9 ms·

Betting the Company on Windows 8

115 points by DanielRibeiro 14y ago

RivieraKid 14y ago
Windows 8 is 2 operating systems for a price of one, that's one of the few positive things about it :) Metro is nice for tablets but it's clearly inefficient as a desktop OS. Efficiency and features are more important than original and pretty UI.
- sixothree 14y ago
  Well, unless you get one of the RT tablets.
jiggy2011 14y ago
The thing with Windows 8 is that the only devices it seems to make sense on are the Surface laptop things. The question remains as to whether OEMs will start to make similar devices and try and compete with Microsoft (who will have an inherent advantage). For the corporate desktop , there is still probably a lot of mileage left in Windows 7.
- madoublet 14y ago
  I agree to a point. Windows 8 works without touch, but it doesn't have the same wow factor. With that said, I cannot imagine buying a new device without touch.
  - ori_b 14y ago
    I can't imagine getting real work done on a touch device. Touch device implies it's screen is small enough to hold in one hand. In other words, the screen is too small to spread a few browser windows on. Touch implies discouraging the use of a mouse. Fingers are fuzzy and annoying for precise selection, and onscreen keyboards suck. By the time you've gotten an external keyboard and mouse to work around this, you no longer have a touch device. I can't imagine buying a touch device for work. I wouldn't object to getting one to watch movies or read books on.
    - jules 14y ago
      There are larger touch devices out there, e.g. Thinkpads. I don't see why a screen has to be small to have touch.
      - ori_b 14y ago
        You're right. It can be clunky instead.
    - jiggy2011 14y ago
      I guess this is why hybrid devices like surface exist. The question is whether the future is to have a single "do everything" device like a Surface laptop or several discreet pieces of hardware for different jobs. People with high disposable incomes don't seem to have any problem owning a PC/Mac desktop , a laptop , a tablet , a smartphone as well as several games consoles and other gadgets. Assuming you already have an iPad I don't see any huge benefit to having a Windows 8 laptop over a Windows 7 one. I know people who bought touchscreen monitors to run Windows 7, in combination to keyboard and mice. They found these a novelty for the first few days but they never really use the touch functionality.
    - cooldeal 14y ago
      >Touch device implies it's screen is small enough to hold in one hand That's a very mistaken assumption for Windows 8 devices. There are going to be a lot of form factors with touch which are not small. Eg. IdeaPad Yoga. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SHKFYngqOM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SHKFYngqOM Acer All in One http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/03/acer-announces-windows-8-all-in-one-u-series-at-computex-2012/ http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/03/acer-announces-windows-8-... Even an 80 inch computer. http://www.idownloadblog.com/2012/05/25/microsoft-sell-80-inch-windows-8-tablet/ http://www.idownloadblog.com/2012/05/25/microsoft-sell-80-in...
      - ori_b 14y ago
        Anything that size will give me arm fatigue using the touch in any meaningful way. For occasional interaction, it's fine, but standing in front of it all day, the touch will mostly get ignored.
  - lawn 14y ago
    I personally can't stand typing on a touch screen at all, even a small sms can make me upset let alone doing some actual work with it. Touch is for media consumption, not when you need to get something done.
    - madoublet 14y ago
      I completely agree. But, I also think it is just as odd to have to choose your device based on what you want to do with it. To me, this is why the Surface is so cool. Attach the keyboard, you have a work device. Detach it, you have a consumption device. To be fair, the iPad (and Android tablets) with a keyboard provides similar flexibility, but I think the desktop paradigm is what is missing.
      - alttab 14y ago
        I came here looking for this comment. I have an iPad3 with a Zagg keyboard and I freaking love it. Imagine the same level of flexibility with access to legacy Excel/Word/IE apps when you need it, but also access to newer more friendly replacements as time allows! My wife needs a new laptop, but only because she requires access to these legacy apps. Going into "legacy" mode for this, but providing the mobile consumption experience and productivity of a convienent keyboard is a killer combo. I'm actually fairly impressed with the promise of the Surface. I might go as far to say this will be what people will be carrying in 5 years or less.
    - tomkarlo 14y ago
      I can understand you may not like typing on a touch screen, but it's pretty clear that for a fairly large portion of the market (70%? 80%?), typing on a glass screen is fairly acceptable. Otherwise you wouldn't see such dominance of keyboardless phones over those with hardware keyboards. I carried a blackberry for 5 years (and sent dozens of emails a day from it) but I've never particularly found that switching to a glass screen on iPhone and now on Android impacts my ability to compose messages. Most of the folks I hear complaining about screen keyboards are still using hardware keyboards and haven't used both methods for any extended period of time.
troygoode 14y ago
Having played with the Release Preview I have to say that while Metro is very cool, the bipolar experience of constantly switching between Metro and legacy (?) is very not cool. I'm not sure if there was a better way to solve the problem or not (obviously Microsoft prioritizes backwards-compatibility), but right now it kills the experience for me. If Metro apps take off we'll likely see the need to switch to legacy mode dwindle over time, but with so many of our common day-to-day apps living in legacy mode at launch I'm afraid Metro will just fade away in most users minds ala the OSX Dashboard...
- jjcm 14y ago
  Having been using win8 for around a year now (MS employee), I really haven't noticed it getting in the way. I rarely find myself using a mix of both - either I'm in metro mode or I'm in a desktop mode. If I'm on a desktop, the keyboard shortcuts (win + type anything has gotten a lot better since windows 7) work wonders. They've made a lot of speed improvements that have been really nice. If I'm in metro mode (which admittedly I rarely am, it's just not that useful right now on a desktop), I tend to stay within that modality. I think that right now Microsoft is preparing for future hardware with this release. On traditional desktops, this doesn't make sense. But on things like the new surface I can actually see it working well.
  - SoftwareMaven 14y ago
    I have also used products at the companies I've worked for that 1) worked well for me and that 2) nobody else can figure out. Eating your own dog food is a good first start, but never believe it is sufficient to really understand how users will use a product.
  - seanmcdirmid 14y ago
    I've had to configure my helper applications to avoid getting thrown into Metro from Desktop by accident; e.g., setting my PNG viewer to Chrome instead of picture viewer. I haven't found much to in Metro yet beyond browsing my applications, but I think the whole concept is very cool. Even on my Samsung tablet I find myself in desktop all the time...b/c OneNote is just that good. (disclaimer: another MS employee)
eande 14y ago
I start to see two camps on Windows8. Some who love the surface usage idea, tech people who can easily adapt and the other camp having a real challenge with the new UI. The majority of users are the second part and I think it will be a long hard battle for MS to convince that group. At least they tried something new.
