windows 8 Do you like or hate Windows 8?

[Dot Matrix]

[Shaun N.]

[Draconian Guppy]

if it performs equally or better in games than win7, i'm all for "the way of the future"

[PGHammer]

Agreed. It is very disruptive with my productivity.

Who says I run it fullscreen?

I run it as a background task - which it is designed to do.

It replaces a Win32 applet (specifically, AWS WeatherBug) that normally lives in the Tasktray. AccuWeather/RT is quite invisible until/unless there is an alert - which pops up like alerts from other WinRT apps, such as Mail or Messenger. That means it's less visible OR distracting than AWS WeatherBug - until it needs to be. It uses fewer resources than AWS WeatherBug as well. While it is configured on first use full-screen, after that, you need never go full-screen with it again 9like the original Weather/RT app that is included with Windows 8, which it is designed to replace.

[PGHammer]

Agreed. It is very disruptive with my productivity.

And the Start menu chopping off part of the desktop isn't?

How much customization and ordering have you had to do of your4 Start menu?

Do you have to install additional utilities to manage the Start menu to keep it from getting cluttered?

Do you have to invest additional TIME dealing with Start menu clutter?

If you answered "Yes" to either (let alone both) of the last two questions, then the Start menu certainly is NOT *working* by default.

If you've had to spend any time customizing and/or ordering your Start menu, then there's obviously some reason you do so.

[Tharp Daddy]

I have no issues with it. My games run fine, any programs i need run fine normally, or in compatability mode. I hardly ever use the metro screen, though the search is fast and painless. All in all, i have no issues with the OS, and the under the hood improvements are enough for me to drop money on an upgrade when it's released.

[Stoffel]

The hate to me seems to come from only 1 thing and that's a full screen start menu and search.

Personally I have no issue with that, I'm one of those people that can only concentrate on 1 thing at a time.

If you don't see the point of Metro apps, just don't use them. Unpin all of them from the start screen and just pin anything you would normally pin in your start menu.

You can pretty much pin anything you like to the start screen.You can put much more up front on the start screen then you can on the start menu. So that way everything is only 2 clicks away. Seems faster to me then clicking the start button, then All Programs and then maybe have to scroll through a long list to find what you need.

This way you can use Win8 pretty much like you would use Win7. That all assumes that you can live with the full screen start menu and search.

For the majority of the people who only use facebook, mail, internet, the casual game,... Win 8 seems like a massive improvement to me. It will make the lives of people much easier, after a short adjustment period.

I'm all for Win8 and will be upgrading asap

[Noir Angel]

<snip>

Yeah, because there's just no way someone without Metro could have the common sense to organise their files properly, huh? :rolleyes:

Look ma! All like magic, no desktop mess and I did it all without Metro! (and I have more than 1 TiB of video files in my library and more than 400 GB of games on my hard drive so I have more than enough content). Absolutely amazing, huh?

[Dot Matrix]

You guys took my comment out of context. It's the mess, not the desktop. :sleep: :sleep:

[migo]

I don't like the fact that it appears to be more oriented towards touch devices, with the desktop user experience seemingly tacked on at the last minute.

Do I hate it? No. Do I like it? Certainly not. Would I use it with various tweaks put in? If the tweaks made it more of a desktop experience that I've become used to, probably.

This isn't the case at all. I've been using the CP on my Netbook (with 1024x576 resolution) for the past several months, desktop mode only, and it's a better experience than Windows 7.

[Syanide]

Using RP now with a start menu hack program. Metro is an unbelievable mess and looks awful on any screen larger than 10", but luckily it's mostly easy to ignore.

[trag3dy]

I'm really getting tired of people saying they want to be able to boot directly to the desktop. you haven't been able to do that since the days of ME and earlier. It boots the the login screen just like normal. what you guys want is to login directly to the desktop. Get your terminology right or you keep sounding like idiots!!! /rant

Uhm...if you hide the admin account or any extra guest/user accounts and don't set a password your computer will boot directly to the desktop. It's been that way since Windows 2000 at least. Just an fyi.

I'm pretty sure people who likes Windows 8 are these type:

and those who hate Win8 are these type:

Completely wrong.

[engii]

its always a case of damned if you do and damned if you dont with MS isnt it??

