Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 25th Oct 2012 20:50 UTC
"Microsoft today announced the global availability of its popular Windows operating system, Windows 8. Beginning Friday, Oct. 26, consumers and businesses worldwide will be able to experience all that Windows 8 has to offer, including a beautiful new user interface and a wide range of applications with the grand opening of the Windows Store." I'm still not clear on what '12:01 AM local time' means, but if it means it goes on sale in every country on 12:01 AM, I'll be buying in a bit over an hour!
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RE[3]: I'd rather put my head in an oven.
by Dave_K on Fri 26th Oct 2012 02:00
in reply to "RE[2]: I'd rather put my head in an oven."
Member since:2005-11-16
I dispute the " If you use it on a tablet, for which metro was intended, it's fine." Admittedly, what I assumed after being taken aback by what a kludge it was on the desktop but after tinkering with 'Metro' I quickly found it half-baked and not ready. The few apps are really piss-poor and although I expect it to improve it really shouldn't be brought to market yet.
I'd agree with that. "Modern UI" is fundamentally decent as a tablet interface, and should be a pretty good platform once the apps are mature, but they really aren't up to scratch right now.
Unfortunately, as someone who's primarily a desktop user, I think it's a lot less likely that "Modern" will ever stop being such kludge ridden crippleware on a large screen PC.
Personally, I won't be upgrading to Windows 8, and I'll be buying a copy of Windows 7 for my next PC build too. To me buying a copy of Windows 8 is one vote to devalue the "legacy" desktop in favour of a tablet focussed UI and app store. Thankfully Windows 7 is good enough that I'm not missing out on much.
RE[4]: I'd rather put my head in an oven.
by WorknMan on Fri 26th Oct 2012 03:32
in reply to "RE[3]: I'd rather put my head in an oven."
Member since:2005-11-13
Personally, I won't be upgrading to Windows 8, and I'll be buying a copy of Windows 7 for my next PC build too. To me buying a copy of Windows 8 is one vote to devalue the "legacy" desktop in favour of a tablet focussed UI and app store.
Or it could mean that you'd rather use an OS that runs faster, boots faster, and is more memory efficient than Windows 7. Not to mention sporting some other features like native USB 3 support, a much improve task manager, hyper-V virtualization, native mounting of ISO files, taskbars on multiple monitors, etc.
The nice thing about Metro is that it is completely optional to use. The one possible exception is the Start Screen, which really doesn't suck as bad as people thing it does. IMHO, it's actually an improvement over the old Start menu, and I find it the one aspect of Metro that is tolerable to use. You can pin desktop apps and bookmarks there. So hit the Windows key, and it's basically the same as the start menu. You can install Metro apps like Wikipedia if you want and search those right on the Start screen. You can size app tiles and sort them into groups. So don't decide you hate it until you spend some time getting acclimated with it.
And don't worry about the 'classic' desktop being gone in Windows 9. MS needs to do a lot of work before Metro even becomes a viable replacement so they can port 'real' apps to it like Visual Studio. We're at LEAST 10 years away from that happening.
Edited 2012-10-26 03:37 UTC
RE[4]: I'd rather put my head in an oven.
by modmans2ndcoming on Sat 27th Oct 2012 17:42
in reply to "RE[3]: I'd rather put my head in an oven."
Member since:2005-11-09
RE[3]: I'd rather put my head in an oven.
by thavith_osn on Fri 26th Oct 2012 21:32
in reply to "RE[2]: I'd rather put my head in an oven."
Member since:2005-07-11
Features
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/11/13 21:41 UTC
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/24/13 22:24 UTC
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I dispute the " If you use it on a tablet, for which metro was intended, it's fine." Admittedly, what I assumed after being taken aback by what a kludge it was on the desktop but after tinkering with 'Metro' I quickly found it half-baked and not ready. The few apps are really piss-poor and although I expect it to improve it really shouldn't be brought to market yet.
Luckily, it easy enough to install a classic start menu and just about ignore 'Metro' on the desktop. Still, it's really only a worthwhile service pack to 7 or if this is what a new OS is then for all the time and monies expended you wonder why they bothered. Not exactly a must have update...wouldn't even consider if it wasn't on 'offer'...suppose a cheap way to upgrade from XP but otherwise a damp squib.