Good enough to understand the basics.

http://www.lynda.com/Windows-tutorials/Windows-Consumer-Preview-First-Look/100467-2.html

What a mess. The mail application doesn't appear to even have UI functionality to select multiple messages for mass sorting?

People are going to have to relearn how to use the system all over again. All the things they were used to do wont work here. It's a whole different environment.

My guess is most will just stick to the desktop screen and wonder what's al the fuss with the new start screen and why do they have to go through it. It would be much easier if MS allowed people to choose to have the desktop as their main screen and skip the formerly-known-as-Metro interface altogether, but so far it seems the system wont allow it. I assume it's because MS wants people to get used to it.

If windows 8 only used the metro interface then It could become a great OS, the problem is that weird mix of Desktop/metro interface which makes things a bit confusing.

I hope in the future MS improves it.

Agreed

If they remain Windows users... Outside of a couple of games, there isn't much keeping me in Windows anymore.

No

friggin'

way...

Bill Gates is probably rolling in his grave ...

I feel sorry for the human race... Honestly, what a big load of crap.

And it's true, Bill Gates would be rolling in his grave if he was dead... probably he is rolling in his millions, though.

Metro UI was renamed Windows 8 UI...

While I won't be getting Win8 anytime soon, MS do seem to be backing away from what was first announced like the next version of the compiler only being able to target metro Windows 8 UI apps.
...and apparently it's quite easy to configure Win8 so that it looks like Win7.

We'll see....

Not anymore...

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9...o_desktop_hacks

Ah...

Come to think of it, this may be no bad thing since I didn't want the desktop in the first place.
In 1992, most programs that I used to use would run straight from the DOS prompt. You could always type 'win' to enter the horrible world of Windows 3.1...and the win7 desktop is just a prettier version of it.

Windows 8 - the best reason to use Linux.

Way to drive the retraining industry!

no thanks...win7 works really well with me...and unless there is a reason to upgrade...I wont be

When Win95 came out it was a natural evolution.

This feels forced. MS is trying to compete with Android, Apple and Linux simultaneously and is trying to make Windows too many things at the same time.

From an economic point of view it makes sense. They only need to develop one system that fits all, but are taking the risk of alienating everyone.

Problem is all new laptops and computers will have win8 with them, it will mostly be people like us who won't

This could be Microsoft's finest hour, as they control the business market with MS Office.

Imagine the boost to the economy if people could not create Excel spreadsheets or PowerPoint presentations anymore, and had to do some real work.....and surfing the internet is not an option since they lack the slick interface of iThings and Android.

Apparently MS is also implementing the new metro interface on Windows Server 2012. From what I have read Windows Server 2012 is supposed to be a mayor update(not just the UI) and making even easier administrative tasks and including also the metro interface and desktop.
Also Visual Studio 2012 will support development for metro interface apps.

Here some performance tests Win 8 vs Win 7
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2012/08/lets-see-how-windows-8-performs-against-windows-7/

It's not a good sign when people start thinking in hacking the OS so it behaves like the previous version.

Honestly, this is a tablet OS, trying to think of it as a desktop based OS, and thus, the replacement of Win7 or XP is just a mistake, Nobody likes the UI and those benchmarks jt_medina posted show pretty much no improvement at all, so who's gonna buy it? OEM systems are going to be it's primary market share. And even then, I'll bet people will start asking for the "other Windows" like it happened with Vista.

Even worse, what about developers? Remember that in order to have anything to do with the OS you need developers that create apps... And that is always a problem, it was a problem when Win95 came out, and it surely will be now with Win8. And it seems, so far, developers haven't shown much enthusiasm about it.

The only good things about this is that maybe prices on Win7 go down? Maybe...

Just for more info, here's where someone talks about putting Windows 8 on a few older systems with 4GB of RAM, and feels it improved performance, even over Windows 7 (user interface not discussed):

http://www.zdnet.com/installing-windows-...ing-7000002903/

That's great now I can have a smart phone experience on my pc. Super job M$. If I wanted that I would have over payed for locked down apple stuff.

I have been playing with win 8 for a couple of days and I think the new interface has a lot of potential. Keep in mind that win 8 has to keep compatibility with "older" desktop applications so for now most of us will have to live with both desktop and metro UI. I have tried some apps from the store and it looks promising what can be done with the new interface.

