Gartner Analyst Retracts "Windows 8 Is Bad" Claim

nk497 writes "A Gartner analyst made headlines after describing Windows 8 desktop as: 'in a word: bad.' After web reaction, including one story asking why anyone bothers to listen to the consultancy firm anymore, Gunnar Berger has now yanked the offending sentence from his blog post, saying it was taken out of context and only applied to using the desktop with a mouse and keyboard, and that overall Windows 8 is a good thing. 'If you look at my blog, I've gotten rid of it,' he said. 'It's upsetting me that it's being taken completely out of context.'"

Comments

Was it taken out of context?

[Captain Hook]

Admittedly I tend to only read the tech related news sites but they all picked up on the same thing....

Windows 8 on a desktop just doesn't make any sense.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[bigstrat2003]

I thought exactly the same thing. He has nothing to apologize for, Windows 8 is bad. It has one of the worst UI designs I've ever seen.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[dubdays]

Admittedly I tend to only read the tech related news sites but they all picked up on the same thing.... Windows 8 on a desktop just doesn't make any sense.

Yes, it was definitely taken out of context. He was only referring to using the Metro interface with a mouse, and I totally agree with him. It is really, REALLY bad trying to deal with Metro when you can't use a touchscreen.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[blackicye]

I thought exactly the same thing. He has nothing to apologize for, Windows 8 is bad. It has one of the worst UI designs I've ever seen.

Frankly though, I don't really care about the UI, I've been using the Win2K classic mode since well..win2K.
There have already been user mods and themes to restore the classic interface.

I'm interested more in the kernel and stability/updates and underlying parts of the OS.

I've never liked Aero, or the ME or Vista interfaces or bloated junk like the OSX interface.

I'm not curmudgeonly enough to work purely in a CLI environment, I don't want my OS to look pretty, I want it to run applications, preferably faster and more stably than it's previous iterations on the same hardware.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Aeros]

He could say he was making a bad (very bad) 80's reference and the term 'bad'='good' no...noones buying it?

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[cpu6502]

>>>Windows 8 on a desktop just doesn't make any sense.

What about Android on the desktop? I bet Google could make a lot of money selling PCs with the ad: "Works just like your phone, with the same android interface you know and love." Win8's failure might by Google's chance to chip-away at Microsoft's desktop/laptop monopoly..... just as they chipped-away at Explorer's dominance on the web.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Anonymous Coward]

He has no spine.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Monoman]

Metro on the desktop is fine if it is run as an app and has a dedicated monitor. :-) The desktop in Win8 should be full featured with Metro as an option. I can see Metro being used for kiosks maybe

Typical MS coming out with something totally new is that it always feels half baked. There is a reason why many people believe MS doesn't get things right until (at least) the third version.

Metro on the phones and tablets is another discussion entirely.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Dog-Cow]

What's wrong with OS X? It's GUI is so sparse, I long for Windows when I have to use it. Now, the OS itself I like. I just think the GUI is stuck in the 80s.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[grcumb]

I thought exactly the same thing. He has nothing to apologize for, Windows 8 is bad. It has one of the worst UI designs I've ever seen.

Ah, Grasshopper, you fail to understand the zen of Gartner.

In order to be taken seriously, that they base their statements on nothing more than what people want to hear from them. Because they therefore illuminate the inner brilliance that every CEO knows must exist inside of them somewhere, Gartner becomes the top research agency in technology today.

It is not sufficient that Gartner, like a stopped clock, accidentally be right from time to time. No, they have achieved release from the wheel of torment that is reality. They strive never to be right. Gartner, my child, is the apotheosis of Wrong.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Dog-Cow]

It's not even all that new. It sounds to me like a(n improved) copy of OS X Lion's Mission Control.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Anonymous Coward]

Frankly though, I don't really care about the UI, I've been using the Win2K classic mode since well..win2K.

Well, you'll feel right at home with Windows 8, and that same old Start menu bar that's been there since forever. It's a good thing they haven't decided to change that or anything....

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[LordLimecat]

Frankly though, I don't really care about the UI, I've been using the Win2K classic mode since well..win2K.

The UI is one of the most forefront things in Windows, and if theyre radically changing how applications are going to interact with the user (single fullscreen app, two contexts metro / regular, new widgets) thats going to affect 99% of users.

I mean maybe there are new commandline commands or powershell cmdlets, but Im going to go out on a limb and say those arent why people get a new desktop version of windows.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[kdogg73]

In the shadow of my main Mac tower (desktop publishing), I have an old Dell XPS B866 in my office running Win2k as my lowest common denominator, so I can test .doc, .xls and .ppt files in Office 2003. But talking about Windows UI? It was no frills, quick and to the point interface. I still think it was Microsoft's best OS. All it needs is some protocol updates and other under the hood stuff, it could last longer. Unfortunately, 12 years old, even Firefox developers wont throw it a bone.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, it is, it is - it sucks even harder than Mission Control!

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[cpu6502]

>>>What's wrong with OS X? It's GUI is so sparse,

Try running it on a 400 MHz Mac sometime. It's not sparse at all..... in fact it's slow as heck (you can actually see OS X draw the window). WinXP's desktop runs better at 400 MHz than OS X's desktop.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[blackicye]

What's wrong with OS X? It's GUI is so sparse, I long for Windows when I have to use it. Now, the OS itself I like. I just think the GUI is stuck in the 80s.

I didn't most of OSX, aside from the UI. As someone who only very recently started using a Mac (partially out of professional curiosity, partially to support semi-PC/Mac illiterate users)

But I immediately found most of it's evangelists claims of it being user friendly, more stable than windows etc to be almost totally marketing/fanboy rubbish.

For starters, trying to make a Shortcut (alias) to the desktop was one of the most counter intuitive things I've ever experienced in any UI. Also I once had to figure out why Dragon Age 2 wasn't working on a Macbook Pro, and that left me fumbling in the dark for almost an hour.

Game developer support for the OSX platform is also sorely lacking, and most of the Mac users I know have also given up and just caved in to using Bootcamp.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[blackicye]

dang it...I really need to start using the preview button as intended..

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[sproketboy]

Why would anyone bother running modern software on 12 year old hardware?

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[coastwalker]

Fine for an exec reading their email and calling people to tell them they are fired but utter excrement if you are a salesman, engineer, document writer, project planner etc. You know the useless scum that actually do the work and don't need stock options because we can just fire them and get someone more subservient to do the job. Yes windows 8 and Android will be fine for all organizations that don't actually do anything.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Ken Hall]

In a previous job, where I was a tech manager, the management above me swore by Gartner. Nothing was done without their blessing. Unless, of course, the recommendation disagreed with one of their deep-seated "religious" biases.

In any case, dealing with Gartner was an interesting experience. I would call them and speak to an analyst about some product we were thinking of getting. The analyst would make vague pronouncements about "industry standards", and "best of breed", and "best practices", and usually vaguely recommend whichever product happened to be the front runner in that particular niche at that time. Then I would outline my reasons for choosing whatever product we had determined to be best for our needs. I could hear the analyst hanging on every word, and I just knew our reasoning would make it into the next round of recommendations.

They never gave me anything useful, their sole function seemed to be to validate whatever decision we had already made. In the couple of cases where they did make a serious recommendation in conflict with our plans, the company tended to ignore them and do what it pleased anyway.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[cpu6502]

>>>Why would anyone bother running modern software on 12 year old hardware?

8 years old.
Same reason I climbed Mt. Everest. ;-) Also it's "green" to continue using hardware rather than throw it in a landfill. Plus I was mainly proving a point: That OSX 10.5's desktop runs slower than XP-SP3's desktop. OSX is not "sparse" at all.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[postbigbang]

It actually went like this:

"Hey Gunnar-- Microsoft's check cleared the bank!"

"Oh shit! Where's the fcuking delete key!"

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean the same XP that was designed for a CPU at that speed? You do realize how OLD XP is? Perhaps you should run a version OS OS X from a decade ago and see if it's the same result?

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[jellomizer]

Unless your desktop has a touch screen.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Anonymous Coward]

Frankly though, I don't really care about the UI, I've been using the Win2K classic mode since well..win2K.

I see your point.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Anonymous Coward]

Metro on the phones and tablets is another discussion entirely.

Yes, but then what about a full Windows desktop on a tablet and phone? Does that make any sense?

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[jellomizer]

Which version of OS X?

Windows XP was released back in the early 2000's About the Same time OS X was released.
Now Microsoft Screwed up and couldn't get Vista out until late in the decade, allowing Apple to release multiple major version upgrade in that period of time, and began to not support Macs that are 6 years old or older.

What OS X and Windows Areo did was offload a lot of the graphic processing off the CPU and onto the video card. When they did that, the older systems without such cards started to take a performance hit.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Anonymous Coward]

He has nothing to apologize for

other than biting the hand that feeds him.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Anonymous Coward]

Feh. I've been using the "Win2K classic mode" since NT4. (You know, the version of NT that first introduced the Win95-style beveled widgets in lieu of the old Win3.x/NT3.x flat motif-like widgets?)

I'm 28 and rent an a apartment, so you lawn-walking kids are in luck... this time.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[oakgrove]

My thoughts exactly. MS saw a non-biased critical piece and sent the army of astro-turfers on attack. Corporate PR and reputation management. When MS finally gets brought down the world will be a better place. Simple as that.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[egomaniac]

I'm curious how right click -> "Make Alias" is "one of the most counter intuitive things [you've] ever experienced in any UI."

I found an article on Microsoft's site describing how to do it on Windows, and I'm not sure how:

1. Right-click an open area on the desktop, point to New, and then click Shortcut.
2. Click Browse.
3. Locate the program or file to which you want to create a shortcut, click the program or file, click Open, and then click Next.
4. Type a name for the shortcut. If a Finish button appears at the bottom of the dialog box, click it. If a Next button appears at the bottom of the dialog box, click it, click the icon you want to use for the shortcut, and then click Finish.

counts as more intuitive in any universe.

And while I certainly agree that struggling to figure out why a particular program isn't working can be very frustrating, surely you're not suggesting that this issue is unique to MacOS? Go dig through the technical support forums for, oh, any Windows game ever if you'd like to disabuse yourself of that notion.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[hal2814]

The conversation went something like this:

Microsoft: "If you're a researcher on this Windows 8 thing and you were on Earth, you must have been gathering material on it."
Gartner analyst: "Well, I was able to extend the original entry a bit, yes."
Microsoft: "Let me see what it says in this edition, then. I've got to see it."
... "What? Bad! Is that all it's got to say? Bad! One word! ... Well, for God's sake I hope you managed to recitify that a bit."
Gartner analyst: "Oh yes, well I managed to transmit a new entry off to the editor. He had to trim it a bit, but it's still an improvement."
Microsoft: "And what does it say now?"
Gartner analyst: "Mostly bad."

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[joppeknol]

Try running it on a 400 MHz Mac sometime. It's not sparse at all..... in fact it's slow as heck (you can actually see OS X draw the window). WinXP's desktop runs better at 400 MHz than OS X's desktop.

I run osx unto 10.3 on a clamshell 366 Mhz ibook (with, from memory, 320 Mb ram). It ran good enough for me to use it. Even programmed a little java with Xcode on it. WinXp would probably have run faster though. It had less fluff than OSX.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 7 runs like shit on my P4 400 also...

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Anonymous Coward]

8 years old? You bought a brand new 400MHz system in 2004? Not likely, since even the 12" iBooks had 800MHz PowerPC G4 processors as of the beginning of 2004 (with 1.07GHz processors released in April of that year). The PowerBooks of the same time period had 1+GHz processors, and the PowerMacs came in north of 1.5GHz with the G5 processor. The most recent Mac I can find that had a 400MHz processor was the FireWire iBook, released in September of 2000. It came with a 366 or 466MHz G3 processor.

And, congratulations, even if any of what you said *had* been true, you're claiming that a fully-patched OS that was released in late 2001 runs better on hardware of it's day than an OS released in 2007, roughly a year after Vista, which won't even run on hardware of that era.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[oakgrove]

I've been experimenting with an Android desktop for a while and it does have potential but there is still a ways to go. The first issue is many programs don't work well with the keyboard. Pulse news reader is a great example as it is basically useless with the arrow keys. You try to navigate and just get stuck somewhere pressing the keys and nothing happening. Another issue is global keyboard shortcuts like alt-tab just don't work as well as they do on other systems. When you alt-tab on Android, you get the 6 icons of the most recent apps to select from but to go back and forth to the most recent app, you have to hold alt and hit tab twice as the first tab just highlights the app you are currently using. No other system works like that and it is annoying. Also, things like keyboarding the browser are a bit annoying. Things like ctrl-click don't work very well. And you can forget about middle click etc. Right click should give you the long press menu but it doesn't, e.g., it just acts like a regular click. The mouse pointer doesn't change when you hover over links either. Another issue is how selecting text works. Nobody wants to long press and drag handles on the desktop. They want to just click and drag. Also, the fact that there is no actual windowing system in Android (at least AOSP Android) makes multi-tasking weaker than other systems. Another deal killer is how the system kills apps in the background. Nobody on the desktop wants to reload every tab every single time they alt-tab back to the browser. Boatloads of RAM would solve that though.

All in all, I think some combination of Android and ChromeOS with support for X applications and Dalvik apps would be very exciting and a potential disrupter if Google plays it right.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Papaspud]

Or you can right click on the file you want on the desktop, make a shortcut and then send it to desktop..... pretty straightforward.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out http://www.android-x86.org/

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Anarchduke]

You say use right click on a Mac. Did Apple start to make reasonable mice again? Because last time I looked at a Mac it only had one button on the mouse.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[jez9999]

Windows 8 on a desktop just doesn't make any sense.

Especially when it's been superseded by new technology.

I can't believe these reviews are still focussing on Windows 8. I've got Windows 98 for god's sake. Get with the 21st century.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[jbolden]

When was a 400 MHZ mac current? I think we are talking late OS8.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[jbolden]

8 years ago the 12" was 1.4ghz g4.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Pope]

You must be trolling.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[jez9999]

What about Android on the desktop? I bet Google could make a lot of money selling PCs with the ad: "Works just like your phone, with the same android interface you know and love."

Why is everyone so obsessed with unifying interfaces? Sometimes, different interfaces are *necessary* to achieve wildly differing functionalities on the desktop and portable devices.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Aenoxi]

Sigh. This old canard again? Every mouse and trackpad sold by Apple since the mighty mouse and the glass trackpad has had right-button functionality built-in. OSX has supported right mouse clicks since forever.

Of course modern Apple pointing hardware only has one microswitch and relies on capacitance multi-touch technology to identify if the user is clicking on the right hand or left hand side of the device.

Being charitable i'll assume that's what you meant by one button. Why not try using the hardware to discover its actual functional capabilities? You never know, you might like it. I did despite my initial prejudices (as a dremel-wielding, cryo-cooling, case-modding hardcore PC fan).

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Imagix]

Wow. You're many years (about 7) out of date. The Mighty Mouse had right click. And as I recall, using a 3rd party multibutton mouse worked even earlier than that. Plus the alternate of Ctrl-Click is the equivalent.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[mcgrew]

I'm running kubuntu 11.01 on a ten year old Dell. I'll have to downgrade to 10.04 though, Flash won't work on it with the updated OS (probably not enough memory).

To answer your question, because newer OSes have more and better features, often are faster (I've never seen that in Windows but I have in Linux) and why throw perfectly good hardware away? I hate wastefulness! If it's still useful, use it. If it will run a newer OS acceptably, slap a newer OS on it.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[jbolden]

There are two markets for desktops:

enterprise: Microsoft has Windows 7. Enterprises are mostly not done even their Windows 7 conversion and won't be moving again for a while.

consumer: Desktops aren't a high profit area. Its a thin margin rapidly declining market. Why would Microsoft want to target this group?

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Missing.Matter]

theyre radically changing how applications are going to interact with the user (single fullscreen app, two contexts metro / regular, new widgets) thats going to affect 99% of users.

