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Windows 8

Posted: Fri 16 Mar, 2012 15.01
by Dr Lobster*
any of you boys and girls tried Windows 8 yet?

i've been using it for a little while on a test pc at work.

i never thought i'd say this, but if the metro interface gets foisted upon me i will save my pennies and get a mac.

the stupid start screen kills productivity, you need so many clicks and right clicks to get to your regular apps.

if most of your work involves sitting in a browser or single window, then i reckon it'll be fine... anybody else who needs to work with multiple windows and applications it's a killer. getting rid of the start button has made the interface a horrible mishmash.

am i the luddite or has microsoft got it wrong?

Re: Windows 8

Posted: Fri 16 Mar, 2012 16.33
by Ant
I've been putting off getting a Mac, purely because Windows 7 is a pretty decent OS and it does the job nicely.

However Windows 8 is clunky, difficult to use, too much of a mish-mash between old and new and not particularly attractive. Seriously considering switching to a Mac if this is the direction Microsoft are going down.

Re: Windows 8

Posted: Fri 16 Mar, 2012 16.51
by Critique
Having been on XP since I got my current PC, about 7 years ago, I've been looking to upgrade for a while, now. If Windows 7 is going out, and 8 is coming in, then I may well get a Mac. Was planning on getting one anyway, but this is doing well to reinforce the idea.

Re: Windows 8

Posted: Fri 16 Mar, 2012 17.29
by woah
I've tried and I just can't get used to it - really irritating to faff around on the Metro interface for the Start menu which just doesn't work on desktops as smoothly as the standard Start menu, nor is it as simple to use. I don't see the harm in giving the users either desktop mode or Metro mode instead of trying to glue two very different things together.

There are improvements - it is faster in a lot of respects as an example. But, I'd much sooner have seen Microsoft focus on slimming down and speeding up Windows 8 as another improvement on Windows 7, and considered developing WP7 into a tablet OS instead - or simply not butt into a crowded market with failures like HP WebOS and Blackberry already having taken place. I can't see Windows 8 being a popular system on tablets at all, think it's doomed to failure in that market.

Porting Windows 8 to ARM architecture also seems odd - the main problem being, 99.9% of current Windows compatible programs will not work with it and I'm not convinced that many companies will want to port their programs to ARM.

Re: Windows 8

Posted: Fri 16 Mar, 2012 19.53
by cdd
The idea, surely, is that the Windows 7-style desktop is made to feel like an old-fashioned application - a bit like running XP mode.

The sad truth for (I suspect) most of the commenters in this thread is that they do not fall into the 90% of people whose only need for a computer is to live inside bloody Facebook (in addition to light other internet use), play angry birds, and write documents. I KNOW people like this. These people will barely even have to leave the "new" interface. They won't be able to download viruses or adware or toolbars because the "Metro" version of IE will be too crippled to do that. And from their perspective, their computer will be "lovely" to use (a fact they will credit to WIndows 8 when actaully it's just because it won't have any of the usual bloat on it).

Meanwhile, the 10% of people who want to do PRODUCTIVE things on their computer have to suffer because of the design compromises of this "Metro UI" that nobody in their right mind would use. And anyone who doesn't think it is a design compromise is either blind or lying.

They should just market the two interfaces as different versions of Windows and let people decide. That way everyone would be happy, and poor sods like me wouldn't have to fiddle around with a stupid full screen animated pile of bullshit just to open a single program.

Re: Windows 8

Posted: Fri 16 Mar, 2012 20.01
by bilky asko
Maybe they should release a Windows 2000-esque version of Windows 8 for users who want the old-style interface - Windows 8 Retro, as opposed to Metro.

Re: Windows 8

Posted: Fri 16 Mar, 2012 20.16
by DVB Cornwall
So I presume people are using the issued demo which only has the Metro interface attached as a matter of course. It doesn't as far as I am aware have the 'Classic' version of it's interface, that will be selectable (as default) in the commercial release version.

This confuses me.

Re: Windows 8

Posted: Fri 16 Mar, 2012 20.19
by Gavin Scott
Oh I thought it was metro or nothing. I saw nothing in the blurb about classic interface.

Anyway, this is all very disappointing to read. I pissed about for ages setting up virtual machine to run this on, and for various reasons I didn't finish the setup, but now I don't think I'll bother.

It doesn't sound like it will suit me at all. Touch tablets should be for Facebook and angry birds, but there has to be a full application environment for all that video and image editing etc.

Bah.

Re: Windows 8

Posted: Fri 16 Mar, 2012 20.24
by woah
The classic interface is there - the only problem being, clicking the start button takes you straight into the Metro interface. There is no classic Start menu whatsoever - the Metro main menu is the Start menu.

Windows Explorer (through which you can access the usual control panel and other bits) and the taskbar are still there, and so are the classic Windows apps like Notepad, Paint, etc.

Image

Re: Windows 8

Posted: Fri 16 Mar, 2012 20.40
by Critique
Oh, good grief. No start menu... Deary me...

Re: Windows 8

Posted: Fri 16 Mar, 2012 20.49
by dosxuk
woah wrote:Porting Windows 8 to ARM architecture also seems odd - the main problem being, 99.9% of current Windows compatible programs will not work with it and I'm not convinced that many companies will want to port their programs to ARM.
Except the only decent tablet hardware is ARM, so if you're wanting to release a tablet version of Windows, you need to support ARM. A much larger proportion of software than 0.1% will work fine too. Anything written in Java or the several .NET languages will work exactly the same as on x86 and won't need recompilation.
DVB Cornwall wrote:So I presume people are using the issued demo which only has the Metro interface attached as a matter of course. It doesn't as far as I am aware have the 'Classic' version of it's interface, that will be selectable (as default) in the commercial release version.

This confuses me.
There isn't a "classic" interface option and there isn't intended to be one. It's not included in the preview (previously known as a beta) edition because there isn't one. The W7 desktop does exist, but it's accessed from the metro start screen. I do however see the start button returning for the next release.

I don't understand the problem people are having with the Metro start screen though. If you want to run a desktop app, you click the (invisible) start button, and click the icon for the app. If the app is buried in one of the folders on the menu, you can pin it to the front screen. Alternatively you can just start typing and it will appear in the list. Just like W7. The only real difference is that the default icons are different, and it fills the whole screen, but since the start menu is a modal procedure anyway (you can't open the start menu, and then open an email in a different app while the menu is open), it doesn't matter if it does fill the whole screen.

If you want to complain about the usability of metro, complain about the invisible buttons, or the fact that there's no shutdown option. The start menu / screen itself is different, but works the same as what we've had before.