Microsoft Launches Windows 8 Consumer Preview

suraj.sun writes "Microsoft on Wednesday made the Consumer Preview of Windows 8 available for download to the general public. Built with touch computing and apps in mind, Windows 8 is crucial to Microsoft's efforts to make inroads against Apple and Google in the red-hot tablet market, where the company is significantly behind rivals. Windows 8 marks the biggest change to the OS since the aforementioned 95 flavor (which, shockingly, turns 17 this year). With Windows 8 comes the introduction of a Metro-style interface, inspired by the lovely and intuitive presentation found in Windows Phone. In it, apps and functions are pinned to tiles and, to interact with those apps, you simply tap those tiles. The former Start Menu has been replaced by a full-screen view of tiles that you can scroll through horizontally. You can pin applications, shortcuts, documents, webpages and any number of other things, customizing the interface in any way you like — so long as what you like is rectangular and only extends from left to right." MrSeb wrote on with info on generating a USB stick installer from the available images, and itwebennet with details about IE10.

Comments

Lovely and Intuitive?

[sconeu]

I had the Win8 Developer Preview, and I *HATED* the Metro Interface. IMHO it was ugly and a PITA to use. It does not scale well to a standard WIMP interface.

Maybe for a tablet, it's OK.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[ByOhTek]

I can see it being "OK" for a tablet, like it is "OK" for a phone (not great, and I'd struggle to call it "good"). However, for a non-touch screen, or a screen that is large enough to hold a decent amount of text, this interface is a horrible, inefficient waste of space.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[Samalie]

Agreed entirely. There is absolutley no fucking way my owners will want this at all in our office environment.

Complete and utter shit. Vista 2.0

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[w.hamra1987]

Well, as a computer technician, i loved the few years of Vista. I had so many customers buying new laptops, and asking me to downgrade them... Those were the good time, cash pouring in all the time.

Then came 7, it was good, no one wanting a downgrade, but certainly lots of people needing help to upgrade. Maintenance-wise, 7 didn’t prove to be a challenge, and fixing its problems is usually simpler, especially with the addition of repairing tools to the boot partition.

I guess now with windows 8, we'll go back to the downgrade frenzy phase... I look very forward to it.. and even more hopefully, Microsoft will again, as with Vista, learn the errs of their ways, and produce a good windows 9.

whatever the result... I’m happy with my Linux and KDE here... windows is nothing but a huge job opportunity to me :)

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[Joce640k]

They're dreaming if they think it's anything other than a tablet OS.

I don't think I have the upper body strength to use it on a monitor for more than half an hour.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[tokul]

Vista 2.0

Your versioning system is a bit off. Vista 2.0 was released in 2009.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[Cinder6]

I think, for certain people it will be nice. Looking at screenshots and videos of it at work, I think my mom would have an easier time with it than with Win7.

For other users, it looks like a disaster. As many have said, it might be a nice tablet OS (hell, I may actually get a Win8 tablet at some point, though I'm a bit skeptical), but mouse interactions on the thing look awful. Maybe if I had a Cintiq...

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[FishOuttaWater]

I think your sarcasm threshold needs adjustment. ...there. Do you get it now?

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[not already in use]

Typical of slashdot, people are either ignorant to the fact, or ignore the fact, that the desktop interface still exists, and that metro is not intended to be used in a desktop environment.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[CSHARP123]

I am not sure what you mean by decent amount of text. If you meant, dos prompt you don't need a 24" monitor either. They demoed the thing on a 80" touchscreen. Engadget has photo of it. Also in the consumer preview they have added more keyboard shortcuts. According to some who has tested the consumer preview, Windows 8 has more keyboard shortcuts than previous versions of Windows. From what I see, they removed the start menu and made a huge set of tiles that launches the application.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[jythie]

'inefficient waste of space' is probably part of the point. Just like other displays of status and wealth, people like showing off that they have the space TO waste.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[T.E.D.]

Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).

That must be one really tough coffee table.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[chucklebutte]

Metro UI is default in dev preview, and pretty sure it will be in final retail. Your desktop is still there yes, its just a tile now, that you have to press, and wait for your desktop to load, which makes a lot of sense. Who wants to start up their PC and use it to actually work?

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[Riceballsan]

You are quite right, Vista really is windows 7 pre-alpha that was released to the public due to massive overshooting of the balmer peak http://xkcd.com/323/ and then continous attempts to fix it before the damage was severe and they had to actually just finish the product and release it.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[jittles]

Well, no. That was more like Vista 1.5, if you're referring to Windows 7. It made Vista useable. In fact, I think windows 7 has great performance. I run some micro ATI boards that perform better w/ Win 7 and an SSD than they do with XP and an SSD. But Vista was bad, just as Windows 8 will be.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[Anonymous Coward]

Typical of slashdot, people are either ignorant to the fact, or ignore the fact, that the desktop interface still exists, and that metro is not intended to be used in a desktop environment.

Yeah, we just got confused by the fact that when you install it on a desktop, you get the metro interface and there's no way to permanently turn it off (not even the registry hack from the dev preview works now). Had we known that, as you point out, this was not INTENDED behavior, and that it therefore must be entirely ACCIDENTAL, we would not be complaining at all!

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[Muramas95]

aye me too, I just hope there is improvements over the preview.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[NatasRevol]

Next year is the year of Nerds On Steroids.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[DigiShaman]

And the ribbons interface for Windows Explorer? WTF?! I would rather be waterboarded. Screw that!

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[DeathFromSomewhere]

Hit the windows key, type the first few letters and hit enter. Exactly the same as you would do before.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[atlasdropperofworlds]

> It does not scale well to a standard WIMP interface.

I don't understand what you're saying. The desktop is still there. Explorer is still there. I've found win8 makes very little difference, because I am a heavy keyboard user. I use windows via the command-line, which is pretty much the same from win7 to win8.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[atlasdropperofworlds]

People are bawwing too much about metro. The desktop is available right there. You can pin desktop apps to the metro interface and they launch in desktop mode. I've 2 30" monitors, and I've got win8 set up on it. It's fine. The monitor space actually shows a ridiculous amount of icons, and a flat structure for finding my top, oh, 40 apps is just fine. Granted, I'm still a keyboard user, but metro is actually making me think of using the mouse more.... on a desktop.

Metro is just a fullscreen start menu with large icons (ie. BIG hit targets). It's actually a good direction, and the desktop will always be there for us who use WIMP interface suitable to large displays.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[dave420]

You don't have to use it - a perfectly normal desktop is there if you want to use it. Bitching about this is like complaining that Calculator is a piss-poor Control Panel. Technically correct, but entirely pointless.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[dave420]

The Metro UI is not an OS. You can still use the normal desktop UI if you want, which I'm sure most desktop computer users will.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[cayenne8]

Hit the windows key, type the first few letters and hit enter. Exactly the same as you would do before.

Hmm..I've never tried doing that before.

I'm guessing this would be new to a LOT of people too besides me...?

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[WaffleMonster]

Typical of slashdot, people are either ignorant to the fact, or ignore the fact, that the desktop interface still exists, and that metro is not intended to be used in a desktop environment.

I wonder if there could be a third option? Such as not wanting to go through another hoop to get to the desktop or the fact that when you click the start button it opens the metro interface rather than my list of apps.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Vista SP1 made Vista usable. Windows 7 only added a few frivolous features on top of post SP1 Vista and no real performance improvements.

Most of the Vista naysayer have either never used it beyond RTM or have never used it at all.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[DeathFromSomewhere]

I wouldn't doubt it. It's not something they show in the videos very often. It's not exactly new and there are so many other changes that the start menu search seems to get forgotten. That and it's nowhere near as discoverable as the search box is on windows 7.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[dave420]

Pretty sure based on what?

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[Abreu]

How about laying the monitor flat on the desk? or maybe at a 20-30 angle?
I wonder if a large touchscreen would work better that way

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[MosX]

You don't have to wait for the desktop to load. Apparently Metro and the classic desktop load at the same time and are always there.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[DrXym]

I had the Win8 Developer Preview, and I *HATED* the Metro Interface. IMHO it was ugly and a PITA to use. It does not scale well to a standard WIMP interface.

Not surprisingly the developer preview focussed on the metro stuff because that's what they want people to start learning about. I really don't see any reason to think they're going to inflict it on regular desktops without at least providing switches to disable most of it. The reason for this should be obvious.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[gl4ss]

based on this consumer preview and the pr material provided by ms on the issue.

of course, as a result of this review they'd be smart to turn it the fuck off if they detect a keyboard and a mouse connected. perhaps provide the tiles on the desktop. but everyone fucking hates active desktop, they should know that from win98..

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[ferongr]

Two words: Finger grease.

It's already unbearable on a small smartphone with an oleophobic glossy screen that you use sparingly. Now imagine having to regularly clean a 27" monitor with a matte surface.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[tibit]

If you don't know about that, you're really wasting a lot of time. Did you truly believe there are no new tricks to be learned as you upgrade your Windows? It's not like an undocumented poweruser thing. The damn key is on the keyboard, and has been for a while, what about pressing it every once in a while to see if they added any new functionality to it...

It's been quite long on both Windows and Mac since you actually had to browse lists to pick up items from them. You know, computers are quite good at looking things up. Command line with suggestions has come back, and it's known as Search or Spotlight.

Lists/menus/files in folders are good when you don't know what you're looking for. Once you remember the name (or a sample of contents) of the thing you need, let the machine find it for you.

</rant>

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[jmorris42]

> Hit the windows key, type the first few letters and hit enter. Exactly the same as you would do before.

Why am I having flashbacks to almost exactly identical threads when GNOME3 was excreted? New 'super simple' graphical interface that can't be used with a mouse but if you memorize a bunch of keyboard shortcuts..... It is/is not (at the same time, often with both sides argued in a single post) built for a touch only world. Windows ME will be moving up a notch from the bottom of the list of Microsoft's worst products. But dead last will of course belong to Bob; now and forever.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[chispito]

I foresee I'll get modded down like the guy above me... but Vista SP1 isn't that bad. It's not much different than Win7, actually.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[houstonbofh]

I am so proud! Finally Linux is the innovator. The "Upgrade" of KDE caused a huge backlash, and was rapidly fixed into something still usable. But Gnome took this to new heights with Gnome 3, and Ubuntu added even more customer dissatisfaction with (dis)Unity! The fact that Microsoft is playing catchup in the game of throwing the core users under the bus to chase iPad and Android fanboys is so satisfying!

Sarcasm aside, at least Microsoft did make it optional this time. One up on Linux there.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[thomasw_lrd]

I'm actually curious to see how the xbox integration works.

Oblig Star Wars reference if you can use it remotely from work.
It was as if a million managers suddenly cried out in pain, and were silenced.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[Defenestrar]

Presenting advanced features in a context specific UI is definitely worth the slight headache of learning something new - besides what else are you supposed to do? Shout "get off my lawn" and tell old stories about the vi-macs war?

I'm actually quite fond of the ribbon interface. Sure it wasn't what I learned on, but anything common was still keyboard navigation and =COMMAND (or VB work), the ability to have a pull down menu which would select and present options for specific figure modifications (just try modifying/deleting horizontal error bars when the scale wasn't convenient for the default values using 2003). It's a shame they didn't get the ribbon setup simultaneously launched for the entire suite (e.g. Project '07 was old style).

In both cases 95 and 98 were massive improvements over the prior edition, IE6 was the winning shot of the browser war (and nobody likes the compromises war brings), and zune was just a mp3 player - so what if it didn't go viral? (You will note I did not discuss ME)

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[Billly Gates]

Apple is becoming more and more enterprise friendly ... not because of iShinyness but because of stupid mistakes by MS ... Balmer.

Metro is pretty bad in the developer preview. Consumer preview shows more attention to mouse detail as the desktop mode is enchanged for keyboard and mouse, and MS being retarded enough to disable AD integration in Windows 8 on arms. This and porting Office to the IPAD is another big mistake. Take away those reasons and why bother with Windows tablets and phones?

Corporate America in the next 5 years will open their eyes and realize they do not need Windows anymore as the shiny Apple logos replace tablets and phones and MS dependency is broken. Looks like the MS monopoly is broken. However, I do not know if I like this new Apple one any better.

I mean does Balmer really think we use WIndows because it is just a great product that we seek it or because we have files in Office and need IT to manage our devices for us?

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[msclrhd]

The desktop is right there in Windows 8, just another tile. Just like DOS was still there on Win 3.1. The desktop is only available on ARM for Office and Explorer.

I see Microsoft trying to move from traditional Win32/64-based desktop applications to pure WinRT Metro applications in the future. However, I don't see this working for complex business applications.

And, reading about the multitasking behaviour in Win8, if you have something like VMware running, or are encoding a video for YouTube or have a build running on Desktop and switch to Metro, Windows will kill the desktop process in 10 seconds (it gives it that long to suspend).

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[jellomizer]

I try new things just so I can Hate how different they are. Because I tried it first I can be first to say I hate it therefore I am better then the rest of you.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[Defenestrar]

...Granted, I'm still a keyboard user, but metro is actually making me think of using the mouse more.... on a desktop.

Metro is just a fullscreen start menu with large icons (ie. BIG hit targets). It's actually a good direction, and the desktop will always be there for us who use WIMP interface suitable to large displays.

Dude the mouse is so last century, and this whole thing with touching and smudging a screen is lame-o tech like hand cranking an engine - what MS wants people to do is really Kinect with their computers

But yeah - the bits of 8 that I've seen don't look bad at all. I just wish more people would connect the dots and follow the rabbit hole, I expect the future to be quite the wonderland; presuming IP law doesn't make it shrivel up and die anyway.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[chucklebutte]

I started on Win 95a, I actually liked ME, however 2K was much more superb. Nothing against learning something new, I use Gnome or KDE now. It is more of a usability standpoint, not sure why companies think less control of what we use is better. Ribbon is just sloppy the original menu bar works just fine and allows you to accomplish many things in a timely fashion.

I don't want to have to hunt through tabs and list boxes just to bold something, just like I don't want to hunt through tiles to find my desktop to hit the start button to navigate through the horrible Windows 7 start bar just to launch a program that doesn't have a tile.

This wont affect my home life, or my personal computer, it will affect end users which I support, and will influence my future headaches.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[Anonymous Coward]

Its Microsoft, and they are notorious for implementing terrible things. Ribbon interface for starters, Vista, IE6+, Zune, ME, 98, 95A+B, etc~

It took me some time getting used to the Ribbon, but I would never go back. I use Excel and Powerpoint quite extensively for work (like heavily every day, and regularly quite advanced, and have done for years). Even though the Ribbon gets a lot of hate on Slashdot, I've also seen several studies saying users like it. What would be interesting is to hear your level of Office use is?, because I have this impression that the most vocal ribbon haters here actually are not very heavy daily Office users.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[Billly Gates]

The XP driver for eSata and PATA does not support disk queing and is more of a failsafe crippled driver. The driver more than the kernel is why Windows 7 is way faster than a XP kernel. SMP performance would be weaker on XP because that is where the newer kernels shine.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[Defenestrar]

Hip hip hooray!

Did you truly believe there are no new tricks to be learned as you upgrade your Windows?

What's up with all the people here who can't stand change or well tested improvement? (like the stats they run on data like button clicking, eye movement, etc...). Shouldn't a self-proclaimed technical elite be enthusiastic about change on a computational device, or are some of us hitting an early and disillusioned middle age from the tech crowd that started here in the late 90s?

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[atlasdropperofworlds]

Mutlitasking is more complex than that. It is possible for tasks to run continuously, it's just an API call to request that ability. If for whatever reason the OS can't give your application the resources it has requested, it notifies you. This means that if you write an application that will do long-term tasks in the background, you will have to write code that will handle the OS suspending you, which will happen on, say, weaker systems than what you envision (such as low-memory ARM devices), but on systems like my hex-core desktop, your application will be allowed to run indefinitely.

This is pretty much the same situation you encounter on Android and ios. ios in particular is quite draconian about shutting you down. Android is much more lenient, but as a programmer you have to pay attention to what you're doing. Win8 seems to be very much like Android.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[Zephiris]

They don't.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[s73v3r]

I don't want to have to hunt through tabs and list boxes just to bold something

I'm sorry, but that was a piss poor example. The Bold button is right there at the top, where it always was.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[s73v3r]

So your anecdotes are worth more than empirical data gathered through studies?

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[atlasdropperofworlds]

Using the kinect if you don't have a mouse could actually be really quite cool. However, I hear they are actually working on eye-tracking technology to control the mouse pointer with a company called Tobii (http://www.neowin.net/news/windows-8-demoed-with-new-gaze-eye-tracking-tool).

I have an xbox with a kinect. It's actually a good party distraction. The wife plays fitness games. And I don't need a controller at all to use my TV... outside of turning everything on (you listening MS?). I can rent movies on it too. From a product standpoint, it's quite good for non-hardcore console gamers.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[DigiShaman]

There are a ton of vertical market applications that are developed for the Windows platform. So Windows is not going away in the business world. Not by a long shot. Where Apple will continue to dominate is in the home market and BYOD iThings from employees into the office.

Basically, Microsoft will hang in there like IBM without any further ground breaking market penetration.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[jtownatpunk.net]

Terrible ergonomics.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[geekoid]

Because there will be no way to set it to do that automatically~

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[Ihmhi]

Agreed entirely. There is absolutley no fucking way my owners will want this at all in our office environment.

Complete and utter shit. Vista 2.0

Windows seems to go through a pattern of "Good Windows, Bad Windows". We should add to the "never buy before the first service pack rule" - never buy a Windows if the latest iteration was really good. It'll be crap.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[nightfell]

Who wants to start up their PC and use it to actually work?

Only a minority of PC owners.

