If W8 translates well to tablets and phones then that's great. I look forward to the day when we can at last have fully integrated portable and desktop devices. I just really dread having to use a desktop interface that loses a lot of what it had going for it because of an over zealous design department desperately trying to outdo Apple.

I'm running Win7 x64 and I've installed a start button simply because the Vista/7 program menu is rubbish and takes twice as long to find anything than the old tree structure of the XP start menu. When design is prioritised over practicality then it's a regression not an enhancement. I don't need a fancy looking OS on my desktop. When I get a tablet then let MS turn it into an avant garde conceptual art piece for all I care. I'll only use it for web surfing, email and mucking about with games and other recreational pastimes.

The win7 Start menu is helpful in some ways and helpless in others...but the fastest way to find a program in it is to start typing the program's name.

The problem with that is that sometimes you just want to browse the menu because you don't quite know what you want.

I'm just now looking at Win8 preview. My first thought is that all the keyboard shortcuts form Win7 to Windows 95 are really coming in handy.

Start button? Hmmm. All the Win 7 installations i've worked with have had a perfectly functional start button right out of the box. I didn't have to install one.

True, on my own workstations i've reverted back to the way-classic Win98se theme simply because it's uncluttered and wastes the least screen space of any of the interfaces. I don't need my OS GUI to look pretty. I need it to provide access to the computer's resources and then get out of the way. This is the concept that the Apple GUI completely misses, the "getting out of the way" part.

There is a start button in W7 that's true but it opens that new style menu which I find annoying for the reason rmack350 points out. Often I want to look through a list of the programs I've got installed rather than trying to remember the name and the tree menu really suits this way of searching.

I'm a big fan of simplifying graphical interfaces and I agree that Apple is over designed which might fit in well with a designer lifestyle but for practical purposes it gets in the way. The Apple and MS design approach now seems to be putting lots of trivialities (like web feeds in W8) on the desktop and hiding away all the important and useful things so that finding or doing anything takes a lot longer. I've watched a few W8 Metro video's and MS have managed to hide away programs (which they now call "apps") behind even more useless design fluff. At least there's still the option of switching Metro off.

On a more positive note the one thing I do like in W8 is the new "refresh" option which sets W8 back to default but doesn't affect any of the installed programs or files. If this works as advertised that'll be amazing. Anything that reduces the need to make huge and lengthy back ups of the OS is good. Although whether or not to trust this to be consistently reliable remains to be seen.

">>>Yea, I think the difference between Microsoft and Apple is that Apple optimizes OS X for desktop and iOS for mobile devices and Microsoft is using this "one size fits all" approach which, IMHO, isn't going to work. One size does not fit all. "

Interesting. I say QUITE the opposite. I think people will welcome the same OS system on as many of their devices as they can. Compatibility and simplicity are key functions which EVERYBODY looks for. You can't get much more compatible than running the same system on your desktop as on your tablet. I think it's a great idea which is going to give Apple a run for the money.

My first impression of Win8 and Metro is that, no surprise, this is a beta interface.

It doesn't kill me to use it, and it responds to some very standard Windows actions. Most useful so far:

Press the Windows "Start" button on the keyboard and Metro opens or closes. Or press Ctrl+Esc if you don't have that keyboard key. This is the quickest way into and out of Metro. (Once in Metro, simply pressing Escape gets you back out)

Can you get a hierarchical view of the Start Menu? Yes, kind of, and maybe better. There are a couple of ways to dig one layer down into Metro to see an "Apps" screen. This shows you the entire contents of the start menu in a full screen window, so you might say you get a bigger, fatter view of the start menu than you ever had before. But it doesn't look like a file tree, and you can't drag things around or create new folders. Nor can you collapse the groups. It shows you *everything*.

Meh. Maybe that'll change, maybe Metro will be more configurable. It's configurable now but if I ran the circus I'd staff a usability lab with 80 year olds and start tuning Metro from there.

If "intuitive" means "my first guess what to do will be right" then I think Metro is failing the intuitive test. But that can be fixed with better interface feedback or even tooltips. I'm sure designers hate the idea of tooltips but, again, that can be designed more intelligently (like ever increasing delays before you get a tooltip, and decreasing delays if you actually waited for the tooltip).