- Zenst 14y ago
  As long as I can pull up a command prompt I realy don't care as it's the easiest way to move all files starting in "A" and ending in "Z" (move A*Z ./wibble/wap/woo/.). Show me a GUI that does it easier and then we can talk about progress.
  - jjcm 14y ago
    GUI's can't, and that's why so many tech companies are trying to develop intelligent voice controls. Saying, "Hey move all of the files starting with A and ending with Z" is easier to remember than command line syntax. Don't try and make a GUI do something it's not designed to do, you'll end up with a bad GUI, not progress.
  - eande 14y ago
    I love the command prompt as well, but there are several hundred million users who don't even know what that is.
  - pbz 14y ago
    Using Total Commander, hit F6 (move), hit tab to move to the "only files of this type" box, type "A*Z", and then hit Enter.
- specialist 14y ago
  You forgot my camp: Persons so abused by Microsoft over the years that I'm fresh out of goodwill. Metro looks bitchin. I can't wait for others to copy it. But I can't imagine Microsoft sustaining their commitment. Nor can I imagine them not trashing whatever investment I've made in their platform(s), either as a user or as a dev.
mindcrime 14y ago
Updated Office 2010 style "ribbon" Explorer UI. Bleah. Here's a thought: "Newer" and "innovative" do not necessarily equal "better." As far as I'm concerned, the Ribbon UI sucks big hairy ones, and is just one more reason to run screaming away from Windows 8. Then again, since Windows 8 isn't F/OSS, I have exactly zero interest in running it to begin with, so MS aren't losing a customer here.
- cooldeal 14y ago
  I don't understand the fuss, it is minimized by default and works well on a touch screen by showing a lot of common commands. It's like people love to hate it or something, especially ones that don't even use Windows daily.
  - mindcrime 14y ago
    OK, to be fair, I've never used the ribbon on a touch based device... just Office on a conventional PC with mouse/keyboard. But that was enough to turn me off on the "ribbon" and nothing I've seen or heard to date has given me sufficient reason to revisit my dislike for it. But, I only use Windows at my dayjob where I have no choice, and I try to spend as little time as possible paying attention to the fact that it's Windows (hello, Cygwin). I'm probably not exactly the target market for MS on this to begin with. ;-)
  - CountSessine 14y ago
    Can't comment on the tablet experience - maybe it works. But Office on the PC wasn't made for a tablet - they intended the ribbon to be used by PC users, and it's terrible. Removing the menus eliminates discover-ability. The common case now when using a recent ribbon-enabled Office application, for me at least, is vaguely recalling a function that I used in a previous version and then hunting around for 2 or 3 minutes through the UI and not finding it. Without doing google searches, I'd never be able to find these features. And each of these feature-hunts adds up to a lot of wasted time.
    - beernutz 14y ago
emehrkay 14y ago
> But I have to say, this choice seems, at least so far, to be a bit saner approach than the super hard totally incompatible iOS/OSX divide in Apple land. Oh, this was a satire piece.
- Tloewald 14y ago
  I think he must be referring to the change of scrolling direction in 10.7. That stymied me for over ten seconds.
  - ams6110 14y ago
    I just changed it back in the Preferences. I tried to get used to it but somehow while it makes total sense on-glass it seems absolutely backwards on a touch pad. Maybe just too much muscle memory.
stcredzero 14y ago
> In the post PC era, Microsoft is betting the company on Windows 8, desperately trying to serve two masters with one operating system. They could be onto something here, but it will only pan out if Microsoft can execute it properly. Instead of thinking of it as "serving two masters," think of it as treating all HID paradigms as first class. You have one device that can hold all of your data and can adapt to either a tablet or a workstation input mode. Basically, it's the OQO with an iPad form factor. This could be just as "Post PC" as anything else claiming the moniker. Instead of all computing being embodied in a PC, the PC/workstation just becomes one of many input form factors. Whether or not this will fly will depend on how well Microsoft and partners can achieve the same sort of vertical integration that Apple has. (It will also depend on how well Google can develop the same and how well Apple can maintain theirs.)
- tomjen3 14y ago
  Ha, well then I will predict the future with this quote: >No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other.
  - stcredzero 14y ago
    Do you hate your iPad and love your laptop, or vice versa? I don't think it's an apt analogy.
    - AlexandrB 14y ago
      YOU are the master of the iPad/laptop, not the other way around.
      - stcredzero 14y ago
        Very good. That's a bigger reason why it's not an apt analogy.
      - Kerrick 14y ago
        That must be why iPad doesn't have user accounts.
yawgmoth 14y ago
The trend of 'surface won't suffice! I need a workstation to get real work done!' reminds me of 'a UI won't suffice! I need a command line to get real work done!'.
- tikhonj 14y ago
  And, for the people making that claim, this is still true. I certainly wouldn't be nearly as productive if I only had my GUI tools and could not use Bash, after all! I don't understand why people assume that just because CLIs are older and less popular they are also necessarily worse: they really aren't.
- lmm 14y ago
  You say that like it's not true. I've never met a decent developer who runs windows, and the obvious explanation is that its command line is still hopelessly inadequate.
  - yawgmoth 14y ago
    No, the obvious explanation is that you haven't met many Windows devs. There are many talented .NET developers.
- el_presidente 14y ago
  If the stylus is good enough I can see people who use Photoshop or AutoCAD replacing their laptop/desktop with a tablet. I just don't see how a tablet would be an improvement for working with something like a spreadsheet.
jamesaguilar 14y ago
I just don't really get why they can't do what Apple does. There are two metaphors here, one for fingers, one for keyboard and mouse. For systems with a keyboard and mouse, use the metaphor that suits them better. Seems simple.
- JoelSutherland 14y ago
  For systems with a keyboard and a mouse, Windows 8 is just Windows 7 with a new, full screen start menu. If you unplug your keyboard and mouse, you get a UI that is designed for touch. Makes sense to me.
- mtgx 14y ago
  Because they didn't do this with the customer in mind. They did it for themselves. The main is because they are very "weak" on the ARM architecture, so they need to somehow tout the ability that you can also run legacy apps, even though that's always been possible on Windows tablets, and people never cared, because they were still unoptimized for touch, just like the one that exist now will be. And second, probably because they didn't want to be the ones that actually push the knife deep into their decades long partner, Intel, and they wanted to drag them along in the "post-PC" era.
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    afaik, ARM based Windows tablets will not run legacy applications.
    - WiseWeasel 14y ago
      But they do still have a desktop, which is a bit of a head-scratcher. Why not go all-metro for WinRT? Will anyone write any non-metro Windows software for ARM, apart from Microsoft's own Office?
      - jiggy2011 14y ago
