The direction Microsoft took with Windows 8  

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  1. 1. Do you like the direction Microsoft took with Windows 8?

    • Yes I love it, i'll be upgrading
    • No I hate it, i'll stick with Windows 7
    • It doesn't bother me
    • I will use Windows 8 with a start menu hack program


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People are inept and lazy to learn. And I mean that in the nicest way :D

Riight, oookay :laugh:

I am not pro Windows 8, I just wanted to hear a proper counter argument and you guys provide it. Thanks. I agree, Windows 8 is not an essential upgrade. I just love having the latest things, heh.

Do continue so. Without early supporters and simply latest-greatest fans there would be no proper testing and feedback, just marketing. I believe there are at least some objective people that will not hesitate to point out flaws to official channels.

It seems, in this case, people that can't be arsed are too numerous. And because I can't be arsed as well, I mean that in the nicest way :whistle:

Because I don't want to use Metro in Windows 8, and they're forcing me to.

No. Not at all. Uninstall all the Metro apps, and you're done. Start Screen? Too bad so sad, there were technical reasons Microsoft purged the Start Menu.

I think it will be hard for Microsoft to sell 8. It is damn fast, and I do think it works well if you know what you are doing. The one unified search in the charm bar is going to confuse people, it will take them 5 - 10 tries of actually doing it to be used to it. Having both metro and desktop apps is kind of destructive as well. I think if Windows were either all one or the other it simplifies things.

I used to hate 8, but I am coming around. I can do what I need to do just as fast if not faster than 7.

imo, i dont like the MS forces you to use Metro. Why am i forced to use the new start menu?

also, why is the user forced to boot into the start menu instead of the Desktop? where is the choice? Imagine Win7 booting into Media Center. Users would be livid.

where is the multitasking w/ Metro? I can use a cookbook app, but i cant use the Weather app at the same time. i have to close one, then open the other.

The fullscreen apps and Metro start menu dont work well w/ a keyboard and mouse. it would be fine for a tablet, but just doesnt work well w/ a mouse.

why did MS choose to use a crippled version of IE in the Start Menu?

the UI is awful. the flatness, colors, all of it.

Office 2013 looks completely unfinished. It looks like someone drew the UI on a piece of paper, then scanned it into Office 2010.

at least on the RP, if you hover your mouse over the bottom right corner, most of the time the menu doesnt appear. you have to move your cursor back and forth in the area multiple times to make it appear.

why does it take more steps to shut down or restart my computer?

so, after all my opinions, i will say that i like the new Task Manager.

I have too much a life to hate an os, but feel that "go to corner and slide" is unconfortable, and sometime i miss it trying to open the charm bar

and i feel that is frustrating that when i open the charmbar, on the other side of the screen appears the time, and if i try to click on it both them disappear

almost the same when i go to the start menu corner, istinctively i move the cursor on the center of the start preview, and it disappear

last but not last, form me is disorienting the fusion of content, window specific command, and general window chrome in the desktop application, it need to be graphically separated

this in my opinion will be easily resolved with some customization, but why confuse my eyes with the default theme?

Quoting myself

Well, I'm an old user. Tested Win 3.11 on my fathers company... it had colors! something that MSDOS didn't had.

Later my 486SX was upgraded to Win95, it had more colors but the whole UI changed, more like it is up until Win7, still lots and lots of MSDOS usage but it was nice to have an "explorer" to work with the files, no more "C:, cd documents, cd... etc".

Installed Win98 through floppy disk and WinRAR MSDos edition... took nearly 100 copy and paste, fully using 3 new Verbatim floppy disk until their end of life. The interface was the same but software begin to catch up, more intuitive, games where already more interesting, internet was the fashion, MSDOS usage got reduced but still a lot depended on.

Installed Windows Millennium Edition, didn't had as many problems as others but Internet Explorer crashed every single time by no reason, had to live with the "Internet Explorer has encountered an error and will close" dialog next to me as my daily internet experience, outside of that the OS fell good to me and felt more like an improvement than a dragging, it had support even for USB sticks... which Windows 98 didn't had.

