Windows 8 (Official)

[JLTucker]

I recently installed Windows 8 and I figured this would be a good place to discuss the retail version. Edi already hates it, per the venting thread, so it would be cool to actually have some legitimate discussion. Yes, there's a thread about it, but it's a month old and I don't want to resurrect it.

I will give a more in depth review of my experience with it this weekend. I have two tests and a paper to work on this week. I will say that at the moment I like it.

[Stark]

I like pretty much all the changes, and I'm eager to find out if you can driver metro with a controller. The smartphone UI is cool, having the consistent swipes for settings/closing/split screening/etc is great, and the upgrade adviser and process was great. I just wish there was some guidance on how to avoid the legacy desktop entirely rather than it still existing, and its a shame that many functions are in the old desktop control panel rather than the metro stuff.

Gabe Newell aside, I haven't experienced a single downside. CATASTROPHE.

[Ford Prefect]

I like pretty much all the changes, and I'm eager to find out if you can driver metro with a controller.

A mate of mine started doing this a few weeks ago.

[Stark]

Sweet. I want to use Win8 on a lounge box, and hopefully (fatnerds aside) I won't have to leave the nice interface for that icky desu desktop.

I wonder if there are live tile apps for torrents? TO THE BATMOBILE

[Ace Pace]

I wonder if there are live tile apps for torrents? TO THE BATMOBILE

Tell me, if not, sounds like I have a new thing to do during weekends

[Stark]

uTorrent is on the App Store, which is pretty neat, but it's just a desktop app and not a tile. I'm not sure how much torrent control you could get out of a tile, and I'm not sure if you can have tile apps working as a front end or remote for a real app.

A tile that told me traffic and some simple torrent status stuff would be pretty choice really. Less reason to look at desktop. :v

[Edi]

It's a good UI for a smartphone or tablet, but decidedly less so for a desktop or even laptop machine. It's worst on laptops without separate peripherals, such as the test machine we have at work.

A lot of shit requires the desktop environment to work and some things that don't will not work correctly in the tile version but will work with the desktop version (Google Chrome being one of them, some plugins simply will not work with the tile version).

You also need to go through the control panel to access any kind of actually relevant troubleshooting shit if anything goes wrong and that requires the desktop. Sure, you can make tiles of desktop applications and invoking the tile will run desktop first and then the app. Fun thing is that when you go to Settings from start screen or from the Desktop gives you completely different Settings menu options and if you need the control panel, that's from the desktop, or alternatively from Show All Apps.

And accessing the full application list is unnecessarily complicated because it works differently based on whether you're on Desktop or in the Start Screen and the new interface is notoriously bad at giving any kind of visual cues to the user other than the minus sign on the lower right.

They could have at least put the kind of menu and back buttons permanently visible somewhere on the bottom of the screen and a shortcut to the Switch List as well for good measure. Those alone would have been a huge improvement and would have made the interface more user friendly.

As it is, a lot of people are going to struggle with the new Windows and many of them, especially older users, are never going to learn to use it well. Some are not going to learn to use it at all.

[Stark]

The control panel clearly being legacy and most of it not being searchable from tiles is a clear oversight. Luckily there's a link on the settings swipe for the desktop, or it's only two clicks away, but it should be neater and actually connected to the friendly metro settings.

Being in a search in the App Store and typing should really search again rather than making you go back, but if UI quibbles like that are the big problems I think it's pretty sound. The idea old people can't use the far simpler UI is pretty bizarre; people in their 69s who never really understood windows anyway have zero barrier to entry, because now it's like their phones.

It's only nerds who can't learn.

[Tribun]

The truely embarrassing thing for Microsoft is, that it actually would have been very easy for them to implement a simple switch that triggers between Desktop or Metro mode without much trouble, without axing functionality. Considering that "Classic Shell", a freeware program manages to restore a full functional desktop and allow you to program Windows so that you only use Metro when you want to use it, MS proved that they just try to ram a smartphone interface down the user's throats.

Thing is... there is no real reason to switch to Win8. Win8 gives apart from Tablets (where it is hardcoded anyway) no advantages over 7 nor are there any pressing needs (like there were with XP or 7) to switch at all. MS ironically cursed themselves with actually creating a good OS and now having the problem that simply axing it for the next one isn't that simple.

