While the GUI will take a bit getting use to, all of our client's users have been trained to utilize the one key feature that trumps GUI/KB Shortcuts:
Start --> [Start typing what is needed]
This ability to start the Windows Search feature by clicking start and typing what one is looking for was not readily apparent in Win8. However, once users are shown that it is there, invisible if you will, waiting for them to type the whole GUI thing becomes moot.
Philip Elder SBS MVP
Naturally, as a technology columnist, a brand new operating system to play with causes involuntary symptoms not limited to: excitement, anticipation, a sudden urge to write, combined with sweaty palms and jittery extremities.
But with every high, one must come back down again. And the ‘down’ hit me hard.
In short, what we have is a benchmark for what we will see in the final version of the next-generation Windows operating system.
“But they could take bits out!”. No, I’m afraid Microsoft can’t. If they did, they would be breaking a promise they haven’t already given. Logically speaking, Windows 8 cannot contain any less than what it has in the public developer preview.
Gallery
To see the screenshot gallery documenting how to install and get started with the Windows Developer Preview, along with some of the best features so far, head this way.Jump ahead to find the new Blue Screen of Death, also roaming cloud profiles and the new ‘Start menu’. You can search, see new notifications and see your new Control Panel. See what happens when you switch from Start to desktop, and see where Microsoft is pinching ideas from Apple.
Though I am fully aware the publicly available Windows Developer Preview is exactly that — a preview merely for developers to test the basic elements of the platform and user interface — there is already a great deal set in stone where by a vast number of users will hold back from upgrading.
1. Death of the Start menu
The Start menu is gone. I can’t put it any simpler than that; it simply is not there any more.
For over fifteen years, the little pop-up menu in the bottom-left of the screen has been transformed into a screen filled with tiles, replacing the home of services and applications in favour of Microsoft’s new Metro user interface.
As discussed only last week, users do not like change. Windows Developer Preview already takes time to get used to, even in light of a simpler, step-by-step installation to get users off the ground. But those users may be shocked to discover a new home for their applications, even if they are a swipe to the left instead of clicking on a solid point where the Start menu used to be
Office 2010 performs a similar function to the Start screen in the Windows Developer Preview. Just as you see the Start screen to take up your entire desktop estate, the ‘Backstage’ menu in all Office 2010 applications takes over what you were working on in favour of primary focus menu options.
Getting back to your work is only a click away, just as is the case in the Windows Developer Preview. But it does not feel natural, nor will it be obvious to Windows 8 newbies.
Whether or not this was an indication of what was next, it remains to be seen.
We were slightly misled when Windows 8 was first demonstrated in June at the D9 conference in Taipei, in that we expected an ordinary desktop, but a new layout for tablets. It would be two-in-one — a tablet operating system fit for the desktop, and vice-versa.
2. Netbooks still struggle under ‘new’ hardware requirements
Installed on a fully-fledged desktop PC with 8GB RAM, along with a touch-screen laptop with 2GB RAM, the one device that stutters under the weight of the new operating system is the 1GB RAM netbook.
Netbooks are limited in what they can do, sure. But there has not been an operating system, bar that of Ubuntu, developed specifically for the netbook. It is a new device in the soon-to-be post-PC world, and Windows development has missed a beat between Windows 7 two years ago, and Windows 8 in a year’s time.
There is no doubt that the Windows Developer Preview runs better on a netbook than a non-Starter edition of Windows 7. But Windows 8 still boasts the clunk and the heavy weight that Windows 7 does, with some bits stripped out and a new interface plonked on top.
Windows 8 will arrive at a time when netbooks are dead. Netbook development has been slow, along with smartphone innovation in the past few months. But netbooks for now are still widely used and need to be fully accommodated as part of Microsoft’s ethos in creating a next-generation operating system for every device — not just PCs, laptops and tablets.
Next page: Three more major criticisms to go »
