought - might have occured earlier but so automatic after all these years it barely registers on consciousness - that the forcing Metro on PC users is a bit like the way MS still have all those fucking awful sounds and animation/fade/slide effects enabled by default, which I disable as about the first thing I do after any Windows install. And while plenty of non-geek users apparently don't even realize you can turn that shit off, there are actually some who don't mind it!
But at least you have the option to turn that shit off. The sounds annoy me - like people using mobile phones on trains annoy me (particularly in the Quiet Zone coaches); while the visuals are like a far off echo of the nausea I recall from too long playing Wolf 3D.
I think Henry Ford had some justification for Ford's lack of choice, given how new his industry was at the time. Microsoft, oth, for not providing the choice of a Start Menu instead of the Start Screen - imho - can go swivel.
They want people to use their "App Store" so they can get in on the profit like Apple has... and No. Sorry. Just No. I want nothing to do with their abortion of a UI, and I definitely don't want anything to do with their App Store.
The "closed garden" approach that Apple made popular is something I wish would just die a horrible death.
Well, everyone wants a pretty task manager, don't they? Personally, I always want to be visually dazzled and inspired while forcing my unresponsive applications to shut down. I hope it comes in that special shade of purple - you know, the colour of someone's vomit after drinking red wine - that we are seeing in all the pictures.
Been running the full version for a couple of weeks now, and it's not half as bad as everyone seems to think. Metro apps are content driven so aren't particularly useful, the app store is near empty, and metro apps on low dpi screens don't use clear type, so they look a bit rubbish to be honest, but...
It's faster than win7, and you really don't have to use the metro side of things if you don't want to. Just pin everything to your task bar. You'll be surprised how few apps you actually use.
The excitement over shutting down the computer - win7: mouse bottom left, click, up a bit, click, right a bit click, vs. windows 8: mouse right, up, click, down, click, down click, or..... press the off button.
And then the where's my start button gone? it's on your keyboard....
Cue the haters...
I've been pressing the Off button to shut down my machine since XP SP2, and possibly longer.
It's even the default functionality under Windows 7 - Vista was the one with the broken default (Sleep!)
My keyboard doesn't have a Start button. It's got a "Windows Logo" button that looks just like the Windows Logo used in the Windows 7 menu that it opens.
So clearly, the Windows 8 version of the keyboard should have a blank, unlabelled key to open the Start Screen.
And GET YOUR ****ING HANDS OFF MY CHEESE. It's pretty clear that you've never actually read that book, as the key point it makes is that change for the sake of change is stupid, as all change causes a loss of productivity in the short term. Change has to have clear reasons, and offer clear benefits to all users or it will create resentment, be passively fought, and even actively sabotaged.
It's not 'who moved my cheese?'
It's 'who moved my cheese from the cupboard to the bathroom?'
Microsoft took a perfectly good OS (windows 8) and stuck a stupid, poorly thought out metro interface on it. I swear it's designed to get you to run your mouse over as many tiles as possible. Why is 'all apps' hidden with a right click?
No, people aren't pissed that their cheese is moved, it's that it's moved to stupid, complicated, hidden places. The shutdown menu as you pointed out, Why? Is Start > Shutdown just too much.
Windows 8 is like two operating systems at one. Power users can use their keyboard to get stuff done quickly if they know the magic (I do, but hell, now it now just like using Linux). For the rest of the world that will never learn the shortcuts Windows is dolled up like a fancy whore that has fancy makeup and flashy bits you have to go thru to get to what you wanted to do in the first place.
"Just pin everything to your task bar. You'll be surprised how few apps you actually use."
Upvoted for this quote alone. As a penguin in the privacy of my own home, the Ubuntu Unity launcher has made me realise that, yes, 95% of what I do is only 7 apps or so (albeit one of those is terminal). I've defined a consistent set of keyboard shortcuts across Debian Squeeze; Ubuntu 12.10; and Ubuntu 12.04 with mad-scientist IceWM window manager (much under-rated). Just fine, thanks.
"Just pin everything to your task bar. You'll be surprised how few apps you actually use."