Moved to Windows XP, it was far more cooler than WinME but my Compaq 5253, with 350Mhz AMD K6-2, ATI Rage 4mb video and 64mb RAM just couldn't move anymore (at the beginning only the OS was OK but programs god rapidly more RAM demanding than ever), felt slow but still I liked it a lot, moved to Windows 2000... both OSes didn't ran any games at the beginning, but by then emulators were also kind of popular, had really good times with both OSes... (Win2000 is like WinME with far more stability and programs became more and more compatible with it thanks to WinXP)

Windows Vista came, it was really slow on my Pentium 4 3.0 Ghz, 500 mb of RAM and Radeon 9200 LE (128 video), didn't had Aero but shortly after that I got my first laptop, an Inspiron 1501, Turion64 x2 (TL-58), Radeon xpress 1150 and 1 gig of RAM double channel, instantly went to 64 bit version and oh god, such awesomeness, such stability and such graphics, that OS shown the world two things: 1.- it was slow as hell and machines needed to be by standard more capable than almost everything you could find at the stores (at the beginning, even with brand new machines with the intel integrated graphics card fiasco) 2.- An OS could be fun, it didn't need to become boring, you could even customize it with different themes, like the ones that made Neowin so popular. Nonetheless I really liked that OS and I made every single program that I wanted to run... to run on windows vista, even if there were so many complains about not being compatible, I just wanted to shown everybody how good that OS was with a decent computer.

Windows 7 came, at first for a BIOS problem didn't ran well on my laptop (video corruption eventually leading to BSOD by no apparent reason, went back almost to the very first BIOS released for my inspiron 1501 to resolve this) but nevertheless it felt light, it felt better, it felt like a natural improvement of Windows Vista and felt even more refreshing. Hardly had any compatibility problem, games ran fine and emulators too, my engineering programs behaved the same way. my graphics card was already quite outdated but still ran Aero very, very well unlike some Nvidias which continued to struggle back then to properly show an aero experience, let's not talk about intel integrated graphics, they still struggle even today. It was natural and perfected evolution.

Tested Windows 8 RTM this week, installer resembled that of Win7 except for the background which now is completely flat and ugly, almost same setup anyway. Installation went smooth and with no problems although more slow than that of Win7... but at least detects USB 3.0 on setup (allowed my mouse to run trough a USB 3.0 hub), already on desktop, still Aero on taskbar, no start menu, blue interface. Darn is annoying to work on desktop because of the full screen start menu, darn is hard to press a program on the taskbar due that ridiculous big button "start" that appears out of nowhere, to do exactly the same that one can do with the charms bar. Darn again, pressed the start menu... alright, let's move the taskbar upwards so I don't press that damn button. My eyes are bleeding, so much white... let's change the background, better, a bit better but still too much white. Fells fast... good. Install drivers... everything good on my current laptop (see signature) install basic programs, darn "start" button again, should have gone and only allow the charm bar to be in there, is that hard to make it like the xlaunchpad? xlaunchpad can be summoned with just putting the mouse pointer in any corner of the screen, with no more movement, I have it on win7 on the lower right corner, bam, launcher as it should be. Basic programs installed... what!? why the hell my K10STAT doesn't start automatically even when put on "startup" folder? never resolved this part, had to put a shortcut on the startmenu just to call it each time I started the PC... annoying but passable. installed more programs, restarting is a pain through the charms bar... Alt+F4 only make it more slow too, office 2010... some engineering programs, suddenly windows is not too fast, it behaved and started exactly like win7, alright... tried to install max payne 3, didn't worked.

Got tired of it, to much flat, to much "trying to change my paradigm" to go according win8, to much time lost and I couldn't play MP3, tried to run MSI Kombustor... doesn't detect Direct X11 API... whatever, installed Windows 7, oh hell, fells exactly like Win8 with all my programs installed and no compatibility problems. Why the hell I was testing Windows 8 then? For the illusion of a good OS just like vista was... it isn't, Windows Vista slowness was exceeded by its impressive stability, x64 support and innovative graphics and overall design... Windows 8 has nothing new except being fast, is just Vista on steroids with an horrible makeup. My illusion is gone, windows 8 is gone for me also. DRM? No thanks MS, I see your activation options, you can put that on your A**, I got a nice Windows 7 Pro thanks to technet and my university, I think I will keep that until Win9 comes... dreaming is free.

I came to the conclusion that those who thinks that Windows 8 is innovative... never in their life used another launcher on windows, for example like rocket dock or xwidget or xlaunchpad, they just like it because is offered first party but they never cared to search it third party. Paradigm? ha! I like them to use my full blown 7 experience with my launchers and no desktop icons, far better pleasuring for me but because they don't know it they will think "it has no standard", and yet, for me... it's fast.

its a very vocal minority. mac fanboys have always had a inferiority complex and theyve always been loud because they must feel very tiny. linux fanboys and android fanboys have also joined them.

i remember the same thing happened with windows xp. have people really forgotten? everyone called it fisher price os. why should i switch to it when windows 98 works perfectly,and other crap like that.

its just that theres so much time between the announcement and release that these other platform fanboys are having a field day with their bashing. after release you will see them retreat back to their hole until the next release is announced.

