The Windows 8 challenge

Is there not a feedback icon on the desktop? Most of the previous OS betas have had one.

@evildictaitor: Nope. Nor on the start screen.

@evildictaitor: No, that's what the Feedback Tool from Connect gives you.

I miss the days of the only technical beta programs. Sure, more people get access to it now, but the way that worked made you feel you were making a difference. We got earlier builds, and much more frequent builds. Back in the XP days I was installing a new build almost once a week at one point (okay, that was a bit over the top). The newsgroups were great, too, lots of MS people and there was real discussion about features.

With Vista began the decline. We still had an impact, but there was less dialogue, and more of a "you send feedback, we'll let you know if we've fixed it or not" approach.

Then Windows 7. No more interrim builds; all we got was the public betas, and beta 1 was already feature-complete so no more chance for suggestions. There was still a dialogue with MS in the newsgroups but no one felt like they were making a difference. With Windows 7 SP1 we got a beta, an RC, no MS presence in the newsgroups at all. Besides the ability to file bug reports we were essentially ignored.

And now, the days of the beta are over. They're not even calling it that anymore. And only Technet and MSDN subscribers seem to have an official avenue for feedback.

Well, as of today, my calendar is also in German. It used to be English despite my Dutch language settings (which is good, seeing how there's no Dutch language pack), but now it's in German, which is ridiculous. I have no idea what prompted the change.

So I just installed W8 CP on my desktop at home to see how my kids and girlfriend react. This was on a virgin box with stock W8 CP -- no desktop apps installed like Office)

• 17 year old daughter: jumped right in and went straight to the desktop to setup her favorites. Couldn't figure out how to get back to metro mode.
• 14 year old son: Discovered quickly that all of the games in the store were free, downloaded, and played them all. He figured out how to get around but it wasn't very efficient. Like on an Apple product he'd go back to the "home" screen to switch apps.
• GF: Wouldn't go near the thing.

It will be interesting to see how well they do when it's time to do homework on the thing.

While I had used W8 at work on my tablet "assistant" I guess I really didn't get the full mouse/keyboard "experience" myself. Now that I have no touch input at home I have to agree with what many here voiced: W8 is intolerable. I feel like I am trapped in a box with no way out half the time. You really have to learn the shortcut keys to be "fast & fluid" with the new UI. (hey Andy )With the desktop all of your running apps are always displayed in the taskbar, readily accessible, in addition to being able to see them on screen all at once. In metro with all of the apps full-screen if you launch one app from another (say a picture viewer from an image in news in the contacts app) getting back to the original app from whence you came is not straight forward. Also closing an app via <ALT><F4> is just adding another set of keys for users to hate (akin to <CTRL><ALT><DEL>). Ridiculous! And don't even go there about metro apps not consuming resources when suspended crap -- resources on a desktop aren't the problem. Since task switching is so cumbersome on keyboard + mouse showing every f'ing thing I've opened in either task switcher (<ALT><TAB> or <WIN><TAB>) makes finding the app I want to switch to so much more cumbersome. How about at least putting a little 'x' close button on the thumbnails in the task switchers so I can close the stuff with a simple mouse click like the desktop task bar preview thumbnails? Is it really "no chrome even if it hurts"?

It's pretty clear that despite Microsoft's "efforts" to make metro mouse & keyboard friendly it certainly isn't. It's pretty clear that metro apps will contain a lot of horizontal scrolling and even that sucks hard with a mouse. IMO, their keyboard + mouse support is all part of their "thousand little cuts" strategy.

It's a shame because I do like quite a lot about it:

1. Cloud integration with social providers & skydrive. While there is room for improvement the contacts app (and OS in general) with all of the social stuff if pretty cool.
2. While I don't like the "metro apps from the store only" model I do like how quick and easy it is to find what you need and download it.
3. Because I'm old and my eyes suck on a big monitor I kinda like all of the white space and larger text (though I'd also like to be able to scale it down when I want to look at a lot of data). Semantic zoom to be a requirement of all screens in a metro app.
4. On a large monitor (unlike my tablet) I do like the start screen tiles because I can both see unimportant apps with tiles that I want status updates from and also have my most frequently used apps on the first virtual page of the start screen (yes Sinofsky you can still take those heat maps and shove them. It doesn't work when you mix status info needs with MFU app launcher needs. That's a con and a fail.)

W8 no doubt on a tablet or other touch device might have some success but on a desktop it is an epic fail.

Edit: Had to add just one more...

I'm in metro and want to see the time on a desktop with keyboard + mouse only. How the f do I see the time? It was always on the desktop readily available at a glance. Now I get it by mouse hovering in the lower right corner to bring up the charms bar and then moving the mouse into the chars space to bring up the clock. Now I'm sure there are one or two shortcut keys that would make this easier but even then we're moving away from "at a glance" to "memorizing shortcut keys." What a pile...

