For a little more than a week now, I’ve been reading about the Windows 8 Developer Preview from various websites and also try on my Dell Inspiron 15R laptop. So far, the operating system shows a lot of potential as a new environment for tablets and even for more standard machines. However, it still needs a lot of work before it’s ready for end-users.
Since the release of Windows 95, the Windows desktop hasn’t changed a whole heck of a lot. Oh sure, Windows XP gave us fancy graphics and a slightly different look, Windows Vista made the start button round, and Windows 7 made the taskbar a bit like Mac OS X’s dock, but overall, the general make-up of Windows has stayed the same. Now here comes Windows 8, and it’s a whole different ball of ear-wax. No more start button. No more taskbar. Just a screen with a bunch of rectangles and squares. Oh sure, you can still access a stripped down version of the Windows 7 desktop if you need it, but it’s not the centre of Windows’ universe anymore. Windows 8 seems to boot very quickly and resume from sleep almost immediately on the tablet. Even on an older desktop (without the UEFI replacement for the BIOS) it seems to boot faster than Windows 7.
Windows 8, from a desktop user’s point of view, is very scary. But Windows 8 scares me. It doesn’t scare me because it’s new or too difficult to use, it scares me because Microsoft is forcing the user to conform to the operating system, instead of making the operating system conform to the user.
Windows 8, in its current form, will be a huge headache for the average business user. Want to check your mail? You’ll have to click on the Outlook tile. When you’re done checking your mail, you then have to go back to the home screen and click another tile to get into Internet Explorer to browse the web. What if you’re working on a report and want to copy/paste stuff between two or more windows? It would be a generous pain in the butt with the Metro way of life in Windows 8. While you can access a good old-fashioned desktop environment in Windows 8, it doesn’t have the same start menu as previous versions, so you can’t easily start programs from the Windows 8 desktop without doing computing contortions. I know you can switch between Metro programs using some tricks, but it’s not as easy as clicking a button in the taskbar.
Windowed environments like Windows 95 and Mac OS were created to solve a problem. In the DOS days, under normal circumstances, you could only work on one program at a time. With special tricks, you could do a certain key combination and switch to other programs, but that was a pain in the behind. So Windows and Mac OS solved that problem by allowing multiple programs to be open and on the screen at the same time. No longer were you limited to just one program at a time. But watch out! Here comes Windows 8 and Metro! Now we’re going back to being limited to just one program at a time. What in the world is going on here? From a desktop user’s point of view, this is ten big steps backward…not the future. For a person using a tablet or touch screen computer, Windows 8 will be great…but I’m representing the desktop / Laptop user in this post.
To some extent, that’s to be expected. Microsoft was clear at the conference that this was a developer preview, not a customer beta. As such, it comes with a variety of developer tools. Visual Studio Express, Expression Blend 5, a remote debugger, and very little in the way of consumer applications give developers a number of sample applications written by Microsoft interns. It gives the feel of the basic user experience, so I set off to add programs I’m likely to run.
For most, change is never easy, but if companies like Microsoft design their flagship products to better accommodate users, instead of clobbering users over the head and forcing them to like the lumps, this world would be a better place and Linux and Mac wouldn’t get so many switchers.
Since the release of Windows 95, the Windows desktop hasn’t changed a whole heck of a lot. Oh sure, Windows XP gave us fancy graphics and a slightly different look, Windows Vista made the start button round, and Windows 7 made the taskbar a bit like Mac OS X’s dock, but overall, the general make-up of Windows has stayed the same. Now here comes Windows 8, and it’s a whole different ball of ear-wax. No more start button. No more taskbar. Just a screen with a bunch of rectangles and squares. Oh sure, you can still access a stripped down version of the Windows 7 desktop if you need it, but it’s not the centre of Windows’ universe anymore. Windows 8 seems to boot very quickly and resume from sleep almost immediately on the tablet. Even on an older desktop (without the UEFI replacement for the BIOS) it seems to boot faster than Windows 7.
Windows 8, from a desktop user’s point of view, is very scary. But Windows 8 scares me. It doesn’t scare me because it’s new or too difficult to use, it scares me because Microsoft is forcing the user to conform to the operating system, instead of making the operating system conform to the user.
Windows 8, in its current form, will be a huge headache for the average business user. Want to check your mail? You’ll have to click on the Outlook tile. When you’re done checking your mail, you then have to go back to the home screen and click another tile to get into Internet Explorer to browse the web. What if you’re working on a report and want to copy/paste stuff between two or more windows? It would be a generous pain in the butt with the Metro way of life in Windows 8. While you can access a good old-fashioned desktop environment in Windows 8, it doesn’t have the same start menu as previous versions, so you can’t easily start programs from the Windows 8 desktop without doing computing contortions. I know you can switch between Metro programs using some tricks, but it’s not as easy as clicking a button in the taskbar.
Windowed environments like Windows 95 and Mac OS were created to solve a problem. In the DOS days, under normal circumstances, you could only work on one program at a time. With special tricks, you could do a certain key combination and switch to other programs, but that was a pain in the behind. So Windows and Mac OS solved that problem by allowing multiple programs to be open and on the screen at the same time. No longer were you limited to just one program at a time. But watch out! Here comes Windows 8 and Metro! Now we’re going back to being limited to just one program at a time. What in the world is going on here? From a desktop user’s point of view, this is ten big steps backward…not the future. For a person using a tablet or touch screen computer, Windows 8 will be great…but I’m representing the desktop / Laptop user in this post.
To some extent, that’s to be expected. Microsoft was clear at the conference that this was a developer preview, not a customer beta. As such, it comes with a variety of developer tools. Visual Studio Express, Expression Blend 5, a remote debugger, and very little in the way of consumer applications give developers a number of sample applications written by Microsoft interns. It gives the feel of the basic user experience, so I set off to add programs I’m likely to run.
For most, change is never easy, but if companies like Microsoft design their flagship products to better accommodate users, instead of clobbering users over the head and forcing them to like the lumps, this world would be a better place and Linux and Mac wouldn’t get so many switchers.
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