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I jumped into Windows 8
Let me preface this by: I like Windows 7. A lot. In fact, I like it almost as much as I like OS X.
But, working peripherally in the computer field (pun only slightly intended), I have found that I need to keep up with whatever is new. When XP first came out, I kept reverting my own computer to the "Classic" theme, and it took me ages to figure out the new Control Panel layout, and the new Start menu layout. And inevitably when I was asked to help other people, they would be on this foreign, alien landscape - even though I was supposed to be the one to know at least a little bit about computers.
So this time, with Windows 8, I decided to take the plunge. I formatted my main computer, kicked everything off of it, and started with a fresh install of Windows 8, leaving nearly everything stock.
It wasn't as big a shock as you may have imagined. I had at least installed the Preview Release, and knew roughly what was going to hit when Modern UI loaded up. It was roughly akin to sticking your toe into an icy lake - yeah, you know it's cold, but it still doesn't prepare you for the shock that hits when you jump in all the way over your head.
I've only had a day to wrestle with it so far, and so far my head hasn't exploded. But I do have a headache.
Once I started to regard the Modern Start page as one huge, full screen Start menu, the computer at least became functional. Metro... err... Modern Apps look awful. They may be really nice on a tablet, but on a 24" monitor it's abysmal. Once you get back to the desktop, there is some measure of familiarity. The Taskbar now extends across all monitors (rather than just the primary), which takes a bit of getting used to after staring at the desktop there for years.
There are some bright spots. Startup time is fast - really fast. Most all programs have worked, and in many cases, Windows 7 drivers work for things that don't have Windows 8 specific drivers yet.
Do I recommend it? No. I don't. It's like a kludgey poor attempt to bridge tablets and desktop computers. But if your installing a new computer, or buying a new computer with it pre-installed, I wouldn't immediately jump on the "downgrade" option (like was the case with XP->Vista). It takes some adjustments, and it's not all roses, but love it or hate it, this is the way the wind is blowing.
Also, Start8 is looking really really tempting.
Comments
I've been using it for a while now in the preview release. I purchased the release version yesterday.
I don't think it is bad at all, really. It's different in how you intereact with it, but even then it only takes a litle getting used to.
Microsoft had no choice. It was this, or try to maintain multiple operating systems for what are increasingly similar devices (computers, tablets, phones). They also know that in the post-PC era, we are heading away from mouse and keyboard as primary input devices, and even moving away from the desktop computer in general. In the coming years, touch, voice and gesture will be largely taking over. Windows 7 was not equipped for that.
At any rate, I have my own I.T. consulting business (20+ year veteran), and I'm keeping all of my clients on Windows 7 for the next 1-2 years. They have no need for what Windows 8 brings to the table, and I've found it serves them better to let them learn about the new Windows versions organically through their own private purchases over time, than to hammer them with a whole new interface and potential compatibility problems.
As for home use, people won't have much choice as Windows 8 will be standard from here on out. It will be interesting to see if Windows 8 apps will take off, since they will work across all the MS devices and computers. I'm even playing with some development myself.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
Nonsense. There is no post-PC era. If there is ever a post-PC era, it will be as a result of such radical technological changes that it will probably also a post-tablet and post-cell phone (I refuse to call them "smartphones" on the basis that any product or concept that has to call itself "smart" probably isn't) era. Microsoft has correctly countered that it's a PC-plus era. People will still use PCs, but will also use other devices.
Being able to support one type of input doesn't mean you can't support any other. Mice didn't make keyboards disappear. Touchpads didn't make mice disappear. Touch screens could conceivably make touchpads go away, but they're certainly not going to make keyboards or mice disappear. That I have a gamepad that works with my current computer and probably wouldn't work with some much older ones doesn't make my keyboard or mouse work any less well.
In terms of speed at which you can transfer precise, meaningful information from a human to a computer, the keyboard is the leader by an enormous margin. Nothing on the horizon has any real hope of challenging the keyboard's supremacy there. To illustrate this, try to imagine any other input device that could let you input something like this half as fast as a keyboard:
" vTess = inversesqrt(length(camMatrix * (objMatrix * (position * axes) + moveVector)) / (max(axes.x, axes.y) * length(vec2(axes.w / axes.z, 1.0f))));
"
(Yes, that's a real, meaningful line of source code. If you can guess what it does, I'll be very impressed.)
If you can think of anything at all, it's probably some other device emulating a keyboard, in which case, it's completely obvious why it will never be able to compete with a real keyboard.
Touch might become common for analog controls where using a real mouse isn't an option, but it will never be more than a dumb gimmick in situations where a mouse is available.
