[citation][nom]DRosencraft[/nom]What gets me is that with an audience that supposedly cares so much more about performance behind the scenes, always wanting programs that do more, do it better, and do it faster, all they can seem to care about is the fact one little button has been made into a full screen, and it doesn't look beautiful. These are the same people who criticize Apple constantly for being more about style than substance. I have been asking for a long time now for someone to explain to me what about Win8 makes it harder to use than 7. We get it, you don't like the looks of the UI. What else? It's only for touch? Why? What are you seeing that makes it difficult to use a mouse and keyboard? I wish someone would answer these questions, because I haven't seen it at all.[/citation]
True in some ways. Where do i start. See...i don't know if you've gone to press conference. I had an opportunity to, day before.
I seriously sat through over one hour of marketing BS. They even showed us a stage play, on how easy it is to use Windows 8, all the while promoting Metro.
You see...it's not really hard with a mouse and keyboard. But...well this was the first time i had used 8. On a tablet you don't expect to see the desktop, so if you have to look at loads of tiles, it's fine. But when you use a mouse and keyboard, it's like you don't want metro in front of you any more.
I don't know, maybe because it was my first time, but it was like...i was trapped, sort of, with metro in front of me. I wanted to shut it. Which was easy, press the Windows key.
But after i entered the desktop...my first impulse was to click on "start" to see what programs were in the demo machine. Of course, there wasn't any start button. And i didn't want to go back to metro. I had this odd feeling of helplessness. lol. anyway, my problem with 8 is this:
Yes, there are improvements under the hood. But are they significant enough for someone on Win 7? Does metro help you do anything faster than Win 7? Are apps really relevant on a desktop/laptop? They're glorified web pages, after all.
The only reason i think "apps" ever existed is because we needed touch-friendly programs, and these had to be thought of as different from your usual programs, hence the different name.
And what is the need of touch on a desktop? Motion control, maybe. Voice input, maybe. But touch?
May even work on a laptop. Sure the screen's sitting on my lap or not too far away so i'd maybe want to, say, flip through pages with my finger. But desktop?
My problem is that, MS' marketing tries to tell us that metro and windows 8 apps and all this BS is somehow good for the desktop. I just don't see how that's true. Also, the new desktop looks kinda tired and dry. It's almost like someone took the Basic theme from Win 7, made it even more basic, and slapped it on to Win 8 as an after thought.
You see, i went from 95 to 98 to XP to 7. Each time there was a change in the Windows kernel. This time there is none. Same argument as Win 7 not really being a good idea if you have Vista SP2 + DX11, except this is, in many ways, a step backwards for 1.3 billion people.
And MS knows this. When someone asked the other day, that what's the cost of upgrading to Win 8, the genius marketing exec said that "win 8 devices will be available from Rs.23,000 to Rs.150,000+, so we have a wide spectrum of devices...bla bla bla". Rs 23,000 is about $430. Then they said that you can upgrade for Rs.700, without saying anything about the June 2nd to Jan 31st condition. Then someone probed them and they came clean. The only thing that's clear to me is that they're keeping the prices low till Jan 31st so that hopefully most people upgrade.
So...yeah. Also, OEMs seem to have two-finger scrolling messed up on non-touch laptops. It's inverted to what you would feel natural, don't know if that can be fixed/tweaked.
So yeah...when a company spends so much on marketing, you know the product might not be able to speak for itself. Plus these special offer prices, trying to rush people in to impulse buying. They just need to be able to declare it as a success.
This was an honest first impression. Based on very little time, yes, but honest.