MS says it sold 60 million copies of Windows 8

[thekev]

The problem is with the live tiles it can sometimes look like a hot mess.

That looks quite busy, but I doubt it would matter to me once I'm within a given application. Bugs and ram hungry operating systems are far more likely to annoy me.

 

[throAU]

• Lightning fast. Startup and shutdown takes seconds at most. Everything else seems to be snappy.
• Better GFX performance and DirectX 11.1 (my Windows machine is a gaming rig)
• New Time Machine-esske backup system (at last!)
• Inbuilt antivirus (at last!)
• The Start Menu in Windows 7 was rather small and hard to use at my resolution. The New Start Screen has solved this.
• Was never a big fan or Aero (but I understand a lot of people are)
• Storage Spaces is fantastic for if one of my HDDs failed
• Plenty of tweaks to existsing desktop features that make them more powerful and useful
• Appears to use less resources than Windows 7
• Never had a problem with search in Start or Explorer. Maybe they'll fix your problem someday.

See this is the thing: none of those reasons are game changers, and in particular...

• 7 is already fast. My SSD equipped machine boots (from cold, including bios POST) in 10-11 seconds.
• tweaks to make desktop features more powerful? there are plenty of ways in which they have cripppled it also - search being a massive deal-breaker for me
• resources? 16GB of ram is 80 dollars. shaving a hundred meg (if that) = not something to convince me to deal with lost functionality
• the multi-UI paradigm is plain annoying. yes i can figure it out. if it provided some actual benefit i wouldn't care, but it doesn't - it is change for change's sake - they could easily have ADDED a more touch friendly launcher (like apple did with launchpad) if they wanted to - but no, screw you desktop users. screw you people who have existing workflows.

I have 8 here in test, have run it back to back on same hardware and the benefits for what business users do just aren't there. But there are plenty of drawbacks.

As far as gaming goes, Valve is trying to get away from Windows 8 due to the app-store model Microsoft is trying to force on people. With the resurgence of the Mac in recent years, more people will be writing for OpenGL for cross compatibility. And most DirectX games aren't even DirectX 10 yet, due to continuing XP support...

IMHO microsoft has made a big mistake. They took an unproven UI that had been met with a consumer reaction of "meh" on mobile devices, and bet the company on it, by pushing it everywhere.

The same UI will not work across phone, desktop and tablet. It will be crappy at all three, or at the very least, crappy on one or more platforms.

Apple made the right decision in not porting the iOS UI wholesale to OS X, and those bits that they did port were made OPTIONAL.

 

[Zombie Acorn]

Only time I really use the metro interface is when I'm searching apps. Its kind of handy to quickly glance at before I go to desktop mode though.

The start menu was getting tired, I enjoy the unity desktop interface on Ubuntu, so if windows was going to keep it around I'd rather see that.

 

[roadbloc]

See this is the thing: none of those reasons are game changers, and in particular...

Use Windows 7 then. I doubt Microsoft care which one of their OSs you use. Especially if said OS doesn't lose support until 2020.

As far as gaming goes, Valve is trying to get away from Windows 8 due to the app-store model Microsoft is trying to force on people.

I fail to see how the App Store model is being forced on people. A Windows 8 tablet app requires to be in the App Store (just like Apple), but for a Windows 8 desktop app, it is totally optional (just like Apple). People who have been developing desktop apps are free to continue as they were. Just like the users.

 

[charlieegan3]

its not really everything at once, its more of a just showing the important info for each app at a glance. It works great on windows phone.

I think for office at least it could almost certainly be at least partically summed up by 'everything at once'.

Think about the number of new little buttons that were menu items.

I don't really have a problem with it though. I think it's quite a wise move for taking in on new users and building for new languages.

 

[jf1450]

Whereas I agree it isn't a must have upgrade and more directed at tablet devices, there are several reasons why Windows 8 suits me.

• Lightning fast. Startup and shutdown takes seconds at most.

• 
  
  I *love* this one. It may throw a login screen and Metro screen up on the monitor fast but that wheel is still spinning for quite awhile before you can do real work. Pure smoke and mirrors.
  
  Jeff

 

[roadbloc]

I *love* this one. It may throw a login screen and Metro screen up on the monitor fast but that wheel is still spinning for quite awhile before you can do real work. Pure smoke and mirrors.

Not for me, startup as as quick as it appears. Granted, it is quite a powerful rig. A budget laptop may be a different case. Either way, on my machine it is much faster than W7. I never said this was the case for everyone else.

 

[boss.king]

I *love* this one. It may throw a login screen and Metro screen up on the monitor fast but that wheel is still spinning for quite awhile before you can do real work. Pure smoke and mirrors.

Jeff

Out of curiosity, what are your specs?