Some years ago I documented some thoughts on Windows 7 when I first installed it. I believe most if not all of them still hold true. It’s a fine OS, but other than updates to the base structure and security offers little that I care about over Windows XP (and we’re skipping Vista all together).
So, likewise, here are my experiences installing and using Windows 8…
The good:
1. I can now browse a folder with lots of big files without the OS hanging for 30 seconds. It always bugged me that a modern OS (Windows 7) couldn’t pull this off.
2. Apparently Windows now has some backup functionality built in (though well hidden). I haven’t had a chance to play with that yet, but it’s promising.
The neutral:
1. Installing – nothing too concerning here, it installed. On boot up I went through the standard new install questions – name, password, network, etc. The only new one was that I got to select a color for the interface. Woo Hoo!
The bad:
1. The start screen – this is almost its own sub-category.
A. The tiles don’t really do anything for me, especially on a desktop. I understand them on a tablet since they’re basically a consolidation of widgets and apps.
B. It’s not a good idea to cover everything else I’m working on in order to start a new program, especially when I’m trying to follow instructions on a web page for how to get rid of the start screen.
C. Why would the Windows key call up this screen – tablets don’t have that, so why bind it to the start screen for desktops?
D. See the comment about flatness later… flat buttons – aka tiles are not pleasing to view.
2. Gestures – on a tablet, gestures are a fine, if overused, idea. On a desktop, they don’t really exist. Having to park my mouse cursor in the extreme corner of my screen to call up the start screen or the charms bar is a bad plan. Calling something the charms bar is another bad plan.
As a side note, I still don’t think gestures are as intuitive as the OS makers are trying to sell – either that or they don’t really know what intuitive means. Two finger rotate – yeah, obvious and intuitive (this action would work to spin a picture on a table). Swipe to flip pages – works for paper, so it’s intuitive for a tablet. Pinch zoom – Obvious, maybe, and you could argue this is intuitive, but I’ve never pinch zoomed a printed picture. Two finger drag to scroll – not obvious or intuitive, but simple and widely adopted enough to work. Three and four finger gestures coming from different edges of the screen – NOPE, neither obvious nor intuitive nor consistent enough to be useful – at least not yet.
3. Aesthetics – the interface seems to have taken a step backward. Instead of shaded buttons, windows with rounded corners, ‘raised’ borders and color options to call out background windows it’s now all flat. Now, I was never into the transparency “Aero” look, but I like things to look nice as well as I think there are some advantages to the illusion of contour. Buttons now have minimal visual indication of actually being a button – it was nice having ‘shadows’ which make a button look like something that could be pushed down. Window title bars and borders are a single completely flat color – the gradients were nice and again a shaded border giving the impression of a tiny frame made sense. Third, inactive window borders are all near white (and largely indistinguishable from any window contents with a white background) this is probably getting picky, but I like to see distinction between the window and it’s contents probably with the primary goal of being able to click and drag the border quickly to resize.
4. No “Start” button (or whatever it’s now called) – meaning no way to get to the classic Windows menu. This is just failure for consistency of the desktop OS. Having another interface, alright. Completely scrapping the old one, silly – especially when your user base sticks with the OS just because it’s what they’re used to.
5. Playing media – works without codec installations, so that’s nice. However, the default media handler is some Metro-full-screen-program which was rather confusing when I was trying to find the restore button in the upper right corner. Also, I somehow would get stuck watching the video with no obvious way to get back to the other windows (see the gestures and intuitiveness comment above).
I haven’t really, and don’t intend to get into the Metro apps. As said, this is a desktop install. Minimalist apps that run full screen expect to get information to me through their tile on the start screen are not on the list of things that are useful.
Summary – Windows 8 seems like it might be a fine OS for tablet use. It’s fine for Desktop use also, so long as I can turn it into Windows 7. My prediction is that in the future, if MS wants to keep the Tablet and Desktop OS’s as one, there will be an up front decision that the user makes and then they use a single OS with one of two distinctly different interfaces… though, at that point, I’m not sure what value there is in calling it a single OS.
Again: Fine for tablets where small screens and low power processors coupled with a touch screen that the user is already holding mean the new flat, minimalist, touch centric interface is acceptable. Bad for desktops.
