Windows 8 First Look

[A Twig]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p92QfWOw88I

Whaddya think? Seems like they've "borrowed" the Apple Dashboard idea, and M$'d it, seems a pretty radical departure from the old style to me?

Full article: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2011/jun11/06-01corporatenews.aspx

[BrotherTobious]

At the moment looks more style of substance  but open to be proven wrong

[ArithonUK]

They've bolted a Windows Phone 7 interface over the desktop. What a POS.

They should be addressing the real issues with Windows - installation and driver support.

The Mac OS X is for the most part inferior and less productive than Windows (rage away fanboys, but I have numbers to back me up on this), however it has one thing down that Windows totally sucks at: Installation.

On a Mac you just drag an icon from the disk to the desktop and it's installed. The End. To uninstall, drag to bin. The End.
No registry crap, DLL hell, finding bits of installation and folders left all over in Program Files, AppData, My Documents etc. It's there, or not. Microsoft really need to address this shortcoming.

I just cannot see that launching programs has ever been a problem with Windows. Keeping them running and finding where they hid all your documents - that's a problem!

[TheDvEight]

First impressions the "welcome screen" looks to much like an ipad/xbox 360 interface and doesnt look like a PC "full screen windows apps" - Pointless IMO (which are designed for touch but work with mouse). Even though they showed an excel spreadsheet how are you meant to use it properly with your hand? i dont think you can with the same ammount of speed as a mouse and keyboard, Although it does look good in some parts where it would work as a trouch screen operating systems i still think its pretty pointless for the things i would want to do. Make word docs, type on facebook,forums,post ebay listings etc. Seems more like an OS for mobiles, The only way i would be tempted to by Windows 8 is if it was on a touch screen Laptop but even then i wouldnt buy it becuase i know it would just pee me off.

[T-Bag]

Screen layout is important. Windows 7 added snapping to the top and sides. and shifting positions of windows with Win + Arrow etc. They make a huge difference to usability. I want them to take that further. I don't want that to be all they do. I will use a keybaord and mouse for the foreseeable future so I want a OS that works with that. For touch devices I'm sticking with Android for the short-term at least so I don't can if my PC supports these fancy new touch interfaces...it's nice that it does...but if it comes at the expense of a keyboard and mouse (even the slightest bit) then they're inconveniencing me hundreds of thousands of times over the lifetime of the OS.

Basically I'm saying all this stuff is important (I install programs very rarely, but I use my computer to browse the web and use apps all the time), but I'd rather my OS was fast stable and make my life easier in each revision through usability. I can see tiles or something to that effect being useful and saving me time, but if like Arthon says they can make the programs seemless or the file system into one smooth well oiled machine (like they started doing with Libraries) then I'd appreciate that more.

I overall in terms of time saved good UI changes are worth thousands of installations (try going back from Win 7 to XP and using the start bar without search -- it's a real time saver) but to compete with ubuntu and mac they need to rapidly address the installation side of things. It's bad that most installations are 10x easier in Linux.

[Tutonic]

The touch-screen interface stuff looks really nice, I'm looking forward to seeing what they're doing under-the-hood. It looks like evolution rather than revolution so far, which is to be expected.

All this stuff they're showing off is just to try and advertise Microsoft's push into the mobile/tablet market, I really doubt that this is just Windows 7 with a new skin - more changes will probably be revealed later on.

On a Mac you just drag an icon from the disk to the desktop and it's installed. The End. To uninstall, drag to bin. The End.
No registry crap, DLL hell, finding bits of installation and folders left all over in Program Files, AppData, My Documents etc. It's there, or not. Microsoft really need to address this shortcoming.

The Windows Registry is a relic that should be scrapped, but how do you manage the migration for developers? Just about every Windows app ever written would need to be completely re-designed, and that's a big ask.

Microsoft don't have the luxury Apple have, of just making massive architecture changes and telling their users to like it or lump it. They (rightly or wrongly) have an obligation to build some sort of legacy capability into their operating systems or the fanboys will be up in arms that none of their programs work on the new system/

Now that multi-core CPU's are getting more and more powerful, I think Microsoft will start to build on the excellent 'Windows XP Mode' and use virtualisation to get around alot of these problems - but maybe not quite yet.

[smilodon]

Welcome to the twenty first century Microsoft, glad you made it. We've all moved on to 2011 now, but we've left the lights on and there's milk in the fridge. Enjoy.

sigh  :nevermind:

[DrunkenZombiee]

I just want it to run games smoothly and improve on stability.

The interface isn't that important to me as I have multiple monitors hooked up with different applications open. Under the hood is more important than a shiny UI as you can just install whatever UI you want on top.

One thing I want to see is the ability to remove all of the crap you don't need from the install without having to use a third party application such as nlite (remove all of the services you don't want and stupid drivers which clog up your machine). When was the last time anyone used here used telephony.

[Jewelz^]

Looks like my windows phone, which is nice as a phone, wouldnt want it instead of win7 on PC though...