Windows 8 - Getting used to the Metro interface on a PC?

[Nitrius]

Am wondering about installing the RTM version on my main computer, not tried Windows 8 at all yet, but i've read about it, and i know that a lot of people don't like that the start button is gone, and the new metro interface not being mouse/keyboard friendly, is this still the case with the RTM version?

If yes, is the metro interface such a bad thing for a "regular" pc? Like with some time, wouldn't one get used to it? Or doesn't it work at all?

[Dot Matrix]

Am wondering about installing the RTM version on my main computer, not tried Windows 8 at all yet, but i've read about it, and i know that a lot of people don't like that the start button is gone, and the new metro interface not being mouse/keyboard friendly, is this still the case with the RTM version?

If yes, is the metro interface such a bad thing for a "regular" pc? Like with some time, wouldn't one get used to it? Or doesn't it work at all?

First, the Start Button isn't gone. It moved.

Second, the Modern UI is very keyboard and mouse friendly. Even more so than the current Start Menu in Windows 7.

Simply put, you should be trying out yourself rather than listening to other people. Don't let others decide for you. Start has its pros and cons just like the Start Menu has its pros and cons. But, truth be told, Windows 8 is built for a new, modern era of computing. It's going to take some getting used to, but once you get used to it, you'll find it to be little different from what you're used to.

[+Eternal Tempest MVC]

Considering my gaming is steam, and GuildWars 2, I will not be in the metro/modern UI for launching / interacting with them.

It's not that I don't like metro/modern interface, it's the constant flipping between metro/modern and the desktop, and having to manually search for any apps I'm looking for that's getting me annoyed.

[PGHammer]

Am wondering about installing the RTM version on my main computer, not tried Windows 8 at all yet, but i've read about it, and i know that a lot of people don't like that the start button is gone, and the new metro interface not being mouse/keyboard friendly, is this still the case with the RTM version?

If yes, is the metro interface such a bad thing for a "regular" pc? Like with some time, wouldn't one get used to it? Or doesn't it work at all?

That was initially why I installed the Developer Preview in a VM, then shifted to a dual-boot configuration - to deal with the UI and evaluate Windows 8 properly - as an upgrade from Windows 7.

Apparently, a lot of the critics looked at Windows 8 as if it were WindowsRT, as opposed to simply evaluating Windows 8 as an upgrade from Windows 7.

The WinRT API is simply too new for me to consider running everything in only that API - the same reasoning kept me from jumping whole-hog into Windows NT and the Win32 API in 199x.

Much to my surprise, I found that I could deal with the Modern UI just fine - as long as I got rid of my preconceptions; it's getting rid of the preconceptions that's hard.

Once I *did* get rid of the preconceptions, I found that the Modern UI has a lot of advantages over the Start menu - one rather large one (for me) is that I no longer have to spend time and energy sorting programs (applications, games, or anything else). Searching the applications installed (all of which are on the Start Screen by default) leverages the Windows logo key - a common feature on every keyboard since 1995. It doesn't matter what API the application or game I'm searching for uses, either - if it's on the Start Screen, Search will dig it out.

This makes launching what few WinRT apps I use (and a lot of WinRT games I play) quite painless - I use Search to root them out. (Far easier - not to mention faster - than using the Start menu, even in 7.)

So, as someone that uses the Modern UI day in and day out (and on a desktop), I have, in fact, little problem doing so; however, you have to leave your preconceptions at the door.

[argonite]

Once I *did* get rid of the preconceptions, I found that the Modern UI has a lot of advantages over the Start menu - one rather large one (for me) is that I no longer have to spend time and energy sorting programs (applications, games, or anything else). Searching the applications installed (all of which are on the Start Screen by default) leverages the Windows logo key - a common feature on every keyboard since 1995. It doesn't matter what API the application or game I'm searching for uses, either - if it's on the Start Screen, Search will dig it out.

It's not *technically* a preconception you're getting rid of, it's a habit. You could search programs just fine in the Windows 7 Start Menu, but it was never forced on you. Most people I know kept doing the same trawling through 'All Programs' as they had done before.

Because Windows 8 throws in a completely new interface, you're forced to break habits and you expose yourself to features.

Kind of like how the Ribbon in Office 2007 made people go exploring, break habits, and use features that had already existed for several years in Office.

[scumdogmillionaire]

My wife had it on her laptop since the RP and I would tinker with it here and there. I'm a software developer that spends the majority of my day in Visual Studio, Outlook and other desktop applications and I installed Windows 8 yesterday. I think it's good for the desktop. It takes a little shift of mind set, but so far, loving it. Can't wait for a tablet!

[brlmedia]

I have been using windows 8 since the first preview in February. It didn't take long to learn the "new" ways of getting things done, and seeing how to navigate the start screen/desktop. I think everyone is different, and if your set in your "old" ways, it may be a shock at first, but take the time to get "to know" windows 8.

