
How I came to love Windows again - petrel
http://betanews.com/2013/03/05/how-i-came-to-love-windows-again/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed+-+bn+-+Betanews+Full+Content+Feed+-+BN
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rkalla
This piece is written a little... enthusiastically. That said, I would
completely agree that the "Ah-ha!" moment for me with Windows 8 was when I
tried it out on a touch-screen enabled laptop (something from Acer at Costco).

Suddenly the horrible "tiles" dashboard brought up by the Windows key made
much more sense to me, was more fluid than I anticipated and after about 10
mins playing on the laptop I walked away feeling "Yep, this is exactly how a
laptop should be."

I was really surprised. Found it instantly intuitive and a faster way to
navigate my way around the computer.

There are also a slew of more advanced keyboard shortcuts in Win8 as well that
make me happy that Microsoft hasn't forgotten about keyboard-driven folks.

I know there is a lot of Win8 hate going around, but so far, I think it was a
good move. Very curious how Blue Sky (8.next codename?) turns out though.

~~~
jamieb
And then I plug it into my 24" monitor and put the laptop on a stand. Bzzzt.
Mind fuck. Motor cortex confused. "fluid" operations when the laptop was on my
lap suddenly difficult, even painful with my deltoid injury. The keyboard is
under my hands, the laptop screen in fact too far to touch without doing sit-
ups.

Windows 8 is a broken frankenstein. It fundamentally does not work for
anything other than a laptop-on-your-lap. The rest of us are impeded, annoyed
or even physically injured by it.

Apple nailed it. Here's your tablet OS. Here's your laptop/desktop OS. Result:
my house now has more Apple devices than all the Windows devices I've ever
owned.

~~~
dntrkv
When you plug it into your 24" monitor, use it like you would Windows 7. All
the keyboard short-cuts are there, you can press Windows Key + Type in
anything you want to run and press enter or you can switch to desktop mode.

I really don't understand all this Windows 8 hate. I switched to using Mac-
only (due to my new job) about 7 months ago and when I first tried using
Windows 8, it took about 5 minutes before I found everything I needed.

If you are a beginner-user, Windows 8 is even easier since you probably just
use Office + Internet Explorer which are right there in front of you in big
tiles.

Intermediate-users can switch to desktop mode if they need.

Power-users can work even faster since now there are more keyboard shortcuts
and that same desktop mode is there if you really want it.

Can you explain what prevents you from using Windows 8 like you would use
Windows 7?

~~~
Kluny
I think it's just the mental switch. It's like shifting from Mac to Windows,
something I do frequently at school. Well, not that frequently - I avoid
switching whenever possible because the simple cognitive shift to remember
where my files are stored and which keyboard shortcuts to use is so disruptive
to my workflow.

------
ghshephard
Things hold me back from "loving" windows (I say this as a continuing daily
user of Windows for 18+ years) as my primary system instead of my MacBook Air.

    
    
      o Add a half decent gcc/bash/posix tool chain (something built in, not cygwin)
      o Include a decent terminal/ssh client.
      o License apple's touch pad
      

They've got a lot of things going for them:

    
    
      o Better Games 
      o The new tablet/wacom SurfacePro blows away anything apple 
        offers for stylus digitization on the iPad.
    

Microsoft has a chance here - they just have to keep pushing.

~~~
baby
Microsoft is full of talented developers, why have they not added all those
things that make people switch to a UNIX system yet?

~~~
jfb
The number of people who might switch from OS X to a mooted Windows with a
POSIXy toolchain is approximately zero. Engineering time and energy are not
free.

~~~
actf
I disagree. This is one of the main reasons that drove me to switch over to
OSX. I don't think I'm alone in this either. I have a number of colleagues
that have switched from windows as their primary OS for similar reasons.

I'd like to believe that if Microsoft were to add POSIX support, and a decent
terminal as part of the _default_ Windows installation it would go along way
to improving their perception in the minds of technical users.

