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One size^H^H^H^H interface fits all?
After using Win 8 RP since it was released on a dual monitor system (one is touchscreen), and Windows Phone 7, I have to say I’m impressed.
It is one interface to rule them all. It’s clean, very functional, and once you get the hang of it, very fast.
As for the learning curve, it’s no different than when 3.1 came out, when 95 pissed off a lot of 3.1 users. People will learn it. The complainers need to try it out for a month or so and will never want to go back.
One must give MS accolades for daring to have a new idea and for making it work excellently in small, portable formats – strong competitor for phones and tablets. However, that is the point where accolades stop.
This is not going up to something more useful as Win 3.1 -> Win 95 when desktops and regular laptops are concerned. Exactly the opposite. This is down to Win 3.2 in its essence. The whole concept of “full screen app” is crap for desktop and non-mobile usage. For serious work. Nothing to adjust to. Simply wrong concept. Another completely wrong concept (though again I commend MS for trying something new) are tiles. Very novel and useful concept for small, touch, mobile devices and users needs there – quickly observe widgets, have info on the fingertip. Consume information. Absolute nonsense for desktop and working laptop. Inappropriate for creating information. Access to large amounts of info (way beyond the tiles) and various apps with various large amounts of data is needed for work. Second fundamental design problem here: our minds expect 3D world. Evolution of desktop icons toward grabbing 3D images is the one toward the needs of our brains. It does not need to be realistic (ex. symbolic 3D icon of Firefox) but distinctiveness beyond plain color, dimensionality which brain expects. Also workspace of “empty” space to lay screens “one behind the other” for working apps is what is needed for natural experience our brain demands (and that you can’t train out but in generations).
Adding “Metro” as a “side panel” to working, desktop and similar implementations would be useful. Pushing it as a unavoidable default desktop, nonsense but for small mobile, touch platforms. And you do not create anything useful on those. They are communications and consumption devices first. That distinction is lost on MS.
The problem is that they are pushing it on the desktop aswell.
Install something like visual studio and you get 100s of tiles for every little commandline utility in the system with no obvious way to hide or organize them so you can actually get the IDE.
It’s like the original Mac metaphor of every file being an icon on the desktop. Great if you have 2 home work assignments – less great if you have >1M datafiles from a seismic survey.
There’s a reason Apple invented the folder…
Do you understand how the system works? No one says you have to use a full screen app.
All the interface change is is a fancier start menu…I use a lot of desktop apps and continue to use them.
The biggest improvement to the OS is the underpinnings. Much of the bloat in the old windows code has been eliminated and consolidated. There is a reason they can run the core of this OS on phones, desktops, and tablets.
“Adding “Metro” as a “side panel” to working, desktop and similar implementations would be useful.”
Have you used it? You can do this. I have Word opened on the desktop and can flip through an RSS reader on a side pane that is METRO.
Bloat like running apps that still do not have an equivalent 64bit replacement. Oy vei.
PLC programmers/repairmen will be as welcoming of windows 8 elimination of 16bit support on the 32 bit platform as the plague. And as retard manufacturers like HP among others is eliminating driver support for any os earlier windows os pre7 and later on it will be win8 only, it will be hell, and almost all paralell and serial (rs***) ports even on most professional laptops are gone. So many factories have a com, and dos only siemens PLC running each machine. And as it works and the upgrade is not cost efficient… i guess older laptops might will start getting expensive again, just as when the powerbook was discontinued.
About the UI, i do not care for it, ugly unintuitive and not suited for the desktop at all. But on the other hand i did never use the start menu in windows. meta+r and %programname% is alot faster than clicking.
But I want an iPhone!
We know sheeple, we know.
PP(poor pedro) can’t afford a quality phone, a iphone.
pedro, the iphone is only for a smart person; that is why it’s a smart phone.
People understand your frustration with being dumb and poor, but; you shouldn’t take it out on others (the rich smart people with a iphone).
oy!Phone a quality phone? I didn’t know you were that funny
If you don’t mind the look of a steady YAWN, while waiting.
That Microsoft is spending upwards of 1,400x marketing then they spend on developing this new iteration of ‘Windows’ with only one window — pretty much says it all…
Is it full ADD or just ADD ready.
I’ve been using both Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 for about a week now. So far, so good, loving it better every day.
How are you liking the Server version? There was some hesitance from IT guys about the “METRO” interface in Server.
How about Server Core for them?
No issues with the “Metro” so far. I’ve been able to find all admin stuff or equivalents. Most of the apps run, too, though one ERP server component is not starting. But overall, it’s a lot less troublesome than I expected.
I like how both PC’s they used in this ad look like macs.
Time to see a shrink.
In my only Windows system I have, an XP virtual machine, I am still finding it difficult to migrate to Win7. Then I watch the trailer for the newest mini-win-pod OS junk and I ask, but where is the Facebook app? . Hell, I quit using Ubuntu a couple of years ago due to their total failure make a decent desktop.
Another person who comments without knowledge…You do know that Windows 8 (just like Windows Phone 7 and soon 8) integrates into any and all open social networks you would want it to connect too. This allow most tasks to be performed without the need of an app.
With that said, Facebook will make an app. With Microsoft as an investor, they will need to. The Facebook app on Windows Phone is quite good.
There’s already an app for FB and many other web-pushed idiotic data: It’s called browser
PP(poor pedro) is all testy now about the WWW.
Poor pathetic pedro, you must really get angry when surfing the web in your browser!
I think noname has screen size envy. Little iphone compared to real keyboard and 32 gigantic inches of goodness.
jpfitz, your right!
I am lucky to have half that.
Aw, turns out nobrain, as usual, is projecting his shortcomings. Right now, projecting he’s just a poor guy.
PP(pointless pedro) so trying to be smart!