Voice is a niche option and will remain so forever. That's not just a technological barrier, either; even if voice recogntion worked perfectly, I don't want my neighbors to hear what I'm typing. A room with a bunch of people talking to their computers at once would be disturbing in ways that a bunch of people typing at once isn't. It's not just because we're not used to it; a bunch of people talking on cell phones at once is also a nuisance.
Gesture commands could conceivably catch on for situations where there are only a few things that you could conceivably want to do. Think "The Clapper" here; it works if all you want to do is to turn lights on or off. But do you think you could come up with forty distinct gestures for which it's plausible that computers could reliably recognize the difference between all of them? And even if you could, would you be able to perform them at a rate of several per second, as is easy to do with a keyboard?
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As for the original post, thanks for sharing your experiences. As I see it, there are three very different classes of cases where Microsoft will take criticism for changing things:
1) You can still do something that you used to be able to do, but the way you do it now is different. Not really better or worse, but just different. The only real problem is that we're used to the old way and not the new one.
2) You can still do something that you used to be able to do, but now it's much harder.
3) There are things that you used to be able to do that you now cannot do at all. This can be a big problem if you still want to do them.
Part of the problem is that on launch day, the distinction between the three classes isn't always immediately obvious. Criticisms of the first type will soon blow over; once everyone is used to the new way, we won't miss the old way.
The second type is about trade-offs. Any particular task could be made very easy by having a large button to do that particular task constantly visible in the center of the screen. But you cannot do that for every task at once. Good UI design is about making the things that you want to do a lot easy, while the things that you only infrequently want to do are relegated to the more awkward methods.
The third type is the problem. Windows RT will probably come in for reams of criticism over it, once people buy Windows RT machines and then learn that most of the software they want to run can't run. But Windows 8 might see a lot less of it.
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Microsoft touts a new search function, but I'm curious whether they've restored the great search functionality that Windows 98 had--and XP, Vista, and 7 all lacked. With Windows 98, you could specify a string of text and a place to search and it would return all files area you specify (a folder and its subfolders) that contained the given string anywhere in the file. More recent versions can't do that, or at least, I spent hours trying to figure out how in XP before giving up, and have likewise tried and failed to figure out how to do it in Vista and 7.
Windows 7 can find a file with a specified name, or a specified portion of a name, but that only helps if you remember what a file is named. Windows XP couldn't even do that much; you could tell it to find all files with such and such name, and it would miss some. I think that the difference was supposed to be performance optimizations; the Windows XP file search function ran much, much faster than the Windows 98 one. The problem is that the way it got the performance increase is by not searching everything. Fast and wrong is useless.
The closest thing I've found to be able to do this is Google Desktop. However, for some reason, Google discontinued that in 2011.
Vector normalization, I'm guessing for Tesselation based on the variable name and the multiplication of the length (which would be the magnitude of tessellation, such as in a graphics setting), but could be for anything - object movement, lighting, shadow, etc.
It's also interesting reading why Google discontinued Desktop... OS X at least still has Spotlight, which works pretty well. I had thought that Windows Indexing would help with that, but of course, it doesn't, or at least, I couldn't figure it out either.
The Windows 8 search, in my limited experience playing with it - sucks as bad, or worse, than the Windows 7 Search.
The hardest thing for me to get used to right now, are the hotcorners. I guess with a touch interface, you just tap and the charms (I guess that's what they are calling them) pop up on the sides.
With a mouse, you have to stick your mouse in the corner (there is no hint, no folded page, no "hotcorner" to aim for), and wait - eventually the charms appear. It takes a second or two. No initial trigger to aim for, no feedback that it's occurring. I hate it very much. Maybe if it were instant I wouldn't mind (if there is a setting for this time delay, then I haven't found it yet - I'd appreciate if anyone else has found it letting me know). It's made especially difficult if you have extended your desktop horizontally - because it's very hard to know if your in the trigger corner, or if you've moved far enough over to be on the second desktop.
There is ~something~ in all four corners.
I'm not going to argue your "nonsense" claim, since Microsoft has a lot better experts than you or I, and they made the call.
More and more people are choosing mobile devices over full computers. The lines are being further blurred by devices such as Surface and Phablets. Head-mounted and other types of hidden/ubiquitous computing will be here soon enough as well. Depending on which sources you follow, some say tablets are killing laptops in sales, but also leading people to purchase desktops if a tablet is going to be their main "roaming" device.
By post-pc, no one means the PC is going away. It is, increasingly, taking a back seat in pure numbers, to mobile devices. I'm as big of a friggin geek as they come, and I use my iPad at home more than anything else. It replaced my livingroom laptop. This is also common for my clients now. Obviously type-heavy work is a different matter.
You can whine and be an old curmugeon about new operating systems if you want. I've heard it about every Windows release since we went from 3.x to 95. It's not going to change the way things are going. I've read that as many as 80% of people won't ever own Windows 8. I think this is more true in Enterprise than at home. However, Windows 9,10 probably isn't going to return to the old start bar, so you might as well get over that now.
