poll Windows 10 Preview (How do you like it?)

[Rickkins]

  MS is looking for feed back and testing bugs on features they introduce such as the new start menu. If you're installing classic shell, you should just  stick to windows 7 or 8 for now.

Their metro-fied start menu, is the bug, period. Until they fix it, it is unusable. But thank God we're all free to make up our own minds about how to govern ourselves. Imagine if we had to take each and every little opinion to heart...??

 

What an unfortunate world that would be. Don't you agree..??

[nosense]

Apparently the company is only looking for feedback which is in accord with what it already plans to do. Requests for the Windows 8.1 Start screen, for example, are seemingly ignored altogether.

I know you truly want win8.1 start screen since you keep bringing it up when ever you can.You're going to have to wait for BUILD 2015 to see a more polish version on windows 10 and if MS is going to introduce interactive tiles.

 

Because you don't see changes in these test branches doesn't mean MS is not listening to the feed back. They have been pretty quiet on the start screen front tho,

[Rickkins]

Apparently the company is only looking for feedback which is in accord with what it already plans to do. Requests for the Windows 8.1 Start screen, for example, are seemingly ignored altogether.

An all too common occurence. I maintain that that is the reason for the 8/8.1 debacle; the only folks they listened to, was the ardent supporters....

[Ian W]

I know you truly want win8.1 start screen since you keep bringing it up when ever you can.You're going to have to wait for BUILD 2015 to see a more polish version on windows 10 and if MS is going to introduce interactive tiles.

Yes. I'm sorry about that. It's just very unfortunate to lose something mostly because of the negative reception it received. I believe that at least some of this reception was mostly due to not knowing what the interface was capable of, or what it was intended for. Most seem to have preconceived notions about the interface.

 

Because you don't see changes in these test branches doesn't mean MS is not listening to the feed back. They have been pretty quiet on the start screen front tho,

I agree that just because changes are not seen does not mean that they have not been made. However, my Windows Uservoice suggestions are ignored. My e-mail messages are ignored. And by ignored I do not mean that my suggestions are dismissed with some typical corporate response, but that they are not even responded to. I know that I am not representative of the Windows community as a whole, but I don't think that the company should ignore feedback even if it is not what it wants to hear; in some cases that can be the most important type of feedback.

Dare I say that I think the previous Windows team was more responsive to feedback during development of Windows 8? At least some of them responded directly to messages and also explained their rationale for changing or removing features. While I am thinking about it the development of that OS seemed to be more transparent as well, with entire blog posts dedicated to consumer-oriented features and technical aspects. There are, of course, blog posts pertaining to Windows 10, but they do not go into the same level of detail.

[PGHammer]

 

It's not really all that hard to figure out, but I'll try to help.

 

Preview or not, most people who have been into these things for a while, pretty much know what they want. And I can assure you, in no uncertain terms that the current start menu, for oh so many of us, is certainly not it.

 

Therefore, to properly test 10's usefulness we need to ensure that available fixes can still fix the mess that microsoft is pushing out. I am happy to state that at least for me, most of the annoyances are fixable. And make no mistake, the inability to fix their disastrous start menu, would be an absolute deal breaker.

 

Hope that helps.....

 

Rickkins - given their druthers, most users won't move. They get fat, lazy, and utterly complacent. And when the economy is in poor condition, the ease of staying where you are becomes easier - not spending money (on either hardware or software) becomes a checkbox item. If they need capability that their current hardware doesn't have, instead of replacing that hardware, they augment it (with a tablet/smartphone/phablet) - it costs way less than a new computer (in the cases of tablets/phablets/smartphones, it can cost less than a one-seat license for Microsoft Office). That is something Microsoft faces with every new version of Windows - despite the changes in hardware capabilities, and even the vast widening of the hardware range, Windows 10 won't change that basic argument one bit.

The ODMs/hardware partners want to sell new hardware - they have bottom lines they have to meet as well; that applies to both entirely new desktops/portables/tablets/etc. and components that upgrade existing desktops/portables/etc. They have to deal with that same comfortable and complacent consumer - how do you get them to buy something they would rather NOT buy?

Then there are consumers that want greater computer capabilities, but are not necessarily looking to completely replace their entire computer. They aren't complacent, but they aren't spendthrifts, either. This is the upgrader community in a nutshell.

