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    Windows 8

    Anyone had a go on the preview yet? Or the developer edition that preceded it?

    The idea of an OS that can effortlessly switch between tablet and desktop is good; whether this succeeds I've no idea.

    But I think it's interesting that Microsoft is attempting something new here — the desktop GUI metaphor hasn't changed significantly since Xerox Parc in the early 70s.

    #2
    Windows 8

    Apple's bringing over some things from iOS to the new Mac OS, aren't they?

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      #3
      Windows 8

      Incandenza wrote:
      Apple's bringing over some things from iOS to the new Mac OS, aren't they?
      Yes. And I've read reviews from several people who aren't happy about it.

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        #4
        Windows 8

        I have no experience at all with Macs, so I don't really know if people don't like the new features at all, or don't think they're a good fit on a desktop. My gut reaction is that I want to use a tablet and a desktop for different things, so having the same sort of interface on both doesn't appeal to me all that much.

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          #5
          Windows 8



          So, I've been playing around with this a bit; there's a lot to like about Windows 8, but also a lot of things that really leave me scratching my head. I installed the consumer preview on a VirtualBox virtual machine, so I can't realistically judge its performance (although it runs fairly well).

          The surprising thing was how much I liked Metro, having been quite sceptical about it. The minimalist graphics and focus on typography is rather nice, as opposed to the never-ending advance of shadows and gradients. I rather enjoyed its lack of clutter and visual consistency. The animations were good and I particularly liked the Metro email client. On a tablet, I think Metro would work very well (which seems to be the consensus among many pundits).

          My issue with Metro is its usefulness on normal PCs. Because, on a 686 PC, you get a combination of Metro and an OS reminiscent of Vista/Windows 7. But while Metro is probably great with fingers, it's not as good with a mouse and works even less well with a trackpad. And it seems as if you can't turn it off.

          As an example, I thought I'd bring up Paint (there's not much software on the beta). The OS had booted up in Metro and I'd switched to the desktop. But to search you have to go back into Metro and when you've found your program, you're back on the desktop again. The Start button has gone, so you don't have that option any more.

          There's also no idea of how something like MS Office would function in touch mode.

          So, I'm sure Metro would be popular on tablets and I can imagine this version could be useful on laptops-with-touchscreens that could convert into tablets. But I really can't see why the average Windows 7 user, using a desktop or laptop, would want to upgrade to 8.

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            #6
            Windows 8

            The OS had booted up in Metro and I'd switched to the desktop. But to search you have to go back into Metro and when you've found your program, you're back on the desktop again. The Start button has gone, so you don't have that option any more.
            That is pretty useless indeed if you don't have a tablet.

            Windows 7 it is then.

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              #7
              Windows 8

              I guess we need to remember this isn't the final release. But yes, if you're using it as a desktop PC, then Metro — as much as I like it — is just a superfluous annoying layer and a completely different visual metaphor.

              If you could switch to desktop mode (or boot into it) and simply stay there, I think it would be much better. (Although this would essentially be Windows 7 SP2.)

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                #8
                Windows 8

                I had my first run in with Windows 8 on my Dutch friend's new laptop. Like me, he's been using Windows since Windows '95.

                He bought a new laptop in Germany which has the German Windows 8 on it. I visited his house and he showed me his new laptop. When he showed it to me it awoke from sleep mode. "It was in sleep mode because I haven't figured out how to turn it off yet," he added.

                So we spent 25 minutes trying to figure out how to shut the thing down. We figured out that by typing commands into the metro interface that we could get it to do things for us. So we discovered that we could get to the Desktop by typing "Desktop" and then the option to get to the Desktop would come up. Then we discovered that the Start Menu was gone. The Metro thing is now the Start Menu. There is no button to get back to it, but if you put the mouse where the Start Menu used to be, a pop-up thing appears.

                And yet we still hadn't figured out how to shut the thing down. As it is German Windows, it didn't understand when we typed "Shut Down". We tried "Aufschliessen", "Aus" and "Raus!" but got nowhere. The irony here is that Windows is trying to develop and intuitive touch interface and we are reverting to 1980s MS-DOS style typing of random commands and hoping to type something the computer understands.

                Eventually, after clicking all over the screen, we discovered a really, really tiny dashed line in the bottom right of the screen. Then a menu pops up from the side. On that there is an icon for settings. Shut Down is there. Or "Herunterfahren" as it is known in German, apparently.

                I notice now that if you type "Shut Down" into Google search that the first predictive search suggestion is "Shut Down Windows 8". Nice work, Microsoft.