        From what I remember of the demo, the desktop is for the Intel version only and the arm version is 100% metro. Just google'd this though and couldn't find anything confirming either way. If this is confusing people on HN, think what it will be like for consumers since the two devices look very similar. Imagine trying to explain to someone that their laptop can't run software X that someone else's otherwise identical (or near enough) laptop can because "it has an ARM chip not an intel one". Instead of saying " Supports Windows 8 " , non metro software will now have to say " Supports Windows8* " I wonder how many developers will bother with metro since we already have a bewilderingly huge choices of platforms to support with our software, including "Just give up and do a web app".
deleted 14y ago
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- pmelendez 14y ago
  I still think it's a bet... OSX isn't integrated with iOS in the same fashion of Metro/Desktop in Win8 and Android has not a real desktop version to make a comparison here. Microsoft is trying to bring the touch experience to desktops with a keyboard and a mouse and that's very risky.
saturdaysaint 14y ago
Is it fair to consider the touch-centric UI a "bet" when competitors have been demonstrating it's popularity in the marketplace for years? I take some exception with characterizing Windows 8 as a "bet" because there's little risky or new about it. It handles multi-tasking more elegantly then iOS, but so do/did Android tablets and Palm's WebOS. It has a nice app store, but that's just table stakes at this point. The built in apps are cute, but I don't see any that would make me regret buying a competing tablet - to contrast, Apple's creative apps and Android's maps would induce some buyer's remorse.
Zenst 14y ago
I'm amazed that Windows is sold and tied to one user interface! Why they don't afford the user choice like Linux I don't know. Forcing users to make a limited choice of one is going to upset many, change can be bad as well as good. Come SP1/2 of windows8 they will offer alternative user interfaces - can smell the outcome in the air. Failing that they will have a active market in alternatives that will become more mainstream aware than the alternatives currently.
- jjcm 14y ago
  "Why they don't afford the user choice like Linux I don't know." You can choose to have the standard desktop be the default, is that what you mean?
  - Zenst 14y ago
    What i mean is you get the windows GUI and are not afforded any alternatives like you are browsers, there are alternatives out there but they are not for the faint hearted and that in itself is the issue. Tech's like us have no issue with them but for joe public then they only see what they are given and when they are not offered an option then they see no choice.
- tedunangst 14y ago
  If you sit down at a friend's Windows box, with two buttons, you can use it, again with no problems. But just try making sense of a friend's X terminal: three buttons, each one programmed a different way to perform a different function on each different day of the week -- and that's before you consider combinations like control-left-button, shift-right-button, control-shift-meta-middle-button, and so on. http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix-haters/x-windows/disaster.html http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix-haters/x-windows/disast...
- josephcooney 14y ago
  You can change the windows shell, and a lot of people do (for example LiteStep) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_alternative_shells_for_Windows http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_alternative_shells_for_... There is also a very active windows theme customization community who use tools like windows blinds to tweak the current windows theme into something you probably wouldn't recognize. http://www.stardock.com/products/windowblinds/ http://www.stardock.com/products/windowblinds/
smashing 14y ago
"But don't take my word for it. Download the free Release Preview and try Windows 8 yourself." Does this sound like marketing to anyone else?
- zachwill 14y ago
  To me, it came off along the same vein as Daring Fireball, but in a worse fashion — a little too pro-Windows and the new features.
  - tikhonj 14y ago
    I can certainly see how this is like Daring Fireball: he does neglect to talk about any downsides. But I can't imagine how this is worse, except that it's about Windows rather than OS X. Personally, I find Daring Fireball significantly more smug and annoying--unlike this post, Daring Fireball also likes to constantly rag on Android and implicitly assumes almost everything Apple does is perfect.
- rewind 14y ago
  So anytime someone is excited about a product and says "I love it; you should try it!" they're a shill? If your customers used your product and told others to do the same, would you have the same opinion?
- MattSayar 14y ago
  To me it sounds more like he wants you to form your own opinion.
capkutay 14y ago
I'm actually pretty impressed by Windows 8...but do I see myself actually buying an MSFT tablet over the next iPad? At this point...no.
- sixothree 14y ago
  How about instead of a new notebook computer? I think that's where this is really going to be a attractive to people.
thom 14y ago
Oh look, they've updated the copy dialog again. Tell you what: maybe just make it as fast as it can possibly be, and I'll promise not to ask how long it's taking. We seem to be heading towards a point where booting Windows is going to take longer than copying a single file.
- dpark 14y ago
  Oh look, copying 200GB of data across the network is slow. I wonder how long it will take.
  - thom 14y ago
    Making every copy operation excruciating just to support the few cases where you might actually benefit from the fullscreen 3D copy visualisation with Dolby Surround Sound isn't a design tradeoff with which I've been particularly satisfied. It'd be fine if you could hold down Shift or something to say "please don't muck about". It's even worse when it's putting stuff in the Recycle Bin, at which point you really, _really_ don't care. Your mileage is entirely welcome to vary, and perhaps the performance of this new dialog is such that I won't notice it as much as its Vista and Windows 7 counterparts. To be honest I couldn't work out the Windows 8 preview to the point where I could even find a file, let alone copy it somewhere.
    - dpark 14y ago
      I'm not clear what your complaint actually is. Are you upset because the dialog exists at all? Would you rather that you get no convenient way to know when the copy is complete? Or are you annoyed by the extra visualizations and such? It seems like you could simply not expand the additional info. As for the recycle dialog, I'm pretty sure that's gone in Windows 8.
snorkel 14y ago
Windows 95 was the last time I can recall a major rev of Windows lived up to its pre-release hype. This Windows 8 hype reminds me of the salivating over Longhorn which turned out as Windows Vista, again.
- rbanffy 14y ago
  Well... The difference between what has been show of Windows 8 and the preview versions you can download and run are small when compared to the Longhorn PDC'03 video and what was actually delivered as Vista. In fact, the PDC'03 Longhorn is still light-years ahead of Windows 8.
georgemcbay 14y ago
"I'd argue that the last truly revolutionary version of Windows was Windows 95. In the subsequent 17 years, we've seen a stream of mostly minor and often inconsequential design changes in Windows" I know Jeff is looking at this more on the design side than the technical, but I'd argue that Windows XP was a much bigger deal than Windows 95, being the first consumer release based on the NT kernel and thus the first "home" version of Windows with reasonable memory protection between processes. How quickly we forget how terrible Windows was in the bad old days of daily BSODs.
- ArbitraryLimits 14y ago
