Microsoft recently released a public preview of Windows 8, so the web has been full of critiques and slams.
The biggest problem Microsoft is running into is their ‘fans’ don’t like the new Metro interface nor will any Mac lover sing of its praise. So, that only leaves Microsoft fanbois to defend it, and there aren’t very many of those out there.
Have you tried Windows 8, yet?
Here are two videos of guys being introduced to Windows 8 for the first time:
[tentblogger-youtube v4boTbv9_nU]
I don’t think this is giving Windows 8 a fair shake. I know the guy who posted the video is an Apple fanboi, but it still highlights the problem of usability.
Let’s take another look, except this guy (the gentleman on the video) loves his XP version of Windows:
[tentblogger-youtube oyc1RVCXvAk]
Again, we see the same thing.
Before I join in the bashing, there are two things I would like to point out:
First, every windows install since Windows 95 has had an arrow pointing out the Start Menu to the user the first time they booted up the machine. If there is a hotkey for the Windows Menu, perhaps they’ll do something similar. Just because the functionality isn’t overtly obvious, doesn’t mean it’s a bad design.
Second, different is different. Recently I made the switch from Windows to Mac, and I can honestly say that my first week wasn’t easy. There were some actions I could do on Windows without thinking, but since it was different on the Mac, I had to Google it. Once I knew how to do it, it was easier than Windows, but it wasn’t initially. These two guys may find Windows 8 to be wonderful, if they only had the chance to learn how to do old tasks in a new way.
What do you think?
Peter S says
I actually played with Win 8 a little the first time I used it and was a little overwhelmed by the Metro. After a little tinkering, I realized that the Win key switched between desktop and Metro. I realized typing in the Metro side would bring up app lists. Alt+Tab still works. Overall, once I got a little familiar with the interface, it wasn’t too bad. Put frequently used apps in Metro and you’re good to go. Yes, it’s significantly different, but I think in the long run MS will be able to capitalize on this. Windows tablets are planned for later this year and will use largely the same interface. Metro is much more touch friendly so I can see a big benefit there.
As for the above, they have some points – some sort of getting started tutorial would help and MS could definitely use some feedback on actual long-term users adapting to the system. As you noted, adapting to a new system will take a little time. I will say that I showed Win8 to a couple of teenaged girls and they thought it was awesome. They had no problem hitting the store, downloading an app or two, and playing around with the apps (as much as I’d let them due to time constraints). They were looking forward to this being released. 🙂
Eric Dye says
Great feedback!
Adam Shields says
People don’t like change.
I switched to mac about a year ago and while it took a little while to learn wasn’t a big deal. But then you and I are professionals. My parents, not so much. My Dad would still be using Q&A on dos if it were available.
Eric Dye says
There is a divide in computer users, good point.
Steve Knisely says
I’m not sure I can agree the Chris is a apple “fanboi”. He seemed to switch the same time I did, which was when Microsoft came out with Vista minus all the promised goodies. Apple switch to Intel and had a really nice OS that was already doing a lot of what Microsoft cut out of vista. In essence I’m saying that picking the best OS / hardware doesn’t make you a “fanboi”. The pain of moving to Apple was far less then the pain of remaining with Microsoft for myself, and I believe, for Chris as well.
Chris Rouse says
I installed Windows 8 on my secondary hard drive at work today. It was just a backup drive so I trashed it, reformatted, and installed Win8. I’m in tech support and work with Macs and PC all day, and personally use Macs, so I know both platform in and out. I spend more time in Win7 during the week than I do in OS X these days.
First impression: The installer confused me. It just shows the beta fish and the progress lights, but just stayed there for a couple minutes before the installer kicked in. This had me concerned that something had already gone wrong. The rest of the installer was very fast and fluid. Much easier than Win7 (which is already easy) and just as easy as OS X. You can choose to connect to your Microsoft account or just create a local account. Not sure what it does if you’re upgrading since I did a clean install on a drive that has never had an OS installed.
Second impress: Metro. OK, I can work with this. Looks like it has some flexibility. You can right-click on the panels to change them from squares to rectangles. There actually seems to be a lot of flexibility here. I’m looking forward to exploring the Metro UI a bit more soon. When you’re in Metro, if you start typing it will start a search and has a pretty slick interface for searching through apps. Pressing the Windows logo key will take you back here or you can drag your mouse into the bottom left corner and click the pop-up tab for Metro. This second option was a bit tricky since you apparently have to be very precise for this to work.
App installation: I installed Firefox Beta, Flash for IE, and ProPresenter 5 (my day job). The installation process is a bit quicker. Overall, not a lot has changed here. Firefox Beta is not quite ready for Win8 (not surprised) and has some UI funkiness at times. IE looks like it’s been cleaned up a little for Win8, but I don’t use it enough in Win7 to fully compare it. It does promise full HTML5 support, though.
UI: Once you get to the desktop from Metro, the UI looks more or less the same initially. There’s no start button, but hitting the Windows key pulls up Metro and that works basically like the search button and Start menu in Win7. I adjusted pretty quick to this change. My favorite changes here include the task bar being shown on each of my three displays, the ability to use 2x and 3x wide desktop images with the new Span setting for desktop backgrounds (Sweet!). In Win7 I hate having to enable Aero because I think the shiny textures look terrible. In Win8, the stupid shininess is gone. So are the rounded edges on everything. The UI changes are very nice and very welcome to me.
Windows Explorer: I didn’t explore this much, but I didn’t notice any glaring difference, although I’ve read there are a lot. I must just missed those or they’ve been disabled in response to the unhappy reply they got from users several months ago about those changes.
Shutting down: And now we have arrived at the first problem. Even when I got my first Mac in 2005 I was able to figure out how to shut it down without having to look it up. Not so much with Windows 8. Instead of going to the Metro UI and clicking on a Power button (which would make sense), you actually have to drag your mouse to the bottom right corner of your main screen, then click on Settings, then click on Power, then Shutdown/Standby/etc. What?! I hope this changes.
Overall my first impression was positive. I liked that they continued the beta fish motif from the Win7 beta versions. I did like the Win7 beta fish better than what I’m referring to as a “tangram beta fish”. Anyone else remember tangrams from elementary school?
If you’d like for a more thorough review, I’d be glad to write one.
Eric Dye says
Email me about it — eric [at] churchm.ag — would love a more thorough review 🙂