Except they aren't changing that, they are adding it in addition to the normal desktop paradigm we're all familiar with. You don't have to use any metro apps if you don't want to on the desktop.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Anonymous Coward]

lol

One of the nations largest hospital's fire alarm system (they use 3 actually) runs on a windows 98 machine. It has been running pretty much non stop for over a decade. I don't know how that is even possible, but it's true. I see that damn machine every day.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Cinder6]

I thought Windows 8 was bad, so I downloaded the preview and ran it exclusively for a week. While it obviously still has some bugs to work out (which I am sure will largely gone by October), I find myself having to admit, I liked it. Metro apps are kind of odd on a desktop, but the actual desktop (or is that Desktop?) is still just as usable, and if I can keep 99% of my apps using it, then I will have absolutely no problem with the OS. Frankly, the Start Screen is better than the old start menu. It's much more customizable and acts as a very fast application launcher for anything you don't have saved to your home screen.

I even found myself liking the ribbon in Explorer. Whereas I had to do a Google search to find out how to show hidden files in Windows 7, in 8 it was two very logical clicks away. Even in previous versions of Windows, it took several clicks going through different screens. I can accept that it's not for everyone and maybe Microsoft should add a toggle for old-style menus, but I feel like Slashdot has too much of a knee-jerk reaction to this thing and is engaging in too much groupthink. It's something you have to try out for longer than a few minutes (my first reaction was to laugh at it), which is why I went for the full week.

This probably sounds like a shill post, and I wouldn't be surprised if it gets labeled as one. I don't much care; people will think what they will when their opinions are challenged.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[locopuyo]

You could probably get a Raspberry Pi or some other super cheap piece of hardware that is faster than your 10 year old Dell and save enough in your power bill to for the upgrade to pay for itself.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[adisakp]

I've never liked Aero, or the ME or Vista interfaces or bloated junk like the OSX interface.

I actually like Aero/Vist interfaces. What I don't like is some of the dumbification of Windows 7 -- Like removing the ability to let the taskbar not be "always on top" and removing the ability to remember size and placement of individual explorer windows by their root.

The taskbar is an annoying issue because it's a permanent waste of screen-space. Then again, Android Honeycomb on up permanently waste screen-space on the system bar which is just as stupid.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hardly. Mission Control, Launchpad and full screen mode are designed to work on the desktop. They don't create separate apps that only run full screen or only work with gestures derived from a different (touch screen) interface. Full screen apps will run in a window as opposed to Metro apps which are full screen only. They didn't get rid of the Dock in favor of Launchpad like WIndows 8 has done with the Start Menu in favor of the Start Screen. And both the Dock and cmd-tab works perfectly well for switching between apps.

These are night and day. If anything the Windows 8 attempt is a half baked attempt at playing catch up. I've used all 3 preview releases of Windows 8 and they were poor enough to make me buy two new Retail copies of Windows 7 Pro so I'll have it available through my next upgrades until either Windows 8 SP1 or Windows 9 fixes this crap or I finally move completely to Linux on the Desktop. Linux Mint 13 is pretty nice.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mice with buttons are so 20th century. Would you like a toggle switch with that? How about some hand valves and a buggy whip?

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Dcnjoe60]

What about Android on the desktop? I bet Google could make a lot of money selling PCs with the ad: "Works just like your phone, with the same android interface you know and love."

Why is everyone so obsessed with unifying interfaces? Sometimes, different interfaces are *necessary* to achieve wildly differing functionalities on the desktop and portable devices.

If I had points, I'd mod you up. You don't see people clamoring to have trains, cars, planes and boats to all have the same interface. Each mode of transportation has an interface suited to that mode. Why people think that computer devices should be different is beyond me. Using a desktop or laptop, use a desktop interface, using a tablet or phone, use a tablet or phone interface. Using a TV, use an interface appropriate to that. Put differently, if your use of a device is to consume data, than use an interface suited to that us. On the other hand, if your use is to create content, then the interface needs to support that.

Nobody would want to go to a surgeon where all of the "tools" were patterned after a bone saw. That might be good for some procedures, but if you needed an appendectomy that would hardly be the tool of choice.

One ring to rule them all may apply in Middle Earth, but definitely fails when dealing with computer interfaces.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Anonymous Coward]

The analyst would make vague pronouncements about "industry standards", and "best of breed", and "best practices", and usually vaguely recommend whichever product happened to be the front runner in that particular niche at that time. Then I would outline my reasons for choosing whatever product we had determined to be best for our needs. I could hear the analyst hanging on every word, and I just knew our reasoning would make it into the next round of recommendations.

They never gave me anything useful, their sole function seemed to be to validate whatever decision we had already made. In the couple of cases where they did make a serious recommendation in conflict with our plans, the company tended to ignore them and do what it pleased anyway.

This sounds conflicting, they validate whatever decision you already made, except when they don't?
Why would you talk to them after you've already made your decision, and why isn't revising their guidance based on your feedback a smart thing to do?

It sounds like they were doing their job, and you wanted more decision making power...

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[gtall]

Why would MS want to target desktops? MS sees their bread and butter being stolen by handheld iThingies. They feel that without some sort of paradigm shift on their part, they'll be left-non-circular-shifted out of the buffer of customer (business or consumer) attention span. So, in an amazingly brilliant insight, they decide to take the iThingy paradigm and transplant it onto the desktop thereby making it relevant again...errr...or something...it made so much sense when the MS salesdroid said it...

Just think of it as a FrankenTop...in a deep and mystical MS marketing laboratory hidden away from prying eyes, a marketroid, whose eyes are reminiscent of rotating spheres of flashing lights, looks up to the heavens or the ceiling of the lab with a diabolical grin: Apple will NEVER follow us HERE, Bwahahahahaha!!!!!

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not even all that new. It sounds to me like a(n improved) copy of OS X Lion's Mission Control.

Microsoft's software always does _sound_ like an improved copy of something else, but hey, they've never let you down before so why now right? /sarcasm

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[MightyYar]

Yeah, I'd bet dumping the 10-year-old power-sucker would be worth it, both environmentally and economically.

On the other hand, the fabs to make the chips in a Raspberry Pi consume an awful lot of water and electricity.

Tough call environmentally - probably depends on where the grandparent's power comes from.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Anonymous Coward]

Any consultant that can get management to go with the prefered solution of the team responsible for development and maintenance is worth every penny. Naturally if management would just go with the solution suggested in the first place by the inhouse team, when they so little themselves that they need to go to a consultant for help, that money could be saved.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[bigstrat2003]

I don't think it's a shill post (which, on this site, is really another term for "someone who said something positive about a product/company I don't like", nothing more). I do disagree. The desktop is fine (it's the same as ever), but I find the start screen to be a complete train wreck on a traditional computer. It's completely unsuited to navigation with a mouse and keyboard, and is transparently designed to promote Microsoft's bottom line, rather than a positive user experience. I would have to literally get paid to put up with it.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 8 IS bad.
The installer could not even locate my MICROSOFT USB keyboard and mouse to START the install.
I had to find a PS/2 key&mouse to be able to 'accept' the nightmare.
xp has nothing to fear with this pile.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[ninjacut]

On the contrary, I find Windows 8 the best UI designs ever seen. Try using it for sometime, with objectivity than hatred about Microsoft and you will change your opinion. It is that good.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[bigstrat2003]

I did use it, and I did evaluate it with objectivity. I don't hate Microsoft, in fact, I like most of their products. This one is an abject failure, however. Microsoft is so hell-bent on trying to capture the mobile market that they either don't know or don't care about the shitty experience they're forcing on desktop users in the process. I tried Windows 8, and will never use it again. I'll stick to UI paradigms that weren't designed for completely different input devices, thanks.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[dywolf]

"I had to do a Google search to find out how to show hidden files in Windows 7"

Really? It's been in the same spot for years...since what, Win95?
That's what makes it sound the most like a shill post.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Cinder6]

"I had to do a Google search to find out how to show hidden files in Windows 7"

Really? It's been in the same spot for years...since what, Win95?
That's what makes it sound the most like a shill post.

It's changed, or rather become less apparent. In XP and earlier, you click Tools->Folder Options->View, and then found it there. In Windows 7, the toolbar is hidden by default. Not being a full-time Windows user, I didn't realize that you could hit Alt in order to bring it up, and I'd imagine a lot of people are in the same boat.

Regardless, that particular option is faster in Win8.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Cinder6]

I think that Metro apps themselves are silly on a desktop--in particular a high-resolution desktop--but I have to disagree (obviously) on the start screen. If you use it to type in a program name (which is how I personally open 99% of programs), you can hit enter to open it. Note that this is the same as it is in Windows 7 (and Vista). The only difference is that the icon is larger and the search feature is faster.

With the customization aspect of the start screen, you don't have to wade through as many menus as you did before, you can have more apps showing per time, and you can group them any way you want. However, I can understand dislike for it, and I don't expect everyone's experience to mirror mine.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Missing.Matter]

What's wrong with auto-hide? Also 3rd parties to the rescue: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/54842-taskbar-always-top-disable-enable.html

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Missing.Matter]

If it was a shill post, wouldn't he have said "I had to do a Bing search..." ?

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[mcgrew]

I'm not curmudgeonly enough to work purely in a CLI environment,

Are there still CLI-only OSes? The only time I ever see a command line is if I forget the root password and have to start in recovery mode. Which is almost never. Well, once in a while somebody will bring me an old XP computer that they've forgotten the admin password to, I'll use a Linux boot disk and reset the XP password from the tool. Oh, I have to use a CLI on the mainframe at work once in a while... usually (again) resetting a user's mainframe password.

Damn, I guess I use a CLI more than I thought!

I don't want my OS to look pretty, I want it to run applications, preferably faster and more stably than it's previous iterations on the same hardware.

I agree completely. Some people equate "pretty" with "useable", which seems pretty dumb to me. Windows is far less useable than KDE, but Windows is prettier.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[pixelpusher220]

Reach your arm out...if you have a monitor of any decent size, it's far enough away from you that you can't 'touch' it.

'Touch' in the generic computing market is nothing but fluff hype and M$ is going to take a 'massive' hit on this when it comes out for enterprise computing users.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or drag the file to the desktop with the right mouse button, then select "Create shortcut". Since the right mouse button is associated with extra options, that's absolutely intuitive.

Maybe, for some filetypes, just dragging with the left mouse button will create a shortcut. THIS is ridiculous. The standard, always-working way to create a shortcut on Windows makes a lot of sense.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[steelfood]

Gartner analyst: It just so happens that your product here is only mostly bad. There's a big difference between mostly bad and all bad. Mostly bad is slightly good. With all bad, well, with all bad there's usually only one thing you can do.
Microsoft: What's that?
Gartner analyst: Go through the code and look for loose change.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[firewrought]

Why is everyone so obsessed with unifying interfaces? Sometimes, different interfaces are *necessary* to achieve wildly differing functionalities on the desktop and portable devices.

OS vendors want one unified OS to market and maintain. Developers want one unified platform to target code for. IT groups want a standardized ecosystem when possible. Tech-savvy users would like one set of apps that runs everywhere. And ordinary users that just want the best experience with each individual device? I don't know that anyone is talking to them... :O

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[jellomizer]

OK, I did it. It was rather easy. The monitor was 70 cm away from me. My Arm is 80 cm. (54 cm monitor is a good size).

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[thetoadwarrior]

What they mean is Microsoft came down on them Sandusky on a 10 year old to get them to soften up their review.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you have one? I'll take six

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Hamsterdan]

My Graphite PowerMac G4 running Leopard (unsupported, i know) would disagree with that statement.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Anonymous Coward]

An Apple shill would use Bing?

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[blackicye]

I'm curious how right click -> "Make Alias" is "one of the most counter intuitive things [you've] ever experienced in any UI."

I found an article on Microsoft's site describing how to do it on Windows, and I'm not sure how:

1. Right-click an open area on the desktop, point to New, and then click Shortcut.
2. Click Browse.
3. Locate the program or file to which you want to create a shortcut, click the program or file, click Open, and then click Next.
4. Type a name for the shortcut. If a Finish button appears at the bottom of the dialog box, click it. If a Next button appears at the bottom of the dialog box, click it, click the icon you want to use for the shortcut, and then click Finish.

counts as more intuitive in any universe.

And while I certainly agree that struggling to figure out why a particular program isn't working can be very frustrating, surely you're not suggesting that this issue is unique to MacOS? Go dig through the technical support forums for, oh, any Windows game ever if you'd like to disabuse yourself of that notion.

Try right clicking a folder or file in windows, selecting copy, then going to your target location and right clicking again to "paste shortcut"

As opposed to whatever hoops you have to jump through to make an alias pointing to a specific directory or drive in OSX.

I've not experienced _any_ problems running _any_ games in Windows since XP SP1, you know why?

Because I hand pick my hardware in a manner that ensures a more problem free experience.

It's not difficult:
Intel Chipsets (I prefer Gigabyte motherboards.)
Intel CPUs (because now they have the best price to performance when overclocked and are available in conveniently multiplier unlocked models.)
nVidia graphics cards (because as much as I like ATI, Crapalyst drivers are still more prone to hiccups.)

Even macs are running the same hardware now you know?

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[blackicye]

The UI is one of the most forefront things in Windows, and if theyre radically changing how applications are going to interact with the user (single fullscreen app, two contexts metro / regular, new widgets) thats going to affect 99% of users.

I mean maybe there are new commandline commands or powershell cmdlets, but Im going to go out on a limb and say those arent why people get a new desktop version of windows.

I don't think anyone rushed out to upgrade to Vista or Win 7 for the Aero interface, at least I hope they didn't. I took the plunge with Vista, and it wasn't a great experience, but I always run fairly current hardware, so the bloat was not as apparent, it was almost tolerable post SP1.

I did it in part for the DirectX 11 support, which admittedly wasn't at all impressive for the GPUs and games available at the time, in retrospect I should have just stayed with XP until Windows 7 was released.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

I passionately hate full screen apps.
I can see all my applications open on the desktop and switch between them in a flash. I can also drag and drop between two separate windows. I have never understood why people seem to insist on all their applications run full screen.

I guess I will take a pass on Windows 8.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[pixelpusher220]

So you're tall then I take it? 80cm is about 30 inches. Which I'd wager is longer than most people's arms.

I'm 5'6" and so pretty average in height and my arms when extended straight forward are at best 65cm to the finger tips. You lose some usable arm length going forward because the shoulder is set back relative to the front position of the chest.

Not even considering the extra effort required to hold your arm out and up off the table for most of the day.

When our monitor is our desk, this starts to become useful as a desktop, but that's a long long way away.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[LordLimecat]

The start menu-- one of the most iconic things about windows-- now launches Metro. I know, because I installed the server 2012 beta, and it is mind-blowingly frustrating to have to deal with.

Metro isnt something that is optional, it is something that every single user of Windows 8 will have to interact with on a daily basis.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[jellomizer]

You could also just position your monitor differently too.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[LordLimecat]

I rushed out to upgrade to Win7 because of the UI; IMO it is the single best default UI on the market for dealing with massive numbers of application windows and multiple screens (barring taking the time to actually learn to deal with Workspaces on Linux, which might take the cake-- but its multimonitor support is still inferior IIRC).

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[blackicye]

I actually like Aero/Vist interfaces. What I don't like is some of the dumbification of Windows 7 -- Like removing the ability to let the taskbar not be "always on top" and removing the ability to remember size and placement of individual explorer windows by their root.
The taskbar is an annoying issue because it's a permanent waste of screen-space. Then again, Android Honeycomb on up permanently waste screen-space on the system bar which is just as stupid.

I actually don't mind the taskbar being up all the time, and in fact prefer it this way. 1920x1200 leaves enough desktop real estate for me to do my stuff whilst avoiding the additional time wasted mousing and waiting for the taskbar to pop up, slide up or phase into existence.

The really annoying thing about Win 7s default aero theme is how it combines task buttons by default, so instead of knowing what is running
and where it's running at a glance, I have to instead do unnecessary mouseovers and movements to play application hide and seek with shiny animations and
transparent and translucent windows and other live preview sub windows every few seconds/minutes.

