Windows 8 thoughts & opinions: incomplete?

Jayoneseven

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It's been 2 days now since I completed my hellish install of Windows 8 (which, itself, took 2 days) and I'm now just getting round to playing with some of the features. Sure it's clean, nice, fancy... all of that, but there's one overwhelming issue that I just can't quite put my finger on and it's this; the whole OS, every part of it, just seems... well... unfinished? Incomplete?

Tiles:
My problems started when I wanted to pin certain things to my new start menu so I could have everything accessible, but I found out pretty quickly that you can only save "apps" there. I wanted to pin my banking websites, Facebook and certain apps to this, but am restricted to using apps from the market. Perhaps I'm missing it but I had envisioned a way to create your own tiles, color of them, and for advanced use perhaps even a live tile of say your personal favorite weather website.
Also settings for specific apps seem to be missing. I have Google Chrome as an app, I wanted to look at the settings, but right clicking the app only allows me to unpin.

Start:
I love the tiles, I have a windows phone and have long been a fan of the simple pin/unpin of everything you love onto your own personal start screen. In Windows 8 though I feel as though it's almost forced upon you. Now I'm sure it works better with touch screens and what not, but it doesn't seem as smooth as with the phone. It's replaced the old start bar, but doesn't come close to being as efficient, nor easy to use. Once you tab out of the start menu and onto the desktop, it's almost like running Windows 7, but someone has replaced your start bar with this annoying, cumbersome contraption that can't hold everything you want it to, and doesn't work as well. Again I get the feeling that this is something that's really not complete, as though it was half done then rushed through production. The start menu looks great from a distance, but when you get up close and realize a lot of the tiles on there are nonsense you'll never use, you slim it down to what you want and it looks bare.
Here's the biggest peeve though. Open up youtube, play a song you like, then tab into the start menu to go look around while jamming to your song. As soon as your browser is minimized for the start screen, the music is muted. Why? I don't know. Does this mark the end of photoshopping while listening to jams? What's the purpose?

Options:
I'm seeing a huge lack of options in Windows 8. From customization to performance (which my PC runs noticeably slower in 8) I'm feeling kind of lost and helpless, not able to change the things I'd like to, nor cut the things I don't like. I feel as though if I looked harder I'd find some options somewhere hidden in the control panel but insofar I have not come across anything.

Adds:
When I first heard people talk about the adds I thought for sure it was speculation, and that it was an idea that would have been pushed aside long ago. When I finally got onto Windows 8 and saw them I was pretty much shocked and disgusted. For a product I had just paid for, and an operating system I've used my whole life, now to be selling things right at me, with no option for removal... Probably one of the biggest downfalls so far.

I guess I can tally this up by saying a nice TL;DR sentence.
I love windows phone, and had envisioned all of these amazing abilities with Windows 8, to truly personalize your experience, which are simply nonexistent. It's bulky, slow, not very user friendly, and frankly not worth the money in it's current state. Perhaps after some updates but not right now.


Thoughts? What are your own experiences so far?
 

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After some time playing I'm now finding more things I dislike.
The ability to have more than one window open at a time, such as reducing the size and having them side by side on the screen, is not possible unless you get out onto the desktop version, where you can't access your apps, and is just like Windows 7 so why bother having 8 for that? If you're going to revert to using your old desktop, and making shortcuts there because you can't in the "start" because you can't create tiles, then the entire premise of Windows 8 is moot, and you may as well revert to Windows 7.
The only options for tiles is one button, ONE, and it is "turn on advanced tiles" which essentially is like saying "copy and paste Control Panel to my desktop. Really? That is all?

I'm still stunned at the inability to create your own tiles... must somebody create it, upload it to the marketplace, then havee others pay for it?
 

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    Nvidia GeForce 210
It's not ready for desktops yet. I just feel like Microsoft rushed it and just put a tablet friendly UI over the desktop and made everyone boot to it.

Sure, you can use a mouse and keyboard. But you can use a mouse and keyboard on any tablet UI. Doesn't mean it's better than a real desktop UI.