One problem Windows 8.x faced was that it was being sold into a poor economy. (As I said earlier, not spending - either at all or as much - is a lot easier decision to make when the economy is poor.) It also did Windows 8.x no good when a lot of click-bait FUD articles appeared that criticized Windows 8 for actually supporting touch-screen hardware - even though such hardware began appearing with Windows 7. (I'm actually tempted to call such articles the equivalent of slander - if you did even window-shopping for computes during 7's launch, you doubtless saw touch-screen desktops and portables out on the display area. If such hardware was, in fact, out there with Windows 7, why WOULDN'T Windows 8 support that same hardware?)

And speaking of click-bait articles, commentaries, etc., I'm going after one such attempted conclusion right now - the assumption that "touch-first" means "touch-only". It's untrue - definitively - and it's surprisingly easy to prove. How many of you have any experience with running Android either in a VM or an emulator? (Any emulator will, in fact, do - same applies to VM platforms.) Emulators don't support touch at all. (None - that includes Hyper-V.) Yet you can run Android in Hyper-V - or VirtualBox - or VMware. (Of course, you can also run Android in purpose-built Android emulators for Windows - such as DuOS, BlueStacks, etc.) Out of the purpose-built emulators, only BlueStacks supports touch-screens - yet it works just fine without one. (I have BlueStacks installed on all my non-server Windows partitions - and I don't have a touch-screen display.) Then there is Word "for touch" - at this point, it's more Word Lite. How I can draw that conclusion at this point is rather easy - as has been pointed out elsewhere, it's available from the Windows Store, at a cost of none. It installs just fine on any Windows PC with access to the Store - 8 or later. It even installs on PCs that lack touch-screens - or have an existing version of Office - in other words, there are no prerequisites other than the Windows Store. I have thus been able to compare it to the "real" Word heads-up, in both touch AND non-touch environments. (On my PC, it faces off against Word 2016 Preview x64 - on mom's Pavilion touch-screen running 8.1, it faces off against Word 2013 x64 .) Word for touch works without touch - though it lacks the Ribbon of big-brother Word 20xx or even Wordpad. However, the mere fact that it supports touch separates it from Wordpad - which doesn't support touch. Word itself has supported touch since Office 2013 - Office 2013 can be installed via touch-screen - by default; in other words, the installer itself supports it. Word's Ribbon supports touch (as of 2013), so what updates does Word itself need to support touch? However, Wordpad doesn't support touch - it also does not support a new document format that Word 2016 will introduce (the new format is, like the .docx format introduced with Word 2010, optional - Word .doc formats from 97 to now, which WordPad supports, are still available via Save As - same applies to RTF formats). Hence WfT being a WordPad killer - not a Word wounder. (If anything, I would rather Microsoft eventually call it WordPad 6.0, if not Word Lite 2016 - and have it auto-update from the Store - as Skype Modern does today.) "First" still doesn't mean "only" - not for touch, and not for pointing devices, either; stop deliberately attempting to conflate the two.

[The_Observer]

surface pro 3 user here, installed and updated to lastest version, mmmm while i am looking forward to it, it wasnt ready for surface pro 3. Am looking forward to seeing it action.

[Rickkins]

@PGHammer

 

You make some valid points. Personally, I love "new and improved" stuff, even if it rarely is. 

 

I can even take, in limited context, change for change sake. My bug-a-boo, is it had better be at least as good as what it replaced. For me, personally, the entire metro system fails this basic but essential test.

 

I've been in since 3.1.

I even liked winMe, never ever had any probs with it and found it a satisfactory upgrade from '98.

 

I skipped over Vista completely, and mostly liked 7 when it came out, with a couple slight modifications. In a nutshell, I returned the windows XP takbar to its place, dumping the win7 taskbar. The moving of the "show desktop" was just one annoyance. After being to the left hand side for so long, for no apparent reason. Made no sense to me, and in no way could any reasonable see it as "better", or even as good.(although I'll never forget one guys, telling me how he could, and I quote "fly his mouse down to the corner and Bam, there he was"). Still gives me a chuckle.

 

And here we are today. I do actually understand the desire to compete in the mobile arena. I would even not be surprised to learn that as a mobile os metro is not bad.

 

However, their continued insistance on trying to cram metro into the desktop, regardless of how many people despise it, means that for sure, these people, like myself, will never ever own a windows mobile device, even if only to protest over the whole metro on the desktop nonsense.

 

[PGHammer]

 

@PGHammer

 

You make some valid points. Personally, I love "new and improved" stuff, even if it rarely is. 

 

I can even take, in limited context, change for change sake. My bug-a-boo, is it had better be at least as good as what it replaced. For me, personally, the entire metro system fails this basic but essential test.

