Bits What's coming in Windows 8?

It took me ages to get use the the subtle differences when moving from 98 to XP. Desktop touch screens are a terrible gimmick that are more trouble than their worth.

 

Okay it's clear a lot of people have no idea what is going on here. That tile UI is only in conjunction with the normal desktop. The best way too see it in action is here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDry3QUllYk.

Yes it's 32 minutes long but you can skip the crap at the start and the end. Watch this THEN come back here and comment.

 

There have been many valid points, some I hadn`t thought of,

Will it be better, will it make life easier, will it do what you want it to do.is it safer(never some hacker will just have to prove a point or be malicious).

I admit i am very biaised and have felt cheated by certain operating systems as a consumer and engineer.

I like win7 ult and hope that future operating sytems will be user friendly and stable.

Computers are after all hardware software and interface. Connecting your devices is becoming more and more important.

Instead of a new operating sytem that everyone sooner or later has to buy, why not upgrades for the features you need.

 

Hopefully they'll change their minds and allow desktop users to disable it.

On tablets, mobiles, touch screens etc I can see it's place but imo it's unnecessary fluff on a PC.

 

Yuck!
That new UI looks nasty, it looks like "my first PC" or something like that.
Kind of reminds me of iOS as well for some reason, which I do not like.
I think it's also going to cause quite a few problems for casual PC users adapting to the new UI, I know a few people who had problems dealing with the update to IE9 let alone a whole UI change.

 

Give me good interoperability between tablets and PCs and almost as good phones and PCs and you have me won. This is with the condition that you LEAVE a real friggen file system that I can access, not this IOS bullcrap, allow me nearly unfettered access to customize a bizillion settings like I can do know in Windows and leave things like the command console and I'll be happy. I want something simple on a tablet with the option of something more complex and low level that I can access in "the background", on a PC I want the opposite. Both living together and working pretty much the same on both systems with the exception of what I am using as an input device would be lovely and brilliant.

I just fear that this is the first step toward the loss of being able to truely customize Windows the way you need it to be. Don't get me wrong, for 90% of stuff on a tablet I can live with iOS and I like it suprisingly enough (I have an iPad2) and the missing 10% is a little aggrevating, but I can deal just fine. On a desktop something like that I'd be able to do about 40% of what I need to and that missing 60% would piss me off beyond belief. It would also mean that I'd be living with legacy Windows 7 until I litteraly couldn't either get hardware to support it anymore or else critical software just wouldn't run on it.

I am fine if this ends up being like the move to Windows 95 where you have Windows as THE graphical interface and need to open a DOS shell to do a lot of low level stuff (though that said, you could do a heck of a lot of that stuff through the interface easily or more easily). Obfuscate and make easier the Windows 8 interface all you want and the same with future windows OS, but leave me my "classical-ish" Windows GUI and all of its bizzillion and one options underneath, to the side, etc that I can access when I need to fine tune something.

I do fear the move away from KB+M, because as a KB+M and a touch screen user I can tell you that office productivity, systems administrator, coding and general lengthy typing (more than about a paragraph at a time) is much more exhausting, difficult, etc to do with a touch screen interface, I don't care if it is a 14" touch screen or a 7" touch screen (though obviously a large one would be a little easier, but also more cumbersome). Lets not even discuss a monitor as a touch screen. Shudder.

My hope is that MS can intelligently design both the metro and aero interfaces living together and operating well with both touch screen and KB+M. Obviously one is probably going to be better than the other for each interface, but if touch screen works brilliantly with the metro GUI and KB+M works okay (as in not frustrating, extremely limited, error prone, etc) and with the aero GUI KB+M works brilliantly and touch screen works okay (with the above caveats) then I think its a winner possibly.

I am very catiously optimistic. Why, because I hope MS hasn't lost their sanity and besides, its all I can do. Its that or just go in to a fugue of depression.

 

Oh for the new UI from the comments MS has made that I've read it seems like the Metro UI on a PC will be the default login splash screen, but after that you can drop directly in to Aero (or whatever they might call it in Windows 8) after logining in as default option. I can like with Metro as a splash screen on my PC, more than that and no thank you sir.

 

Actually OS X supported both Intel and PowerPC from 2006 to 2009, in both OS X 10.4 and 10.5 (Tiger and Leopard). These days the majority of PowerPC Macs have been retired (and anyway Apple's sales have soared since the introduction of the first Intel Macs) so Intel Macs now massively outnumber PowerPC ones and most applications are written for Intel only, but there was quite a while where Apple and developers had to cope with both, using universal binaries and the Rosetta Stone virtualisation layer.