------
lucisferre
I had high hopes for Windows 8 and honestly believed the hybrid experience of
desktop and tiles wouldn't be all that bad. What I fool am I. Since spending
more time with it I can't believe just how frustrating the experience of
constantly needing to switch between the two is.

To add insult to this injury is how badly thought out so many of the little
details of Windows 8 seem to be. From creating your user account (forced to
choose a password hint?) to using the system search everything feels clunky
and always involved an unnecessary extra step.

I will agree that the only thing that does feel decent and well thought out is
the touch experience. After trying it out on a surface if you simply use the
tiles and IE10 the experience is actually quite fluid and nice. However the
problem remains, Windows 8 is still meant to be the next major version of
Windows and not just some tablet OS. On a desktop (even a touch desktop) and
in the hands of a power user it's an abject failure.

~~~
SAHChandler
> (forced to choose password hint?)

I haven't used Windows 8, but on Windows 7, when creating a user account I was
required to create a password hint and could simply enter a space.

~~~
tehwalrus
I favour "hah, nice try."

------
rayiner
So I got a Surface RT recently, and as someone who hasn't used Windows since
XP came out, I came away pretty impressed. I think the weakest aspect of the
Windows experience has always been the hardware that it runs on, and Surface
gives us glimpses of what Microsoft can do when it keeps the OEM's at arms-
length.

It's a deeply flawed product in a lot of ways. I don't know why Google can
make a $300 Nexus 4 with Quad-Core Snapdragon + Adreno 320 graphics and 320
ppi display, while Surface RT at $500 comes with an aging Tegra 3 and 150 ppi
display. And contrary to what all the apologists on the internet were saying,
you miss that extra measure of power when you see simple animations drop
frames or when you realize you just don't have enough horizontal pixels to
comfortably view a pdf while holding the device in portrait mode (the Surface
Pro's screen is a huge step up in that regard). Windows 8 isn't fully baked
yet. It doesn't have the reassuring visual solidity of iOS, which comes from a
painstaking attention to avoiding redraw flicker. The apps in the Microsoft
Store, with the exception of some great ones like the Netflix app or Fotor,
are of almost uniformly shitty quality. The gestures are well-implemented, but
so undiscoverable I'd never give a Win 8 machine to my mother... There are
instances of the "old Microsoft" peeking through--things that make you go "did
anyone even use this?" For example, the background level of the headphone amp
is very noisy. It's not a problem for music, but if you're listening for the
keypress feedback, you hear the background hiss come on and off as Windows
turns off the sound-card between bouts of typing.

All that out of the way, it's the first non-Apple devices that I've actually
found charming. From the magnesium case to the felt of the type/touch covers,
it feels like a device that's worth $500. It looks nothing like an iPad but it
manages to look great. It's something you want to touch and turn around in
your hands and the PC OEM's have never been able to bring that to the Windows
ecosystem. Once you figure out how the gestures work, they are efficient and
fluid to use. At least as long as you stay in Metro (and ignore the desktop
bolted onto the side like some weird monstrosity), the UI looks coherent. It
looks like someone actually designed it, instead of having a bunch of
engineers do whatever the hell they wanted.

I'm not surprised it's not selling well--I wouldn't recommend one to anyone
unless they have very specific needs, but at the same time I'm actually
excited to see what the next iteration looks like. I haven't been able to say
that for a non-Apple product in years.

------
pmikesell
This whole article was gushing over how _beautiful_ and _modern_ his
experience was, but the one and only actual example he uses of it actually
doing something for him was that it found printer drivers. This was written
like a fashion article.

~~~
Kluny
Without intending any disrespect to elderly British homosexuals, I read the
whole article in the voice of an elderly British homosexual. One who is easily
impressed.

------
baby
I just bought a Lumia 620 and the tiles system is just that good. I do miss
the possibility of Android (widgets and number of apps) but I really really
dig where Microsoft is going lately. Metro looks great, their last products
(Bing, Office, Internet Explorer, Surface...) do too. I'm waiting for their
new Xbox announcement but I really feel like they're getting back into the
game.

I'll still be a bit skeptical on the Windows 8 until I try it myself. But as
we always say, better skip a version every two windows.

EDIT: I almost forgot what they did with the kinnect those past years.

------
underwater
I've had a Surface RT for a few months now and the experience has been
disappointing. The tablet feels slower and much less polished than the three
year old, cheaper, Windows Phone 7 device I have lying around.

Maybe Windows 8 works great on the Pro, but I feel like Microsoft did a bait
and switch by promoting RT like they did.

