As someone that hasn’t used Windows past XP, I installed Windows 8 in VMware the other day to start doing some Windows Phone development. My first reaction was “ok, now how do I do anything?” because the boot-up screen just shows those tiles. I tried clicking on Internet Explorer but it gave me an error dialog saying my resolution was too small to run IE (wat) and then the tiles disappeared and it brought me to the Display settings dialog, but with the task bar on the bottom and the usual desktop. I’m not sure if this is normal, but this is how I get to the desktop now, by way of this silly error.
Of course once I installed Visual Studio and it put an icon on the screen with the tiles (does it have a name?) I don’t need to go to the desktop anymore. It did take me a bit to realize that right-clicking on the tile screen background makes the “all icons” thing show up, which is where the rest of the applications were that would normally be on the start menu.
This was a learning curve because I’m used to old Windows, but as a new user that was just familiar with an iPad or something, I probably wouldn’t be looking for a desktop.
My thoughts are basically that they tried to avoid duplicating effort in some places (taking the easy way out) and this burned them. Why does Windows RT have any desktop? Because they didn’t finish converting everything to tiles and so they left random leftovers in classic mode. Now you end up switching between modes far too frequently. Obviously this bleeds into Win 8 too. MS’s problem is that they tried to avoid shipping two entire operating systems by shipping two half operating systems.
The Win 8 interface would be great for a tablet. Or at least something with touch. Otherwise stick with the desktop. It’s a nicer Win 7. Unfortunately for everyone, it would probably have been illegal for MS to only make the new interface available on new touch computers.
you have to hover to the left of the screen, or something silly like that, to bring up the menus. i am amazed that this got through the (presumably) extensive user testing that microsoft did before launching this product
As someone that hasn’t used Windows past XP, I installed Windows 8 in VMware the other day to start doing some Windows Phone development. My first reaction was “ok, now how do I do anything?” because the boot-up screen just shows those tiles. I tried clicking on Internet Explorer but it gave me an error dialog saying my resolution was too small to run IE (wat) and then the tiles disappeared and it brought me to the Display settings dialog, but with the task bar on the bottom and the usual desktop. I’m not sure if this is normal, but this is how I get to the desktop now, by way of this silly error.
Of course once I installed Visual Studio and it put an icon on the screen with the tiles (does it have a name?) I don’t need to go to the desktop anymore. It did take me a bit to realize that right-clicking on the tile screen background makes the “all icons” thing show up, which is where the rest of the applications were that would normally be on the start menu.
This was a learning curve because I’m used to old Windows, but as a new user that was just familiar with an iPad or something, I probably wouldn’t be looking for a desktop.
My thoughts are basically that they tried to avoid duplicating effort in some places (taking the easy way out) and this burned them. Why does Windows RT have any desktop? Because they didn’t finish converting everything to tiles and so they left random leftovers in classic mode. Now you end up switching between modes far too frequently. Obviously this bleeds into Win 8 too. MS’s problem is that they tried to avoid shipping two entire operating systems by shipping two half operating systems.
The Win 8 interface would be great for a tablet. Or at least something with touch. Otherwise stick with the desktop. It’s a nicer Win 7. Unfortunately for everyone, it would probably have been illegal for MS to only make the new interface available on new touch computers.
you have to hover to the left of the screen, or something silly like that, to bring up the menus. i am amazed that this got through the (presumably) extensive user testing that microsoft did before launching this product