                Thankfully he has a copy of Windows 7 lying around and I will help him reformat the computer. I can see why this Metro interface is handy for touch enabled computers (but even then, how am I supposed to know where stuff is hidden), but for laptops there is really no point in having it enabled. I'm sure we'll be seeing Windows 8 SP1 which has the option to totally disable all the Metro stuff for non-touch PCs and bring back the Start Menu.

                Comment


                  #9
                  Windows 8

                  I don't disagree with that--there's a certain lack of discoverability in Windows 8 (the usual answer is to point at a corner or edge of the screen). On the release candidate, working out how to shut the thing down was certainly a pain.

                  I won't miss the Start button though. Once you've used the search-based function in Vista, Win7 or OS X (or many Linux distributions for that matter), it's a pain to go back again. (I'm still using Win XP at my work.).

                  Digging around hierarchical menus is a relic of the 90s really.

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                    #10
                    Windows 8

                    Hmm, yeah, I often use the search function in Windows 7. But like I explained above, German Windows did not understand English. Then with the Start Menu I can at least follow the tried and trusted icons to get where I need to go - but it's gone.

                    You have to ask yourself why all language versions aren't included in the same copy of Windows, with changing the language being as simple as changing the wallpaper. It can't be that difficult, surely. And it's not a question of disk space, because we're talking about plain text here.

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                      #11
                      Windows 8

                      Bryaniek wrote: You have to ask yourself why all language versions aren't included in the same copy of Windows, with changing the language being as simple as changing the wallpaper. It can't be that difficult, surely. And it's not a question of disk space, because we're talking about plain text here.
                      I think the most expensive version of Windows does, but I imagine the demand for this feature is a very small segment of the market.

                      What would be nice is keys that change when you change the keyboard language.

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                        #12
                        Windows 8

                        Why the buggering bollocks can I not have a clock visible on the screen all the time?

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                          #13
                          Windows 8

                          What's wrong with the one in the bottom-right of the screen?

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                            #14
                            Windows 8

                            It isn't there.

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                              #15
                              Windows 8

                              My daughters got a laptop for Xmas with Windows 8 on it, and it certainly is different. Needless to say they took to it like ducks to water, though.

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                                #16
                                Windows 8

                                Rogin the Kitten Minder wrote: My daughters got a laptop for Xmas with Windows 8 on it, and it certainly is different. Needless to say they took to it like ducks to water, though.
                                I suspect that's the clincher. Us old people may bemoan the simple charms of days of yore but the kids are the ones who will use it like it's second nature. My not yet two year old already seems to be getting the hang of things...

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                                  #17
                                  Windows 8

                                  I wouldn't be at all surprised if Microsoft's key user testing is with a bunch of 12-year-olds.

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                                    #18
                                    Windows 8

                                    I got a new work lappy with an SSD, so I slung Win8 Enterprise on it.
                                    It boots up in about the same time as my Android tablet. Literally 5 seconds from power to desktop.
                                    I'm impressed.

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                                      #19
                                      Windows 8

                                      My wife got an ASUS Windows 8 touchscreen laptop last month. She couldn't do a thing with it until she spent a lunch with the regional Windows specialist, going through the new features. She says it's the best thing ever, but it would be shit on a normal laptop.

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                                        #20
                                        Windows 8

                                        Got Windows 8 this morning at work. I'm sure it's very nice, but what the fuck has happened to Firefox? Its interface is hideous, recalling the gloryu days of Windows 95.

                                        And how on earth do I reinstall my profile with all my bookmarks? The Mozilla help page hasn't realised that Windows 8 even exists.

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                                          #21
                                          Windows 8

                                          I'm pretty much still using Windows 3.1 and MSDOS 5.0. Hipster computing.

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                                            #22
                                            Windows 8

                                            TonTon wrote: Why the buggering bollocks can I not have a clock visible on the screen all the time?
                                            Have you been to taskbar properties? There's an option to show or hide the clock.

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                                              #23
                                              Windows 8

                                              G-Man wrote: Got Windows 8 this morning at work. I'm sure it's very nice, but what the fuck has happened to Firefox? Its interface is hideous, recalling the gloryu days of Windows 95.

                                              And how on earth do I reinstall my profile with all my bookmarks? The Mozilla help page hasn't realised that Windows 8 even exists.
                                              Blimey. I work for a supposedly cutting-edge software company and I'm still using XP. On an eight-year-old Dell.

                                              You should try using a bookmarks manager. I use X-Marks, which synchronises across Chrome and Firefox. Can't live without it really. That and Lastpass.

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