Microsoft Shows First Look at Windows 8 Interface

[Guest]

@felipex: "Why wouldn't you have a cell or a tablet that works as great and in an almost identical fashion to your desktop OS? No need to learn things anew, etc."

Yeah, that's why we're all rushing out to buy Tablet PCs, amirite? MS has tried this before, and to utter failure on several occasions...

 

[clonazepam]

My suggestion centered around making voice recognition and voice commands a more prominent feature, but since they are going with touch as a standout feature, I can see my suggestion getting rejected anyway. However, for the desktop environment where you're not likely to use touch, voice would be a good alternative.

I've been playing with it on Win7, but so far it pretty much sucks. I'd sit there saying "start listening" for an hour and never be heard despite plenty of volume on the mic and the mic working flawlessly in other apps.

 

[escogido]

Why is Microsoft tryin got be a Mac? COMON!! Apps, tiles, blah blah blah... they're just pushing windows media center, which is useless...

 

[triculious]

all of you ranters are aware that this is a touch centered OS and most of all, tablet focused?
this is not the successor for windows 7

 

[escogido]

[citation][nom]triculious[/nom]all of you ranters are aware that this is a touch centered OS and most of all, tablet focused?this is not the successor for windows 7[/citation]
It is a successor of Windows 7, if you look at the full video, you'll see a Windows 7 lookalike desktop pop up at one point in the video (when they start talking baout the file system. They just added a desktop with tiles to windows 7 - WOW what an innovation!!

 

[f-gomes]

I'm not very keen on changing when changing for better, let alone changing for this crap idea. Come on, MS, Windows is not a toy, let me work on it, instead of making it look like a phone.

 

[dalethepcman]

It never surprises me, but always confuses me that so many people compare windows 8 to windows 7. Tip of the day, Windows 8 is not for desktop computers. Its for touchscreen laptop/tablet pc's. When was the last time you ran a desktop PC off of an ARM CPU? Why do you say such stupid things as "this would suck on my 24" monitor," "it looks like a phone screen for my PC, fail," "I hope I can turn this off." If you had previously read anything about windows 8, then you would know that its made to run on touch screen ARM and X86 devices that are more powerful than a phone, but less powerful than a desktop.

 

[wcooper007]

[citation][nom]escogido[/nom]It is a successor of Windows 7, if you look at the full video, you'll see a Windows 7 lookalike desktop pop up at one point in the video (when they start talking baout the file system. They just added a desktop with tiles to windows 7 - WOW what an innovation!![/citation]

Okay this isnt even beta so you cant expect the "desktop" to look any diff than windows 7.. Now back to what i was going to say.. To me i think this would be really nice just emagine your start button being the screen. Say you have COD installed "i know COD crap but yeah" and the tile can keep track of current games that are going on your stats and clan stats who is online right now and playing on what map. all that without actually opening up steam and or the game to check that information. Oh and skype can be integrated into a tile and it can tell you who left messages or who has attempted to call you. TO me i really could see this helping with people who are computer Stupid like my grandmother who i built a computer that is literally sitting there with no use now with this new Windows 8 i might be able to get her to actually use the computer becuase she can see and touch what she is wanting to do instead of the mouse and keyboard which she doesnt get

 

[Th-z]

Old style desktop still exists, see 3:02. Don't think they're that stupid to get rid of that, if it's to replace Windows 7. Desktop apps are still the bread and butter on PC. But they also need to improve traditional UI, not just adding that tablet/touchscreen friendly layer. Windows need more customization options to the appearance of icons, folders, and other UI elements. The taskbar can also use some upgrade, a dynamic one instead of static one like right now.

 

[ravewulf]

My take away is that apps are the new "It" thing and our regular programs are "legacy."

Personally I don't follow the "one interface to rule them all" thing they are going with.

On a phone I want an interface designed for a phone
On a tablet I want an interface designed for a tablet
On a laptop/desktop I want an interface designed for a laptop/desktop

 

[ravewulf]

[citation][nom]dalethepcman[/nom]It never surprises me, but always confuses me that so many people compare windows 8 to windows 7. Tip of the day, Windows 8 is not for desktop computers. Its for touchscreen laptop/tablet pc's. When was the last time you ran a desktop PC off of an ARM CPU? Why do you say such stupid things as "this would suck on my 24" monitor," "it looks like a phone screen for my PC, fail," "I hope I can turn this off." If you had previously read anything about windows 8, then you would know that its made to run on touch screen ARM and X86 devices that are more powerful than a phone, but less powerful than a desktop.[/citation]
You must have missed the memo. Windows 8 is for all of the above: tablets, laptops, and desktops. They may (and I hope they do) customize the default interface depending on the device, but Windows 8 will indeed be for desktops too.

 

[Nakal]

[citation][nom]dalethepcman[/nom]It never surprises me, but always confuses me that so many people compare windows 8 to windows 7. Tip of the day, Windows 8 is not for desktop computers. Its for touchscreen laptop/tablet pc's. When was the last time you ran a desktop PC off of an ARM CPU? Why do you say such stupid things as "this would suck on my 24" monitor," "it looks like a phone screen for my PC, fail," "I hope I can turn this off." If you had previously read anything about windows 8, then you would know that its made to run on touch screen ARM and X86 devices that are more powerful than a phone, but less powerful than a desktop.[/citation]


You may want to go back and listen to the video. Especially the part where he mentions that "this is the new version of windows: It is going to run laptops, It is going to run on desktops, it is going to run on PCs with mouse and keyboards ,it's going to run on touch slates, it is going to run on everything"

 

[CsG_kieran_2]

Oh, I really don't like the look of that.