  Agreed. All the tech popularizers and business people focus on the non-exclusive license for DOS they gave IBM as the smartest decision Bill Gates ever made, and I guess it was, but for my money a very close second was hiring Dave Cutler and his people from DEC to build a real OS kernel. Without the NT kernel to fall back on, Windows would have collapsed under its own weight long ago.
  - yuhong 14y ago
    On the other hand, one of the worse ones was the fiasco involving OS/2 2.0, which was much closer to NT than Win9x was and for example could have been used to legally attack DR-DOS. Why did it take 10 years after Intel released the 80386 before 32-bit programming became popular? I have a thread about it here: http://www.os2museum.com/wp/?p=516&cpage=1#comment-3413 http://www.os2museum.com/wp/?p=516&cpage=1#comment-3413
- facorreia 14y ago
  How terrible third-party Windows applications were. Writing cooperative multitasking applications is hard and much blame was assigned to Windows when it should be on applications.
  - georgemcbay 14y ago
    I agree with you up to a point but given the hardware of the time, it was certainly possible to make the OS more robust than it was prior to the switch to NT everywhere, and to Microsoft's credit they did make the correct decision. Now, despite the lingering snarkiness from the *nix-hipsters, Windows is incredibly robust... even more so today since in Vista and on even the graphics driver can crash without an OS restart in most cases.
jpxxx 14y ago
Microsoft is not composed of morons, their engineering is world-class, and they're not out to ruin their business or their product line. And the problem isn't Windows 8. I'm guessing: The Windows 8 Desktop side will be top-notch, comforting, and work as before and as expected. The Windows 8 Metro side will be top-notch, internally-coherent, well-received, and offer a reduced complexity set for novice users and those seeking clarity and easier consumption. The core OS will be top-notch, work on a grand range of hardware, and work as before and as expected. It's not the problem with any of these pieces, it's how they're put together. The first hour of Windows 8 is maddening, regardless of your technical skill level, comfort with Windows idioms, or level of resistance to change. Two thirds of system configuration has been gutted and stranded in Metro mode. Login (if set up) is baffling and new. The computer violently flips between Metro and Desktop for reasons you're never quite sure of. It's constantly trying to drag you to this new place with completely different rules, appearance, and behavior. UI is hidden and transient. There's no guide. You're just dumped there, and all efforts to work your computer like you did before are stymied. Yes, eventually YOU figure it out, but someone who's spent 20 years baking in the same ultra-reduced set of magic rituals to get the e-mail out is going to feel stupid. And they're not going to blame themselves - the era when you had no choice but to blame yourself is long over. The Microsoft TABLET will be fine. The Microsoft SERVER will be fine. The Microsoft POWER USER base will be fine. The Microsoft GAMER population will be fine. The Microsoft DEVELOPERS will be fine. It's the people who are only on the platform by virtue of "that's where facebook and my email is" who are going to run away screaming "Vista 2". That's the chip they're gambling with here, and I think they're going to lose it.
- onedev 14y ago
  This is the most accurate comment on Windows8 that I've seen so far. I'm a developer so I had no problem playing around with Windows8 DevPreview and ConsumerPreview. However, if you gave Windows8 to someone who doesn't even know how to navigate the filesystem properly, they will just get mad. Unfortunately this happens to be, by far, Windows' largest market.
  - huggyface 14y ago
    I'm a developer so I had no problem playing around with Windows8 DevPreview and ConsumerPreview. I'm a developer and I absolutely had a problem with it. The question I ask of changed software is whether it makes my life easier or if it makes my life harder. Windows 8 makes my life harder to force a tablet paradigm on the desktop, hoping to leveraging a desktop monopoly into taking on Apple. From no perspective does it improve my experience on the desktop. It is actually the first time I've seriously considered moving my primary development desktop to Ubuntu or OSX.
mrdodge 14y ago
How often do people use the Task Manager? I keep hearing about how great it is in every Windows 8 review.
- jinushaun 14y ago
  Every day. Ideally, I should never need to open the task manager, but I do—even on OS X.
erikpukinskis 14y ago
Whenever anyone lists the new copy dialog as one of the top features of Windows 8, it really makes Windows 8 sound bad. I mean, seriously? The copy dialog? The thing whose job it is to say "OK, you've got plenty of time, go take a shower" and "OK, we're almost there!" I'm sorry, this is not a key piece of infrastructure. If that's one of the most exciting things you can point to on Windows 8, that says to me there's not much exciting to point to.
- neotek 14y ago
  Come on, nobody is suggesting the copy dialog is the pinnacle of Windows 8, but it's important because it solves a very common and very visible frustration with previous versions of Windows.
  - ams6110 14y ago
    Does it? What frustration is that? Copying files takes time, everybody gets that, what's the frustration? The animation isn't cute enough?
    - neotek 14y ago
      Users regularly express frustration with the inaccurate way Windows calculates time estimates on file transfers and the fact that you can't add or remove files in the queue without using a third party application like Teracopy.
      - hammersend 14y ago
        I would imagine I'm about as much of a "power user" as anyone else on here and I couldn't care less about either of the things you just mentioned. Making a big deal out of the file copy dialog on a new OS does seem a bit over the top.
jsz0 14y ago
It's amazing how fast things change these days. Good 7" tablets for $200-$250 really undermine the whole Windows 8 strategy. Carrying around a laptop and a cheap 7" tablet that is actually light enough to hold for long periods of time is going to be a better choice for most people than the 2 pound Surface Pro which may very well end up costing more than two separate devices.
lurkinggrue 14y ago
It feels like they took the widgets that I never quite got into using and shoved them in my face at full screen. The new meto programs have no depth or maturity. I had the same problem trying to do serious work on android. It wasn't worth jumping though the extra hoops to get the same stuff done. That being said... a tablet is the best bathroom computer.
awaretek 14y ago
Microsoft abused me for years. They had a monopoly, I had to use Windows and Office ( I still do at work for many things). Now , thank god almighty, I have choices. They will have to do a lot better than Windows 8 to rope me back into the corral. Metro and Windows 8 might be good enough if introduced by any other company. Microsoft is not any other company. I am not a ludite nor a nutjob. I have real work to do and am forced to use Microsoft products. But I will roast in hell before I give them any benefit of the doubt. Ever. I hate Microsoft.
- Maascamp 14y ago
  Why are you here commenting on this then? Just avoid the Microsoft articles and we can avoid your valueless commentary.
awaretek 14y ago
Microsoft abused me for years. They had a monopoly, I had to use Windows and Office ( I still do at work for many things). Now , thank god almighty, I have choices. They will have to do a lot better than Windows 8 to rope me back into the corral. Metro and Windows 8 might be good enough if introduced by any other company. Microsoft is not any other company. I am not a ludite nor a nutjob. I have real work to do and am forced to use Microsoft products. But I will roast in hell before I give them any benefit of the doubt. Ever. I hate Microsoft.