[Stark]

You mean except that the metro is AMAZING and the only reason not to use it is weight? Like I said, I wish more apps supported the metro-ness so I didn't have to look at the clunky desktop and windows at all. As Edi says, its just a shame that the tiles and metro aren't fully integrated throughout the OS (with the old control panel being the most obvious offender). I can't wait to put this on a mini box and set it up so I never have to see the legacy stuff at all.

Actually, Edi, how does the metro thing work? What's involved in making a desktop/window program work within the metro interface?

[Ace Pace]

Actually, Edi, how does the metro thing work? What's involved in making a desktop/window program work within the metro interface?

Quite a bit (have spent some time looking at the new APIs and stuff). Basically, you're talking about a rewrite of large parts of any programs GUI. From two prespectives (both mobile oriented)
1) You only do processing on foreground and can register for push notifications and periodic updates (LiveTiles)
2) You can do far less "things" to the computer, such as interacting freely with other parts of the OS. Easiest example is that there is no easy way to "embed" an Excel file into Word, since applications are sandboxed from one another. Rarely is that a deal breaker, but it makes quite a few things less comfortable.

For me, 2 is the more significant part. For well written GUI programs, this shouldn't be too much of a pain. But the easiest example for me (as a techie), a text editor can't just randomly open files. So even a Metro UI style Notepad++ is a pain.

[Edi]

@Stark:

If all you use it for is internet and hotmail, yeah, it's okay. As long as nothing goes wrong, that is. The moment something does, shit hits the fan for the user. The all apps list is another thing that should be directly accessible from the interface through a permanent tile, since a lot of people will be needing it.

Given that it's the nature of my job to actually advise and teach completely clueless users how to use the computers, tablets, smartphones and software they have, I run into this sort of basic usability issues every single day and it doesn't take more than a glance or at most 15 minutes of playing around with something to spot the shit that will cause the most issues.

The massive UI change is good in the sense that they didn't just switch a few often used elements around and away from where everyone had gotten used to them, but went ahead and changed the whole thing. However, in that light some of the basic usability shit they ignored was completely incomprehensible from a regular user's point of view.

The regular user wants to have fast access to all of his stuff, so the tiles for most used is good, but why not a tile for the entire app list and also for the menu and Switch List? Same for lack of visual cues, because that just means unnecessary trouble for the user until they have gotten familiar enough with the system and even then some visual cues are nice. Sure, all that is covered during the install screens when you first set up the computer, but outside of that it's either blunder around or try to find the help file and mash buttons or swipe shit until you accidentally hit something and then try doing other stuff there.

It's not as if Microsoft lacks the resources to put into that kind of thing, but no, on that score they dropped the ball. Stuff like the Control Panel being in the Desktop Settings swipe but not the Start Screen Settings is the most egregious example, but it's not nearly the only example of user unfriendly or just plain bad design decisions. I hope they will fix some of those with Windows Updates.

Oh, and the Windows Update shitting bricks and breaking down during first install and update and requiring seven or ten clicks worth of delving into the OS innards to fix the problem right out of the gate was an absolute hoot. If the automated fix works (once you find it, that is), all well and good, but what if it doesn't? The user is up shit creek without a paddle.

I'm also rather tired of your meme about "nerds can't learn", because it's so self-evidently false and stupid that it's gotten absolutely tedious. The ability to learn and adjust and quickly is basically a requirement to be able to perform any kind of tech support job that involves interacting with customers. However, needing to learn something and liking the object of said learning are two entirely different things.

I'm required to learn Windows 8 as well as possible, but I'm not required to like all the changes, especially the stupid ones like the Control Panel / Settings inconsistency.

[Stark]

Oh, so the metro part works like a smartphone, and doesn't just look like one. That's kind of a shame, but I guess if I clean off my desktop I can pretend its not horrible.

[Vendetta]

You also need to go through the control panel to access any kind of actually relevant troubleshooting shit if anything goes wrong and that requires the desktop. Sure, you can make tiles of desktop applications and invoking the tile will run desktop first and then the app. Fun thing is that when you go to Settings from start screen or from the Desktop gives you completely different Settings menu options and if you need the control panel, that's from the desktop, or alternatively from Show All Apps.

Most of the common troubleshooting stuff is actually straight under a right click menu from the bottom right left corner of the screen.