I personally prefer to see my window titles and applications running at a glance, and I can't imagine why anyone wouldn't.

The only reason I can think of for combining task bar buttons is if you have a teeny tiny low res CRT or LCD.

I disable all windows animations and visual effects as one of the first steps after a fresh OS install, leaving only font smoothing and showing contents of windows being dragged around or resized, everything else is inefficient and useless fluff really..

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Rockoon]

Wait, not only are you saying that Mac's now have more than one mouse button, but they also have a Control key?
Is that between the Option and Command keys?

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[blackicye]

I agree completely. Some people equate "pretty" with "useable", which seems pretty dumb to me. Windows is far less useable than KDE, but Windows is prettier.

I don't use windows because it's prettier than KDE though, I use it because I like playing (have an addiction) to games, primarily of the FPS, RPG and MMORPG genres, and Linux hardware driver support and games support just sadly hasn't materialized till this day.

This is also partially because I'm lazy and don't have as much free time as I'd like these days...and the fact that I spend a fair amount of money on hardware annually, so speed and efficiency wise, windows is good enough.

I don't run mission critical applications on my desktop so stability and security wise, it's also good enough, thus I just can't justify spending the additional time or SSD space as well as continually swapping between Linux and Windows because I need to have Windows 7 installed to run the applications I use my PC for any way..

I'm currently I'm running a Gigabyte Z77 Sniper 3 with an Ivy Bridge 3570K, 16GB of Kingston Valueram and a 3-4 year old GTX580 1.5GB, Sandisk Extreme 120GB SSD backed with a handful of Hitachi and Samsung 2TB mechanical drives.

The extent of my Linux usage at present (sadly) is a dual boot of Ubuntu 12.04 on my work laptop and FreeNAS 8.2 on my DIY 4 bay NAS (RAID-Z.)

If some larger developers/publishers like Steam or Blizzard would lead the charge and start sponsoring more Linux ports and development of games, more of us could start migrating away from Windows.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[hairyfeet]

Here is the thing that gets to me....MSFT has always been known for using focus groups and actually having real honest to God user studies, so why then is this a typical reaction from my customers when they try the Win 8 CP box I have set up at the shop? See how lost she is? How she doesn't have a clue where to go or what to do and the OS is not even giving her so much as a tooltip or pop up to help?

So i'm sorry Win 8 fanbois, Win 8 isn't just bad with a keyboard and mouse, although it sucks the big wet titty on those, no Windows 8 is just a bad design PERIOD. Its not intuitive, its not discoverable, it doesn't follow either desktop or cellphone UI conventions, doesn't give the user jack shit in the way of help or guidance which is shocking as hell as MSFT ALWAYS has little tooltips and guides to help new users, in a word its a sloppily thrown together mess that simply doesn't belong on the desktop or laptop and gives the user nothing that Win 7 doesn't give with a much better experience.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think it's a shill post, and I appreciate the comments. Additionally, I agree that Slashdot is full of knee-jerk anti-Microsoft attitudes and curmudgeons who despise change. However, this caught my eye:

I had to do a Google search to find out how to show hidden files in Windows 7

I find that a very odd example, since the way it's done is exactly the same as it was done in Windows Vista, XP, 2000, ME, 98, and even 95. Besides, it's the sort of thing most people would do once and then forget about, so it seems a strange thing to reduce the number of clicks to get to.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Rary]

A user interface is more than just what pixels are lit on the screen. You also have to factor in how you physically interact with it. So, if you're using a keyboard and mouse, as opposed to a touch screen, then it's not the same interface, no matter what it looks like on screen. And, what it looks like on screen will be, or at least should be, based on how you're going to interact with it.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure the author is mainly sorry as MS legal tends to make things very uncomfortable for anyone who reviews MS products negatively or without express written authorization by MS.

- Used to be a tech journalist, chose to quit rather than write "advertorial" about Windows Vista.

Sadly, integrity is a poor long-term investment.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Imagix]

Heh. Although for reference, Apple keyboards have had a control key since about 1986..... (25+ years...) perhaps earlier. The Apple IIc had a control key in 1984, the Macs got it a little later (1987 with the Mac Classic and LC?).

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[dwlovell]

I think your determination is premature and opinionated. I dont understand how you got modded "Informative" for a purely opinion statement.

Windows 8 isn't even released yet. The UI differences between Developer Preview, Consumer Preview and Release Preview were significant. I found the earlier desktop/metro integrations unpleasant, but the current Release Preview build feels right. Even on a desktop with just keyboard and mouse, I can navigate to everything I want relatively easily.I didn't like metro at first, but since I have been actively using it on my main laptop, I do feel like its an improvement. The integration to the cloud and app store integration across form factors definitely needed a face lift that the old desktop UI just couldn't support.

My personal opinion is that Windows 8 is great. They will continue to iterate on the UI until launch to satisfy as many people as possible. They wont make everyone happy, but then again a lot of people are still running Windows XP, so even if some people hold off on 8, I think they will be just fine.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[cpu6502]

>>>an OS released in 2007 which won't even run on hardware of that era.

I never bought any Mac new. They are usually handed to me for free, or cheap. So I was going by wikipedia which my G4 was last made in 2004. And YES you can run OS 10.5 on a 400 MHz Mac. I'm sorry you got all offended because I said OS X's desktop is "less speedy" than XP-SP3 on a 400 MHz processor. Maybe you shouldn't put your personal selfworth into a damn piece of plastic & metal if you are so easy to anger.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[jbolden]

No its more sensible than that.

As tablets and phones start to become primary computing devices their limitations become more obvious.The most obvious limitations are connections with business productivity software. Microsoft is dominant in business productivity. If they can carry their business productivity advantages to tablets and phones they maintain their hold on the consumer space. If they fail, consumer becomes a software eco-system entirely different than enterprise by say 2020. That fast changing rapidly evolving eco-system will naturally develop business productivity applications for the small business market, while at the same time having volumes from consumer which will allow to it pull ahead in other ways.

Microsoft then spends 2020-2030 having done to it, what it did to IBM, DEC and Unisys.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[cpu6502]

So basically you're complaining that Android OS does not act like Windows OS. :-| Better not switch to a Mac or Amiga then... their respective OSes don't act like Windows OS either.

To expect all OSes to have the same keyactions as windows is pretty silly, but I guess your view is the same view most customers would have. "It doesn't act like windows therefore it must be crap."

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Cinder6]

I explained the reasoning above (the toolbar I always used in prior versions of Windows is hidden in 7, and I didn't realize you could hit Alt), and the reason I didn't give another reason is I haven't had to use the ribbon beyond that. My point was that the ribbon does seem to expose functionality that was previously buried several menus deep. Since you're the second person mentioning that part of my post, I'm beginning to regret saying it...

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Cinder6]

I must be the most subtle (or terrible) Apple shill ever if I just wrote a post praising Windows 8. Is it all part of my cover? By writing this in a jesting manner, am I trying to throw you off my scent? Who knows...

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[msobkow]

Power users want tools that are tailored to the job at hand. Hence the plethora of languages and desktop managers available for Linux, no one of which has ever been so dramatically superior as to even begin to threaten total dominance.

But to the average user, simplicity comes from predictability. If they can do what they want everywhere with one set of gestures and actions, they'll leap on that consistency in a heartbeat.

The fact that tablet/gesture and keyboard/mouse user interfaces are driven by dramatically different technologies and limitations is irrelevant to the user. They want it the same, even though they'd realize that's a fundamentally flawed idea if they took the time to think about it.

Because at the heart of it, the "average" user doesn't want to think about their computer use at all! They just want it to work, which to them means "the same way."

To be honest, I don't see anything fundamentally wrong with Unity, Gnome 3, or Metro. I don't like them for my own needs, but they are better able to deal with tablet/touchscreen interfaces. Like it or not, the vast majority of new devices connecting to the internet are now such portable devices, not new desktop PCs of any brand.

It won't be long before the keyboard/mouse driven PC is the minority in the overall web community, if it isn't already.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Waccoon]

Why is everyone so obsessed with unifying interfaces?

For the same reason people want to use their personal phones/tablets at work.

Not that I agree with it, of course.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[tftp]

If you use it to type in a program name (which is how I personally open 99% of programs), you can hit enter to open it.

Maybe half of geeks type names of programs. I do not, for example, but you do (that makes it 50% on a sample size of two.)

However down there, in cubicles of the real world, not more than 0.1% can be bothered to type program names. Why should a worker remember what some specific piece of software is called by its developer? There are pretty strange and unintuitive names there. You could guess for a year and still not be able to figure out that the thing you need is called "pvkfms3" or like, there are many wonders like that in the industry. Command line is dead for a good reason. People don't want to memorize arcane commands; they are simply not paid to do that - they are paid to do their professional duties, be it drafting legal texts or entering orders or creating designs. Workers need clean, simple and portable method of launching applications. Metro screen is confusing because it is too large and is not organized. Windows key is not even in the running. Desktop shortcuts are possible, but how would a user create them without the start menu to copy from?

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[hairyfeet]

Well to be fair while Win 8 is a giant clusterfuck of a UI Win 7 did actually bring some nice useful features to the UI, such as breadcrumbs and jumplists. I've found with breadcrumbs I can fly around the file system quicker than I've ever been able to and jumplists make it so easy to get back to what i was working on the previous day. if you haven't tried them they are quite nice.

As for what's under the hood while it uses a little less memory (although personally I LIKE how Win 7 uses memory, having all my most used programs precached into RAM makes for a hell of a snappy OS, even on my little netbook) the only thing I'd wish they'd backport is the new services model which frankly Windows should have had a decade ago. For those that don't know Windows FINALLY has an on demand services mode, where a service will only activate as long as its used and turn itself off when its no longer needed.

But other than that one change frankly i haven't seen anything that would make me want to put up with metro or waste the time hacking metro away when Win 7 works great and is supported until 2020. I had high hopes that win 8 would simply be more of Win 7, since its frankly one of the most rock solid OSes I'd seen since XP X64 but I have no desire to replace my monitor with a touchscreen or get my programs from the MSFT "appstore" (man I'm really starting to hate that fucking word) so it just doesn't have anything to upsell me and from talking to my customers after playing with the Win 8 box I have set up in the shop frankly they aren't impressed either.

Bottom line? Unless you are buying a cell phone or touchscreen device like a tablet don't bother, Win 7 works just as well and doesn't feel like you should be holding your screen in your lap with a sliding keyboard like a supergigantic smartphone.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[hairyfeet]

Because if it works well for a task you shouldn't have to throw away working hardware? I have a 1.8GHz Sempron desktop I use as a nettop at the shop and frankly it runs the web and serves files just fine and with very low heat and electricity usage. If I ever feel like bothering I can change out the chip for an Athlon Mobile and get even lower power usage but frankly 35w for the system is fine. This machine runs XP just fine and after popping in a second drive to test it Windows 7 ran just fine as well, only Aero was lacking which who cares about Aero.

So with the economy in the crapper frankly you shouldn't have to toss hardware if its working, although i don't know about 400MHz as I usually chunk anything below a 1.5GHz at the shop. But those P4s and Athlons work just fine for basic tasks so there really isn't any sense just tossing them, although the later "space heater" P4s like Cedar Mill and Prescott probably suck more power than they are worth.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[hairyfeet]

Well this is why I sold the Pentium Ds that the boys were using but kept the Sempron tower for a nettop, those old P4s were serious hogs when it came to power. If you can find an Athlon or Sempron from the same time period frankly they weren't bad at all.

As far as the water and power the fabs use making them? Just too tough to find the exact figures so ultimately I tell my customers to look at their own power usage and decide for themselves. I know I've switched out a lot of the old P4 office boxes with CRTs for AMD E series and CULV Phenoms and Athlons with LCDs and frankly the customers rave about how much lower their electric bills were, not to mention the cooling costs which when you are talking about southern summers space heater P4s? Not fun to have around.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Missing.Matter]

If you installed Server 2012, you should also know you can switch between the sever core UI and the full Metro GUI.... so it is explicitly optional for the server install.

As for a consumer/desktop install, it's optional insofar as you don't actually ever HAVE to use it. You can boot right to the desktop, and launch all your Desktop programs from there. You don't even have to go into the metro start screen to shut down. The most you might ever have to do is full screen metro search, but then again there are about 1000 utilities like Google Desktop to search your desktop. What exactly is the use scenario where you're 100% forced into using the start screen daily in a "mind-blowingly frustrating" manner? Your complaints seem completely overblown and hyperbolic.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry you got all offended because I said OS X's desktop is "less speedy" than XP-SP3 on a 400 MHz processor.

Another baseless accusation by cpu6502, how shocking.

No one is "offended" that OSX 10.5 runs slow on a 400MHz CPU, while XP runs decently. What "offends" us is the way you make it sound like it is some how a legit comparison. XP's specified minimum CPU speed is 233MHz, just over half of 400. OSX 10.5 has a minimum specified CPU speed of 867MHz. That is more than double 400.

Basically, to flip the comparison around, it's like saying 7 runs like crap on a 400MHz machine, while OSX 10.0 runs silky smooth. Yeah, no shit, tell us something not so obvious.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[oakgrove]

So basically you're complaining that Android OS does not act like Windows OS.

Windows, OSX, Gnome, KDE, LXDE, Unity, Fluxbox, and on and on all work exactly like I described above. I don't have a problem with Android being different on the desktop but it can't be worse and be a viable option.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[justthinkit]

When Microsoft began incorporating the mouse into their applications, their goal was to keep their applications fully accessible by keyboard. What has happened to this goal? Every new version of Windows seems to break keyboard access more and more. Now we are having touch rammed down our throats as the _only_ preferred way to use an OS ?!
.

If ever there was a time for a WTF, this is it.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[exomondo]

Windows 8 on a desktop just doesn't make any sense.

To be specific, the 'Start Screen' on a desktop just doesn't make sense. Through using the RC it is, IMO, a far better OS than 7, it certainly seems more responsive and i like the replacement of that glitzy 'glass' effect. I actually really like Windows 8 on the desktop, the only problem is that damn start screen, especially how silly it is on multiple monitors...if they had made the start screen and Metro apps more of an optional thing on the desktop (like Launchpad on OSX) then it would be great.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Missing.Matter]

It seems you're under the impression that Windows 8 is only for the full screen metro apps. Here are some points you might be interested in:

1) Everything you did in Windows 7 you can do in Windows 8 in terms of multitasking and multi-window management. Full screen is only a requirement for metro apps. The full desktop is still there in Windows 8.
2) Windows 8 has much better multi-monitor support, so for hardcore multi-taskers, it's a great improvement over Windows 7.
3) The ability to dock applications along side the desktop is a multitasking improvement. You can dock a music player, IM, and presumably as apps are added, things like doc references or Skype.
4) Win+tab allows you to see all open metro apps and switch between them in a flash.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Anonymous Coward]

My thoughts exactly. MS saw a non-biased critical piece and sent the army of astro-turfers on attack. Corporate PR and reputation management.

Right, no person could actually like anything microsoft does, the only people who do are people paid by microsoft because microsoft has all the money in the world they can pay businesses and governments to use their software, they can bribe government officials to avoid lawsuits, they can pay OEMs to pre-install their software and they can tolerate end user piracy because this magically makes them money, usual conspiracy tin-foil hat theory from nerds foaming at the mouth at whatever microsoft does. Anti-Apple stories/posts have an army of loyalists that will defend everything Apple does, anti-Google stories/posts get flooded with responses claiming they must be from microsoft/apple. But anti-Microsoft is fine and anything pro-microsoft is blasted as being "shilling" or "astroturfing".