I think what Microsoft should do is remove the full screen start menu. Return the regular menu, but make it look more Metro themed. Add a real app store. Make it so that apps aren't full screen and can be used on a desktop in windowed mode and make them more desktop friendly. None of that side scrolling crap that's great on tablets, but not so good on desktops.

But that's my opinion, people might think differently about it. But, I think that Microsoft not letting people disable it is not so good.
 

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Ads - I totally agree and honestly can't believe there isn't a bigger deal being made about this. What happened when Amazon tried to force ads on the Kindle?

Options - I also agree. A lot of things have been taken away or "dumbed down" for the masses. Power user options and/or MUCH more customization should still exist for people that want to use them, not removed completely. Too many people are blindly hailing M$ and ignoring these obvious flaws.

Tiles - App options - usually accessed by opening the app and then right-clicking, if I'm not mistaken Chrome settings are still tucked away in the Chrome menu in the app as well as the application. Although I'm not at my PC right now to verify.

Not being able to "multi-task" on the Start screen, although I hadn't even tried this yet - is simply ridiculous. This is a limitation of mobile devices for the most part and it's rather stupid that it's brought into a PC OS if that's the case.

There are a few annoyances with Muti-Monitor setups that are rather frustrating too.
 

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Agreed. I found one thing that was... almost useful, in that through Chrome you can pin website shortcuts to your start menu. This is far, far less than what I expected though as I had imagined a live tile, fully incorporated by Facebook, that blinks or gets a +1 when you have a notification.
The full screen thing is terribly annoying. IT's forgivable on my phone, but not on my PC.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 7 ultimate
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    AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 5200+ 2.70GHz
    Motherboard
    Phoenix tech 6.00PG 8/7/2008
    Memory
    4.00 GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    Nvidia GeForce 210
It's been 2 days now since I completed my hellish install of Windows 8 (which, itself, took 2 days) and I'm now just getting round to playing with some of the features. Sure it's clean, nice, fancy... all of that, but there's one overwhelming issue that I just can't quite put my finger on and it's this; the whole OS, every part of it, just seems... well... unfinished? Incomplete?

I'm sorry you have had problems. However, my guess is that you were doing an upgrade install. Never in the history of Windows have upgrade installs been perfect. Some people can do an upgrade without issue, but a large percentage of people have problems. Microsoft simply cannot predict every possible configuration of Windows that is out there, and some people will end up with a broken install if you do an upgrade. The rule of thumb is simple.. do an upgrade, but if you have ANY issues with it, throw it away and do a clean install. If you have issues, they will just compound and you will end up spending days trying to fix problems, and likely having to do a clean install anyways.

My problems started when I wanted to pin certain things to my new start menu so I could have everything accessible, but I found out pretty quickly that you can only save "apps" there.

What the heck are you talking about? Of course you can pin other things there. You can pin any application there (desktop or tile), you can pin web site links. You can pin folders. You can pin all kinds of things. This is simply not true, and it seems a large part of your rant is based on this false assumption.

Also settings for specific apps seem to be missing. I have Google Chrome as an app, I wanted to look at the settings, but right clicking the app only allows me to unpin.

When has right clicking on your icon for Chrome ever allowed you to change its settings? IE works that way (if you are pointing to a guid based link rather than just a traditional shortcut link), but I've never seen any other apps do that. Can you explain why you would think it would work this way?

In Windows 8 though I feel as though it's almost forced upon you. Now I'm sure it works better with touch screens and what not, but it doesn't seem as smooth as with the phone. It's replaced the old start bar, but doesn't come close to being as efficient, nor easy to use.

This is a common opinion in the first few days. Give it some time, you will likely grow to like it, and maybe even prefer it. I'm a little confused though, since on one hand you rave about the phone, which works exactly like Windows 8 does, and then complain that it's forced on you? You do know about the All Programs button, right?

Once you tab out of the start menu and onto the desktop, it's almost like running Windows 7, but someone has replaced your start bar with this annoying, cumbersome contraption that can't hold everything you want it to, and doesn't work as well. Again I get the feeling that this is something that's really not complete, as though it was half done then rushed through production.

And again, you're absolutely wrong about this.


The start menu looks great from a distance, but when you get up close and realize a lot of the tiles on there are nonsense you'll never use, you slim it down to what you want and it looks bare.