Slashdotters are always harping on about "working" on computers. The iPad isn't for "real work", now Metro isn't for using to "actually work". By that metric alone, I'd expect Windows 8 to be a smashing success.

Though that's just one metric, but although I'm sure a lot of Slashdotters do work on their PCs, most people just want to communicate, play, create (not work), and the like. And for the "create" in that list, very little in terms of text or numerical projects (some writing, short newsletters at most), but heavy on creative projects like photos, invites, and videos.

And I don't see how Metro in any way hinders any of those, other than being different. If the iPad has shown us anything, it's that Slashdot-type geeks are the *last* people to consult regarding the preferences of the average person.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[DaHat]

The desktop is only available on ARM for Office and Explorer.

Really? My setup must be extra odd then when I am running the Visual Studio 2012 beta on an x64 machine on the Windows 8 Beta.

And, reading about the multitasking behaviour in Win8, if you have something like VMware running, or are encoding a video for YouTube or have a build running on Desktop and switch to Metro, Windows will kill the desktop process in 10 seconds (it gives it that long to suspend).

Sure sounds like FUD to me... or would you like to support your claim as again... I have not experianced what you claim to be seeing.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[cayenne8]

Well, I just don't use windows that often really.

About the only time I touch it is at work..and that is XP.

I've never known a reason before to hit the windows button...I just did it, brings up the Start Menu..but when I started typing the first letters of a program it didn't go to it.

Perhaps this is a Win7 thing?

I only VERY recently had a laptop purchased for me to do some work on later for someone that has Win7...I've only fired it up to install some stuff on it...but when I get home, i'll give the windows button a try.

The GP maybe assumed someone that was familiar with Win 7, or possibly Vista which might have this feature?

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[CohibaVancouver]

You can still use the normal desktop UI if you want, which I'm sure most desktop computer users will.

Except that the start menu is gone - Clicking 'start' returns you to the metro tiles - Sort of like clicking the button on an iPad. So if you consider the start menu to be part of the 'normal desktop UI' then no, you can't use the normal desktop.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[bored]

Except in the developer preview I have, I wasn't smart enough to figure out how to get a proper start menu. I was constantly flipping back and forth to start applications.

It basically left me scratching my a** a couple of times trying to figure simple stuff out. It might be intuitive for my 5Y/O but anyone over 20 is going to be like WTF? From someone who actually owns a touchpad and an ipad, and didn't find either interface to be that foreign. The developer preview was a mess.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[MrHanky]

Interesting. The whole 'spread a bunch of icons all across your huge widescreen monitor' idea is actually the one thing I dislike in Gnome3's launcher thing. I don't see how hunting for an icon all across your entire screen is any better than scrolling through an alphabetically ordered list. In fact, it isn't. Why do you think it is?

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[JohnFen]

Yeah, that's new to me too. Learn something new every day! Not really very useful to me, but still, good to know.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[JohnFen]

Yes, but the perfectly normal desktop keeps getting obscured by that damned Metro interface. Why can't Microsoft let us turn Metro off completely?

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[CohibaVancouver]

a perfectly normal desktop is there if you want to use it

The start menu is gone - Clicking 'start' returns you to the metro tiles - Sort of like clicking the button on an iPad. So if you consider the start menu to be part of the 'perfectly normal desktop' then no, you can't use the normal desktop.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[cyber-vandal]

I am a heavy user of Word and Excel and the ribbon was very annoying for me as a lot of the things that I was used to in Office 2003 were very difficult to find. I don't want to spend time on Google I want to do my job. I am getting used to it now, but a transition stage would have been nice for those of us who use the advanced features.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[tibit]

Vista has this feature, released in January 2007, as does OS X since Tiger (10.4), released in April 2005. On OS X, it's closer to being a decade old thing. If you're using the command line processor (cmd.exe) in Windows XP or newer, you have suggestions when you press tab, similar to bash or other modern shells on Unix, but there's likely no search in cmd.exe, although I don't recall that detail right now.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[msclrhd]

I said desktop on ARM -- the desktop on 32/64-bit will work with existing applications just fine. The point was that "desktop" is not available as an option on the new platforms for any serious development (e.g. porting Photoshop or LibreOffice to ARM); you are relegated to using Metro and the WinRT APIs which are not designed for creating complex applications.

App Suspension:

  1. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/02/09/building-windows-for-the-arm-processor-architecture.aspx -- can't find the specific quote in the article, but checking out the comments: e.g. "I hate that the OS suspends the app when it's not in the foreground. To fix this issue, I always run it in Visual Studio, so it doesn't get suspended."

  2. http://hexus.net/tech/news/software/35057-microsoft-windows-8-feature-app-suspension/ -- "This time around it's Microsoft's announcement that its goal is to suspend Metro apps that are currently not visible on the screen to curtail and, with any luck, cut completely their power consumption" and bear in mind that the desktop is just another application (unless Microsoft are treating the desktop applications in the Desktop application differently to Metro applications in Metro).

  3. http://www.techpowerup.com/160208/Windows-8-To-Introduce-App-Suspension.html -- "Simply put, it is a kernel optimization that "suspends" applications that are running in the background without much activity." This is a further clarification on the suspension behaviour, which would mitigate the problem (e.g. what about an alarm clock application, an application polling a server infrequently, or VMware with a powered on but idle OS).

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[geekoid]

um. You can also use a mouse..or hot keys..or touch.

DOS 4 was far worse the MS Bob.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[cyber-vandal]

And would you be running VMWare on Android or a Windows 8 Phone? Why would you want this behaviour on a desktop where you want multitasking to work like it always has?

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[geekoid]

Corporate America in the next 5 years

I've been hearing that for over 15 years....yep any day now.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[geekoid]

stupid hacksters wanting to hate things before it's mainstream.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[terjeber]

You didn't read his post at all, did you?

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[ozmanjusri]

Studies conducted on behalf of Microsoft? You mean, like their "Get the Facts" studies?

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[DeathFromSomewhere]

I wonder this myself. Looking at the comments on this site it's amazing how bad "power users" are at adapting to change compared to more typical users. Not just this site either, I know a few people that still insist on running XP with windows update turned off because they think it's going to eat all their RAM or something.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. I came into Vista with a SP1 laptop and I could never understand people making SUCH a fuss about Window 7. I'd also started using a Mac around the same time and the only immediate difference I could see in Win 7 is that the Taskbar "borrowed" from the Dock.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[SuricouRaven]

I'm not sure, but I think Apple actually has a patent on that. I remember seeing an image from it a long time ago.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[SuricouRaven]

I know a lot of people who turn off updates, but more because they hate that 'Windows will restart in ten minutes' dialog that always seems to disappear behind other windows and reboot when you're in the middle of a mission on EVE and cost you a hundred-million-ISK battleship.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[DrGamez]

It is faster though. Not much consolation but it finds programs/settings/files a lot faster than win7's search box via start menu does.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[narcc]

Windows seems to go through a pattern of "Good Windows, Bad Windows".

What?

Looking at this list: 3.1, NT, 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP, Vista, 7 I don't see the pattern.

Looks like yet another oft-repeated, yet totally baseless, meme.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[Zuriel]

not sure why companies think less control of what we use is better.

A sure sign that this is a man who has never had a user:

1) delete Word and complain the next day that they can't open Word files
2) Zoom in to 200% and complain that the text is too big

I'm sure everyone here has stories to tell... Making users jump through some hoops before they can break things is fine, but removing control altogether isn't fine.

I suspect less user control directly reduces the money companies have to spend on tech support...

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[aztektum]

Windows 7 has done me well. I am still running an install I performed in Feb of 2010 (purely gaming install).

In fact, I put the hard drive in a new i7 box I put together last year. Ran a "repair install" tool and it's been working fine ever since.

I was wiping WinXP every 6-12 months, so color me impressed.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[exomondo]

Metro UI is default in dev preview, and pretty sure it will be in final retail. Your desktop is still there yes, its just a tile now, that you have to press, and wait for your desktop to load, which makes a lot of sense. Who wants to start up their PC and use it to actually work?

It's kind of like what Apple did with LaunchPad, only that Microsoft has done it the wrong way around. On tablets sure Metro should be the default but on mouse/keyboard setups the Desktop should be the default.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[narcc]

The #1 thing that sucks about the ribbon? Answering "how do I" questions.

The ribbon has probably caused billions of dollars in lost productivity...

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[shutdown -p now]

You ever used menus in Explorer?

(the ribbon is minimized by default, by the way)

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[exomondo]

The iPad isn't for "real work", now Metro isn't for using to "actually work". By that metric alone, I'd expect Windows 8 to be a smashing success.

I'd hazard a guess that a like-minded vocal minority said the same thing about the GUI many years ago too.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[shutdown -p now]

I would admit that I'm one of those slashdotters harping about "real work". But then the nice thing about Win8 is that the old desktop is still there, so real work can be done just fine. The only thing that's missing is the classic Start menu, but I give it at most a few months before someone writes a third-party clone of that. In the meantime, I mostly have apps that I use pinned to the taskbar anyway, and Win+search can locate the rest same as it always did, even if I don't like the new fullscreen Metro UI for the search.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[shutdown -p now]

And, reading about the multitasking behaviour in Win8, if you have something like VMware running, or are encoding a video for YouTube or have a build running on Desktop and switch to Metro, Windows will kill the desktop process in 10 seconds (it gives it that long to suspend).

I don't know where you've read about this, but it's wrong. The 10 second limit before suspending only applies to Metro apps, not to desktop apps - which makes sense, since no desktop app had to deal with it before, and so they would all just die if you switch to Metro. Which evidently doesn't happen in Win8, if you actually try running it.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[nbehary]

Did you try? I'm not saying I figured out the Reg Key to do it myself, but a quick Google search will tell you how to turn on the Win7 interface on the Developer Preview. There are even several tools that will switch it back and forth for you.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[shatfield]

[sarcasm mode=on]But.. but... it's "Lovely and Intuitive"!!! Didn't you RTFA?! [/sarcasm]

I am not a fan either... I think that it feels very weird. Maybe I would consider it a decent start, I guess.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[arkhan_jg]

that the desktop interface still exists, and that metro is not intended to be used in a desktop environment.

Except it's replaced the start button entirely, and you can't even kill it with the reg hack any more. So as a desktop user, you have 4 choices:
1) pin your most common apps to the taskbar - while I do do that, I use far too many to pin them all; such as the administration tools for servers.
2) have them as shortcuts on the desktop; great until you have an app window covering the icon you want
3) take hand off the mouse to hit start, flip to metro, type the app name you want (yes, I touch type), and flip back to desktop, put hand back on mouse
4) put up with the flipping into metro and back every time you want to launch a frigging app

There's a noticeable delay with the pretty flip window for switching from desktop to metro to desktop; and since certain apps are metrified, you go there anywhere when it launches. It's not as quick, nor as simple as a dock + plus application folder.

Sure, for those people who only use their computer at home for light use - facebook, mail, photos, google search for 'the internet' metro is fine; but they're the people buying ipads in such large numbers anyway, or they buy an ipad to do their light use on the sofa with, and leave the desktop/laptop for the serious business.

At offices, where windows is utterly dominant, metro seems utterly terrible. Not one person, and I mean not one I know has seen the metro interface from where I've been running it on a test rig at the office (I'm the head IT guy) and expressed anything positive - my wife has threatened to divorce me if I put it on her laptop! It's just not a decent tablet interface (too many small fiddly buttons still, such as on ribbons or the non-metro desktop) OR a decent desktop interface; they've taken a really solid OS and frankly ruined it.

The 'push up against the sides/corners for charms, metro shortcut and running apps' gimmick is also a frickin nightmare on virtual machines or RDP - if you run them windowed, as I often do when I'm testing new software rollouts on multiple images, you can't hit the fricking hot corners or edges reliably because of course your cursor goes past the edge of the VM window. If you run fullscreen, you just hit up against the host bringing up ITS UI on screen edges - start bar on a windows host, or the top mac bar on parallels/osx. It is literally rage inducing.

I've been running windows desktop/linux servers as my primary OSes for a good 15 years now. After a couple of weeks with the developer preview, I got so sick of it I built a hackintosh; given my boss is a bit of a machead, it wasn't hard to get him to eventually buy me a mac at the office, and I've now switched to OSX as my primary OS (at home and work) for the first time in my life; save for gaming and a win7 vm for vmware tools/AD work. I've never been a fan of OSX, but it's growing on me; between multiple spaces and a magic touchpad, gitbox, totalfinder, iterm, alfred and sublime text I've grown to find it quite useful, if a bit expensive. And mac mail can go die in a fricking fire for its non-standard attachment handling.

I've been testing the consumer preview of win 8 out today, and it's still just as broken on a VM with the new UX. I'm going to have to force myself to use it so I can support it later, but it's going be a cold day in hell before most of the staff accept it as a replacement for windows 7 on their machines. You thought getting through the switch from office 2003 to 2007 was bad? (We've still a few staff refusing an upgrade to 2010 it was so traumatic, they don't want to go through any more). The switch from win 7 to metro is so jarring, I seriously think we're going to see a lot of users jump ship from windows entirely, myself included.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[caitsith01]

Maybe for a tablet, it's OK.

Everyone is assuming that desktops are the target here.

There is no reason why MS can't run a strategy of Windows 7 continuing to be supported as the primary desktop/serious OS, and Windows 8 being deployed for a disparate range of non-desktop applications. That would be quite smart, actually.

AFAIK there has been no indication that Win 7 is about to become unavailable or unsupported.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[nightfell]

Exactly right. It's strange how technologically conservative so-called geeks can often be.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[Tarlus]

With windows 7 the craptacular user interface is mandatory.

No, the classic Windows UI is just as accessible in Windows 7.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[xhrit]

None of my computers have a start menu or icons on the desktop, so the Metro UI concept is fine in theory. I get plenty of real work done on my Linux machines running a minimalist gui, and my Windows machines are configured to operate in exactly the same manner.As long as we are still replace eplorer.exe as the default shell in the registry and run Xoblite or another port of Blackbox instead of windows explorer then I can upgrade my windows machines to windows 8 and my desktop user interface will remain unchanged.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[shutdown -p now]

As long as we are still replace eplorer.exe as the default shell in the registry and run Xoblite or another port of Blackbox instead of windows explorer then I can upgrade my windows machines to windows 8 and my desktop user interface will remain unchanged.

I gave it a try, and it works, but with one catch. All the new Metro stuff - which includes various pop ups (go-to-start-screen in lower left corner, task switcher in upper left corner, and "charms" like Settings, Search or Devices in either of the right corners) - is implemented on some level lower than explorer.exe. So if you kill the latter and fire up BB, the taskbar is gone, but corner actions remain. It doesn't seem to be actually affecting anything, since you need to put the mouse cursor all the way into the corner for it to activate. Still, that BB button in lower left corner now has to be aimed at more precisely.

On the bright side, switching from and to Metro seems to work just fine, so this could be used on Intel Win8 tablets, with Metro operating as touch UI, and BB when docked with keyboard/mouse, same as stock config.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[exomondo]

Windows consumer OSs (NT, 2000, 2008 are server OSs) seem to go through a pattern of "Good Windows, Bad Windows": 95=good, ME=bad, XP=good, Vista=bad, 7=good, 8=bad.

98? better than 95, that breaks the pattern straight away.
And NT & 2000 were not server OSes, they had Server-branded versions though.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[SpryGuy]

You realize the ribbon is collapsed by default, and you need never use it.

But if you want it, you can expand it and use it.

So... no need to run off to the water-boarding facility... you're not being forced into that.

Meanwhile, Windows Explorer has lots of really good enhancements, from integrated SkyDrive to native support for mounting and burning *.iso files (FINALLY), and a return of the 'up' button to go up a directory level.

So this isn't really something to rant about and get all angry over.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[SpryGuy]

Also, XP wasn't actually good (clearly you've forgotten all the bitching over the cartoony UI and issues it had with compatibility and especially security)... XP SP2, however, was very good.

And as mentioned, Windows 98 and Windows 98SE are both missing from your list (both good).

Also, Vista SP1 eliminated most of the real problems with Vista.

So yeah, this meme is everywhere, but it really doesn't hold any water, as you really have to cherry-pick in order to make it work. Better to just stop repeating it.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[Osty]

eh.. no? Even my computer illiterate parents do that. Slashdot likes to make fun of Joe sixpack, but sometimes we seems so stuck in the past that we are actually less proficient with using modern Windows 7 PCs than ordinary Joes. Like the leet people who think they speed up their PC by turning off hardware accellerated Aero "eye candy", replacing it with the software default that actually is slower.

Or the people who turn off search indexing to "speed up games" and end up making the start menu search unusable. Or the people who insist on doing a complete OS reinstall every couple of months. Or the people who don't run AV software because it's too intrusive (they've obviously never tried MSE). Or turning off UAC, disabling the firewall, turning off "unnecessary" services because they don't understand what they do, etc.

There are a lot of things "power users" do that are not relevant anymore or even damaging to actual performance and functionality, simply because that's what they've always done and they can't comprehend that things change and get better over time.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[SpryGuy]

No, the start menu isn't gone.

The "Start Screen" *is* the new Start Menu. You can arrange it as you wish, group things as you wish, remove anything you don't want to be there. Yes, it looks a lot different... but the old "start menu" had major changes in every major release of Windows since Windows 95.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[SpryGuy]

The Developer Peview UI wasn't complete. It wasn't for consumers or the UI really. There were place-holders and some things just completely missing.

The Consumer Preview changes things and is a lot more consistent and usable. There is much better support for mice and keyboards.

You should try the Consumer Preview, give it a few hours so you can get used to it, check out the right-click menus and keyboard short-cuts, and realize it's not that bad at all.

