News Microsoft's Windows 8 upgrade paths detailed

Also, I've be running Windows 8 for a few weeks on my laptop and I think it's great. It's quicker and has more features, but is otherwise the same as 7. Yeah, the start menu looks different, but I personally think it's faster and more intuitive to use than the old one, even without a touchscreen.

 

This is the part where I think you're crazy. The new start menu is undoubtedly slower to use no matter what perspective you look in. The buttons are gigantic, which means it takes longer to point your mouse to an icon (this is relevant to laptops) and it means you have to spend more time scrolling through the menu items to find something. Whether you're on a tablet or not, this is slower than the classic start menu or the menu interface that iOS and Android use.

The metro interface is also cluttered with non-application items, slowing down your navigation further. The one and only thing that makes metro faster is it's more colorful and uses large icons, making things faster to recognize in your peripheral vision. However, as I've stated before, if you've got a bunch of things installed, it will take just as long (if not longer) than the classic menu. If you maintain a clean start menu and/or distribute your most commonly used programs to the desktop and remove them from the start menu, then the classic menu is plenty fast.

I've also noticed Metro is relatively resource demanding, so depending on your system, it's slower to use.


My gripe about technology these days is companies are trying WAY too hard to find replacements for things that have been proven to be effective for around 15 years, whether that be games running at 60FPS, keyboards + mice, overall GUI, and so on. Sure there are plenty of things that have replacements and are good ones, such as SSDs, cloud storage, or PCI-e, but sometimes I feel like companies don't put any thought into whether something is practical. As I see it, if it doesn't actually improve production/usage and if the cost difference is too drastic, the product shouldn't be a big focus. Metro tries too hard to be something its not.

 

well i was thinking about 'maybe' getting Win8 for my tv PC, but the more i used it the more i thought it's just not worth the hassle. reminds we of some of the linux distros i used ten years back.

 

I'm skipping 8. I held onto XP until sometime in '10, as I recall. I'd spent a long, long time tweaking XP to be just the way I liked it, and I didn't want to give that up. I finally broke down and installed 7, and I dig the hell out of it. I went on a work trip a while back, and a colleague (the only honest-to-god Windows fanboy I know) let me borrow a laptop with Win8 DP. Hated it with a burning passion. He still raves about it - he's installed every preview release and it practically slavering at the prospect of actually being able to get the final retail version. For myself, on the other hand, the more information that comes out, the less I want it.

Shouldn't be entirely surprised about the XP upgrade, though - MS is probably pissed now that they extended support for XP to '14. I was rebuilding a PC at work today and had to reinstall from original media, XP SP2. Lo and behold, if you're on SP2, you can't get to Windows Update anymore. You have to install SP3 first. I think they're pushing as hard as they can to kill XP as quickly as possible (now, rather than 3 years ago when they should have...even sooner if Vista hadn't been such a disaster.)

As others have pointed out elsewhere, MS has a definite tendency to go every-other on good releases of Windows. 7 - good, Vista - bad, 2000 - good, ME - bad...gets fuzzy there - 98SE was good, 98 not so good, 95...well, it was the first modern version of Windows.

For that matter, I was on Win98 until 2006, if I remember right, so maybe I just like to lag

 

If you were using start menu using mouse, then you were using it wrong for few years in first place. How different is :
1) Windows Vista/7: Windows key (or Ctrl+Esc), type few letters from the application name, Enter (or few arrow movements before Enter).
2) Windows 8 - alternative 1 : Windows+Q, type few letters from the application name, Enter (or few arrow movements before Enter).
3) Windows 8 - alternative 2 : if you are on Start screen (if not, press the Windows key), then type few letters from the application name, Enter (or few arrow movements before Enter).

The Start screen is not your replacement for start menu. It is your new desktop.

 

win+q. Is that going to equal win+r but with the search feature of the start menu then? Always liked that dock type thing in Ubuntu when I used it. The one where you just type on the desktop and it brings up apps. I think it would even recognise recent web pages and files/folders.

