Mini-review: Windows 8, after a while

I don’t use Windows daily, but I’ve got a bit of experience with Windows 8 nonetheless now. So, a small update.

1. Freezes don’t occur after I got several hundred megabytes of updates. I did not try the suggestion in an Ars Technica comment which claims…

This is the “dynamic tick” issue. Install the latest updates through Windows Update to fix itor disable dynamic ticking.

Run Command Prompt as Administrator and type this:

bcdedit /set disabledynamictick yes

and then reboot.

2. Lock screen is cool.
3. Couldn’t get Apple multitouch touchpad to work yet.
4. TeamViewer 8 now supports sending multitouch gestures from iPad to Windows, so I played a bit with that. Neat; I can imagine this being cool on a tablet. But no way these gestures will be tolerable on a desktop.
5. Desktop removal was done only partially. I really wish I could make Metro a secondary UI at this point; Explorer improvements are fantastic, and Metro is only a toy.
6. Xbox Games app is still useless to me.
7. Store app is useless to me, but at least I found out how Updates are done. A small link appears in top right.
8. I like the fact that I could theoretically write a Metro/WinRT app in pure C. I don’t like the fact that the signature requirement and different formats make it nearly impossible to use MinGW for that.

Anyway, I’m not as angry as I was after an hour of use, especially since the system does not randomly restart for me. In fact, I’m not angry at all; I’m more disappointed, considering that this would’ve been an awesome upgrade from Win7 were it not for a silly potentially unreadable theme in desktop (and removal of Windows Classic theme!), and were it not for the Metro being forcefully shoved at everyone, yet being inaccessible to developers who don’t want to ship through Windows Store. Metro may be cool in some uses, but should not have been forced upon every single desktop user who wants Windows 8 just for better performance and better Explorer.


via blog.vucica.net

One thought on “Mini-review: Windows 8, after a while

  1. Ivan Kravarščan

    You know how it is was last 10+ years, every other Windows OS were good while versions in between were disasters. Maybe they are doing it on purpose, one version is social experiment and the next one is polished result.

    But the Metro style is so wrong way to go that I can't explain. Have seen new Visual Studio, 2012? An atrocity! Upper case menus, smaller colorless icons, reduced contrast and no borders between "panels". It's not the case of me not being adjusted to new look it's me not seeing where toolbar ends and code editor starts and trying do figure out whether a project item is grey because it's disabled or is it normally to be colorless. I don't like Metro on phones too but that's another story. They can force on phone any trademark stuff but development tools should, no, must be clean and usable.

    Reply

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