Bullshit. I used this particular machine to test that unmitigated abortion, Mac OS X 10.8 (which will _never_ hit a production machine under my control. Never.) I reformatted it when the test was over, as that was the easiest way to get rid of the stink. That was about three weeks ago. I just got back to the main office after a week in Orlando (long story, but no, I was not making a pilgrimage to the Mouse) which means that I've only used it about two weeks since the complete reformat. Apple has, under the Apple menu, a list of recently used applications. The current list includes:
MS Word
MS Excel
MS Powerpoint
Activity Monitor
Acrobat
Photoshop
Dreamweaver
FireWorks
InDesign
Carbon Copy Cloner
DVD Player
DiskWarrior
Network Utility
Sophos Anti Virus
Terminal
TextWrangler
Pages
Safari
Firefox
Opera
Console
VLC
Little Snitch
And that's just the stuff I've used _recently_. One reason why i detest OS X 10.7 and later is that Apple is trying to enforce the use of their idiotic application manager, and even that, bad as it is, is far better than The Interface Formerly Known As Metro. And you can kill it. You can't kill TIFKAM.
I'm surprised that in an article about the "oddness" of Windows 8, no mention was made of things that could make the transition from Windows 7 easier, with Classic Shell - see http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/ - being the most obvious one. I suspect Windows 8+Classic Shell+booting straight into desktop mode could actually be a decently similar experience for ex-Windows 7 users...unless you're running Windows RT, in which case you're royally stuffed.
It's mostly because they're crap. And pointless. After a brief period of getting used to the change, they just seem as clunky as the Start menu does. It's the same argument as was heard when Program Manager/File Manager were replaced by Explorer and the Start Menu, yet you don't see everyone clamouring for their return.
Personally I never heard anyone say a good thing about the old Program Manager, it was a clunky abomination everyone hated. And of course MS didn't actually remove it in Win95, if you were clinically insane enough to want to carry one using it.
Nice strawman for the apologists though.
Website resizes window to fill screen. I try to grab right edge to shrink it. Charm bar grabs my focus. Shit.
Five attempts later I managed to drag it before the charmless bar got in the way.
Not pleased. There's a good reason good ui's don't hide interface elements behind invisible trigger zones. Unless your mission is driving users away from the desktop...
You're supposed to click on the window icon or if the program doesn't allow it, press Alt-Space when the window has focus, then choose Size, then press the right cursor key to choose the right side of the window, then hold the left cursor key to move the right hand side of the window, then hit Return.
This is so obvious and user-friendly that there's no need to include any visual cues to help you to remember how to do it, in the same way that the Charms bar is so obvious and user-friendly too there's no need to include any visual cues for that either. As these elements are so user friendly we can therefore summise that there's a clear improvement in end-user productivity.
Windows 8 is just a step between Windows 7 and Windows 9. Windows 9 will remove every single visual cue available, operate only in full-screen mode, and fully complete the transition the user over to shortcut keys, therefore making the next version of Windows the most productive ever yet curiously having a look and feel like Emacs.
Task manager in Windows 8 has a prettier interface? Pretty is not a word i would use.
Anyone used to the Sysinternals suite (Microsoft) has seen this screen before. New? No.
Windows 8, as the Customer Preview version, installed and ran fine on a desktop, but often looked more like a 'display add-on' to Windows 7.
It is faster, IE10 is quite a bit faster and copying files appears to have had some performance improvements made, apart from the ease of instant access to other devices, iso file formats and so on
What will put most off, is the HARDWARE that WILL cause the RELEASE version of WIndows INSTALL to FAIL - even though its perfect (and sometimes Logo'ed) for Windows 7.
Intel must be laughing all the way to the bank.
Then there are those 1280x1024 screens out there in offices that will cause Windows 8 to STOP and will NOT WORK. (no, not the graphics cards, the screens)
MS has hardened the install to 1366 x 768 minimum and so far haven't found a way round this as I did in the Customer Preview release.
Shares in new screen sales will go up! Samsung must be laughing!
>>> What will put most off, is the HARDWARE that WILL cause the RELEASE version of WIndows INSTALL to FAIL
What hardware? And with citations!
>>> MS has hardened the install to 1366 x 768 minimum
Bullshit. The minimum resolution for Windows 8 is 1024 x 768 px. Some features such as "snap" require 1,366 by 768 px to work.