But yeah, there are some things that are lacking in the "Discoverability" aspect. But hopefully constructive feedback will help polish the remaining rough areas.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[toddestan]

I've used both quite a bit, and the main difference performance-wise between Vista and 7 is that Vista's implementation of superfetch seems overly aggressive and tends to churn the disk a lot which overall hurts performance if you're trying to use the computer at the same time. Windows 7's Superfetch tends to chill out and is a lot better about keeping the superfetch thing in the background. Other than that, both the OSes are very similar (think Windows 2000 and XP) and the only other differences I tend to notice are the user interface tweaks.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[exomondo]

I said desktop on ARM -- the desktop on 32/64-bit will work with existing applications just fine. The point was that "desktop" is not available as an option on the new platforms for any serious development (e.g. porting Photoshop or LibreOffice to ARM); you are relegated to using Metro and the WinRT APIs which are not designed for creating complex applications.

You can use any APIs you want, you can use native code as well, you could use Qt, for example, if you wanted to.

Using WOA “out of the box” will feel just like using Windows 8 on x86/64... ...You will have access to the intrinsic capabilities of Windows, from the new Start screen and Metro style apps and Internet Explorer, to peripherals, and if you wish, the Windows desktop with tools like Windows File Explorer and desktop Internet Explorer.
Building Windows 8

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[SpryGuy]

Okay, the ignorant homophobic slur wasn't necessary and paints you as kind of a clueless rube.

But ignoring that, the start menu is there: It's called The Start Screen. Yes, it looks a LOT different. But each start menu in each Windows release has operated a lot differently. It takes a bit of getting used to. Some things have moved around. It's frustrating to lose the advantage of muscle-memory, but once you give it a chance, a lot of it makes sense "in the new world". And you can stay in the desktop as much as you want.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[Osty]

I've never known a reason before to hit the windows button...I just did it, brings up the Start Menu..but when I started typing the first letters of a program it didn't go to it.

Perhaps this is a Win7 thing?

I only VERY recently had a laptop purchased for me to do some work on later for someone that has Win7...I've only fired it up to install some stuff on it...but when I get home, i'll give the windows button a try.

The GP maybe assumed someone that was familiar with Win 7, or possibly Vista which might have this feature?

XP is 11 years old (Vista is 5 years old, and 7 is going on 3). Running XP today would be the equivalent of running Debian Woody, Ubuntu Wary Warthog, or the initial version of OS X 10.0 Cheetah. If someone were to complain about Linux based on their only experience being a decade old release, they'd be laughed off of Slashdot. Why is it accepted to do that with Windows?

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[SpryGuy]

Well... no.

Metro's overhead is hardly onerous (in fact, Metro apps are much more energy efficient).

Beyond that, the Start Screen can be very efficient in an Enterprise situation. You can pin anything to the start screen, including deep links. So your first screen can be tailored to your work-flow, or your tasks... whether you're an administrative assistant, or you're an IT professional.

And the server versions are FULLY scriptable (finally), and scripts can be pinned to the start screen too. As well as reports, documents, folders, whatever.

I just don't think you're thinking it through.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[toddestan]

Well, it depends on how you order them, whether or not you include the server releases, how finely you split hairs about things like 98 and 98SE, and how you deal with the consumer/professional split before Windows XP. Generally, looking at what you might find on a typical home PC, you might have:

3.1 (good) -> 95 (bad) -> 98 (good) -> ME (bad) -> XP (good) -> Vista (bad) -> 7 (good) -> 8 (bad?).

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[SpryGuy]

There is no "Start button" on the taskbar any more.

Use the windows key to go to the start screen, which is the REPLACEMENT for the Start Menu. It uses the Metro design language but it is not, in and of itself, "Metro".

You also don't HAVE to click the desktop tile to get to desktop. You can also click on any desktop application tile to just launch it and you'll be right there in the desktop. And you can continue to click on apps pinned to the task bar (which can now span multiple monitors) to launch additional apps, minimizing the number of times you actually have to go back to the start screen to find and launch a new desktop app.

The Start Screen *IS* your list of apps. Sort it, group it, arrange it, add and remove tiles, ... any way you want. You can optimize it to exactly what you want and how you want it.

And the "start menu search" still works the same way as always: just start typing. WinKey + "cmd" + Enter, and voila, you've launched a command window. Just the same as in Win7. Or you can have the command window pinned to your task bar. Or pinned to the start screen. Or as a short-cut on your desktop.

You have options.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[SpryGuy]

You realize you can remove any tiles from the Start Screen that you want, right? You can customize it, group tiles, make tiles large or small, and re-arrange tiles to your heart's content.

There is a separate "all programs" menu, just like on the old start menu. right-click the start screen to access it.

And of course you have windows search. Either just start typing on the start screen, or you can use the "search" charm in the right-sidebar menu.

So yes, you can pick the program you want from a list. Or you can pin your most used apps in the order you want, in groups you define, at the front of the start screen. You can also "zoom out" on the start screen, and dive right back into a group way to the left, without having to "scroll and scroll". And of course you can directly access the app by search, typing its name.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[SpryGuy]

It works in Vista and Win7, but not XP.

After working in Win7 for a while, going back to XP was an exercise in frustration... like working with stone knives and bear-skins. Win7 is THAT much better.

Win8 is interesting. Unlike most, I don't think it's a step backwards. It's different. I think there's a lot of harsh judgement because of trying to use Win8 as if it were Win7 (or worse, XP). If you take 30 minutes or so to play around and get used to it, Win8 starts making sense, is more consistent than originally perceived, and has some powerful new features and short-cuts.

But there are admittedly still some significant rough-spots in the Consumer Preview, and I can only hope those are addressed before final releas.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[SpryGuy]

One of the BEST things about Windows 8? They fixed this update nightmare.

Reboot updates will only be pushed once a month, on a specific day (First Tuesday, I believe?), and there will be a notification on the login screen for THREE DAYS prior to it doing anything automatically, to all you to apply them at your desired time and at your leisure. No more "nagging" with pop-ups or "10 minutes".

In fact, the OS has a whole lost less "nagging" in general.

They did an entire lengthy post on this new update system and how it works over on the "Building Windows 8 Blog" (google it).

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[SpryGuy]

Well, in Windows 7, you had Win+0 through Win+9 to instantly launch apps based on their position on the task bar. nowehre near 20 (or 46), but still it's fast. Win8 keeps these short-cuts, by the way. And you can Windows key (to start menu), and then arrow and enter, to launch apps on the start screen. Again, more keystrokes, but they won't change on you once you arrange the start screen the way you want it.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[DeathFromSomewhere]

I don't believe that you have been using windows for as long as you claim and you don't know the ctrl+b shortcut. Troll harder next time.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[Ihmhi]

95 (G) > 98 (B) > 98SE (G) > ME (B)

Or something. It's not perfect, but you get the idea.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[Luckyo]

"Cartoony UI" could be switched off with a handful of clicks of the mouse. I used XP with 95-style interface for almost a decade. Still would in fact if not for DX11 on home machine. I like games.

In fact, I still use 95-style interface with 7. I had to install classic shell to kill some of the biggest annoyances that for some reason could not be switched off (like the messed up start menu in 7), but mostly you can just right click on desktop >basic theme > windows classic and you get 95-style. Not hard.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[Luckyo]

Some minor things are in fact missing, like the start menu. You can however revert to old-style interface by installing a utility called classic shell.

I am speaking from experience, I can't stand the 7's interface but I want DX11, and there actually was no way to reverse changes done to start menu and some parts of explorer until classic shell folks got their stuff working properly.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[Luckyo]

We are glad that you love your [spiked anal dildo]. Could you please note that people have different tastes and not everyone has as [much love for pain] as you do, and that there should be a choice for [more vanilla approach to sex toys]?

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[w0mprat]

I foresee I'll get modded down like the guy above me... but Vista SP1 isn't that bad. It's not much different than Win7, actually.

Well mod me down too because I spend a boat load of time with OSX and Linux and as much as I love each, I have to say Win7 is damn good. W7's taskbar is the undefeated productivity king, I'm happy to settle it with fist fight with anyone who wants to disagree. Microsoft nailed integrated search in the OS, and popping of advanced searches from the start menu is pretty damn useful. The metro interface, love it or hate it, was far from a let down at it's release - If you've used it on a touch interface it was actually ahead of it's competitors at the time. It is at least highly innovative and a level up from the iPad's 2007 interface paradigm rut that Apple won't be able to get out of.

Actually.... Microsoft hasn't fucked anything up since Vista. Kinect, even, was actually more of a success than expected. Windows 8 doesn't seem to have any sign of problems.... erm... yet...

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[jones_supa]

Meanwhile, Windows Explorer has lots of really good enhancements, from integrated SkyDrive to native support for mounting and burning *.iso files (FINALLY), and a return of the 'up' button to go up a directory level.

Mini-clarification: you can already burn ISOs using Windows 7, mounting is a new thing though. :)

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[Bonobo_Unknown]

I found this little fella - he was lost! e

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[jones_supa]

I said desktop on ARM -- the desktop on 32/64-bit will work with existing applications just fine.

It's just the word order that was in your sentence "The desktop is only available on ARM for Office and Explorer." The confusion could have been avoided if it were "On ARM the desktop is only available for Office and Explorer."

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[strabo]

Clicking 'start' returns you to the metro tiles

No, they fixed that. Now there's no "start" to click.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[atlasdropperofworlds]

The idea is that the icons are large targets. You'd certainly want them arranged in some way, and Win8 also has an alphabetical list. However, if you know what your application is called, you just type it in and don't bother with using the new start menu at all. Unity and Gnome3 , KDE , OSX's spotlight, and the Win7 start menu use this mode of launching. IMO people seriously need to start using the keyboard - given the shortcuts in all OSes these days it's far faster to launch what you want or perform a pretty good variety of tasks. When you use the keyboard, the Win7/Win8 start menu thing loses it's significance.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[MrHanky]

What you're saying is that the Metro style menu doesn't actually have any advantages to the old start menu (except "big targets", which is great for touch screens and otherwise suck), but that it also has search which you already used in Windows 7 anyway. Your answer to my question of what makes the Metro launcher better is that I shouldn't be using it anyway.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[Anonymous Coward]

> give it a few hours so you can get used to it

Why should I ?

I *like* the interface I've got with Win XP. I *liked* the interface of Gnome 2 (Gnome 3 is dogshit). I *do not want* a new interface.

The various desktop and start menus etc. exist for one purpose only - to allow me to start the programs I want to use. They're not an interactive game. I *do not* want animated crap, flashing crap, desktop effects, popups, notifications or any other crap. Piss off and stop using my CPU cycles for unnecessary crap - I'm trying to do a job here.

And things should especially not start trying to "help" me as they always. always get it wrong and get in the way.

Personally I'm fucking sick of all these computer illterate newb children that now pass as developers redesigning the basic UI and throwing away 30 years of good, refined, interface deign.

My linux boxes now run with Blackbox (and a permanently open terminal) and I'll not be upgrading any XP machines until they (or I) die.

Fuck all these new interfaces - they all suck donkey balls. Fisher Price inspired shit for idiots.

'Tractor' Barry (who can't log in and Slashdot won't email me my password...)

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[Stoopiduk]

I can't remember the last time I took much notice of any flashy graphical interface updates, and do my best whenever I get a new windows machine to make it look as plain and boring as possible. I almost feel sorry for Vista and Windows 7, because I ran straight to the settings and got rid of as many bells and whistles as I could. I want a clear desktop, a taskbar and easy method to switch between open windows (Swift middle finger to my work macbook pro, still can't fathom cmd+tabbing, so I just attached 2 monitors and use a different screen for everything I'm working on) and I don't mind little memory exercise to get my programmes open. If I can get past all of this nonsense everyone is complaining about in Win 8 (no judgement here on the merits of the complaints) with the windows and r keys then I'm happy.

On a side note, I was disappointed when I dumped Mint onto an old laptop and gave that a whirl. I'm not at all a fan of that interface, this could be down to my unfamiliarity with package based installation though, I found that all a little frustrating.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[w.hamra1987]

yes, believe it or not, i think the winning strategy for new windowses is to be a replica of their predecessor... all microsoft really want is just getting their customers to upgrade, and laptop makers to preinstall windows on their machines. the only reason a big corporation is going to upgrade their windows, is when its deprecate and no longer maintained, they bite their lips, and move on with an upgrade. but guess what? windows xp was and still is working for most of them... so the smart choice would have been to release windows vista to be an XP replica, with few enhancements. it doesnt matter you're selling the same OS under a new name, with just few enhancements that you could have released as a service pack for the older OS, when the time comes, people will upgrade.

keep in mind, businesses don't like huge change... nor do a large portion of customers... they have worked hard to get accustomed to all the features of XP, telling them to learn it all again is not a recipe for happy noob customers, or large companies with a complex IT infrastructure

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[tehcyder]

Looking at this list: 3.1, NT, 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP, Vista, 7 I don't see the pattern.

As this is slashdot, the pattern is:
bad, bad, bad, bad, BAD, bad, bad and bad

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[cayenne8]

XP is 11 years old (Vista is 5 years old, and 7 is going on 3). Running XP today would be the equivalent of running Debian Woody, Ubuntu Wary Warthog, or the initial version of OS X 10.0 Cheetah. If someone were to complain about Linux based on their only experience being a decade old release, they'd be laughed off of Slashdot. Why is it accepted to do that with Windows?

I dunno...why don't you ask the multitude of private businesses....not to mention FEDERAL govt. entities many of which are still running XP.

Just now upgrading on contracts I know of...soon some will move from XP to Win7...but many business and govt branches are in no hurry for the expense and trouble of an update that massive.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[diethelm]

Microsoft is (re)discovering the Linux version numbering scheme: odd is stable, even is development.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[ConceptJunkie]

Well, if you're going be pedantic, Vista was Windows 6.0 and "Windows 7" is really Windows 6.1.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[ConceptJunkie]

So Windows is starting to catch up to where Linux was 10+ years ago. Good for them.

Yeah, I'm being obnoxious, but there were better file managers on Linux many years ago than Explorer is now or ever will be, and the lack basic functionality like burning and mounting ISO images, scp and other basic command-line functionality have always been weak points in Windows.

Of course these problems are generally fixed with quick additions of any of the many simple and good third-party solutions, but the truth is that Windows out of the box gives you very little useful functionality until you start installing applications.

And I don't buy that bundling apps will lead to anti-trust issues. First off, Microsoft's anti-trust activities had mostly been implemented and successful before IE ever existed. Second, bundling IE with Windows really wasn't a problem regardless of what anyone ever said, it was MS strong-arming OEMs to prevent them from providing alternatives, as well as their general willingness to do everything possible to disrupt standards and make life difficult for competitors to their own applications. Third, IE beat Netscape because at the time (mid to late 90s) it was simply _better_. I'm no MS apologist and haven't regularly used IE since Firefox was Phoenix 0.5, but I was happy to switch to IE at version 3, and thought version 4 offered a lot of good stuff too.

I'm very curious to see how Windows 8 will go over in the market place. I think MS has been on the inexorable road to complete irrelevance for years and it would take something bold for them to halt their decline. Windows 8 sounds like a bad idea to me, but I'll give MS credit for being bold. However, Windows as we have known it is not long for this world, and good riddance.

I know the whole Windows vs Linux argument inside and out, and I use both at work and home, although 95% of the reason I still use Windows on my own hardware is because of games) but as far as I'm concerned, MS has never and will never provide an OS that gives me as much value as I can get from installing even the most minimal Linux distro. Windows will be around with us for many, many years, and Linux will probably never overtake it on the desktop, but of course, the desktop as we know it probably won't exist in 10 years.

If you described to someone in the year 2000 about the preponderance of operating systems like iOS and Android, they would have a hard time believing you, but today it's old news. I'm happy to see Microsoft continue as a member of the group of companies in true competition, because despite their pathetic and evil leadership, MS has a tremendous amount of talent working for them. But I'm glad to see the days of the MS monopoly coming to a close because they have been nothing but a boat-anchor on true innovation for too many years.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[ConceptJunkie]

Classic Shell is an absolute must for Windows 7.

I always thought the Start Menu was a pretty good idea, although there were lots of ways it could have been made better. I found Windows 7's Start Panel to be a confusing and unpredictable mess. Just like Apple's iTunes software, it's only helpful if you are the kind of person who cannot or does not want to organize things yourself. It will do it for you, but you have to like the way it's done.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[SpryGuy]

It takes a few hours to learn any new system. You're being ridiculous. Much of it is pretty intuitive once you learn a few basic principles. This is no different than Win7, WinXP, Win95, OS X, the original MacOS, iOS, etc.

The problem is, you have to "unlearn" what you THINK you know (which no longer applies). This is standard in learning any new system. Your resistence to this basic fact is... weird (but all too common).

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[SpryGuy]

You don't "LIKE" the interface of XP so much as that's what you're USED TO.

Win7 is vastly superior to XP in just about every way. But people confuse being "used to" something with that something being "better". They refuse to take the few hours to sit down and learn the new system... their minds (like yours) are closed to change, even if the change is ultimately better.

It's fascianting that the more "computer savvy" people like you (being sick of all those noobs, after all), are vastly more resistant to change than the average person. You're locked into what you learned first, and refuse to step out of your comfort zone even if the result would be something that is ultimately better (once you unlearn your old habits and discover new ones).

It's ironic, and kind of pathetic. Because the only constant in the universe (especially the universe of technology), is change.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[SpryGuy]

Someone in the technology world bragging that they use an interface nearly 20 years old because they're incapable (and unwilling) to learn and adapt to something new is ... ironic, sad, and rather pathetic.