 

I've been in since 3.1.

I even liked winMe, never ever had any probs with it and found it a satisfactory upgrade from '98.

 

I skipped over Vista completely, and mostly liked 7 when it came out, with a couple slight modifications. In a nutshell, I returned the windows XP takbar to its place, dumping the win7 taskbar. The moving of the "show desktop" was just one annoyance. After being to the left hand side for so long, for no apparent reason. Made no sense to me, and in no way could any reasonable see it as "better", or even as good.(although I'll never forget one guys, telling me how he could, and I quote "fly his mouse down to the corner and Bam, there he was"). Still gives me a chuckle.

 

And here we are today. I do actually understand the desire to compete in the mobile arena. I would even not be surprised to learn that as a mobile os metro is not bad.

 

However, their continued insistance on trying to cram metro into the desktop, regardless of how many people despise it, means that for sure, these people, like myself, will never ever own a windows mobile device, even if only to protest over the whole metro on the desktop nonsense.

 

 

I loathed ME (security issues) - instead, at home, I migrated to Windows 2000 Professional - the first NT OS I could actually game on.  (While Fury3 actually worked on NT - back to NT 3.5, in fact - that was not true of many games, and especially DirectX -based games.)

 

I migrated to Vista at launch (but then, I actually had a proper GPU; therefore, I didn't get bit with the issues that plagued Intel's integrated graphics).

 

I would migrate to 7 (and then to 8) for the same reasons that I migrated originally to Vista - it let me do more, with the same hardware.  Windows 8 banished the Start menu - however, once it left, I found that my workflow was NOT as dependent on it as I thought it would be (despite my using a keyboard and a mouse).  That IS one key difference (in fact, the ONLY difference) between myself and most of the detractors - I'm not pointing-device-driven.

 

Rickkins - look at the one thing you all have in common besides no smartphones (at least no Windows Phone or Windows Mobile (the predecessor) devices) - how many of you also don't have portable PCs (I'm not talking 2-in-1s, but even legacy laptops and notebooks)?  If you don't have even a laptop or notebook, you are NOT likely to have any appreciation for smaller screens.  (You also likely have no idea what travails those same laptop and notebook users go through because their trackpads/touchpads have driver woes.)

 

It is the legacy notebook (HP dv9700) that sees the most Modern app usage - and entirely due to the smaller screen size; I've been rather honest and up front about that.  That is where portable form-factors (tablets, smartphones, and even laptops and notebooks) come together - none of those are desktop-formfactor devices.  One problem with desktop software on ALL of them is that it doesn't scale DOWN to deal with smaller screen real estate - literally the mirror image of the "Modern app problem".  That is why I call it a perception problem - until I got a notebook myself, I had no idea what even notebook owners went through first-hand.  (Hearing about it is NOT experiencing it.)  However, isn't it also true that most of you see notebook usage as - literally - the last resort?

[Rickkins]

I loathed ME (security issues) - instead, at home, I migrated to Windows 2000 Professional - the first NT OS I could actually game on.  (While Fury3 actually worked on NT - back to NT 3.5, in fact - that was not true of many games, and especially DirectX -based games.)

 

I migrated to Vista at launch (but then, I actually had a proper GPU; therefore, I didn't get bit with the issues that plagued Intel's integrated graphics).

 

I would migrate to 7 (and then to 8) for the same reasons that I migrated originally to Vista - it let me do more, with the same hardware.  Windows 8 banished the Start menu - however, once it left, I found that my workflow was NOT as dependent on it as I thought it would be (despite my using a keyboard and a mouse).  That IS one key difference (in fact, the ONLY difference) between myself and most of the detractors - I'm not pointing-device-driven.

 

Rickkins - look at the one thing you all have in common besides no smartphones (at least no Windows Phone or Windows Mobile (the predecessor) devices) - how many of you also don't have portable PCs (I'm not talking 2-in-1s, but even legacy laptops and notebooks)?  If you don't have even a laptop or notebook, you are NOT likely to have any appreciation for smaller screens.  (You also likely have no idea what travails those same laptop and notebook users go through because their trackpads/touchpads have driver woes.)