You want to contradict that, again - citations please.
Yeah I'm struggling with this one.
I've installed Windows 8 on hardware dating back to 2005. It all installed flawlessly except for the Bluetooth stack which the Vista driver sorted out.
It actually installs better (in terms of hardware recognition) than Windows 7 in my experience.
Badmonkey, I'm not sure about failing to install, but from what I've just read there are all kinds of issues with Metro not working correctly on the 5:4 ratio. Applications not coming up, screen locking at black.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/sorry-power-users-windows-8-is-built-for-small-displays/4620
This gives a little insight on why odd stuff like this may happen.
Just allow Metro to be disabled, and reinstate the start menu. Without those two things fixed, Win 8 has no interest for me.
I have played with it for a few days, and it just makes everything more awkward. There's no reason for me to upgrade from Win 7 just to give myself added frustration.
Not for myself, but for my girlfriend, and for the hell of it, it's getting 8. But before I've even got the machine built, I've made sure to buy Stardock's Start8. I'll be instantly disabling hot corners, and pretty much anything metro. Straight to desktop with a Windows 7 style start menu. Then it's fully digestible, and won't be much of a pain.
The fact remains, the two UI cluster-fu.. of Windows 8 is simply horrible. Two IEs, two control panels, multiple ways of doing the same thing, and they didn't give us what we wanted in the end - Windows 7 polished to a mirror shine. They introduced more inconsistencies and made it more of a mess.
At least Start8 helps by letting you effectively ignore all the new crap.
Sorry, you mis-read. It's not for me. I've still got a Windows 7 install on my machine.
I realise this isn't strictly in the upgrade rights, but the old copy of 7 Home Premium is to find another home anyway, so in reality, there was nothing extra paid for in this particular circumstance.
For the most part I really want to upgrade.
The deal breaker for me though is the whole "invisible corners that do stuff" concept. I use RDP and dual screens extensively and in these environments you NEED visible buttons to click. Even relying on keyboard shortcuts is flakey for RDP (expecially over a mobile device).
Give us a start button & menu and give us a way to access the charms bar et al from a button and I'm there. Till then I'll stick with 7 at least on my desktops. I might give it a go on the media PC (the taskbar on dual monitors looks great for my particular setup) and on my small laptop (better boot time and battery usage would be good there).
Windows 8 is a difficult sell even for a tablet OS IMHO. There are no apps, half the apps that do exist are sorely broken, and trying to do anything useful requires coming out of a touch-screen friendly interface. Even setting up some wirelesses takes you to the desktop, and the metro apps that DO work are heavily neutered to the point where I cannot even set a custom fucking Pictures folder without going into desktop!
This is before we even get to the PC side. No start button, Windows key takes you to the metro screen (where there is NO indication that you can type something to start searching), all methods to the control panel seem hidden away, vital functions such as shutdown are hidden away in a retracting sidebar (again, no visible indicator to show this thing even exists). Oh and the only way to attempt using a Metro app on a netbook is a to force the resolution to 1024x768 (netbooks are typically only 1024x600, and thus Windows locks you out of metro apps). So immediately after installation and i already have to do registry hacks (and suffer bleeding eyes) to so much as test the fucking Metro side of things!
Oh and did i tell you most settings dont carry over from desktop to Metro? even where possible?
"And then for a extra insult they had to pay the same amount to upgrade to Win7 as the people who stuck with XP."
That would be... zero... in my case. I have an academic account with what used to be the Microsoft Academy, and I can, and have, got various MS OSes for free. I have DOS 6, Win 3, Win 98, Win NT 3.5 and 4, W2K, XP, Vista, 7, Server 2000, 2003, 2008, 2008 R2, all parked on disc somewhere around here. All free. All legal. I could get Win 8, too, same source, just as free, just as legal.
Microsoft will have to pay me to take it off their hands. I tried out the last beta. That abortion will never go near any of my machines.