Someday maybe, just not today. Keep trying maybe you might actually be smart someday.
Pedro, noname can make a self deprecating funny, and understand my joke was not meant to harm. You, Pedro are always… why am I wasting my keystrokes on you!
Ya know… you and I are probably some of the only, ms users, and don’t like the stolen “Apple” name from the Beatles. Hey you young guys on here, have any of you seen a Beatles 45 vinyl with the green Apple logo and name?
PP(poor pedro) your such a willing, self-advertising and delusional target!
It just wouldn’t be fun not to take passing swipes at you!
You are serving a purpose, DU entertainment!
He is persistent, you gotta give him that.
What every good OS needs is a Social Media Blocker. An added plus would be someway to spoof the growing necessity to become a member for some unrelated service, like free software or access to an article. Who dey pimpin?
Video’s been removed.
I’ve seen an earlier promo or demo, of “8″. And the blurb on that one said the screen corners were the natural cursor positions for locating the key OS menus. But the corners take the longest mouse travel to reach. When the top and bottom borders, take the least. Hopefully the Desktop and Laptop versions of “8″ will allow one to switch back to a “classic” menus. With things arranged along the bottom edge.
Frankly I think this Metro scheme is just an excuse to employ billboard marketing on your screen space. Applications have these huge solid colored squares or rectangles, that are centered where the vendor wants them. Not small icons, arranged along the edges where you might want them. And no wallpaper to distract your eyes from the products’ titles. To me, this is more of a return to Win98, with all products visuals they can cram onto your screen. Only they’ve sold the idea that it’s more convenient for YOU, now. B.S.! It’s a billboard of vendor ware.
And no matter what Microsoft thinks, in constantly pushing its “surface” technology as the wave of the future. People are not going to what to reach out to the PC monitor’s screen, to do things, all the time. That’s just so much Hollywood Tv & film propaganda (“Hawaii Five-O”, “Minority Report”).
What’s next Microsoft? Use the Kinect system to replace all mouse and trackpad use? Want to do your taxes? Start waving your arms in the air! Bill Gates must be trying to get everyone into better shape, replacing tried and true mice, with more exhaustive GUI movement tech. Improving the slave class, for harder work, in the future?
Taken down. I guess Microsoft reads DU.
Did anybody make a copy before Microsoft took this video down?
I remember many decades ago, when I saw this version of the Mahjong game on an early PC. And it had colorful titles that were animated. And I thought at the time, someday the PC’s screen icons will be fully animated. But they never ever were.
Not even when PC had 2.5+ Gigahertz processors.
My old Amiga, at least had two double image icons. Not exactly animated, but it was a start. And after all this time, the most animated thing Microsoft has done for its Windows OS, is to have its “mail” tile tell you how many messages are unread, in white numbers. And the tiles can be moved around like a “15 puzzle”. Because you want to waste your time rearranging your tiles that way, don’t you?
Microsoft must have given up on Aeroglass, on Win8. Unless its still an option I don’t see. That was a waste of processor time. Rendering blurry images under windows’ borders. Just useless GUI eye candy tricks. So why not try making regular full color screen icons, animated a little, to liven up the desktop GUI?
Like a clock icon that actually shows time changing? Or a weather status icon, that shows temp. or sky conditions changing? Not these blue, purple, green, or red colored tiles, with tiny white type you can barely read, and white product logos, like on highway signs. Restroom, hotel, & gas, next exit.
This Win8 Metro GUI is either something they designed for lab Chimps, or people who can read the language, so they use International product symbols to represent various things. Way to dumb down the user experience, Microsoft. No language skills required? Or are your users in so much of a hurry, they can’t be bothered to process more than the color white, against a solid “earth” color (in Microsoft’s thinking)?
Maybe Metro is great for making Tablet PCs look like fancy remotes. But I think killing the only screen you could wallpaper, on a laptop or desktop PC, is way too dystopian a move.
I’ll pass, I am fine with Windows 7.
I’m sticking with vista for now. I wan’t an SSD drive but I’ve read vista dosen’t support TRIM. Can’t afford to buy win7 and ssd at the same time.
This is a tablet OS. I think it will most likely work great there.
The machines I’m using aren’t having any issues running wind 7. The fastest is a quad core and the slowest is a duel core atom. I’m using 3o inch monitors with them (One a dell and one a tv so it can play blue rays) and I’m not about to purchase touch screen 30 inch monitors to replace them.
The oft repeated phrase that the new OS will make you more productive has never been true for me. I’ve always been able to learn how to use them but they have never made me more productive. My honest reaction is: PREET! Press lips together and blow between them.
oh, you mean ‘queef’.
If Vista and Win7 or any indication as to how much Win8 will inprove utility for the average user verses the boring cost of having to learn to do essentially the same things a different way, YAWN!!!
PS – Oh yes, I almost forgot the $300 price tag
Win 98 has suited me well.
Obviously a good commercial and tightly edited. A relink to the commercial. And someone actually trying to use it.
unfortunately it looks like the clip has been pulled.i’ve been running Win 8 long enough now that i feel like i can form an honest opinion. minus metro, it feels like Win 7, but not up to par. i do give MSFT credit for attempting to take a radical jump into something different, but for me, i have no problem with the old interface paradigm. i have a MacBook Pro doing dual-boot between OS X Lion and Win 7 Pro. i probably spend about 70% – 80% of my time in Windows, and 20% – 30% in OS X. the years of personal and professional use has impacted me. so even though i am a long-time genuine Windows user, i have my suspicions regarding Win 8, and it’s significance, and whether or not it will just be a piece of the standard refresh. the first thing i’ll do is find an app to strip metro bring back all the functionality of the start menu, which i think has already been done. i’ll be sticking with 7 for a bit.
Wise decision