The Start Menu in Win7 wasnt' at all "messed up". It was a change. I was put off at first, but I started using it, and it was MUCH better than XP's. By a lot. All that micromanaging I used to have to do to keep the XP Start Menu looking like I wanted was gone. It freed me to do more work and less futzing.

Interestingly, the new Start Menu in Win8 goes back to letting you (making you?) micro-manage it the way you did in XP. So perhaps you'll actually like it more. :-P

(Of course, that would require you giving it a chance with an open mind, being willing to let go of old habits and learn new concepts and new ways of approaching tasks... which you've already insisted you Will. Not. Do. ... So never mind)

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[ConceptJunkie]

I disagree. NT 3.51 was rock solid. In my experience, the most stable OS Microsoft ever made. So was NT 4.0 as long as you avoided the even-numbered service packs. At the time, I expected to Windows 2000 to be a complete mess, but aside from Explorer being ridiculously crashy (it would sometimes crash on me with an hour of installing 2000 from scratch), 2000 was also quite solid. XP had its issues, but it was much more compatible with older software, and pre-SP3 security wasn't a problem for a knowledgeable and careful user. The eye-bleedingly ugly UI theme could quickly be turned off. Explorer was less horrible too. I never had any interest in Vista, but I had it foisted upon me when I bought a new computer. Vista just pissed me off so much and in so many ways I actually bought an XP license just to get away from it. It's default theme was also hideously ugly, too and its performance was a big step down in most ways.

Windows 7 has a lot of things that annoy me, but nothing major. Explorer still sucks on toast, but at least it rarely crashes. I don't hate it and it doesn't prevent me from doing what I want, how I want to do it. On the other hand, there really isn't anything about it I prefer to XP except for maybe a few really minor UI improvements, and the usual "support for newer hardware" that was almost always by far the most useful reason to upgrade Windows.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[ConceptJunkie]

The sad thing is that it's been obvious for many years that Microsoft has failed to make inroads in non-PCs (not counting X-Box) because of its insistence that trying to make Windows a huge monolith that supports every device from the smallest phone to the largest server.

It seems that rather than following Apple's very successful lead in creating iOS, MS is doubling-down on this strategy with Windows 8 and trying to make Windows even more monolithic. I think they are making a big mistake even worse, but then again, I'm not the most powerful and richest software company in the world, so my opinion might not be so good.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[ConceptJunkie]

I use the launch bar, or Windows 7's alternative of pinning icons to the taskbar and the Start Menu most of the time. The rest of the time I launch programs from the command-line. I can't comment on Windows 8 because I haven't seen it or used it, but XP Start Menu (if you organize it intelligently) and the LaunchBar/pinned icons works great for me.

Also less use of the mouse is always better for efficiency. Mouses are very useful, and sometimes absolutely necessary for a task, but using the mouse is always slower than using the keyboard for anyone with any typing skill.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[ConceptJunkie]

You mean I no longer restart Windows with the non-intuitive and practically non-sensical series of "Start", "Shutdown", ...

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[hendridm]

I guess everyone has different experiences. Vista was the reason I finally made the switch to Mac. Vista was clunky and painfully slow, and driver support was terrible.

I'm still using a Mac for my primary machine, but I have Windows 7 installed on my work PCs and on my media center at home. It's fast, even on old equipment, and I've yet to have a major driver issue.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[Luckyo]

Someone in technology world bragging that they are better then someone else because they OH LOVE THIS NEW INTERFACE, when someone else doesn't on the other hand is same old stuff. Bonus points for insulting everyone who doesn't like the new interface and prefers old ones by labeling them as "pathetic, unable and unwilling to adapt".

The best part was your attempt to call people like me "pathetic" and invoking irony. Indeed.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[nobaloney]

I'm not sure which is harder to understand, that someone owns you, or that Microsoft thinks anyone will want this on a general purpose home or business computer.

No, it's not Vista 2.x or 3.x, it's Windows 3.1 for five-year-olds.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[ConceptJunkie]

Because there's no compelling reason to upgrade a machine running XP, and a lot of reasons to avoid it.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[SpryGuy]

They ARE fixing things that broke.

With the Ribbon, they were fixing the problem that they were constantly and consistently getting feature-requests for features that were already in the product.

The control panel really only changed once (in Vista), and in Win7 includes useful search. Once you actually stop clinging to the old (I did for a while) I find the new organization much better and easier to use. It takes me much less time to find the control panel applet I want in Win7 now, compared to the mess of icons in XP.

Keyboards: Every company is guilty of this. And yes, it's annoying.

In Win7, the networking and wireless controls are pretty much on the surface... so I'm not really sure what you're talking about here. If you're talking about digging down into the guts, that was buried in XP too, but since Win7 I've almost never had to go there.

And I'll just say that I've experienced what you feel enough times, and then ultimately have been proven wrong, that I tend to not jump to conclusions any more. What initially seems like "no performance gain" actually ends up being one once I stop fighting it, a LOT of the time. The thing is, sometimes it takes a mental shift, using a different model or way of thinking about the task, to gain the advantage, but ultimately the advantage makes it worth it.

Take The Ribbon. Oh god, I hated it so much, just as you do now. Then someone sat down with me and pointed out half a dozen things... basically "things to know" rather than specific tasks or controls... and suddenly my perspective changed a lot. Like realizing how holding down ALT showed the hot-keys to get to anything you wanted from the keyboard, explaining the Orb/back-stage area and how to find "options", how to customize, etc. Now I find the ribbon to be just fine. Still a few annoyances, but no more so than the annoyances I had with the old menus. I'm pretty productive with it now.

As for Win8 (back on the topic), you can still do MOST of what you do the same way as you've always done. The Start Screen is jarring at first (less so in Consumer Preview than Developer Preview), but for the most part you can ignore Metro if you want to. The only thing that still rankles is when you're going some where and when done, you're dumped back at the Start Screen instead of back at the Desktop. And some areas are missing some obvious hot-key support (like Escape and Backspace). Hopefully that stuff will get ironed out.

Look, it's clear MS is going this direction. You can spit into the wind, or you can accept that, and just try to give CONSTRUCTIVE feedback, with specific user scenarios, and ideas on how to make your workflow better. I tend to choose the latter these days.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[EBlyton]

You can still use keyboard as you used to to launch apps. Just press Windows Key and start typing to search.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[ozmanjusri]

To whom? Marketers?

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[ByOhTek]

And if you had to use the calculator to get to the control panel, your analogy might actually be accurate.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[atlasdropperofworlds]

> What you're saying is that the Metro style menu doesn't actually have any advantages to the old start menu (except "big targets", which is great for touch screens and otherwise suck), but that it also has search which you already used in Windows 7 anyway.

Big targets don't suck at all. They only suck if you need to display a really, really large amount of icons in a single screen without scrolling. The overwhelming majority of people, and even saavy people like me, are good with probably at most 20 icons visible. I've packed almost double that on 2 30" monitors. But again, my particular use-case isn't even affected by this new start menu. I do, however, see it as an improvement over the old one for people who use a mouse.

Re:Lovely and Intuitive?

[WaffleMonster]

Use the windows key to go to the start screen, which is the REPLACEMENT for the Start Menu. It uses the Metro design language but it is not, in and of itself, "Metro".

The trouble is speaking for myself I can't have the entire screen changing on me whenever I want to launch an application or scroll through a list of programs and documents... this is counterproductive to say the least.

There is nothing wrong with windows7 as is...annoying me sure as hell is not going to make me upgrade.

You have options.

If there were knobs to retain the windows 7 behavior there would be no issue. As registry hacks have shown MS has the capability to easily offer this as an option but refuses to do so.

  MS wants to force me to use a paradigm not suited for simultaneous management of large numbers of applications. I reject this because the paradigm does not provide value to me and makes my work more difficult.

  As a separate matter I need to continue to use my expensive high resolution monitor for something other than viewing one or two programs at a time... the inability to run all possible applications from within the desktop is an issue going forward for the continued viability of the windows platform.

If Microsoft refuses to meet my needs I will go elsewhere.. Simple as that.

full screen start menu nice on small screen not

[Anonymous Coward]

full screen start menu nice on small screen not so much on a big one / more then 1.

Re:full screen start menu nice on small screen not

[atlasdropperofworlds]

I disagree. Using the keyboard is the same, but a large array of large application targets makes using the mouse easier too.

My desktop is not a tablet.

[Kenja]

As such I will not buy any computer with Windows 8 on it. Hope Apple realizes this before the next OS X is released, but I doubt it.

Re:My desktop is not a tablet.

[sirber]

You can disable the Metro interface..

Re:My desktop is not a tablet.

[networkBoy]

No, you can't.
You can launch a desktop tile and bring up a standard desktop UI, but you can not disable metro.
If you have found a way to do so, please let me know, as I've been trying for several weeks now, as it interferes with some of my automated test regressions.
-nB

Re:My desktop is not a tablet.

[MosX]

You know, I'm not so sure about this. Do you have a source? I know you can go into a 'classic' Windows desktop mode, but from all the videos it looks like it behaves more like an application (meaning certain Metro style 'Windows' or panes or whatever can pop up OVER the Windows desktop mode). People keep saying you can just stay in this classic Windows desktop mode, but I don't know if that's the same thing as disabling the Metro interface.

Re:My desktop is not a tablet.

[Baloroth]

"HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer" in regedit, set "RPEnabled" to "0". Haven't tried it myself (don't have Win8), but supposedly it completely disables all the Metro and Ribbon stuff in Explorer.

Re:My desktop is not a tablet.

[networkBoy]

Nope, no love on the last developer build.
Maybe on this release, but not on mine :(

Re:My desktop is not a tablet.

[Anonymous Coward]

That worked on the developer preview; doesn't work on the consumer preview. Already tried! :(

Re:My desktop is not a tablet.

[CSHARP123]

According to Zdnet this registy entry do not work in the current version.

Re:My desktop is not a tablet.

[DigiShaman]

Search for regedit. Now right-click of the executable and choose "Run as Administrator". I haven't tried it myself, but perhaps elevating the permissions might make a difference???

Re:My desktop is not a tablet.

[Baloroth]

Ah, well then. That sucks. I have no problem with MS playing with new interfaces so long as they allow us to shut it off and go back to the regular desktop, but if they don't allow that I may well not move to Windows 8 (might not anyways unless there is a good reason to).

Re:My desktop is not a tablet.

[Billly Gates]

The desktop mode is improved in the consumer preview and you can run Metro apps inside it, rather than the other way around. It is more mouse friendly (at 3:44). Thank God you can at least stay in the desktop.

Re:My desktop is not a tablet.

[lunasee]

Yep, that's how you do it. Turns Windows 8 into Windows 7 for the most part.

Re:My desktop is not a tablet.

[terjeber]

1) Click the Desktop "Tile"
2) Open up File Manager and point your browser to C:\\Windows\\System32\\
3) Rename shsxs.dll to old_shsxs.dll
4) Confirm UAC Dialog Prompt
5) Reboot the Operating System
6) On the new login screen, click the mouse button and drag up
7) Login to the machine
8) Your operating system should act like a desktop OS without the "crap"

Re:My desktop is not a tablet.

[shutdown -p now]

I know you can go into a 'classic' Windows desktop mode, but from all the videos it looks like it behaves more like an application (meaning certain Metro style 'Windows' or panes or whatever can pop up OVER the Windows desktop mode).

Things generally don't pop over other things in Metro. About the only thing I can think of in that context is the "charms" bar that appears on top of the desktop if you put your mouse into lower right or upper right corner of the screen. But I don't see why you'd ever need to use that if you just stay in desktop all the time.

Re:My desktop is not a tablet.

[Osgeld]

good god whats the point, just dont upgrade... people do that and for microsoft it works ... for example

MS-DOS4
Windows NT
Windows ME
Windows Vista

Re:A new kind of copying

[alen]

when i first got my iphone in 2009 the first thing i thought was that the GUI looks like Windows 3.1 and the old Mac OS

"Consumer" Preview

[redneckmother]

Does anyone else take exception to the use of the word "consumer" instead of "customer"?

Re:"Consumer" Preview

[sixtyeight]

Yes. It's somewhere between "helpless end-user" and "grazing cattle".

Re:"Consumer" Preview

[DogDude]

No. "Consumer" is used to differentiate between regular people and developers and corporate partners and such. Those developers and businesses are "customers" too, so using the word "customer" for today's release doesn't make any sense.

Re:"Consumer" Preview

[masternerdguy]

We're here, we're waiting -- The Linux Community.

Re:"Consumer" Preview

[masternerdguy]

Doesn't consumer just mean an entity that consumes?

Re:"Consumer" Preview

[sixtyeight]

I get your point. I had assumed the question had been asked in a general sense rather than specifically about today's release, but it's open to interpretation.

Re:"Consumer" Preview

[sixtyeight]

Doesn't consumer just mean an entity that consumes?

Increasingly, the term means an entity whose sole defining characteristic is that it just consumes.

It's becoming appropriate for the majority of people. But a lot of this is due to strategic coordinated efforts between corporations and the media - making the term, when used by the mainstream media, doubly offensive. Injury, as well as insult.

Re:"Consumer" Preview

[causality]

Doesn't consumer just mean an entity that consumes?

No. It comes from the broadcast industry.

Say you run a TV station. You broadcast TV shows plus commercials over the air at no charge. Anyone with the right receiver can watch your content without paying you a cent.

The advertisers who buy commercial time are your customers. They are the ones paying you. If you piss them off, say by airing programs they find distasteful, they will take their business elsewhere and you will lose that revenue.

The viewers who provide eyeballs for the advertisers but pay nothing ... those are the consumers. Compared to your customers, they have little or no power to change your content or make requests. One of them threatening to watch another channel means nothing to you. They only matter in very large groups.

They are not remotely the same thing. A customer can be influential as an individual. Referring to a customer as a "consumer" is an Orwellian Newspeak method of trying to disempower them, to tilt the balance of market power in your own favor without having earned it. It is belittling and degrading and shows a certain contempt that can only come from taking them for granted.

Re:"Consumer" Preview

[Livius]

"Customer" implies a voluntary relationship whereas "consumer" is anyone using the product or service, voluntarily or otherwise.

But I'm sure it's not that....

Re:"Consumer" Preview

[fast turtle]

What they should have called it was Windows 8 Beta, becuase that's exactly what it is - A damn Beta. Buggy as hell in some spots but like the Win7 Beta, it gives us an oppurtunity to see what's coming and figure out how to support the damn thing.

Re:"Consumer" Preview

[redneckmother]

They are not remotely the same thing. A customer can be influential as an individual. Referring to a customer as a "consumer" is an Orwellian Newspeak method of trying to disempower them, to tilt the balance of market power in your own favor without having earned it. It is belittling and degrading and shows a certain contempt that can only come from taking them for granted.

Thank you. Well said.

Re:"Consumer" Preview

[fnj]

And we have Gnome3, which is the only pile of shit worse than Windows8.

Re:"Consumer" Preview

[geekoid]

No.

A consumer is a person who buys stuff, a customer is some who has bought your stuff.

It's pretty simple and clear. But go ahead and look for reason to complain and whine.

Re:"Consumer" Preview

[causality]

They are not remotely the same thing. A customer can be influential as an individual. Referring to a customer as a "consumer" is an Orwellian Newspeak method of trying to disempower them, to tilt the balance of market power in your own favor without having earned it. It is belittling and degrading and shows a certain contempt that can only come from taking them for granted.

Thank you. Well said.

That a single individual, such as yourself, found that edifying made it more than worth my time to elucidate.

You're quite welcome, madam.

Ooo, look!

[msobkow]

We called iconic borderless buttons "tiles"!

Aren't we cool and relevant and creative and all that shit?

Re:Ooo, look!

[gstoddart]

We called iconic borderless buttons "tiles"!

Yeah, it looks just like my Xbox -- when they updated it and added ads to it. I don't want ads in my fucking Xbox screen, why did they feel compelled to "monetize" my game console? They already got paid for it.

Greedy bastards.

Re:Ooo, look!

[b4dc0d3r]

I held out for as long as I could. XBOX Live needs an update or it can't connect. Good, cancel.

Then it wouldn't even keep the correct time any more, so my save games were all out of order. Every game was some number of seconds from November something, 2001. "Continue" didn't work, I had to sift through them to load the right one. Play for 3 hours and that's the newest save, turn it off and play for 1 more hour, and that was the "oldest" of the saves,

So finally I updated, and I hate the everloving piss out of it. What took 5 blocks to move to the right (network settings) now stops 3-4 times on each "page", bloop bloop bloop bloop... tons of stuff I don't care about in my way.

To make it worse, Crackdown has a known problem that you can't re-play it. You have to delete the game data, and sometimes that makes it crash on load. So I did the only thing left - deleted my profile, and download it again. Except my profile was an offline one, and I downloaded an online profile. Not only did I lose all of my saves, now it asks me to sign in every time I want to do something.

No thanks, just remember what time it was. Is that too hard?

Re:Ooo, look!

[CodeInspired]

Just FYI, you can move up first, then move to the right to skip over sections. I think it's still an extra click or 2 to get to network settings, but not that bad.

Re:Ooo, look!

[Osty]

Or you can use the bumper buttons to switch page to page without even having to navigate up. Or you can use voice commands or gestures to switch pages, if you have a Kinect.

Re:Ooo, look!

[Osty]

We called iconic borderless buttons "tiles"!

But they're more than just buttons. They're "live" tiles, in that they can show you information related to the app without even launching. For example, a weather app may show you the current temperature on the live tile and a more detailed forecast when you start. Or a stock app may show you the change in your portfolio or watched stocks on the tile and give you a more detailed view if you start the app. Or a game might show you a leaderboard, or a notification that a friend wants to play, or that a friend just beat your high score.

