The Mouse is Dead! Long Live the Mouse!

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Nice thing to see windows putting forth real effort to get into to the tablet os market.

It'd make sense if we were all using touch screens, but we aren't. The active tiles are fantastic, because they provide more information than just regular old desktop icons.

Allegedly if you are connected to an Active Directory domain you will be able to disable the Metro interface through group policy, but for home users this is how it's going to be.

I did see a video on it, and it does look great for a touchscreen. Such that I wouldn't be against having it on a tablet or something for myself.
But give every hardcore gamer, quad-screen stock trader, artist and web developer touchscreen versions of their current monitors, and take away their mice, and watch the rage begin. I think Microsoft is smart (or legacy-supporting) enough to keep the old ways supported and integrated. I know for my parents an OS like this would be great because they cluster everything on the desktop.
As long as it still runs Steam and native code (Songbird and Firefox), I'm happy.

I'm not a big fan so far, yes its nice and all but the app spaces just annoys me the most. Especially the desktop one when I go to click start I want the start menu not be dumped back to the Metro screen.
We've been running it in Virtual Box and so far everything seems to function correctly except it won't pick up the mouse pointer unless you physically allow the VM to take over your hardware.

Great writeup Chad!

As probably the only person you know that uses a Windows Phone 7 (HTC HD7 T-Mobile), I can tell you that the Metro interface with the live tiles is an absolute wonder to use. They make things so much easier in just about everything I do with my phone.

But here's the rub with Win8, and its very similar to the feelings I had about Lion: There is a place for a mobile interface, and a place for a Desktop interface, and personally, I believe they should be highly, (and I mean HIGHLY EXTREMELY) compatible, but not IDENTICAL.

MS has found themselves with a winning mobile platform/UI for running, phones, tablets, heck, even touch POS systems, but for a main desktop OS, their flagship OS, they need to keep things closer to what we have been using for so many years. The Metro UI is NOT suited for mouse in any way or form.

Other changes they made to the actual Windows Shell are very nice. I like the flatter, cleaner look of the desktop. I like the improvements they made to the Taskmanager. I really like the UI consistencies they are going for with the ribbon interface in every part of the OS. But when you click on start, and the Metro start pops up, or like you mentioned, going to the control panel and it dumps you back into the classic shell, are going to be confusing and disorienting to new users.

From what Ive seen/used of Win8, it has pushed me to finally want a tablet/slate.

To sum it all up, unless they give me an option to completely disable the Metro interface on my desktop, I will be taking a pass on the new edition of Windows, and that says alot. As of right now, I don't have to pay for MS products, as my employer pays for a TechNet subscription, and if I wont even take it for free......

Thanks for the props! I actually just wrote a WP7 writeup that should hit the site shortly. You'll agree and disagree with some of my points. I do like the interface though!

Here's the thing about Windows 8 that I was recently made aware of. Don't think about the Desktop as the desktop with other applications. Think of the Desktop as one application.

Apparently (according to Paul Thurrott of the Win Super Stie) Microsoft hired some interns to write the apps that you see in the Metro start menu. But Microsoft should have spent the time and money investing in showing off what a serious application (like Microsoft Word) would look like as a Metro app. I think the opinion of the new interface would be far superior to what it is now (because people think it's just a chintzy gimmick for Angry Birds-type games).

There is no need to close applications in the Windows 8 environment; they just pause when you switch apps. Load the Task Manager after you've run a few applications and you'll notice the word "Suspended" next to them. It's going to be secure, robust, and powerful.

Once we start seeing some "Real" applications I will revisit my opinion of the new Operating System. But like it or not, it WILL be the next version of Windows without many changes, so it is something we'll have to get used to. Either the hardcore games will be played on the new Metro or you'll have to stay with Windows 7. Heck, MIcrosoft still supports Windows XP and will for awhile.

chadkirchner wrote: There is no need to close applications in the Windows 8 environment; they just pause when you switch apps. Load the Task Manager after you've run a few applications and you'll notice the word "Suspended" next to them.

This worries me. As a heavy user I like to close every program I can so I can get the hardware use when I need it. As I understand it, Mac doesn't really kill processes the same way, and keeps them up in the background. But when I'm DONE with something, I want it out of my RAM, proc, and everything else so I can run my other programs better. Hardware isn't slow anymore, I can tolerate booting a program again. But I can't tolerate having my game lag because my internet browser is eagerly waiting to be booted again when I won't.
I don't want to have to buy 28 damn GB of RAM just because some derps can't design an operating system and think that I want to boot everything instantaneously. Consumers shouldn't expect instant either.

chadkirchner wrote: Here's the thing about Windows 8 that I was recently made aware of. Don't think about the Desktop as the desktop with other applications. Think of the Desktop as one application.

Hrm... never thought of it that way....

chadkirchner wrote: But Microsoft should have spent the time and money investing in showing off what a serious application (like Microsoft Word) would look like as a Metro app. I think the opinion of the new interface would be far superior to what it is now (because people think it's just a chintzy gimmick for Angry Birds-type games).

I really like the interface, just not as my main Desktop UI. From what I understand, Office 2012/2013 will still be very similar. If you have seen the videos of the BUILD slates in action, there are a few ways to use the OSK, but for real productivity, I think it will be a hard sell to corporations. (Where MS makes the real money)

chadkirchner wrote: There is no need to close applications in the Windows 8 environment; they just pause when you switch apps. Load the Task Manager after you've run a few applications and you'll notice the word "Suspended" next to them.

Windows Phone 7.5 does this for fast task switching, but

Leonresevil2 wrote: I don't want to have to buy 28 damn GB of RAM just because some derps can't design an operating system and think that I want to boot everything instantaneoulsy.

chadkirchner wrote: Heck, MIcrosoft still supports Windows XP and will for awhile.

927 Days from today.