115 points by DanielRibeiro 14y ago

Windows 8 is 2 operating systems for a price of one, that's one of the few positive things about it :) Metro is nice for tablets but it's clearly inefficient as a desktop OS. Efficiency and features are more important than original and pretty UI.

sixothree 14y ago
Well, unless you get one of the RT tablets.

jiggy2011 14y ago

The thing with Windows 8 is that the only devices it seems to make sense on are the Surface laptop things. The question remains as to whether OEMs will start to make similar devices and try and compete with Microsoft (who will have an inherent advantage). For the corporate desktop , there is still probably a lot of mileage left in Windows 7.

madoublet 14y ago
I agree to a point. Windows 8 works without touch, but it doesn't have the same wow factor. With that said, I cannot imagine buying a new device without touch.
- ori_b 14y ago
  I can't imagine getting real work done on a touch device. Touch device implies it's screen is small enough to hold in one hand. In other words, the screen is too small to spread a few browser windows on. Touch implies discouraging the use of a mouse. Fingers are fuzzy and annoying for precise selection, and onscreen keyboards suck. By the time you've gotten an external keyboard and mouse to work around this, you no longer have a touch device. I can't imagine buying a touch device for work. I wouldn't object to getting one to watch movies or read books on.
  - jules 14y ago
    There are larger touch devices out there, e.g. Thinkpads. I don't see why a screen has to be small to have touch.
    - ori_b 14y ago
      You're right. It can be clunky instead.
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    I guess this is why hybrid devices like surface exist. The question is whether the future is to have a single "do everything" device like a Surface laptop or several discreet pieces of hardware for different jobs. People with high disposable incomes don't seem to have any problem owning a PC/Mac desktop , a laptop , a tablet , a smartphone as well as several games consoles and other gadgets. Assuming you already have an iPad I don't see any huge benefit to having a Windows 8 laptop over a Windows 7 one. I know people who bought touchscreen monitors to run Windows 7, in combination to keyboard and mice. They found these a novelty for the first few days but they never really use the touch functionality.
  - cooldeal 14y ago
    >Touch device implies it's screen is small enough to hold in one hand That's a very mistaken assumption for Windows 8 devices. There are going to be a lot of form factors with touch which are not small. Eg. IdeaPad Yoga. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SHKFYngqOM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SHKFYngqOM Acer All in One http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/03/acer-announces-windows-8-all-in-one-u-series-at-computex-2012/ http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/03/acer-announces-windows-8-... Even an 80 inch computer. http://www.idownloadblog.com/2012/05/25/microsoft-sell-80-inch-windows-8-tablet/ http://www.idownloadblog.com/2012/05/25/microsoft-sell-80-in...
    - ori_b 14y ago
      Anything that size will give me arm fatigue using the touch in any meaningful way. For occasional interaction, it's fine, but standing in front of it all day, the touch will mostly get ignored.
- lawn 14y ago
  I personally can't stand typing on a touch screen at all, even a small sms can make me upset let alone doing some actual work with it. Touch is for media consumption, not when you need to get something done.
  - madoublet 14y ago
    I completely agree. But, I also think it is just as odd to have to choose your device based on what you want to do with it. To me, this is why the Surface is so cool. Attach the keyboard, you have a work device. Detach it, you have a consumption device. To be fair, the iPad (and Android tablets) with a keyboard provides similar flexibility, but I think the desktop paradigm is what is missing.
    - alttab 14y ago
      I came here looking for this comment. I have an iPad3 with a Zagg keyboard and I freaking love it. Imagine the same level of flexibility with access to legacy Excel/Word/IE apps when you need it, but also access to newer more friendly replacements as time allows! My wife needs a new laptop, but only because she requires access to these legacy apps. Going into "legacy" mode for this, but providing the mobile consumption experience and productivity of a convienent keyboard is a killer combo. I'm actually fairly impressed with the promise of the Surface. I might go as far to say this will be what people will be carrying in 5 years or less.
  - tomkarlo 14y ago
    I can understand you may not like typing on a touch screen, but it's pretty clear that for a fairly large portion of the market (70%? 80%?), typing on a glass screen is fairly acceptable. Otherwise you wouldn't see such dominance of keyboardless phones over those with hardware keyboards. I carried a blackberry for 5 years (and sent dozens of emails a day from it) but I've never particularly found that switching to a glass screen on iPhone and now on Android impacts my ability to compose messages. Most of the folks I hear complaining about screen keyboards are still using hardware keyboards and haven't used both methods for any extended period of time.

troygoode 14y ago

Having played with the Release Preview I have to say that while Metro is very cool, the bipolar experience of constantly switching between Metro and legacy (?) is very not cool. I'm not sure if there was a better way to solve the problem or not (obviously Microsoft prioritizes backwards-compatibility), but right now it kills the experience for me. If Metro apps take off we'll likely see the need to switch to legacy mode dwindle over time, but with so many of our common day-to-day apps living in legacy mode at launch I'm afraid Metro will just fade away in most users minds ala the OSX Dashboard...

jjcm 14y ago
Having been using win8 for around a year now (MS employee), I really haven't noticed it getting in the way. I rarely find myself using a mix of both - either I'm in metro mode or I'm in a desktop mode. If I'm on a desktop, the keyboard shortcuts (win + type anything has gotten a lot better since windows 7) work wonders. They've made a lot of speed improvements that have been really nice. If I'm in metro mode (which admittedly I rarely am, it's just not that useful right now on a desktop), I tend to stay within that modality. I think that right now Microsoft is preparing for future hardware with this release. On traditional desktops, this doesn't make sense. But on things like the new surface I can actually see it working well.
- SoftwareMaven 14y ago
  I have also used products at the companies I've worked for that 1) worked well for me and that 2) nobody else can figure out. Eating your own dog food is a good first start, but never believe it is sufficient to really understand how users will use a product.
- seanmcdirmid 14y ago
  I've had to configure my helper applications to avoid getting thrown into Metro from Desktop by accident; e.g., setting my PNG viewer to Chrome instead of picture viewer. I haven't found much to in Metro yet beyond browsing my applications, but I think the whole concept is very cool. Even on my Samsung tablet I find myself in desktop all the time...b/c OneNote is just that good. (disclaimer: another MS employee)

eande 14y ago

I start to see two camps on Windows8. Some who love the surface usage idea, tech people who can easily adapt and the other camp having a real challenge with the new UI. The majority of users are the second part and I think it will be a long hard battle for MS to convince that group. At least they tried something new.