 

[bejabbers]

This new version looks horrible. Last time I checked, my PC was exponentially more powerful than my phone or any tablet/slate on the market. Why would I want to run a less capable OS on more capable hardware.

And why would they want to remove bios and motherboard support? One of the largest benefits to owning a windows based PC IS the bios, and the ability to go into the bios and optimize my hardware's performance, not to mention the ability to use whatever hardware I please.

It seems like windows is trying to turn itself into mac OS/iOS. It'll never work, the type of idiots who buy macs buy them not because of the OS or hardware, but because they're brainwashed into believing that the pretty metal box it comes in will make them trendy and cool. Microsoft should stick do doing what works, not this tablet/touch phone bastardization of a windows for computers.

 

[cold fire]

Did no one of the complainers watch the video? The new UI is optional and mainly for tablets and other touch devices. You still have the normal desktop UI with the task bar, file explorer...etc

 

[ravewulf]

[citation][nom]bejabbers[/nom]This new version looks horrible. Last time I checked, my PC was exponentially more powerful than my phone or any tablet/slate on the market. Why would I want to run a less capable OS on more capable hardware.And why would they want to remove bios and motherboard support? One of the largest benefits to owning a windows based PC IS the bios, and the ability to go into the bios and optimize my hardware's performance, not to mention the ability to use whatever hardware I please.It seems like windows is trying to turn itself into mac OS/iOS. It'll never work, the type of idiots who buy macs buy them not because of the OS or hardware, but because they're brainwashed into believing that the pretty metal box it comes in will make them trendy and cool. Microsoft should stick do doing what works, not this tablet/touch phone bastardization of a windows for computers.[/citation]
I agree with most of your post except for the bios part. From Wikipedia
"[UEFI] can run on top of or instead of traditional BIOS implementations"

So basically you can run the bios still, have UEFI on top of it (if it is indeed a requirement of Win8) and then run Win8. Still a pain if it is required, but it isn't as though all bios based boards will have to be replaced.

 

[ravewulf]

[citation][nom]cold fire[/nom]Did no one of the complainers watch the video? The new UI is optional and mainly for tablets and other touch devices. You still have the normal desktop UI with the task bar, file explorer...etc[/citation]
I think most of the complainers (including myself) is that the new interface is shown as the default and they didn't say if the default would be different for different platforms or if you could change what the default interface is.

Frankly they did a terrible job of explaining the new interface. They really needed to give it a context. eg "this is the default for tablets" or "you can change the default start up environment to the familiar desktop if you want to"

 

[Maxor127]

Looks awful. I was looking forward to Windows 8, but so far it hasn't shown me anything that I'd be interested in. Guess I'll have to get used to Windows 7 for a long time.

 

[acadia11]

[citation][nom]clonazepam[/nom]This is their response:As a Customer Service Representative, I am here to assist you in finding the right place to get help with your questions and provide resources to resolve your concern. I understand that you would like to suggest ***** with all retail copies of Windows 8 when it will be released. I apologize for the inconvenience this has caused you. While Microsoft does accept suggestions for existing products and services, we do not accept suggestions for new products, technologies, processes. We hope that you will understand our intention to avoid any potential misunderstandings or disputes that may arise from submissions of information not related to current Microsoft products. Thus, we are returning your information without review.[/citation]

Potential patent issues, if I suggest something and MS uses it, dayum skippy I want them to pay me for my idea. Hence, why they don't do it.

 

[acadia11]

f-gomes, you don't get it, you still have the productivity power, can hook it up with mouse and keyboard, and have the heavy hitting of windows 7, it's now that this OS seamlessly integrates a touch UI, if needed, didn't you pay attention to the snap feature where it pulled up native windows 7 apps, and they are certainly still expecting you to attach a keyboard and mouse, although you don't have to.

I said it before that windows would crush apple and android at the end of the day, people don't want to listen, when they decided to build an OS from ground up that could be used in the mobile / tablet space as well as the desktop space, it was over, for one thing windows is the ultimate app store, who has more software on it as a platform, and a unified OS (mobile/table + desktop) no one has accomplished yet, Mr Gates has done it again. I think this war has awakened his old fire.

 

[pug_s]

I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt to Microsoft here. Microsoft has been making Windows for tablets for more than 10 years yet they failed simply because of the user interface. This Metro UI seems to be optimized for the tablet so I give kudos to them. Nobody knows what the finished product for pc's so I would hang tight until we see the finished product next year.

 

[c0oim4n]

I saw the image and cried.

 

[xenorage]

Dang I thought this was a tech site, with real bright tech guys on it. Now a days I guess we have a bunch of end users posting on here with no clue as to what they are looking at.

This is what Google, and Apple talk about all the time... One OS to run their entire eco-system. This is one OS for everything from the PC down to the phone, the target audience for this doesn't know what the difference is between a defrag and format, they just want to click something and it work. The power users and "tech" people will still be using the old file system and interface because they are "power" users. This new stuff is to simplify the PC and so forth so grandma who has trouble with finding the apps in the start menu and hope on do what she needs to do and get off.

Microsoft has the right idea here, who is dominating the market right now on the Phones and Tables, Google and Apple... Why cause they make OS's that are build for consumption not content creation, Microsoft is giving its users a simple and easy to understand UI for those people, not really for us the people whom know how to navigate a system and create something with it.

Windows 8 will be an upgrade to Windows 7 but at its core it will not be a total revamp for those that don't use the new UI, so stop worrying about the small stuff and hope they put some more work into the things that matter to us, like kernel optimizations and additional features that we can use, this after all is nothing more than a streamlined interface for your avg "USER".

 

[Dreamion]

To me as a gamer it just looks like it would be "Windows 7+ Edition" or something else. Maybe I'm wrong.

 

[drwho1]

I had already decided to skip Windows8, now my decision is final.