No start button, WTF are MS thinking - imagine the meeting as MS. "Yeah, this start button thing really isn't working for our users. It just seems silly to me... 'start... run...' or 'start... type app or doc name..' it's plain crazyness and as for 'start... shutdown' what the hell were we thinking. TEAM it's obviously more intuitive to hide the start button and replace it with a 4x4 pixel mouse-over area... and I've had a call from my pal who desinged the ACPI power off function and he'd like to see more people using the power button to switch of their machines - he's a really clever bloke - so, lets hide the shutdown function. Oh, and one more thing, we can test how many users are adopting our flagship product by analysing our YouTube stats for the keywords 'how the fk do I lauch an app and shutdown Windows 8?'"
Windows 3.1 & 3.11 - Great
Windows NT - GOOD but basic
Windows 95 - Great
Windows 98 - Ouch
Windows 98 SE - Great
Windows ME - Ouch
Windows XP - Great (in fact super great)
Windows VISTA - Ouch
Windows 7 - Great
Windows 8 - Ouch
Windows 9 - Great
Windows 10 - Ouch
Pattern developing???
Windows 3.1 & 3.11 - Great
Windows NT - GOOD but basic
Windows 95 - Great
Windows 98 - Ouch
Windows 98 SE - Great
Windows ME - Ouch
Windows XP - Great (in fact super great)
Windows VISTA - Ouch
Windows 7 - Great
Windows 8 - Ouch
Windows 9 - Great
Windows 10 - Ouch
You forgot the BEST version of windows that MS have ever made !!!! (no not WFWG)
Agreed, but then it was so quickly subsumed by XP that most people wouldn't have had a chance to play with it. I actually keep a copy running in a VM for some old software titles. Frankly, if they could bring that system back with a nice Powershell GUI (akin to the OSX terminal), that would be marvellous.
I suppose I could install and run Windows Server 2012 with Minimal Server Interface to get the same feel, but that would be like shooting a fish in a barrel with a LOIC...
so I've been using WIn8 preview releases for as long as they've been public and I'm looking forward to playing with it properly on an ARM tablet to see how well the touch-only experience is (though I really want a stylus)
but on my current laptop (even with it's touch screen) I avoid the lego layout as much as I can and stick to the properly mouse and keyboard driven desktop world where I love the tweaks and fine tuning that's gone on. It's more stable, faster, things like the copy dialogue are more useful and the experience is so much better ...I don't really miss the start button but I don't like the jarring transition to Minecraft every time I want to open a new program (so my desktop is now littered with icons!)
Win8 won't be a flop, and I'm sure MS will continue to iterate. I wonder if early adopters will be burnt in the same way that that WP7 users have been with dead-end hardware and limited app support (though WP8 at least comes with a new set of "trust us" promises)
in 6 months time all this fuss will be over, it'll be business as usual and we'll be hating on the changes Win9 is going to force on us and wishing they'd just left Win8 alone!
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I've been running Win 8 on my laptop since the customer release preview was made available and after you install Classic Shell in order to get your start button back and relegate metro to the lowest pits of hell (from whence it is never seen again), Win 8 actually becomes a very good OS.
I only run instances of Windows for gaming and Win 8 has not disappointed me. When I'm not gaming I dual boot into whatever flavour of Linux I'm using at the time (lubuntu atm, I like my desktop minimal and Unity is even more annoying than metro).
I most likely will be upgrading my desktop shortly after release but I'll be doing the usual research into whether or not all my hardware will be well supported and I'll double check my software as well to make sure there aren't any mission critical applications that might be broken in the process.
All this knee jerk hate spewing from the commentard community is, frankly, disappointing. But then I expected reason and temperance, mostly what I see here is a bunch of cry babies screaming for a waaaaaambulance.
Here, I have a crock of shit to sell you. The crock is really good after you clean out the shit.
No, I'm not going to take the shit out of the crock. It's critical to my strategy that everyone gets the shit as well as the crock.
What do you mean, you don't want it? The crock is great! Everyone says so!
This is a U.I. based on what Microsoft wants for it's business strategy, not what is good for the user. That's a formula for failure. The only reason it has worked for Microsoft in the past has been the belief that there are no viable choices... and other platforms are slowly poking holes in a belief.