 

It is the legacy notebook (HP dv9700) that sees the most Modern app usage - and entirely due to the smaller screen size; I've been rather honest and up front about that.  That is where portable form-factors (tablets, smartphones, and even laptops and notebooks) come together - none of those are desktop-formfactor devices.  One problem with desktop software on ALL of them is that it doesn't scale DOWN to deal with smaller screen real estate - literally the mirror image of the "Modern app problem".  That is why I call it a perception problem - until I got a notebook myself, I had no idea what even notebook owners went through first-hand.  (Hearing about it is NOT experiencing it.)  However, isn't it also true that most of you see notebook usage as - literally - the last resort?

I got a 17" laptop(notebook..??) Some HP thing, came with 8 on it. I promptly did all my little mods to make is as 7ish as possible, and I'm fine with it.

 

That said, about the only thing I really use it for, is as my portable jukebox, with 94gigs of mostly classic rock which I plug into the logitech z-2200 I keep as my deck sound system... sippin' on an ice cold beer....

[chrisj1968]

You're never going to get full parity. In the transition to Modern applications, features are going to be deprecated and removed or in the case of scalability, features that are just not feasible in Modern applications.

Also, what you just described, is what Microsoft is working towards, and has achieved with Windows 10. Right now, when you download a modern application from the Store, it's the same application on the desktop, tablet, and phone. Not 3 different ones. Office, for example, has achieved universal status.  

 

my understanding was the code base was supposed to be the same hence, playing your xbox games across numerous platforms. I think that's what is being said with the outlook scenario

[PGHammer]

I got a 17" laptop(notebook..??) Some HP thing, came with 8 on it. I promptly did all my little mods to make is as 7ish as possible, and I'm fine with it.

 

That said, about the only thing I really use it for, is as my portable jukebox, with 94gigs of mostly classic rock which I plug into the logitech z-2200 I keep as my deck sound system... sippin' on an ice cold beer....

What do you use for a pointing device on it, Rickkins?  If you are like all too may folks, you use an external mouse.  That, in fact, leads to the Ultimate Non-Trick Question - why the heck are you using an external mouse with a laptop or notebook that includes a touchpad or trackpad?

 

The reason I call it the Ultimate Non-Trick Question is - before I got this particular notebook, I saw notebook and laptop owners unpack external mice whenever they went "mobile" - and that was despite the built-in touchpad or trackpad.  Then along came the second (not first) Windows 10 Technical Preview - which was the first build my then-new-to-me notebook saw.  Surprise - the trackpad was not only properly detected, but I no longer needed an external mouse at all.  THAT is why I promptly hit the ceiling.

 

Said notebook originally came from HP with Windows Vista.

 

One of the BIGGEST complaints about Windows on both notebooks and laptops alike was the absolutely sorry state of touchpad and trackpad drivers. (Hence all those external mice.)  Along comes the January Technical Preview, and the trackpads and touchpads on notebooks and laptops are actually usable!  Usable touchpads and trackpads means less to unpack when mobile - less space that you need while mobile - in other words, greater MOBILITY while mobile.  All I need is a place to plug in and be in range of a free hotspot - that's it.  (If said notebook is fully charged, all I need is the latter.)

 

The used-to-run Windows Vista legacy notebook is now a Lean and Friendly Mobile Computing Machine.  It's fully compatible with Microsoft Office (from 2010 to 2016), which means I can write (or edit) on the move.  Because the trackpad is fully usable, I don't need an external mouse.  Something on YouTube catch my peepers - I'm ready for it.  Need a game fix?  As long as my notebook is capable (and the game itself is SFW), so am I.  The notebook in question is 1440x900 resolution-wise (larger than 1280x720, but smaller than 1680x1050) - this odd resolution is not a good fit for a LOT of desktop applications - however, it's practically right in Modern's wheelhouse (in fact, it's at the upper end of the ModernUI sweetspot).That is why I call it the mirror of the "Modern scaling problem"  - while most Modern apps don't scale up to 1920x1080 all that well, most desktop software (including a lot of browsers - Chrome, oddly enough, is a major offender), don't scale down to 1440x900 or smaller.  On that same notebook, I'm more likely to run Word Lite (AKA Word for Touch) as opposed to full-tilt Word 2016 (the scaling problem common to notebooks rears its head again).  It's STILL "horses for courses" - which is something I've been saying about Modern all along.  That is, in fact, why I'm all the more mystified that nobody (except folks like Dot, DConnell, myself, and others that have actually used portables for - well - portable computing) ever considered Modern in that context, considering how long merely laptops and notebooks have been around.

[chrisj1968]

@PGHammer, I think the implementation of Windows with touchscreens and with mice are the problem. I shy away from OEM's that I have no idea about. This is the 5th or 6th Toshiba I've owned and out of the box, there are no issues with drivers because they (Toshiba) use quality parts in the Qosmio line and ensure the system is failure free upon shipment.

