What is your opinion of the new Windows 8?

[SteewpidZombie]

My own experience/opinion:

Spoiler

Recently my family purchased a laptop for my younger sister to play her games on, browse the internet, and do all the stuff that anyone else would use a laptop for. Unlike my own laptop however, her's came with a pre-installed Windows 8 OS on her system (Mine is Windows 7).

While I was willing to give Windows 8 a chance at first, we quickly discovered that it is a VASTLY different setup compared to the past versions of Windows. First and foremost was the lack of a 'Start' menu, instead replaced by an entire screen that scrolls and seems designed more for tablets then a computer. Which looks nice and all, but makes finding things harder than needed. Mainly by re-organizing where certain files are located or how they're labeled, and using 'hidden tabs/buttons' or 'swipe features' that require moving the mouse to certain parts of the screen in the same manner you might use a tablet/touch-screen.

So overall, what is your own opinion of the new OS?

 

[Angie7F]

I hate it when you have one version of windows in the office, and another at home. so you keep getting confused what to do.
i wish they would just update all versions for free so that you dont have to adapt to using many different versions.

 

[Esotera]

I get the feeling Windows 7 will be the last OS used for a while by businesses and most people clinging to PCs...everyone else will move to tablets as it's so awful. Essentially Windows 7 is the new XP.

One trend I really hate is the stupidification of computers, especially how files are being actively hidden from the user.

 

[EscapeGoat_v1legacy]

Not a fan. I've tried both on a laptop and on a tablet, and I reckon I'd be fine with it if I had a tablet running 8 though. It is pretty clearly designed for use on touchscreen devices, and I'm sure it's fine on them, but I'll stick with 7 on my laptop thanks.

It's not total rubbish, but it's not very comfortable to use with a mouse and keyboard, and I also didn't appreciate the idea of hidden tabs and buttons. I'll pass on 8.

 

[lechat]

looks exactly like the android system i have running on my tablet

i still wouldn't not use it just because it was different, in fact all windows systems i used initially had a feel of "man this is shit the old one was better" until i got the hang of it. windows 7 was the first OS i used where i just happily admitted that it was an improvement on the last and instantly installed

does the new windows force use of mydocuments folders?

 

[The Maddest March Hare]

It works almost identically to Windows 7..I really don't understand the confusion and dislike for it.

Start screen? Fullscreen start menu. You can pin folders, programs and so on as ever. Need to search? Windows key + start typing, same as ever, or open the menu and start typing. The only thing missing there is a text box that is there permanently, so the only people I can see being affected there are the people who actually clicked on the text box instead of just typing. Getting people out of that habit is a good things and speeds up start menu navigation, so that's hardly a bad thing.

The design and layout of the start screen is clearly designed for tablets, but the live tiles and huge amounts of pinning space are great for desktop users too.

Desktop mode is literally identical to windows 7 except it doesn't have the horrible shiny aero effect all over it, I'm a big fan of the solid colours.

No start menu button? Ok this I can see being confusing the first time you use it, but the click to open start screen is in precisely the same location as it always has been so after doing it once and realising where it is..no problem there either.

The system footprint is a good 300mb lower than 7 was for me, and the start up/shut down is fantastically quick even on my now fairly slow desktop.

The motion required to open the sprites meny down the right is a bit annoying, and very much based on being a tablet motion. That's quite bad, but the unification of settings menus in a similar way to OS X is always a nice touch. It's not as well implemented as on OS X though, since OS X gives you context, where as 8 simply states "settings" and doesn't tell you that the "settings" contained are contextual to the program open..

Basically the learning curve for me was about 10 minutes of faffing with it after upgrading, then I realised there's only a small number of changes and carried on as usual. This attitude from users and companies of "oh noes we has to relearnz it all" is just premature wailing as far as I can tell, unless you've got so badly trained employees that they can't actually use a computer, and instead just mimic whatever actions your company originally engrained into their minds.

 

[Zorpheus]

I kind of resent the insistent pushing towards "Tablets are the future!". I like my mouse and keyboard just fine, thanks, and will not be permanently switching to Windows 8.

 

[EHKOS]

I'm getting a new computer, immediatly installing 7 on an SSD and deleting 8. My sister just got a new laptop equip with 8, one look and I was just NOPE.

 

[Xannieros]

I dislike it, I got my dad a laptop for Christmas thinking W8 couldn't be all that bad. Well.. I was wrong. Utility wise, Metro is a mess. Start button is gone, which seems to me like the most idiotic thing they could do. You have to move the mouse to the edge to get more options, which causes problems in full screen or if you're doing something else.