The fact is if you really believed it was an "astroturfing" or "shill" post you would not contribute to its popularity (unless you're an idiot) because doing so would obviously just be serving the ends of such "astroturfers" or "shills". Responses that simply make accusations like that serve no purpose, a valid rebuttal, moderation or not responding at all would be the appropriate courses of action, but foamy-mouthed staunch anti-ms nerds aren't capable of that.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[exomondo]

So i'm sorry Win 8 fanbois, Win 8 isn't just bad with a keyboard and mouse, although it sucks the big wet titty on those, no Windows 8 is just a bad design PERIOD. Its not intuitive, its not discoverable, it doesn't follow either desktop or cellphone UI conventions, doesn't give the user jack shit in the way of help or guidance which is shocking as hell as MSFT ALWAYS has little tooltips and guides to help new users, in a word its a sloppily thrown together mess that simply doesn't belong on the desktop or laptop and gives the user nothing that Win 7 doesn't give with a much better experience.

I think it's only bad on a desktop/laptop, i don't see any reason it would be objectively bad on a tablet and it's worth remembering it's not the final version, so there's no how-to intro or tooltips or helpers built into it yet. This is just like the transition from Windows 3.x to Windows 95, all the same complaints, but the world's changed since then too, if you want simple, easy-to-use basic computing then many people get a tablet (and add a keyboard for word processing/long emails if necessary), naturally i understand you will fight that to the bitter end given that your business has a reliance on PCs so i don't blame you for that.

The tablet market barely existed a little over 2 years ago and now it is doing phenomenally well, desktop/laptops won't die, i don't even think they'll fall into a niche market, they will likely be the workhorse but not the primary computing device. There is clear logic to Microsoft's strategy based on what i assume is their view of the future of computing, they seem to see it as a tablet-first world (right or wrong), so if you've had experience with a Windows tablet then the knowledge translates directly to the desktop for those times when you might need to use one, they don't want the PC to become the device no one will use because it is unfamiliar with their normal computing environment (which they seem to see as being the tablet) but they've already proven you can't shoehorn the traditional desktop OS onto a tablet and already i would say most smartphone owners do more of their personal computing on their smartphones than they do on their desktops/laptops.

Please bear in mind this is just why i think they are taking this path, i'm not about to abandon my macbook air as my primary computing device in favor of a tablet or dump my gaming desktop and just use my xbox or ps3 but i certainly do a lot on my iphone that i used to do on those devices. Also FWIW i would prefer a 'Launchpad' style optional approach to the Start Screen than the mandatory way ;)

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[ThePuceGuardian]

Gartner, my child, is the apotheosis of Wrong.

Did something happen to John Dvorak?

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[cpu6502]

Puppy Linux doesn't. For example instead of double-clicking icons to start a program, you single-click. It took me awhile to adjust but I did learn to like that OS. Being different =/= worse.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[oakgrove]

I love Puppy Linux and install it from time to time on really old hardware so I'm with you on that.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Missing.Matter]

Yes! I've been arguing this here and elsewhere. I constantly see the line paraded here that "Windows 8 sucks with keyboard and mouse" and I have no idea how these people came to that conclusion, especially in the Release Preview, which I've been using daily with a Keyboard and Mouse since its release. With the keyboard, I have dozens of keyboard shortcuts that mimic any functionality I could use with tablet, and in some cases it's way more efficient. For instance, to launch an application pinned to the start menu I press Win+#, and it launches from anywhere. To do the equivalent with touch I need to go to the desktop then select the item... so it's more efficient with keyboard! Similarly, the mouse is more efficient at accessing hot corners, since I just bang the cursor to the screen limits. With touch I might have to switch hands I'm holding the tablet with to do a swipe gesture, so in that respect mouse is more efficient than touch. Finally the touch pad is the best of both worlds. With multi touch gestures, I have a proxy for touching the screen, but I have all the gestures and shortcuts of a mouse, with a keyboard and all its shortcuts 6 inches away.

So is Windows 8 designed for touch screen? Yes, and the result is you have a UI with many shortcuts and amenities for touch users. But it's also designed for touch pads, keyboards, and mice, as there are equally many shortcuts, gestures, and amenities for those input methods as well to make those user interfaces (UI) efficient.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Trogre]

Because we can. I'm going to re-post something I wrote recently, pertaining to computers ten years old:

I don't believe we have seen this before in computing history - an era where software written today can be reasonably expected to run on a personal computer manufactured a decade ago.

This was not the case in 2008, 2004, 2000, 1990, 1980...

In 2002 the state of the art computer was an Athlon XP 2000+ with 256MB RAM, 40GB HDD. Many of these are still running now, and so long as schools and grannies can use them to browse the web and watch YouTube (Flash-only of course) they will continue to run for years to come. Of course most will be 512 or 1GB now since extra RAM is most often a trivial upgrade these days.

In 1998 what did we have? The AMD K6 and Intel's Pentium 2, and 128MB if you were lucky. Not so many of those were running in 2008 I'm sure.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Trogre]

I bought a brand new 400MHz system in 2004 - a Sharp Zaurus SL-5600. Beautiful machine, pity the front light burned out recently or I'd still be using it.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[Missing.Matter]

The only thing not optional about the start screen is that you boot into it. After that, you can go to the desktop and stay there for all eternity if you wish. Work there, install apps there, launch all your apps, and it looks and feels just like Windows 7 with all the performance improvements of Windows 8. If you really want, there are utilities that allow you to boot directly to the desktop, so you never even have to see the start screen. I'm sure we'll see more of these in the future, maybe even ones that replicate the old start menu if you really want. The one I linked to also includes a start button and a non-fullscreen app list.

Personally, I like metro apps and the new start screen, but the point is there are options for those that don't. Sure they're 3rd party, but Microsoft has to appeal to many customers, and they can't satisfy them all. Third party utilities that modify the stock GUI has been a part of Windows culture forever, especially since Windows XP with skins for the awful Luna theme. FRankly all this uproar about the default install options on a forum where modding, tinkering, and hacking is the norm is really surprising.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[exomondo]

Fair enough, agreed.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[ninjacut]

Guess you have your opinion, frankly I use Windows Phone, Windows 8 and XBox. Other than Live tiles, which make real sense I dont see any forced fitment to any form factor. They all are unique and appropriate for each device. The Metro UI in Windows 8 is just a much better replacement to start menu, the desktop is the same but then it is touch, mouse and keyboard friendly.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[mcgrew]

I use it because I like playing (have an addiction) to games

Well, at least for the time being, gamers are stuck with either Windows or a console.

This is also partially because I'm lazy and don't have as much free time as I'd like these days

Without the games, Linux would save you time. What takes five clicks and a reboot in Windows takes a single click in Linux. These days Linux needs far less maintenence than Windows. That said, I still have Windows 7 on my notebook, mostly because of (ahem) laziness. I'm running XP on an ancient box for pretty much the same reason as your game rig -- EAC is far better than Audacity, and it won't run on the CD-less notebook or in Linux.

If some larger developers/publishers like Steam or Blizzard would lead the charge and start sponsoring more Linux ports and development of games, more of us could start migrating away from Windows.

Very true.

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[doccus]

OK.. How's this for youmy iMAc came standard in late 2009-2010 with OSX Leopard.. However, after upgrading it feels like I'm back on a 386.. it takjes anywhere from 1 to 2 seconds for the desktop to register a click, and waiting fot *itunes* to respond to input is so slow i can get a frikkin coffee before it loads the track i clicked ./. Onsome apps I can actually see the tect being written across the page before my eyes.. It's a nightmare, unacceptable for a core 32 DUo 2,6 GHz.. When I boot into Vista, with all the 'Eye candy" loaded, however, it is blindingly fast and responsive on the identical machine.. OSX = 386, at least in my eyes

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[doccus]

Incidentally, I forgot to say what I upgraded to, only ONE major release up.. "Snow Leopard".. That's all it took to turn a fast iMAc into a paperweight..;-(

Re:Was it taken out of context?

[ConceptJunkie]

Because autohide has been horribly broken since it was first introduced and has never gotten better. As with almost everything in Explorer, it just doesn't work.

In short, it inevitably stops autohiding. The only solution I've ever found, short of constantly turning it off and on again to reset it, is to use a third-party tool.

Payday!

[Sponge Bath]

I guess the Microsoft check finally cleared.

Re:Payday!

[Anonymous Coward]

More than likely the arrival of threatening letters from Microsoft lawyers.

Re:Payday!

[poetmatt]

pretty much. Gartner analysis has always leaned towards those who pay the most for the studies, in order to get in their magic quadrants.

Re:Payday!

[MickyTheIdiot]

These guys are Microsoft lapdogs. They are so biased that their analysis means nothing. When one of them speaks the truth about a product that looks like it will go down in flames he gets swatted down. This just proves what we have been saying about Gartner.

Re:Payday!

[dkleinsc]

The interesting bit about the story of Gartner has always been how they continue to make money and be well-regarded as prognosticators while having a track record of being completely wrong and having opinions that are basically those of the highest bidder.

Re:Payday!

[blackicye]

I guess the Microsoft check finally cleared.

Give the guy the benefit of the doubt, he might have been trying to type "Awesome" and just typoed (before the check cleared.)

Re:Payday!

[MickyTheIdiot]

Well regarded by whom?

Oh.. well regarded by the upper IT head honchos spouting today's buzzwords.

Look at the track record of those guys. Not good.

Re:Payday!

[azalin]

The interesting bit about the story of Gartner has always been how they continue to make money and be well-regarded as prognosticators while having a track record of being completely wrong and having opinions that are basically those of the highest bidder.

Free markets at work? *ducks*

Re:Payday!

[Anonymous Coward]

Please provide a citation of said 'track record'...

Re:Payday!

[dc29A]

Here you go.

Re:Payday!

[LordLimecat]

Threatening lawyers would have 0 effect, as he would immediately have scores of Pro-bono lawyers lining up to defend his 1st amendment rights. The EFF immediately springs to mind.

Re:Payday!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen a few Gartner analysts consulting within other companies, and they usually help recommend decent kit, the most appropriate software for the job (regardless of their research) and often get sizeable discounts off the bill (again, regardless about who they write about). Of course there are probably bad examples too, just like this out-of-context one, but on the whole, there is a lot more to that and other research companies then easily mis-quotable headlines and forecasts, which are only that, a forecast!

Re:Payday!

[synapse7]

What else would be the motivation for the changes/retractions?

Re:Payday!

[oztiks]

I don't blame them though the nasty job critics do these days is really sickening.

I'm not sure what is with the trend to simply side with every and any Apple product and then have the competition try to create a iDevice "killer", then afterwards, 10 out of 10 times side with the iDevice in closing summary.

I mean the Nokia Lumia which is a great phone got shocking reviews for no real reason other than the fact its fashionable to trash Microsoft. Android devices left right getting the beat down, not factoring in price or purpose.

It's about time the critics stop it with this instant pro-Apple mantra and see devices for their differences rather than some half backed comparison.

For example retina performs poorly in direct sunlight and that many products out there have created solutions that perform better in the sunlight because that's what people want, or a critic complaining about 800px res on a phone vs 900px? What on a phone? A little handheld device that only sucks extra battery juice because of the extra pixels with no real world practical advantage...

It's good that there is some accountability with the comments and users being able to pull the footing out of under these critics sometimes. I remember seeing a Siri vs Tellme YouTube clip, where the reviewer didn't follow the regime of the Tellme interface and used phrases known to work on Siri. There was a huge backlash about it as it was unfairly compared and instead of retracting clip the idiot reviewer got back on YouTube and tried to justify his behavior, which only made him look like even more of a dick and further served to discredit him...

Re:Payday!

[Tridus]

When the Lumia is capable of doing advanced things like have Skype receive calls without being a foreground app, then maybe I can take this seriously.

As it stands right now the Lumia and WP7 are just lousy phones. They're not up to par with the competition. They got better reviews then they deserved considering how many reviewers adored the thing, but the market didn't care.

Re:Payday!

[zlives]

just chek on the cloud ;)

Re:Payday!

[zlives]

bad to the bone?

Re:Payday!

[Anonymous Coward]

didn't these guys used to be called Data Quest back in the PCWeek days? If so, their nickname was often Data Guess and yes they were Microsoft lapdogs back then too. One of the original paid research shills.

Re:Payday!

[zlives]

he finally saw minority report and thought ow that looks cool?

Re:Payday!

[nschubach]

But the EFF would never know if he got a threatening letter from Microsoft unless he made a big stink about it and/or contacted them himself. Of course, making a big stink would make him and/or Gartner look bad to most of their clients who rely on Microsoft products recommended by Gartner.

Re:Payday!

[Nerdfest]

A lot of the news media have been using Apple products for years, and this is their chance to prove to everyone how bright they were. A good chunk of developers recognize what Apple has become, but the non-technical don't see it yet. (Admittedly, a portion of the technical crowd don't see it yet either).

Re:Payday!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry to detract from the karma whore ciclejerk but you're falling in to the same trap that all iOS device competitors and apple haters have been since the launch of the original iphone.

A good device is not a list of features.
Again, because this point somehow does not get drilled in to your skull enough!
A good device is NOT a list of features. Get it?

Every rant is an endless list lf X feature is better in X device or Y feature was in this company's product first! WHO FUCKING CARES?

The iphone experience is a carefully constructed raw-materials-to-retail purchase experience where every factor is carefully adjusted to make sure everything works as planned. For every superior device you can claim, I'll point out 5 fatal flaws that indeed make it inferior to the iphone when realized as a whole package.

You don't get it. The industry doesn't get it. Apple laughs all the way to the bank as proof.

And no, it's not a "legion of rabbid apple fanatics" that props up apple's product. That is a construction you make to rationalize your opinion. And it's absurdly ,laughably wrong.

Re:Payday!

[Anonymous Coward]

> For example retina performs poorly in direct sunlight

Where did you hear this? My MBP 15" is phenomenal outside. Sure, DIRECT sunlight is bad, but it's no worse than every other LCD made. And in bright, indirect sunlight, it's very usable. Much better than other laptops I've seen.

I expect everyone who bought a Lumia now regrets being locked in to an obsolete platform for the next two years...

Re:Payday!

[turkeyfeathers]

I thought Pro-bono lawyers only sued people who infringed U2's copyrights?

Re:Payday!

[jbolden]

For example retina performs poorly in direct sunlight

Just about any backlit LCD performs poorly in direct sunlight. In direct sunlight you want a reflected light monitor not an emitted light monitor. Pixel Qi screens, for example, are used in laptops that need to perform well in direct sunlight. So what's your point that Apple's screens suffer from the same defect as 98% of the other laptop screens on the market? The retina also doesn't do well with heavy exposure to water, people who need to get their laptops wet have to go elsewhere.

The reason iDevices get good reviews is that the balance of all the various parts of the hardware and the software. That's a compelling package. Part by part they can obviously be beat, and for specialized used cases they can be beat. But what's missing is a broad based disadvantages for the iDevices relative to the competition.

Re:Payday!

[oztiks]

I won't get into the retina argument I'll just say I had both devices, the Nokia works great in broad daylight, I live in a very hot sunny part of the world and it's the case that with other phones unless you boost its brightness to max you're having to dart under shade to use it where still in many cases it suffers. I was blown away on default setting on the Lumia I was walking down the street midday seeing everything clearly and could operate it but that's just an experience I've had.

See I want to argue your point on the feature balance. In many ways yes, you're right, Eg Apple media devices, laptops, desktops but with the iPhone it's not, it's the exact opposite, it's always about how much more you're getting with the iPhone and really it's not true it's not the case. It's as if when Apple makes a less specced product it's because the product is better balanced as you say, when it's over specced from the competition it's how superior they are. In critic world they get the cake and they eat it.

Re:Payday!

[Missing.Matter]

1st amendment rights would be defending Gartner from the government. It can't do anything to protect Gartner from Microsoft suing over libel or something else. Read the 1st amendment sometime.

Re:Payday!

[Dcnjoe60]

The reason iDevices get good reviews is that the balance of all the various parts of the hardware and the software. That's a compelling package. Part by part they can obviously be beat, and for specialized used cases they can be beat. But what's missing is a broad based disadvantages for the iDevices relative to the competition.

The reason iDevices get good reviews is because such reviews usually don't look at the cost of the devices. A Porsche is a lot better driving experience than a Honda, but that doesn't mean it is a better buy. What most reviews of Apple products do not discuss/include is whether or not such device is a good buy. To know if something is a good buy or not, you need to know how it is to be used and what else is available.