 

It is the same search feature of the start menu. And if you are on a start screen, you don't even need to press that button. Just start typing.

 

So the real upshot is that you still have the option of doing your own backups, zapping the hard disk and then you choose any version you like? Cool. My rellie's PC is single core so struggles with 32-Bit Vista, the last OS it'll ever run. Whenever there's a new build I'll just use the spare licence from the Windows 7 family pack and that will be that.

I'll assume the future Xbox will have a crossover version of whatever Win 8 looks like after its SP1 so that's probably the first time I'll have to deal with it all the time.

 

I resemble those last two!

My primary machine still runs XP pro 64 and will continue to, even though I'm probably about to do a major hardware upgrade on it. The bottom line for me is that I have yet to see a compelling reason to upgrade, and I find the Win7 UI to be a colossal pain in the arse. There is nothing I have a need to do which I cannot do on my current OS, and I refuse to upgrade just because there is something new out there!

 

Based on what you described, if I'm using the mouse then no, I still didn't use it wrong. What you described is interfacing by keyboard, which is a different story. And yes, keyboard is often faster (being mainly a linux user, I prefer the terminal sometimes since its faster) but if what you're looking for isn't at the tip of your tongue or if you're a slow typist, then the keyboard isn't the fastest way to navigate either. Generally speaking, the mouse with a clean classic start menu is the fastest way to get something done.

I used to highly agree with this, but then I found that Win7 can be dumbed down a lot and it really did prove to perform better. I still utterly hate parts of 7's UI such as control panel options and the new media player, but everything else is pretty quick to getting used to. I wouldn't say I prefer the other changes but they don't bother me anymore either.

 

In that case - move your mouse to the right top or bottom corner, click on Search, click on Apps and browse the list. Same amount of clicks as - move your mouse to the left bottom corner where your Start button is, click on it, click on All programs and browse the tree.

 

And the tens if not hundreds of millions of business PC's which haven't upgraded to Win 7 and can't for useability reasons upgrade to Win 8.

As far as business is concerned this is just going to drift on past and not even going to be considered because of the retraining costs for every employee and the fact that like most OS releases massive amounts of highly bespoke software is going to need re-writing. At least with Win 7 most software will work with a some minor tweaks in XP mode and it looks enough like XP not to require user retraining. A decent group profile means a Win 7 machine is identical to a XP machine from the users point of view but if, as has been reported, there isn't a easy way to switch metro off and have the normal start menu and corporate screen, business wont look at this. If, and this is a very big if, there is a built in XP VM some places might consider it but only because it will look, feel and work in an identical manor to XP.

 

I have XP on one of my PCs.

You omitted to include those too lazy to get around to putting on that Win7 upgrade that's been laying on the shelf for 6 months.

Happy with Win7. In fact I'm happy with Vista on one of my other PCs, since it was released there have been so many updates that it runs like Win7 wearing different shoes.

Windows 8. No. No thanks.

 

Lolnope. Quick registry edit and Metro is banished to the consumerist pit that it came from.

 

Maybe ms over time might be able to convince home users to buy this..experiment, but I cannot for my life see how they are going to convince ANY company to switch to Windows 8. Ever. The only way as I see it, is to force companies over to Win8 with "Win8 only" apps, services, support etc. :-/

Personally, I guess I'm like a lot of other users with going 8 from 7. And to be honest, I really don't feel like learning a new OS at the moment, I want to turn on my computers and..use them.
If I was forced to learn a new OS, then I'd rather have a try with Linux. At least that seems rather user-friendly.

 

MS is definitely following the Star Trek movie rule - every second one is trash.

 

Yes, very informative.

Why don't you throw up some Venn Diagrams too, while we do a group read of Covey's Seven Habits.

 

U mad bro? Bargaining is next.

 

Take it easy guys, it's just software.