Volitions Advocate on 13/1/2012 at 05:57
Just thought I'd see if anybody around here was trying it out or using it.
I decided to take the plunge completely. I backed up my data and installed it as my primary OS. The license expires on March 12 I believe, which only gives me another 2 months with it, but the Windows 8 beta should be out sometime before February is over if the internets are correct.
Thoughts? Complaints? Praise? Hacks? etc.... ?
At first I didn't like the idea of the Metro UI and all the post-PC crap that comes with it, but I think i've come around and found the genius of it. I have been debating with myself whether or not to buy a tablet lately. I'm not an iAnything fan, and while I'm enjoying my android phone. Honeycomb just doesn't do it for me, and I'm not sure I want to buy something tied to a platform that is so random and confusing depending on who releases hardware for it.
Looking at some of the windows 7 tablets (which are very few and far between it seems) I thought about how cool it would be to have a full fledged desktop platform on a tablet that matches what you use on your desktop or notebook. Since I'm in audio and audio research, having a tablet that can seamlessly link with my computer would be an asset for experiments and live performances, whether I'm on stage or the tech guy, so this has got me kind of excited.
Then there's the possibilities with kinect on your desktop. I got a kinect with my christmas card money this year and have been doing the minority report thing on my xbox, just thinking of the cool stuff that could be done on a desktop.
If you're screwing around with it. Let us know how its going.
Renzatic on 13/1/2012 at 20:37
I'm waiting on the beta before I take the plunge.
There is one thing I'm greatly skeptical about. Mainly this...
Quote:
At first I didn't like the idea of the Metro UI and all the post-PC crap that comes with it, but I think i've come around and found the genius of it.
I'm just not seeing it. The start menu has been a mainstay of Windows for almost 20 years now. To replace it with an interface better suited for tablets seems like such a hugely bad idea to me. MS is supposedly improving it for desktop usage, which gives me some hope. But as is? The tiles are too large, at least 64x64, and are all arrayed in a relatively small space in the center of the screen. That's a setup better suited for finger stabbing than mouse clicking, and ends up being a huge waste of space for an interface that should be built around the precision of a mouse. If you have a large number of programs installed, you'll have to scroll through three or four screens worth of overly large tiles just to find the one overly large tile you want.
To me, it seems like MS wants to shoehorn Metro into Windows just so they'll have a common interface amongst all their platforms. And while Metro is a great interface for tablets and phones, it doesn't work for the desktop.
So what do you like about it? What's better about it in contrast to the oldschool start menu?
wonderfield on 14/1/2012 at 04:48
I used Windows 8 exclusively for about six weeks before switching back to 7 for development purposes (the SDK is in a bit of a transitional period right now, making native development fairly complicated). 8 has some wins:
The ribbon interface in Explorer is much, much better than the traditional Explorer interface. I'm no particular fan of the ribbon, but it's extraordinarily good in this context. I miss it in Windows 7.
There's no more display mode change for UAC prompts to dim the desktop. Good thing.
The file transfer dialogue is both simpler and more functional, giving you more control and unifying all transfers. This beats multiple dialogues.
And misses:
Metro. Very nearly every damn bit of it. I'm not in any way against changes in user interfaces — even major paradigm shifts — but the numbers have to add up. It has to be a positive improvement in usability. Metro introduces a regression in usability for desktop usage. Great for touch, I'm sure, but bad for the desktop.
If they force Metro for non-touch-enabled devices, the level of backlash is going to be monstrous. If they don't, users are going to be spending a fair amount of money to upgrade, if history is any indication, for very little. Either way, I suspect Windows 8 will not be particularly well-received.
Volitions Advocate on 14/1/2012 at 05:42
As far as metro is concerned. I like the idea of how they are going to implement it. Microsoft is trying to catch up to the apple paradigm of the app store, zune has been pretty much a failure since the get go, at least in comparison.
They're going to have a set of standards for their metro apps, which should work across the platforms, (tablet, desktop, phone) that developers must meet in order to publish a metro app to the online store. Which would be a big improvement on the Android method which is... if you feel comfortable publishing it then go ahead. Which I suppose could be a negative depending on your viewpoint, but I have a Samsung Galaxy S Vibrant and the android marketplace is a schizophrenic mess. In recent months it has improved but there is still a great deal of crap on there that barely works or has the potential to brick your phone.