No. Not at all. Uninstall all the Metro apps, and you're done. Start Screen? Too bad so sad, there were technical reasons Microsoft purged the Start Menu.

Metro isn't just the apps. Lock screen, start screen, settings, charms bar are Metro as well. You can't uninstall those, can you? The lock screen is the first thing we see before login, the start screen is right there after the login screen, when we press winkey on the desktop. We have to use the charms bar to sleep or shutdown the computer. We have to use Metro to update the computer or change other settings. Always in fullscreen. Metro apps can be put side by side, but that's not good enough: there's also no vertical multitasking in Metro.

In essence, yes, they're forcing me to use it in Windows 8.

EDIT: I challenge anyone to come up with a plan of how NOT to use Metro in an out-of-the-box, vanilla edition of Windows 8, without resorting to hacks and third-party apps. Natively, I mean.

The reasons Microsoft used to ban the start menu are invalid. They basically said "nobody uses it anymore". That is a lie. Following the same logic ("if they're not using it enough, get rid of it"), other features should be out of Windows 8 as well. Like the character map, wordpad, math input panel, snipping tool, magnifier, etc. Why didn't they conserve consistency of logic? I know why. MONEY in tablet markets, screw the desktop users who want options and freedom of choice in their latest OS.

Because it's different. Many just don't want to take the time to learn something new.

That's a simplistic explanation at best.

Many here have stablished work-flows that depend heavily on the desktop. While W8 has a desktop too is just not the same.

Maybe we don't like it, because it doesn't suit our needs? Before Windows 8 came along Windows suited everyone, now it only suits some people. Had they shipped Windows 8 with an off button for all the Metro stuff that gave us the "Desktop" enhancements then it would have suited everyone. To not include such an option is why people hate it.

No one has any problem with the OS that I've seen apart from the interface changes which are 80% of the new features of Windows 8 anyway

I actually don't use my start menu that much. I keep my program icons on my desktop. Multi-tasking though is a must. I couldn't function without it.

You have to realize though that gaming pretty much requires a desktop. I have tried gaming on a laptop, but it isn't much fun. For immersive gaming you need a large screen and top of the line hardware.

Metro isn't just the apps. Lock screen, start screen, settings, charms bar are Metro as well. You can't uninstall those, can you? The lock screen is the first thing we see before login, the start screen is right there after the login screen, when we press winkey on the desktop. We have to use the charms bar to sleep or shutdown the computer. We have to use Metro to update the computer or change other settings. Always in fullscreen. Metro apps can be put side by side, but that's not good enough: there's also no vertical multitasking in Metro.

In essence, yes, they're forcing me to use it in Windows 8.

EDIT: I challenge anyone to come up with a plan of how NOT to use Metro in an out-of-the-box, vanilla edition of Windows 8, without resorting to hacks and third-party apps. Natively, I mean.

The reasons Microsoft used to ban the start menu are invalid. They basically said "nobody uses it anymore". That is a lie. Following the same logic ("if they're not using it enough, get rid of it"), other features should be out of Windows 8 as well. Like the character map, wordpad, math input panel, snipping tool, magnifier, etc. Why didn't they conserve consistency of logic? I know why. MONEY in tablet markets, screw the desktop users who want options and freedom of choice in their latest OS.

How is the lock screen any different than the one in Windows 7? You have problem with it because it looks different/metro-ey? :blink: You can disable it the same way I did which is no different than 7 (either don't put a password or do the control userpasswords2 trick).

The only metro thing you are forced to use is the new start screen. If you remove/uninstall all metro apps - there is not much metro left in it.

For restart/shutdown - make your own shortcuts to shutdown /s or /r.

How is the lock screen any different than the one in Windows 7? You have problem with it because it looks different/metro-ey? :blink: You can disable it the same way I did which is no different than 7 (either don't put a password or do the control userpasswords2 trick).

The only metro thing you are forced to use is the new start screen. If you remove/uninstall all metro apps - there is not much metro left in it.

For restart/shutdown - make your own shortcuts to shutdown /s or /r.

So basically you're agreeing with me. You cannot not use/uninstall/disable Metro.

This topic is now closed to further replies.
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