When Windows 98 came out, everybody hated it. Not because it was different (which it was just a bit) but because it was slower. The hacked solution was to add back the Windows 95 UI, which a lot of people did - myself included. You got all the benefit of the under the hood improvements, plus the speedy older UI. I have already seen similar trend for Windows 8. There are people making a program/patch/hack to change the UI back to windows 7. (one example here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/classicshell/forums/forum/1049755)
So, if you are a in a position of being required to upgrade and dreading the learning curve (and in my case the teaching curve) this is a good solution. Not a great one mind you, but it will get you over the hump.
> When Windows 98 came out, everybody hated it.
There were a couple of things that I 'hated' about 98. The first was that installing IE was not optional even though it was a separate install. On the first reboot after installing 98 it went to IE install with the Cancel button deactivated. The second thing was 'Active Desktop'. I did not want any 'channels' and hardly ever see the desktop anyway, it is covered by what I really want to do. Fortunately that could be turned off.
Windows 8 recombines those things that I hated, not-Metro tries to be active desktop but without the option.
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I have been testing the consumer preview one for a while, my observations....
The disconnect between metro and the desktop is horrible,jarring and pointless. There was nothing wrong with the start menu in the first place.
Having the metro apps scroll horizontally whilst you move the scrollwheel vertically==more disconnect.
The power menu is hidden in the most illogical place for no obvious reason.
Having to drag that stupid clock screensaver thing out of the way instead of just clicking it.
Why do you have to toss about with the registry to get metro to function on a 1024x600 screen? I really dont understand this little foibble as its only a flag in the registry ,so quite why you cant just select 1024x600 in the ui is puzzling.
Most of the apps (i fucking hate that word in the context of a desktop os, bloody Apple) in the app store are either pretty uninspiring or just dont work right. The weather and map ones were pretty though.
On the plus side, it boots quickly and is actually quite fast.
If they let you remove the metro part, it would actually be very good, but they havnt, so its not.
I think the whole Metro thing has really confused everyone. I know it has with me. There are metro apps, and then "desktop" for legacy apps. Does desktop support normal window controls? Can I have half a dozen windows for different apps open on the screen at the same time? Can I re size the windows? I just found out in these comments about 1280x1024 causing issues with metro. One guy said he could even get it to install.
These are the kinds of things you shouldn't even have to think about when you install an OS. I run Vista and Ubuntu 12.10 on a 1280x1024 monitor. Everything works fine.
Question: Am I the only one????
#1. Can someone tell why MS never included an EXPERT / NOVICE toggle button on the windows UI?
I'm bored having to expend the same wasteful energy whether its helping out girlfriends, friends or neighbors every time they have a PC problem or buy a new one :-
A. Uncheck hide extensions for known file types.
B. Change all default file folder views to DETAILS view!
C. Show hidden files and folders.
D. Hide unused folders in the left-pane of explorer and expand necessary ones etc.
E. Disable bland security notifications and endless tray icon balloon notifications.
F. Change System settings to 'Adjust for Best Performance'.
#2. Why is there no toggle button for a Safe PC Mode i.e. OS wide PRIVATE-MODE where the following are all disabled :-
A. All SCHEDULED TASKS including Facebook Voice, Google, Adobe, Java Updaters.
B. All browser add-ons & plug-ins in all installed browsers especially the most cracked: Flash & Java!!!
C. All unnecessary SERVICES especially the most hacked: VNC Server, MS SQL, Remote Access RDP.
D. All Registry Run / Runonce key commands.
E. All Pointless windows sounds.
F. All Remote Access.
#3. I also wonder, why is MS is not forced to include a switch to revert W8 to a more W7 looking model? After all 3rd parties have already coded shell revisions. It seems strange that something so fundamental is always down to 3rd parties...
All this seems to have come about for the sole reason that the iPad and others are doing pretty well right now.
MS have adopted it full steam ahead, thereby ignoring, nay, shitting on, the many software development investments (billions of dollars worth) from nearly two decades ago, in a single stroke devaluing probably the best and most important reason in the world to buy Windows - backwards compatibility.
Metro is apparently the vomit inducing way forward, it's like sod the past and PAY ME.
What with all the problems with modern society, MS really don't need to add to it by dumbing down and psychedelic re-colouring everything - don't get me wrong, I'm all for ease of use and the tablet form-factor, but most certainly not at the expense of the power that a full Windows app might have had prior to it being Metro-ised.
