I am using Windows 8 on my laptop and have done so since it was released. I find the interface an interesting concept and with a touch tablet or some such device it is I am sure a wonderful experience. However on a laptop and standalone computer I find the Windows 8 interface to be very frustrating to use.

What we need is a faster interaction for these users for example:

1. Use the mouse to drag screens around and not be forced to use the scroll bars which are so Windows 3.1.

2. Double clicking selects an item say an image which should then offers up the edit tool options. Within these options should be included any relevant user install software for example Photoshop or Gimp. The user could also set their editing software as the preferred option so next time the image would open automatically in that program with and other options still shown on the options bar.

3. Placing the cursor at any of the edges of the screen should provide a pop out box with options rather than having to right-click and getting top AND bottom options appearing.

4. More use of key combinations should be adopted. For example we currently have ALT + arrow keys to go back-and-forth between different sites in Internet Explorer which is very useful so why not introduce CTRL + arrow keys to go back and forth within a web site? Which speeds up the user experience

These are just a few of the concerns I have with Windows 8 however, little things like this would, I feel, greatly enhance the user experience within Windows 8 for those who are not using touch screens. I hope someone will look at these and other such issues and remedy them prior to releasing Windows 8 into the wild.

Regards

Othalian

Rather than yet another redundant way of scrolling I'd prefer that the "drag in empty area" with mouse be used for something else, such as quickly selecting multiple items with a rectangle as it is on desktop.

The problem with (3) is that once you've "used up" the edges of the screen by making them trigger the app bars, you can't use them for anything else - on horizontally scrolling canvases this would break the scrollbar and semantic zoom control for example. Personally I wonder if there shouldn't be a separate control for commanding with mouse (with the same commands), something like the transparent mini-toolbar in Office, that would allow you to command a selection without having to take your mouse pointer down to the bottom of the screen (and back up again).

For (4), I agree there need to be more keyboard shortcuts and I also have a related gripe which is that there's no way to easily learn/discover keyboard shortcuts in Metro style apps other than knowing them from desktop apps or trying every key on the keyboard. The app bars need to have something like underlines in menus, keytips in ribbons, etc., where you can hit a key like ALT and see the available keyboard shortcuts.

To be clear: I like Win8 on both machines (a lot), I just prefer it on my laptop.

1. I like having a common location for things, but the Devices, Settings, and Share charms don't make it obvious that they're app-specific, especially when you have the top and bottom menu bars too. I didn't think the Mail app supported printing until I read that print functions are moved into the Devices charm.

2. I lost my right-click! Sometimes context-sensitive menus make sense, like in a word processing application. I undertand why it left though, as you can't really right-click with your finger.

Do you think as an OS it is workable on a multi-monitor setup? In particular with either the left or right hand "hot corners" (hot edges? hot sides?) being unreliable?    

Also how much time do you spend in Metro Vs. the "desktop?" 

I tried installing few games to both clean 7 and clean 8 RP and in 8 RP the installers exhibited some bugs. Not a good sample size but I suspect that if in Vista some drivers stopped working, in Win 8 it will be some old apps stop working more or less subtly.

 Laptop:

I was intending to install Win 8 RP to my old laptop but apparently newer cpu with NX is required.

I haven't had any problems making the transition, because I use the start screen exactly the same way as the start menu. I either hit the Windows key and start typing, or I click an icon that is pinned to the task bar. In Win7 I never actually used the MRU list in the start menu, and I equally never clicked into the all programs list. If it was important, it was pinned, and if it wasn't then search is your friend.

1 day ago, Othalian wrote

I am using Windows 8 on my laptop and have done so since it was released. 

Windows 8 hasn't been released yet.

8 hours ago, ManipUni wrote

@Larry Osterman: I'm honestly quite surprised to hear you say that.

Do you think as an OS it is workable on a multi-monitor setup? In particular with either the left or right hand "hot corners" (hot edges? hot sides?) being unreliable?    

Also how much time do you spend in Metro Vs. the "desktop?" 

It's 100% workable on multi-mon, *especially* with the hot corners in the RP - they're pretty reliable on my rig.  Because of how my monitors are oriented, the hot corners aren't as relevant though - my monitors are oriented like this: ||= so the hot corners are only active on the right monitor at the top left and bottom right - the middle corners on the left monitor already have infinite fitts distance because the mouse gets "trapped" in the corners.

I spend about 95% of my time in the desktop environment, that's because the primary tools I use are almost all desktop apps (my day job is building code for Windows and the command interpreter is a desktop app).  I use the metro email app for my personal email pretty much exclusively, and the metro calendar for my personal calendar (I merged my work calendar into it earlier today actually).  I use the music app all the time to listen to my music collection, but since the music plays in the background, it doesn't really count as being in "metro".

I also spend some time each day playing some of the various metro games in the RP, some of them are pretty good, some are just ok.  That's expected with any platform.