 

I'm running something @ 1920x1080. I dropped Windows 10TP because games were locking up my system and I migrated my photos and files I needed to a USB drive. I'm back to 8.1 but the OEM disks have all the proper drivers installed, the system is 100%. When Windows 10 releases, I'll upgrade to Windows 10 as I'm sure then Toshiba will offer drivers I need for all my devices. I'll have to hope and depend you guys can send the feedback needed to get us what we want.

 

best wishes and regards,

Chris

[AtomR]

Installed on Dual-Boot with W8.1, No Problems so far. 

[Rickkins]

@PG If I'm just on the deck listening to tunes, I don't bother with the external moose. If I'm using the laptop because my main machine is down for whatever, I use the cordless moose....

[PGHammer]

@PG If I'm just on the deck listening to tunes, I don't bother with the external moose. If I'm using the laptop because my main machine is down for whatever, I use the cordless moose....

It's still NOT the trackpad or touchpad that came with it - and as I said earlier, I DO get why; for some rather odd reason, despite how long they have been around, trackpad/touchpad support - in every version of Windows pre-8 - simply is NOT as good as support for mice. And it's the very fact that Windows 10 (in Technical Preview form) got trackpad support nailed right off that had me hit the ceiling. It's one thing when we are talking new hardware - however, it's quite another for Windows to have CONSISTENTLY flunked trackpads - let alone touchpads - which have been around literally since the first true laptops (as opposed to luggables). I'm not blaming a single trackpad/touchpad ODM, either - even Synaptics (who supplies Toshiba, HP, and other manufacturers of laptops) shares part of the blame - as does Microsoft, and as do even users. (How are users part of the problem? Simple - they didn't complain loudly enough.) In fact, the trackpad/touchpad problem is one reason why I STILL call Windows, to an extent, a hardware laggard. (It's not as large a laggard as Linux distributions or OS X - however, it still lags the hardware base more than it should.)

[PGHammer]

@PGHammer, I think the implementation of Windows with touchscreens and with mice are the problem. I shy away from OEM's that I have no idea about. This is the 5th or 6th Toshiba I've owned and out of the box, there are no issues with drivers because they (Toshiba) use quality parts in the Qosmio line and ensure the system is failure free upon shipment.

 

I'm running something @ 1920x1080. I dropped Windows 10TP because games were locking up my system and I migrated my photos and files I needed to a USB drive. I'm back to 8.1 but the OEM disks have all the proper drivers installed, the system is 100%. When Windows 10 releases, I'll upgrade to Windows 10 as I'm sure then Toshiba will offer drivers I need for all my devices. I'll have to hope and depend you guys can send the feedback needed to get us what we want.

 

best wishes and regards,

Chris

chrisj - I ALSO tend to shy away from (and have never recommended) "brand X" hardware; in fact, I build my own desktops. It's not easy to BYO portable, and you have to jump through quite a few more hoops (and pay a far larger price) to do so - which is why I stick to known-brand laptops - such as HP, Dell, and Toshiba. However, even Toshiba has been known to make a few lemons - despite laptops being their only business (at least in North America) - though they HAVE been in their Satellite (value) end of things. Then there very much IS the issue of cost/price - how much MORE do you pay for a Qosimo compared to a similar-spec Satellite?

Is the Qosimo driven by a DX12-ready (though mobile) GPU? That seems to be a particularly tetchy issue right now for both AMD and NVidia alike - said issue has, in fact, forced me to stall on upgrading my GTX550Ti (which works fine in all flavors of Windows I'm running, using the same drivers across the board). However, I'm putting this out as a general question - didn't both companies have issues with their early Windows 8-specific drivers during the days of the Developer Preview? (The issues DID in fact get solved - with the Consumer Preview.) Driver issues with pre-production OSes aren't surprising - it's happened before, and with Windows. That is also why I was surprised that the Technical Previews have had stellar support for my trackpad - which is where Windows has traditionally had issues.

[Rickkins]

Like I said, I do use the touchpad for some things, like sitting on the deck listening to tunes.

 

But, trying to do actual work of any kind with just the touchpad... just seems kinda clunky to me. Maybe some are better than others, I dunno. But the whole thing is rather limiting, imho...

[PGHammer]

Like I said, I do use the touchpad for some things, like sitting on the deck listening to tunes.

