Windows 8 - What's your opinion

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Yesterday I installed Windows 8 consumer preview in VMWare Workstation. I really like Windows 7 and also Mac OS X - they are both phenomenal operating systems. As you know, Microsoft is in a real pickle and has to answer to Apple's success. Windows Phone 7 and Metro - not quite biting in against iOS and Android. So now there's Windows 8 and Microsoft's success affects our livelihood. What is your opinion on what you've seen with Windows 8 and Metro?

In my experience yesterday - I am extremely disappointed! I hate it! I will stick with Windows 7 or put Windows 8 in "classic" mode - I don't like this metro stuff at all!!! That's just my opinion! It's not elegant, it's in the way, it just shouldn't be on the desktop when a keyboard is involved! Are we going to all go buy much more expensive touch screen systems? Doubt it. Do we really want to sell our applications through Microsoft and give up 30% of our revenues? Do we really want the Apple experience with software and extremely underpriced apps. It's no doubt Steve Jobs didn't believe in "software" -- his passion was hardware. Hence the $.99 apps, free apps, developers no where near earning what they should for their labor and talent. I digress...

Share your opinions on Windows 8. Do you own a Mac? I do (for iPhone programming) and really like it. I think Windows 7 is better but Windows 8....where will this take us?
 
I believe Win8 might have an affect on users like Vista. W7 is a great success on desktops I believe, but for the new comer I have doubts too.
But it will be perfect on tablets, I'm sure about it
For developers, it is a chance to create a small app and sell it to millions, of course if you can.
 
I haven't used it in anger yet but I doubt that, on the desktop, Windows 8 will offer anything significant over Windows 7 for me. I intend to drop back to the Windows 7 style desktop rather than the Windows 8 Metro interface. That said, I also intend to get a Windows 8 tablet of some kind. My partner and I will probably get one RT tablet and one Pro tablet between us. I will also likely end up with a Nokia Lumia 920 or the like. At that point, I will undoubtedly be using the Metro interface on the phone and RT tablet pretty much all the time and the Pro tablet some of the time, so there may well be some Metro apps that I want on all my devices, including my desktop. Very few of the apps I build at work will be affected as they would not translate to Metro, except maybe as an additional component to provide notifications, which would actually mean additional work.
 
I installed Windows 8 Enterprise from my MSDN onto a laptop. It takes a little getting used to, but I figured it isnt going away so I need to get to grips with it. After some use and getting used to keyboard shortcuts its actually quite intuitive. Moving the menus for windows into a ribbon is bit of a pain but it will fall into place over time. For the first few days, finding things was a pain. I am getting used to the idea of the left and right hand menus that appear when you move the mouse there and the options found when right clicking the start menu. I really dont miss the control panel now.

My main reason for installing was for VS2012. I want to play with writing metro apps and you cant do it on Windows 7. I havent had time to play with development on it yet though, its more an at home endevour than work one. I spend all my work time on winforms and sharepoint.

At first I couldn't see the point of metro apps on a PC/Laptop because winforms can surely do it all. I am coming around to the idea that if you write the metro app, you can have the same app on every device. I see how it could benefit some users. I wont say I am completely sold on it and not sure businesses will really use it. It strikes me as another attempt for MS to break into the mobile market. If they can make things the same on tablets, pcs, phones etc they probably think they have a chance at the business market share but I dont think it will happen.
 
Like every operating system Microsoft has ever made, always skip every other version. MSDOS was good, Windows 1.0 was bad, Windows 3.x was good, Windows 95 was bad, Windows 98 was good, millenium was bad, XP good, Vista bad, 7 good, I strongly predict Windows 8 will be an epic failure. Having tried it I have no respect for the cheap marketing ploy that is to mix a mobile phone operating system on top of an already fine operating system, making it worse, and calling it new. If you want to innovate, innovate. Start by building a fully 64 bits operating system from the ground up instead of patching an old 32 bit one.
 
Ah one exception to your rule is the totally amazing windows 2000. That was sold as a rock. Other than the one exception I agree though.

one thing to add is the crap version always led to something good. Vista was full of good ideas that needed further development. As was 95 and now windows 8. Let's forget about ME, really!

There are things I like about 8, as said above, but 9 will probably be where it shines.

Sent using XT910 with Android 4.0.4 and MIUI 2.8.10
 
hmm.. MSDOS had a range of versions by itself, there was also a Windows 2, and 95/98/Me is same major version (v4) and so is Vista/7 (v6), W2000 is probably worth a mention along with XP, anyway if you're going to look at every minor version you have a rather long OS list to elect from: List of Microsoft Windows versions - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. I also think Vista was and still is great. I've not used W7 much, but for me it feels just like Vista. Thinking back to Windows 3 and onwards I have actually found every new Windows OS an improvement, even slightly. I look forward to W8 (and VS2012) for my next computer, due this year or next.
 
Do you own a Mac? I do (for iPhone programming) and really like it.
No, never, but I had some stray years with OS/2 in the Warp era in the nineties. Loved that :anonymous:
 
JohnH, Win7 is like Vista but less um..clunky. A lot of good features where introduced with Vista (bcdedit replaced boot.ini, printer routing is different, driver store, bitlocker, partition tools, the list goes on...) but the OS was slow and not nearly as stable as 7. Windows 7 is what Vista should've been.
 
If you want to innovate, innovate. Start by building a fully 64 bits operating system from the ground up instead of patching an old 32 bit one.
Vista was a re-write from the ground up for both 32bit and 64bit.
hmm.. MSDOS had a range of versions by itself, there was also a Windows 2, and 95/98/Me is same major version (v4) and so is Vista/7 (v6), W2000 is probably worth a mention along with XP, anyway if you're going to look at every minor version you have a rather long OS list to elect from: List of Microsoft Windows versions - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. I also think Vista was and still is great. I've not used W7 much, but for me it feels just like Vista. Thinking back to Windows 3 and onwards I have actually found every new Windows OS an improvement, even slightly. I look forward to W8 (and VS2012) for my next computer, due this year or next.
Win2k, XP, and 2003 are all NT 5 too, it's just that XP is the home users OS rather than a server OS (with the exception of win2k Pro, that was meant for workstations).
 
JohnH, Win7 is like Vista but less um..clunky. A lot of good features where introduced with Vista (bcdedit replaced boot.ini, printer routing is different, driver store, bitlocker, partition tools, the list goes on...) but the OS was slow and not nearly as stable as 7.
I haven't had any stability issues with Vista, nor any lack of performance, it's as fast as anything I've seen in the past. Incidentally it was also the cheapest PC I ever bought.
Windows 7 is what Vista should've been.
Being a v6.1 that's what MS thinks, too. So W8 being v6.2 should be what W7 should have been :)
 
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