I downloaded and installed Windows 8 beta on a six year old laptop to check it out. I found out I don't like the new graphical Tiles interface at all. Maybe I am just stuck in the old Windows format and don't like change. It might be fine on a smartphone, but not on a full size computer screen. As far as I was concerned the old format was OK- I liked the Start button just fine- leave that alone. No sense putting off getting the new laptop I needed, so I decided to go ahead and get a new 17" laptop with led-lcd display and blu-ray player while I can still get Windows 7- it's starting to feel like Vista all over again (which I skipped). I got my last laptop 2 years ago on a Memorial day special and this year I was not disappointed, either- it was a 40% off sale price at the big box store.
Windows 8 beta, the tiles interface sucks
by moshe 22 Replies latest social current
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cuckoo in the nest
Moshe, I couldn't agree more. Ever since the iPad opened up a previously unexploited gap in the market, operating system producers have become obsessed with tablets, and touch screen interfaces generally. The Metro interface may suit a tablet, although you have to wonder what level of market penetration Microsoft could achieve with Apple and Android as established competition, but on a "proper" monitor? Hopeless. Before it's finally released I hope MS include an option to set the normal desktop as default prior to booting,
I am primarily a Linux user, and we have been plagued with similar issues of our own over the last year or two. Arguably the most widely used desktop, Gnome 2 which utilised the traditional desktop paradigm, has been replaced by the Gnome 3 Shell. This too seems to have been designed by a pre-school child with a large box of coloured crayons. Much of the screen area is wasted with toolbars, multi tasking with multiple programs open at once is practically impossible, virtually all the user configurable options have been removed and the icons are large and blocky which look simply ridiculous and HUGE on my 22" monitors. It won't even work properly on older equipment without graphics acceleration, which many Linux enthusiasts use to experiment with.
Despite the valiant efforts of many Linux distributions to try and make this abomination usable, I think many users have abandoned it for other desktops. Personally I have opted for KDE, another desktop that follows the traditional format. It runs flawlessly on my desktops and three year old laptops. When Xerox defined the desktop paradigm 30 years ago, they got it right. All the most successful graphical user interfaces since then have followed suit, whether it be Windows, Linux, Apple System, RISC-OS, Amiga, whatever. We don't need the wheel reinventing, we just want something usable that works.
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botchtowersociety
Windows 8 beta, the tiles interface sucks
If you refer to the Metro interface, it seems to be more suited for mobile touchscreen devices, not laptops. I have demoed it briefly on smartphones and tablets and it seems to work well there from what I can tell. For a laptop, you probably want to run the available (and more familiar) classical interface.
I haven't played with it enough to know how well it works yet.
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SadElder
Moshe, I agree with your observations. I'll sit this one out for now til I'm forced to move on. MS is taking a great risk with this release. They should have learned with Windows ME and Vista.
I'm just as frustrated with the constant changes. Just when you think you've learned where all your favorite shortcuts are, they change the OS and move everything. The ribbon in Office is just as frustrating. Some of my favorite functions are still hiding, fortunately I found a little app that gives me back the old menu. I still like Wordperfect, but have been forced by the market to also use Office.
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Violia
I haven't liked Windows since 98. I really liked the way it worked . I kept 98 until I was forced to update( none of the games my DH liked to play would work with it). It was one of the most stable of all the Windows versions. I did not get the ME, can't recall what came after , maybe XP. I kept XP forever until just recently went to Windows 7. I used to understand my computer better but not really since 98.
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cuckoo in the nest
The last version of Windoze I liked was 2000, it just worked and managed to stay out of the way; most of the time you didn't know it was there which is how a good operating system should be. It's only an interface between your choice of hardware and your choice of software. Now newer iterations of Windoze want to do EVERYTHING whether you need it to or not. I eventually got used to XP and Win7, because I had to for clients' machines as much as anything, but I can't say I ever enjoyed the process.
SadElder, have you ever tried LibreOffice? It's an open source office suite that's file compatible with MS Office (doc & docx etc.) but the interface is much more like Office 2003 than 2007 onwards.
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botchtowersociety
I use OpenOffice almost exclusively.
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dgp
Violia, . I kept Windows 98 for as long as I could. My reason to change was that I wanted to use pen drives with a capacity larger than 128 Mb.
Call me old-fashioned, but I have never understood why people ever used Word. WordPerfect (in its new versions) is far, far better, and cheaper, and has no learning curve. If you knew how to use WordPerfect 6, you know how to use WordPerfect X6. And your files are compatible.
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cuckoo in the nest
Smart move BTS, LibreOffice is a fork of OpenOffice and is very alike, the Linux community got jumpy when Sun was sold and switched to Libre. We weren't sure how committed to open source Oracle were going to be. OO is still a good suite though.
Dgp & Violia, I'm pretty much the same. I switched to Win 2000 when I built my Athlon 2400XP system, so I could have USB2.
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moshe
I heard that in the Win8 release there will be no native ability to play a DVD- a license will be needed, unlike Win7 that includes the DVD player license.- makes me wonder what else will be stripped out-- I am a classic interface person who sure has gotten used to the standard shortcuts in windows. I realized this weekend that businesses have migrated to Win7 and won't be likely to jump to Win8 anytime soon, so it makes sense for me to stay with the OS that has the support of business and forget about waiting for Win8 to come out to upgrade hardware. I have two 6 year old WinXP PC's I upgraded to Win7 that are working just fine for us. I keep thinking they will quit working, but they haven't.