  The new MacBook Pro with the Retina display is a very good product, all the reviews say so. It may be superior in every way to say an average pc, However, I don't think I will buy one for my mother to use just to send emails, surf the web and see pictures of the grand kids. Why not? Because for her use, a MacBook Pro is definitely not a good buy.

Re:Payday!

[Dcnjoe60]

I guess the Microsoft check finally cleared.

Give the guy the benefit of the doubt, he might have been trying to type "Awesome" and just typoed (before the check cleared.)

What's interesting is that he said it was taken out of context, so instead of rewording the statement to keep it in context, he deleted the whole line. And then cashed the check.

Re:Payday!

[Tom]

no real reason other than the fact its fashionable to trash Microsoft

and why is that fashionable, I wonder. It's almost as if there was a reason. Or several.

Re:Payday!

[Anonymous Coward]

Nokia Lumia phones are very very good if you consider the fact that it's the first Nokia phone running an OS not proprietary to Nokia. They will definitely catch up with the competition sooner than later.

Re:Payday!

[jbolden]

I own the rMBP. I think we should subdivide the issue of price:

1) On the computer side, Apple is now dominant owning 90% of the $!000+ laptop market. There median PC laptop is $515, the median Apple $1400. Which means there really are two entirely different comparisons.
a) How does Apple compare to similar general purpose laptops. And there by virtue of the different target markets Apple shines. I think its fair to say if you are planning on spending $2k+ on a laptop, and don't need to be in Windows, you'll have a better experience on Apple.
b) How does Apple compare to similar specialized laptops, which are often at those price points. And since Apple doesn't make specialized laptops the PC laptops win easily.
c) Should you buy a high priced Apple or a low priced PC laptop? Which is the point you are getting at. That's an impossible comparison. A fair comparison might be used Apple laptops to new PC laptops. And there I think the PC is likely to come out ahead.

2) On the tablet side there are Android tablets at the same price points as the iPads, though generally they are more money for a less. Apple wins here on both price and experience, generally. As you go down market, with the tablets in the $40-300 range you start to run into the same problem you didn't with PC laptops vs. Apple. As you go up market you hit the Windows tablets with stylus and OneNote and those are vastly better devices for more money.

3) On the phone side, the price difference is somewhat obscured for most consumers by the higher subsidy. If a consumer is a getting a $14/mo subsidy on an Android vs. a $17/mo subsidy on a iPhone that blows away $72 in price difference for the raw device. Once you subtract off that difference, since it doesn't matter for consumers generally the iPhone is about the same money and a feature to feature comparison works out. When people have to buy phones unsubsidized they frequently consider cheap and look at the low end or used.

Re:Payday!

[LordLimecat]

You cant easily sue for libel or slander in the US without the first amendment being brought up. In order for MS to successfully win their case, they would have to demonstrate that Gartner's speech / writings were NOT examples of protected speech; if they were, then no law could make such speech illegal as it would be unconstitutional legislation.

Re:Payday!

[jbolden]

I understand what you are saying. What I'm saying is that bright sunlight is an unusual working condition. But if the goal is to function well in bright sunlight you want entirely different type of screen. This isn't a quality difference you are actually in a situation where you preferring lower quality to higher. As an aside iPhone 4 does rather well in indirect sun but no emitting LCD is more than terrible above 40,000 LUX, and a bright southern condition you are likely at about 120,000 LUX or more.

In critic world they get the cake and they eat it.

Yes I'll agree. The real test is how they get treated when something is a genuine negative. Like for example when the iPhone wasn't available except on AT&T and AT&T was having data problems. But you do have a point, critics do also go with winners. I remember when I was a big fan of Apple during 2004 years their stuff got panned even when in areas where it was way better.

Macs for example has the best OS right now for 3D gaming (native), but you never hear about that because in practice no one brings out high end gaming for Mac using low level Apple only features.

Re:Payday!

[Tridus]

Yeah, I get that. And if I'm an industry follower, I can accept it.

As a phone buyer? I don't care. I want the best phone I can get today. The Lumia 900 does not stack up against a Galaxy S III or an iPhone 4S and win. It's simply not a competitor at the high end of the market.

Nokia's next set of phones on WP8 might be, but that doesn't matter today.

Re:Payday!

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps you would be interested in this link detailing the top-rated phones with a service plan at amazon (by customer review).

Specifically, I would like to draw your attention to the top 4 phones. Yes, that's right. They are all Windows Phone. I'm pretty sure those reviews are not all from professional reviewers.

Re:Payday!

[cavebison]

They got better reviews then they deserved considering how many reviewers adored the thing, but the market didn't care.

Judging a technology based purely on market success makes you sound more like a fan of business than a fan of technology. Whether it's Betamax vs VHS or Blu-ray vs HD DVD, the factors are a lot more complex that simply who the market "cares about".

Some people care about what Gartner analysts say

[turkeyfeathers]

It's company policy at Gartner for the analysts give their website links to their mothers, so that someone will read their blogs.

Fatigue=suck

[StormyWeather]

Hold your arm out in front of you for 20 minutes and tell me how great that touchscreen interface is.

Windows 8 is full of fail, just like the Nintendo power-glove, and for the same reason.

Re:Fatigue=suck

[Java Pimp]

Seriously! I get pissed when my kids touch my monitor screen with their sticky fingers. Now if I have to do it my screen is going to be covered in Cheetos dust.

Re:Fatigue=suck

[StormyWeather]

That's true. People that have to look at monitors all stinking day are very picky about having them clean, free of dead pixels, having them operating on the right frequency, set to the right brightness, right angle to view, etc. One of my coworkers accidentally touched one of my monitors the other day, and promptly apologized, and went to go get stuff to clean his fingerprint off it.

People that check their mail for a few minutes once a day could care less.

Re:Fatigue=suck

[MistrBlank]

really great. Imagine how toned everyone's arms will be as a result of this technology coming into our every day lives!

Re:Fatigue=suck

[Teresita]

People don't get enough exercise these days. Win8 on a desktop with the touch interface will help you build your trilaterals. No more getting sand kicked in your face by those Apple bullies.

Re:Fatigue=suck

[azalin]

Kids, chocolate and touchscreens are not a good combination. Well actually not a whole lot of thing go very well with the first two...

Re:Fatigue=suck

[Anonymous Coward]

A fine Chianti?

Re:Fatigue=suck

[ethanms]

Hold your arm out in front of you for 20 minutes and tell me how great that touchscreen interface is.

The touch interface makes sense when you consider the rising popularity of the tablet form-factor, and potentially increasing number of non-traditional "desktops" such as Surface-like devices (which would be an ergonomic nightmare for long term use, unless they intend to patent a dual-display where your hands/arms sit on one interface flat to your desktop while your eyes view another display (in a more traditional position say 90-120* vs. your desktop) which would have some sort of an on-screen halo showing the positions of your hands/fingers so that you can coordinate what you're touching on the lower screen with your eyes on the top screen.

But yeah, in it's present form Win8's UI appears to be adding needless complexity to traditional laptop and desktop form factor PC's. So far for me it has been far more difficult to use and I fail to see how it will ultimately be a better interface than what we have already. I think MS' best bet would be to allow a full regression to the "traditional" interface in order to maximize potential adopters, at some point they probably don't care WHY people are buying Win8, just that they are... so why not have a full WinXP/7-UI mode available?

One thing I do love about Win8 is the new copy dialog--love to see the progress and measured disk/network speeds. I also think that the larger fonts make a good deal of sense given how usage is changing (it looks great on the PC in my living room connected to the TV).

Re:Fatigue=suck

[Richard_at_work]

In my day, I used a touch screen interface for hours at a time - we called them white boards.

No real issues with fatigue tho. That argument sounds like the same sort of ones we heard back when the first touch screen iPod was mooted (well before the iPhone and Touch hit - the rumours were based off a fake leak) about how no one would ever want to deal with finger prints on the same screen they viewed the content on. That worked out well...

Re:Fatigue=suck

[Anonymous Coward]

Please invite me to watch you take your monitor off its stand and rub it on your leg, ok?

Re:Fatigue=suck

[Megane]

The fatigue argument goes all the way back to light pens in the early '80s. If it was so good to use a vertical (or vertical-ish) touchscreen at a desk, we'd have all been using light pens instead of a mouse.

FWIW, back in the day I thought a drafting table style PC would be a good form factor. The closest we have is those monster iMacs, but they're vertical. I'd still rather use a laptop in a comfy couch.

Re:Fatigue=suck

[Anonymous Coward]

People don't get enough exercise these days. Win8 on a desktop with the touch interface will help you build your trilaterals. No more getting sand kicked in your face by those Apple bullies.

Are you suggesting that a Gartner analyst calling Metro "bad" is the insult that made a man out of Mac? (Atlas shrugs :)

Re:Fatigue=suck

[hackula]

Pleeeeeasssseee, drafting table style PCs. This would be insanely cool. A 42" table with a touch screen interface and pressure sensitive stylus support would be awesome. It would have to keep a physical keyboard option so that I can still use my Das Keyboard. I expect a prototype on my desk by Monday.

Re:Fatigue=suck

[azalin]

A fine Chianti?

Touché

Re:Fatigue=suck

[gbjbaanb]

whiteboards.... you were sitting down at a whiteboard that was a full arm's stretch away and roughly level with your shoulder?

No, didn't think so. Its one thing to use a vertical surface when you're generally keeping your arm at a downward angle with occasional and short horizontal movements, all with your elbow bent. Its quite another to stick your arm out and keep it there for any kind of extended period. Try it now, you'll notice it getting heavier after just a minute.

As for fingerprints, I guess it's different with a small, bright device. I guess monitors could be as good... except you can't easily breathe on them and wipe them clean, instead you'll be smearing grease around, or keeping a whole heap of cleaning fluids to hand.

In any case, I just think its pointless, desktop UI should be ergonomically designed around desktop users, not phone users. Why they couldn't make 2 slightly different UIs beats me.

Re:Fatigue=suck

[Anonymous Coward]

Get them a Power Glove instead?

Re:Fatigue=suck

[Anonymous Coward]

Note that HP makes a (miserable 22", 1920x1080) multitouch monitor with a variable kickstand that allows you to set it at any angle from about 10 degrees to upright -- pretty much drafting table range, at least as a miniature prototype.

Anyway, the 1920x1080 kicked up at a 25 degree angle and a T221 above it (in the usual upright position) makes a pretty decent rig, but I'm still trying to figure out an elegant way to slide a keyboard out over the multi-touch -- right now the keyboard's duct-taped to a board which sits across the whole bezel, and I set the whole thing to the side when not typing. Gotta rig an alternate T221 mount with clearance for the keyboard to slide straight back...

Re:Fatigue=suck

[Missing.Matter]

I think MS' best bet would be to allow a full regression to the "traditional" interface in order to maximize potential adopters

A full regression to the traditional interface is including the traditional start menu, which today users spend 0.00001% of their time using. I fail to see how a shortcut launcher makes/breaks the Windows desktop experience. As it stands, you can spend all your time in the Windows 8 desktop environment and the only thing you lack is the classic start menu. To get around that there are myriad ways to launch applications, many of which are used today in Windows 7 in response to how lacking the classic start menu is. How has the classic start menu all of a sudden become this golden standard in UI, when we've been lambasting it for years?

Re:Fatigue=suck

[0123456]

Why they couldn't make 2 slightly different UIs beats me.

'cause they want people to develop Metro apps, and developers won't do that if they can't run on desktop Windows. Unless Microsoft pay them lots of money, anyway.

Hence desktop users are lumbered with a crappy tablet interface that makes no sense to them.

Re:Fatigue=suck

[Dcnjoe60]

Hold your arm out in front of you for 20 minutes and tell me how great that touchscreen interface is.

Windows 8 is full of fail, just like the Nintendo power-glove, and for the same reason.

Anybody with a two year old and an lcd tv will know that touching the screen with ones hands is not ideal.

Re:Fatigue=suck

[Dcnjoe60]

Pleeeeeasssseee, drafting table style PCs. This would be insanely cool. A 42" table with a touch screen interface and pressure sensitive stylus support would be awesome. It would have to keep a physical keyboard option so that I can still use my Das Keyboard. I expect a prototype on my desk by Monday.

And in an office setting, you would put your documents you are working from where? The problem with the top of the desk being the touch screen is that unless you need no other supporting materials, you will be covering up some of your desktop and when you set down your coffee cup or worse yet spill it, what does that do to your touch screen interface. As for keeping your physical keyboard, again, if you are putting it anywhere on your desk, you are again covering up your screen.

Re:Fatigue=suck

[ninjacut]

So you have not used it, you dont have to touch it if using on your notebook. The touch will be useful for demo or tablet mode. I am using it since developer preview on a 5 year laptop, and frankly it is the best UI and OS experience. It actually becomes difficult to even get back to Windows 7. In my view, the telemetary data is helping it. Just use it for a month, and everyone will want Windows 8 on their machines. Forget about failing, it could be the most successful OS and even better Windows 7 in adoption.

Re:Fatigue=suck

[Mashiki]

Hold your arm out in front of you for 20 minutes and tell me how great that touchscreen interface is.

Never done defensive tactics(DT) have you? Do that, then strap 30lbs of padding on. Have fun, oh did I mention someone is going to be kicking and punching them repeatedly? Oh yeah baby. Don't drop your guard, it hurts getting hit.

You're right through, the UI for a desktop PC like that isn't the best design. At least not in that way, personally I think smart tilesets would be better with a more intuitive start menu.

Re:Fatigue=suck

[Rockoon]

Hold your arm out in front of you for 20 minutes and tell me how great that touchscreen interface is.

This isnt really a valid argument. The touch screen interface does not replace the mouse, just like the mouse did not replace the keyboard. Its an additional interface. Do you always type on the keyboard with one hand while the other is always on your mouse?

Maybe Win8 is not a good example of Keyboard+Mouse+Touch, but you are arguing that Touch should never be included with any desktop interface, which is just a silly blanket generalizations.

I remember the days when a good half of computer users spoke vehemently against GUI's. The very same sort of arguments that you are using would come up.. "I'll be moving my hand from mouse to keyboard to mouse to keyboard." I was one of those holdouts, not really starting to use a GUI OS until Windows 98. Now I dont want to ever go back to just keyboard.

Re:Fatigue=suck

[DiEx-15]

I am sure that the majority of these screens will be covered in something other than food particles...

HINT: It is biological in nature.

Re:Fatigue=suck

[hackula]

Document Shmockuments. By the time my minority report rig comes in I will ditch the dead trees once and for all. I almost already have. I keep a moleskine notebook on my desk and that is about it. As far as the coffee goes... I think this thing might need cup holders.

Whatishhhh!!!!!!

[miffo.swe]

Thats the sound he heard after some pressure was put on them. The press dance to microsofts shots around their feet. Often with ms putting a bullet in their own foot at the same time.

Only bad for mouse & keyboard users?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I must be one of those Neanderthals then. ;-)

Re:Only bad for mouse & keyboard users?

[hackula]

True True. Nothing beats the almighty trackball! I am hoping Windows 8 drops support at the last minute for mice, touch, stylus, and keyboards that are not the Das Keyboard ultimate. There can only be one....way to operate Windows 8, and that is my way. If you are not using a Das Keyboard with a Kensington trackball, then you are doing it wrong.

Re:Only bad for mouse & keyboard users?

[Anonymous Coward]

If using a Model M and a DT225 is wrong, I don't want to be right.

(Though I admit, I've been looking at those CST trackballs a lot lately...)

Mouse and keyboard?

[OzPeter]

saying it was taken out of context and only applied to using the desktop with a mouse and keyboard,

Mouse and Keyboard??? Isn't that how 95% of the population is going to initially be using windows 8?

Re:Mouse and keyboard?

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 8 is an obvious knee-jerk reaction by Microsoft to the rise of the tablets and their fear that the world is moving on and they're going to be left behind out in the cold.

