Report: Majority of Windows 8 Users Ignore Metro / Modern UI Applications

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I love when i turn on PC i see my emails right there(ive stopped using outlook in fact and ive used it for nearly a decade). However I take the point that some apps have issues Toms is one of the biggest offenders in fact,almost evreytime i launch the Toms Hardware app for windows 8 and open a article it crashes, or i attempt to share that article it crashes and toms doesnt seem o want to do anything about it as this is one of my few windows 8 apps that has NEVER updated since i got it two months ago, you would think with all the complaints lodged on the reviews they would actually do something about it. Well I guess tey have, they keep writing articles that say Windows 8 sucks,so that way we wont have to fix our Windows 8 app.On that note I found a engadget reader that works just fine and has great live tile support(which i absolutly love)
 

Most of my devices communicate just fine as USB storage devices or bluetooth file transfer. Things would get even easier if Google and Microsoft could come to an agreement about SMB and vFAT.

Also, Windows is a horrible resource and license fee hog for embedded and low-cost computing devices. There is also way too much crud under Windows' hood to let it manage critical systems in cars. You also wouldn't want your mouse and keyboard to have a $30 Windows license and full-blown SoC to run what would otherwise have been a 8KB USB microcontroller firmware image.

There are plenty of reasons to have embedded OSes for various situations so those are not going to disappear any time soon.

What is needed isn't a be-all, end-all OS but standards to make everything work together. There already are tons of those but many of the more common ones have patents or other forms of licenses getting in the way.
 


Invalid, most of my devices communicate just fine too... Since I've started selectively picking and choosing which ones I bring home. But the thing is "as USB file storage" just doesn't cut it any more - or, at least, will do so less and less as the years roll on. It's not just about "hook in machine, access files" any more. To give an example that is the tip of the iceberg...

I work with books. Lots of books. I use them for source materials for papers, mostly as do most of the people I work with. Just in the past five years or so ebooks have become a big deal and a *tremendous* boon to my work one way or another. The ease of finding particular material, how light they are to pack and easy to access. The problem is I originally got a Kindle e-reader and started using it for pleasure reading. After that, ebooks became more prevalent, and all of the sudden I saw tremendous potential in them for my work, whereas before they had basically been a recreational toy. So, I started to buy things in .mobi format (Kindle's proprietary format) and build a collection. Thing is, within a year or two, I found lots of books in .pdf and .epub which were very handy to me as well, so I got an android tablet so I could access these things on the go, keeping hundreds of useful books stored in its memory. I found a good reader for the android tablet and am still using it for work.

Problem is, I have thousands of notes - bookmarks, written notes - etc, on my android tablet's reader (cool reader, if you're interested - silly name, but very versatile and functional reader). This works fine when working with an Android device - but when I plug that android tablet into my PC and start transferring files (or do it through cloud storage which is, in reality, how I am transferring files more often these days) they transfer just fine, but the formatting is lost. Bookmarks, notes, etc - there is no coolreader for Windows. Windows fault? Partially and probably. But even if there was, coolreader is some small time program that will likely not be worth using in five years.

The thing is, file transferring alone doesn't do the trick any more unless you want to spend half your time finding out how to transfer obscure formatting files and getting the characteristics of format A on platform B to transfer to format Y on platform Z. This is not just an ebook issue though. Everything from browsers to video files to services to pictures to documents all have a whole host of options and settings and notes and preferences and this and that and the other thing which do not play well from one platform to another. Some things are relatively easy changes, and some are tricky.

Now, about 3 months ago I got an Acer Iconia W700 Windows 8 tablet and you know what happened? During the installation process, it asked me to input my windows live account information at the start. When I logged on for the very first time my browser was set up with the lion's share of my desktop options, hooked into Skydrive, my e-mail, plugged into my calendar with all relevant dates, hooked into my photo album that is shared between my phone and my desktop PC... And since I've started using a Windows based e-reader on my new tablet for my work books, the formatting that I can't even transfer from my android device is now available on any device I want to use.

The thing is, I can't even get many of these services to connect through Android or my old iPod touch, but they all run tickety boo through the Windows 8 environment.

Now, back to the original point... Metro VS desktop and whether metro is a horrible abortion or good for what it does. When I don't have that new Windows tablet of mine hooked up through the HDTV and actually use it as a tablet, I can access all of this desktop and phone specific content easily through that tablet either in a tablet manner or using it as a laptop/desktop. Simply put, for those books, I want to be able to view them on my desktop with their formatting, then access them through my tablet with that formatting, add more formatting, and then freely access it through either device in either tablet or desktop mode.

Take away Metro? Why? Put it in the background, sure, but kill it? I want the things I do on my tablet to be integrated to my desktop, my phone, etc. Having devices which can work focused in both ways - tablet and PC - and share what you do between one and both.. THAT is what I want. I'm sick of plugging my android tablet in as a USB device and transferring files, redoing formatting, and wondering if my current e-reader program will even be around in five years. Windows 8 solves that for me, gives me both a good tablet experience and a good desktop experience. Bring back the start menu and we're golden.
 