Every negative response somehow comes from the perspective that you now are forced to use the new start screen against your will, always under all circumstances??? None focus on the most impressive aspects on windows 8 an the fact that you can pretty much live in desktop mode for the rest of your life with the most minimal of metro flavour, if any at all???

Its like the start menu is something these people are using like its their day job??? i mean really, its a fairly ridiculous basis on which to form an oppinion.

How bout he massive speed increases in boot, shutdown, hibernate?

How bout Built in anti-virus, Trusted Boot and improved BitLocker drive encryption, along with AppLocker and claim-based access control

How bout built in Hyper-V (to run that classic goodness if your crying about it so much)

How bout the better multilanguage support

How bout better multi monitor support

How bout smaller memory footprint and better performance on th same hardware, better security, privacy and system reliability

How bout enhanced Task Manager and Windows Explorer

How bout ntegrated windows store

How bout Windows To Go

How bout enhanced DirectAccess and built-in mobile broadband features that natively support 3G and 4G telecommunication

How bout enhanced multi touch support

How bout ie10

Just to name a few

And best of all for developers (ME) you can write code in practically any language and if its targetted to metro it runs on everything and its 1 click publish and sales on the store...Yes actually running tablet and phone apps on my desktop via metro not to mention killer dev tools...pus auto natice cloud sync and support, plus folow on from 1 devcie to next...

No other platform currently is offering that and certainly not for the F*ckOff stupid upgrade price they currently announced...

Love windows 8, theres lots to love cause its windows 7 with tons more...sure its missing the round icon in the bottom left corener but if your spending any significant amount of time fiddling with that then your probably spending a whole lot more time fiddling with yourself...time to get your hand off it and take an actual look at what 8 is offering compared with 7 and youll realie its all gonna work out just fine and if not, windows 7 aint going anywhere for agggggeeeessss, so live in that world for as long as you can...heaven forbid youd want to have a tablet that can sync nicely with your desktop.....

[trag3dy]

its always a case of damned if you do and damned if you dont with MS isnt it??

Every negative response somehow comes from the perspective that you now are forced to use the new start screen against your will, always under all circumstances??? None focus on the most impressive aspects on windows 8 an the fact that you can pretty much live in desktop mode for the rest of your life with the most minimal of metro flavour, if any at all???

Its like the start menu is something these people are using like its their day job??? i mean really, its a fairly ridiculous basis on which to form an oppinion.

How bout he massive speed increases in boot, shutdown, hibernate?

How bout Built in anti-virus, Trusted Boot and improved BitLocker drive encryption, along with AppLocker and claim-based access control

How bout built in Hyper-V (to run that classic goodness if your crying about it so much)

How bout the better multilanguage support

How bout better multi monitor support

How bout smaller memory footprint and better performance on th same hardware, better security, privacy and system reliability

How bout enhanced Task Manager and Windows Explorer

How bout ntegrated windows store

How bout Windows To Go

How bout enhanced DirectAccess and built-in mobile broadband features that natively support 3G and 4G telecommunication

How bout enhanced multi touch support

How bout ie10

Just to name a few

And best of all for developers (ME) you can write code in practically any language and if its targetted to metro it runs on everything and its 1 click publish and sales on the store...Yes actually running tablet and phone apps on my desktop via metro not to mention killer dev tools...pus auto natice cloud sync and support, plus folow on from 1 devcie to next...

No other platform currently is offering that and certainly not for the F*ckOff stupid upgrade price they currently announced...

Love windows 8, theres lots to love cause its windows 7 with tons more...sure its missing the round icon in the bottom left corener but if your spending any significant amount of time fiddling with that then your probably spending a whole lot more time fiddling with yourself...time to get your hand off it and take an actual look at what 8 is offering compared with 7 and youll realie its all gonna work out just fine and if not, windows 7 aint going anywhere for agggggeeeessss, so live in that world for as long as you can...heaven forbid youd want to have a tablet that can sync nicely with your desktop.....

People are always talking about the metro start screen because it's the most blatantly obnoxious in your face (almost literally) change that comes in Windows 8. If we say that we don't like we're told how we're wrong and it's the best thing ever since sliced bread and blah blah blah.

