it’s funny that anyone would think they were planning to do away with the command line when they released PowerShell in 2006.
Now, COMMAND.COM (the old DOS command interpreter) is gone, at least in 64-bit versions of Windows. Which, I’m sure, is largely because they’re 16-bit programs and 64-bit Windows cannot natively run 16-bit program code.
I just got a Windows 8 laptop, and my initial impression isn’t great, but I don’t feel I used it enough to officially declare one way or the other.
The thing that annoyed me most is how certain things fade away if you move your mouse away for a moment, and there doesn’t seem to be a simple way of getting back to it (e.g., the Network list, when I was trying to set up my VPN connection) without starting the navigation from scratch. I also used IE, and didn’t like how it takes over the whole screen and there’s no taskbar-like quick access to the other programs, or to the desktop, that I can tell. Whether that’s an IE thing or a Windows 8 thing I don’t know. On my current (Windows 7) laptop, I use Chrome instead of IE because I hated the upgrade to IE9. I haven’t gotten to installing Chrome on the new one yet (if I even should).
Okay, I installed the wireless card today and poked around a bit while Windows 8 downloaded about a thousand updates. I’m not enchanted by Windows 8 at all. The more quickly somebody makes an app or skin or whatever the hell the proper term is to make Windows 8 handle like Windows 7, the happier I will be.
I used it at my dad’s for a while and I didn’t hate it. That’s the nicest thing I can say so far, other than that I actually like the way metro looks in general, functionality aside.
I installed it on VMware Workstation the other day to see what all the fuss was about. Hate it so far. I’ll install Start8 to see if that improves things.
I’ve had it for a couple weeks. I like it a lot. Keep in mind that as a power user, 99% of what I do involves the desktop. Once you’ve logged in, you can either click on the desktop icon or hit WIN+D. After that it’s pretty much indistinguishable from Win7. I never look at the start menu unless a) I want to start something I’ve pinned there or b) I’m just noodling around. There’s no need to ever get involved with the apps at all if you don’t want to. The only one I really ever use is the Accu Weather app.
I’ve got about thirty games pinned to the start menu, all nicely categorized. You can scroll with the mouse to see everything.
I found this post here -
http://everythingwindows8.blogspot.com/
to be super helpful, especially the top article from Loyd Case.
Protip: If you rightclick in the bottom left corner, you can access the special sooper secret power menu. It’s a quick way to find things, basically.
PS: I like the way it looks.
It’s faster, more secure, more efficient, and has a few improvements here and there that make my computing experience a little bit better - like the new copy/move windows. They are more accurate, present a history of move speed in a nice graph, and a single window will combine all your move/copies, instead of having a bunch all over the place. Also the new task manager is a hell of a lot more useful.
The start menu isn’t an issue, because it works the same exact way it did before, the only difference is an aesthetic one. I still click at the bottom left of the screen and start typing, just like I did in windows 7.
The ONLY issue is that some programs are either being slow in accommodating the OS or are having issues with it.
Chrome, for example, worked fine until the latest update a few days ago. Now it’s been crashing unless I disable certain extensions. And my Home theater PC was having issues with the cable card tuner until the latest beta driver a few days ago, now it’s working like a charm.
I’m happy overall, and about the only other complaint I have is that the Microsoft apps included are incredibly lacking in features. I can’t print pdf’s, the mail app sucks balls, the rest aren’t even worth mentioning. Luckily, I can still use my desktop apps that used to handle this stuff, just as I did before, but I would have liked to see Microsoft provide some truly viable alternatives.
it’s going to suck when run in a VM since the “hot corners” will be problematic at best.
I hate the interface. And what really sucks is they forced Metro down our throats as admins by having Server 2012 to use it too.
Funny, I upgraded just last night.
From what I’ve seen, I vote okay. Really I’m just glad the upgrade went as smoothly as it did and nothing is obviously broken. I like live tiles. Having news and weather and mail on the start screen is nice, and I like the new email app which lets me get rid of thunderbird which I never enjoyed using.
The biggest problem is space. I had windows 7 and all my non-game apps installed on a 64 gig SSD and I had over 20 gigs free. After upgrading, I now have only 5 gigs free. Is windows 8 really that big? Is there something I can get rid of? I noticed a ‘old windows’ folder and I wonder if I can delete that to free up space. Or maybe I should just get a bigger SSD.
I voted OK. It’s a hell of a lot better than Windows XP. It’s mostly better than Windows Vista. But it’s just marginally better than Windows 7, and that’s the one most people care about.
Thus, I recommend everyone upgrade if they have XP and can handle the requirements (1GB of memory, and a processor that can handle blip.tv videos or HD YouTube videos without maxing out. There’s a new process that will make those things take 10-15% more processing time than they used to.) I recommend anyone not completely happy with Vista to upgrade. I recommend people who want to use Modern UI (aka Metro or Windows Store) apps upgrade from Windows 7, but, otherwise, stick with what you’ve got.
The biggest tradeoff with Windows 7 is not the lack of a Start Menu, but one of the features of the Start Menu that they didn’t replicate: the frequently used programs list. They still keep the data, as you can see in Task Manager, but for some reason don’t tell you about it. Instead, every single application you install will wind up on the Start Screen, which, IMO, creates a cluttered mess unless you dutifully organize it. Windows 7 handled this better.
