Windows 8 Beta

[jzmtl]

To me it's just the continuous dumbing down of OS, not good for people who wants more than just use it as is.

It really isn't. Faster on same hardware as Win 7, loads of improvements all round. I've been using it as my primary OS for months. Disclaimer:I am MSFT.

Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

Improvement yes, that's not what I'm saying. newer OS increasingly isolate users from the basic operations, like apple's walled garden approach.

[GNandGS]

The tiles suck.  "."

They do not lend to multitasking and in a kb/mouse only UI it just gets in the way.  I can be waaaay more productive with widgets that provide all the same info without losing access to normal productivity apps.

This is solved easily for everybody with a simple "on/off" option for tiles*.  This would allow for the same OS or at least interface on nearly all platforms. 

* option may be there by now, too turned off to check

[Whoey]

Imho, this will only open the floodgates for third party dockbar/startmenu apps like stardock...

[mvyrmnd]

I find the tiles work nicely on my MacBook...

[Grant Lamontagne]

So what I'm seeing here is.... folks don't like it because it's different than before and it is the next step in isolating the user from the computer's functions?  Is that basically it?

Honestly I like the idea of having the same OS from phone to tablet to netbook to laptop to desktop, and I am glad someone is finally taking the step to make it happen.  Yes it might be a bit too underpowered for desktops/laptops right now, but think about what things will be like in 5 years time when all the kinks are worked out?  There are always going to be growing pains- in the beginning no one wanted to switch to XP.  People were upset because some of their peripherals wouldn't work with XP, and now people refuse to let XP go despite it being several generations out of date.

I liked XP- it was perhaps the best OS in my mind, but Vista wasn't as bad as people made it out to be.  I know, because it ran stably on my laptop for several years, although to be honest I had originally ordered my laptop with XP because of the things I'd heard about Vista.  When it started to get a bit bogged down after about 3-4 years I decided to do a clean sweep and install Win7 and to be honest, it's been quite good to me as well.

I think I'll wait a few months to get a new laptop (assuming this one doesn't die on me, although I have kind of been expecting it to for the last year or so) and probably get it with Win8, just for the heck of it.  If you are going to spend money on tech, might as well get the most advanced one you can...

Def

[derekmac]

I think I'll wait a few months to get a new laptop (assuming this one doesn't die on me, although I have kind of been expecting it to for the last year or so) and probably get it with Win8, just for the heck of it.  If you are going to spend money on tech, might as well get the most advanced one you can...

Def

Microsoft has an offer out now, that if you buy a new computer, you can upgrade to Windows 8 Pro for $14.99

http://windowsupgradeoffer.com/en-CA

My wife's laptop, and my PC at work has Windows 7 on it, and I can honestly say I'm fairly happy with it.  It doesn't happen too often that I can say I'm happy with something Microsoft related.

Apple pretty much has a cross platform OS with iOS, though as Heinz has said before, I really don't like some of the things they have done to it for the computer side of things.

[Grant Lamontagne]

Yes and no- it is a couple of different OS's designed to be complimentary, and that is different from having the same OS across all platforms.

And yes, I see the offers for the upgrade package but I don't want to buy a machine now and get it set up the way I want it to just start all over again in three or six months.  Screw that...

Def

[Syph007]

I'm too old to be wasting time being an early adopter of OS's anymore.  Heck at work we JUST got win 7 out as a corporate distro. At home all my boxes run xp because it still works.  I dont upgrade anything anymore unless Im forced to.  You keep more money in your pocket that way for tools and knives.  If win 8 is as dumbed down as it sounds, then 7 will likely be the last win OS i use, and it will be linux after that.  I'm a developer so I need an OS that lets you do more than change the background theme and check facebook.

[GNandGS]

I'm practically a windows fanboy.  Win8 tiles is the first time I've not liked windows (Except for "ME") so I have all sorts of street cred

If you were actually staying in a tiled "app" environment all the time it would still suck but at least you wouldn't be jumping in and out of two completely different interfaces.

There are some clever things they are doing and in an info CONSUMPTION environment (tablet) where your fingers can navigate quickly its probably something I might like.  The phones I played with seemed ok

They lose me quickly and entirely though with tiles.  The "vibe" I get is if you only deal with APPS (think phone) or worse, only need to look at status windows or alert lists, its ok.  You cannot however use all the tiled apps at once.  Not sure about you guys but I use multiple programs at once - not only consuming info but inputting info.  The tiled apps are mostly meant to be used ONE AT A TIME.  Seriously, take your iphone or android and connect it to an external screen - but without touch.  Like it?

"But you can drop to the desktop".  Absolutely.  So let me turn off the tiles and stop trying to force me back to tiles.  If I need "at a glance" notifications in colored boxes, I would prefer transparent widgets where I can get all the same info while still working in MS Office.

There is no excusing this.  It was not designed with desktop in mind.  Nobody can convince me.  It was intended with mobiles (new tablets coming) that retain a desktop for other systems.

The way you are SUPPOSED to retain previous productivity is to make a LOT more use of keyboard shortcuts.  This is so you can pop back and forth.  Translation: faster switching of interfaces.  As mentioned, on a PC you will be using two DIFFERENT interfaces.  It really gives the impression of having two different installs of IE browser - one the "app" the other traditional.  They are not linked in any way.

Bleh.  another on the way...

[GNandGS]

originally posted in another forum (by me) a few months ago:

(nip)

I'm still finding the interface a real pain to use. During install I used one of my email logins... it finds some stuff. ok. Cool. Pics! Open one and it has this minimal phone like display and no way to manipulate the image. I had to "open with skydrive" which only then showed anything useful (saving, path/URL, or picture information). Found myself missing a simple right-click.

Next, I did "download" and had a save option. Ok. When opening it asks me what program. Good. I select PhotoViewer. I'm dumped to desktop and the image opens. I think it was only two programs involved (app and photoviewer) but it felt like three. Oh wait, it was! IE was open for skydrive. Is that 4?

Without a touch screen I can only see value for certain folks. How you guys like it I'll never know. What am I missing? Its horribly inefficient at getting where I want to go by forcing a lot of extra kb interaction or annoying hovering.*

I'm done with photos and have hovered over the left side images tab, then opening it... took me a while to realize I had zero options for closing until right click the window preview. grr. Forgot about that annoying feature. Went back later to delete the test photo that I chose to save and noticed it does not appear in my list of avail images using the photo app. It was at least predictable to find it in my downloads folder. If curious: I dragged it over to the pictures folder using explorer... opened the photo app widget doodad and find 0 files in my library. Comedic moment reading the info blurb telling me I can add photos to library using explorer.

Email app via tile sucks. Bad.

News app was ok on the pretty scale but EVERYTHING was reuters in my results but other sources are configured. I tend to cross check a lot of what I read so the lack of even MS services to look up terms has been left out or removed. You can copy text only from what I'm seeing... so its out of the app and over to IE at which point you choose either the IE "app" or IE proper and past it in. I was unable to share or get a link for the news story I was reading in the news app. Forced to Bing search for the title and find a close (but not exact!) duplicate. Under "Share" in the app it says, "Nothing to share right now/cannot be shared". bleh. No like/email/print options either... all on a poorly used bit of screen space that forces itself in full screen. News app uses adverts btw.

The granny friendly config of crawling your account for you during setup seemed well done - not sure if any benefit to those using multiple accounts

For any long term use I'll have to have a way to get rid of Metro UI. Not bothering for now as its just something I play with as a Virtual system.

*Some annoyances are likely due to virtual install (oracle)