This just ain't not right I tells ya!
.
P.S. Have you ever tried to use Windows 8 RTM in a windowed Hyper-V console? I have, it's an utter joke even trying to get to the top level menus.
" upgrading for desktop-only users is a mixed experience; there are real benefits,"
Name
One.
Boots Faster?
Is that the best you got???
More secure?... like we haven't heard that one before.
Easier/more intuitive/simpler?... Hell no!
Lighter/faster?.. Not an issue with Win7.
What? name me ONE thing, on a pure desktop, that Windows 8 does better than Windows 7?
W8 has a 'time-machine' like File History application built in. Point it at another drive and you can go back and see a change history of your files, and they're protected from your main drive crashing. That's one thing.. I guess.
I like W8 other than the stupidity of the UI related to Metro, charms, and hot corners. It's really sad they messed up a good operating system with it. That said, without the Metro controversy, W8 wouldn't be too much more then a W7SP2.
I installed the preview on an old single core Amd 4000 (2.4ghz) with 2 gigs of ram and was impressed with how snappy it was. Much snappier than 7 which runs reasonably well on the old beast. So, as Jason 7 said, if you can upgrade an older XP or Vista machine to this for 40 bucks then go for it.
Sure it took me 5 minutes to figure out how to turn it off and I never really fell in love with Metro but I didn't spend a lot of time with it because it wasn't on my main machine. For forty dollars I'll probably give it another go.
It looks very much like Microsoft have taken a look at Apple and just thought "ooh yeah, app store" in the same way uk.gov looks over the pond, sees ideas that appear to work, but only pick the headline components rather than the bits that make it work as they take time and money. They've seen Apple taking a slice of the post OS sale profits action and want a slice, only in typical MS fashion they haven't thought it through very hard at all, leading to a mish mash system designed to support something they want to sell (surface + app store), rather than designing something punters actually want. Inevitably, nothing really joins up properly and as usual users are expected to do things the MS way for no better reason than 'just because' - the ribbon in office still causes much wailing, and for no real gain I can perceive.
They might just change their minds for Windows 9; they have recent form here. Having discontinued their incredibly successful (and profitable) Flight simulator series with the tenth version - a successful ecosystem, but one in which MS did not profit from the addons, only the original game. Then, out of the blue, MS suddenly did a bit of an about turn and released "Flight" . Yes, a flight sim with an attached "Marketplace, AKA app store. It looked pretty, but the underlying model was extremely poor and simplistic, there were virtually no add ons at launch (meaning you were stuck in a rather pretty Hawaii), and with the "we approve add ons and take a fat slice of your profits for no benefit to you devs" model, the small developers - often working for free - that had made previous FS iterations a success were clearly not biting at all. To nobodys real surprise (after an extremely lukewarm public response), only 6 months down the track, they pulled it entirely, after what must have been a great deal of work and money spent.
I think it says a great deal about where MS are; except in fits and starts (kinect for one) they don't really have any big, quality ideas of their own any more, and they don't even have the attention to detail to get the ones they borrow from elsewhere to work properly. They're happy to routinely dump things without thought (MSFS; visual basic in Mac office, now reinstated four years later,; WHS; prior to that Drive Extender in WHS 2011) or put out half baked, half finished ideas (app store with everything) as finished product, then like as not pull it. The list of swift 180s is endless, and as for Windows mobile...
If Win 8 is "incoherent" as the article subhead suggests, its a good metaphor for pretty much everything MS does these days. The real danger, with everyone so sadly reliant on their output, is that they become like a steroid charged Yahoo from hell; another vast, cash rich, influential company with no sense of direction rampaging across the IT landscape, picking up and dropping ideas without rationale and doing very real damage to users, businesses and IT as a whole on its way to the grave.
I've used/put up with every version of Windows since 3, every NT version since 4 - if MS thinks I'm installing this fuck-ugly heap that looks like Win2000 running in safe-mode (judging from the color scheme), they can blow me. I'll patiently wait until Win9 when they realize what a terrible mistake they've made and realize that some of us don't want 27" widescreen monitors treated like 720x480 phone touchscreens.
Until then I've got Windows 7.