It's fail spectacularly (Windows ME) because it's going to fail on tablets (the market is already flooded with iOS and Android, they're coming very late to the party without any noticeable killer features to compete with - it'll be what the Zune was to the iPod) while alienating their existing main customer base (desktops), where all serious business work will continue to be done. If the GUI is really that bad that it actually impacts on productivity businesses will choose to hold their users back at Windows 7 until 9 comes out or until they switch to MacOSX/Ubuntu/whatever (much as we'd all love Linux to finally benefit from that, Apple are more likely to benefit). It's happened before - many businesses stayed on XP until 7 come out rather than use Vista.

Re:Mouse and keyboard?

[Anonymous Coward]

saying it was taken out of context and only applied to using the desktop with a mouse and keyboard,

Mouse and Keyboard??? Isn't that how 95% of the population is going to initially be using windows 8?

Seeing as a lot of the coming Windows 8 PCs shown at Computex and other places do seem to have touch screens, be convertible between laptop/tablet use or have large multitouch gesture trackpads you can use as indirect touch screen.. I wouldn't be so sure about that. I don't expect that many to upgrade old machines, but that has been the case for quite a while with new Windows versions.

After testing Win8RC though, I don't understand the uproar. Basically the only Metro I see on my old traditional PC is the start screen, which works as an application launcher - big version of the old start menu - that you with one click launch away from and then stay in normal Windows desktop mode, which has quite a bit of improvements over Windows 7. For most of the time it is a better Windows 7 than Windows 7, and then the start menu has changed - from an expanding pop-up to fullscreen.

Re:Mouse and keyboard?

[nurbles]

I assumed he meant that Windows 8 was only bad if it was used on an actual computer. I figure he meant that using it on toys like phones, tablets and xboxes will be great, though.

Re:Mouse and keyboard?

[yankeessuck]

Indeed but they have the "build it and they will come" delusion of selling tens of millions of tablets. If desktop Metro really sucks that bad then the PR uproar will force Microsoft to make it optional for keyboard and mouse.

Re:Mouse and keyboard?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and 95% of the population doesn't understand that a mouse is the exact same thing as a finger, so they're going to whine and moan about it.

You move the mouse pointer around the same way your hand will move to poke at things.
Left-click is the same as poking with a finger.
Right-click, well, can be simulated with multi-touch, so the comparison breaks down a bit there, unless you're a Mac user with a one-button mouse (using Windows on Mac).
Wheel vs. swipe is another difference that's still really similar.
Hand-eye coordination is a lot better with a 2-D mouse pointer than using 3-dimensional spatial recognition.

Touchscreen is not revolutionizing the way we interact with gadgets. It's just removing a piece of hardware and replacing it with organics. We are de-androiding our computers and turning them into cyborgs.

Re:Mouse and keyboard?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then there's all the god damned hot-corner / hot-side charms that aren't intuitive (how would you know these are there?) to new users and make you wait for them to pop out. Talk about annoying.

Re:Mouse and keyboard?

[0123456]

Seeing as a lot of the coming Windows 8 PCs shown at Computex and other places do seem to have touch screens, be convertible between laptop/tablet use or have large multitouch gesture trackpads you can use as indirect touch screen.. I wouldn't be so sure about that.

Yeah, we totally want to be sitting at a desk having to reach out and poke the screen with a finger every ten seconds in order to write an Excel spreadsheet. And having to stop every ten minutes to wipe off the fingerprints...

Touchscreens are used on devices which can't support a keyboard or mouse because they're the least bad alternative. They're stupid as hell on a desktop.

Re:Mouse and keyboard?

[Anonymous Coward]

And having to stop every ten minutes to wipe off the fingerprints...

I remember this also being a common argument for why iPhone was sure to be a failure. But you ignored the part about 1) using trackpads instead of touch which I think we'll see more and mroe and 2) you can use it exactly as you use Windows 7 today. I use the Win8RC without any touch devices, and would not go back to Win7 as with one click on your metro start screen you are in a better Windows 7 than Windows 7 desktop. The earthshattering big change is that a popup-expanding start menu is replaced by a full screen start menu.

Re:Mouse and keyboard?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, they're almost as unintuitive as right click. How would you ever know to right click on something without someone telling you? It's the dumbest UI ever.

Re:Mouse and keyboard?

[Zontar The Mindless]

And having to stop every ten minutes to wipe off the fingerprints...

I remember this also being a common argument for why iPhone was sure to be a failure.

I remember that someone's already pointed out that it's dead easy to wipe the iPhone screen clean on your trouser leg, but not so much a typical laptop or desktop screen.

Re:Mouse and keyboard?

[Festeron]

saying it was taken out of context and only applied to using the desktop with a mouse and keyboard,

Mouse and Keyboard??? Isn't that how 95% of the population is going to initially be using windows 8?

I can't say I agree with this. Surely the number is much greater than just 95%.

Context

[Anonymous Coward]

"out of context and only applied to using the desktop with a mouse and keyboard, and that overall Windows 8 is a good thing."

What about the context is that 90%+ of Windows-based machines will be using mouse and keyboard as the input mechanism? Virtually nobody currently has touchscreen, very few are going to buy desktops / laptops with touchscreens in order to use Windows 8, and the amount of Windows 8 tablets that are sold will still amount to a very small percentage of the overall desktop / laptop market.

So, if Windows 8 is bad with mouse and keyboard...

Re:Context

[Deep Esophagus]

People always took Ralph Nader's statement out of context too. When he said "Unsafe at any speed", he didn't mean that all cars were unsafe; he only meant they were unsafe at any speed over 5 miles an hour. Outside of that, they're perfectly safe.

Re:Context

[jbolden]

That may not be the case. Microsoft controls the OEMs. It depends how committed Microsoft is to the shift in the laptop market. They can, if they so choose, force the market to switch.

Re:Context

[Anonymous Coward]

Doubtful.
Doing this would bring the antitrust allegations back before they could even finish their sentence.

Re:Context

[jbolden]

How? The anti-trust violation was about using a monopoly in one area to create a monopoly in another. Its not about pushing standards in their area of monopoly (operating systems). Especially if that is in the public interest.

Gartner cannot tell a truth

[blind biker]

Not even by mistake.

God is just

[Anonymous Coward]

God says...
C:\Text\BIBLE.TXT

  the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest,
whose waters cast up mire and dirt.

57:21 There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked.

58:1 Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew
my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins.

58:2 Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways, as a nation
that did righteousness, and forsook not the ordinance of their God:
they ask of me the ordinances of justice; they take delight in
approachin

Re:No, we understand the "Context" just fine.

[Anonymous Coward]

you can polish a turd all you want, but underneath it's shiny exterior, it's still a piece of shit.

only applied to desktop with a mouse and keyboard

[cpu6502]

Yes.
And?
That's exactly what I'll be using Windows 8 for: My desktop and laptop. If it is "bad" for that task then I won't be buying it. This reporter should not retract his honest opinion of Vista the Second (Win8). Unless he's being threatened by Microsoft?

Professional integrity

[SirGarlon]

This is why we all need to say what we mean, and mean what we say. Otherwise we lose our credibility. Whether Berger didn't really mean Windows 8 with keyboard and mouse is "bad," or he did mean it and is now recanting under pressure, looks bad either way. He's not only harmed his own reputation, but his employer's as well.

Re:Professional integrity

[usuallylost]

He may have damaged his reputation. Gartner's reputation is exactly in line with this sort of thing. I pretty much don't take anything they have to say seriously anymore. To many of their "learned" pronouncements just haven't passed the laugh test over the years.

Gartner

[Keruo]

I started ignoring everything stated by Gartner when they announced something in lines with "Companies shoud switch to Windows Vista as soon as possible, in order to avoid costly migration later"

Good Thing He Didn't Say It

[assertation]

..on Slashdot, he would have gotten modded down as a "troll" for simply stating his opinion of Windows 8 as being bad.

Same thing happened to my last week for saying that while I was not a fan of Apple as a prelude to commending them for the support for the blind in the iPhone.

Re:No, we understand the "Context" just fine.

[Keruo]

Most of us who have tried Windows 8, know how bad the UI is.

Have you actually tried it, or are you just parroting what other people have said about it?
I've been using Win8 for few months on my netbook and it seems fine to me. Metro is just start menu with some extra bells and whistles and after few weeks you don't really even pay that much attention to it.
The integration with skydrive and easy migration of user settings/files etc are what make it great os compared to previous versions.

In a word

[slashmydots]

If I had to describe using a desktop without a mouse and keyboard, I would have to say: BAD! I can type 98 WPM on a keyboard and when gaming with a mouse, I make joystick users on the Xbox look like penguins trying to play using their wings. But I guess it's common knowledge at this point that the resounding theme out of the market research is "people want SLOW!" The slower the better! The longer it takes to type out a wall post on Facebook, the longer the user gets to enjoy it.

Re:In a word

[Outtascope]

Ding Ding Ding! Bob, we have a winner! E. Fish. ANSII. Touch is not and cannot be practical for most business/office applications. Yes, it rules for Angry Birds and Draw Something, maybe even for your calendar (provided you are only viewing). But it is an awful interface for anything that requires typing and makes multi-tasking nearly impossible. Copy and paste on touch is the gonorrhea of computing. Just look at how crappy Autocad has gotten over the last 10 years or so where they have tried to move everything to a point-and-click use paradigm. It sucks balls, I spend an hour everytime I install it disabling all of the new UI crap they put on it because it just isn't efficient. I can't wait to see the cesspool that they create for it on Win8.

I think touch it is fantastic on tablets, but not the friggin' desktop. And even there, the dozen or so people in my office that have tablets all end up getting keyboards and mice for them (myself included on my ICS Android tablet) because they simply can't get stuff done quickly enough with touch.

Leave it to Microsoft to finally get something right (Windows 7) and then throw it away.

Re:In a word

[Anonymous Coward]

No kidding. I read this a long time ago, and I really wish the industry today would pay attention.

"If it isn't instant, it isn't fast enough."

-Michael Abrash, Zen of Code Optimization

Re:In a word

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL thats why I call Windows 8 -- BOB 2.0

Re:In a word

[Zontar The Mindless]

Copy and paste on touch is the gonorrhea of computing.

Thank you. Someone else who's actually tried to compose an email over ten words in length on a smartphone, I see.

I have often wondered why there are no arrow keys on my touchscreen keyboard. Those, and a Shift key that can be held down*, or even something like our old friend CapLock (a shift toggle), would go a long way toward fixing this problem. Maybe multitouch isn't up to this sort of thing yet?

In any case, you've hit on a key reason why I don't see myself doing any serious work on anything with a touchscreen interface anytime soon.

(*My mind keeps wanting to add "for continuous fire". What the hell am I doing up at this hour?)

Re:No, we understand the "Context" just fine.

[DigiShaman]

Remember. If you can't polish a turd, try rolling it in glitter.

Bow to you masters...

[Anonymous Coward]

This retraction is why I will never pay a damn bit of attention to you again. Stick to your guns or shut up. I don't need anymore yes men out there. Coward.

context

[PopeRatzo]

He meant "Windows is bad" in the same way James Brown is bad, right?

Please, how do you take "Windows is bad" out of context?

Then he tries to retract by saying "I meant in the context of a keyboard and mouse". Well who does he think uses Windows? Are we all going to start interacting with Windows 8 via neural link?

I do agree with questioning why anybody would listen to a consultant's blog. They're looking to get attention and after a while, you have no choice but to say something that you know will get attention. (See: television)

Don't RTFA

[cpu6502]

There's a stupid popup ad that won't go away, and I don't see an "X" to close it. (But then again maybe the problem is with Opera browser.....)

Pretty much

[Sycraft-fu]

I have to say I actually agree with him both ways, that it is bad, but not completely.

So from a technical standpoint Windows 8 is great. It is fast, stable, and efficient. Cakewalk tested Sonar X1 on it and found an across the board performance improvement. They didn't recompile for it or anything, just used the current one, and in all tests 8 did better. They really seem to have done a solid job improving the technical aspects of the OS which is great, but 7 is already quite good.

The problem is the UI. Not only is it ugly, which maybe shouldn't matter to people but does, but it is not well designed for mouse+keyboard. They are trying to whack a tablet UI on to a desktop and for some reason they think that won't piss people off. So it isn't as pleasing to look at, and is less efficient to use than Windows 7.

So over all I think it is a "bad" OS in that people are going to hate it, and it is going to create this situation of "Windows 7 is the last good OS EVAR!" and it'll be harder to get people to upgrade than it normally is. However it is only bad because they are trying to use it to flog their tablets, the technical aspects are quite good.

For personal use I don't care, I'll just replace its UI with something else, but it annoys the hell out of me for work since it is going to make life more difficult. Users are going to hate it (they hate any change but they'll really make hell about this one) and then decide they never want to move off of 7.

Re:Pretty much

[jbolden]

The problem is the UI. Not only is it ugly, which maybe shouldn't matter to people but does, but it is not well designed for mouse+keyboard. They are trying to whack a tablet UI on to a desktop and for some reason they think that won't piss people off. So it isn't as pleasing to look at, and is less efficient to use than Windows 7.

They aren't trying to sell it for mouse+keyboard. They whole goal is
keyboard: onscreen or external
touch screen and stylus
mouse: replaced by stylus or trackpad

That's the devices this is aimed at.

Re:Pretty much

[jbolden]

small correction:

I should have added voice under keyboard.

So it should read

keyboard replaced by: onscreen, voice and rarely external
mouse replaced by: touch screen, stylus highly sensitive trackpad

Re:Pretty much

[0123456]

Can you imagine sitting in an office where everyone is speaking to their computer and reaching out every few seconds to prod the screen?

Really?

Seriously?

That sounds like my idea of hell. And that would be if voice recognition actually worked; I tried the Google voice search on my Android tablet and the terms it came up with only bore the vaguest resemblance to what I asked for.

Re:Pretty much

[shutdown -p now]

If you read the "Building Windows 8" blog, Sinofsky is repeatedly stating that it is designed to be "just as good" with mouse & keyboard. So yes, it is being sold that way.

Re:Pretty much

[jbolden]

Why would you be sitting in an office? If people are mobile why pay for that incredibly expensive real estate? But even lets assume the office is being used. Most likely in a sit down office setting they would want to use a high end trackpad or touch tablet, not touching a 24-32" screen. If they are talking regularly and they are in an office, they are going to want to use a good quality microphone so they would be speaking softly, and that means headsets as well.

As far as voice recognition. Good voice recognition can be trained. See Dragon for example.

Re:Pretty much

[jbolden]

We both agree it is not "just as good" on legacy hardware. It can't be. A system designed to work only with mouse and keyboard is going to be better than a flexible system when used with just mouse and keyboard.

That sort of messaging will kill Windows 8, the same way chickening out on the higher hardware requirements for Longhorn killed WinFS, killed document security and made everyone think Vista was terrible. Microsoft is going to have to decide on where they want to take this.

I agree with the plan on Windows 8, assuming they do not for one second underestimate the degree of change they are trying to push. 1/2 measures will fail.

Re:Pretty much

[Patch86]

Sounds like hell.

I had one of those moments a couple of days ago, funnily enough. I was playing a game on my Android phone. When you selected a character, you could get info about each character by touching and holding the portrait of each one- obviously the equivalent of hovering a mouse cursor for a context tooltip. But every time I did that, my finger was in the way- I had to try to read the information around my own finger. Yes that's a shitty GUI design- but it's also a fundamental issue with touchscreens.

I mean, say you want to do something pretty basic like drag a window around the screen. I've got pretty large hands- if I touch any part of the screen on this laptop I'm using right now, my hand covers about a third of the screen. So I've got to precisely move something around on screen, without being able to see most of the thing I'm moving, or a large fraction of anything else on screen.

What's wrong with a mouse/trackpad/trackball/nipple again?