Screenshots of the Metro interface on Win8 or WP7 really don't do it justice. You need to see it in action to appreciate it. The Metro interface on Xbox is more static (you can't pin your own tiles, for example, and the active content is just all ads), but it at least has the look and ties together all "three screens" (PC, phone, TV).

Re:Ooo, look!

[Xest]

Updated and added ads? You know the XBox 360 has had ads on the dashboard since release right?

The dashboard may have changed, but there have always been ads there, they certainly weren't just added in one of the updates.

Re:Ooo, look!

[basecastula]

what is this? window maker

Re:Ooo, look!

[basecastula]

Network upkeep?

Re:Ooo, look!

[Oakey]

There's no internal battery to save the time and date, so every time you lose power it resets.

Even cheap watches have a battery!

Possibly too little, too late ...

[gstoddart]

My organization is in the middle of deploying Windows 7 to replace XP desktops.

Given the costs and time of doing this, it will likely be several years before this gets replaced.

I wonder if other organizations are only just getting to Win 7, if Win 8 might become one of those releases that everyone bypasses since they just finished upgrading. That would likely hurt MIcrosoft.

Anybody got any screenshots for the new interface? I'm curious to know how trying to make something optimized for phones and tablets is going to work as an actual desktop interface. It sounds like they might be trying a bit of a "one size fits all" approach, which doesn't always work so well.

Re:Possibly too little, too late ...

[gstoddart]

No screenshots from me (would violate NDA), but there is a tile you can launch that brings up the classic desktop.
So your average user experience will be boot to metro, click this tile, now start working.

Please tell me that you can turn that on once and leave it? Or do you have to turn off the stupid every time?

As bizarre as it may sound, I'll likely stick with my Vista for now. Apparently I'm one of the few people who has really had a good experience with Vista.

Re:Possibly too little, too late ...

[GeckoAddict]

I wonder if other organizations are only just getting to Win 7, if Win 8 might become one of those releases that everyone bypasses since they just finished upgrading. That would likely hurt MIcrosoft.

I would expect most organizations (especially large ones) to skip it, just like they skipped Windows ME and Vista... but I don't think that really hurt MS too badly. If there's one thing MS is good it, it's solidifying version 2.

Re:Possibly too little, too late ...

[networkBoy]

As far as I've found, it's every time, but in this comment: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2700079&cid=39200483 someone posed an unverified reg key that will disable it. Here's to hoping...

Re:Possibly too little, too late ...

[gstoddart]

Allow me to link TFA to you again.

Yeah, saw those.

Half of the pictures are of a monitor so small I assume it's a tablet hooked up to a keyboard (the screen is *smaller* than the keyboard. The other half have no surrounding context and look like they're on a tablet. One of them is a picture of a web browser with a picture of a screenshot -- that looks like it's a picture of a tablet.

Seriously, if they're giving me this Romper Room GUI they deployed onto my Xbox lately, I'll be underwhelmed. I'm just having a hard time visualizing this as an actual desktop UI people would use.

The idea of turning my 23" monitor into something with big giant lego color buttons just seems kind of lame.

Re:Possibly too little, too late ...

[dan828]

Perhaps MS realizes this and figures they've got a good 9 more years to experiment before they need to make a solid desktop OS that'll be adopted by their enterprise customers? I mean, Windows 7 looks like it's going to have all of the staying power that XP did. Perhaps they're thinking they can do some radical experimenting and still maintain their user base with windows 7.

Re:Possibly too little, too late ...

[UnknowingFool]

Most organizations are just getting to Win 7 for a variety of reasons but the main reason was Vista was not well received and many organizations opted to skip it. Many organizations did not feel the need to upgrade to Vista given the little benefit it provided given the steeper hardware requirements. As companies slowly upgrade their infrastructure, the hardware requirement is not as a major obstacle as it once was. Win 7 has also proven a bit more stable. Good Win 7 adoption bodes ill for MS as you've pointed out many organizations are unlikely to upgrade to Win 8.

Re:Possibly too little, too late ...

[Billly Gates]

Nothing wrong with betting on Windows 7.

Even if Windows 8 had the same gui as Windows 7, and none the Metro-ness that we all flame here there are bugs. A good enterprise rule is to wait until Service Pack 1 is out. XP, Vista, and even Windows 7 had issues before SP 1.

Windows 7 still is flaky with shared drives if you have a crappy wan link and hanging if ARP tables are not cleared for them etc. This is after SP 1 is released so even Windows 7 is still being ironed out. I am sure at your organization you have seen work orders for "Why do I have red Xs" etc.

"Anybody got any screenshots for the new interface? I'm curious to know how trying to make something optimized for phones and tablets is going to work as an actual desktop interface. It sounds like they might be trying a bit of a "one size fits all" approach, which doesn't always work so well."

Here is your answer from the Windows 8 product manager. The second half of the video talks about the desktop and last minute mouse and keyboard integration. I tried the developer preview and it sucked goatballs hard. However MS, listened to us complain so I can not comment on using it myself with keyboard and mouse. It will take some time for an adjustment. Your users will be much happier with Windows 7 as it is more familiar to them and XP like. The only thing I can see is a plus for Metro is you can organize icons/programs by group. Something XP did and that is lacking in Windows 7.

Re:Possibly too little, too late ...

[fast turtle]

I'm happy with an old system that still runs Me - preloaded and very little extra crap installed so it works fine. I even didn't have much of a problem with Vista though like many I complained about some idiotic things like very slow file copies/moves and a too aggressive UAC but once system was setup right, I had very few issues with it.

That's just like many scream about the Ribbon interface and I agree, it's a PITA because things that I'm used to finding in menus that I now have to learn where they're at.

Re:Possibly too little, too late ...

[fast turtle]

Perhaps MS realizes this and figures they've got a good 9 more years to experiment before they need to make a solid desktop OS that'll be adopted by their enterprise customers?

Never thought of that but I wouldn't put it past them to treat us home users are damn guinea pigs once again. Only this time they've got a decade to get things right. Yes I did say decade as in 10 years because there is nothing that says MS couldn't extend support for Win7 a few months if needed.

Re:Possibly too little, too late ...

[s73v3r]

From what I've heard, Win8 isn't really targeted at businesses. It's more targeted at consumers and tablets. Businesses would still be on Win7.

Re:Possibly too little, too late ...

[painandgreed]

I wonder if other organizations are only just getting to Win 7, if Win 8 might become one of those releases that everyone bypasses since they just finished upgrading. That would likely hurt MIcrosoft.

As one of those guys who builds the corporate images that goes out to the desktops, I can tell you that yes, Windows 8 will be skipped, but no it won't hurt MS. We're just now getting around to looking at Win7 and expect to be able to start deploying it in a couple of months between testing with enterprise applications and workflows. Before all that, we had to wait years for vendors such as GE to sign off that their apps will work on Win7, not to mention things like getting FDA testing done for their healthcare apps. If Win 8 is actually any good and the vendors sign off on everything quickly, I could see us also moving on quickly. If it is bad, they'll probably hold off for Win9 (or the EOL of Win7 anyway) as we'll also be forced to. As for hurting MS, enterprise pays the same per seat for licensing to run Windows no matter what version we actually install. Our site has 5000 seats, they sell us license for 5000 copies of Win8 and the Office with the stipulation that we can downgrade if we want. They get to claim we upgraded to Win8 as well as the money, so they'll not be hurting. (Disclaimer: I do not really have anything to do with the licensing agreement, but this is how I understand it to work out.)

Suspicious..

[iONiUM]

I think they ripped off Star Trek..

Windows 8

vs

The future

Re:Suspicious..

[masternerdguy]

And it's a bad interface in both cases. I love Star Trek but the Federation's UI designers should be shot with a phaser on maximum, and everything they ever touched sanitized. Colored tiles are a really bad interface model.

Re:Suspicious..

[dan828]

Or perhaps the set designers for Star Trek consulted some UI people about what UIs would look like in the future? And perhaps the people at MS study some of those same ideas when they were in school?

Re:Suspicious..

[fnj]

Set phasers to KILL, baby!

I always wanted to say that.

Re:Suspicious..

[jader3rd]

Colored tiles are a really bad interface model.

If you think that's true you're going to love the vNext of Visual Studio. They removed the color and made everything grey on grey.

Re:Suspicious..

[geekoid]

Are you insane? Color differentiation is the recommended way to impart information quickly and intuitively.

LCARS is actual interesting. It's basically a dynamic menu(like Macs) on the side but with strong indication of whats going on. If you think about it, that make a great deal of sense, because the operators are really just putting information together, all the complex work is done by the computer it'self. SO you want to pull in the deflectors shields, and tie it to the shield within certain parameters.

Being able to present the pertinent information distinctly is key. With people access more and more information, but have a limited space to work, this style is how you would do it.

Re:Suspicious..

[geekoid]

Or it's the obvious solution to present so much data on a small screen?

Re:Suspicious..

[xhrit]

The UI for the videogame Starfleet Command is not in strict adherence to LCARS design specification guidelines, but is heavily based upon it and highly effective. The sheer volume of data and the speed at which you can manipulate it using this style interface is astounding.

http://www.startrek-gamers.com/forum/album_pic.php?pic_id=548

Re:A new kind of copying

[sideslash]

How are they mimicking iOS? Aside from lots of use of multitouch, I'd describe it as a radically different UI style.

Disable metro?

[DrRobert]

Will it be possible to disable all the retarded metro stuff and just get work done or will you constantly be fighting around it? I want a single preference that would turn it off.

Re:Disable metro?

[CSHARP123]

Then use Windows 7. Why do you want to upgrade if you want to turn off the metro interface

Re:Disable metro?

[tepples]

Then use Windows 7.

How so after your current Windows 7 PC breaks and Windows 8 starts coming preinstalled on all new x86 laptops that don't bear an Apple logo?

Re:Disable metro?

[CSMoran]

To get the subset of new features of Windows 8 which does not include the metro interface?

Re:Disable metro?

[Billly Gates]

Yes and No.

I hated the developer preview but the consumer preview enchanced its desktop mode for keyboard and mouse users. There is a picture and small preview here. Basically you do not have to drag the mouse all over the place and just need to go to the upper left hand corner to preview other apps and the title bar still works like Windows 7 with Aero preview. The search button and other features are to the right of the screen so you can hit the Windows key and type your program or file which is nice.

Here is the new gui in action, where the desktop is mentioned after 4:00. Metro is still there but at least MS listened to use and made it more mouse and keyboard friendly with the corners and dragging so we do not have to keep using our fingers and only seeing one app at a time. Thank GoD!

I do not know if I like it as a desktop as it will take awhile to get used too. But it is much improved over the developer preview to it being tolerable hopefully. I do like the sync/send function if you watch that video. It integrates nice in desktop mode and the app/icon grouping from XP that is lacking in Windows 7. Other than that it is eh ok.

Re:Disable metro?

[s73v3r]

That's why you keep the Win7 install disks around. Remember, even after Vista was on the way out, it was still possible to get a copy of XP.

Re:Disable metro?

[SomePoorSchmuck]

Then use Windows 7.

How so after your current Windows 7 PC breaks and Windows 8 starts coming preinstalled on all new x86 laptops that don't bear an Apple logo?

Insert your Win7 DVD and install onto your new PC.

If you don't have an install disc or you aren't able to go through the Win7 setup process on other hardware than your previous computer, then the simple reality is that you don't and never did own Windows 7 in addition to owning a PC. You owned a specific Win7 device that was a holistic sum of its multiple hardware/software/firmware parts, and the purchase price of your device was most likely subsidized by OEM licensing/rebate agreements.

When that specific Win7 device broke, you no longer owned a working Win7 device. Now, because you never purchased Windows7, but rather a device, you must go to the store and purchase whatever Win[x] devices are currently on the market (if you choose to continue using Windows). It makes little sense to complain that a specific consumer electronics device in a continually changing technology industry you bought three years ago will not still be on the market three years from now. If your approach to a computer is to buy an existing model from the store with pre-loaded software and never tweak/hack/upgrade the hardware/firmware components, then I'd say you might take a look at Apple products while you're at the store, because you're approaching a PC as if it were a Mac with two or three specific product lines that are designed to go from factory to consumer to landfill having never been opened up and played with.

Re:Disable metro?

[ConceptJunkie]

Yeah, but you had to pay for it. Of course, the Business edition could "upgrade" to XP for free, exactly the users who wouldn't need to be able to.

Vista was a big turd, which is fine. Having it foisted on machines that weren't capable of running it was just evil.

Re:A new kind of copying

[GameboyRMH]

From a geek's perspective, ever since iOS came out, OSes have been competing to out-crapify each other.

But is it art?

[Quiet_Desperation]

Huh. So Microsoft hired the ghost of Piet Mondrain as their lead designer?

It looks... really... straight and... yeah. It sure is a thing.

(sudden panicked thought) They still have the Ribbon, right? How will I live without the concentrated awesome of Teh Ribbon?!

Re:But is it art?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're such a l337 power user, why are you concerned with Teh Ribbon? Aren't shortcut keys sufficient?

Regardless, actually using the ribbon for any period of time will result in the realization that it's actually an improvement. But instead, lets just make fun of the screenshots you've seen in slashdot summaries and act like you know something about Windows UX.

Re:But is it art?

[circusboy]

can't be Mondrian, he had a pathological fear of green..

must be Theo van Doesberg...

if so, someday we'll get diagonals!

Re:But is it art?

[Quiet_Desperation]

Aw. Someone needs a hug.

Re:But is it art?

[Quiet_Desperation]

Yeah but he's dead now, so I assume that frees him of any neurological conditions like severe phobias.

Science!!

Copying

[sixtyeight]

I was just watching the Developer's Preview. They were touting "a new kind of copying files ... you don't have to copy files to your hard drive anymore, they can just stay in the cloud".

Well how nice! Why have the tedium of being sure your files will be there when you go for them, when you can suddenly become dependent upon a third-party service? It's not like they've ever ratcheted up the price on their customers before.

I'm just waiting for them to abandon the hard drive entirely, in favor of a coin slot. Using your computer will be just like internet video poker.

Re:Copying

[adonoman]

I think you missed the point of a new kind of copying - they're finally fixing the wild guesstimates, uninformative dialogs, and constant interuptions when copying files using the GUI. It finally lets you queue up copy operations, has a helpful keep/replace dialog that only prompts once at the beginning, and actually maintains a graph of copy performance if you go to the advanced view.

The cloud thing is a whole different issue.

Re:Copying

[Nemyst]

Those coins will be called punch cards, which let you store things called bits in physical form! Isn't the future amazing?

Re:Copying

[sixtyeight]

I did miss the point of the "new kind of copying" actually - I didn't find the distinction being made, so it sounded like that was the cloud.

The cloud thing was therefore my issue.

Re:Copying

[sixtyeight]

Spread a bunch of trendy coffee-shop, faux-minimalist, designer-colored graphics over it, and make sure it works with social networking, and the majority of people will mob to buy it. /. types won't find much value in using it, but will be able to make a bundle coding glitzy apps for the technologically-unsophisticated social networking crowd. I suspect Microsoft has been watching Planet of the Apes again.

Re:Copying

[SplashMyBandit]

That's funny they want your files in the cloud considering Windows Azure just went 'tits up' for an extended period (possibly due to them not being able to handle a leap year - that would be amazingly dumb if true).

Re:Copying

[Billly Gates]

It does make copying multiple files easier for regular (l)users.

Re:Copying

[NJRoadfan]

Wasn't all the changes to the file copying interface in Vista supposed to fix all that? Oh wait, it made it worse. It turn file copying into a twisted "choose your own adventure" game.

Re:Copying

[sixtyeight]

Yes, mixing up Skydrive integration and a vastly improved copy dialog

Who did that? No distinction had been made by Microsoft in the product demo I watched.

Difficult to mix something up that hasn't been presented. That's pretty basic reasoning.

Re:Copying

[purpledinoz]

I just hope that copying files will work properly. in Vista, MS broke file copying. I guess it wasn't a useful enough feature to test properly.

Re:Copying

[randomsearch]

> I'm just waiting for them to abandon the hard drive entirely, in favor of a coin slot. Using your computer will be just like internet video poker.

We use Bitcoin in this community, you insensitive clod!

End User, as in End User License Agreement

[tepples]

Then why don't they say "End User Preview"?

Re:End User, as in End User License Agreement

[Dog-Cow]

Because "End User" is just as ambiguous in this context as customer.

Re:End User, as in End User License Agreement

[shutdown -p now]

Because Win8 Consumer Preview can be shortened to Win8 CP. And CP is something that you just want to talk about a lot. ~

Because you haven't bought enough blades

[tepples]

why did they feel compelled to "monetize" my game console? They already got paid for it.

Because Microsoft didn't yet get paid for games that you haven't yet bought for it. In video game consoles, there's a concept called "attach rate" of how many licensed games and licensed accessories are bought for each console.

Re:Because you haven't bought enough blades

[gstoddart]

Because Microsoft didn't yet get paid for games that you haven't yet bought for it. In video game consoles, there's a concept called "attach rate" of how many licensed games and licensed accessories are bought for each console.

Yeah, well, adding ads to that screen almost gave them the option to learn about the detach rate. As in I sign out of XBox Live, disconnect my Xbox from the internet, and use it as purely an offline console. It's not like I play online, so it's not going to hurt me.

I think the only thing I'd lose is the live weather in Tiger Woods. And, really, I don't care much about that.

Seriously, don't put fucking ads in the middle of my screen unless you're offering me some compensation. I paid for the device, I pay for the internet connection, why should you expect ad revenue?

what's new?

[DaveGod]

So what are the significant changes? Other than the UI.

I did try Googling a few previews, they talked about the UI.

Re:what's new?

[gl4ss]

well, server version has a new filesystem option.

