Windows 8 - Looks really awsome

If you have issues there's the ubuntu forums and you can post here/ I'll try to help (though I'm not exactly a guru lol.)

lol I talked to one guy at MS about Metro and he really believes it's great and that people are going to change their minds about it when they see the new tablets MS is lining up.

I think on some level they have to know that it's going to be a tough sell.

 

Vista-type sales aren't likely to happen. I don't think you really remember the mess that Vista beta stage was and how buggy Vista was at RTM.

Windows 8 Beta (Consumer Preview) is being a huge success. Most people that install it keep using it, according to telemetry data. Even Windows 7 beta didn't see such success.

I wouldn't extrapolate the "Metro hate" from conservationists to make predictions about Windows 8's success.

 

I'm kinda expecting more "I'm a Mac" commercials.

True but I don't think this is really a good indicator as the type of people to try something like a DP/CP aren't necessarily the type of people who would hate a UI change, you know? These are the people who WANT bleeding edge and who WANT change.

You might be right though and I'm really interested in seeing how it works.

 

The like or dislike for Metro is what will make or break 8.... at least until tablet sales dominate. I don't know if it's really hate. I think people with desktops and laptops just see Metro as "unnecessary".

 

I agree, it's all about how people recieve metro. Windows 8 is pretty much objectively measure in terms of its security and performance.

 

I meant I'd stick with Win 7 for as long as I can. But thanks for the offer of help with Ubuntu anyway.

I suppose time will tell.

 

Exactly.

 

One more thing, Windows 8 is much more than Metro or cosmetic changes to the desktop mode. Windows 8 introduces lots of other new features (some of them aren't even already listed in that wiki link), that people here rarely talk about. Maybe most people here got exhausted of talking about those new features in the first pages -and/or- they simply forgot about their existence -and/or- they never knew about them in the first place -and/or- they don't care about them (which would be weird, because they are really cool).

 

There are definitely some great features. I actually like Metro and prefer Windows 8. I'm only saying that people won't necessarily be able to get past their dislike of the UI.

 

Bring back DOS I say!

That was me! Still is too, Windows XP looks terrible and everything is in the wrong place. 2000 rules!

Most people still don't like those changes. I do on the other hand, graphically it looks the best and it can be customised to behave exactly the way you want. Well close enough.

Only partially, I had the critical reactions all right but I didn't demand changes as that interface was well beyond saving. Given time you can get used to it, I prefer my OS to get used to me instead so after two weeks of fighting with Vista Lite I downgraded to the real thing.

 

That's the problem. It sounds like Windows 8 is going to be great, under the hood, but it's getting overshadowed by the polarizing new UI.

I can only speak for myself, but I've been using Windows for nearly 20 years now. I upgraded from 3.1, to 95, to 98, to Me, to XP, to Vista, and finally to 7. I looked forward to each upgrade, and felt that each was better than the one that came before. Yes, for some reason, I even found the much-maligned Me to be more stable than 98 - on my system, anyway, and I liked Vista. (Then again, for Vista I had a new system with enough RAM, and I made sure to pick out compatible parts.)

And yet, Windows 8 is the first version I am seriously considering skipping, all because of Metro. I'd like to see where this is going. Is Metro really going to be the new Windows, or is it just an alternative interface to help sell tablets? Are they going to keep both interfaces, or phase out the desktop over time? I may wait and see.

 

I disagree with the Vista analogy: Vista sales were initially very strong, consumers liked what they saw and rushed out to get it. But Vista was very much a new OS and the new token system led to the software of the day crashing left, right, and centre. Adding to its woes Vista had much higher system requirements than its predecessors so most machines didn't so much run it as crawl under it. Then came the coup-de-gras: the most atrocious set of Windows Updates that Microsoft has released to date, an unprecedented achievement even by their standards. Their ingenious programmers managed to choke even the best systems that had kept running smoothly up to that point. End result: after an explosive release Vista was the OS everyone wanted to get rid of.

Windows 8 labours under a very different set of strife: graphically it's a downgrade from its predecessors and the UI is thoroughly off-putting to new users. Hence unlike Vista nobody is going to set out to buy it. The only question is for those who end up with it by default as a result of buying a new machine: if it is stable it'll stay, not out of any particular enthusiasm for it but because it's too much trouble to bother with downgrading. In this scenario some of those who were initially forced to use it will end up becoming quite taken with the changes, resulting in the creation of a tiny support base. Tiny as many have only recently upgraded to 7 and virtually nobody on Aero will voluntarily upgrade to a Metro based system, and because 99% of businesses won't look at it under any circumstances. Given past form I'm expecting the opposite in any case: from the moment that buyers try installing their old software it'll be crash, crash, crash. As such I would suggest that a better comparison would be to that other bastardised OS: everyone's old favourite Windows Millenium Edition.

 

All these stats are based on what? Are them coming from your magical hat or what?

I don't know why, but comments like this makes me want to buy Windows 8. I may end up not waiting for next year laptop, lol.

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This is true:

Source.