Zenst 14y ago
As long as I can pull up a command prompt I realy don't care as it's the easiest way to move all files starting in "A" and ending in "Z" (move A*Z ./wibble/wap/woo/.). Show me a GUI that does it easier and then we can talk about progress.
- jjcm 14y ago
  GUI's can't, and that's why so many tech companies are trying to develop intelligent voice controls. Saying, "Hey move all of the files starting with A and ending with Z" is easier to remember than command line syntax. Don't try and make a GUI do something it's not designed to do, you'll end up with a bad GUI, not progress.
- eande 14y ago
  I love the command prompt as well, but there are several hundred million users who don't even know what that is.
- pbz 14y ago
  Using Total Commander, hit F6 (move), hit tab to move to the "only files of this type" box, type "A*Z", and then hit Enter.
specialist 14y ago
You forgot my camp: Persons so abused by Microsoft over the years that I'm fresh out of goodwill. Metro looks bitchin. I can't wait for others to copy it. But I can't imagine Microsoft sustaining their commitment. Nor can I imagine them not trashing whatever investment I've made in their platform(s), either as a user or as a dev.

mindcrime 14y ago

Updated Office 2010 style "ribbon" Explorer UI. Bleah. Here's a thought: "Newer" and "innovative" do not necessarily equal "better." As far as I'm concerned, the Ribbon UI sucks big hairy ones, and is just one more reason to run screaming away from Windows 8. Then again, since Windows 8 isn't F/OSS, I have exactly zero interest in running it to begin with, so MS aren't losing a customer here.

cooldeal 14y ago
I don't understand the fuss, it is minimized by default and works well on a touch screen by showing a lot of common commands. It's like people love to hate it or something, especially ones that don't even use Windows daily.
- mindcrime 14y ago
  OK, to be fair, I've never used the ribbon on a touch based device... just Office on a conventional PC with mouse/keyboard. But that was enough to turn me off on the "ribbon" and nothing I've seen or heard to date has given me sufficient reason to revisit my dislike for it. But, I only use Windows at my dayjob where I have no choice, and I try to spend as little time as possible paying attention to the fact that it's Windows (hello, Cygwin). I'm probably not exactly the target market for MS on this to begin with. ;-)
- CountSessine 14y ago
  Can't comment on the tablet experience - maybe it works. But Office on the PC wasn't made for a tablet - they intended the ribbon to be used by PC users, and it's terrible. Removing the menus eliminates discover-ability. The common case now when using a recent ribbon-enabled Office application, for me at least, is vaguely recalling a function that I used in a previous version and then hunting around for 2 or 3 minutes through the UI and not finding it. Without doing google searches, I'd never be able to find these features. And each of these feature-hunts adds up to a lot of wasted time.
  - beernutz 14y ago

emehrkay 14y ago

> But I have to say, this choice seems, at least so far, to be a bit saner approach than the super hard totally incompatible iOS/OSX divide in Apple land. Oh, this was a satire piece.

Tloewald 14y ago
I think he must be referring to the change of scrolling direction in 10.7. That stymied me for over ten seconds.
- ams6110 14y ago
  I just changed it back in the Preferences. I tried to get used to it but somehow while it makes total sense on-glass it seems absolutely backwards on a touch pad. Maybe just too much muscle memory.

stcredzero 14y ago

> In the post PC era, Microsoft is betting the company on Windows 8, desperately trying to serve two masters with one operating system. They could be onto something here, but it will only pan out if Microsoft can execute it properly. Instead of thinking of it as "serving two masters," think of it as treating all HID paradigms as first class. You have one device that can hold all of your data and can adapt to either a tablet or a workstation input mode. Basically, it's the OQO with an iPad form factor. This could be just as "Post PC" as anything else claiming the moniker. Instead of all computing being embodied in a PC, the PC/workstation just becomes one of many input form factors. Whether or not this will fly will depend on how well Microsoft and partners can achieve the same sort of vertical integration that Apple has. (It will also depend on how well Google can develop the same and how well Apple can maintain theirs.)

tomjen3 14y ago
Ha, well then I will predict the future with this quote: >No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other.
- stcredzero 14y ago
  Do you hate your iPad and love your laptop, or vice versa? I don't think it's an apt analogy.
  - AlexandrB 14y ago
    YOU are the master of the iPad/laptop, not the other way around.
    - stcredzero 14y ago
      Very good. That's a bigger reason why it's not an apt analogy.
    - Kerrick 14y ago
      That must be why iPad doesn't have user accounts.

yawgmoth 14y ago

The trend of 'surface won't suffice! I need a workstation to get real work done!' reminds me of 'a UI won't suffice! I need a command line to get real work done!'.

tikhonj 14y ago
And, for the people making that claim, this is still true. I certainly wouldn't be nearly as productive if I only had my GUI tools and could not use Bash, after all! I don't understand why people assume that just because CLIs are older and less popular they are also necessarily worse: they really aren't.
lmm 14y ago
You say that like it's not true. I've never met a decent developer who runs windows, and the obvious explanation is that its command line is still hopelessly inadequate.
- yawgmoth 14y ago
  No, the obvious explanation is that you haven't met many Windows devs. There are many talented .NET developers.
el_presidente 14y ago
If the stylus is good enough I can see people who use Photoshop or AutoCAD replacing their laptop/desktop with a tablet. I just don't see how a tablet would be an improvement for working with something like a spreadsheet.

jamesaguilar 14y ago

I just don't really get why they can't do what Apple does. There are two metaphors here, one for fingers, one for keyboard and mouse. For systems with a keyboard and mouse, use the metaphor that suits them better. Seems simple.