3 processes less(MEANS NOTHING! but fills a powerpoint slide) running by default.

screenlock screen has some data on it, about how many mails etc. you know, the kind of thing you'd usually just use some 3rd party sw. could easily be shipped as a win7 sp extra.

you'll have refresh points. you know what restore points are? yeah, those. but they're refresh points.

it's like they gave 7 to a fucking UI modder and then lied to him that the dominant platform for running it is going to be a 10 inch slate, gave him an android honeycomb tablet and told it to copy that but "make it more metro!". well, what matters really is that it defaults to booting to metro and the desktop mode has no regular start button anymore, probably to discourage you from using it(apparently you'll have to pin programs to the taskbar, which all nice and good except for first launches and for seeing wtf all legacy stuff you have installed in the first place - also, making the regular desktop a bit worse and slightly better in some other ways doesn't make much sense either, you can mount .iso's in w8 without extra programs, file copy dialog is like a copy of a decent drop-in-replacement for explorers file copy and so on).

Re:what's new?

[shutdown -p now]

The big difference is that it's trimmed down enough that it can actually run on tablet hardware on today, with perf and battery life on par with iOS and Android. That, and it comes with the new API (and yes, UI) to write apps that work well in such an environment - meaning touch-centric, suspend-on-background.

Re:Might work as a tablet OS...

[Spiked_Three]

hint hint; desktop PCs are dead - MS is getting out of that business, and in a way that tries and convinces current customers not to run to apple. But anyone with any common sense can see that the consumer explosion that made MS billions has shifted away from PCs. Sure they will be around a while, but they are not the money makers they once were (or soon will not be at a minimum). Let linux and apple have the small market that will remain. Get the TV set top market - ie XBOX - be on every TV sold. They are late to the game on tablets, but the TV set top is wide open and is the next money maker. Windows 8 is headed for XBOX.

Re:A new kind of copying

[MightyMartian]

Exactly. How else do you think Hitler came to run China?

Re:A new kind of copying

[masternerdguy]

The fanboys will claim that the first iPad was on DS9. Don't try to argue with them.

I like the look...

[tjstork]

with my tv wired to my pc, windows desktop seems "off", and metro seems more intuititive. hook me up!

Re:I like the look...

[fnj]

Looks like you're one of the 5 people whose PC makes sense to run Windows8 on.

For the other 6,999,999,995 people in the world, not so much.

Inspired by Windows Phone, with no market share

[G3ckoG33k]

"inspired by the lovely and intuitive presentation found in Windows Phone"

Is that just mean, or plain ignorant? The Windows smartphones have no market share any longer. Look at the stats for smartphones - http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/14/shocker-android-grew-us-market-share-after-q2-ios-was-static/

That expensive effort from Microsoft was killed by Android and Apple.

Why copy a product with a sinking market share? Do they believe the new Nokia hardware will sell their operating system for PCs?

Re:Inspired by Windows Phone, with no market share

[SadButTrue]

Because Microsoft believes, and correctly so, that no matter what they do to their OS PC manufacturers will still preload it on all of their hardware. This will lead to more developers targeting metro apps which, in time, will lead to a more robust ecosystem for their phone platform.

Re:Inspired by Windows Phone, with no market share

[Minter92]

Being outsold by another product does not mean the windows phone interface isn't "lovely and intuitive" It just means you've been outsold. Consumers often do not chose based on the best product.

Re:Inspired by Windows Phone, with no market share

[DogDude]

Market share doesn't have anything to do with quality. By your logic, McDonald's is the best restaurant in the world and Apple should just give up the PC market altogether.

Turnabout

[Anonymous Coward]

"HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer" in regedit, set "RPEnabled" to "0". Haven't tried it myself (don't have Win8), but supposedly it completely disables all the Metro and Ribbon stuff in Explorer.

all of this low-level technical registry mumbo-jumbo that Grandma could never handle is why we will never have the Year of the Windows Desktop...

Re:Turnabout

[bobjr94]

Grandma probably has a nice fast machine running Win XP and it will stay that way.

Re:Turnabout

[EBlyton]

Doesn't work anymore.

I'm gonna be hated LOL

[BudAaron]

I used the Developer Preview as my main OS for a few weeks. On Windows 7 I pin all of my apps to the taskbar. I did the same thing with Windows 8. So I had all the goodness of Windows 8 but all the availability of Windows 7. I came to think of it as Windows 7 on steroids.I may well go back to Windows 8 as my OS of choice.

Re:I'm gonna be hated LOL

[shutdown -p now]

Pinning the apps is all well and good, but I don't want to pin all the crap that I need only occasionally (and there wouldn't be enough space for that, in any case). So I would normally use search to find those, i.e. press Win and type whatever it is. Which, of course, still works in Win8, but the fact that it pops up the Metro UI is so distracting that it drives me nuts.

Yeah, yeah, get off my lawn.

Re:I'm gonna be hated LOL

[WolfgangPG]

This is exactly how I feel. I enjoy some of the metro apps, but don't really feel it is that much different from Windows 7.

Re:I'm gonna be hated LOL

[WolfgangPG]

The biggest change is getting use to the hot corners which is a lot like OS X.

Vista Rehash?

[eternaldoctorwho]

I remember going to a Windows Vista preview some years ago. Sure it looked all fancy and cool back then as well, but we all know where that pOS ended up. I'm always suspicious of when people say "OMG, this new Windows platform is the greatest evar!!!1!"

Re:Might work as a tablet OS...

[x1r8a3k]

Desktops may be on the decline for home users, but what about the millions of business computers?

Tablets are good for browsing the internet, some email, and the occasional video. Do they really expect people to type all day on one though?

MeTrO SUCKS !! COMMAND LINE CONSOLE ALL THE WAY !!

[Anonymous Coward]

Because God hizself created the command line !!

How is it ambiguous?

[tepples]

How exactly is "End User" "just as ambiguous in this context as customer"? Either what or what can it mean?

Re:How is it ambiguous?

[SomePoorSchmuck]

How exactly is "End User" "just as ambiguous in this context as customer"? Either what or what can it mean?

Office Cube Farm Accounts Receivable Clerk = End User = WindowsOS application developer = End User = Aunt Carol on Facebook using MSIE = End User

The above equality is false.

Re:Might work as a tablet OS...

[Riceballsan]

I'm actually currious how long or if the tablet concept can hold up. They are great for reading, great for reviewing on the go, but I don't see any real advantage for creating content. Sure you can get a bluetooth keyboard and mouse and work almost as comfortably as on a laptop with a wireless mouse, for almost as much space and twice the price of a laptop... but really what's the advantage. I just can't see anyone sanely working on advanced photo editing or spread sheet writing etc... on a tablet.

Very slim margins

[tepples]

I paid for the device

But you didn't pay enough for the device. Console makers traditionally make very slim margins (or occasionally even a loss) on the device in order to make it up with high margins on the products that contribute to attach rate.

Re:Very slim margins

[gstoddart]

But you didn't pay enough for the device. Console makers traditionally make very slim margins (or occasionally even a loss) on the device in order to make it up with high margins on the products that contribute to attach rate.

I understand what you're saying ... buy why is it my problem? I'm not here to prop up their business model.

As I said, they can also find out about the detach rate too.

Re:Very slim margins

[s73v3r]

But you didn't pay enough for the device.

I'm sorry, but that's complete and utter bullshit.

Re:Very slim margins

[SomePoorSchmuck]

I understand what you're saying ... buy why is it my problem? I'm not here to prop up their business model.

Oh my, I think you have largely or even entirely misunderstood your role in their business model.

Re:Very slim margins

[DrGamez]

I don't want to say I stopped using Xbox live when the new update hit (the first NXE update when they ditched the blades the first time) but when I saw how they were cramming my console full of ads AND charging me monthly for a service that has less functionality than Steam........ I just couldn't do it anymore.

Re:Very slim margins

[gstoddart]

Oh my, I think you have largely or even entirely misunderstood your role in their business model.

Well, then I might just have to remind them of who controls the pipe for the last part of their business model.

I don't game on-line, so disconnecting my XBox from the internet won't hurt my feelings, and they can no longer sell ads on my console.

It also comes with the benefit that I could choose to mod my XBox now.

Re:A new kind of copying

[Geoffrey.landis]

You should do your homework and find out where are the roots of the Metro interface, then you'll see iOS was not even in Jobs' wildest dreams when they started.

Neither was the first mac when windows 1.0 came out, but that doesn't stop the fanboys from claiming windows stole something.

checking dates:
"Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS"
"The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984"

It's hard to see why one could claim that the first mac was "not even in Jobs' wildest dreams" when Windows 1.0 came out, since the mac had been on the market for nearly two years by the time Windows came out.

Why is this post moderated "informative"?

Re:A new kind of copying

[NatasRevol]

China? I thought he bombed the Pearl Orient?!?

Windows 7, we hardly knew ye

[WheezyJoe]

The problem Microsoft faces is they took 10 years to get out from XP, so people got used to XP, tweaked it, customized it, worked around its shortcomings, got faster machines, and got accustomed to having the same familiar thing around for a nice long time. You would expect to have 10 years or so (ok, at least six?) of Windows 7.

Now they expect PC users to trash Windows 7 for Metro? where the desktop interface is crippled, appearing like a tacked-on compatibility mode for outdated software that always ducks back out to Metro? Yet the desktop is also essential, the only way to get at key system apps like the task manager? Seriously?

Windows 7, to Microsoft's credit, mostly works fine, particularly at work where you might have to grind between 8 or 9 apps simultaneously. If Microsoft is truly tablet-happy, I would prefer a Windows 7 with a Metro compatibility mode tagged-on for running Metro apps (maybe in a window, maybe full-screen), rather than making the tried-and-true desktop into a second-class citizen. If they don't reverse themselves on this, I'm skipping Windows 8 unless someone writes a hack (enhancement) that puts the desktop and start menu back front-and-center and Metro in its place as a gadget.

Re:Windows 7, we hardly knew ye

[ChefInnocent]

It's like Star Trek movies. You can only watch every other one. 95 bad, 98 okay (SE better), WinME bad (Win2K was fine, but consumers hated it), XP okay, Vista bad, 7 okay, 8 bad. Windows 9(?) should be okay.

Re:Windows 7, we hardly knew ye

[UnknowingFool]

I see two major strategic problems here with the Win 8 approach. The first is the MS insistence that everything must be Windows. Tablets are not another kind of device; they are PCs. Thus Win 8 shall be an all-one type of OS that works on tablets and desktops. Apple and Google take a different approach where a desktop OS is not the same as a tablet OS for practical purposes. I don't think this everything is Windows approach will work very well for users.

The other problem IMO is MS really lacks a sense of design and style. The tiles just look like someone threw them together. Going for simplicity is great but it looks to me MS isn't really trying.

Lovely preview video

[Anonymous Coward]

The best is likely the laptop, which looks like a macbook pro, all with indentation for the keyboard and black screen bezel. The monitor for the PC looks like an apple display. The only thing not apple is the tablet, since it doesn't have rounded corners, so it's most likely an android.

Re:Microsofts going out of business sale

[Minter92]

This tactic has worked well for apple over the last ten years.

It reminds of Yahoo and Portals

[SmallFurryCreature]

Remember them? When your ISP still thought that you would visit their home page for anything else but to find the way to cancel the service?

Yahoo was just one of many to do this and often it meant that what you came for was completely impossible to find. MS has never lost this, its web presence is a design nightmare. There really even isn't one. Every little thing gets its own site, often barely working and then gets forgotten. It also happens to bigger things, MS pushed its own solution for selling music for music players, then it dropped it completely when it launched the Zune and then it dropped the Zune. Games for Windows has had many forms, launched and forgotten again.

But now... this approach has made it to the desktop and it ain't new at all. Active Desktop, widgets,gadgets, someone at MS seriously believes that people spend all their time looking at their desktop. Are you? Right now, how much space on the screen in front of you is taken up by the browser?

Right... where are all those Metro blocks supposed to go?

The engadget article doesn't suprise me. Did you see the monitor in the video? I didn't even know they still made them that small. The original Mac had a bigger screen for fucks sake. Now try the same interface and the scroll down for start menu on a triple 30 inch monitor setup. And I am thinking of going to 6. Apples unified menu system, Unity, Gnome 3. They ALL suck with big screens. Of course not everyone has a big screen... even more reason to use the available space for what you are working on. Where are the metro apps? Hidden... now you want something else... so you are supposed to minimize all applications, then click on the desktop and get that app running fullscreen because you need full details... that is handy?

No... this is a classic designer mistake, it looks pretty but it isn't usable. If you demo it, you have only one app running and as you make the metro desktop appear you pause and show the wealth of information available to you and how easy it is to get a detailed view open... very nice, very smooth and totally NOT how you do it when you are working.

Jagged Alliance 2 was a turnbased game that on every move, had the bottom 3rd of the screen drop out and appear again to change the display. Very pretty... once... the millionth time, you want to exterminate the designer and everyone he ever met.

I just don't see people use their PC's the way the metro app seems to think. Most people I know work with either full screen applications or have them covering the desktop and switch them the taskbar or by alt-tabbing. The desktop just never is in view. That is why Active Desktop never got anywhere, people never saw it. With the new linux desktop Enlightenment it is possible to make animated wallpapers... cute... and there is a reason nobody else has bothered with it, because you never see the damn thing. The desktop and start menu are there to get you started... from then on, you switch between applications and never ever close them. Only the most infrequent users and under powered constantly shut down their PC and start it up again. I know one person like that and she has firefox on autostart and arranges it to cover the desktop with her IM.

The Metro style is the domain of movie UI's. I remember one Sci-Fi movie with I think Robert Sellect (magnum PI) in which he goes through a morning routine with a robot. It is a common enough scene in future movies and it just doesn't happen. A: No human being can possibly care to be informed in detail about the weather outside, the news, appointments, social chat with relatives, banter with the AI before they got a cup of coffee. B: Any AI system at the moment that would display so much information would display the wrong thing at the wrong time and C: INFORMATION OVERLOAD.

I check my mail... then I read the comics... then I check the weather. Display them all at once... and WHERE ARE YOU GOING TO PUT THE ADS FOR THOSE FREE SERVICES?

I think this will be another MS Bob. Vista? To small a disast

Re:It reminds of Yahoo and Portals

[JonySuede]

I guess that eventually there will be a release of something like Windows Workstation that will feature a Win 7 style desktop on a Windows Server kernel available to developer and enterprise customer...

Re:It reminds of Yahoo and Portals

[geekoid]

Selleck, not Sellect

A) People do that RIGHT NOW. a lot od people. The get up, checka ll there information sources, and banter with facebook.

B) Nonsense.

C) Yeah, everyone keep talking about that, and it's been getting more for 25 years.

opensource? you spent several paragraphs being wrong to make a statement about open source?

Re:It reminds of Yahoo and Portals

[Anonymous Coward]

To paraphrase The Darth -- "I find your lack of understanding to be...disturbing". It is clear to me that there is a LOT of misunderstanding of how Windows 8 actually works, yourself included. You say "I just don't see people use their PC's the way the metro app seems to think. Most people I know work with either full screen applications or have them covering the desktop and switch them the taskbar or by alt-tabbing. The desktop just never is in view." This is EXACTLY how the new Windows 8 works. Metro apps run in two modes: full screen or shared screen (this way you can have two Metro apps visible side by side).

When you want to switch to another application you either flick between apps with your finger or alt-tab, exactly as you describe. When you want to run a new program you bring up the home screen (consider it an "app" in its own right if you like) and just select an app icon to run the new application. Simple, no?

Frankly this is a proven UI that has been shown to work really well -- I bet you have a smart phone that works exactly the same way. However now Microsoft is bringing the same easy-to-use UI to the general PC arena. Instead of dinky phone/tablet "apps" you can now run full-fledged "applications" with the full power of a modern, desktop/laptop at your disposal. More memory, drive space, speed and sheer power. And they are not just bolting a phone/tablet UI front-end on to the same old OS, it really is a totally updated version of the OS built specifically with mobile devices in mind:

* You want to use your mouse and keyboard for everything? = fully supported
* You want to use touch for everything? = fully supported
* You have some older, non-Metro software that needs the old desktop? = fine, fully supported
* Cold boot time, start to finish, about 15 seconds (or instant-on from hibernate)
* Save your data locally, in the cloud, or both
* Synch your data (e.g. web bookmarks) between all your PC's = fine, fully supported ...and the list goes on and on

Make no mistake, whether you like it or not Windows is the most used OS on the planet, and tablets are only going to get more popular. If you are any kind of professional you NEED to understand this new OS and not dismiss it as a fad or a mistake.

Re:It reminds of Yahoo and Portals

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a large reason why I like the full-screen app option in OS X Lion. /ducks
i can leave iTunes open in full screen mode with music on, while using a browser in windowed mode on the desktop.
when I want to change the song, I swipe the touchpad to the left, and my iTunes library is in front of me. this is faster (and more reliable) than alt-tabbing (or the mac equivalent), and also quicker than moving the pointer down to the dock.
I keep Xcode in fullscreen as well, and swipe when i need to reference something, and then swipe back. no juggling windows, resizing, etc.
at first i thought the whole fullscreen thing was a gimmick, but now i believe it is a huge UX improvement.

The more things change the more they stay the same

[kirkb]

http://i.imgur.com/avgcv.jpg

Bring back Start

[JDG1980]

No Start menu? No sale.

Mixing metraphors

[psydeshow]

I'm a longtime Apple guy who also owns, uses, and mostly enjoys Windows Phone 7. Metro is a fresh take on what software should look like, and since Apple hasn't done any graphic innovation since 2007 I really appreciate it.

But on the desktop? Mixed in with traditional Windows applications? On your boss's computer? OMG train wreck!