There are quirks. The Internet explorer that opens within Metro can't open my webmail site, but the I.E that opens from the taskbar can. And Metro doesn't quite know what to do with dual monitors yet. (For that matter, after waking Win8 from sleep, Win8 decided I only had one display. I think it woke up faster than the monitor.)

Vegas runs (without the FX dialogs crashing that I always see on this same computer under Win7). Adobe applications run. Libre Office runs.

I don't see Metro as an obstacle here.

That's good to know. Maybe it won't be too much of a change. One issue that concerns me is that using widgets has the potential to compromise privacy because you have to give permission to the developer to share information. If Metro is based on widgets doesn't that make it less secure? I stopped using any Win7 widgets because of this issue. I also don't use Chrome extensions for the same reason.

>>>>>Interesting. I say QUITE the opposite. I think people will welcome the same OS system on as many of their devices as they can. Compatibility and simplicity are key functions which EVERYBODY looks for. You can't get much more compatible than running the same system on your desktop as on your tablet. I think it's a great idea which is going to give Apple a run for the money.

That's what I'm talking about.

Hey Rmac350, have you checked out the new Windows Explorer and turned on the ribbon? I was loving that, couldn't of imagined that WExplorer could use this much improvement. Granted, it's never been perfect, but I was copying all kinds of stuff across the network to the W8 machine and the ribbon and new features really made it efficient. Not sure why but I thought back to the old DOS days and my old favorite file manager PC Tools. How long ago was that?

"I'd be shocked if there even is a Windows 9"My gosh, I hope there will be. Microsoft has developed a trend with their operating systems :-)

Windows ME = crap
Windows XP = good
Windows Vista = crap
Windows 7 = good

...Jerry

Windows Vista can be good if you spend the time disabling all the crap in it plus it will suck up all of your old applications like Grog where Win 7 will not.
JJK

Kinda like the Star Trek movies, except in reverse!

Although, contrary to popular opinion, personally i quite liked #9.

> I don't see Metro as an obstacle here.

rmack, I haven't tried Win8 yet but I've been disappointed to hear that one of my most favorite features of Win7 is no longer included. I love the ability to open the start dialog and start typing to find applications and services. For example, when I want to change my power settings, instead of navigating to the control panel, then to the power settings dialog I simply open Start, type "power" and select "Power Options" from the displayed list. I use variations of this frequently and can't understand why such a useful feature has been omitted.

/jerry

Actually, I didn't say that. If you have Metro open then all you have to do is start typing and it'll find these things. Same function as Win7 but with a different face. And you get to see more of what's in the start menu than Win7 can show you because Metro is full screen.

It's actually not bad once you figure out how to open and close metro, (and how to shut down the computer). Metro seems to use the data of the start menu and just display it differently. It'd help if it was clear in Metro that "feature X" was actually the same info as "feature X" in the older Start menu. It's not immediately apparent that the two are the same things. I count that as NOT intuitive.

Rob

Rob, I wasn't clear that I had heard that from other sources - not from your post. Your new information is encouraging. I look forward to at least trying Metro, but probably not until it is released this fall.

/jerry

Dach,

I agree. At first I was complaining but the more I've thought about it, SO LONG AS IT HAS A DESKTOP and can function much like the past then it's a great move.

First off, mfg's are already displaying prototypes of hybrid laptops. Acer had a video of one guy using a laptop and then suddently he grabs the screen and starts using it like a tablet. If mfg's can keep the horsepower while creating these hybrids, that's great. And if you're going to aim for compatibility, we have to all face the fact MS still owns the world and that aint gonna change even if MS puts out 15 bas Os's. the Business world is OWNED and there aint no escaping it. With that said, I like Windows and my buddy's windows phone is awsome. I'm looking forward to 8 now.

Jerry,

I would revise your assessment as follows. But you are on track!

Windows 3.0 - crap
Windows 3.1 - good
Windows 95 - kind of crappy (first release bugs)
Windows 98 - good
Windows ME - crap
XP - good
Vista - crap
7 - good

- Mark

"I would revise your assessment as follows. But you are on track!"Good upgrade! The trend continues.

I was using mostly OS/2 in the early Windows days.

