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| Review: Windows 8 RTM |
| By Thom Holwerda, submitted by Bob Stein on 2012-09-26 20:16:43 |
| ActiveWin.com has just posted their 45-page, 40-screenshot review of Microsoft Windows 8. The review covers many different aspects of the OS including performance, security, application compatibility, and more. "Is Windows 8 a hit or miss? It's a hit, it is clearly Microsoft's most bold development in years, it probably beats out the transition from Program Manager (Windows 3X) to Windows 95, the move from Windows 9x to the NT Kernel. The Windows 8 platform represents so many things: truly touch centric, support for modern processor architectures, fast and fluid as Microsoft puts it and also represents where the majority of the world is heading when it comes to computing, entirely mobile." |
|
| Uhm |
| By peteo on 2012-09-26 20:39:10 |
| NO! |
 - Score: 7 |
| RE: Uhm |
| By lucas_maximus on 2012-09-26 20:41:04 |
| YES |
| - Score: 4 |
| A mixed bag |
| By WorknMan on 2012-09-26 20:50:09 |
|
I can appreciate what MS was trying to do with this release, but I think they really screwed up the integration (or lack thereof) between 'classic' desktop and metro. No self-respecting power user is going to have much to do with metro, and I can't imagine it not confusing the hell out of tech tards (esp when they're randomly thrown into desktop mode), but that remains to be seen. That being said, I have been playing around with the final release, and other than the new start screen (which is ok once you get used to it), metro pretty much stays out of my way, and I find that there's enough new features besides metro to make it worth the $40 upgrade price that MS will be asking for when it's released. For a broad overview of new features, see here: http://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hp... |
| - Score: 6 |
| Well... |
| By Thom_Holwerda on 2012-09-26 20:54:23 |
| It made me switch back to Mac. |
| - Score: 3 |
| Comment by Gusar |
| By Gusar on 2012-09-26 20:56:40 |
|
So this OS is a hit because of the bold move of making it "touch centric"? Yeah, that makes total sense when my input devices are keyboard and mouse. The world may be heading towards mobile, but that doesn't mean everyone is using tablets and only tablets. |
| - Score: 14 |
| RE: Well... |
| By jbauer on 2012-09-26 21:06:34 |
|
> It made me switch back to Mac. Did your Windows 7 suddenly stop working? :P |
| - Score: 9 |
| No thanks... |
| By cmost on 2012-09-26 21:23:52 |
|
Of course I shouldn't even be commenting as I switched to Linux for all my own computers when Windows XP debuted with activation. But, as an IT consultant I do have to support others who might use this ugly, cumbersome OS. I have to agree with the conclusions of the article in that all of the touch-centric features should be optional on traditional form factors. While I can appreciate that much of the new functionality will go over well on devices such as 'Surface' and other tablets, on traditional laptops and desktops I think most people are going to very quickly find themselves lost. Especially people who have been working with Windows since '95 and who are accustomed to a 'Desktop' paradigm. Also, is it just me or does the new flat, 2D looking default theme seem...cheap? At least Aero looked slick as hell! Sorry Microsoft, I give this a two thumbs down! Edited 2012-09-26 21:25 UTC |
| - Score: 1 |
| If an email client doesn't support IMAP... |
| By Verenkeitin on 2012-09-26 21:25:19 |
| For an OS "designed" for content consumption, Windows 8 will spark a lot of creativity. The more I read about it, the more I want to write malware for it. |
| - Score: 2 |
| Touch on a desktop machine just doesn't work |
| By saso on 2012-09-26 21:34:57 |
|
And before the smart boys come and proclaim that I only say so because I haven't tried it, let me state clearly, that I have. I sat in front of a Windows 8-equipped 27'' touch screen Dell machine and after a half hour of usage with my arms somewhat strained I concluded the absolutely frustrating experiment. 1) The sensation of swiping your finger across anything more than 2-3'' is f'ugly... There is a small amount of body grease underneath the finger on which the finger slides. However, after dragging for 4-5'' this is all gone and your finger essentially start stuttering, squeaking and heating up due to friction. Not a nice feeling. 2) Coherent text input is extremely clumsy. A narrow (about 10'') virtual keyboard appears on the bottom 1/4 of the screen and even doing something as simple as typing "osnews.com" into the address bar on a software keyboard at arm's length took me about 20-30 seconds. Not to speak of the fact that the software keyboard was about 15'' away from the field I was typing into, so I either could look at the keyboard, or at the input field (to see what I was actually typing), or continuously shift between the two nearly every other letter. Also, to reach the screen one has to sit unnaturally close to it, which means that the screen stretches out of one's active field of view. As a result, I had to constantly move my eyes and head around to see various parts of it. This wasn't all that terrible, but the screen felt definitely too big for touch controls (also tried on an equivalent 24'' - a little better, but still too big). 3) In most apps, half of the gorgeous 27'' beyond-HD screen was taken up by inert colorful bars which did nothing but provide huge thick frames. Such a waste of pixels is near criminal. 4) The 70/30 apps split was nearly useless. Anything docked in the "30" part is unusably narrow. Sites in IE looked too crammed, and most other apps collapsed information to a few lines (on a display that is about a foot high...). Also, there's no method (at least I haven't found one) to put two tabs side-by-side in IE. Thus most fixed-width sites (like OSNews) look like a thin sliver in the center of the screen with huge white areas two each side. 5) Maximum number of tabs in Metro IE is 10. I kid you not. In 2012 on a machine with 8GB of RAM. Seriously Microsoft? In all Metro IE feels like taking the Android browser and blowing it up to 27'' screen sizes. It's like taking a cute little squirrel and blowing it up to the size of a truck. Functional? Sort of. But definitely not something you'd want to deal with on a daily basis. 6) To bring up the actions bar in e.g. Windows Store, or the address bar in IE (both of which sit at the bottom of the screen) you need to swipe in from the top edge of the screen. You heard right. Swiping in from the bottom does nothing. Thus I conclude that this UI was clearly intended for tablets/smartphones, not desktops. It just doesn't scale. Edited 2012-09-26 21:37 UTC |
| - Score: 10 |
| RE: A mixed bag |
| By quackalist on 2012-09-26 21:57:19 |
|
Mixed bag is kinda over egging the positive, IMHO. True, one can almost forget 'metro' after installing a start menu app though, however, if the option didn't exist 'metro' and the desktop are so unintegrated to make 8 unusable as a desktop. 'Metro' is irrelevant and just a pain in the ass and after puzzling over it for a bit one just wants it gone. Even 'metro' on it's own, as tablet etc using touch is, I fear, not fit for purpose. Initially, while puzzling over it's use on the desktop and the bizarre decision to shove it down our throats come what may I had thought it would work well on a tablet but the more I played around, admittedly not on a tablet, the less it made sense. Most of the major 'apps' dealing with the nuts & bolts of being on the net and consuming stuff don't actually work well enough that I'd be reluctant to use it. Pretty sure this will improve with time but it's puzzling why MS is risking so much on something so half-baked. The more I use it the more puzzled I become. What, underneath, would be a no-brainier update to 7 is wrapped in an ill-thought marketers 'bright-idea' to 'Appleise' Windows and is just a mess. Can't imagine this is how 8 was envisioned and just wonder when the 'bright-idea' was tacked on. Maybe, it'll all come together in 9 but for now it's a disaster. 8 without 'metro' a positive yes, as it is...ho hum, a risk in being dependant on an app to make 'metro' go away and Microsoft not somehow forcing it back on the user. Edited 2012-09-26 22:10 UTC |
| - Score: 5 |
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