Windows 8 - What do you think?

[tseven]

I can't choose. While I love the fact they are making a touch friendly(hopefully pen friendly Microsoft Courier anyone?) version of windows I don't like how flat metro is. I mean to be honest I don't like the aero glassy effect all over the windows 7/vista much either but the complete flatness of metro bothers me. I guess what I wish is for them to have something that is in-between. A little shading and chrome wouldn't hurt. Just not too much. Also I feel like metro although is aiming to be simple actually feels more complicated. A list which essentially huge icons that barely tell more information than how many new emails you are getting or what the weather is taking a huge part of the screen real-estate bugs me. Everything feels so cluttered and messy. I don't know how to describe it. While I liked their vision for courier which reminds me of a journal even as a program I cannot seem to really like metro. Even the metro in their phone is starting to bug me. I also hope they do not completely flatten the desktop. The stuff they are doing already seems fine and good enough. But I hope they get rid of the ribbon it makes all the windows look cluttered. They need to work on the desktop and give the metro start screen some life.

 

[ADRz]

I can't choose. While I love the fact they are making a touch friendly(hopefully pen friendly Microsoft Courier anyone?) version of windows I don't like how flat metro is. I mean to be honest I don't like the aero glassy effect all over the windows 7/vista much either but the complete flatness of metro bothers me. I guess what I wish is for them to have something that is in-between. A little shading and chrome wouldn't hurt. Just not too much. Also I feel like metro although is aiming to be simple actually feels more complicated. A list which essentially huge icons that barely tell more information than how many new emails you are getting or what the weather is taking a huge part of the screen real-estate bugs me. Everything feels so cluttered and messy. I don't know how to describe it. While I liked their vision for courier which reminds me of a journal even as a program I cannot seem to really like metro. Even the metro in their phone is starting to bug me. I also hope they do not completely flatten the desktop. The stuff they are doing already seems fine and good enough. But I hope they get rid of the ribbon it makes all the windows look cluttered. They need to work on the desktop and give the metro start screen some life.

Wow!!! A kindred soul. I agree with you that Metro is aesthetically not pleasing. Other OSs achieve a similar level of integration without overdoing it with huge squares that take lots of real estate in the screen for a minimum amount of information.

First of all, Metro has never been a "crowd pleaser". It has been in Windows Media for over 10 years and this is one of the least used modules of Windows. It did not attract users to the Zune and WP7 is hardly popular. In fact, it trails badly. I do not know what Microsoft believes, but Metro is hardly appealing and the data show that this to be true. I would say that Microsoft should take a serious look at the opening screens of Android 3.0 and 4.0 and the use of icons and widgets to aggregate information to the users. This is a far more efficient and visually pleasing way of presenting information. I also like the "folder" idea of Android in which a user can assemble a variety of programs (or bookmarks, or whatever). This is only possible in Windows with a 3rd party utility called Fences.

But the worse part of Metro is that it degrades substantially -as it is currently implemented- the desktop experience. It may be OK for tablets, but it is a disaster on the desktop.