And accessing the full application list is unnecessarily complicated because it works differently based on whether you're on Desktop or in the Start Screen and the new interface is notoriously bad at giving any kind of visual cues to the user other than the minus sign on the lower right.

You can get to applications by, well, typing. Just start typing on the start screen and it starts searching, simples.

[Stark]

I was told getting to search was hard, because you had to use the right swipe menu and aim at search, which is longer than hit start + typing.

Too bad the hit start + typing still works, I guess. :V Its a bit of a shame the app thing is cluttered by importing legacy start menu shit - I've got hundreds of useless HTML LINK TO GAME WEBSITE and README FILE 'apps' I can add that were just filling up the old (useless) start menu.

[DaveJB]

I set up a Boot Camp partition to install the preview version of Windows 8 on my MacBook Pro, and it ran pretty well considering it's a relatively old model from mid-2009. As for the new interface, I'll detail my thoughts below, but it seems to me that whereas 7 was a jack-of-all-trades, 8 is really good in some specific scenarios, but a step back in others.

From the five or so minutes I spent with an early Windows RT tablet at the weekend, it seems to be a pretty good tablet OS. Not overwhelmingly better than iOS or Android mind, and I think the latter would still have the edge in terms of overall versatility, but it's definitely very usable, and I could see myself using a Windows 8/RT tablet if the price were right. It did seem a bit more sluggish than the Android tablets they had, but it's hard to know whether that was the fault of the OS or the hardware.

As a general usage machine, not too bad; the Metro UI definitely has its advantages. It definitely seems like it would be a hell of a lot better as an HTPC OS than the desktop-media centre combo that you would have to use in Windows 7. Granted, there are some new aspects which aren't terribly intuitive, but they're things that you'd probably get used to in the long run.

As an OS for a creative professional who has to work with vast numbers of media files... yeah, this is where Windows 8 really falls down. The Metro interface is basically useless for this type of work, forcing you to spend 99% of your time in the desktop interface, meaning that much of Windows 8's reason for being goes out the window (pardon the pun) right away. After that you end up with an OS that, when you eventually work past all its quirks, doesn't really offer a hell of a lot of compelling reasons to upgrade from 7. You don't have to flip-flop between the desktop and Metro UIs nearly as often as you did in the early betas, which is nice, but I overall found that my workflow just seemed a little slower and more drawn out than it did in either Windows 7 or OS X.

In all, Windows 8 would probably be okay for casual usage once you get used to its quirks. Heck, if I ever get around to building myself an HTPC, I'll probably snag myself a copy. But as a professional who uses my computer for vast amounts of the day to get work done, there's just no real benefit to upgrading.

[Stark]

If you're working directly with files, what scenarios require metro at all? I can (for instance) edit, rename and upload a pile of images or transcode heaps of video with reformatted subs and jiggered audios without using metro (or having to hit start). At worst right-click menus still have everything they did before, and that's how I do most of my productive shit. I can only imagine using start a lot if you're constantly opening and closing apps without files.

Saying a quickbar interface (and similarly the start menu in general) is useless for 'professionals' is a staggeringly worthless statement. How big can someone write 'no shit'?

[Tolya]

The basic problem I have with windows 8 is that the UI is not customizable really. It is a nuisance when you can't in any way clean up the All Apps section where every desktop application you install just dumps its shit into menu start folders, which in turn get flattened and thrown into metro.

It would be great if they added more customisation, like letting the user create his own tiles with subcommands - you have one tile for entire application, but if you right click/do whatever apart from normal left click, you could access help/uninstall/config/docs, like with the right-click context menu in desktop. This would make me totally sold on metro because you could have a very clean interface with quick access pseudotiles. Right now... well, generally I like metro, but if you are installing and uninstalling big amounts of stuff then your UI screen will be cluttered.

Another thing is that in its current state metro does clutter itself pretty easily and cleaning it up is more of a chore than in the start menu.

There are some rather obvious design flaws, but overally I like the change.

The thing I really like about 8 is how fast it is. Really, LAN transfer speeds suddenly sped up to the maximum that the switches and routers can handle. For some reason USB2 speeds also went to their max theoreticals, (like 30mb/s instead of 10-11mb/s).