~~~
meaty
Agree with this. Surface RT is painful. Especially office.

~~~
Maarten88
I'm quite happy with my Surface RT. I use it every day, mostly for browsing
and watching video. I agree with the article that Metro-IE10 is very very good
on the Surface in tablet mode. Good apps are coming slowly.

But Word, Excel and even PowerPoint are too much for it. Only good for
reading. OneNote is very usable on Surface RT though, I do use that to take
notes during meetings.

The Windows Mail app also sucks, and on RT you cant install Outlook.

~~~
TheAnimus
I haven't done any killer spreadsheets as I can't have my plugins working.

But I've not found RT office to be unusably slow.

For me it lives up to its purpose of being a compaingion device.

The problems I have are basically the Mail app is uselessly bad and the Photos
app sometimes grinds to a complete halt.

------
Aardwolf
I will not love Windows anymore unless they show file extensions by default,
allow scrolling areas without click to give it focus first, allow changing the
volume by using the scrollwheel over the speaker tray icon, don't have such a
small limit for amount of characters in the command line, have incremental
history in the command line, and other things like that.

I'm not their target user.

~~~
Zigurd
Imagine the conversation at Apple or Google:

"We can bring a tablet to market that has file extensions in the user's face,
and a command line, and part of the UI needs a pointing device."

"lolwut? You're serious? Get out of here!"

Microsoft is still dragging too much untablety legacy tail to make a
successful tablet.

Courier was the right idea. Windows everywhere isn't. The result wll be a
rearguard that only slightly slows the decline of the PC by dressing it up as
a tablet, and leaves Microsoft without a competitive tablet product. You can
see this in sharp relief in the market failure of the ARM-based, neither-fish-
nor-fowl Surface.

~~~
XorNot
The PC has been in alleged decline for 15 years now. The reality is its not
going anywhere, other complementary technologies are simply rising to the same
level of penetration.

Tablets are not replacements for a full computing environment, and never will
be.

~~~
Zigurd
Re "Tablets are not replacements for a full computing environment, and never
will be."

How many PC users actually use or need "a full computing environment?"

------
liotier
Microsoft may be bringing innovative UI to the market. They may even have a
technically mature infrastructure. But how are they going to regain the trust
they lost by breaking API and promises time after time in the last twenty
years ?

~~~
Roboprog
I love the quote in the article about the 90s being the dark ages of personal
computing. What happened in the 90s? Oh, yes, Windows 3.x and Windows 9x.

For some of us, though, it was an age of enlightenment, having to work on
various unices and then picked up Linux at home. (I started work in the 80s on
MS-DOS & Novell environments)

What I have found the last 2 years or so is not that Linux is so awesome, but
that Windows is, by itself, simply really bad. Having picked up iOS, MacOS and
Android devices recently, they all work pretty well. Windows simply sits by
itself in being a remarkably sluggish turd that cannot decide what it wants to
look like. Of course, I have not actually had to use Windows 8 yet, but 7 was
bad enough of a WTF U/I change (and slow as ever, with klugy programming
environment).