About the lack of developer support, keep in mind that Visual Studio 2012 is about to be released, so it's normal that developers are still adapting. Besides not only win 8 is changing graphical interface but also Windows Server 2012, which means in the next windows version we could see how the desktop environment as we know it could be gone forever.

About the OS performance, I have both win 7 and win 8 RTM on two partitions and so far win 8 feels smoother, it boots up faster, the store allows people to install apps very easily, even uninstalling software is meant to be simpler on the metro UI. The downside is the interface is still too new, developers have to get used to make apps with the new interface, besides the OS hasn't even been released yet and the number of apps available are too small. Give it time and I hope things will change.

Just my opinion.

Microsoft is of course claiming Windows 8 is the best thing since sliced bread, and there are others who think it will be a disaster, but my guess is that reality will fall somewhere in between.

I think people's (un)willingness to learn something new will be the biggest factor in how well it does. I am also concerned about the apparent move away from "windowing," which is what I thought "Windows" was all about. I frequently use multiple overlapping applications to view or copy data from one area to another.

Moving away from windowing is concerning. There are other things that puzzle me. Hiding the clock unless I take an action to show the charm menu is a waste of my time and an interruption to my workflow. Doing away with the taskbar is as befuddling as the old "autohide" feature... The taskbar may be nearly 20 years old, but being able to see every open program, program alert indicators and titles, system status indicators, and the time, day, and date all by doing nothing more than moving my eyes (!) still has value.

The most notable concern is the limiting and removing of options for user preferences. At least Win7 lets somebody choose whether they see the clock, the tray, or even see the taskbar at all.

Choice. It's why I was so impressed with Linux. Freedom of choice in how every aspect of MY computer worked for ME. And note that I found this freedom within the Gnome 2.2x desktop, which many feel offered less user choice than it's competitor, KDE. When Gnome 3.x came out, so much of that freedom was gone. I ultimately removed the Gnome desktop altogether, and installed the XFCE desktop on my Linux.

I think choice is simultaneously Linux's greatest strength and its greatest weakness (is that a line from "The Architect" from the second "Matrix" movie?).

It's great to be able to do whatever you want, but with Linux so many options go to the core of the OS that it's not easy to maintain compatibility. I've seen applications work on one distro but not another, but for other applications it's the other way around. And I'm not talking about some small downloaded utility written by a college student, but large, professional applications. I imagine for high-performance gaming it gets even more complicated. Until that's addressed, I'm afraid that Linux won't work well for simming/gaming.

And I agree, taking all that stuff away from Windows just doesn't make any sense. It's like MS had tablets on the brain and didn't think about any uses other than that when they were designing it.

That's a fair point.

I've never met a Linux application that wouldn't run on my system, though. There are ample cases of a program being based on either GTK or Qt and depending on those libraries. And of course, distros that ship with KDE don't always include GTK, and those that ship with Gnome sometimes don't ship with Qt. But I've run both libraries together.

Earlier this year, I ran an experiment in my office where I tried switching my desktop workplace environment from Windows XP to Linux - Xubuntu, if I recall correctly. I was partly interested in fairly putting Linux through its paces, but also partly interested in running a portable install of my workplace operating system on a USB stick I could take anywhere. The USB portability aspects caused enough headaches on their own, but in all fairness, I was most likely pushing the operating system beyond functionality intended by its developers.

But I am not convinced that Linux is ready or will be ready in the foreseeable future to offer an alternative to Windows or MacOS in a business environment. Great desktop operating system for Grandma to check her mail and surf the web a bit, and maybe it might work if you're in a small business or retail setting where interfacing with other departments or major clients is a concern. But for me, it boiled down to the applications. Word processing applications like OpenOffice and LibreOffice inserted so much extraneous garbage into my documents, be it extra characters and formatting, that they became illegible for my coworkers. The ultimate solution was to hack Office 2007 into working on Linux, which ultimately made me question why I was using Linux in the first place. Likewise, there are no suitable replacements for other high-end design suites like Photoshop. Try batch-processing a couple dozen images for print publication in GIMP - it sucks. There really is a lot of choice in applications - maybe too much. I am not very well informed in this area at all, but it seems to me like it'd help for the GPL folks to get over their aversions towards profit and let some of the big kahunas in to make some software useful in these contexts.

Windows 8, on the other hand, looks like a big step backwards all around for these purposes.