Been playing with Windows 8 on my old Dell XPS m1530 over the weekend and must say overall I'm quite impressed although there are a number of little niggles but I'm sure most can be worked out with updates or alternative apps. Not sure about moving my desktop PC over yet, will need to play a bit more before I take the leap...
No Start menu really freaked me out in the desktop at first, quickly adjusted and tend to alt tab my way around between Metro and the desktop. I can understand why some find it quite jarring as very different look and feel to 7. I think on a touch screen laptop or tablet Windows 8 has a great deal going for it but on older hardware which doesn't support gestures on the trackpad can make navigation a bit of a pain in places.
I find the new Start screen to be a likable hub and think the live tiles are handy, I look forward to seeing more being made of these. Would be great if we could easily create and customise our own.
It would be nice to have more options and customisation generally, for example the photo app shows big previews and there is lots of left to right scrolling, would be nice to be able to view as thumbnails or somewhere in between but seems pretty locked down and seems to be a theme. I can understand when on a tablet but more options for power users on desktops/laptops would make more sense to me.
IE10 in Metro is hideous in my opinion, why they thought sticking the URL bar at the bottom would be a good idea is beyond me, totally counter-intuitive to all other browsers and seems to be a change for change-sake. There were a load of other things I hated about it but can't recall off the top of my head.
I don't seem to be able to snap anything to the side either, tried all manner of apps and I can drag them all but just bounce back to full screen, even tried registry fixes but still no joy.
The Store needs work, need to be able to sort and filter by creator, if I want to see everything official by Microsoft or whoever it shouldn't be that difficult. True I can search for Microsoft and mostly the first results are all MS ones but load of junk mixed in too. The upgrade process to get Media Centre for free was a ball-ache and again more complicated than it should be.
I like many others was thrown when needing to shut down, now it only took we a few seconds to think to alt and F4 or ctrl, alt and delete but why wouldn't you include a simple button in an obvious place? I know it's in charms now but should be always on the desktop I think. There are now third party fixes for this but my Mum wouldn't have had a clue what to do and could lead to a lot of frustration for novice users and seems like a ridiculous oversight.
It's a big change for MS and am quite impressed, can't fault the speed as my old laptop has never felt so responsive and considering the age of the hardware needs to be applauded. I do think there is a lot of room for improvement but the same is true for any new system, as I said I'll hold back using on my desktop until I'm a bit surer how all my games and applications will work. I do think for tablets this is a real winner though, just need to play with the phone now as def. considering a change from Android.
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