Big, rectilinear blocks and panels of flat, solid, bright colour is the ‘modern’ look at the moment - I guess it’s a reaction to the rounded glass look that came before it - but Microsoft isn’t alone in adopting this design ethic - The Google Play store has it, The BBC website has it (a bit)…
Heck, my main use of the Start menu is finding a program’s icon so I can send it to the Desktop, and from there to the appropriate Desktop folder. Normally when I get a corporate laptop it doesn’t have any desktop icons, or if it does they’re for things I don’t use (no, I don’t need Publisher, I don’t even know how to use Publisher… where the fuck did you hide Visio… ah, here!)
I had to use a computer with Win8 for a class I was teaching and was very, very happy when one of the students had used one before. Once he’d explained it was a matter of seconds to get to the Desktop, but if I’d had to find out myself? And the local IT guy wasn’t coming in for a couple of hours…
Shading/shadows is antithetic to “flatness”, which is the big design thing nowadays.
It seems to me that Microsoft is primarily interested in putting out products that they believe will make money, when instead they should be focusing on putting out products that people actually want.
Nobody* wants to use a tablet touch interface with a keyboard and mouse. Hell, nobody wants a tablet OS on their desktop or latptop. Tablets and desktops/laptops are used for different things! This is why Surface is failing so spectacularly.
Nobody wants half the crap they tried with the new Xbox either. They’ve been backtracking on “features” since before it was even released. Do you really want to talk to your Xbox? Do you really? Was that on your wishlist?
Windows 8 drove me to Mac. No joke. I write software. I have degrees in computer stuff. I’m also a gamer. Hell, I built my last five PCs from components. (Newegg and I are BFFs!) For decades, I swore up and down that I’d never own a Mac. Windows 8 made a liar out of me.
I really thought they were turning things around when they released the Zune. That thing was amazing. Best music player on the market, hands down, but they sent it out to die then killed it when no one bought one. Even when they do something right they can’t follow through.
*Hello pedants! I look forward to your opposition to my use of this word.
Did you try simply using Win 8 in desktop mode (it can boot to desktop now, but maybe you had to manually go there when you tried it) and adding a third-party start menu replacement? I understand a non-technical person giving up and going to Mac, but someone of your experience could make it act like Win 7 with Win 8 improvements under the hood with ease. A lot easier than going to Mac, I would have guessed.
Nobody is obliged to.
That seems a bit extreme. I just bought a copy of Windows 7 last time I built a box. It’s not going anywhere any time soon and, by the time it does, I assume Microsoft will have gotten its act together and I’ll just upgrade to Windows 9 or whatever we’re at by then.
Live Tile is nothing more than a pile of icons on the desktop. It’s messy, and just looking at it gives me a headache.
I would gladly take the look of 95 over W-8. The ribbon was unnecessary and the latest bit of glurge is downright annoying.
Adding new features, thumbs up. Rearranging features and changing names, a big thumb up their ass.
you know what little thing really pissed me off was the SEND function. I went to send a file via email and … no Send function. It wasn’t there. I’m looking all over the page. Where the frick is it? Oh, I’m now Shaaaaaring my files. :rolleyes: Somebody actually got paid to come up with this little gem.
I liked the idea of live-tiles at first, I thought it wasn’t a bad idea to have info in the tiles.
But after seeing them in action, I personally find them to look much messier than a grid of icons. It’s kind of jarring that some are flat and simple colors and others are detail pictures, and the difference in sizes makes the whole thing really look even messier, in my opinion.
My mother fell in love with little Rocky – a cute puppy that could be selected in place of Clippy – when she first started using a computer. I ended up installing a Microsoft Agent viewer/editor so that she could at least see the little guy. As a result, Clippy (along with several of his Office Assistant buddies) still resides on my computer.
I bought a new computer with Windows 8.1 on it not too long ago…I figured that if I was going to spend that much money, I ought to buy the most up-to-date thing available. I’ve never used Vista; however, my experiences with Windows 8.1 have not been nearly as bad as the things I’ve heard about Vista. The most frustrating thing to me is the way the settings are now randomly scattered around; some stuff is still in the Control Panel, and some stuff has made its way over to PC Settings. The power settings aren’t consistent either; again, some options are in the Control Panel, and some are controlled by the screen saver options, whether you’re using the screen saver or not! I also think the lack of DVD playback (for non-pro users) was a big mistake…I’ve never encountered 3rd-party DVD/Bluray playback software that wasn’t clunky, and the crap that came pre-installed by my PC’s manufacturer is no exception. The password/PIN requirement for all accounts is silly; this is a tower, not a laptop or tablet that could get swiped from my bag! That has actually been my mother’s biggest hurdle with Windows 8.1; she doesn’t have a smart phone, so she doesn’t grasp that Microsoft was trying to emulate the mobile experience on the desktop.