If I could, I would go back to W7 but not worth the money to me. I'll just look up other programs third party users have made to make it more user friendly.

 

[DeadlyYellow]

Let's just say I find myself preferencing Vista over it.

 

[SuperSuperSuperGuy]

Oh, that's funny. MY sister also got a Windows 8 laptop recently.

I hate it. It's just so... bleh. There are too many hidden things all over the place. In addition, having 2 screens to work with (desktop and start menu) was just an awful idea. I didn't see anything wrong with the old start menu, anyway; it was small, easily accessible, NOT HIDDEN, didn't take up the entire screen and didn't rip away the taskbar when accessed, which you need to multitask. And you know that shiny effect that Windows 7 had on its taskbar and stuff? That's gone, so now everything is dull and matte.

The biggest issue is definitely with all of the hidden things. Like, why would they do that? To clean things up? If that's really their intention, then they didn't do any cleaning at all. They just shoved all of the mess under the bed, so to speak, and made it harder to find the things your looking for.

That being said, I don't think it would be so bad on a tablet or mobile device, but on a laptop or PC, it just... doesn't work. Besides, I don't like change. I'll be sticking with Windows 7, thanks.

 

[Monster_user]

Spoiler

So overall, what is your own opinion of the new OS?

I think I would like it, on a touch screen laptop. It has its place, but I have no need of the devices it works best on. Those devices are "in-between" transitionary devices, which is likely a niche market. It is not a blended, or universal OS, it is a transitionary OS. Because it is a transitionary OS, I have no use for it now.

I may have use of Windows 8, four years from now, when touch interfaces are standard. I will want to keep my legacy Windows 7 software if the world requires me to use "modern" touch interfaces.

On that image though, Windows 95 was good, but my computer wasn't. It wasn't as good as the much improved Windows 98, but it was good.

Windows Me wasn't terrible, it wasn't worth upgrading from Windows 98, but it wasn't terrible. Vista is what I use now, and I prefer it to Windows 7, and Windows XP.

Actually, Windows XP was terrible, and is terrible. I hate that operating system, and I've hated it since day 1. Give me Windows 2000 (Looks like Windows Me, but runs as stable as XP). I just hate XP's UI. Even when you switch to "classic" it has this "Playskool" feel to it, ick.

 

[hybrid2d4x4]

I tried the Consumer Preview version of it a few months ago. There were a few things that were much improved, namely the file manager: it gave relevant file information in the details pane (ie: ISO/shutter speed/F-stop for a photo folder), which was only possible in 7 in detail view and you had to enable the custom fields every time, and also the file copying, where you didn't always have to click to "see more details", and it was smart enough to switch to the faster network interface on-the-fly (ie: you start copying over wi-fi, which is slow, so you plug the gigabit ethernet line in and it will speed up; in 7 you have to cancel, turn off wifi to get it to default to the wired connection and start again).

I hate all the tablet-centric "touch" features, but by installing Stardock Start8, I got back the same start menu we had in Win7, so I never had to see or deal with any of those annoyances, especially that awful start screen. Overall, with the mod I used, Win8 becomes perfectly usable and I'll make the switch when a compelling SSD deal comes around...

 

[Ickorus]

I've tried it and simply do not enjoy it, to get anywhere near the amount of control over the OS as you used to you need to download third-party applications and turn the start menu screen into an eyesore.

It all brings back memories of TES: Skyrim's menu system, something that's great for one thing may not work nearly so well on another and instead of making it all the same and if you don't like it you can fuck off they need to instead give people more choice and customization so users can make of it what they want.

I also don't like that the UI looks like it was designed for children, reminds me of the little toy laptop I had when I was a kid.

 

[Charli]

Skip it for 7 if you have the option. It's a tablet toy, but the fact that they're trying to foist it off as the 'next big upgrade' had me in stitches.

There are many ways to tweek it for the common desktop usage, but it's... just not that much of an upgrade for what you get which is guaranteed compatibility with most games, sustained know how of use, etc.

Find a way to get rid of the tablet interface and try it then.


But most are treating 7 like XP and 8 like Vista, wait until the actual next upgrade comes to town.

 

[MagunBFP]

I don't have it yet because I'm waiting for my touch screens before I install it. A couple of guys I work with have it installed though and they say once you get past the learning curve and stop trying to make it Windows 7 its as good as Win 7, and on a touch screen its better.

