News Former Microsoftie launches 'Fixing Windows 8'

Well I installed it on a laptop that I have spare it ran fine and works well enough for me, however I put the same laptop in front of my computer illiterate parents ( they can turn a computer on send emails basic tasks basically ) and they could not even get to the web browser, Which in turn means i get asked for help so I give them the windows 7 one back and left em to it.

The UI works great on a touchscreen that most don't have and don't want.

General consumer is gonna take some convincing that this is a great idea 1million sales to geeks and nerds as people call us would be a disaster for Microsoft.

 

It's a risky move by Microsoft. Whether it proves to be a balls-out brave or dinosaur-stupid one remains to be seen.

Apple went about things in a different way: it developed iOS and the mobile devices it runs on in parallel with its established desktop and laptop computers running OSX. It didn't matter whether iOS was going to be a huge success or not; it had the PC market covered with an established product. It used iPod and iTunes to leverage the iPhone and iPad. Now these are a huge success, far overshadowing what Apple makes on PCs running OSX, so it can merrily experiment with that next without worrying too much about the financial consequences.

Microsoft has gone the other way. It had Zune, which begat Metro, but failed to leverage that excellent device to its full potential, focusing instead on their bread and butter income generator of the PC market with Windows OS. Then it developed Windows Mobile 8, which anyone with half a brain can see would have been excellent for tablet devices. But no: instead Microsoft dicks about with Windows 7 on the HP Slate, which doesn't even make it off the launch pad, while Apple occupies nearly the whole Tablet market. Now Microsift has decided to cram Metro into the full-blown Windows OS to try and cover all the markets. If they can marry up two such different GUI's into one coherent package, it will be the coup of the century. But equally likely they may fail. The problem is that Microsoft cannot let go. It cannot make a clean break with what has been its main source of income for the last decades, so it cannot just redesign one OS to rule them all from the ground up. It tries to pull the same trick it did with Windows over DOS, but that was a GUI substituting for a CLI, not one GUI superimposed over the other.

It would have been wiser to develop Metro on a Windows Mobile OS in parallel with the established Windows desktop OS, and see which one takes off best before gradually shifting focus as devices start to converge. Right now it is putting all its eggs in one basket, trying to hang on to it's established market while cashing in on a totally new, different one with the same product, and that is very risky.

 

Installed and used Windows 8 consumer for a week, found majority of software I use wouldn't work with it and missed the Start menu, gone back to Windows 7.

 

Why can't you just press a button and toggle between touch screen interface, and a traditional tried and tested windows interface?

 

personally im not fused about any of the new features in windows.

they should slow down and do a new os every 5 years or so

personally i dont understand why they did what they did. some smart people managed to disable metro so it looked like win7


but this is way beyond what most pc users can manage

 

I still haven't figured out how to launch things like Windows Update without navigating to the control panel. On Win7 its faster to hit super then type "wu" and hit enter. It should be possible to control a PC quickly without the use of a mouse.

 

I have a sneaky suspicion that Microsoft knows this will fail on the desktop, but wants to get it out onto phones and tablets. This would explain the Windows 7 extension, they haven't even replaced it and they are already extending it, that should tell you something.

By extending Win7, they can take a bit more risk on Win8 and take on the Phone and tablet market. Then come back and merge them better with Win9. I think they fear they are losing too much ground in the mobile market and that Win7 is strong enough to hold them over.

 

I dont know why, but changing something as fundamental to windows such as the file copying box feels... unclean

 

You can. It's the Windows key.

 

My windows key is currently broken. Other then buy a new keyboard is there a way for changing the interface.

So far running everything i can from the cmd prompt so i don't have to navigate

 

...I was under the impression you could turn the Metro UI off?

Am I under a false impression?

 

You can't in the two previews, though that doesn't mean you won't be able to in the final version.

 

Ah, no, there's no "off" button as such, but there's a reg edit you can make to turn it off and get the "normal" taskbar system back.

Hopefully they make it a choice on install/setup if there's enough protesting to metro being on regardless

 

How many machines (in business especially) are still running XP/Vista and ever increasingly Win7? How many companies do you think want to fork out for Win8 training days? How many people want things to be contained in "floating/invisible bars." and a need to relearn how to turn the damn thing off?

A UI should just be simple, obvious with the role of being the gateway to another programme, be it browser, office or game. It is not the UI's role to be the final destination!

Throw in the fact that M$ have joined Apple in trying to push yet another app store while trying to kill off Flash and you can't help thinking that the rich and largely free computer/'net experience we enjoy today will soon be history.

 

^ This, in a nutshell.

 

But I mean why can't they just make it so you press a button and it becomes like Win7, or you press it again if you have a touch screen and it has the big boxes or whatever.

 

Remember the good ol' days? I do. Living on the edge of town, my friends and I would ramble for hours over the local fields and forest land, climbing over barb wire fences around pastures, wading through streams catching frogs and climbing trees. I got myself stung, electrocuted (those barn-wire fences often had a mild current running through them to keep the cows in), falling out of trees and in murky lakes countless times. The things we got up to! In hindsight it is a wonder I didn't get myself killed.

Most parents now would balk at letting their child wander miles away from home and not seeing it for hours, not quite knowing where it is or what it is getting up to. They want a safe space --like a playground. Playgrounds can be fun, but they need fences. And because someone is responsible for running them and keeping them safe, they need all sorts of safety features, and rules and restrictions. They cost money to build, maintain and supervise. They are undoubtedly safer than the places my friends and I explored, but it is harder to have fun in a creative way, to learn and discover things about the world and to learn to assess risk and how to keep yourself from getting electrocuted, stung, bitten or drowned.

When I got into computing, in 1986, and you young'uns got into it at the birth if the World Wide Web in 1995, the land of computing was like the wild fields I roamed in with my friends: full of exciting possibilities, discoveries and also dangers and opportunities to get hurt. Now computers and the Internet have gone mainstream, and the land of computing is like a collection of playgrounds. They are fun, colourful and above all, safe spaces, but with little opportunity for creativity and exploration, and none for learning to assess risk. And of course they all have fences and rules, and cost money to maintain and supervise.

If you don't like the playgrounds, then you'll have to explore the spaces in between, where the wild things are: the land of Linux, hackers, original and creative home-brew software and hardware, but also of viruses and malware. Have fun but accept the scratches and bruises. Explore, but also assess risk and keep yourself safe. It's not for everybody. Most people nowadays prefer the playground.

 

Greetings!

No longer works in the CP.

 

I didn't notice the metro screen being that big a part of Win8, I only used it for the couple of seconds it took me to open a program, and then back to the normal desktop.
Mind you, I will be picking up Win8 when it comes out, but then I'll be expected to support it (and Server 8) one day so familiarity will be useful.

 

Well that's unfortunate! Thanks for the heads up.