Windows 8?

[Levantine]

Oh thank god. I thought I was the only one who had a bad taste left in his mouth by trying to use metro on a desktop. If I'm forced to use it you can pry 7 out of my cold dead hands.

[PsiVen]

Windows 8 will probably be a big thing for Intel in the tablet market, if they can actually price competitively. But since they felt it necessary to make Windows RT, I don't think that will be true for years yet.

As a desktop system, it's already a flop. Businesses will ignore it and consumers will be annoyed by the needless changes. The Windows Store on a desktop platform is going to be a disaster; I don't think Valve has much to fear from the folks responsible for GFWL.

[Koatanga]

At least we can look forward to there being no upgrade path from 7 to 9 except via 8, just like how you couldn't go from XP to 7 without going through Vista.

[Skye1013]

I think the desktop version will get some love from people using the tablets that want a similar interface. People just flat out upgrading from 7 to 8 though, I see that as less likely, unless something amazing comes out of 8.

[Nooska]

At least we can look forward to there being no upgrade path from 7 to 9 except via 8, just like how you couldn't go from XP to 7 without going through Vista.

Oh, I dunno, it could be done with a clean install.
Legally and licensewise you were allowed to, just no out-of-the box upgrade options (and required changing something in the registry), overall not that hard.

[masterpoobaa]

I work for a Large Private School Organisation (130 schools and counting, 5 office sites).

For us the official line is that thre are no plans to upgrade to windows 8.
Our current SOE is Win7(32bit) and IE9, soon to be 64bit Win7 with the hardware rollover due before christmas.

Bottom line is that while yes, the metro interface may look good and work well on mobile devices, it is not at all suited to a desktop/laptop environment. And therein lies the issue.

[Skye1013]

To be fair, there isn't really much of an incentive to upgrade to 8 from 7 in the first place. If you're on Vista (god forbid) then I could maybe see jumping to 8. If you're still using XP, you really should upgrade to at least 7, as I imagine it's not going to be supported for too much longer (if it even still is.)

I do wonder what the US military's plans are, since we tend to be behind when upgrades are concerned (I know some places that are still working on a Vista upgrade... though I'm currently on a machine with 7.)

[shadoh]

I do wonder what the US military's plans are, since we tend to be behind when upgrades are concerned (I know some places that are still working on a Vista upgrade... though I'm currently on a machine with 7.)

With the migration rolling out, i find it hard to believe we will be rolling out win 8 anytime soon. Having finished our 7 push last year, and still running a few 2k3 servers... we are way behind the ball. For once it might be a good thing, looking at it from a network admin's point of view, win 8 would be a horrible idea for productivity and hopping to it right away scares me with vulnerabilities. But it is the military so who know what we'll get forced to push onto our users.

[Mozen]

I remember reading two main points why desktop users should not upgrade to Windows 8.

(1) You cannot turn off the Windows 8 UI interface (originally named "Metro"). There's no "Classic Mode" or anything.

(2) All non-Win8 applications are still accessible, but they will all use the ugly old icons instead of automatically default to a style that fits into the Windows 8 UI.

I'm not sure if anything have changed since then, but I sure am not going to upgrade. Touch oriented interface simply won't work on a desktop where the display is usually at an arm's length.

The Leap gadget looks very promising, though. If Windows is able to integrate it in such a way that I only have to lift my hands (or even just fingers) to point at the screen and it correctly detects my gestures, then it's perfect.

But still, since I work with text just about all the time, a touch interface is more a toy for me than anything. It would do more good for CAD people, maybe?

[Arnock]

So, I bit the bullet and installed windows 8 on my desktop.


And... it's not bad. Not bad at all.

Dual monitor support is marginally better, the taskbar stretches across both monitors.

The start screen is definitely not designed for desktop use, but it does work, and I'm getting used to it. I find that I've been keeping desktop/taskbar shortcuts for my most frequently used applications, and leave icons/shortcuts for less frequently used apps in the start screen, and it's working out pretty well. I actually am starting to like it better than the old start menu.

If you really hate the start screen, you can more or less ignore it completely after booting up, and then the OS looks and feels almost identical to win7, if slightly prettier.


Some of the 'metro' (or whatever MS wants to call it now) apps are alright, built-in netflix is pretty nice.

IE Sucks... less.

But the real winner for me: Holy boot times batman.

From completely powered off to the windows login screen, it seems like it takes aproximately the same time to boot as windows 7. However, it's nearly instantaneous to go from the login screen to the desktop. Seriously, it's fast.


For $40 bucks, I'd say it's worth the upgrade for the boot time decrease alone, but I wouldn't pay full price. I like that MS is trying to standardize desktop and tablet OS/applications. iOS and android are both nice, but they're still not up to the functionality of a true destop OS, and Windows 8 is heading in that direction.

The only real downside I found was the start screen, but I've been getting used to it, and might actually start preferring it over the old start menu. The only thing that I can say that I probably won't ever like about the new UI, is that it's more annoying to power down the PC(hover cursor in top corner of screen ->settings->power->shut down.) I think think that's because most tablets are designed to hibernate/lock rather than powering down completely.

[Talaii]

The only real downside I found was the start screen, but I've been getting used to it, and might actually start preferring it over the old start menu. The only thing that I can say that I probably won't ever like about the new UI, is that it's more annoying to power down the PC(hover cursor in top corner of screen ->settings->power->shut down.) I think think that's because most tablets are designed to hibernate/lock rather than powering down completely.

It's fairly easy to make a start menu shortcut to shutdown if you want. I have both shutdown and reboot on my start screen. The start screen is fairly nice in general - it needs one new feature to be ideal imo (live tiles from desktop apps). You can pin desktop apps to the taskbar, and you can still do the start button -> start typing trick, as in 7 (though it categorizes the search, rather than just presenting everything). Just make sure you have a look through the keyboard shortcuts (Win + C and Win + X get a lot of use here).

I'm liking win8 a lot. I was considering getting one of the start menu replacements and just treating it like 7, but I find that (limited) use of metro apps is even good - especially on a three-screen setup. I've got an IM client snapped to the edge of one screen constantly, and some of the metro-style apps are quite nice (they tend to look a lot cleaner than other apps - no taskbar and very little UI means more space for actual content). Additionally, there's a lot of minor improvements that are so much better than in 7 (file copy progress box is night and day, as is the task manager).

[Arnock]

I've found the netflix metro app to be quite nice myself.

Also, natively being able to have a wallpaper spread across multiple monitors.


I wish valve would get off its high horse and create a metro app for steam. It seems like that would be a pretty ideal type of program to work with the new UI.

[Flex]

I've found the netflix metro app to be quite nice myself.

Also, natively being able to have a wallpaper spread across multiple monitors.


I wish valve would get off its high horse and create a metro app for steam. It seems like that would be a pretty ideal type of program to work with the new UI.

Valve's too busy getting into the PC console business.

[fuzzygeek]

the taskbar stretches across both monitors.

Ugh. Can this be changed? I have four monitors and would hate to have the taskbar run all the way across.

[Nooska]

^same - well I only have 2 monitors, but one is my display, I don't want a taskbar there - the other is my "stuff" monitor where I keep the taskbar and all the files/shortcuts I want while I'm using my Display.