Re:Pretty much

[jbolden]

If you want to precisely move windows, you might want to consider tiling window managers. Microsoft and Apple are both moving in this direction trying to figure out how to get the power of a Unix tiling window manager without all the complexity:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/arrange-windows-side-by-side-on-the-desktop-using-snap

I get your point though. The answer is precise movements aren't supported by touch but they are supported and supported better by a stylus. Your entire life your hand/fingers have been doing extremely precise operations with restricted viewing when you reach out and grab things. Inside your brain you have a dedicated subsystem to handle that. It is capable of making extremely precise 3D models, tying hundreds of muscle movements to those 3D models making continuous adjustments and all those calculations happen so quickly you aren't even consciously aware of the mental effort involved. But watch a newborn that hasn't learned to operate that system yet. You do not have, nor will you ever have a dedicated move a mouse subsystem. If you are designing software, why wouldn't you want to use your already existing precise movement subsystem which is going to inevitably than any possible mouse based system?

The problem with the mouse is because you lack the subsystem that it isn't terribly precise. If I told you to look at a screen and move your finger to any part of the screen you would hit inside of 30 milliseconds. If I had you do it with a mouse it could take you over a second and the act would be distracting from your conscious train of thought.

Re:Pretty much

[Anonymous Coward]

In my office, everyone is grumbling "Shit!" to their computer, and push the monitor.

Re:only applied to desktop with a mouse and keyboa

[synapse7]

Windows 7 will be the next "XP" that we will be using 15 years down the road...

Re:No, we understand the "Context" just fine.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have used it. My main machine at home has been running it for months and I've had several work machines running various builds from early alphas through the Release Candidate. Metro with a mouse and keyboard is indeed stupid. I can see it being OK for slate / tablet type devices - it makes sense there. It doesn't make any sense when coupled with an accurate pointing device like a mouse or trackpoint. It is terrible for ergonomics in that things like a normal (Win 7) right-click, run as administrator require a click, then a mouse trip all the way to the bottom of the screen, then another click. This type of absolutely thoughtless (dumb) move is all over the UI. Once you actually get to the Win 8 desktop, everything is fine and the OS does have many improvements and enhancements. However I find that I end up with shortcuts and pinned taskbar items for damn near everything I use so that I don't have to go to Metro. Another example - how do you put the machine to sleep or turn it off? Move the mouse to the bottom right corner. Wait for the charm bar. Move up into the charm bar. Click "settings", click "Power", click "sleep". Really? Really? Under settings you should find - oh, I don't know - maybe the SETTINGS for power? For example, "balanced", "high performance", etc. And they should not hide the options to actually shutdown the machine behind so many clicks in illogical places. Metro is indeed just bad for mouse users like the guy said.

Wimp

[fnj]

What a goddam loser.

Bad move

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a bad move on the author's part. Pulling his statement shows he isn't willing to stand by his opinion. If the quote really was taken out of context that is not his problem, it's the foolishness of others. If it was taken in context and was wrong then he shouldn't have written it in the first place. Pulling his statement means either he wrote something that wasn't true or public opinion means more to him than the truth. Either way I can't respect a writer who does that. I write articles and reviews that get flak, it's part of the job. But if something is true I'm not going to pull it just because some idiots don't like it.

Why not Zoidberg?

[Taibhsear]

Your OS is bad and you should feel bad!

Different = Bad? NOT!

[Anonymous Coward]

To be honest I stopped putting much faith in reviews, blogs and assorted opinions long ago and now test drive software myself (either demos or on other people's machines). I do this because for me "different" isn't "bad" ... bad is when software crashes or simply doesn't do what I need it to do.

I've been using Windows 8 on my desktop since it was first publicly available and I am impressed with it's performance improvements. The UI is different, not bad. I have found ways to do everything I did in Win 7 with very little effort. Please ... if you're going to rant endlessly about the UI, one extra click or having something located in a different menu ... get over it and learn to adapt. Software evolves, so should we.

Re:Different = Bad? NOT!

[WaffleMonster]

To be honest I stopped putting much faith in reviews, blogs and assorted opinions long ago and now test drive software myself

The UI is different, not bad. I have found ways to do everything I did in Win 7 with very little effort. Please ... if you're going to rant endlessly about the UI, one extra click or having something located in a different menu ... get over it and learn to adapt. Software evolves, so should we.

Interesting and somewhat amusing that someone who puts such little faith in the opinions of others should feel the need to offer up their own including going as far as telling people to stop whining and embrace change for changes sake.

I know for sure one thing I will not be getting over is loss of any of my cash due to purchasing "upgrade" to Windows 8.

If the new UI was a better way which improved my life in some way and in return required some time and effort to realize that would be a different matter. This is not true with metro. It was designed for a consumption oriented market and only makes sense for small form factor devices or larger devices without mice and keyboards. Microsoft chose to go with the jarring user experience, they chose to reject user choice for strategic reasons to salvage their mobile market share. They did not do it to make MY life any better. They did it to make their bottom line better.

It IS bad

[Tridus]

Gartner is a joke, and this retraction is just another in a long list of mistakes they've made. They're known for saying whatever people want them to say, and in this case since Microsoft pays the bills they can't leave bad things about Windows 8 floating around out there.

Too bad it really does suck with a mouse and keyboard. And hey, Metro apps get suspended if they're not in the foreground. So you won't be doing background work either. The whole desktop version of Windows 8 is just the revenge of Vista. It's a disaster driven by poor leadership that's desperate to try and get somewhere in the tablet market and willing to throw their desktop users under a bus to get there.

Re:No, we understand the "Context" just fine.

[gl4ss]

I tried it. it sucks for general computing. if I wanted a fucking media hub I could run plex on my workstation-type laptop. I don't want start menu to take up the entire screen.

the smaller the screen the less it sucks. the more your computer is like a traditional workstation, and used like one, the more it sucks.
and really do I want a fucking live account attached to everything? no. half of win8 is just force feeding you with online services and the other half is throwing half of your screen space away because empty is pretty.

Re:No, we understand the "Context" just fine.

[Outtascope]

Wait for the charm bar.

Seriously? Charm Bar? WTF is this, the Webkinz desktop? To quote the only authoritative source on such things:

"I believe you'd get your ass kicked sayin' something like that, man."

Re:No, we understand the "Context" just fine.

[zlives]

i have tried it as well, and even though i really like the guts of win7 optimized the UI does not work well for doing actual work.

Re:only applied to desktop with a mouse and keyboa

[zlives]

yup or ms will release a win 8 sp1 update that enables desktop mode?

In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

In other related news, the internet called him up at his home and asked him "Why are you so stupid?"

the real story - it's going to ship this way

[Anonymous Coward]

had he left it as it was then there was hope that Microsoft would change the mess of a UI on their desktop version. But since he as corrected his blog, and it's very likely he was asked to do so, this leads to the belief that desktops will get Metro as default. Another fine example of Microsoft trying to leverage the desktop to help a flailing new product. Most of you know that Windows 8 Metro apps will run on Windows Phone 8 and without apps, Windows Phone 8 will sink faster than Windows Phone 7. What we are seeing here is yet another case of Microsoft determining what is best for users by deciding what's best for their wallets and their market share. So Windows 8 really is "bad".

He KNOWS what he said

[Trip6]

He knows what he said, and he knows he's right. Now he doesn't have the balls to stand in - either personally because of public reaction, and/or professionally because he was threatened by the MS -> Gartner chain of command.

Re:No, we understand the "Context" just fine.

[na1led]

I've been using Windows 8 for 6 months on my Thinkpad X60 tablet PC, and it sucks. I've been trying to get used to it, hoping that maybe I just need a little time with it, but I can't stand it. Only reason I still keep it on is because I have to evaluate this new OS for my work.

Even in context its significant

[DrXym]

The comment said that the experience of using Windows 8 with a mouse and keyboard was bad. Since that covers virtually 100% of all existing deployments and likely 95% of deployments even into the next few years I think it pretty significant. Of course what the analyst said is not surprising to anyone who has used the preview releases. The experience with mouse and keyboard IS bad.

I don't blame the change in UI for that so much as the replacement simply isn't mature or refined enough to be called a replacement. E.g. if metro supported folders then it could group tiles together it could show program folders pretty much how they are now, but it doesn't so it implements a kludge where it strips out any start menu items such as Uninstall, Readme etc. and leaves just the executables in a flat linear list. It sucks balls basically. If / when groups appears this behaviour would be markedly improved. Similarly if a user could zoom in or out to maximize the amount of tiles this too would be better but they can't.

So eventually they'll get there and no doubt intend an accelerated 8,5 "desktop edition" or Windows 9 but as it stands Windows 8 blows on the desktop. I'm certain Microsoft's rationale is to make a beeline for tablet land and then worry about fixing the behaviour for everyone else but that is cold comfort for everyone else.

Re:Even in context its significant

[Missing.Matter]

Of course what the analyst said is not surprising to anyone who has used the preview releases. The experience with mouse and keyboard IS bad.

I see this constantly floated as if it is a fact, but almost never backed up. Just because you capitalize IS doesn't make it true.. I assert quite the opposite: that the keyboard+mouse experience is GOOD. And just as capitalizing GOOD doesn't make it true, I hereby provide some reasons for my assertion (which you should also retroactively do for yours). First, the biggest difference between Windows 7 and Windows 8 is the lack of a classic start menu. Current users, if they use the classic start menu at all, use it simply to launch applications. Roughly no time comparable to the time spent using the machine over all is spent in the start menu. Fact is you can use Windows 8 and really never access the Metro start menu if you don't want to, so how is the keyboard + mouse experience significantly worse from Windows 7?

Further, included in Windows 8 is a vast array of Keyboard and Mouse shortcuts. These enhance the experience for keyboard only or mouse only users, providing more functions to each compared to Windows 7. Keyboard users get an array of metro shortcuts, accessing all the functions a touch user would. Mouse users get hot corners and a variety of gestures not found in Windows 7.

For primary mouse users specifically, the metro interface is a net gain. The number of clicks to action has been preserved for most tasks, but the metro start menu has more options in less clicks than the classic start menu (start -> option instead of start -> all programs -> folder -> option). Live tiles mean the need to access an option is completely removed, thus only one click is needed in some cases (start), and the larger size of the live tiles means time to access is overall lowered for more items according to Fitt's law, despite the full screen layout. Finally, the ability to fully dock applications side by side alleviate the need for constant switching between apps. For example, I dock the desktop and the media player or chat side by side. So instead of switching between what I'm doing and the music player or IM constantly (more clicks) I have everything I need right in front of me.

Re:Even in context its significant

[DrXym]

I've spent more than enough time going through very specific flaws with Windows 8 in the past. I couldn't care less if the start menu goes providing what replaces it provides analogous functionality and refinement. It doesn't, not by a long shot. Turning 40+ program groups into a linear list of brown tiles spanning multiple horizontal screens is just awful behaviour and I could go on citing issues but I'd only repeat what I've said previously. It is bad. I'm all in favour of metro if it accomodates mouse and keyboard users but at the moment it doesn't. It is clear to me that Microsoft are in a sprint to make the OS tablet friendly and everything else has fallen by the wayside.

Re:Even in context its significant

[Rotag_FU]

So basically the same strategy that Google used with Honeycomb (Android 3.0). Come up with a tablet interface as quickly as possible and fix it for other formats (i.e. phones) in the next release Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0). At least Google publicly acknowledged this is what they were doing and had the good sense to not recommend Honeycomb be used on phones. Of course, one could argue that not releasing the source for Honeycomb was not a good move from an open source perspective.

Maybe Microsoft should just skip Windows 8 for the desktop and call Windows 8 the tablet edition. However, I'm not convinced you can ever truly unify a tablet interface with a desktop interface.

Re:Even in context its significant

[Missing.Matter]

The windows 7 start menu has become a multifunction swiss army knife, and is now replaced by three separate screens: The start screen, the search screen (which includes the app list), and the settings panel. The linear list of 40 brown tiles is a vestiage of Windows 7 installers which install folders to the start menu. This isn't the way it should be done anymore... the start screen should be customized by you to your liking, including the programs and groupings as you see fit, not as an installer sees fit. The apps list is where you'll find the start menu equivalent of all your apps and their associated utilities. Now, maybe what you like specifically about the start menu is the tree layout (which is something I don't care for since it keeps everything hidden), but if you do you of course always have the option of maintaining your own tree of shortcuts in the form of a folder, which is of course all the start menu is after all: a folder of shortcuts.

Out of context.

[Anonymous Coward]

'It's upsetting me that it's being taken completely out of context.'? Unless what he actually said was:'in a word: bad ASS best OS Ever' it's quite hard to see how a self contained nugget of trollhate like "in a word: bad" could be taken out of context.

Sincerely,
A. Coward.

Au Contraire

[DaKong]

As a happy Apple investor, pray the instant pro-Apple mantra continue :-)

Apple say it will work fine.

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be one reason.

Second reason is that you want to run Mac OS X on the machine you bought with Mac OS X on.

And you can run modern 2.6 kernels on 18 year old hardware (heck, if you can find memory sticks for it, 20+ year old! though that's probably the limit because you can't get a 2.6 kernel into less than about 32MB of memory).

Out of touch

[Anonymous Coward]

Lumia, short on features, extremely limited number of apps, the interface is the same as the failed Microsoft Kin phone, and thus any wow factor has been lost. Pricey. Biggest marketing I saw mentioned it can edit office documents and access XBox market, geee.... yeh that's really what I look for in a phone.

People like the resolution because it lets them see the same web page clearer at a higher zoom factor. You said: "For example retina performs poorly in direct sunlight", that's not sufficient to make up for the lack of resolution.

Seriously, I prefer the Sony Xperia Ray, because its so small and because the interface is so fun. But I recognize that a lot of people like the iPhone, and I can see why. Lumia, like the hardware, interface is ho hum, would be better running Android. Indeed why isn't it running Android?

If everyone and their uncle can enter the Android market (Amazon & Facebook being the latest with their Android phone leaks), how come Nokia the worlds, second (or is it third by now) largest handset maker can't make money there?? They're dying with that Windows phone. They're dying with Elop. At some point what's left of the board needs to take this by the scruff of the neck and sack him. Forget pride, Android has won.

And with 850k activations a day, plus a whole load of Android units that don't require activations (only the ones with the Google package need activating). They're selling more devices with their OS than Microsoft even sells Windows.

Re:Out of touch

[oztiks]

See I hear this all the time about how WP7 falls short. I've had iPhones for years, then Android, then Lumia and what your saying mirrors 90% of the critics out there.

I have not found a single thing, not one, my iPhone did that the Lumia can't. It's app range meets the AppStore in quality but not in quantity. For example, Astronomy Apps WP7 has all the ported apps I need and the same with Cartography Apps, again ported. Netbanks, Pizza delivery apps, all there. The 10 versions of the same app isn't but that's what i find good about it vs the AppStore as it's becoming cluttered with crap. I've been using WP7 for I think 2 months now with no complaints.

Speaking of Android, now that's a platform that outs both of them. A good example of that is Wifi Hotspotting in the phone, Android added it causing Apple to respond. Android is cram packed full of features, maybe a bit of overkill for just a phone, who knows, but the Android system on individual features out pace any other phone on the market. Doesn't make it a better phone IMHO it just makes it a more versatile system moving forward.

As for your statement on Nokia adding Android, it is every nerds dream really :) I would opt up for it over what I currently use but to say about the concept that WP7 is unworthy to compete, that's just critic FUD IMHO.

On a footnote about features, iOS 6 boasts its own mapping and driving app, this is sooo a rip from Nokia Drive.

Windows 8

[MONSTER_RANCHER]

After testing it for the last month, I just cant get into the tiles idea. I spend about 80% of the time on the old desktop. had to copy the remote desktop client from my windows 7 machine just to use rdp in the old desktop. maybe I was just missing the point.

Windows 8 Release Preview

[Angrywhiteshoes]

I've never been a operating systems fan and I wouldn't say I am now. I just use what I have to because I have to whether it was for personal, work, music, school, whatever. I've used OS9,OSX, Win95-Win7, Solaris, Ubuntu/Fedora/CentOS/RedHat/YDL all because I was put in a situation where something I wanted to achieve required I use whatever OS. That being said, I don't think Windows 8 is bad and I don't find the Metro GUI hard to use, in fact it's really simple. It's the kind of OS that I feel I could show my grandparents how to use and still get my work (computer science research) done.

