Windows 8 release preview has been launched today

The desktop is still there, metro in a business would be used as a start menu, at that it's a lot better. It works great with k+m. Not that I expect many to upgrade yet, as a lot of firms have just updated to win7 and roll outs take a few years to plan. However I can see many using win8 on tablets and phones. Rather than a split of Bb phones and iOS tablets. That'll helP speed up adoption.

It remInds me off the hords who said iPad would fail, we all know what happened there. Most people just can't see past the present and can't see the selfs adapting. But we all know we are great at adapting and quickly relearn.
 
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Have to say, after a couple of days of usage now, I just don't see the point of Metro. It's slow, nice for a while but then is useless and as most have said, you spend most of your time in the desktop. I like the spruced up desktop stuff, shame they can't retrofit that in to Windows 7 tbh.
 
Glaucus said:
The desktop is still there, metro in a business would be used as a start menu, at that it's a lot better. It works great with k+m. Not that I expect many to upgrade yet, as a lot of firms have just updated to win7 and roll outs take a few years to plan. However I can see many using win8 on tablets and phones. Rather than a split of Bb phones and iOS tablets. That'll helP speed up adoption.

It remInds me off the hords who said iPad would fail, we all know what happened there. Most people just can't see past the present and can't see the selfs adapting. But we all know we are great at adapting and quickly relearn.
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I can't see that at all, from my own short experiments and numerous read ups on the whole sorry affair, metro apps run full screen which isn't really conducive to a business scenario where a user will have a citrix session, email, web browser and other various tools running in order to do their tasks, that is for the desktop, although my own testing is limited in this respect apparently the desktop window behaviour has been crippled to the point where this kind of multi window action isn't possible on one screen, thus people like call centre operators would need multi-monitor setups.
More monitors = less operators per desk = loss of productivity.
I know business uptake is much slower than retail, the time to rollout is irrelevant, higher tech costs and lower people per desk is inevitable regardless of when it will happen.

Like I said, tablets have their uses, the uptake I feel is more down to convenience over a bulky laptop for social computing (ie surfing the net on the couch while the other half else reads an ebook and the kids watch TV) as well as the whole image factor that apple has so successfully built and managed.

I love new tech, I've early adopted quite a few things over the years (some of them turned out to be flops like DVDA/SACD as the general populus and supporting tech wasn't ready for it) yet I'm struggling to understand this idea of dressing up a PC in a tablets clothing.
 
Desktop is in no way crippled, it's still there you can still use it as you did before.

On top of that tablets are far from media consumption. The majority of ftse100 companies now actively use iPads. And we've just rolled out iPhones to ~18000 employees and iPads to ~2000 as a work tool with custom apps.
 
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That's talking about purly metro, old style desktop is also there.

Metro you can have two apps per screen with snap. Other apps can still run in background and can quickly be brought to the front.
 
It surprises me how many people seriously think that Microsoft is attempting the equivalent of Apple ditching OSX and forcing iOS on to the Macs. That would be insane.

Windows RT is the tablet OS, and thankfully it's not coming to a PC near you.
 
I don't understand what people are complaining about to be honest.

You don't "have" to use Metro apps...it can be used as a start menu and all the apps that you had running before you opened metro will still be there on the desktop after you have finished using Metro?

The ONLY disadvantage is that you can't see what apps you already have running once you open metro/start menu to open another.
 
Cheetah Designs said:
I don't understand what people are complaining about to be honest.

You don't "have" to use Metro apps...it can be used as a start menu and all the apps that you had running before you opened metro will still be there on the desktop after you have finished using Metro?

The ONLY disadvantage is that you can't see what apps you already have running once you open metro/start menu to open another.
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For me it's the fact that the start menu is small and out of the way, all I use it for really is to search for stuff. So in Windows 7 I can have a broswer, email client and another application open, and I want to search for a file, I hit the Win key and start typing in what I'm looking for. It's nice and neat in the bottom left hand corner. In Windows 8 this Metro thing appears that I have zero interest in blocking everything else on screen. hence getting in the Hway.

As for the comment about my brain not getting used to something new, I think I'll ignore that comment.

How is Metro turned off?
 
Metro is fine for touch screen devices, its not fine for us desktop users. Especially when the Metro UI is just shoved in your face. I like my desktop to be clean and icons tucked away, not wallpapered all over my screen.

I can see Win8 going to same way as Vista, unpopular. Businesses will avoid it, not because of bugs and performance issues like Vista. Because the Metro UI is aimed at the wrong audience for desktops users.
 
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MilanoChris said:
For me it's the fact that the start menu is small and out of the way, all I use it for really is to search for stuff.
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Interesting, this is the exact reason I LOVE metro. Because its not small and fiddly (I do the same). To open and app/file I just press the win-key, type and press enter....I love the fact that I don't have to concentrate and look at the tiny thing in the corner and its now in my face. (I don't struggle to see by the way 20:20 vision, but I just find it nicer)
 
Cheetah Designs said:
The ONLY disadvantage is that you can't see what apps you already have running once you open metro/start menu to open another.
Click to expand...

Which is stupid in itself. A touchscreen interface needs to be big, bold, simple and fullscreen, but as soon as you're navigating with a mouse/keyboard it's redundant and counter-productive. I don't need my entire 20" display taken over by a menu, the whole point of having a large, high-res desktop display is to allow multiple things on-screen at once. MS seem to have forgotten this.
 
TheVoice said:
Which is stupid in itself. A touchscreen interface needs to be big, bold, simple and fullscreen, but as soon as you're navigating with a mouse/keyboard it's redundant and counter-productive. I don't need my entire 20" display taken over by a menu, the whole point of having a large, high-res desktop display is to allow multiple things on-screen at once. MS seem to have forgotten this.
Click to expand...

I'm yet to find an instance where you need to see what you have open to use the start menu?
 
They need to really work on this whole Metro vs Desktop thing. The two really don't gel. As a glaring example that I've just stumbled upon, I wanted to send a few files to my phone via email. I selected them, right-clicked, Send To, Mail Recipient and... it can't do it as there apparently isn't an email program installed on the computer. There's the Metro tile, but the Desktop part of the OS apparently doesn't even know this exists. Not good.

Don't get me wrong, I know I can send the files anyway simply by starting at the other end, I just don't like the fact that it doesn't know that the Metro apps exist. I've tried numerous similar situations and the same thing happens in all of them. Desktop can't see any Metro apps.
 
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