 

lol what? You can pretty much replicate Windows Vista's GUI in Windows 7 with a few mouse clicks in the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties.

 

Which stats? I haven't been quoting stats, I'm making a prediction as to the future. Obviously if it ends up being a great commercial success I'll look a right twit, I'm not worried as I'm pretty sure I'm right. Time will tell; for the reasons that I have said in combination with Microsoft's attitude of 'Thank you to everyone for your feedback, we don't care about anything you've said as we're right and you're wrong' - when THEY are wrong, not only am I predicting that Windows 8 will be a commercial failure but I fully expect it to be a disaster for Microsoft on a scale hitherto unseen. Go ahead and buy it, see if it can make your opposite analysis correct. Only one of us (or neither) can be.

 

No you can't, you can make them look vaguely similar but that's as far as it goes. If after these last few years you have failed to notice how exceptionally restricted Windows 7 is with regards to customisability when compared with any of its predecessors then I'm not going to spend the time demonstrating it as such a discussion has no benefits for anyone.

 

The secret is 98SE, the first release was dire but with the Second Edition it became something special. Such things are very personal but I still regard 95, 98SE and 2000 as the best editions of Windows produced to date. Anyway that's quite a history you've got there

 

Weren't you talking about default/standard looks? My bad then. But anyways, all Stardock's products seem to work just fine with Windows 7 in their latest versions, so...

The first paragraph of your post wasn't about predictions. The second one was constructed with the first one as its basis.

 

Yes I can see how it may have seemed that I was complaining about its appearance, although I prefer the Vista Aero over the 7 standard that's just taste and you can adjust that of course. In any event I wouldn't downgrade based on such a slight change of design. I'm not THAT shallow!

Ah there are quite a lot of facts in the first paragraph, those that are gleaned from statistic are I think very well known such as the initial high popularity of Vista amongst consumers as shown by the sales data followed by its elimination as the flaws of Vista became apparent. As to what the flaws were that caused its initial success to turn into a disaster what I listed was our experience when troubleshooting all the crashing machines. The frequent early appcrashes being caused by UAC and the troubles caused by the high system requirements and especially RAM are fairly well documented as these were the official explanations given by software developers. The troubles caused by the Updates are less publicised but were pretty viral at the time: I remember the worst offender that was described as a 'performance and stability update' and was immediately followed by half the machines failing to boot to desktop. This isn't the sort of event that is collated as statistics except I suppose by Microsoft through their 'Customer Improvement Program' and I've never known them to openly publish findings. Still there was quite a furore about it at the time, and there likely remain many support requests viewable on sites that specialise in such. If that is insufficient from an empirical standpoint then fair enough, I'm not writing a dissertation but recounting the events as I (all too distinctly) remember them. If that is what you want to call it then I say "Don't knock the magic hat!"

 

This reads as historically accurate, & I'm pretty sure that this was indeed what happened when Vista was first released Stateside. Although if I remember, when it was released in the UK, it had rave reviews & virtually all of these early inchoate teething problems had been fixed. Either that, or they'd solved most of them by the time I bought a computer with Vista.

As for the future success (or not) of Win 8, I really have no idea & it seems almost futile to try & predict anything. I honestly don't see many average punters upgrading their current machines to an OS that resembles a giant ugly smartphone, whether they run a laptop or desktop. Most sales in my opinion will be people who need to buy new computers. My guess is that they will learn to accept the changes & will adapt as we all have done, such is the power of the Microsoft hegemony, & learn to love Win 8. One thing that does intrigue me slightly is that (in my experience) a great many schools, colleges & other institutions still run hardware that can only effectively run Win XP. Which means that when they finally upgrade their hardware they will be leaping straight past the Vista/7 stage directly to Metro & 8. In which case, Win 8 may become the standard OS for much business & educational computing at sometime in the near future. Which also means that we will all probably have to become much more familiar with it. A rather sobering thought if you ask me. Perhaps in time I will come to love Win 8, just as Winston Smith came to love Big Brother. Who knows?

 

I think one of things that will turn off a lot of Windows 8 users is the apps have to purchased through the Microsoft store. And, when a developer puts out an app, Microsoft takes a cut. People who have used Windows for years are not going to be accustomed to that paradigm.

 

Why are you treating the linked article as a truth?
Written by Metro/Win8 topdog Sinofsky, one can expect it will be like a father describing his new baby; Behold the flawless beauty!
The continuous babble about tablets and laptops as being in the same category (where he means laptops with touch screens like his own Lenovo X220t) comes across as disingenious.
The large majority of laptops and almost all PC desktops, come equiped without a touch-screen.
Until this reverses, there's imo no need to force a 14"-24" smartphone GUI on desktop users. If MS just made friggin' Metro optional, we could all praise Win8 and sing hallelujah as the OS improvements are far from negligible.

 

You haven't read how touchscreen enabled laptops will come with Windows 8?

 

might be good for a laptop, but i don't see myself using that on a desktop monitor about 3 feet away!

not to mention the calisthenics involved with it.lol

 

Apart from whether or not he's read about it what about the millions of laptops without touchscreens already out there running Windows 7?