I have the Windows 8 Release Preview installed on my laptop. I have to say, despite all the negative feedback, I happen to like it. Metro is a simple interface, which I feel achieved what Unity was set out to achieve. It integrates everything I could need and provides me with a regular desktop environment to do the work I need to do. I mean, it's REALLY different than the previous desktops and traditional desktops like Gnome.

I have been using Metro with mouse/touchpad and keyboard strictly, my laptop is not touch screen. Once I got the hot keys down, it was an amazing experience. Without the hot keys, the mouse and keyboard work just as good as they did before. The start page does drive me a little nuts when I have to scroll on it, but having everything that most people do right there is great.

The thing I liked the best was my google account integration. It asked me for my email (I opted to actually use a local account to login), and then proceeded to setup my email, sync my contacts and calendars. Generally you have to do that like 3 times (once per application).

Anyway, I kind of got off my topic here. Windows 8 isn't "bad" in fact I think it took what was good about Windows 7 and made some nice changes.

Re:Windows 8 Release Preview

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed

Re:only applied to desktop with a mouse and keyboa

[Angrywhiteshoes]

That's because of politics and budgets. Most companies do not budget upgrading their OS very often. They poor a lot of money into deployment and training to keep it up and running. They can't afford to just switch OS after that kind of investment, which is why XP is still running all over in business and at universities, not because they think it's superior.

Apparently because he can't decide on what to buy.

[earls]

nt. ;)

About Gartner...

[Skuld-Chan]

The place I work actually has a subscription. I logged in and was even assigned a researcher who sends me spam like emails every month... As far as I can tell its really only useful as a method to justify a decision to management. The one time I called them (the request of my boss) was concerning JAMF Casper - to which they admittedly had never heard of it, but were willing to research it and come up with the same conclusions I did - it was worth implementing.

Most of the articles and the paid for content you could honestly dig up similar results with Google. I've even found one article that has plagiarized content from Wikipedia no less (now archived article about Ruby - a good chunk of it was lifted from Wikipedia word for word). I got suspicious when under platform support they mention Amiga... (I love the Amiga, but its not very enterprise researchy...).

Re:only applied to desktop with a mouse and keyboa

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because of politics and budgets. Most companies do not budget upgrading their OS very often. They poor a lot of money into deployment and training to keep it up and running. They can't afford to just switch OS after that kind of investment, which is why XP is still running all over in business and at universities, not because they think it's superior.

Close, but not quite.

We have an office with about 2,000 workstations running XP. The hardware is cheap, low-end, and can be purchased in bulk so we have spares on hand without much money locked up. People are familiar with using it, and familiar with supporting it and fixing it. In some ways, yes Win7 is superior... but not in terms of the hardware requirements to get the same system performance. The ones we have, do the job we need done... we're not currently being slowed down or hampered by the equipment like we were all through the 90's (and early 00's). The stuff we use is well-tested, stable, and there aren't really any "unknowns" waiting to ambush us when we're doing something critical.

The point is, as a business you can't just say "this is superior", you have to say in what context it's superior. And it's only one piece in a much larger puzzle, the re-training of our users for a new platform might seem simple, but it costs time and money. Or worse, it costs us customers. We could afford to switch, but the benefits of Win7 simply do not justify all the costs associated with switching from XP, and they don't really do anything to put us in a better situation long-term either.

tl;dr instead of asking "why are you still running XP" the real question is "why should you switch to Win7?"

Problem is people don't look back

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually you got it all wrong. The first Lumia's actually were bad. I mean; a smartphone which doesn't even support something as trivial as a todo list and needs to rely on 3rd party software?

That's not a smartphone, that's a joke. Especially if you proclaim the phone to be good for business use.

The real problem however is that Microsoft has fixed all that in the mean time. But who's going to review a Lumia phone these days, now that every player which closely matters has already done so?

THAT is the problem, its not Microsoft hate perse. Microsoft simply should break the cycle of releasing something bad and fixing it further down the road.

Re:only applied to desktop with a mouse and keyboa

[Hatta]

Windows 7 is superior to XP, but not superior enough to give a shit about.

Maybe his Grandma has been taken out of context

[Anonymous Coward]

as retaliatory action and he was eager to get her back.

Gartner - About

[mevets]

Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT) is the world's leading information technology research and advisory company. We deliver the technology-related insight necessary for our clients to make the right decisions, every day.

word of the day: perfidious.
They can add that to irrelevant and incompetent.

Not just fatigue

[Dcnjoe60]

The problem isn't just fatigue but the touch interface placed on top of a desktop use scenario is inefficient. I know the article is not about linux, but look at all the frustration people are espousing regarding the Gnome 3 interface when using a large monitor. Microsoft's Win8 interface has the same design problems when used with a desktop.

Funded by Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Somebody forgot to tell him Gartner is funded by Microsoft.

Bill Borg icon censored?

[Anonymous Coward]

What happened to the Bill Borg icon for Microsoft?

Slashdot is now just a corporate shill, I guess...

Re:Bill Borg icon censored?

[JDG1980]

What happened to the Bill Borg icon for Microsoft?

Maybe it has to do with the fact that Bill Gates hasn't been in charge of Microsoft for the past 12 YEARS.

Re:Bill Borg icon censored?

[kimvette]

It should be changed to an image of a fat man throwing a chair.

Ya but that isn't going to happen

[Sycraft-fu]

So it is a bad idea.

Re:No, we understand the "Context" just fine.

[INeededALogin]

++

I'm using it for the same reasons as you as well... sucks.

That's not what MS pays for

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, Microsoft doesn't pay for the truth. They pay for spin.

OK good

[flyingfsck]

So Windows 8 is very good if you don't use it on either a server, desktop, notebook, netbook, phone or tablet...

Re:only applied to desktop with a mouse and keyboa

[cpu6502]

>>>Windows 7 will be the next "XP" that we will be using 15 years down the road...

Exactly. That's why I'm shopping for the best Win7 PC I can find. I bought an XP computer in 2002 and was able to skip-over the vista junk completely. I'm hoping my Win7 PC will live a long time & allow me to skip over the 8 junk too.

It is however not just MS

[SmallFurryCreature]

For some odd reason, since the iPhone scored big, and then Android did, EVERYONE seems to be running scared thinking that their old but tested software must change. It is near idiotic.

I use a linux desktop for work and Windows for gaming. And Gnome 3.0 and Unity were VERY unwelcome surprises. From that fact that Mint sprung up over night from nothing to near replacing Ubuntu (okay a bit to much but you get the idea, and it isn't a very clear line, you can install Ubuntu and then use mint packages to reclaim the desktop), I am not alone.

The x-windows system, maybe from the design at Xerox has been pretty much the same for a LONG time. And ALL THAT GODDAMN TIME people have tried to turn it into something more "fun", "easier", lets face it, turn it into a fisher price OS. We had Bob, I have briefly supported a system for companies selling white and brown goods to order things that was much the same (picture of real desktop, your files going into an animated file cabinat, real notebook etc) and THEY SUCKED!

But for some reason, some designers keep dreaming of an OS that is, exciting, informative, good looking for the movies and totally and utterly unusable.

Metro is the active desktop brought back to live. Let it rest already, it is dead, it died, and if not, we should kill it.

The idea was simple, you got your desktop and it was active, RSS feeds, rotating image, clock. Lots of stuff...

And? When I am not working behind me PC, I turn it off, at least the monitor. When I am working on my computer, I got windows open, covering the desktop. I NEVER SEE THE DESKTOP!

Metro is this "launch" screen that has all this stuff of it, that you can't see because whatever you are doing, will be in front of it. The only people who could think of this as useful are the types who have empty desks because they got nothing better to do then come up with useless designs.

Proof? Show me a screenshot of an iPhone with more widgets, or even 50% widgets instead of boring icons for boringly opening fullscreen applications.

It is not as if the active desktop (95 or 98) was the first or last time this was attempted. Gadgets anyone? Vista I believe. They were SO popular... try to find some. No, there is no store for them, nobody wants them. How many did you install?

For years, real users and real developers have come up with ways to notify the user of things WITHOUT taking up loads of screen space. Right bottom of the screen. That is all that is needed for a weather widget if you really want it. And when the fuck would you click for more info? it is sunny. Nice. Thank you. I do NOT need a complete weather report and if I did, I can just open it in my browser.

Metro reminds me of when people first get a smartphone, they download farts apps and rss widgets and then after a month or two, it has become just another boring computer where people just want to get things done fast and not be distracted let alone delayed.

MS has a point with Metro and the fisher price idea. If done right (video from parent shows metro ain't done right) it is very easy for complete novices.

Problem?

People don't stay a novice for long. As a parent, you might love Fisher Price, praise it to high heaven but tell me. Is YOUR computer a "my first computer" do you bake in an easy bake oven? Is your HIFI a play and speak?

No? Well it figures, making a device for novices only is a very good way of making sure you never have to worry about loyal customers, customer retention is ZERO.

Metro is just another hair brained attempt to turn computers from tools into entertainment systems that are so cool in the commercial. Pity that this sillyness isn't confined to just MS.

Re:It is however not just MS

[Zontar The Mindless]

That is all that is needed for a weather widget if you really want it. And when the fuck would you click for more info?

Dunno, 2-3 times a day, maybe. As I've been doing for the last 7 or 8 years with my KDE weather thingy.

(I agree with a lot of what you said, but ranting about about how you use your weather applet as if it's the only way anyone would want to do so just makes you look... well... a bit stupid.)

Re:It is however not just MS

[hairyfeet]

Actually...I liked the Widgets. But frankly i only used them for ONE task and one task alone, and that was PC monitoring. Check out AllCPUMeter and you'll see why its handy. It integrates with Coretemp, shows memory and usage per core, makes it bog simple for my users to tell when they need an upgrade by simply looking at the gadget and seeing visually how much memory and CPU they are pulling. I have a few users that like the weather gadget but since i have forecastfox in my Comodo dragon i never felt the need for it.

What I find much more telling is that MSFT pulled the plug over a supposed "security problem" that frankly didn't exist. until they killed it everyone I knew got their widgets from the MSFT widgets gallery. Now you telling me MSFT can't even scan their own website? Really? The REAL reason they killed widgets is frankly they competed with metro without all the bullshit. You wanted a tweeting twitting social media crapfest? You could do that in Win 7 and have ONLY the ones you wanted, unlike Metro where you're just screwed.

Otherwise I agree completely, iOS came out and the entire damned industry lost their damned minds and decided that EVERYTHING had to be a smartphone. Laptop? Smartphone with a keyboard. Desktop? Well with Win 8 its a supergigantic smartphone.

The only nice thing I can say about Win 8 is it got a lot of my business customers off the fence, they went ahead and sped up their timetables for killing XP and had me build them new Win 7 office boxes. I did the same with my family, built a hexacore for me and my oldest and moved the youngest to my quad just so we would have more than enough power to completely avoid Win 8 and still be able to game in the future.

To me Win 8 is just further proof that Ballmer is a shitty CEO, you can summarize his "strategy" for MSFT with 3 steps 1.-See what is popular, 2.-Build or buy a half ass, half baked copy of what is popular, 3.-Fail miserably. Zune, Kin, killing playsforsure which actually had made some inroads into multimedia sales for the appstore Zune market failwhale, its just a giant clusterfuck.

What is sad is that honestly Win 7 is the first one they'd gotten right in years. it had excellent memory management, with a precaching that makes even my little netbook zippy because it has all my programs loaded into RAM, jumplists and breadcrumbs made file navigation truly better, and while most of Aero was just stupid bling the "slam windows to one side or the other" trick did make it easy to make file comparisons. They could have made Win 8 an even better Win 7 by focusing on a "it just works" mantra, by for example making it easy peasy for someone like my dad to hook up to his work PC from home using EasyConnect, even better CPU and GPU management along with other under the hood improvements, and then simply spun off mobile as MetroOS and allowed them to innovate.

Instead they crank out the turdfest iOS ripoff while ignoring the most fundamental thing about windows PCs which is you don't run Windows for MSFT programs or looking at the desktop but to be a platform for your third party programs. I honestly see my desktop when I wake up the PC or put it to sleep, that's it, that's all. I sure as hell don't want Metro weighing my PC down like a boat anchor by running 24/7 just so I can see who is playing Farmville right now and after GFWL I wouldn't buy jack shit from the MSFT "appstore" (BTW I fucking HATE the word "app", an app is a teeny fuck off game or program for tablet or phone, NOT a rich desktop program) even if they paid me to use it.

In the end I predict win 8 bombs like MS Bob and I get to spend the next year and a half wiping the damned thing off new machines and putting 7 on. I just hope the OEMs do like last time and just sell "Windows 8 ready" PCs with Win 7 and a Win 8 DVD dropped in the box, because i do NOT want to spend hours dealing with fricking downgrade right

Re:No, we understand the "Context" just fine.

[Patch86]

I've used it for a few days in a VM. I did not like it one bit.

The Metro isn't just like the Start Menu with bells and whistles. It's like running a few special programmes that you've launched inside the Start Menu, full screen only. While other programmes are inexplicable relegated to a separate (and hidden, when running a Metro app) desktop view. And the Start Menu now takes up the entire screen when you open it. And the Metro/Start Menu is now dominated by Microsoft software and cloud services, while rival programmes are hidden away.

And also everything now seems to be hidden. You want something, you have to mouse up against an invisible spot in this corner of the screen, or halfway up that side. After 3 days using it (and without RTFM), I still wasn't sure what I was doing to invoke some menu functions- I would almost be ritualistically rubbing the cursor up and down the side of the screen in a way that I suspected, but wasn't sure, would work and hoping for the best.

It isn't monumentally awful. But it is not good.

Re:No, we understand the "Context" just fine.

[Anonymous Coward]

Prefer gold spray paint - no need to pick the turd!

Re:No, we understand the "Context" just fine.

[Anonymous Coward]

Gold Lingerer!

"it wasn't any official Gartner research"

[Anonymous Coward]

translation: My boss got a phone-call from Microsoft ...

Re:No, we understand the "Context" just fine.

[will_die]

I could case less about skydrive and all other always must be connected outside my house options. Try disconnecting the internet and see if how your attidute will change.
the bringing forward of some of the setting will make it nicer for some people, however for a business environment alot of those will be locked down or disabled; and once set how often do they really change. Windows 7 as easy or easier access to the customizations that people make changes with.
Also Metro is not the start menu because with the start menu I could organize items and bring some unity and order to all the programs installed. With Metro I don't have that; some programs get large icons, I can move stuff I use together but what about all the icon that would normally be in the place with the main icon but in a subfolder hidden form normal use but easly associated when I need them.

Remember when journalists actually had opinions?

[Dissident]

It's too bad this guy couldn't stick with his guns. I'm pretty sure what he said wasn't taken out of context. The fact that he's now reversing himself after some controversy emerged just goes to show that true journalistic integrity has been lost in most mainstream media. Not that I look to Gartner as a source of unbiased product and service reviews and ratings.

Windows 8 UI

[Anonymous Coward]

For the old fashioned desktop with mouse and keyboard it's the worse UI I have ever worked with. To appreciate this UI and to utilize it in it's full glory you need to have a touch screen or at the very least a touch pad. This is not going to be your OS of choice if you are surfing porn with the other.

people are still using

[Anonymous Coward]

windoze?

We're all getting a little old?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't help but wonder whether all the tech "dislike" towards Metro is simply a case of "old hands unwilling to accept change".

I've only seen Metro once here in the office several months ago, so I can't say much - what I'll say is, if the apps are done right, it could become a very successful end user experience for the general masses! Which is worth a lot to me, if it help people like my parents to use it "better" and "easier".

Re:only applied to desktop with a mouse and keyboa

[Angrywhiteshoes]

Man, ultra late reply here, but that's part of my point and a major part of it. Every time they upgrade, they have to factor in the deployment and training costs.

I remember receiving a huge shipment of win7 pcs, right when win7 came out and the IT dept sat around installing win XP on them, because that's what they support.