 

I think this COULD be hawtness. If I no longer have to wait for explorer (and the bulk of the rest of the OS) just to utilize my most used programs, it would be a HUGE step forward for desktop OS. I remember a couple of years ago everyone bitching because MS only releases their operating system as a huge bundle and they wanted it put into discrete "boxes", so they could pay for, download, and use only what they wanted out of the OS. I would like it...Hell, I spent 3 days tweaking a 7 install in vLite to get the install down below 3GB; it would be very polite of MS to do that for me.

Maybe that's where this is headed? A lightweight primary OS comprised of these "tile" thingies as its interface, with a bulkier, more traditional "professional" version available? It would make sense if they wanted to use this on a wider variety of platforms.

Somehow, sadly, I don't think that is what MS has in mind, though. I disagree with the article; I think this is going to be a media center-style add on, and it will take some doing to convince me otherwise.

 

No for a desktop PC. It is a touch centric interface that will be annoying on a desktop. I never want to have a touchscreen for my desktop either, they get dirty quickly and will cause arm strain.

I do however own a Dell Duo (flip screen netbook/touchscreen tablet) I am looking forward to trying W8 on that!

 

The fact that you can't virtualise x86 on ARM might mean that devs code for ARM, and then just virtualise on x86 instead. Might be a performance hit, but you can afford the hit, in a sense, seeing as x86 is being portrayed as desk-bound behemoth compared to portable battery powered ARM devices.

 

No Legacy? I just let out a bit of salty water from my eyes. Let me be clear: If I have to keep using my current PC for the REST OF MY LIFE in order to still be able to play Alpha Centauri in 2050 I damn well will }:-(

Seriously though, I wouldn't buy a tablet because casual games suck balls (IMHO). If I were to buy a tablet, it would need to be able to play proper classic games such as XCOM. I'm afraid badly-ported Bitmap Brothers games just don't cut it for me, particularly with a dodgy finger-smearing control system. Of course, I'm happy acknowledge that I'm just one (quite strange) person and other people have different requirements - I'm probably one of about six people on the planet who absolutely loves their ion-powered netbook.

Apart from that little bombshell, this looks pretty good - I think WP7 is a great mobile OS, and I think Win 8 promises to be a step up from existing Tablet OSs, particularly with Skydrive integration. I don't think this interface is going to be much use on a "proper" computer though..

 

Don't like the direction they're going at all, very Appley in my opinion.
While yeah this would be fine on a tablet/phone, can't really imagine anything worse for a desktop.
Just dumbs everything down.

 

I would agree that the using a touch screen for using desktop computers is pretty much useless, but that is only because we haven't yet seen what kind of interfaces will be developed for desktop machines. The following technology allows for a touch based operating system to be used by allowing your hands to appear inside the computer while resting on your desk. This type of technology could help usher in the use of touch-enabled operating systems since you are allowed the convenience of touch with the precision of a stylus if needed.

Video of Electronic Looking Glass: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nfCeSuhmog

 

have a windows 7 phone.. I like it

I seen this commercial for iphone and they brag about being able to surf the net while talking to someone.. on the windows phone, can play mp3, message and talk to someone while surfing the net.. pretty cool cause does what it's supposed to do as a phone (but no apps).. only thing it's missing is a gps

I dunno if I'd want that interface on my desktop though

 

The new xbox dashboard, word 2010, windows vista, and now this... feels like windows 7 is the only thing microsoft has done right in recent years

 

There are some pretty smart people working at Microsoft (we hope) so how hard would it be to make Windows 8 smart enough to know what input options are available on the device it's being installed on and configure to GUI accordingly? That way tablet users get the spiffy new tiles and other touch-centric features and those of us who aren't ready to toss out our mice and keyboards get something more appropriate to the way we use our PCs.

 

Clearly what we are seeing there is 2 UI's that aren't going to end up together.

The *new* windows 8 bit is a tablet finger touch ui which will be naff with a mouse/keyboard.

The *old* ui - see picture with MS word in windows 8 - is great for a mouse/keyboard but completely unusable in a finger touch tablet.

Hence windows 8 is going to have to consist of:
-a mouse/keyboard interface, i..e windows 7 with a few tweaks.
-a tablet ui, i.e. tweaked windows phone 7.

The only advantage they have is you could run office 2010 in your tablet ui as it's still windows. It'll be completely unusable and run like a dog, but it'll be there.

 

So they plaster social media feeds all over the user interface and call it radical...me thinks not!

 

This is typical Microsoft for you. Change for change's sake. Oh, and because there's new-fangled thing called "tablets", which is all the rage now. Better come up with something tablet-y then...

It's no secret that I abhor the Win7 UI (well, most of it, anyway). And while the new tile-based start screen probably works swell on those "tablet" thingies it has absolutely NO PLACE AT ALL on the desktop.

I take consolation from the fact that most people around here seem to share my disdain for the new Win8 UI. Although it's probably too much to hope for that Microsoft notices how people feel about their new "shinyness" before it's too late.