You really have to learn the shortcut keys to be "fast & fluid" with the new UI.

I'm pretty fast and fluid with the mouse gestures. I think where people are getting misled here is that they are treating the corner actions as "aim your mouse at the corner and then wait for the thumbnail and then click" but you can do it as "throw mouse to corner and click" in one quick motion, and they are treating the sidebars as "aim your mouse at the corner and then wait for the thumbnail and then drag carefully up and then click" but you can do it as "swing mouse around corner and click" in one quick motion. You can get quite fast with it. I'm not sure what's so bad about horizontal scrolling with the mouse either - it works like vertical scrolling, just use the mousewheel, and the scrollbar is also a benefit when you want to jump to a specific part of the page/canvas. 

BTW, while there's not an X in the corner you can just middle-click on the switcher thumbnails to close them (or right-click and choose Close), just like on the taskbar. I do have a major problem with the switcher in that it's very hard to scan it with just thumbnails, making it near useless for me as it's usually faster to just go back to the start screen and find the app. There needs to be something like icon overlays or text labels that makes it quicker to find what you want.

1 hour ago, contextfree` wrote

*snip*

I'm not sure what's so bad about horizontal scrolling with the mouse either - it works like vertical scrolling, just use the mousewheel, and the scrollbar is also a benefit when you want to jump to a specific part of the page/canvas. 

The difference is that the way metro apps are designed there is a whole lot more scrolling. My middle finger is going to get tired from both using the scroll wheel so much and flipping the screen the bird.

In the beginning the start screen was really annoying. If I had to give it a percentage of total annoyance, I would say it was consumed about 70% of the annoyance quota. After using the system more, I have found issues that are far more frustrating.

* Metro Remote Desktop Connection is easily closed with the wrong mouse gesture. This causes all kinds of grief. 

* It's really difficult to say focused on a task when you click on the wrong thing and end up in a place that completely derails your train of thought.

-Josh

Update?

With the desktop all of your running apps are always displayed in the taskbar, readily accessible, in addition to being able to see them on screen all at once. In metro with all of the apps full-screen if you launch one app from another (say a picture viewer from an image in news in the contacts app) getting back to the original app from whence you came is not straight forward. Also closing an app via <ALT><F4> is just adding another set of keys for users to hate (akin to <CTRL><ALT><DEL>). Ridiculous!

It's pretty clear that despite Microsoft's "efforts" to make metro mouse & keyboard friendly it certainly isn't. It's pretty clear that metro apps will contain a lot of horizontal scrolling and even that sucks hard with a mouse. IMO, their keyboard + mouse support is all part of their "thousand little cuts" strategy.

I have lots of RDP windows open all the time. When mimizing an RDP window, you will no longer see the change in its screens if you hover the mouse for the preview thumb, so I never minimize them. I just move my mouse on taskbar and in less than a second I see if anything changed in any of my RDP screens.

This won't be possible in Windows 8. I'm speechless.

Only this one issue makes me not being able to use Windows 8. What the heck!

I'm in metro and want to see the time on a desktop with keyboard + mouse only. How the f do I see the time? It was always on the desktop readily available at a glance. Now I get it by mouse hovering in the lower right corner to bring up the charms bar and then moving the mouse into the chars space to bring up the clock. Now I'm sure there are one or two shortcut keys that would make this easier but even then we're moving away from "at a glance" to "memorizing shortcut keys." What a pile...

Not even the clock is showing?

Wow, just wow.

As I have stated in my other replies here, it seems that Windows 8 is a "cable TV" device where you switch channels. No longer "your" personal computer to use it the way YOU want.

I'm a Microsoft "fanboy". I even liked Vista and never had any issues with it. I am used to change and am able to adapt. That being said, Windows 8 is a disaster.

4 minutes ago, WhatDoYouMean wrote

*snip*

I have lots of RDP windows open all the time. When mimizing an RDP window, you will no longer see the change in its screens if you hover the mouse for the preview thumb, so I never minimize them. I just move my house on taskbar and in less than a second I see if anything changed in any of my RDP screens.

This won't be possible in Windows 8. I'm speechless.

Only this one issue makes me not being able to use Windows 8. What the heck!

Eh? The desktop version of mstsc is unchanged and the Taskbar still has hover previews, so what exactly wouldn't you be able to do?

@AndyC: Don't expect much sense from someone who clearly didn't try the CP.

31 minutes ago, AndyC wrote

*snip*

Eh? The desktop version of mstsc is unchanged and the Taskbar still has hover previews, so what exactly wouldn't you be able to do?

I have been unable to try the CP for now. I stand corrected in that case then. I was misinformed about the RDP client. The other issues remain, however.

What I really hate is the idea that Microsoft can screw things up because "there's always the desktop version" of some app whenever they screw up something that used to work well. It makes Metro seem like one big experiment. The desktop is Microsoft's doormat.