Mixing two UX metaphors is an unbelievably bad idea. It's a big reason why Linux on the Desktop is a hard sell. It's why people intuitively avoid Java applications. It's why Adobe has struggled on OS X. And in all three of those cases we're talking about power users having trouble switching UX contexts.

If you do this in plain vanilla Windows you're going to have confusion on a whole new level. Grandma is not going to understand why some apps work this way and some apps work that way. Or why there are two versions of Internet Explorer. Or what happened to the Start button that I've been clicking to do *everything* for the past 15 years?

I have a lot of respect for Metro and what the team behind it is trying to do. They should just stick with a phone/tablet OS that is Metro-only all the time and not try to do this unholy mix on the desktop.

Too soon

[Lawrence_Bird]

Uncle with the OS do overs. Win 7 has been out less than three years. Heck I still have two desktops running XP because a) it works and b) I don't have to buy new hardware just to make the OS work. Win 7 is stable enough that they should be doing incremental point releases to that and not wholesale changes like win 8. Who is crying for this crap any how? And you mean there was no way to modify 7 to work as desired on a tablet? Hard to believe. Freaking NetBSD runs on damned toasters and mega servers for gods sake!

Re:Too soon

[Your.Master]

Much as I'm not a fan of this interface on the desktop, I think this *is* the way to modify windows 7 to work as desired on a tablet.

Windows 7 ran on tablets for years and it sucked because the entire interface was designed for a mouse and keyboard, with some bones thrown in for keyboard-only users. Tablets have fundamentally different constraints -- not nearly as precise as the mouse, so you need much larger hit targets and hit-testing correction; there's no "right-click" or any other button, so contextual UI has to be redesigned; can "instantly" move the pointer and even have multiple pointers simultaneously, enabling new interactions; no hardware keyboard means the UI has to dynamically account for a software keyboard; etc..

That's what the original iPhone got right: a phone is not a small desktop. People weren't asking for specifically what an iPhone was because they lacked the words to express it, like the tale of Ford and "faster horses". However, Apple seems to think that tablets are huge telephones -- and to be fair, iPad sales aren't exactly lacking, so they have a point to some extent. I think there's a different optimum to be found in that form factor, though. Microsoft seems to be betting on something that's a bit more phone-like but not really a big WinPhone, coupled with the old desktop which continues to work as crappily as ever on a tablet. From an approach perspective, I think it's interesting and promising for tablets. I think it's a mistake for any machine that doesn't primarily use touch input. I would recommend Microsoft make Metro the second-class citizen when you use mouse & keyboard, and make desktop the second-class citizen when you use a Touch device. Of course they don't want UI divergence because it would bisect their famously large 3rd party software market. But that's going to happen anyway because the compatibility is still there and the desktop is still better for mouse & keyboard. I think it's cool that you can run tablet-optimized software on a desktop and desktop-optimized software on a tablet, but I don't think that's what you should spend most of your time doing.

Re:Too soon

[geekoid]

Haters got to hate.

Sponsered by MS Sales article?

[cayenne8]

I have to believe this is one of the new "sales" type posts on slashdot. The part saying "inspired by the lovely and intuitive presentation found in Windows Phone" sounds more like a sales brochure, than a post about a new OS product on a Slashdot front page...?

Re:Sponsered by MS Sales article?

[danlip]

actually it sounded like sarcasm to me :)

Re:Sponsered by MS Sales article?

[cayenne8]

OTOH I own a Windows phone and really like the metro interface, and I think you'll see the design philosophy adopted more and more on the web. I also think ribbons are great, making a huge improvement to Office 2007+.

I'm sorry, you lost me at 'ribbons are great'....

Re:MeTrO SUCKS !! COMMAND LINE CONSOLE ALL THE WAY

[atlasdropperofworlds]

You can run everything in windows from the command-line as well...

What about Media Center?

[na1led]

I was really hoping to see some improvements with Media Center. Metro sytle interface, and Media Center on my Big Screen, this would make a great HTPC.

Re:The Coming of the end times

[atlasdropperofworlds]

I predict that tools to bring back with Win7 UI will be readily available from the MS Market.

I'm not concerned.

Re:Might work as a tablet OS...

[gstoddart]

I'm actually currious how long or if the tablet concept can hold up. They are great for reading, great for reviewing on the go, but I don't see any real advantage for creating content.

Because the use case for the tablet isn't primarily for creating content.

Everyone I know with a tablet is using it to surf the web, play games, play videos, and do a small amount of email. Doesn't matter who makes it. It's not their work machine.

As long as people know that they're buying a secondary machine for doing other things, the tablet concept will hold up.

Not everyone is doing advanced photo editing or writing spreadsheets -- in fact, I'd be hard pressed to tell you the last time I made a spreadsheet. But when I travel on business, the tablet lets me watch movies on the plane, check news and gmail from the airport and hotel, and gives me some games to play in the evenings, find nearby restaurants. After work I can put it on the hotel bar, have a drink, read a few things, and then decide what I'm doing that evening.

My last bunch of business trips, I've brought my laptop, but never used it. My tablet, however, gets loads of use.

The advantage is that I can use it in my recliner, in the backyard, in bed, in a car, and more comfortably in an airplane than I could a netbook. I can't do any content creation on my music player either, and I'm OK with that. Because that's not what I bought it for.

Is it so hard to accept that probably the vast majority of what most people are doing is simply consuming media? To me it's mostly an entertainment device with some light internet connectivity, and works well as that.

My brother managed to get himself a 7" Android tablet for about $150 after Christmas, and he's not much of a techie. But, he uses it for eBooks, watching movies, and quickly checking stuff on the internet. He occasionally does some CAD work as a hobby ... but he uses his desktop for that.

Do you have a smart phone? If you do, are you concerned you can't do any serious work on it? Or are you using it differently than you would your desktop? (In fact, I know people with smart phones who see the tablet as something they don't need ... I don't have a smart phone, so the tablet is better for me. To some people, they fill the same niche.)

Anybody who expects it to replace their work machine is going to be disappointed. If you have a little spare cash to buy it as an entertainment device, it's worth the money.

Wait for Win9

[kirkb]

Honestly, I think Win8 would be better off deprecating the desktop and being metro-only. But this can't happen on day one, because users will be in a situation where half their apps are metro and half are legacy. So Win8 forces us to endure the jarringly schizophrenic clash between Metro UI and the Classic Desktop. It's the "transition version" of windows. Win9 will get it right.

Re:Wait for Win9

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

I don't think so. I think that there's still a good reason to have the desktop. The problem is that there's no good harmony between the desktop metaphor and Metro.

I think Apple and Canonical get it right where they have a clear understanding that a general purpose computer isn't a tablet, phone, or gaming console. Unity might be watered down and kind of a pain in the ass for those like us, but when you come to the thing with a very trimmed down set of expectations of how to interact with a computer, iOSified Lion and Unity make more sense. Granted, Canonical made the mistake of forcing Unity on install, but, overall? Metro just seems like a bad idea for the desktop.

Despite all of that though, it's a refreshing step forward for Microsoft who's realizing that their desktop metaphor kinda sucks.

Re:My desktop?

[Sez Zero]

As such I will not buy any computer with Windows 8 on it. Hope Apple realizes this before the next OS X is released, but I doubt it.

I'm pretty sure Apple is quite happy to sell you a computer with no trace of Windows 8 on it.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Microsofts going out of business sale

[Bengie]

"The customer is always wrong."

That's what I learned in school. Customers are idiots, not to be trusted to know what they need.

You will need to use social skills to dance the fine line between giving the customer what the need and what they want, while trying to push their needs as much as you can.

There is a reason why my Major has had a 100% post-graduation job rate for the past 2 decades. Many getting hired by Google, Microsoft, FBI, Banks, etc. Quite a few have stayed behind to work at local business also, bringing some of the best software products to the market.

I have been on the other side of the stick. Someone explaining the difference between what I need and want was quite enlightening. Left me more open minded for ideas.

Don't think I'm trying to say my way is the right way, I'm just saying one needs to identify the underlying problem. There are many ways to fix a problem, but many end users only look at the symptoms and apply bandaids.

Math fail

[SPBesui]

2012 - 1995 = 17. For some reason that doesn't shock me.

Bit torrent

[ISoldat53]

Is there a bit torrent for the ISO?

Keyboard + mouse improved

[Billly Gates]

Thank God!

They listened and you can read the review here and see the desktop in action staring in 3:45 here.

Still miss the start menu, but at least I can search for a file/program just like in Windows 7, can use aero preview and not have to leave the desktop for Metro each time I do a search. Also you do not have to drag the mouse all over and just need to move it to the upper left hand corner to preview metro apps and stay in the desktop.

I am not saying its better than Windows 7. But at least they are making it suck less and are working on it.

Re:Keyboard + mouse improved

[shutdown -p now]

Still miss the start menu, but at least I can search for a file/program just like in Windows 7, can use aero preview and not have to leave the desktop for Metro each time I do a search.

So far as I can see, you do have to leave the desktop for Metro to search for a program. Unless you have something else in mind from the regular way to do that (which is press Win-key and then type).

Re:Keyboard + mouse improved

[Billly Gates]

When you hit the Windows key the search option is on the right hand side according to the pic from zdnet.

I plan to download it tonight and give it a spin. Not perfect by any sense but I am glad the desktop is being addressed and MS listened to us.

Re:Keyboard + mouse improved

[shutdown -p now]

When you hit the Win key, you get to Metro start screen, same as in dev preview. It looks slightly different when you start searching, in that you get a pane on the right that houses the text field and also lists various categories (this screen shows it), but it's still Metro and therefore fullscreen, obscuring your desktop.

Re:Might work as a tablet OS...

[Billly Gates]

Nope MS fixed many of the desktop issues.

Still very METRo-ish but now you do not have to leave the desktop or move the mouse as much to cycle Metro apps. Jury still out but it looks much better than the developer preview that drove me mad.

So just disable metro:

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Click the Desktop "Tile"

2) Open up File Manager and point your browser to C:\\Windows\\System32\\

3) Rename shsxs.dll to old_shsxs.dll

4) Confirm UAC Dialog Prompt

5) Reboot the Operating System

6) On the new login screen, click the mouse button and drag up

7) Login to the machine

8) Your operating system should act like a desktop OS without the "crap"

Re:So just disable metro:

[Zephiris]

Good thing they completely removed that file in Customer Preview and baked everything in, then.

Re:So just disable metro:

[treeves]

So now Windows is trying to be more like Linux?

Re:So just disable metro:

[treeves]

Hard to configure. Hard as in have to find some obscure file hidden away and edit it (and to know that that's what you have to do), not just go to an appropriately named control panel and uncheck a box.

Re:Consumer preview more mouse friendly

[Billly Gates]

You no longer have to leave the desktop and go to Metro for everything like before. Consumer preview much improved for desktop users.

The integrated search and some of the METRO share, app, and sync functions are on the desktop. Also, you only need to move the mouse a little to the upper left hand corner to go to metro and click to app cycle and not go crazy dragging it all over to browse the tiles while staying in the desktop.

Here is the video by MS showing on a non touch screen lenovo. A full review is here. Yes it is now at least usable with an old fashioned mouse and keyboard where you can run 10 apps at once at least and can stay on the desktop.

I can now probably use it. I do not know if I would like it over the traditional Windows 7. I will download it and play with it tonight.

Re:Might work as a tablet OS...

[DogDude]

Get a job, and get back to us on that whole "desktop is dead" thing. Some people, believe it or not, earn money from doing things OTHER than updating Facebook!

Re:The more things change the more they stay the s

[game kid]

After I saw the old Ballmer ad, I can't keep a straight face when I see Reversi.

Re:A new kind of copying

[jellomizer]

Well not too surprising or really going backwards. When the iPhone came out it was back to the screen resolution that Windows 3.1 or the old Mac OS ran on.

Re:A new kind of copying

[khr]

It's hard to see why one could claim that the first mac was "not even in Jobs' wildest dreams" when Windows 1.0 came out, since the mac had been on the market for nearly two years by the time Windows came out

Well, in the early 90's, when OS/2 was out and Windows 95 not yet in beta, Microsoft's marketing people were telling businesses not to both with OS/2 because "it doesn't do anything the next version of Windows doesn't do" and "IBM just copied the next version of Windows."

I guess that marketing stuff worked...

Re:Might work as a tablet OS...

[thomasw_lrd]

Right now they are only consumer devices, but in another 4 or 5 years, they will probably have the horsepower to be work machines. Hell probably qucker than that. The iPad 3 is supposed to have what a quad-core processor?

Reading opinions like this almost reminds me of something head of IBM said years ago. That there would only be the need for 4 or 5 computers in the world. Hell if you count phones, and tablets in with pcs. I've got more computers than that in my house right now. Soon the tablet will be powerful enough to work on. Especially if Win8 takes off.

Re:A new kind of copying

[s73v3r]

Well no, but then that's because Jobs had taste. If he had dreamed anything like the Metro interface, he probably would have woken in a cold sweat from the nightmare.

Re:destined for failure

[msclrhd]

Windows 8:

    1/ Metro only -- good (only possible if you don't run Explorer/Office/other desktop applications, or want to visit websites with IE10 that use Silverlight/Flash/Java plugins)

    2/ Desktop only -- good (not possible -- forced to interact with Metro through the start page, control panel, auto-start and other areas)

    3/ Metro + Desktop -- bad (inconsistent UI interaction model: Desktop > Metro Control Panel > Vista/Win7 Advanced Control Panel Settings > XP Settings Dialogs, ...)

3 Best Features

[stewbacca]

Is it just me, or is it ironic that the three best features all deal with recovering from system problems (fast reboot, revamped task bar, one-click system restore)?

Re:A new kind of copying

[UnknowingFool]

Well Apple paid Xerox in IPO shares to the rights to use what they learned from Xerox PARC engineers. In the end, the Xerox engineers have Apple guidance and fundamentals of GUI. Apple had to build it and implement their own vision.

I like Metro....

[Fri13]

I like the idea of Metro, I really do... but then when I even look preview videos from it or watch screenshots, I start feeling bad.

I want GUI what works with keyboard only, so that I can just quickly switch between information. That I can have different information resources same time up on one display next to each other.

Sorry, but even xmonad got these things done correctly when compared to metro.

I had vision 20 years ago that we would be using just information, not about toolbars, fancy and shiny buttons and so on.
The vision was very much based to Unix and GUI of Xerox Star. That every data would be a file. Every device would be a file. User could just drag and drop or direct file to other file and get it done what ever wanted. Let the computer do the complex and daily tasks like user management or email address book management. And allow user just to write text with text editor and then direct that file to outbox and type names or tick them in list and send the email.

Windowmaker (NeXT) got many things right, but some things were terrible like how everything actually looked.
The huge tiles side of screen was great idea and the simplicity even today. The good news is that Windowmaker development has continued now and I hope they do modernize its look but maintains it basic features.

I just wish that we would go back to information oriented systems, where data is pure text, image or video as much as possible. So we could just use old Unix programs to manage data in background while normal users get simple and nice GUI for that.

To send a email or document to friend, just drag it to outbox and send to friend and choose email, IM or even share a link to it.

Re:I like Metro....

[SpryGuy]

You can use the Win8 UI with the keyboard only. And with the mouse/keyboard combination. Or with touch.

You don't NEED touch. You don't NEED the mouse. They just give you some extra abilities and short-cuts.

And with the "share" charm, you can send almost anything directly to someone from within that app... much like you want. And the "Metro" design language is very text based.

Re:I like Metro....

[Fri13]

As I said, it sounds nice, but when you start using, you want to rip your own head off.

Re:I like Metro....

[SpryGuy]

True in the Developer Preview.

True if you're trying to use the Consumer Preview as if it were an unchanged Win7.

Not true after you get used to the Consumer Preview and learn how to use it as intended.

Re:Might work as a tablet OS...

[s73v3r]

but I don't see any real advantage for creating content.

1. It depends on the content.

2. How many end users actually "create content" in a way that a tablet is not good enough?

Re:You can bypass the Metro UI completely

[shutdown -p now]

It likely uses an undocumented registry key in Windows 8 developer preview to disable Metro. That key is gone in consumer preview.

Windows is cyclical.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's always been this way.

• 3.1 == Meh
• 3.11 == Woot
• 95 == Meh
• 98 == Woot
• ME == WHAT IS THIS FUCKERY?
• XP == FUCK YES
• Vista == NO WAY GUYS ITS AWESOME THE WAY SHIT BREAK SRANDOMLY VISTA IS OKAY GUYZ
• 7 == Oh thank fucking god.
• 8 == Windows for Metrosexuals

I suspect Windows 9 will bring orgasmic joy to those who opt to suffer through 8.

Also, the conspicuous lack of 2000 is intentional; while it is unarguably the best Windows ever(tm), it (like NT before it) was not targeted at the LOL I M USING TEH INTERNETS crowd.

Re:A new kind of copying

[geekoid]

"2001: A Space Odyssey", you n00b~

Re:A new kind of copying

[geekoid]

Apple bought the rights to use it, MS abused a contract with Apple to claim they could use it.

A few actual things

[cbhacking]

Since you'll otherwise just get a bunch of sarcasm...

  * Memory page de-duplication (automatically reduces system memory usage in most use cases).
  * Lower base memory usage than Win7 (pretty impressive, IMO).
  * Improved file operation interface (copying/moving files now shows all ops in one window, allows pausing, and generally provides more info).
  * IE10 is built in (I assume it will be backported; it's a nice release).
  * ISO mounting without additional software (finally!)
  * App Marketplace (not mandatory, but convenient).
  * Sign in with your WLID (now called "Microsoft Account"; enables syncing favorites, settings, and user-selected files/folders, plus downloading your Marketplace apps on other PCs).
  * Automated ability to restore the OS to basic post-install state without losing the user's files or customizations (simplifying and speeding up the "pave-it-over" solution).
  * Vastly improved multi-monitor support (taskbar spanning both monitors, wallpaper spanning the monitors, separate wallpaper on each monitor, each monitor gets taskbar icons for the apps open on that monitor only, and other options).
  * Improved theme capabilities (automatic selection of chrome color based on current wallpaper, even during "slideshow", for example).
  * Built-in antivirus option (Microsoft Security Essentials is now integrated into Windows Defender).