JoelSutherland 14y ago
For systems with a keyboard and a mouse, Windows 8 is just Windows 7 with a new, full screen start menu. If you unplug your keyboard and mouse, you get a UI that is designed for touch. Makes sense to me.
mtgx 14y ago
Because they didn't do this with the customer in mind. They did it for themselves. The main is because they are very "weak" on the ARM architecture, so they need to somehow tout the ability that you can also run legacy apps, even though that's always been possible on Windows tablets, and people never cared, because they were still unoptimized for touch, just like the one that exist now will be. And second, probably because they didn't want to be the ones that actually push the knife deep into their decades long partner, Intel, and they wanted to drag them along in the "post-PC" era.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  afaik, ARM based Windows tablets will not run legacy applications.
  - WiseWeasel 14y ago
    But they do still have a desktop, which is a bit of a head-scratcher. Why not go all-metro for WinRT? Will anyone write any non-metro Windows software for ARM, apart from Microsoft's own Office?
    - jiggy2011 14y ago
      From what I remember of the demo, the desktop is for the Intel version only and the arm version is 100% metro. Just google'd this though and couldn't find anything confirming either way. If this is confusing people on HN, think what it will be like for consumers since the two devices look very similar. Imagine trying to explain to someone that their laptop can't run software X that someone else's otherwise identical (or near enough) laptop can because "it has an ARM chip not an intel one". Instead of saying " Supports Windows 8 " , non metro software will now have to say " Supports Windows8* " I wonder how many developers will bother with metro since we already have a bewilderingly huge choices of platforms to support with our software, including "Just give up and do a web app".

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pmelendez 14y ago
I still think it's a bet... OSX isn't integrated with iOS in the same fashion of Metro/Desktop in Win8 and Android has not a real desktop version to make a comparison here. Microsoft is trying to bring the touch experience to desktops with a keyboard and a mouse and that's very risky.

saturdaysaint 14y ago

Is it fair to consider the touch-centric UI a "bet" when competitors have been demonstrating it's popularity in the marketplace for years? I take some exception with characterizing Windows 8 as a "bet" because there's little risky or new about it. It handles multi-tasking more elegantly then iOS, but so do/did Android tablets and Palm's WebOS. It has a nice app store, but that's just table stakes at this point. The built in apps are cute, but I don't see any that would make me regret buying a competing tablet - to contrast, Apple's creative apps and Android's maps would induce some buyer's remorse.

Zenst 14y ago

I'm amazed that Windows is sold and tied to one user interface! Why they don't afford the user choice like Linux I don't know. Forcing users to make a limited choice of one is going to upset many, change can be bad as well as good. Come SP1/2 of windows8 they will offer alternative user interfaces - can smell the outcome in the air. Failing that they will have a active market in alternatives that will become more mainstream aware than the alternatives currently.

jjcm 14y ago
"Why they don't afford the user choice like Linux I don't know." You can choose to have the standard desktop be the default, is that what you mean?
- Zenst 14y ago
  What i mean is you get the windows GUI and are not afforded any alternatives like you are browsers, there are alternatives out there but they are not for the faint hearted and that in itself is the issue. Tech's like us have no issue with them but for joe public then they only see what they are given and when they are not offered an option then they see no choice.
tedunangst 14y ago
If you sit down at a friend's Windows box, with two buttons, you can use it, again with no problems. But just try making sense of a friend's X terminal: three buttons, each one programmed a different way to perform a different function on each different day of the week -- and that's before you consider combinations like control-left-button, shift-right-button, control-shift-meta-middle-button, and so on. http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix-haters/x-windows/disaster.html http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix-haters/x-windows/disast...
josephcooney 14y ago
You can change the windows shell, and a lot of people do (for example LiteStep) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_alternative_shells_for_Windows http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_alternative_shells_for_... There is also a very active windows theme customization community who use tools like windows blinds to tweak the current windows theme into something you probably wouldn't recognize. http://www.stardock.com/products/windowblinds/ http://www.stardock.com/products/windowblinds/

smashing 14y ago

"But don't take my word for it. Download the free Release Preview and try Windows 8 yourself." Does this sound like marketing to anyone else?

zachwill 14y ago
To me, it came off along the same vein as Daring Fireball, but in a worse fashion — a little too pro-Windows and the new features.
- tikhonj 14y ago
  I can certainly see how this is like Daring Fireball: he does neglect to talk about any downsides. But I can't imagine how this is worse, except that it's about Windows rather than OS X. Personally, I find Daring Fireball significantly more smug and annoying--unlike this post, Daring Fireball also likes to constantly rag on Android and implicitly assumes almost everything Apple does is perfect.
rewind 14y ago
So anytime someone is excited about a product and says "I love it; you should try it!" they're a shill? If your customers used your product and told others to do the same, would you have the same opinion?
MattSayar 14y ago
To me it sounds more like he wants you to form your own opinion.

capkutay 14y ago

I'm actually pretty impressed by Windows 8...but do I see myself actually buying an MSFT tablet over the next iPad? At this point...no.

sixothree 14y ago
How about instead of a new notebook computer? I think that's where this is really going to be a attractive to people.

thom 14y ago

Oh look, they've updated the copy dialog again. Tell you what: maybe just make it as fast as it can possibly be, and I'll promise not to ask how long it's taking. We seem to be heading towards a point where booting Windows is going to take longer than copying a single file.

dpark 14y ago
Oh look, copying 200GB of data across the network is slow. I wonder how long it will take.
- thom 14y ago
  Making every copy operation excruciating just to support the few cases where you might actually benefit from the fullscreen 3D copy visualisation with Dolby Surround Sound isn't a design tradeoff with which I've been particularly satisfied. It'd be fine if you could hold down Shift or something to say "please don't muck about". It's even worse when it's putting stuff in the Recycle Bin, at which point you really, _really_ don't care. Your mileage is entirely welcome to vary, and perhaps the performance of this new dialog is such that I won't notice it as much as its Vista and Windows 7 counterparts. To be honest I couldn't work out the Windows 8 preview to the point where I could even find a file, let alone copy it somewhere.
  - dpark 14y ago
    I'm not clear what your complaint actually is. Are you upset because the dialog exists at all? Would you rather that you get no convenient way to know when the copy is complete? Or are you annoyed by the extra visualizations and such? It seems like you could simply not expand the additional info. As for the recycle dialog, I'm pretty sure that's gone in Windows 8.

snorkel 14y ago

Windows 95 was the last time I can recall a major rev of Windows lived up to its pre-release hype. This Windows 8 hype reminds me of the salivating over Longhorn which turned out as Windows Vista, again.

rbanffy 14y ago
Well... The difference between what has been show of Windows 8 and the preview versions you can download and run are small when compared to the Longhorn PDC'03 video and what was actually delivered as Vista. In fact, the PDC'03 Longhorn is still light-years ahead of Windows 8.

georgemcbay 14y ago

"I'd argue that the last truly revolutionary version of Windows was Windows 95. In the subsequent 17 years, we've seen a stream of mostly minor and often inconsequential design changes in Windows" I know Jeff is looking at this more on the design side than the technical, but I'd argue that Windows XP was a much bigger deal than Windows 95, being the first consumer release based on the NT kernel and thus the first "home" version of Windows with reasonable memory protection between processes. How quickly we forget how terrible Windows was in the bad old days of daily BSODs.

