<p>Just DLed and installed Win8 today and actually i'm really liking the integration between the Metro UI and the classic desktop workspace. Think MS is finally moving in the right direction as far as keeping up in the "post-pc" era. Have any of you guys tried it yet? What'd you think?</p>
<p>I have a spare 2.5" im not really using at the moment. Might give it a shot when I have a better internet connection again.</p>
<p>Yeah give it a try. It’s not a polished, final version yet by any means, but I’ve found it to be a really neat experience and quite a bit more unique than anything else out there right now.</p>
<p>I gave it a try. It’s unique and looks nifty, but as a desktop OS, I’m finding that it takes approximately twice the amount of clicks (compared to Win7) to do anything. There’s also a lack of visibility with what you can do: i.e. there’s no indicator that getting back to the “start menu” involves the Windows key.</p>
<p>On a tablet, it might be very nice though; I haven’t actually tried it on a tablet to determine whether or not that’s actually the case though.</p>
<p>Yeah I find myself more on the desktop than anything. Its got some bugs in it obviously, but it feels really zippy. Like how windows has its own built in apps for pdf, videos, etc that you can access from inside the desktop interface. I’ve had my struggles with it though. Itunes was said to work on it, but its about 50/50 on whether you can actually play music without it freezing up horribly. Everything else seems to work ok. Overall, I’d give it an 8/10. I haven’t tried it on a tablet yet either but i’ve seen plenty of videos of it working tremendously on older tablets. I genuinely feel like if Microsoft can gain Dev support for their app store and further along this Metro UI, they can really content in the tablet market because everything i’ve seen about the new windows 8 tablets make them look downright amazing. thats really the reason why i was so impressed with it. Its a full featured desktop OS that works just as well on a tablet than on a pc, even more so. I don’t know how this will all play out with the end user, but i’m really excited to see exactly what microsoft is planning on adding before the launch date later this year.</p>
<p>Out of 10? Probably a 2. </p>
<p>Windows 8 sucks for productivity. The Metro apps are aesthetically nice, but for a student who’s just looking to get his work done, Windows 8 does nothing. In fact, Windows 8 hinders my productivity in many ways. One, the removal of the start menu. I used to use the start menu to search for documents and programs. I could bring up the start menu with a single key press (windows key) and start typing the file I needed - e.g. “physics lab rep…” and the file would show up. </p>
<p>On Windows 8, to get to the search functionality, I have to:</p>
<p>1) mouse over to the bottom right corner (completely non-intuitive)
2) click on the “search” button that magically appears
3) type the file I’m looking for
4) click AGAIN on the appropriate category, whether it be “apps,” “settings,” or “files.” What completely irks me is how Windows 8 searches for apps by default, and there is no way to change this. Also, Windows 8 will be content to show you that there are 0 apps found but several documents found. Windows 8 should switch to show the documents instead of just show 0 apps found. </p>
<p>So if I’m looking for a specific document - let’s say “physics lab report,” Windows 8 will report 0 apps found, and 1 file found, but I have to MOUSE DOWN AGAIN and hit “files” just to see that one document. Why can’t Windows 8 just automatically show the files found if there are no apps found? </p>
<p>WHAT IS THIS NONSENSE, I CANNOT COMPREHEND. Searching used to be a two step process on Windows 7. Now it takes a bloated 4 (and possibly 5) step process just to find a file, app, or anything on Windows 8.</p>
<p>Lol yeah its got quite a few bugs to it. Its still in beta form so its gonna have those. Alot of the UI does seem to be for tablets. I’ll give you that 100%. I’m just excited about it because I was really unimpressed with OS X Lion and ML wasn’t really grabbing me either. Its different then we’ve ever seen from MS and I think you almost have to give them a pass on their early models for an OS that is this dramatically different then their past versions of windows. For me, this beats the hell out of Gnome Shell and Unity, so i’m really interested to see where Microsoft goes with this Tablet/Desktop Hybrid OS. I’m guessing they’ll have your indexing issues lined out by the time the final release rolls out and hopefully they’ll cut out some of the unneeded mouse clicks on the way to actually searching. Thanks for the reply man</p>
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<p>It’s been getting worse since the leaked developer preview. In the Dev. Preview, at least the search functionality was accessible by hovering your mouse over the start button. Now, the start menu is gone and the search function is hidden. </p>
<p>I should probably post my rant on the official Windows 8 board instead of here to effect some actual change, but I really don’t have time to make an account, etc.</p>
<p>Windows 8 appears to be the new Vista…</p>
<p>TIME FOR LINUX TO RISE!!!</p>
<p>I like Windows 7. They just had to go and ruin it, huh?</p>
<p>^I like windows 7 too, but I don’t really think they’re ruining it. They’re definitely making some big changes, but you’ve still got your basic desktop and thats pretty much all windows has been to this point. I think they’re really making a push with this metro style mainly because once it comes out in Q4, they’ll have pretty much the same OS running on desktops, tablets, and windows phones. People will install W8, get comfortable with the interface, and may actually go out and purchase a Windows phone because the OS is nearly identical to the metro interface side of Windows 8 and we all know that the regular consumer could care less about speed, cores, etc in a phone. They just want something they can easily learn to use and be productive with.</p>
<p>I really don’t think this is a home run for Microsoft after using the OS for a while, but in a time where Apple has become infatuated with “iOSing” their desktop operating system to accommodate Windows switchers and Linux really not being a real contender yet, I think they have as good a chance as anybody to dominate the OS market. I think this may be difficult for business and enterprise users to catch on to, but the basic user just wants something that works. If their PC comes with windows 8, they’re gonna use windows 8 because they just want the simple things out of a computer. After using it for about a month or so, I wasn’t totally blown away by the performance of Windows 8, but I can definitely tell you that its no different in that respect from what you’d get from Windows 7.</p>