I love when i turn on PC i see my emails right there(ive stopped using outlook in fact and ive used it for nearly a decade). However I take the point that some apps have issues Toms is one of the biggest offenders in fact,almost evreytime i launch the Toms Hardware app for windows 8 and open a article it crashes, or i attempt to share that article it crashes and toms doesnt seem o want to do anything about it as this is one of my few windows 8 apps that has NEVER updated since i got it two months ago, you would think with all the complaints lodged on the reviews they would actually do something about it. Well I guess tey have, they keep writing articles that say Windows 8 sucks,so that way we wont have to fix our Windows 8 app.On that note I found a engadget reader that works just fine and has great live tile support(which i absolutly love)
 

This is not a platform problem; this is a lack of common format problem and the proprietary format vendor refusing to open their spec so others can support it if the original vendor does not want to port their software to other platforms itself.
 
'...: tile/touch interface on desktops was a wasted effort. ...'
isn't the key to this WHAT THE F YOU NEED TO DO WITH A PC?
I mean, sure I can flip and gesture to view and relax but any serious work or coding takes something way more meaty than the tiling.
i'm seeing less of that Windows 8 tablet ad where people toss the thing thru various situations and gymnastically interact with it...
haven't done that yet.
sorry
 


It's a format problem that is to some degree tied to a platform problem. The organizations making platforms and the organizations making formats - oftentimes the same organizations - use one to leverage the success of the other, and it goes both ways. Apple, Amazon, MS, are all guilty of this, and it creates a fragmented world when actually trying to get something to work.

Amazon and .mobi is a great example. As a Kindle - the most popular e-reader - user, you get a collection of .mobi files over time. Then one day you try and get another company's gadget and try loading up your .mobi files and you either use Kindle's relatively bare-bones e-reader program for that device giving you a pretty meh reading experience, start re-buying the format for a more functional device on that platform, or use some weird third party program which has questionable support into the future along with unknown formatting. Or, that is, just stick to using an Amazon e-reader instead of another one. The end result? To get the best experience with your .mobi files you bought incidentally, you continue buying Amazon's platform... The platform propagates the format, and then later, the format propagates the platform since other platforms don't use the format you've already committed to particularly well.

And yeah, Amazon isn't alone with this. Apple does it with media file formats, Office and Google docs is in an abstracted war over this in relation to their respective platforms, and right now cloud/utility services are trying to establish format norms for everything from calendar formats to e-mail contact lists to favourite lists for exporting between platforms to making documents hook into cloud computing. The idea is, once Google or MS gets you hooked on their respective calendar/document/favourites/cloud/whatever format or service, they'll keep you buying their service and/or platform to use those things since they work *far* better on one platform or the other. Don't believe me? Try using Google maps on a Windows phone, try using an .epub file on an Amazon device, or... Heck, does Office even run Google docs yet, and can you edit .docx format on Google docs without saving it as a Google document? Couldn't last time I used it which was admittedly, a few years ago.

Again, technology communicating goes beyond just file format, and it's not just a format problem as you're suggesting it is. There is a long term, rather behind the scenes war going on between these companies trying to subtly nudge people to getting it into their head that your services/platform should be unified. I'm a pretty good example of that mindset and I've given up fighting the little hitches these companies are putting up with cross platform/format activities and I'm just sticking with one. MS is offering by far the most cohesive and smoothly running whole picture on these things right now with Windows 8.
 
to stevejnb
'....MS is offering by far the most cohesive and smoothly running whole picture on these things right now with Windows 8....'
I think so
what most of us have issues with is the getting to the smoothly and cohesive nirvana part. Metro isn't quite it from my pov.
i'd really appreciate an option to handle how I get into my stuff
the disk 'storage spaces' is a needed O/S feature which we use a lot
i'm a Win8 fan when it works for what I need done
the updating tiles are interesting and often useful
but I did bring downloaded a start menu option
we also use tons of Linux here and it's no perfect circle solution either
 


Hey Howard,

Disk management... Do you mean, like a file manager? If so, I'm not sure that there is a decent one, or one at all, in the Metro UI - it's all run through the search function which is a very, very poor substitute for a proper file manager, even if it is a pretty good search function over all. Frankly, this is why I consider Windows RT to basically be an OS for toys (along with iOS and Android to a lesser degree) and not for a functional computer. File managing on Windows 8 pro? Desktop is the only way I have any interest in going about it.

Metro is not a catchall. It, in itself, is a mediocre and incomplete OS at best - I am not a fan of Windows RT as anything but a cheap tablet OS. Ironic, since MS wants to charge iPad'esque prices for Windows RT tablets. Only reason I am a fan of Windows 8 pro is because it offers both a good tablet UI for tablets and a regular UI for everything else.

There is no Metro nirvana... Windows 8 as a whole on the other hand, strikes me as a pretty complete package. Moreso than iOS, moreso than Android, and moreso than Windows 7.
 


I think I have a solution for you! I'm guessing by your response, you may not have noticed it, but... On the Metro screen one of the tiles will show a picture of your desktop background and say "desktop" on it. Click that button and you will find something very close to the classic Windows desktop comes up with very little loading time. I can understand why you would think you were forced to use Metro if you hadn't noticed this yet and, admittedly, MS does a poor job of explaining how to use Windows 8. Loading time for the return to the desktop should be almost instantaneous.

Hope this solves your issue :)

 
nonmetro version of netflix seems to be broken in windows 8. I haven't been able to complete showing of a show in netflix. would be nice to have netflix window sometimes instead of metro screenhog.
 
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