I Love it, I am zipping in and out of different apps /programs, and love the new interface. but yea see for yourself!

[bandit_liberty_rumble]

If yes, is the metro interface such a bad thing for a "regular" pc? Like with some time, wouldn't one get used to it? Or doesn't it work at all?

It does work. You can get used to almost anything. Whether you'd want to is another question.

[Nitrius]

Thanks for the replies. Just installed Windows 8, and i must say am suprised so far, in a good way, i need some adjusting, but it's going very well i would say.

Btw, the fish wallpaper i've seen all over the place, is it gone from the RTM version?

[trag3dy]

Once I *did* get rid of the preconceptions, I found that the Modern UI has a lot of advantages over the Start menu - one rather large one (for me) is that I no longer have to spend time and energy sorting programs (applications, games, or anything else). Searching the applications installed (all of which are on the Start Screen by default) leverages the Windows logo key - a common feature on every keyboard since 1995. It doesn't matter what API the application or game I'm searching for uses, either - if it's on the Start Screen, Search will dig it out.

Did you really spend all that much time organizing your start menu? Did you really? Because I'm betting you spent less than 3 minutes a day doing that. Probably not even 3 minutes a week.

I don't know about your Windows 7, but when I install a new program it put's it in it's own folder in the start menu that is highlighted, and wonders of wonders, is listed alphabetically. Or you can hit that magical start button you guys are fond of and type two or three letters to find exactly what you're looking for.

I think one thing you do a lot is exaggerate, but spending time organizing your start menu? Not so much.

[Eric Veteran]

Thanks for the replies. Just installed Windows 8, and i must say am suprised so far, in a good way, i need some adjusting, but it's going very well i would say.

Btw, the fish wallpaper i've seen all over the place, is it gone from the RTM version?

Yes, the fish is a betta.. (beta) :)

[Nitrius]

Yes, the fish is a betta.. (beta) :)

Ah okay, it's probably possible to download the wallpaper somewhere?

Another thing, the spellcheck feature in IE10, how does it work? My main language is Norwegian, and i don't quite get how i change between English and Norwegian spellchecking?

[Dot Matrix]

Ah okay, it's probably possible to download the wallpaper somewhere?

This one? I can zip it up and send it to you if you like.

[PGHammer]

It's not *technically* a preconception you're getting rid of, it's a habit. You could search programs just fine in the Windows 7 Start Menu, but it was never forced on you. Most people I know kept doing the same trawling through 'All Programs' as they had done before.

Because Windows 8 throws in a completely new interface, you're forced to break habits and you expose yourself to features.

Kind of like how the Ribbon in Office 2007 made people go exploring, break habits, and use features that had already existed for several years in Office.

Exactly. Preconceptions generally *are* based on habit - you get used to looking/doing/seeing things a *certain way*; then when something threatens to change that, you feel you have to defend that habit from *assault*.

One thing I had brought up consistently in the Microsoft Beta forum is using the *keyboard* in the Previews. Notice that I didn't complain that the keyboard got more use in 8 than in 7; in fact most of the keyboard shortcuts I use more regularly aren't new in the least. Most of those same keyboard shortcuts have been in Windows since at least Windows 2000 Professional - I actually went back and dug out my old copy of Windows 2000 Professional for Dummies (which I bought as a deskside reference when where I worked upgraded from NT4WS to 2000 Professional; using 2000 Pro in a home setting (which I had in fact started doing six months earlier) is far different from in an enterprise setting - hence the book) and looked them up.

So what really changed between 2000 Professional and Windows 8, since the keyboard shortcuts mostly didn't? From XP forward, the UI became far more *mouse-centered* as opposed to the very business-oriented and keyboard-centric Windows 9x/NT UX/UI. (It's also why I criticized Windows 7's UI in hindsight FOR that bias - if you look at Windows 7 from a keyboard-user's POV, how badly the Start menu is broken almost glares at you. Yes - hindsight is 20/20; still, I'm far from happy because I didn't realize it sooner. However, I'm upset with *myself* - not Microsoft.)

[Arceles]

Quoting Myself

Windows 8 is bad and Microsoft should fell bad about it. That pretty much sums it up.

-They could actually do metro right and they didn't (just looking at all the white explorer... hurts my eyes, literally)

-I was forced to put the taskbar above, because if it was down the horrible "start" square appeared and didn't let me chose the explorer pinned shortcut.

-The incredible 3 steps to shut down the computer, had once again to accustom myself to use the "alt+f4" technique...

-The horrible, once again, two corners that activate the charms bar, they don't allow me to put a real launcher like xlanchpad, had to move that one to the upper left corner and it's far less intrusive that the "start" square.

-Full screen PDF reader, really? Send it to hell my dear Acrobat.

