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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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]

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?

[jbolden]

8 years ago the 12" was 1.4ghz g4.

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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

Payday!

[Sponge Bath]

I guess the Microsoft check finally cleared.

Re:Payday!

[dc29A]

Here you go.

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!

[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.

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

[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

[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.

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?

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.

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"

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.

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

[DigiShaman]

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

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: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.

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.

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...).

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.

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.