That's why you can uninstall or unpin whatever you want. Don't like the Travel tile, uninstall it! This is just giving you a default to start with that you can customize how you want. Also, more apps will come along, and they will get better.

Here's the biggest peeve though. Open up youtube, play a song you like, then tab into the start menu to go look around while jamming to your song. As soon as your browser is minimized for the start screen, the music is muted. Why? I don't know. Does this mark the end of photoshopping while listening to jams? What's the purpose?

Youtube is a video streamer. What is the purpose of streaming a video you aren't watching? If you want to listen to music, use a radio app, or Pandora, or Xbox music, or any of the dozens of other services out there. Metro is designed to save resources when an app is not the primary, that means putting apps in suspend mode when you switch to a different app. Apps can use a background service API (which is what radio apps use) if they want, and apparently the Youtube app creators felt that it didn't make sense to stream the audio if you weren't watching it.

You will see the same behavior with the Metro Media Player.

The reason for this is that Metro apps have to work on 3 platforms. Windows 8, Windows 8 RT, and Windows Phone 8. And phones and tablets have less resources than a desktop. Would it be nice if they acted differently in Windows when the resources are available? Maybe.. but this is the first version of Metro, and it will clearly go through some adjustments. Is this evidence of being "Unfinished"? Not really, just that you have to cut off the feature list somewhere. You can't add everything at once. Like windows itself has evolved, so too will Metro.

I'm seeing a huge lack of options in Windows 8. From customization to performance (which my PC runs noticeably slower in 8) I'm feeling kind of lost and helpless, not able to change the things I'd like to, nor cut the things I don't like. I feel as though if I looked harder I'd find some options somewhere hidden in the control panel but insofar I have not come across anything.

Again, I think your upgrade install is probably affecting performance. My system is faster than Windows 7 was on the same computer. It's blazing fast (boots in 7 seconds flat, and is very fluid).

Can you be more specific about what options and customizations you're talking about? Yes, 7 has removed some options. It's true. But they've also added a lot more. I see people say things like this all the time, but they can't actually say anything specific... so what it really means is that "I don't like it".

When I first heard people talk about the adds I thought for sure it was speculation, and that it was an idea that would have been pushed aside long ago. When I finally got onto Windows 8 and saw them I was pretty much shocked and disgusted. For a product I had just paid for, and an operating system I've used my whole life, now to be selling things right at me, with no option for removal... Probably one of the biggest downfalls so far.

It's Ads. As in Advertising. Add means to increment. But semantics aside, I have seen no ads in Windows 8. What are you talking about? Or do you mean in certain Free third party apps? This is no different than in the Android store or iOS. Developers want to make some money for making their apps, and if they give the app away for free, they sometimes use ad sponsors. No different than any website that does it.

The OS itself has no ads. None of the MS written apps have ads. Third party app developers don't get part of the profits of Windows 8. They need to make money somehow.

I love windows phone, and had envisioned all of these amazing abilities with Windows 8, to truly personalize your experience, which are simply nonexistent. It's bulky, slow, not very user friendly, and frankly not worth the money in it's current state. Perhaps after some updates but not right now.

As I've already said, you are mistaken about many things. "user friendly" is in the eye of the beholder, but a lot of it is just that you're not familiar with it.
 

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"The OS itself has no ads. None of the MS written apps have ads. Third party app developers don't get part of the profits of Windows 8. They need to make money somehow."

Open the default weather app and scroll all the way to the right, yes that's it - an AD.



"
The reason for this is that Metro apps have to work on 3 platforms. Windows 8, Windows 8 RT, and Windows Phone 8. And phones and tablets have less resources than a desktop. Would it be nice if they acted differently in Windows when the resources are available? Maybe.. but this is the first version of Metro, and it will clearly go through some adjustments."

This has to be the closest thing to blindly accepting what you are given that there is. I don't particularly give a hoot if they work on 3 platforms, I don't own a windows tablet or a windows phone - this point is moot to anyone that also doesn't. The fact here is, it's drastically limited on a PC OS which CAN handle it - and not recognizing or developing for that is pure laziness, nothing else. They wanted to rush out the Surface, and in doing so they released a sub-par PC operating system to make it easier on them. You are blind if you don't see that.
 