ArbitraryLimits 14y ago
Agreed. All the tech popularizers and business people focus on the non-exclusive license for DOS they gave IBM as the smartest decision Bill Gates ever made, and I guess it was, but for my money a very close second was hiring Dave Cutler and his people from DEC to build a real OS kernel. Without the NT kernel to fall back on, Windows would have collapsed under its own weight long ago.
- yuhong 14y ago
  On the other hand, one of the worse ones was the fiasco involving OS/2 2.0, which was much closer to NT than Win9x was and for example could have been used to legally attack DR-DOS. Why did it take 10 years after Intel released the 80386 before 32-bit programming became popular? I have a thread about it here: http://www.os2museum.com/wp/?p=516&cpage=1#comment-3413 http://www.os2museum.com/wp/?p=516&cpage=1#comment-3413
facorreia 14y ago
How terrible third-party Windows applications were. Writing cooperative multitasking applications is hard and much blame was assigned to Windows when it should be on applications.
- georgemcbay 14y ago
  I agree with you up to a point but given the hardware of the time, it was certainly possible to make the OS more robust than it was prior to the switch to NT everywhere, and to Microsoft's credit they did make the correct decision. Now, despite the lingering snarkiness from the *nix-hipsters, Windows is incredibly robust... even more so today since in Vista and on even the graphics driver can crash without an OS restart in most cases.

jpxxx 14y ago

Microsoft is not composed of morons, their engineering is world-class, and they're not out to ruin their business or their product line. And the problem isn't Windows 8. I'm guessing: The Windows 8 Desktop side will be top-notch, comforting, and work as before and as expected. The Windows 8 Metro side will be top-notch, internally-coherent, well-received, and offer a reduced complexity set for novice users and those seeking clarity and easier consumption. The core OS will be top-notch, work on a grand range of hardware, and work as before and as expected. It's not the problem with any of these pieces, it's how they're put together. The first hour of Windows 8 is maddening, regardless of your technical skill level, comfort with Windows idioms, or level of resistance to change. Two thirds of system configuration has been gutted and stranded in Metro mode. Login (if set up) is baffling and new. The computer violently flips between Metro and Desktop for reasons you're never quite sure of. It's constantly trying to drag you to this new place with completely different rules, appearance, and behavior. UI is hidden and transient. There's no guide. You're just dumped there, and all efforts to work your computer like you did before are stymied. Yes, eventually YOU figure it out, but someone who's spent 20 years baking in the same ultra-reduced set of magic rituals to get the e-mail out is going to feel stupid. And they're not going to blame themselves - the era when you had no choice but to blame yourself is long over. The Microsoft TABLET will be fine. The Microsoft SERVER will be fine. The Microsoft POWER USER base will be fine. The Microsoft GAMER population will be fine. The Microsoft DEVELOPERS will be fine. It's the people who are only on the platform by virtue of "that's where facebook and my email is" who are going to run away screaming "Vista 2". That's the chip they're gambling with here, and I think they're going to lose it.

onedev 14y ago
This is the most accurate comment on Windows8 that I've seen so far. I'm a developer so I had no problem playing around with Windows8 DevPreview and ConsumerPreview. However, if you gave Windows8 to someone who doesn't even know how to navigate the filesystem properly, they will just get mad. Unfortunately this happens to be, by far, Windows' largest market.
- huggyface 14y ago
  I'm a developer so I had no problem playing around with Windows8 DevPreview and ConsumerPreview. I'm a developer and I absolutely had a problem with it. The question I ask of changed software is whether it makes my life easier or if it makes my life harder. Windows 8 makes my life harder to force a tablet paradigm on the desktop, hoping to leveraging a desktop monopoly into taking on Apple. From no perspective does it improve my experience on the desktop. It is actually the first time I've seriously considered moving my primary development desktop to Ubuntu or OSX.

mrdodge 14y ago

How often do people use the Task Manager? I keep hearing about how great it is in every Windows 8 review.

jinushaun 14y ago
Every day. Ideally, I should never need to open the task manager, but I do—even on OS X.

erikpukinskis 14y ago

Whenever anyone lists the new copy dialog as one of the top features of Windows 8, it really makes Windows 8 sound bad. I mean, seriously? The copy dialog? The thing whose job it is to say "OK, you've got plenty of time, go take a shower" and "OK, we're almost there!" I'm sorry, this is not a key piece of infrastructure. If that's one of the most exciting things you can point to on Windows 8, that says to me there's not much exciting to point to.

neotek 14y ago
Come on, nobody is suggesting the copy dialog is the pinnacle of Windows 8, but it's important because it solves a very common and very visible frustration with previous versions of Windows.
- ams6110 14y ago
  Does it? What frustration is that? Copying files takes time, everybody gets that, what's the frustration? The animation isn't cute enough?
  - neotek 14y ago
    Users regularly express frustration with the inaccurate way Windows calculates time estimates on file transfers and the fact that you can't add or remove files in the queue without using a third party application like Teracopy.
    - hammersend 14y ago
      I would imagine I'm about as much of a "power user" as anyone else on here and I couldn't care less about either of the things you just mentioned. Making a big deal out of the file copy dialog on a new OS does seem a bit over the top.

jsz0 14y ago

It's amazing how fast things change these days. Good 7" tablets for $200-$250 really undermine the whole Windows 8 strategy. Carrying around a laptop and a cheap 7" tablet that is actually light enough to hold for long periods of time is going to be a better choice for most people than the 2 pound Surface Pro which may very well end up costing more than two separate devices.

lurkinggrue 14y ago

It feels like they took the widgets that I never quite got into using and shoved them in my face at full screen. The new meto programs have no depth or maturity. I had the same problem trying to do serious work on android. It wasn't worth jumping though the extra hoops to get the same stuff done. That being said... a tablet is the best bathroom computer.

awaretek 14y ago

Microsoft abused me for years. They had a monopoly, I had to use Windows and Office ( I still do at work for many things). Now , thank god almighty, I have choices. They will have to do a lot better than Windows 8 to rope me back into the corral. Metro and Windows 8 might be good enough if introduced by any other company. Microsoft is not any other company. I am not a ludite nor a nutjob. I have real work to do and am forced to use Microsoft products. But I will roast in hell before I give them any benefit of the doubt. Ever. I hate Microsoft.

Maascamp 14y ago
Why are you here commenting on this then? Just avoid the Microsoft articles and we can avoid your valueless commentary.

awaretek 14y ago