By the way, DaveJB, how did you install Win8 Preview on Bootcamp? I tried that and it told me to go fuck myself and find a legitimate 7. Is there some sort of an update I need? I have 1.7.5 on an early 2008 macbook pro.

[DaveJB]

If you're working directly with files, what scenarios require metro at all? I can (for instance) edit, rename and upload a pile of images or transcode heaps of video with reformatted subs and jiggered audios without using metro (or having to hit start). At worst right-click menus still have everything they did before, and that's how I do most of my productive shit. I can only imagine using start a lot if you're constantly opening and closing apps without files.

That's kind of the point I was making. If I'm mostly sticking in the desktop environment, using functions and file menus that already exist in Windows 7... why wouldn't I just stick with Windows 7? I don't doubt that I'll eventually upgrade to Windows 8 (or 9, or whatever) when it becomes absolutely necessary, but unless Adobe kills Windows 7 support on next year's Creative Suite, there just doesn't seem to be any overriding reason why I should put Windows 8 on my editing rig any time soon.

Of course, this is all coming from a guy who stuck with OS X 10.5 on my MBP until early this year, so I may not be an entirely typical case.

By the way, DaveJB, how did you install Win8 Preview on Bootcamp? I tried that and it told me to go fuck myself and find a legitimate 7. Is there some sort of an update I need? I have 1.7.5 on an early 2008 macbook pro.

I just used it as normal, stuck in my Windows 8 Preview DVD, started up Boot Camp, and it worked without any trouble. Are you trying to install the 32-bit or 64-bit version? From what I've heard, some older MBPs (even the ones with Core 2 Duos) aren't compatible with the 64-bit version of Windows 8. You might also want to try burning a DVD if you've been trying the USB installer, as I've heard that can be troublesome on some Apple computers.

[Tolya]

I was told getting to search was hard, because you had to use the right swipe menu and aim at search, which is longer than hit start + typing.

Too bad the hit start + typing still works, I guess. :V Its a bit of a shame the app thing is cluttered by importing legacy start menu shit - I've got hundreds of useless HTML LINK TO GAME WEBSITE and README FILE 'apps' I can add that were just filling up the old (useless) start menu.

In 7 you can't hit start and type in the searchbox, you have to select it first. In 8 not only they cut the middleman (typebox appears only when you start typing), but searching starts instantly and shows results neatly.

Some people are just keen on bitching. A few weeks ago I've stopped visiting eightforums.com because people there were more interested in repeating whats been said (like the Newell bullcrap) rather than discuss the actual pros and cons.

[xthetenth]

In 7 you can't hit start and type in the searchbox, you have to select it first. In 8 not only they cut the middleman (typebox appears only when you start typing), but searching starts instantly and shows results neatly.

I just did exactly that in Windows 7. However, I still significantly prefer the implementation in 8. The search results are larger and more legible to me.

Some people are just keen on bitching. A few weeks ago I've stopped visiting eightforums.com because people there were more interested in repeating whats been said (like the Newell bullcrap) rather than discuss the actual pros and cons.

Ahh, the Newell spiel. Why not pick someone who isn't directly threatened by it to give you your opinions?

[Dominus Atheos]

I was told getting to search was hard, because you had to use the right swipe menu and aim at search, which is longer than hit start + typing.

Too bad the hit start + typing still works, I guess. :V Its a bit of a shame the app thing is cluttered by importing legacy start menu shit - I've got hundreds of useless HTML LINK TO GAME WEBSITE and README FILE 'apps' I can add that were just filling up the old (useless) start menu.

In 7 you can't hit start and type in the searchbox, you have to select it first. In 8 not only they cut the middleman (typebox appears only when you start typing), but searching starts instantly and shows results neatly.

What? In 7 you can click on the start pearl and the cursor immediately appears in the start search box. Or just hit the windows key on the keyboard and start typing.

[Stark]

I just did exactly that in Windows 7. However, I still significantly prefer the implementation in 8. The search results are larger and more legible to me.

That reminds me - I don't like that it defaults to 'app' results even when there are none (ie if you do a serach that returns 50000 files and nothing else, you still have to manually click on files to see your actual results, as its bent on showing you the no apps you found). Can you change the order of the results?

[xthetenth]

I do not know off the top of my head. I'll look into that and tell you if I see anything.

[Tolya]

Oh, my bad, I totally forgot I am running Classic Shell on my 7.