So of course it gets talked about the most. It's been said many times that most people who dislike the metro start screen want all the other new features and improvements that are being added in Windows 8. It's just that the metro start screen is what you see first and taints everything else.

And no, using a third party program to get the same functionality we have now by default is not a solution. What if the people who made one of those particular programs decides they don't want to maintain it anymore and a future windows update breaks it? Then you either have to go in search of another replacement or be stuck with the metro start screen.

Giving people the option to have the start menu that Windows 7 has or the metro start screen hurts nobody and would make most if not all of the criticism against windows 8 go away in a hurry. All the people who like the metro start screen though don't want to discuss that option, they just want to tell us how we're wrong. But if enough people that like the start screen but aren't against having options spoke up about it then maybe there might be a chance Microsoft would be compelled to include the options to have one or the other.

People just want to tell the other side why they are wrong instead of discussing a way to get everyone what they want, even if it's unlikely to make a difference.

[Noir Angel]

You guys took my comment out of context. It's the mess, not the desktop. :sleep: :sleep:

I took it in exactly the context it was meant in... which was your inane assertion that people are incapable of organising their files without the Metro UI.

[Dot Matrix]

I took it in exactly the context it was meant in... which was your inane assertion that people are incapable of organising their files without the Metro UI.

I never said anything of the like. Please stop putting words in my mouth. :)

[Noir Angel]

I never said anything of the like. Please stop putting words in my mouth. :)

Then make your point a bit more clearly. Posting a screenshot of 1 person that clearly has no idea how to organise their files properly has nothing to do with the merits of Metro, and what you screenshotted is just as possible in Windows 8 as it was in 7 and Vista.

[Daveski]

Well, regardless, I'm staying with Win 7 on my desktop PC. It's only about 14 months old & I'm still just getting into it. I really really like Win 7. I can't think of a single reason why I need to upgrade, well apart from making Microsoft a profit of course. If I buy a computer in the future maybe I'll use Win 8. Maybe I'll wait for Win 9, who knows?

I'm going to stick with Win 7 for as long as it is supported.

[Motoko.]

I think Windows 8 is an OS designed implicitly for tablets but also encompasses Desktops and Laptops. It's faster than Windows 7 but when I used the charm bar in the CP and RP I somtimes had trouble getting to it with my mouse as I tried to hover( which slowed down my multi tasking by a little).

I can't give a full verdict until a few years after its release, this will depend how will developers will adapt to Metro applications.

[Princess Katie Pixie]

Windows 8 is only good for tablets and I wouldn't be surprised that Windows 9 will fix what Windows 8 fails and that's onl desktops/laptops. =D

[Noir Angel]

Doubtful. Microsoft are obviously intent on forcing this platform upon us come what may, it's not likely to go anywhere.

[xWhiplash]

Doubtful. Microsoft are obviously intent on forcing this platform upon us come what may, it's not likely to go anywhere.

Even if it is a massive failure on the desktop?

[Noir Angel]

Even if it is a massive failure on the desktop?

Well if it were a failure on the desktop I believe they'd be forced to add the old start menu code back in as an option but I still don't think they would remove it completely.

[Dot Matrix]

Well if it were a failure on the desktop I believe they'd be forced to add the old start menu code back in as an option but I still don't think they would remove it completely.

I think you guys really have to let it go. Microsoft has never shown any sign of product back tracking when XYZ product "fails". When ME failed, people used Win98, until XP, even after XP was released people went back to 2000 or 98 until Microsoft fixed the security issues it suffered from. XP was an upgraded ME.

When Vista failed, people went back to XP, Vista was then upgraded to Windows 7, which people now love.

If Windows 8 fails to make inroads (Which due to the booming touch market I don't think it will), people will use Windows 7, and Windows 9 will be an upgraded Windows 8. By Windows 9, the hardware market will be a different place, one that still won't allow for a Start Menu anymore. Computing is moving forward not back to the 90's.

[Noir Angel]

So we're back to the "it's new therefore it must be better" argument? sorry, but no. Not all changes are good. And as long as Microsoft keep forcing Metro into versions of Windows that I use you can guarantee that I'll be doing my utmost to hack it out again until they stop making it look like utter crap and disruptive to my workflow.