2013 - Touchscreen and 24 inch+ monitors are going to be alot more popular

 

[laggyteabag]

Windows has looked pretty much the same for as long as I can remember, aside from a new lick of paint each time. Why Microsoft felt the need to drastically change it, I have no idea.

Lets just say I hate change, and Windows 8 is not suited for Desktops or Laptops.

I think i'll be sticking with my Windows 7 thank you.

 

[SpAc3man]

Love it. As a computer engineering student I got early, free access through uni and installed it on both my netbook and desktop.

Firstly it has one of the best multiboot managers I have ever used. My netbook has Win7 on a seperate partition and Ubuntu 12.04 via Wubi and it was able to integrate Ubuntu into the boot menu perfectly.
Startup times are nice and fast, memory utilisation is even smarter than Vista and 7, the new semi-hybernate shutdown is marvellous.
The new task manager is every power-user's dream. The amount of information available right there is spectacular. It is also organised and divided up and highlighted in a way that the info you need is easy and fast to pick out. Having processes and services all grouped together yet organised is great for seeing what sort of resources everything is using is such an improvement.
The power-user menu is great (right click bottom left corner). Every important administrative tool or location is available there. That is something Windows 8 does really well, grouping things together.
Searching is great in that it displays so many results. Often in Win7 if I was looking for something slightly obscure the Start menu search was lacking in number of visible results. Splitting results into apps, settings and files was a good idea too. Got a little fiddly at first but using the cursor keys and hitting enter made it very useful. There are also hotkeys to immediately open search at the desired field: Win+W for settings, Win+Q for apps which also doubles as a shortcut to the all apps list, Win+F for files.

Now the big one... Start screen.
At first I thought it wouldn't work and then I gave it a go in the dev preview and I could see how it could work but it was in need of much improvement back then. It got better and better through the various previews and the final version is actually really useful. When I open my Start menu I can immediately see if I have emails; messages via Skype, Facebook, Windows Live/MSN and Google Talk (All in the wonderful IM+ app); I can see what the weather forecast is and how the prices of my shares are doing.
At first it may look like everything is spread out an therefore takes longer to reach with a mouse. The actual reality is everything is bigger while using the entire screen so more things get put onto the screen while being faster to click as less accuracy is needed. There is some interesting readings about the design here. [http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/10/11/reflecting-on-your-comments-on-the-start-screen.aspx]
I personally don't get the people who cry about lack of multitasking because of Start screen. Whenever I use Start menu my focus is completely removed from anything else on the screen. It just makes sense to utilise the entire screen rather than waste space on keeping out of focus content visible.

Lastly here are some keyboard shortcuts that I use all the time:
Win+Q for all apps list and apps search field
Win+W for settings search
Win+F for files search
Win+D for desktop
Win+PrintScreen to save a screenshot to dedicated folder in My Pictures

And a big list of shortcuts that has the new Win8 ones included:

Spoiler

EDIT: I must add that my grandparents wanted a laptop so I directed them to a cheap Asus ultrabook with a touch screen and Windows 8. They love it and find it easier to use than their old desktop with XP. Everything is intuitive and the typography design focus makes things more obvious for them.

EDIT 2: How could I forget! Ribbon in explorer is amazing. Everything useful is right there and easily discovered. Invert Selection? Yes please! I LOVE the Explorer Ribbon.

 

[viranimus]

Well I cannot claim to have true knowledge of it, because Ive not ran the release build yet. However having the developers preview roughly a year ago resulted in me uninstalling it in VERY short order.

All I can see out of it from what I saw, was the latest incarnation of Microsoft forcibly trying to tell us how to use a PC and where to put things so that they are organized.

With all the strides Linux makes now, I wish to hell they would pick up a thing or two from Linux, or hell, even mac and quit trying to control peoples use. Allow them to use it freely how THEY see fit. Not how you want them to.

But honestly for me personally. I have ZERO interest in touch enabled windows OS, and once you remove the "metro" trash and get it out of the way, its really just windows 7 jury rigged to be as counter intuitive as Vista.

Just my 2 copper

 

[Rylot]

snip

Dude, thanks for that list, it'll help a lot. I'm not fond of 8 just because it is so different from 7 and tablet oriented. The only thing that's really bugging me is the number of updates it's been doing lately. Something like three in the last day or so. I also have no use for the live tiles or %95 of the apps and it just get in the way

Edit: Okay fuck the fucking bullshit goddamn hidden start up on the right side of the screen! It takes half a minute of flailing around that side of the screen to show up until I want to click something over there and it pops up in the way.