My Computer

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  • OS
    Windows 8 Pro
The ability to have more than one window open at a time, such as reducing the size and having them side by side on the screen, is not possible unless you get out onto the desktop version, where you can't access your apps, and is just like Windows 7 so why bother having 8 for that? If you're going to revert to using your old desktop, and making shortcuts there because you can't in the "start" because you can't create tiles, then the entire premise of Windows 8 is moot, and you may as well revert to Windows 7.

Metro apps are full screen, but you can have two of them open at the same time with Metro Snap. They're full screen for a lot of reasons, but largely for compatibility with phone and tablets. So you have the same experience on any device. iOS apps are full screen. Android apps are full screen. Windows Phone apps are full screen.

Windows 8 takes the philosophy that within a few years, tablets and phones will be the way 75+% of the people use a computer. They will plug their phone or tablet into a dock on their desktop and use a keyboard and mouse with it. Thus they can carry it around wherever they go. The idea is to build an app ecosystem that bridges all three platforms (and at least two cpu architectures) and allows you to run the same apps no matter what device you use.

Phones and tablets can't use traditional Windows apps (they've tried, and it's been a failure), and traditional windows apps won't run on an ARM cpu. So the solution was to create, basically, a totally new OS, which runs alongside the traditional Win32 desktop. So the "bother" with running Metro apps is that you buy an app once, and you can run it on up to 5 devices, including your desktop. It's the same everywhere. Eventually, most people be using only Metro apps (though that's probably a good 5-10 years away).

The only options for tiles is one button, ONE, and it is "turn on advanced tiles" which essentially is like saying "copy and paste Control Panel to my desktop. Really? That is all?

I'm still stunned at the inability to create your own tiles... must somebody create it, upload it to the marketplace, then havee others pay for it?

I have no idea what your argument is here. Advanced tiles shows all the tiles that are in your Start Menu folder, not just tiles. There is a second button that allows you to show Administrative items as well. Nowhere does it include control panel items (other than admin ones).

What exactly is your point? What are you expecting? You CAN add any tile you want, but you can't have a live update tile without code to make it work.
 

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"The OS itself has no ads. None of the MS written apps have ads. Third party app developers don't get part of the profits of Windows 8. They need to make money somehow."

Open the default weather app and scroll all the way to the right, yes that's it - an AD.


Ok, I should amend that. Those are Bing apps, and Bing is a web site and search engine, it makes its money through ads. It's true that Bing apps have ads, but those are the only Microsoft written apps that do. The same will be true of any Google apps (if they decide to write any) or Yahoo apps. Anything that app-ifies a website will likely pass through advertising.

The reason for this is that Metro apps have to work on 3 platforms. Windows 8, Windows 8 RT, and Windows Phone 8. And phones and tablets have less resources than a desktop. Would it be nice if they acted differently in Windows when the resources are available? Maybe.. but this is the first version of Metro, and it will clearly go through some adjustments."

This has to be the closest thing to blindly accepting what you are given that there is. I don't particularly give a hoot if they work on 3 platforms, I don't own a windows tablet or a windows phone - this point is moot to anyone that also doesn't. The fact here is, it's drastically limited on a PC OS which CAN handle it - and not recognizing or developing for that is pure laziness, nothing else. They wanted to rush out the Surface, and in doing so they released a sub-par PC operating system to make it easier on them. You are blind if you don't see that.

You don't own a phone or tablet *TODAY*, but I guarantee you probably will own some kind of smartphone or tablet within a few years. And even if you don't, you will be in a VERY small minority of people. You can't seriously expect MS to target their OS entirely at a small minority of its users, can you?

What is your alternative to "blindly accepting" it? Complaining on newsgroups? That doesn't do anything.The fact of the matter is, you *HAVE* to accept it. It's not going to change. Your only other choice is to go somewhere else. Microsoft is not going to change this strategy in any way meaningful to your complaints.
 

