Windows 8 hater finally upgrading (me)

[zhangm Supervisor]

After the live tiles, application tiles (for non-Metro apps) are just hideous. This isn't an opinion. Microsoft straight up dropped the ball. There are hundreds or thousands of beautiful 256x256 PNG icons out there. OS X uses them. So, why can't Windows 8 grab one from somewhere and slap it on a tile with great contrast? Invert the icon's primary color, there's your tile color. Darken it a little, and throw a drop shadow on it. Maybe that's not your cup of tea, but hey, it's an improvement.

I think it has always been on the heads of third-party developers to maintain their own icons, and many of the Desktop-land icons are already ugly as sin before being slapped onto a tile. Things can get complicated if Microsoft steps in and replaces third-party icons, since that could be construed as messing around with a particular product's branding. That said, I think Microsoft should start treating these Desktop tiles in the same manner as shortcuts on the desktop, and let users change the icon easily, and with good support for many file formats.

Ultimately, Windows 8 suffers from design clash, as others have already said. Metro really needs to take a flying leap. The design language is atrocious, in my opinion. It just doesn't feel conductive to a desktop computer. Also, I really don't like this dynamic of Gmail address as Microsoft account name. On one hand, it's not that bad (and my wife's is a Yahoo account). I want to convert my Microsoft account to something like Outlook or Live, but the closest I can get is something like [email protected]@Outlook.com. WTF? And some cybersquatter has [email protected]

[dragontology]

 

I think it has always been on the heads of third-party developers to maintain their own icons, and many of the Desktop-land icons are already ugly as sin before being slapped onto a tile. Things can get complicated if Microsoft steps in and replaces third-party icons, since that could be construed as messing around with a particular product's branding. That said, I think Microsoft should start treating these Desktop tiles in the same manner as shortcuts on the desktop, and let users change the icon easily, and with good support for many file formats.

Sure, but I think most major applications have these icons. I used to play around with the various 'dock' apps, like RocketDock and the like. And if you added, say, Firefox, the icon would scale all the way up. Very few used 32x32 exclusively (at least, that I used) and for those it was easy to fix... Mainly, I'm just concerned with the look of the tile. Maybe it should be on the developer to design and package their own live tile, but does Windows 8 allow that? Are there third-party (non-Microsoft) apps that have tiles that look great? Or is it just the standard icon on that grey tile? That's my problem with it. And I think Microsoft could at least pick the primary color from the icon and color the tile accordingly.

 

Based on the details that you posted in your support topic, I'd say that this issue is due to a driver glitch, and is most likely to be resolved with an updated driver set from AMD. Not being a participant in the TP, I have no idea how frequently these updates are forthcoming, or whether AMD is currently handling driver support at all, but I think your best bet for seeing a fix (pre-RTM) is when the Consumer Preview is released.

True. I really need to see if I can track down an updated driver, though it's strange that the problem is restricted to explorer.exe (the file manager, Start menu, taskbar, and system tray) and this particular build.

[LimeMaster]

I don't complain about lack of glass and really never cared about it but if most users want it back they should at least be given the option natively, there was no legitimate reason to remove it.

Going by that logic the Luna theme should have been kept in Windows Vista.

[zhangm Supervisor]

Sure, but I think most major applications have these icons. I used to play around with the various 'dock' apps, like RocketDock and the like. And if you added, say, Firefox, the icon would scale all the way up. Very few used 32x32 exclusively (at least, that I used) and for those it was easy to fix... Mainly, I'm just concerned with the look of the tile. Maybe it should be on the developer to design and package their own live tile, but does Windows 8 allow that? Are there third-party (non-Microsoft) apps that have tiles that look great? Or is it just the standard icon on that grey tile? That's my problem with it. And I think Microsoft could at least pick the primary color from the icon and color the tile accordingly.

No, they don't pick particularly good tile colors in many cases. One particularly egregious one that I see right now is the Office 2013 version of Powerpoint. The orange of the icon is almost buried in the background of the tile. Now that you mention bundling tiles...well, Oblytile does allow custom tiles to be created. I figure if a developer were interested, they'd have their installer package drop a custom tile onto the Start screen using the same trick.

[Krome]

I think Microsoft tile is inspired by Star Trek computer OS but they attempt to go around the patten.  Microsoft's attempt seems to prove futile.  Star Trek style is more efficient and relevant.  If it is indeed an inspiration effort based on Star Trek OS computer, I think Microsoft failed very bad.

[Dot Matrix]

I think Microsoft tile is inspired by Star Trek computer OS but they attempt to go around the patten.  Microsoft's attempt seems to prove futile.  Star Trek style is more efficient and relevant.  If it is indeed an inspiration effort based on Star Trek OS computer, I think Microsoft failed very bad.

Metro or Modern is inspired by the numerous street signs and other iconography/typography you come across daily.

[BajiRav]

Wasting time because they want glass enabled? Nonsense.

 

I suppose users complaining that Office 2013 is too bright, white and they don't like using it and tend to use it less makes them more productive too? I mean that certainly doesn't waste time at all, right? It's also why Office 2015 is getting changed up with a dark theme too, right?

I guess you should tell them about the Dark gray theme in Office 2013.

 

My login screen locked out for 30 days was deciding factor. I tried so at least I am not a geezer afraid of change. I like fine touches. I feel this was an experimental release really.

If you forget your password, Windows 7 won't let you log in as well. This is a weird reason to switch an OS.

