If all you’d ever known was Win95, and then you upgraded to Win7, you would be instantly familiar with 75% of it and be able to get started on almost anything you wanted to do with relative ease. A few features are moved or missing since Win95, but the interface is broadly the same as it has ever been.
But if you go from any previous version of Windows to Win8, it immediately looks completely alien and you will be utterly lost to the point of frustration and anger.
Change is scary and alien to people. I get that. But people are bitching about the wrong stuff. And I’m sorry, if you can’t find the damn power button or the control panel in Windows 8, you’re a fucking moron. The out of the box default settings open up the charms bar if you move your mouse to quick, put the cursor on the edges, or even just breath at it funny. Most of the shit being complained about in the last couple of pages is shit that the can be fixed by taking 20 seconds to look at what’s in the charms bar.
I had to look for ways to get the charms bar to shut the fuck up, so I have absolutely zero sympathy for people who can’t find the damn charms bar.
n/m
To continue the car analogy, if some car maker decided to put the ignition switch inside the steering wheel, so that a potential driver had to slide this bit of plastic here, and push that button, then the car maker should not be surprised when car buyers think it’s badly designed.
People aren’t bitching JUST about about the control panel, but about the mindset that it’s OK to suddenly change the standards. The changes were not made for the sake of better utility, they were made for the sake of change. If the changes made the product more useful, then people would greet it with open arms. Instead, MS moved the gas pedal from the right side of the driver’s floor to the left side, where it now has to be operated by the driver’s left knee. And MS expects everyone to just magically know how to use the changed system.
Good lord, how did you ever learn to use a smart phone if learning new operating system interfaces is such a problem?
I take that back, Lynn. I shouldn’t be that snarky and I apologize.
What get’s me about this thread, at last fort the past few pages, is that people are complaining about usability, but using examples that are just fine regarding usability. It’s not the desktop that sucks, it’s the damn “metro” start screen that W8 always tries to throw you to you that sucks.
No, they don’t. There’s a guide when you install the OS that shows you where everything is, plus various guides and stuff on the internet, both on Microsoft’s site and many other places.
It’s you that expects to know how to use things without being shown, and is complaining that that’s not the case here. Look, if you don’t want to learn to use a new OS, stick with the old one, but don’t then complain when it becomes out of date.
Install the OS? I rarely install it, it’s usually pre-installed when I buy a new computer.
Same principle. It still shows you what and where the charms are when you first run it.
Look, I don’t particularly like a few of the design features of Win8, but I generally ignore them, as there’s almost always several ways to do things. But the claim that it’s harder or less intuitive than previous versions is ridiculous. As is the claim that you are expected magically to know. If you don’t pay attention, and expect the new version to be identical to the old, that’s your fault, no-one else’s.
And, once again, if you want a machine that does everything the way you want straight out of the box, and doesn’t need customising, Windows isn’t for you. Either get a Chromebook or a Mac if they suit you, or have fun trying to sort out Linux…
Or just spend an hour setting the Windows machine up the way you want it, like people have been doing for decades, and forget about it.
Excuse me while I give up and go bang my head against the wall.
bangbang…ow…bangbang…she can’t be that stupid can she?.. bang bang
Why are you being such an ass? It’s obvious that Windows 8 is a bad version from a majority of the customers point of view. Are you really so far gone that you can’t understand that most folks don’t want to have to fool with something just to get it to work right?
I don’t assemble my own cars, either. I buy them, and expect them to run without me doing much more than taking them to get serviced now and then.
I used to be intensely interested in learning All About Computers. I tried to learn all about every kind of computer that I’ve owned. This means several different computer OSes, plus Windows from 3.11 to Win7. Now, however, I’m running out of time. I figure that I’ve got MAYBE 10 years of being able to use my brain before my body breaks down completely. I don’t want to spend that much time learning yet another goddamn system which will be obsolete in a couple of years. I don’t have that much time left, and I sure as hell don’t have that much energy left.
I will make the effort to learn new things if I think that the new thing will benefit me. Right now, I’m not seeing any benefits to Win8 other than It’s NEW and SHINY! New isn’t always better. I don’t want just tiny incremental steps, either. If I don’t see a big change for the better, I figure why should I switch? If it ain’t broke, I don’t fix it.
I am afraid that Windows MT (mental telepathy) will find a stronghold with gaming, and become the OS for “You Check It” at Kroger. You just think about what you want to buy, and YCI rings it up.
I will be helpless, and exasperated Kroger employees will hate to see me come in the door. I shall starve. 
And as someone who just got a Win8 PC on Friday, I can tell you that you are absolutely full of shit.
I booted up the PC, put in the product activation code, it asked me if I wanted to connect to a network, and dumped me into the Metro screen. That’s it.
It was only in this thread that I first heard of the “charm bar,” Windows sure as fuck never told me anything about what it was or how to get to it.
That’s the main bullshit that is annoying me thus far. I have no fundamental objection to changes per se (though I note that the only people really happy seem to be ones that are already invested in other Microsoft products), but if you’re going to do major changes to how your OS works then maybe, just maybe, you should have some sort of tutorial or something.
As for the question about how I learn to use a smartphone, well, smartphones come with something called a “manual.” It’s a little booklet that at the very least gives me basic information about what the buttons are and what they do.
I just got a Win8 machine too, and it definitely had a tutorial. Maybe different installs are different? Or you accidentally skipped it?
I’ve been using Windows 8 on a daily basis for over six months now and I still don’t like it. This is more than just a familiarity issue.
This isn’t just people bitching about change. As I wrote in a previous post:
Others will argue that we’re just cranky luddites who don’t like change. That’s a weak argument. There was no backlash like this when Windows 7 replaced Vista or when XP replaced Me or when 98 replaced 95. People have been happy to switch to a new version when it was a better version. When people have complained about a product it was because it was a bad product.
Two of the happiest days of my life. 
Oh, I forgot to mention that there is something that dissatisfies me on my Win8 HTPC. I have to leave a mouse plugged in all the time, otherwise there’s no on-screen mouse cursor when accessing via VNC (you know, like nearly all HTPC phone apps use to control the machine).
Just discovered another landmine in Windows 8. I was doing something pretty simple; working on files with various windows open. I shrunk a file down to a convenient size and tried to place it in a convenient spot on the screen. A routine task that’s been possible with Windows for decades.
And I made a discovery: if you bring a shrunk window up to the top of the screen, it automatically expands up to full screen size. The first time it happened I just had my usual “why the fuck did that happen?” response and shrunk the screen back down to the size I wanted it to be and moved it again to the spot I wanted it at. And back up to full size it jumped. This time, I was paying more attention so I noticed the connection. I shrank down the screen again and moved it carefully around to find out where the trigger was. So I was able to finally do what I had wanted to do the first time.
Now, Windows 8 apologists will no doubt be thinking I’m just some old crank who’s complaining about a new feature. If I don’t want to use it, I don’t have to.
But the point is I had no idea that feature was there. If it had been something I wanted, I wouldn’t have known it was there for me to use. It’s just one of those stupid Windows 8 landmines that are hidden and waiting for you to find them accidentally. There have been a number of times when I was in the middle of doing something and suddenly found I had sprung some unknown feature by doing something - in most cases, I’m not even sure what it was I did that triggered the feature. I’ve gotten used to shutting down features that pop up unexpectedly and going back to doing what I was doing.
If Microsoft wants to load up a program with a bunch of features, doesn’t it make sense to give us a list of them? People who want a feature can look at the list if see if they have it. People who don’t want the feature won’t pop it up accidentally when they’re trying to do something else. There’s no reason other than poor design work for having hidden features that are launched by invisible spots on your screen.