I don’t understand how Microsoft failed to realize that a touch-based interface doesn’t transfer very well to a keyboard and mouse based one. Heck, most of the decent-looking apps in the Windows Store aren’t usable because they require a touchscreen or other smart phone features (such as a built-in compass).
I don’t regret buying a computer with 8.1; I sort of look forward to the Start screen now, as I’ve loaded it with all sorts of interesting live tiles (mostly news-based). All the programs I could run under Windows 7 work fine in 8.1, even old stuff like The Sims. And my wireless printer even works better under 8.1 than it did under 7! (This may be because I actually downloaded the most recent drivers instead of just installing from the disc though.)
All that being said…I also have a MacBook Pro and an older desktop with Ubuntu. 
I’ve got a hybrid (acer iconia w510), and use it both docked and as a standalone tablet; in fact, at home, I’ll plug in a large monitor and external keyboard and mouse. I’m happy having an OS that works in both configurations (though I don’t think even Windows 8.1 fulfills that role perfectly).
Now, I’ve also got a Ubuntu laptop, and a full-grown desktop at work (I often do numerical modelling, which neither the tablet nor the laptop is up to, performance-wise), but honestly, I find myself using the hybrid more and more (such as right now). I still find typing on a touch device bothersome, so I appreciate the keyboard dock/external keyboard possibilities. On the other hand, to read on the train, the keyboard would simply be a hindrance. So I’m quite content with this solution.
Win 8 requires a password to access and then several steps to get to what is a kind of version of a desktop that I am used to. Then it requires several weird steps to log off and reboot.
The new interface is not for me at all. It is confusing and really ugly and artless.
Once you get past all those drawbacks, and into the old fashioned (sort of) desktop, it has a reliability of XP or 7.
As much as I hate Steve Jobs for yelling at virtually everyone that worked with him personally from childhood on, at least it wasn’t me yelling a a computer screen ready to wield an axe at the slightest further provocation.
I also hated the way they wanted us to pay for the Office suite every month. Open office cured me of that. And the cloud space.
Get off my lawn!
The modern design aesthetic is, I believe, tablet driven. Tablets are low power devices, and thus you want to not throw in graphical doodads. Even curves take more GPU power than straight lines. Microsoft may not have started it, but that was definitely part of the reason for it. Aero Glass was a resource hog. The new Aero even runs on a virtual GPU if the one in your tablet isn’t up to snuff. It’s really streamlined.
And I can say from experience that, when you go from Windows 8 back to Windows 7, the glass does look gaudy for a while.
It’s been almost a year now since I set this computer up, so maybe I’ve forgotten having to deal with that, but I don’t think I’ve ever been forced to have a password, or take several steps to reboot. (If I did, I must have fixed it quickly enough that it wasn’t memorable.)
I agree - they look good on a phone or maybe a pure tablet device, but on my laptop, I’ve replaced them all with small icons for my most commonly used applications - grouped/themed by purpose - so the Start screen has become my Start Menu, of sorts.
My mother, who was an XP user and has just switched to Win8, loves them - I think it matters whether you are a media consumer or a productive application user.
True, because by design, it integrates with Microsoft accounts for cloud stuff and more - It’s just a good idea for any computing device where you keep personal information to be password protected.
Several steps? One click in Win8 (on the Desktop tile), and in Win8.1, no additional steps at all - boots straight to desktop (unless you choose otherwise)
True in Win8, abundantly fixed in Win8.1 - there are now several ways to shut down/reboot etc - to wit:
[ul]
[li]Charms Menu>Settings>Power>Shut Down (this would be the weird steps you describe, and I agree, this is cumbersome)[/li][li]Right-click in the bottom left corner and use the Shut down or sign out menu option[/li][li]Start Screen>Power options (top right)>shut down[/li][/ul]
The last two of these are about the same amount of effort as shutting down used to be in WinXP/7. Alternatively, you can configure the physical power button to shut the computer down (on a desktop, it may already be configured for that, but on a laptop, it puts the machine in hibernation by default)
Every phone and tablet also works this way. But I don’t know of a one that actually requires you to enter a password to log in. If Windows 8 does that, that sucks. Forcing password entry is considered a bad security practice, as it encourages people to use simple passwords. Saving passwords is much better.
(When I used Windows 8, I already had multiple accounts and I had to use “control userpasswords2” to set one up as a default, which let me also bypass password entry. So I don’t know what happens when you normally set up an account.)
Can you still just hit Alt+F4, or did they take that out for being too useful?