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    Intel i7 3770K
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    Onboard Audio
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    Auria 27" IPS + 2x Samsung 23"
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    Antec SOLO II
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I'd love to respond to your messages, but figuring my is was an old build, I decided to update it, as the updater told me I had some pending. Now I'm staring at the windows splash screen as it "diagnoses my PC" after crashing several times on startup.
If I knew how to clean install I would have, but all Microsoft would tell me is to run the updater installer, which I needed to do a whole bunch of work to get that going too.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 7 ultimate
    CPU
    AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 5200+ 2.70GHz
    Motherboard
    Phoenix tech 6.00PG 8/7/2008
    Memory
    4.00 GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    Nvidia GeForce 210
You don't own a phone or tablet *TODAY*, but I guarantee you probably will own some kind of smartphone or tablet within a few years. And even if you don't, you will be in a VERY small minority of people. You can't seriously expect MS to target their OS entirely at a small minority of its users, can you?

When did I say I didn't own a tablet or smartphone at all? I said I do not own a Windows tablet or Windows phone. Just because I do not own a Windows tablet/phone but still use Windows on my home PC I'm in a minority? Aren't we deluded if we assume that everyone wanting to run Windows on their PC will also buy a Surface or Windows Phone. I'd be willing to bet that the number of people running Windows on a home PC and/or corporate PCs but not owning a Windows mobile device would be in the MAJORITY, so yes they should target the PC operating system differently. If you seriously think the Surface or Windows phones are going to take over the mobile world, I just don't even...
 

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System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 Pro
So basically they dummed down the OS to make it like the phone and RT versions?
 

My Computer

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    Windows 7 ultimate
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    Motherboard
    Phoenix tech 6.00PG 8/7/2008
    Memory
    4.00 GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    Nvidia GeForce 210
I'd love to respond to your messages, but figuring my is was an old build, I decided to update it, as the updater told me I had some pending. Now I'm staring at the windows splash screen as it "diagnoses my PC" after crashing several times on startup.
If I knew how to clean install I would have, but all Microsoft would tell me is to run the updater installer, which I needed to do a whole bunch of work to get that going too.

I'm sure there's a tutorial on this site for doing a clean install, and if there's not, I'm sure someone will make one soon.

So basically they dummed down the OS to make it like the phone and RT versions?

No. You're not quite understanding. Metro is a *NEW*, totally different OS that runs along side the old Win32 OS. They didn't "drum it down" because it's brand new. As all software does, it can't have everything at once. It will grow over time. It's just the first steps.

The journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 Pro
    CPU
    Intel i7 3770K
    Motherboard
    Gigabyte Z77X-UD4 TH
    Memory
    16GB DDR3 1600
    Graphics Card(s)
    nVidia GTX 650
    Sound Card
    Onboard Audio
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Auria 27" IPS + 2x Samsung 23"
    Screen Resolution
    2560x1440 + 2x 2048x1152
    Hard Drives
    Corsair m4 256GB, 2 WD 2TB drives
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    Antec SOLO II
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    Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000
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    Logitech MX
An hour later, still stuck on the splash screen diagnosing pc. Think it's time to reinstall .
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 7 ultimate
    CPU
    AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 5200+ 2.70GHz
    Motherboard
    Phoenix tech 6.00PG 8/7/2008
    Memory
    4.00 GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    Nvidia GeForce 210
I'd love to respond to your messages, but figuring my is was an old build, I decided to update it, as the updater told me I had some pending. Now I'm staring at the windows splash screen as it "diagnoses my PC" after crashing several times on startup.
If I knew how to clean install I would have, but all Microsoft would tell me is to run the updater installer, which I needed to do a whole bunch of work to get that going too.

I'm sure there's a tutorial on this site for doing a clean install, and if there's not, I'm sure someone will make one soon.

So basically they dummed down the OS to make it like the phone and RT versions?

No. You're not quite understanding. Metro is a *NEW*, totally different OS that runs along side the old Win32 OS. They didn't "drum it down" because it's brand new. As all software does, it can't have everything at once. It will grow over time. It's just the first steps.

The journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step.


The updater app should've given you the option to download the OS as an ISO. If it did not or you skipped past it, launch the new shortcut that it created called "Download Windows 8" and redownload it as an ISO, once you have the ISO use something like WinISO to burn the ISO to disk and make it a bootable disc.