But you can always install ClassicShell if you need a Start Menu, or buy Start8 for $5 if you want one that uses the built-in Windows search. And if you don’t like the Start Screen, you can disable it.
The other big thing I like about Windows 8 that I forgot to mention is how they handle 16-bit or 256 colors. They can run without making the entire desktop run at those color settings. The tradeoff is that some programs take longer to go fullscreen than they did previously. It’s all thanks to that process I mentioned earlier–the DWM, or desktop window manager. It offloads all graphics to the graphics card, but it takes a little bit of CPU to do so.
It is a huge deal. In Windows 7, search results from the start menu were combined. Documents, music, settings - everything. In Windows 8 search results from the “start menu” are segmented into documents, files, and settings, and Windows 8 will be perfectly fine to sit there showing 0 documents found when there are settings found. Why not automatically display the settings found? Or why not just combine all the search results? You know, I don’t like clicking the mouse to do something that was once did not require mice clicks. Try it. Try looking up ‘device manager’ with Windows 8 and see how cumbersome it is compared to 7.
Hint: Notice how you have to physically move the mouse to click on something, where as in Windows 7 the most you had to do is hit enter or the arrow keys a few times to get to the thing you were looking for. Even if you use the arrow keys in Windows 8, you have to press several more times than in Windows 7, and you have to use it in conjunction with the Enter key twice.
I’ve been using it since the beta.
The only Metro apps I use are the Start Screen and PC Settings. 
I’m fine with the Start Screen and I really like the live tiles (at least in theory, because with no Metro apps installed I don’t see them). They could be a really elegant way to combine icons and desktop widgets, however, it seems that desktop applications aren’t allowed to use them (or at least none of the applications I use do yet).
Also, Metro can only ever use one screen, so if you have a multi-monitor setup like me, it’s even more pointless
Win8 desktop feels like a really minor upgrade to Win7.
The ribbon menu in Explorer and the new copy window with pause/resume are nice, but I miss Aero. I didn’t think I would, but it turns out that for me the glass effect created a greater awareness of where hidden windows were.
Also, don’t believe anyone who tells you that if your hardware worked for Win7 it will be fine in Win8. After the upgrade I lost the sound and network function from my motherboard, and both my TV tuners were unusable. No biggy for me, they were due for upgrading, but they had worked fine in Win7 64 and even had drivers available for Win8 from Windows Update (which simply did not work).
But the worst thing about Win8 is how it adds another layer of GUI idiosyncrasy (Metro) that will no doubt be with us forever.
In attempting to fix my hardware problems, I’ve had to mess around with Windows’ settings and it’s like a trip through computing history.
First you’ve got the nice post-Vista control panel GUI like System or BitLocker.
Then you’ve got the NT era GUI such as Disk Manager, where for some reason you can’t use the middle mouse wheel to navigate (I guess it was coded before that was common and nobody has bothered to fix it).
Then you’ve got those little tabbed boxes that popup from the control panel, like Advanced system settings or Folder Options, that feel like they’re from Win3.1.
Anyway, it just feels totally inconsistent, like they hired an industrial designer at some point, he looked at it, hung himself, and they decided they better not try that again.
…but all in all Win 8 is fine.
OK, I have now spent some serious time with Windows 8 on my new laptop, and I have to say I HATE it. It is so user-unfriendly, I’m tempted to get the machine “down” graded to Windows 7 and swallow the cost. This isn’t an operating system. It’s a digital mall. The tiles (at least the ones you start off with) don’t represent programs, they’re “Bing” search engines for specific subjects.
I can see how this might be appealing to someone who wants to check sports score updates on his phone, but what if you want to DO something, like draw a picture or write a letter? Sure, you can right-click, pull up “All apps”, and then you need to scroll through every application - it’s not even a nested hierarchy anymore. That’s not user-friendly at all.
Want to play a nice game of Solitaire or Minesweeper? They no longer exist. Click on “Games” and you’re sent to a “Game STORE.” Lovely.
Try to play a DVD? I popped a DVD into my drive, but no player popped up like it used to on Windows 7 and earlier. Worse, when I click on such seemingly-correct tiles as “Video” or “Media Player” it gives no way of accessing the DVD in the drive, it’s all about selling streaming content, or finding stuff in the “cloud.” How did I finally get to play a DVD on my Windows 8 machine? Went to the Desktop (the one that looks like old Windows, but without a Start Menu), opened up Explorer, found “Computer”, clicked on it to see the drives, then right-clicked on the DVD drive, at which time it displayed a “play” option.
What if I don’t want “Bing” to decide what streaming info I want? What if I don’t want every tile on my desktop to be a link to someone trying to sell me something, or sign up for some free service that I’m not interested in? The answer is pretty much scrap the entire start screen as it was supplied with the computer and rebuild it from scratch. That might be more of a complaint against Microsoft’s packaging strategy than the operating system software itself, but it still sucks.
I am extremely boggled by the fact that the majority of people polled in this thread declared Windows 8 to be “great” or “OK” on a desktop or laptop. This is the least user-friendly interface I have ever been saddled with in all my years of computer usage.
I snipped the rest of your post, cmkeller, not because I disagree with it but because I entirely agree with it. I just wanted to say bravo & thank you.