As for input, yeah clearly the keyboard/mouse will be here a long time. However, as more people use other forms of input on their mobile devices, they will expect the same on their computers. I can't tell you how many times I reach up to touch things on my regular LCD screens these days. Gesture is ancillary. It works with touch and voice better than alone.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
'In the coming years, touch, voice and gesture will be largely taking over. Windows 7 was not equipped for that'
Thats not really the case, it takes a lot more energy to gesture and vocalise on both a gaming and corporate/business environment where there is a lot of use.
From a language and development perspective I do like the direction they went with HTML and XAML, but time will tell where this all leads (as usual)
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
I'm talking across the board. Business and gaming are very specific computer uses that clearly require the use of keyboard and mouse more so than other uses. I will say this though, I'm seeing increased use of programs like Dragon Naturally Speaking for my corporate clients.
If you take computing in general, including the monster - mobile, you will see why things are changing the way they are.
Don't take my word for it. Go research. There is some argument on the matter, but I think the trends are speaking for themselves. Touch-screen enabled laptops and devices like surface will further blur the line. People never really did like touchpads on laptops. They are clumsy and tedious at best.
For the record, I do think it was odd for MS to pull out the start menu. Doesn't seem like they really had to.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
One of the Valve programmers was quoted as saying, "20 years from now (wearable computing) will be the standard, probably through goasses or contacts, but for all I know though some kind of more direct neurak connection. And I'm pretty confident that platform shift will happen a lot sooner then 20 years ... quite likely as soon as three to five."
The Valve programmer's name is Micheal Abrash. Source is Dec. 2012 MaximumPC.
I no I am not connecting any damn thing to my brain. The thought of a virus gives all new meaning.
But for the next generation(s) of people whom are attached to the internet almost non-stop via thier phones maybe that shift may happen quickly for the desirer to keep up with the newest toys. If that becomes an option in the near future.
The glasses/contact idea sounds more stressful to the eye to me.
One thing for certain the current input devices are going to change some how fast in the near future and none of these will be what people are using.
Control Panel --> Folder Options --> Search Tab. Click "Always search file names and content"
Its always been there, albeit, its very "out of the way". Most of this has to do with indexing, which is a feature either missing or poorly implemented in earlier version of Windows.
By the way, I really liked your post, but all of that has applied since DOS, Windows 3.1. Every iteration leaves SOMETHING behind. This is not specifically a Windows 8 issue. Hell, even Unix, Mac OS X/9, and Linux suffer from the same problems. Its what software developers call "job security".
I tend to agree. Advances in different ways to input, including thought, are ongoing.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
OP, I understand where you are coming from with always needing to know how to use the current versions of a lot sofware. It is hard to function in some jobs without that knowledge imo.
I just had someone call me today asking me my thoughts on it. I haven't tried it yet but have read a fair amount about it.
MS had to do something or slowly see thier market share drop but I do agree they could have left an option for the older appearence in there (if they didn't).
Keep us posted in a week or so. I am interested.
I didnt find any difference with windows 8.
They look the same too me only liter and with an additional metro ui.
I sort of agree with this - although i didnt do as much testing as the OP did.
Must admit to start with i was ready to throw something though a window, and as the OP said about the corners. Once i found those was all pretty dandy to be honest.
This is the OS for the casual user imo, my wife, loves it. She had all here apps with facebbok and stuff and she was well happy. I also think and this is just my opinion this is for PCs that will be in the living room rather than the office, though with the smart tvs becoming the norm you prob wouldnt bother.
The other thing i am finding as well is exactly as someone else posted - for non hardcore stuff you use a tablet/netbook and gaming/working you use the desktop.
Win8 lol, pathetic !
If you want to claim that Microsoft has the real experts, then you should realize that I'm only quoting them in claiming that it's a PC-plus era, not a post-PC era.
I'm not claiming that Microsoft shouldn't try to support tablets, cell phones, and whatever else anyone comes up with. I'm only claiming that, in addition to supporting new types of input, they should continue to support older types.
Win 8 is just the next step in controlling what you can use on your computers. I thought Genuine Advantage (LOL) would have pushed people to start coding more software for Linux. It didn't so neither will Win8.
It works. Thank you. I never dug into it as deeply in Windows 7 as I did with XP, as I had simply given up by the time I got 7. It's unlikely that I'd have missed such an option when I was searching in XP, as I know that I did go through control panel and look at all of the folder options with a fine-toothed comb, probably on multiple occasions.
I view Windows 8 like Windows ME give it a 6 months they will have learned there lesson and have something else better.
Am I the only person in the world that liked Windows ME?
Very likely.