Windows 8 - the Features, Applications and News Thread

I'm messing about with the RTM leaked version atm just to get a feel of Windows 8.

The entire o/s is tablet and touch screen focused imo. Now maybe I missed the icon, but in order to shut down my PC, I had to log out; which bought up a splash screen and then click to power off.

It's little things like this which brings up the intuitiveness, ease of use and user friendly aspects which Win 8 is lacking.

Closing applications wasn't obvious either. In order to close them I had to go to the Metro UI; point to the top left; right click on the mini window for every programme I had running.

I had to point precisely to the top right and bottom right to bring up the slidebar. Why can't I just navigate to the right of the screen to do this instead?

I wanted to create Tiles on the Metro UI and I couldn't see how I could do this.

When clicking on "Games" I saw no point in it being linked to xbox live and showing the dashboard interface. Whilst I love the dashboard I would like it to be integrated with the PC game collections I own, sort of like a mini xbmc.

I'm not going to write it off completely though as I want to find out how to do those things I struggled with.
 
majnu said:
I'm messing about with the RTM leaked version atm just to get a feel of Windows 8.

The entire o/s is tablet and touch screen focused imo. Now maybe I missed the icon, but in order to shut down my PC, I had to log out; which bought up a splash screen and then click to power off.

It's little things like this which brings up the intuitiveness, ease of use and user friendly aspects which Win 8 is lacking.

Closing applications wasn't obvious either. In order to close them I had to go to the Metro UI; point to the top left; right click on the mini window for every programme I had running.

I had to point precisely to the top right and bottom right to bring up the slidebar. Why can't I just navigate to the right of the screen to do this instead?

I wanted to create Tiles on the Metro UI and I couldn't see how I could do this.

When clicking on "Games" I saw no point in it being linked to xbox live and showing the dashboard interface. Whilst I love the dashboard I would like it to be integrated with the PC game collections I own, sort of like a mini xbmc.

I'm not going to write it off completely though as I want to find out how to do those things I struggled with.
Click to expand...


I tried Windows 8 and found that everything you would just normally do without thinking actually became a task/chore. Moving from Vista to 7... you would know where things are.. what to do,.. and it would work faster and it would look nicer, and crash less, that was brilliant. Moving from XP to Vista you would even know how to do the usual things, perhaps not some more advanced stuff but you could use the start menu and turn off your PC. Using windows 7... I spent a LONG time trying to shut it down. I spent about 30 mins trying to close an app which I later found you don't close.. you just minimise like on android and they close themselves.

I'm sure people will get used to it and when they do it will be good, but it's not going to be easy to change. Being a computer science PhD student and wanting to eventually own my own business though working with computers, I think it's just something I am going to have to learn to use.

I shouldn't have to "learn" though.

When someone with a computer science degree can't figure out how to shut down a PC.. there are problems somewhere
 
MS touch gestures commands for Windows 8.

Windows 8 gestures follow the same basic principles as Windows 7 finger movements: one finger manages content and two fingers manage apps (formerly windows). Similar to Windows 7, a one finger slide lets you scroll in any direction. A one-finger flick lets you scroll more quickly--a good way to get to the next screen of app tiles in the Start Screen. You can also use the thumb to move backwards or forwards through an app just like in Windows 7.



http://www.pcworld.com/article/260039/microsoft_gets_touchy_with_mouse_gestures_for_windows_8.html
 
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Phil2008 said:
I tried win8 on laptop last night, and if it wasn't for the rubbish metro, it would be a good OS. I did find a tool that gets the start menu back tho, but its not that good.
http://www.technoarea.in/get-start-button-and-classic-start-menu-in-windows-8-consumer-preview/

So I dont think I will be upgrading to win8, unless you can properly get the start menu back and completely disable metro.
Click to expand...

i don't think Metro (or whatever its called now as they are having to drop the name Metro) is rally any good reason not to upgrade.If you have no real use for many of the installed app, as I suspect many people will, they can juts be deleted and the 'Metro' screen then consists of the installed application for desktop. Since one can create folder on the 'Metro' screen, it would only take a few minutes to pop applications into folders and then 'Metro' could be useful.

However, not doing this, and juts leaving Metro alone means that one only needs to see metro once a day, when booting. Everything else can be done on the desktop. (especially using one of the programs that add in a start button) one then benefits from the improved performance of Windows without the annoyances. Frankly, if it comes in at £30 for an upgrade, it is worth doing to keep up to date.
 
I wonder if this is going to be so easy. We have seen in Microsoft Blogs that they have been stripping out legacy code with a view to stopping this messing with their new look Windows. Of course they would have to strip out a lot to really stop people modifying it but i bet dumping 'Metro' is going to be hard with the final version.

The Start menu possibilities are probably better. There are a number of options for this including Classic Shell but we may have to wait for them if the final version has a lot of changes.
 
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