As it stands now in the dev preview, I agree with you guys. there are next to zero customization options and it is very clunky. I wish there was at least a way to click on an empty spot of the background and drag your way through it, but at least using the scroll wheel gives a nice effect. I'm looking forward to fully functional widgets that display all your feeds and subscriptions in fun and intuitive ways when you first start your computer. (right now i'm subscribed to XKCD which i thought was pretty awesome to have on my desktop every morning, its like having the paper delivered). I'm hoping that they develop the "user experience" part of the Metro UI quite a bit more, and I'm sure they will.
In the end you can just disable it anyway. It's one quick registry hack and its gone and you get the classic start menu from Windows 7. Hopefully they'll include an option in the control panel in the future.
It might not be as great for mouse, but its not terrible. and it will be quite handy for kinect, which I"m sure will become quite intuitive in the next couple of years. The latest Xbox 360 update is very close to Metro and it works really well for for the kinect. Not to mention you can give voice commands to kinect, so you should be able to do the same for the desktop. Not new, I know, but maybe it will be more intuitive. The commercial version of the Kinect for Windows SDK comes out in less than a month, and people are probably going to jump on it.
I guess I just like the duality it gives the computer. You can be a simple tablet/phone type user if you want, but the desktop is as powerful as ever and always one click away. And in either case you can use both simultaneously on the same screen if you've got the realestate.
I also didn't like the ribbon at first but I'm getting used to it. A recent discovery of disc image utilities built into the OS was a pleasant surprise. Click on an Iso and click "mount image" in the menu and you're done. No more Alcohol 120% or Virtual Clone Drive.
Volitions Advocate on 14/1/2012 at 05:45
oh.. Re: Pricing
I'm not holding my breath. But I found out that a digital upgrade from Snow Leopard to Lion is a whopping 40 bucks. I hope Microsoft takes this to heart, because I am sick of getting ripped off in that department.
Zerker on 14/1/2012 at 13:09
Quote Posted by Volitions Advocate
As it stands now in the dev preview, I agree with you guys. there are next to zero customization options and it is very clunky. I wish there was at least a way to click on an empty spot of the background and drag your way through it, but at least using the scroll wheel gives a nice effect.
Not everyone has a scroll wheel :mad:
Does it still have the embedded search? Can I just press "Start", start typing "Fire" and hit enter for Firefox?
Volitions Advocate on 14/1/2012 at 18:29
It's also quite intuitive on a notebook with a touch pad.
If you deactivate metro and use the classic start menu instead, then yes. the run / search function is there like normal.
I'm not going to say that you should "get with it" and get a mouse with a scroll wheel, because that's a stupid argument and I don't believe in it, but from a corporate point of view i'm sure MS would think that's a pretty weak argument. I don't see much of a reason to upgrade from 7 to 8 if you don't need the extra features anyway, so I doubt you'll miss out on much, except maybe the microsoft store, when its up and running. And we'll see at some point if the apps from there will be any good, but I'm optimistic.
Looking back I have to chuckle though. I remember when XP was released, everybody hated it and everyone was clutching to their precious W 2000 pro discs like they'd never have a decent OS again. Fast forward and it happened again with Vista (is still happening I should say) and I remember the hubbub over the loss of separate search and run functions.
It'll probably take awhile but at some point Windows 8 will probably turn out to be very useable for both power users and the tablet crowd.
I've been screwing around so much lately with a bunch of different linux distros and trying to build a hackintosh, but I've realized that in the end I always go back to windows for its reliability and ease of use. So anything that might finally consolidate my devices into a single system that works well is welcome.
Volitions Advocate on 14/1/2012 at 22:26
Like I said, I don't believe people should be required to have X peripheral. My mouse actually has a horizontal scroll wheel as well on it and the stupid thing does everything but scroll.
SubJeff on 15/1/2012 at 01:07
Quote Posted by Volitions Advocate
I thought about how cool it would be to have a full fledged desktop
platform on a tablet that matches what you use on your desktop or notebook.
'Tis an interesting prospect, to be sure. I have an Android phone and tablet and I do like the syncing of everything. Sure it syncs with the Google info on the PC but the tablet experience is quite different to that on the PC, even though I can do most (no game) things on it since I have a (free!) wireless mouse and keyboard. If Chrome OS was ever going to really take off and give me the same access to the productivity (read Office) stuff on the PC as well as play games, so long as it wasn't rubbish otherwise I'd probably go for that on my desktop.
What I've seen of Windows 8 seems pretty cool tbh. I hope they can integrate everything really well across PC, tablets and the phones. That would be something.