There's more, that's just what I remember from some of the demos I saw and my own personal experimentation.The "BUILD" conference demoed a lot of stuff, and that was before the release of the previous preview. I'm also just mentioning things that matter to the user, not mentioning the new developer features (though of course BUILD had a bunch of info about those).

Re:A few actual things

[DaveGod]

cheers :)

Is it just me?

[n30na]

Or did Microsoft choose terrible colors for Win8 metro? They all just look so terrible to me, especially the background colors.

Re:Is it just me?

[dryo]

GOD-AWFUL design abortion

ARM

[DrYak]

And would you be running VMWare on Android or a Windows 8 Phone?

VMWare on a phone doesn't make that much sense. *BUT* there are now ARM powered netbooks (ASUS transformer, Toshiba ac100, etc.) ant those would appreciate some way to emulatre a x86 CPU in order to run legacy applications.

When does this expire?

[Nightspirit]

I couldn't find any information about this on /. or the MS page, but when does the preview expire?

I don't even use the desktop so all this complaining about it means nothing to me.

Re:When does this expire?

[shutdown -p now]

It'll expire in January 2013, same as dev preview.

Re:When does this expire?

[Nightspirit]

Thanks.

Re:Might work as a tablet OS...

[geekoid]

why not? You just put it in a dock.

No opening it up, less fiddling, easier support, cheaper.

Re:Might work as a tablet OS...

[geekoid]

yeah...but why do you do a traditional desktop to do it?

Re:Might work as a tablet OS...

[x1r8a3k]

Because that means regressing back to 7-10 inch screens.

Links to ISOs

[aztektum]

Cause you Linux nerds know you want to put it in a VM at least. Avoid their .exe downloader thing.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/iso

Re:Might work as a tablet OS...

[gstoddart]

Right now they are only consumer devices, but in another 4 or 5 years, they will probably have the horsepower to be work machines. Hell probably qucker than that. The iPad 3 is supposed to have what a quad-core processor?

I don't think it's really a question of horsepower so much as form factor.

The GP has a point ... there's no keyboard, and the input device is primarily the screen. Most people can type one handed on their tablets, but I'm not sure you'd be doing heavy duty work with it.

Now, don't get me wrong ... I'd like to see them improve what you can do with it, and they really are still relatively new. But you're still limited by the shape of it. Sure, you can get a blue tooth keyboard for most of them, and at some point you might see an external pointing device that might even evolve the mouse. But photoshop and CAD are still a ways off.

Soon the tablet will be powerful enough to work on. Especially if Win8 takes off.

That sounds like a specious conclusion to me.

What about Win 8 is going to magically make the tablet form factor better for doing real work on? Lego colored buttons? From what I can see, the Win 8 tablet features are more or less taking what people have already been doing. It doesn't look like they're radically improved anything to made any huge leaps forward.

In fact, it seems like the usual Microsoft way of doing things ... late to the game, and mostly playing catch up. Give the whole segment a couple more years as people really push what you can do with it, maybe. But if someone dropped a Win 8 tablet in your lap tomorrow you likely wouldn't be thinking it was a revolutionary device.

I will be curious to see how quickly Microsoft can get adoption of Win 8 tablets, though.

Typical Advertising

[Digital Vomit]

At the end of the video, in blue text on the blue background and covered up by the control bar on the bottom, the linked video reads:

"Some screens are simulated and accelerated"

False advertising should really be illegal.

Re:Might work as a tablet OS...

[thomasw_lrd]

My thinking is that if win8 takes off, then people will buy win8 tablets. They will demand more horsepower and someone somewhere will supply it. I don't know if I would like it for programming, in fact I wouldn't. I have three monitors now, and sometimes I hook up a 32 inch tv to cross refernce between two and three files. But I think the form factor of a tablet is perfect for most people to work on. Not many people have the ,any monitors to hook up. I'm torn between a blue tooth keyboard. Addd one and your got an underpowered laptop, but still lighter than lugging around a laptop all day. Only time will tell, but tablets aren't going away soon, but neither are desktops and laptops.
I personally like my iPad for consuming now, I could see using it for working on spreadsheets, word docs, and composing emails. I would like more control, but I think that will come later as they become more and more widespread and more power users begin to buy them. Of course I could be wrong, and just sticking up for my expensive toy.

time to switch to Linux, finally

[dryo]

If there's no way to disable the GOD-AWFUL Windows 8 Start Screen, then I'm switching to Linux. I'm tired of being condescended to. This is so much like Microsoft BOB that it's not even funny. I need a neutral interface that gets out of my way and lets me do my work. I don't want real-time status updates on what my friends are doing. I don't want big colorful square buttons in preschool primary colors. I just need a stable OS that permits me full control over my own data, period. Clearly, Microsoft and Apple don't care about professional users, so I guess I'll have no choice but to jump ship to a Linux distro, despite the administrative hassles that entails. It's about time, really. I'm just sick of Windows, sick of OS X, and absolutely DETEST iOS. It's the triumph of lazy consumption over intelligent creation. My only problem is that so many of the graphics programs I make my living from do not exist on Linux. And before anyone jumps down my throat telling me all about the GIMP etc., I know about it. GIMP and other Linux-only programs are problematic because I'm a teacher, and I have no choice but to teach the software applications that are dominant in the marketplace.

Re:time to switch to Linux, finally

[beaverdownunder]

As someone teaching people how to use the GIMP, I have to disagree with you. Manipulation, layers, masking, filters, etc. are all concepts that are easily transferrable to Photoshop. If someone truly understands the GIMP, they'll go zero to 60 on Photoshop in 2.5 seconds.

Knowledge isn't properly imparted if it leaves the student unable to transfer concepts to similar applications. But in the case of digital arts, it can be assumed that in order to use any artistic application properly, students must learn the underlying concepts behind how the functions of the application work -- and once those concepts are understood, the student can migrate to other applications with minimal transition time.

Re:time to switch to Linux, finally

[exomondo]

Clearly, Microsoft and Apple don't care about professional users, so I guess I'll have no choice but to jump ship to a Linux distro, despite the administrative hassles that entails. It's about time, really. I'm just sick of Windows, sick of OS X, and absolutely DETEST iOS. It's the triumph of lazy consumption over intelligent creation.

What's the problem? Most professional users just want the OS to be out of the way so you can use your applications, current modern OSes hardly impede that. You don't have to use their extra features an integration just because they are there. I'm not sure what you are going to find so much more difficult or so much less efficient here, even if for some reason there is no way to boot straight to desktop it's only one click away, or you put your applications right there on that start page.

I'm not a fan of that aesthetic on the desktop at all but so long as i can quickly get to the applications i need - which i can - it's no problem, no need to spend time playing around on the start screen.

Re:Might work as a tablet OS...

[gstoddart]

My thinking is that if win8 takes off, then people will buy win8 tablets. They will demand more horsepower and someone somewhere will supply it.

But to get a really good battery life, which is really desirable in a tablet, you can't go for too much power. I can't imagine a tablet with quad core x64 CPUs lasting very long.

I'm torn between a blue tooth keyboard. Addd one and your got an underpowered laptop, but still lighter than lugging around a laptop all day.

I've actually seen roll-up blue tooth keyboards (actually, wow 30 bucks ?) ... I just don't find myself needing a separate keyboard with my tablet just yet.

Although, I'm suddenly tempted.

Of course I could be wrong, and just sticking up for my expensive toy.

Amen brother. I find the entire form factor to be the most exciting thing in computers in several decades. There may have been instances of tablets, but they were expensive and specialized.

I don't care which tablet you're talking about, it really does represent the first significant change in how I interact with a computer since my TRS-80 color computer. It's always been a keyboard on a flat surface.

No matter what people say, wi-fi in your lazy boy is much cooler with a tablet than a laptop.

More-or-less the same feelings.

[Gaygirlie]

I wrote a somewhat lengthy Google+ post as I gave Win8 CP a quick run and, well, it was not pleasant. To summarize my feelings: it might work on a mobile device, but on desktop it's ugly, unwieldy, doesn't work well for mouse+keyboard and will be a pain in the arse to look at on a regular-sized screen. Two of the things that will most likely drive people nuts on desktops is how everything, absolutely everything, is spaced out so god damn wide that 50% of the available space is wasted, and that everything has a sidescrolling bar at the bottom; you cannot just drag the screen around to scroll, you must either move your hand around to Page Up/Down every time or slug your mouse to the bottom, drag the bar, and then back to whatever you were doing. It's feels very inefficient.

The whole post with screenshots is at https://plus.google.com/111441130100170983404/posts/RrRxzm7dYoD should someone feel interested. I doubt I am saying anything that hasn't already been said, though.

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Just turn it off

[Ed Avis]

The Windows graphical interface reached its peak of usability with Windows 95 / Windows NT 4.0. Since then it has been accumulating useless crap that you have to turn off to get a usable system. With each new Windows version you have to spend an additional 15 minutes configuring it to turn off the animations / animated puppies / 'intelligent' start menus / whatever. Windows 8 will have an option to switch to the normal interface, it will just cost you 15 additional minutes to find it in control panel.

Re:Might work as a tablet OS...

[Riceballsan]

Depends, good enough or best is your goal. If you are working on a spreadsheet is a tablet better or worse? What percentage of people use features that google docs or openoffice couldn't handle? Converting to something that is only slightly worse, is not usually a step in the right direction for anyone.

Re:Might work as a tablet OS...

[Stoopiduk]

>I will be curious to see how quickly Microsoft can get adoption of Win 8 tablets, though.

This. I just see it as a natural step in following Apple towards a more unified looking platform across mobile, desktop and tablet. I'd welcome an out of the box tablet that could handle light business and still do the normal browsing/media basics. I currently have an android phone, linux/win 7 laptops at home and a macbook pro for work. I'm a prime candidate for a company to make a decent solution to bridge all of the devices (google is well in the lead here). I tried an ipad a year or so ago, but it was turd. Even for the lightest of business applications it didn't make any sense, transferring files was a pain and almost every app lacked the option to change the settings I wanted to. It was a glorified mobile TV for watching iPlayer and every now and then I'd go for a wander online with it. Anything more than 10 minutes and I'd be back on the laptop, typing on a tablet is a bitch.

I'd snap up a well executed, unified, cross platform experience with more flexibility than Apple's current range.

Worst. Video. Ever.

[Stoopiduk]

Opening shot - draw a circle around a guys face.

What is this? Is this a security check? Or were they just trying to highlight that guy for no apparent reason? I'll remove that.

Second move -

List of boxes in an order you set with all sorts of stuff going on in them. There is a hideous amount of wasted space here, why do all of these things need different boxes? For those messages, what is wrong with having a notification on a taskbar saying you have an unread message? It's a waste of space. I'll remove that.

Clicking on paragliding video -

Wheres the middle step? What if I don't want to watch a paragliding video? How is this any better than having a desktop shortcut to a video folder? I'll remove that.

Vague social networking/Nasdaq shot

People/What's new/ Me is all very well and good if you can integrate Facebook, where everyone is actually updating. Last time I used an MS social network was by accident when I checked an old hotmail account to get some very old login details and windows live showed me the 4 updates from one person in the past 3 years on the Live network. Even if you can integrate working social networks, it looks like a crappy way of interacting with that network, I'll remove that.

Games

Sure many people will welcome interaction with Xbox live and as an Xbox gamer myself I'm all for spending hours playing Skyrim. But I can get all of that info every time I turn on my Xbox. My Xbox is where I'll go for that information. If it's an integration of PC and Xbox gaming then crack on, I won't use it as I don't use a PC for gaming much above humble bundles. I'll remove that.

Photos

Ah it seems you have developed a way of sharing photos. Shouldn't find too much competition there. As it is my phone automatically uploads all of my photos to G+ where I can then share them straight away. I'll be removing that. (I think all of the exclamation marks here are a sign of the target audience.)

Where are we meeting?

I travel a fair amount for work, I have never had to google coffee to find a nearby place to meet a colleague. Day to day, this won't be used because people know where they meet, they met there last week and the week before that. If I was in that situation 10 minutes time I would do the following. Windows + R - www.google.com - my location/what I want to do. This doesn't seem like any more work than the Windows 8 guy is doing and if I was in an IM with anyone It'd be in google chat anyway and I'd be much closer to google maps because of that. I'd also be on Chrome, a browser I chose because I don't trust MS's not to completely bone every computer on my home network. I won't be using this.

Opening Files

Unless the trick here is that Windows 8 magically picked out the various files this guy needed for this meeting, there is no trick here at all. All you are displaying is a system to look at the files you have. Stop the press. I'll be keeping that in, because I need it and expect it to be there. It is to me essentially what an OS is. If you could do away with the flashy opening and minimising stuff that'd be great (you too, OSX).

Closing Shot

3 lovely devices all running an operating system designed to work on only one of those devices.

There is a very good reason this video is so fast paced, it's to stop you from actually thinking about what's happening on the screen at any moment and realising it's all been done before or is pointless.

TLDR - Windows 8 - SHINY! FAST! COLOURFUL!

Home Preview

[tepples]

I understand that a Windows application developer is a much smaller class of end user, but for whom is the Consumer Preview intended: the accounts receivable department or a home user? If the latter, then why not "Home Preview" like the home editions of Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7?

Which isn't a walled garden?

[tepples]

Among popular gaming products that come with a gamepad, which isn't a walled garden? Not all video games are in genres for which a mouse and keyboard or a touch screen is ideal. Where's the freedom-respecting alternative to a PS3 or PSVita?

Re:Which isn't a walled garden?

[StikyPad]

Oh they all are, to be sure. There is no alternative because the market hasn't demanded it. (Another answer is that you can always connect a gamepad to a PC.)

But it's not my intent to debate the viability of alternatives; what I'm saying is that not buying into their paradigm is ALWAYS a valid option. Unfortunately, many people would rather disassociate their purchasing decision from the consequences -- supporting a business model that disenfranchises the consumer -- than go without. When it comes down to it, nobody needs a game console to survive, and buying a device while abdicating control over that device sends a clear message that you're willing to not only tolerate that policy, but that you're willing to support it financially. "Money talks, bullshit walks," I believe is the colloquialism.

OEM Windows

[tepples]

That's why you keep the Win7 install disks around.

You don't get install discs with a new name-brand PC anymore; you get a recovery partition. Most people who use a PC that runs Windows 7 happen not to own a lawfully made free-and-clear copy of Windows 7. Instead, as SomePoorSchmuck pointed out, they use an OEM version whose license is tied to a particular motherboard serial number.

Classic Startmenu

[Liger-Zero]

So long as my Classic Menu/shell (http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/) addon/hack still works, I *think* can tolerate the BS that is coming in Windows 8, but knowing MS they will also remove a bunch of the admin functions again like they did in WIN7

Some videos people need to watch...

[SpryGuy]

There are a lot of ignorant posts on this article. I'm not meaning that to be insulting, just pointing out that a lot of the ranting is coming from a place of not really understading or knowing what's going on.

So I want to provide a link to anyone who is genuinely curious (rather than just being a knee-jerk basher or a person whose opinions are calcified and unlikely to change). It contains two videos.

The first video is just the 8 minute marketing video. But it shows things that answer a lot of the criticisms and questions leveled in a lot of these posts. So for less than 10 minutes of your time, you can learn and understand more than you do now. The second half deals with Windows 8 on laptops without touch.

The second video is the full 90 minute presentation from Barcelona at the announcement of the Win8 Consumer Preview.

From minute 23 to about 40, they cover desktop and non-touch scenarios. LOTS of interesting stuff there. And then there's even more at the end, when they show Windows 8 running on all sorts of hardware, including big game-rigs and beefy server class machines. I think the last ten or so minutes is really interesting.

If you really want to inform yourself, watching these videos is a good start:

http://www.engadget.com/2012/02/29/microsofts-windows-8-preview-event-videos-now-available/

And for more, you can always check out the Building Windows 8 Blog:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/

If all you've seen is the Developer Preview, then you haven't really seen the User Experience... and assumptions you may have about how things work, about work-flow, about mouse and keyboard support, are just not true.

Re:A new kind of copying

[DusterBar]

Even more so, the Mac was a rework of the Lisa - which came out in 1983 (yes, boys and girls, before you were born :-)) The Mac was successful. The Lisa was too costly (at $10k of 1983 dollars, it was more than my new car back then!)

And, yes, many of the ideas came from Xerox but with permission.

Re:A new kind of copying

[ConceptJunkie]

Xenix is still good.

year of the linux desktop

[basecastula]

more people are switching everyday man. we just might be reaching that point.

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Re:destined for failure

[cyber-vandal]

Windows 95 good?!?!?!?!? Are you insane?

Re:Might work as a tablet OS...

[s73v3r]

It depends on what the gains you get from switching are. Moving from MS Office to Google Docs means you have fewer features, but there are other things you gain. If you don't actually use a lot of those features that you lose, is it really something that's worse?

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But how do the mods like the Amish?

[tepples]

you can always connect a gamepad to a PC

"No one does that." --FunkSoulBrother

When it comes down to it, nobody needs a game console to survive

Nor does anybody need a PC to survive. Nor does anybody need electronic devices to survive, technically. It's just that expressing an Amish-aligned sentiment like that in a comment to a Slashdot article about electronic devices tends to result in Flamebait and Troll moderations.