After running Win8 for a couple of weeks I quite like it. Initial reaction was horror at the Metro interface & installation of Start8 to avoid it, but once Start8 expired I didn't bother trying Classic Shell or another workaround, just stuck with the defaults and you know what, it's absolutely fine.
It's quicker than Win7 on the same hardware and there are lots of little tweaks and changes that make it a nicer OS to use - I was pleasantly surprised to find native support for mounting .vhd and .iso files.
It's easy to ignore the inbuilt MS apps (which are poop) and the lack of a start button is an irrelevance after a day or so - 99% of application use comes straight from the metro start menu and for that remaining 1% you just start typing the name and voila, there it is.
It always amazes me how many techies are luddites when it comes to embracing change in OS design. Give it a try with an open mind, don't try and make it fit your current way of working, but see if it offers a better way to work, you might like it.
Microsoft seem to have become what all large companies eventually become, bereft of any coherent leadership and ransomed by ambitious senior managers and their continual infighting. Steven Sinofsky seems to smell strongly of the latter as he has taken Microsoft from a very strong position with the immense popularity and acclaim of Windows 7 and vigorously thrown the baby out with the proverbial bath-water simply so he (and his internal followers) can try and steal some of Apple's thunder while getting the credit for it. I'm sure he will do a lot of harm to the company before he is ousted.
Internally Windows 8 is good but the removal of popular and attractive interface features was egotistical and unnecessary.
The impression I get, from previous software output and reading all the Win8 reviews etc. is that Microsoft is in a panic, following the sellers of the "shiny shiny" toys locked down so that tightly and selling only the products they can make into a revenue flow, rather than looking at what the person sitting at their desk and doing a job actually needs, i.e. MS have forgotten about trying to produce good software that really aids productivity.
The Office Ribbon is a case in point. Most users need a handful of functions most of the time and will draw on some other bits as needed on occasion. So they stopped them from hiding the crap they'll never need, but made it much harder to find the stuff they might sometimes need.
Maybe they needed something better, but that wasn't it.
And Metro sounds like it has the same mentality behind it.
I have been using the RTM version since day 1 and it took me a few days to adjust to all the Windows 8 features. But I can honestly say that I love it.
I was never particularly worried about the old fashioned Start Menu disappearing and it soon becomes apparent that it was a very smart move to remove it. The new UI is brilliant and I cannot understand why people insist on installing Windows 8 and then ruining it by installing a third part Start Menu app.
The Start Menu concept was good in the late 90’s, it was still usable in the early 2000’s but clearly Microsoft worked out that there is a far better way to do things and they’ve implemented it very well.
The live tiles are genius and there can’t be a user on the planet that doesn’t find them useful! Really, what negatives to the tiles are there?
The changes to things like Explorer make Windows 8 quite a significant update. All these changes to Explorer alone make Windows 8 a no brainer for me.
After spending time using Windows 8, I do find going back to my work machine (Windows 7) a pain in the arse.
I don’t think Windows 8 is perfect, but since when has there ever been a perfect flawless OS?
-- The Price is Right
-- Let's Make a Deal
-- Brady Bunch
-- The Partridge Family
--Peter Maxx
Whoever made the. New UI decisions must have traveled back into the 70 and then gliffing snue and doking smope from a salon hair dryer working in reverse.
Oh, throw in Toss Across to the list of reminiscence....
Look guys we ALL know what this is...its a Hail Mary pass, that's all. MSFT spent $450 a pop in advertising for each WinPhone customer and frankly still couldn't give them away, and tablets are owned by Apple and Google, so Ballmer and Sinofsky are throwing a Hail Mary and hoping that if they force the desktop to use a WinPhone UI that people will "get used to it" and buy WinPhone and WinTab...is it dumb? you betcha, but there is a dirty little secret nobody wants to admit that has MSFT backed into a corner.
The "dirty little secret" is that when Intel and AMD hit the thermal wall and switched from a MHz war to a core war frankly machines became monsters, so powerful that you average user simply can't stress the units made even 5 years ago and so there is no need to constantly upgrade like they did during the MHz wars. you see its easy to take advantage of faster single core performance but its a LOT harder to take advantage of massive thread counts. I mean just look at what I was selling as a "low end build" five years ago folks...Phenom I X3 or X4 with 3-4Gb of RAM and 300Gb+ HDDs. Now is there ANYTHING your average user gonna do that will really stress that monster? Heck I'm playing the latest games on an X6 released over 3 years ago and its gonna cycles up the ying yang left!