[count0nz]

I guess you should tell them about the Dark gray theme in Office 2013.

Capture.JPG

 

If you forget your password, Windows 7 won't let you log in as well. This is a weird reason to switch an OS.

Windows 8(8.1/10)you can reset you're password via outlook/hotmail etc.. pretty cool better than 7.

[sinetheo]

I guess you should tell them about the Dark gray theme in Office 2013.

Capture.JPG

 

If you forget your password, Windows 7 won't let you log in as well. This is a weird reason to switch an OS.

 

Well I DID IT!

 

I actually switched to Windows 8.1 5x time is the lucky charm.

 

After a hellish 2 weekends I found out the cause of my issues and it is strange. It was a bad SATA cable. I bought $380 worth of new SamSung Pro 850's thinking I had a bad disk after time #4 had major corruption issues. I re-installed WIndows 7 when I noticed it could not restart. Partition table gone??

 

THen I thought I had a bad disk as I re-installed Windows  7 again and this time it stalled at a different spot each time when uncompressing files??!

 

I need Hyper-V to pass my MS certifications. So it was time to jump. MY BSOD problems might be glass8 related but they finally went away with 1.3.1 and latest NVidia drivers. My only irritation besides me being used to the old look and feel was my beloved VMWare Workstation 11 I can use nested hyper-V installs of Server 2012. Hyper V is not accelerated, and can't do nested VM's so I need to host all images on 8.1 which I find weird. I can always go back to workstation but have to disable hyper-V at the host. ... strange I can not have both on the same host.

 

Windows 8.;1 has the best EFI support and I can finally turn off the buggy CSM compatibility mode and 3rd party USB 3 drivers that I required in Windows 7.

 

I miss the rounded corners and aero still. But I put the Windows 7 image as the background for now to adjust my transition. I need to learn new things as an IT professional.

 

However as an average Joe sorry neowinners but Windows Media Center and familiarity will win hands down.

[+Anarkii Subscriber²]

Well I DID IT!

 

I actually switched to Windows 8.1 5x time is the lucky charm.

 

After a hellish 2 weekends I found out the cause of my issues and it is strange. It was a bad SATA cable. I bought $380 worth of new SamSung Pro 850's thinking I had a bad disk after time #4 had major corruption issues. I re-installed WIndows 7 when I noticed it could not restart. Partition table gone??

 

THen I thought I had a bad disk as I re-installed Windows  7 again and this time it stalled at a different spot each time when uncompressing files??!

 

I need Hyper-V to pass my MS certifications. So it was time to jump. MY BSOD problems might be glass8 related but they finally went away with 1.3.1 and latest NVidia drivers. My only irritation besides me being used to the old look and feel was my beloved VMWare Workstation 11 I can use nested hyper-V installs of Server 2012. Hyper V is not accelerated, and can't do nested VM's so I need to host all images on 8.1 which I find weird. I can always go back to workstation but have to disable hyper-V at the host. ... strange I can not have both on the same host.

 

Windows 8.;1 has the best EFI support and I can finally turn off the buggy CSM compatibility mode and 3rd party USB 3 drivers that I required in Windows 7.

 

I miss the rounded corners and aero still. But I put the Windows 7 image as the background for now to adjust my transition. I need to learn new things as an IT professional.

 

However as an average Joe sorry neowinners but Windows Media Center and familiarity will win hands down.

It's a shame you 'upgraded' to Windows 8. I don't mean that as a insult or anything, but I have to say, Windows 8 is a downgrade to the whole Windows ecosystem. Vista is better than Windows 8. 

I would of actually suggested you download the Windows 10 10074 iso, and install that. It keeps the Windows 7 desktop, has aero glass with the task bar and start menu, and performs SOOOOOOO much better than Windows 8 could ever hope to perform. 

I am glad you figured out the SATA problem however. I would suggest that you try out Windows 10 10074, even if its in VM enviroment, im sure it would be more to your liking than Windows 8.

 

[+InsaneNutter MVC]

I need to learn new things as an IT professional.

 

However as an average Joe sorry neowinners but Windows Media Center and familiarity will win hands down.

 

Indeed very true, that's one of the reasons I finally switched to Windows 8 once 8.1 was released.

 

Windows 8 does have a much more useful task manager, explorer and better support for newer technologies.

 

You get used to working around things, for example I always right click the start button and sign out at work, or on my home machine right click and sleep. Plus you have a lot of the power user options on that menu too.

 

The charms bar and recent apps switcher can be disabled in 8.1, you can auto boot to the desktop and disable the lock screen, all without any 3rd party apps.

 

The start screen still looks like some horrible multicoloured rainbow once you start pinning desktop apps to it, however to be honest i've always used ObjectDock since the Vista days to have my most used apps and shortcuts on, so i've basically just not used the start screen at all.

 

Having used 8.1 since the public preview i'm certainly used to it, is it the best Windows OS to date? No. However I think Windows 10 is where it will all come together and old & new will work together a lot better.

 

Also still rocking Windows Media Center on the living room HTPC here with a Quad DVB-T2 tuner, as I use XBMC / Kodi on everything else and that now has PVR functionality i'll eventually move over to that given it can now replicate the TV features of Windows Media Center and the extender functions. It's just not as smooth a WMC at this point, however by 2019 or 2023 when 7 / 8 are now longer supported I expect Kodi will be much better than WMC for TV / PVR functionality.