...Jerry

Windows 3.1---excellent, most stable OS by Bill.
Windows 95---fair
Windows 2000---excellent, rock solid
Windows Vista Ultimate 64 bit---very good and very flexible regarding networking and accepting old software and old hardware.
Windows 7 32 bit---good but very picky and does not accept old hardware and old software. One out of 20 cold boots is missing something. Today it was the mouse.
JJK

PC World reviewed Windows 3.0 and listed the pros & cons.

Pro : nice solitaire game.
Cons : pretty much everything else besides the solitaire game.

Windows 2 was kinda interesting and almost useful, though it couldn't really be called a GUI. Windows 1 was so useless as to be beyond laughable.

I got to play with the Windows 8 Developer Preview which contains the Metro interface and unfortunately, it was a huge pain to deal with.

First, the computer boots up and I'm presented with a pretty background with the time on it. That's it. How do i logon? I right-click and nothing. I double-click and nothing. Oh I know it's that Alt-Crtl-Del dance from Windows server? nope... you have to swipe up the screen from the bottom to top with your mouse to get to the logon page! I realize this makes sense on a phone because it may push a button while in my pocket so "swipe to unlock" makes sense on that small device... unfortunately, my desktop is NOT in my pocket! There is no reason for this to even exist on a desktop computer. Hopefully this can be disabled because dragging a mouse the entire height on a 24" display is not my idea of a friendly interface. What was Microsoft thinking?

Second, there is no obvious way to return from invoking a Metro App (which are all fullscreen). No amount to clicking, or double-clicking, or right-clicking, or pressing ESC, or trying to swipe with my mouse, would get me out. I had to do a Google search on another computer to find out that the Windows Key switches you out of the App and back to Metro. Not obvious but I guess you can get use to it once you know it. After a while I realize that Alt-Tab brings up the familiar switch bar too. OK, so now I know how to switch around so I explore some more.

Then I tried reading a news feed using the News App and apparently Microsoft forgot that most people expect to scroll down to read long documents.... not the Windows 8 News App. Everything scrolls horizontally!!! So I have to mouse down to the bottom of the screen where a horizontal scroll bar appears and then move it to the left with my mouse to scroll right. This may work on a touch interface where you don't need a mouse, but on a desktop it is extremely inconvenient and incredibly awkward. Why this application doesn't scroll down (so I can use my mouse wheel) is a mystery.

Then I found the start button by moving my mouse all the way to the bottom left and I saw search and found Wordpad and thought, Wow le'me check out the Wordpad App thinking I would get a full-screen app experience... nope... it actually started the windows desktop and threw me into the old Wordpad. So they are breaking the user experience by sometimes clicking on a Metro App and getting an App and sometimes clicking on a Metro App and getting thrown into the old Windows Desktop. I know I've said this before but Microsoft really doesn't understanding how important the user experience is.

So in my short playing around, I came away with the impression that Metro is built for touch and does not translate well to a keyboard and mouse. It probably works great on a phone. Too bad my desktop is not a phone!

I was really looking at this with the home user in mind. That's why I was exploring the metro apps. You know the person that just want's to do their email and surf the web. (of course Windows 8 doesn't even come with a mail app but that's another problem...) Would Metro work for them? I really don't think it will because it's based on touch and you can't touch with the mouse except to click (no swiping). This is a big disability. Microsoft needs a gesture enabled touchpad or magic mouse like Apple has where you can swipe and gesture. Without that, the Metro interface is just very difficult to use. Then add to that the fact that sometimes you get an app and sometimes you get thrown into the desktop and it's just a mess of shifting paradigms.

The Good News:

You can whack on the Desktop App and forget that Metro ever existed but then, why on earth would you buy Windows 8? Just to use the Windows 7 desktop? (and how will the Windows 8 desktop perform as an App under Metro with another layer taking it further away from the hardware?)

I was hoping that Metro was going to be new and exiting but as soon as I saw scroll bars come up to do any navigating, I knew that Microsoft still doesn't "get it". IMHO, trying to use Metro with a mouse and keyboard simply doesn't work. If Windows 8 has nothing else to offer but Metro, I'd recommend sticking with Windows 7 and seeing what Windows 9 brings. As others have said, like Windows Vista and Windows Me before it, this might be one to avoid.

~jr