RANT ENDS.

~~~
jackalope
I haven't tried Windows 8 on a desktop, yet (I couldn't get the consumer
preview to work on any of my machines or in a VM). But I did switch from an
Android to a WP8 phone and couldn't be happier. In that form factor, WP8 is
exactly what I want and the UI is really well designed. I haven't used Windows
since XP (and keep an XP VM for any work that requires Windows), but I'm
actually quite interested in trying out a touch-enabled Windows 8 laptop based
on the positive experience with my phone.

Edit: I should add that my main environment is Linux running dwm in monocle
mode on a 17" MacBook Pro. Noone could be more surprised than me that I would
be intrigued by a new UI coming from Microsoft.

------
S_A_P
I have been using windows 8 on my MacBook and frankly, I hate the work flow. I
can, however, see how a tablet form factor would suit the os nicely. For most
things I use windows for(visual studio, ssms, file manipulation and some
occasional web dev) the context switch DRIVES ME BANANAS! I often start new
processes with cmd + r and it seems win 8 doesn't like my timing because half
the time I get a run dialog and the other half I get the metro screen of
reduced productivity.

Some other complaints about win 8- the metro apps all seem to take FOREVER to
launch. You get this giant c64esque splash screen for 10-15 seconds. Feels
confining to me. The task switching needs improvement. Wish I could see a
screen of all my running apps and click the one I need. Anyone that can
provide advice would be owed a beer.

------
z3phyr
Yeah, with the users point of view, 8 is stunning!!!

But what about the developers and power users? Think about those AAA game
development studios, Large budget software houses? Will they develop high end
software by touch?

This will sound a little off-topic, but I would like to bring this to notice,
anyway... -- GNOME 3 --

Yes, the open source community made a similar move like metro some days ago...
And to be honest, I will not like to use a touch based UI for development
until someone forces me with iron fists!!!

~~~
k-mcgrady
Have you used Windows 8? You don't need to use a touch UI for development.
Devs use Visual Studio which works exactly the same way it has for the last 10
years.

------
josefresco
The article was pretty good, but this bothered me: "For most of February". A
time frame too short for me to make any conclusions about an OS.

A few weeks is usually how long I will use a "gee-wiz" feature of an
OS/app/software until I turn off the unnecessary glitz (that's probably now
choking my hardware) and get down to business.

------
bitwize
It reads like a testimonial for a questionable health product.

I have difficulty believing that anyone can wax so rhapsodic about Windows 8's
UI. It's so clunky and frustrating that the best you can expect to be is
"resigned to your fate".

Me, I couldn't wait to scrap that shit off and load me some Slackware.

------
Rudism
How I came to love Windows 8 involved installing ClassicShell to bring back my
start menu and disable all of the cray Metro stuff entirely.

------
ibudiallo
Although it is nice to see people are using Windows 8 and like it, these
articles do not bring anything to the table.

I remember the first time I figured out Windows xp, Windows 7, fedora , ubuntu
, mac OS 10 , yes I was very excited for each occasion. But it was not worth
an article . Every OS is useful for some needs so let's move on.

------
pungoyal
Not convincing enough. I am staying clear of anything Microsoft.

------
wes-exp
Coming from a site that has an atrocious mobile web interface, not even worth
the read.

People come back to love their abusive spouses too. Doesn't make it right :)

------
itsbits
well there are Windows 8 users!!!!..the main feature as a web developer i like
in Windows8 is its native support to JavaScript...wen i get free the next task
is to make some JS apps for Windows8..also i got to know that UbuntuOS and
FireFoxOS does give JS as native support...and hopefully in future they
together improve HTML5 support than their own API in JS..

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blt
I think this overuse of _italics_ is almost as _annoying_ as the post with
every other word _bold_ from a few days ago.

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mal3x4u
dude.. go to ubuntu or mountain lion and then write another article...

I don't like windows because:

1\. I don't have terminal 2\. I can't configure it easily 3\. I don't like to
have lots of things in taskbar 4\. I want multi-workspace and easy to switch
between them 5\. I want more fullscreen stuff.. 6\. filesystem built not ok!
viruses in windows are a big threat! I don't want antivirus

------
calinet6
Honestly, an article a day about "hallelujah, Windows is back"—Good job on the
covert social marketing Microsoft.

------
dexen
Strangely enough, Adblock Plus failed to filter this press-release-cum-review.

------
Bud
What I notice is, although the author compares the gloriousness of Win8 to
various other products, he takes very special care to not mention iOS or a
single Apple product. Not once.