The simple fact is we ALL know this is stupid, but MSFT has their backs against the wall. Their "world's worst CEO" got spoiled by the MHz war and thought people would just keep right on buying every 3 years and what happened is even on the laptop front I'm seeing people with 4 year old units quite happy because they just can't slam that Core Duo or Turion X2, they just can't feed them enough useful work. AMD has been bleeding, Intel is down to 50% capacity and their warehouses are full of chips, the simple fact is X86 has become so crazy powerful its like a washer or TV, you don't replace it until the previous one dies.
There are still plenty of people who haven't picked up a tablet and are using dumbphones or switch their phones every other year, so no matter how dumb this is MSFT is gonna throw a Hail mary and hope to score some of that cash.
I'm glad I read this thread I ran the compatibility program, app or whatever and was told that certain things would have to be reinstalled after downloading and installing Windows 8, I have Windows 7 Pro at the moment. Now I have read elsewhere that certain software has to be bought again, one of my fave pieces of software, OneNote, being a case in point. I don't want to pay for software all over again even if the Windows download price is tempting at the moment.
Then there is Media Centre, for now its a free upgrade, not sure for how long but even though I search on-line I cannot get a definitive answer as to whether it would be advantageous to upgrade. I have just bought a new 24" monitor although not touch screen so on that score alone an upgrade is a no no, so I am resorting to an old tried and tested theory of letting others try it first then when service pack 1 appears that may be the time to upgrade. But by then the price won't be the tempting one it is now.
Oh come on...there are STILL plenty of other ways to shut down....try the power button of your PC if you're completely incapable of using the keyboard and mouse - since that's the only option you'll have left, except possibly for Kinect-driven applications, etc. The accessibility features are still there to use the on-screen keyboard, etc.
Let me explain. But first, some of the comments on here are very strange! Okay, I purchased Win 8 for £14.99 as I recently bought a new netbook. I pulled it down and burnt to USB stick. So far, so good. However, when I tested the stick to ensure burnt okay, and then abandoned the Win8 install, problems began. You see, I had second thoughts about installing Win8 just yet as I still really liked (and knew) Win7. However, on removing the USB stick and rebooting, I got the blue screen of death. Damn!! Nothing for it but to install Win8 and 'go for it'. I did a clean install rather than an upgrade and it went in smooth. After creating a local account (didn't want to sync) I was then presented with the familiar 'modern' UI. It was only when I went into the desktop that, strangely, I began to feel I would like Win8 ( I had to!!). The picture of a daisy on a pure blue background was simply stunning!! However, I wasn't comfortable, and never have been, about the lack of the traditional start menu. That was soon fixed and for anyone looking to use Win8 in a Win7 manner, the first thing you should download is a program called 'start8' from stardock. Brilliant, I now have the traditional Win7 system back. Hoorah!!. I know that you shouldn't have to do this but, still, the best $5 you can spend. What I have now is all the advantages of Win8 in a familiar Win7 environment. Win8 loads like a rocket, runs quick and is really smooth. Note that you can also get your 'Computer' icon back by right-clicking on desktop, select Personalize and 'Change desktop icons'. You can now get Computer back!!! Overall, I like the advantages of the many changes under the bonnet but don't like the new IE within the modern UI, for example. To some degree, it does not matter. There's no point in looking back and, as I work entirely in the desktop, I'm not too fussed. Each to their own, I guess!!!!
Like most people I thought windows 8 was a major Fail, the start screen just isn't PC friendly and refuse to even touch it!
When the upgrade released I decided to actually go against my better judgement and bought it (£24.99 is actually reasonable for an OS upgrade, just ask Apple), I installed it clean to a new SSD and then just left it, never to be used!
Curiosity finally got the better of me and I went and purchased Start8, for $5, and I am now really enjoying Windows 8!! I never see that hideous start screen (removed the link from the start menu as well) and the operational speed compared to 7 is significant!
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