-Full screen Email client, made a mistake and had to restore program defaults, because everytime I wanted to click an email on a website my whole screen was covered by this really bad "Mail" client.

-Had to pin "My Computer" to the sites listed on the explorer pinned shortcut, now at least is "right click-> My computer" instead of "start menu -> my computer"

-Still unable to run K10STAT automatically at startup because of the admin rights, no matter if I put compatibility options of "Run as Administrator", got it pinned to the "Start" screen, at least the moment I click on it I got into the desktop.

-I miss my transparencies, guess they were removed because a lot of Intel Integrated Graphics had severe slowdowns when dragging a window, something that I haven't seen with every integrated graphics solution by both AMD and NVidia since like 8 years.

-Why... and really why... they didn't let the user to chose between the start menu and the start screen? just because they wanted one person to try the metro apps? they're good if you need small games for children or persons more casuals than the current FIFA players, still, nothing good as a full blown win32 app.

-The only good metro apps are actually the "notes", "rechner" and some others, very specific apps for very specific functions, very small too, they decided to reemplace the whole sidebar with this, in a sense, this is an improvement... but I don't see myself using one of these for real, serious work, an example would be my Eclipse IDE, that I have to have it coupled with KiTTy (SSH terminal) and Putty (RS232 Terminal), both for remotelly debugging my Raspberry Pi programming. In total I have 3 damned programs on the screen, not ONE.

-I actually like Visual Studio 2012, the interface got improved a lot but surely I won't be using it for coding WinRT Apps.

-The faster startup behavior, as explained by the very OS is because "It saves certain files for faster boot up" which means we are kind of hibernating, is not a proper shutdown, because as once again this os remarks "Restart is not affected by this" which means that restart actually does boot up the machine from 0. Once again, I fell the restart performance almost the same than Win7, except for the fact that Win8 is a little light now and therefore a little faster, but not that much on restarts.

-The dual boot menu is... really bad, My whole machine starts just before the GUI just to tell me which OS I want to choose, and when I do it restarts it again to actually boot up the desired OS, this is bad and MS should feel bad about it, there are some tricks like reemplacing the Win7 bootloader instead of the Win8 one.

-The vector designs of the start screen are actually bad and MS should fell bad about it, there is nothing "Modern" in most of them, they look like a lot of plain desings slapped one after another and give the impression of being messed up, the Vista moving lines where by far more "Modern" than this.

-The share option is dumb in the charms bar, only shows to which public this charms bar is given to, they should have put a damned search files option into that bar and would be perfect, NOT a shortcut to search, but an actuall input box where you can type and the results would appear inmediatelly.

-They should have choosen gradiens and not plain colors, like the tiles, the user screen when the machine boots up reminds mi a lot of my Win3.11 or Win95 desktops (and that's quite not bad though but so much for going for "Modern")

-Icons are missing a lof of consistency, but then again, the whole OS does.

-Continuing to use this crap, just to show how bad it is and for keeping away those that say "You only used it a day hurrrrrl!"

[PGHammer]

Did you really spend all that much time organizing your start menu? Did you really? Because I'm betting you spent less than 3 minutes a day doing that. Probably not even 3 minutes a week.

I don't know about your Windows 7, but when I install a new program it put's it in it's own folder in the start menu that is highlighted, and wonders of wonders, is listed alphabetically. Or you can hit that magical start button you guys are fond of and type two or three letters to find exactly what you're looking for.

I think one thing you do a lot is exaggerate, but spending time organizing your start menu? Not so much.

The point I am making is that I no longer have to spend ANY time organizing it.

You generally have to spend more time organizing it in an enterprise/corporate setting because you have far more applications to keep track of (or shortcuts to onside/offsite applications for the really large enterprises); however, it's something you do during downtimes (or when things are slow). However, I still see it as basically *fiddlework* and *ploddery*, and I resent having to do it at all. With Windows 8, that has been absolutely and thoroughly banished.

Do you remember the long-discussed *Cairo* project, which was based on an object-oriented (SQL-like, in other words) file system? I still remember the discussion about that, and we haven't gotten there *yet* - despite SQL Server. merely as a Microsoft product, being itself nearly twenty years old. Worse, the same *backward-compatibility* albatross has kept the Jet database engine around far longer than it should have; what makes me angrier is that the old chestnut about it being what Microsoft Access supports best hasn't even been true since 1997! Backward-compatibility - the *third rail* of IT - is like Social Security (or Medicare) in US politics - touch it and get electrocuted. However, the Start Screen, unlike the Start menu - is searchable, and it uses a *natural* search mechanism - which the Start menu has lacked. That likely wouldn't have happened with the Start menu, as *tradition* and *backward-compatibility* would have gotten in the way.

[trag3dy]

What? You can't search the start menu? This is news to me because I'm fairly certain I've done just that quite a few times.

Like I said... you're prone to exaggeration.