 

But, trying to do actual work of any kind with just the touchpad... just seems kinda clunky to me. Maybe some are better than others, I dunno. But the whole thing is rather limiting, imho...

Rickkins - that is my complaint; in fact, MOST trackpads have been limited.  As I said before, I can understand new (especially BRAND new) hardware having "teething" issues - however, that shouldn't be applicable to hardware that's been standard across the board for several versions of the same OS.

 

And the reality that the January Technical Preview got trackpad support mouse-smooth (which no previous version of Windows - beta or otherwise - ever did) has med wondering what ELSE in terms of existing hardware support has been hobbled.

[PGHammer]

I haven't had ANY issues with Spotify in the Technical Preview - in any build (including the leaks).  And I have two installs of 10041 - Pro on one partition and Enterprise on another.  When I said no problem applications, I meant it.

 

If the problematical game launcher can be fixed, then 10 will have completed the Usability Gauntlet.

[PGHammer]

It's not an improvement. As a user I'd rather have to spend 5 minutes to install adobe reader off the web than use the load of crap that is the default metro app. Hell, even IE can open PDFs, would still work better than a full-screen app (when you read a pdf you don't  necessarily read it in a vaccuum, you wanna do other things as well like check other pdfs). Same goes for xbox music; people don't normally turn on their computer just to listen to music. full screen programs were a horrible idea for both uses

You CAN read other PDFs, as Microsoft Reader supports multiple instances of itself - in 8.x no less. (This is something I've always done, because, except for known problematical PDFs - fill-in forms in particular - Microsoft Reader is now my preferred PDF reader. Further, you can run Microsoft Reader in a window (without ModernMix) - both were fixes in updates to Reader itself since 8. As far as music goes, I use VLC Win64 on my desktop because it can run windowed; however, I use Xbox Music on my legacy notebook (smaller screen by far than my desktop).

[birdie]

I really don't understand what happened to design in general.

 

I don't understand why every website and application in 2015 tries to have four colors at most, nothing to indicate clickable elements, nothing to hint at controls as opposed to text and titles.

 

Windows 10 looks and feels horrible. It's beyond horrible.

 

There's nothing modern about it. It's just ugly. There's no style of finesse or anything warm and fuzzy. They even repainted a lot of icons and turned them into some Windows 3.1 era faeces.

 

Windows 7 will last even longer than Windows XP has already had. Windows 10 promises to become yet another fiasco for Microsoft. In many ways it's even worse than Windows 8/8.1, 'cause the previous Windows at least had some distinction between desktop and Metro. In Windows 10 everything is huddled together into one big mess.

[PGHammer]

Rickkins - the question is not just HOW it fails (according to the critics), but WHY it fails.  For the vast majority of the critics, it failed simply because it changed - period.  That points to complacency/familiarity over change.  A change was simply unacceptable at all. How do you get past that?

birdie - in other words, the only acceptable move is to stay put?

[Squuiid]

Windows 7 will last even longer than Windows XP has already had. Windows 10 promises to become yet another fiasco for Microsoft. In many ways it's even worse than Windows 8/8.1, 'cause the previous Windows at least had some distinction between desktop and Metro. In Windows 10 everything is huddled together into one big mess.

+1. Very well said, couldn't agree with you more. It really does feel like a hybrid mess. The new Start menu is an abomination IMO.

[Dashel]

I love the updated Start Menu, its really starting to hit on all cylinders for me.  Good job MS!

[Rickkins]

Rickkins - the question is not just HOW it fails (according to the critics), but WHY it fails.  For the vast majority of the critics, it failed simply because it changed - period.  That points to complacency/familiarity over change.  A change was simply unacceptable at all. How do you get past that?

birdie - in other words, the only acceptable move is to stay put?

Nothing wrong with change, and for the most part, change can be a good thing.

 

However, not all change is good, or welcome, or even well considered. And THAT is what happened with 8/8.1, and now looks to spill over into 10.

Metro, I'm sure, is all well and fine on touch devices, but should never have been even considered to supplant the regular desktop. It was instituted with zero regard to the Billion plus desktop users worldwide, and THAT is WHY it failed so spectacularly.

 

Sadly, it is quite clear to anyone with an objective eye, that the poindexters at microsoft have learned exactly nothing from the whole 8/8.1 metro disaster.

Instead of doing what they at least alluded to, they have merely tried to sneak metro into the desktop, all the while telling us they were fixing the desktop. I doubt that many people, on either side, see the metrofication of the desktop as "fixing the desktop".

Man, I was so hoping for better.