Then boot with your disc in the drive, it'll start the install process. Choose custom install and when it asks you where to install it and shows your list of physical harddrive, highlight your current system partition and choose Format. Then select this partition as the one to install it on. Clean install, as simple as that.

And yes, they dumbed down the desktop part of the OS and added an even more dumbed down "Metro" start screen. Then, inlcuded a bunch of animations and live updates to the tiles to try to add that cool factor.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 Pro
Operating systems have been able to handle tens of programs, all running at the same time, for years. Phones on the other hand have the ability to only really run one, and you have to close out of that one to open another. When IOS 4.0 was released you could tab between open windows on the iPhone 3gs> And that is all that this operating system is. You can tab between open windows, but not have both open together.
I was countered in that Youtube stops once minimized, because "it's a video streaming site, why would you want to stream video minimized". Now although this is a really bad answer, and most of Youtube is music, here's another example. Open a streaming radio station or music media, then open the start menu. Your music will stop. So I'm forced to either download a radio app (which some of my internet sites don't have apps for) or use Zune.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 7 ultimate
    CPU
    AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 5200+ 2.70GHz
    Motherboard
    Phoenix tech 6.00PG 8/7/2008
    Memory
    4.00 GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    Nvidia GeForce 210
Operating systems have been able to handle tens of programs, all running at the same time, for years. Phones on the other hand have the ability to only really run one, and you have to close out of that one to open another. When IOS 4.0 was released you could tab between open windows on the iPhone 3gs> And that is all that this operating system is. You can tab between open windows, but not have both open together.

iOS 4 allows you to switch apps, but the majority of them do the same thing. They are suspended when they are not the active app. Like Windows 8, some apps can be written to use a special background API, but by default apps are suspended. I'm pretty sure Youtube on iOS also suspends when you switch to a different app.

I was countered in that Youtube stops once minimized, because "it's a video streaming site, why would you want to stream video minimized". Now although this is a really bad answer, and most of Youtube is music, here's another example. Open a streaming radio station or music media, then open the start menu. Your music will stop. So I'm forced to either download a radio app (which some of my internet sites don't have apps for) or use Zune.

Youtube is a video streaming site that just so happens to play audio. It's designed to WATCH movies, not listen to music. Lots of people have uploaded music, but they have to attach video to it in order to do that.

I have heard others talk about radio apps stopping when opening the start menu. I do not have that problem. I think it's also related to your broken install.
 

My Computer

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  • OS
    Windows 8.1 Pro
    CPU
    Intel i7 3770K
    Motherboard
    Gigabyte Z77X-UD4 TH
    Memory
    16GB DDR3 1600
    Graphics Card(s)
    nVidia GTX 650
    Sound Card
    Onboard Audio
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Auria 27" IPS + 2x Samsung 23"
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    2560x1440 + 2x 2048x1152
    Hard Drives
    Corsair m4 256GB, 2 WD 2TB drives
    Case
    Antec SOLO II
    Keyboard
    Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000
    Mouse
    Logitech MX
When has right clicking on your icon for Chrome ever allowed you to change its settings? IE works that way (if you are pointing to a guid based link rather than just a traditional shortcut link), but I've never seen any other apps do that. Can you explain why you would think it would work this way?

It hasn't ever worked before, but I haven't ever had tiles before. I wanted to get into the tile options, and perhaps change the tile settings. Tile settings is vital to me, and vital to this OS even being successful I have a Facebook tile right now that is a chrome bookmark. I can't change it to a Facebook tile logo, I can't make it a smart tile, I can't do anything with it other than unpin it. That was my problem with the lack of options in this.
The Zune tile doesn't have buttons, even when you make it bigger, so you have to reopen Zune to pause or skip music. On Windows 7 hovering over the icon in the taskbar would allow you to do so. Not in 8.

The way I want it to work is this: Go to a file or folder in Windows, right click it, go to properties. You can change the appearance and some qualities and properties of said file. With tiles you can't. You can't even change the color, they are what they are. From the worlds "most customizable and personal" start screen that's pretty abysmal.
So when I talk about not being able to pin things to the start screen that's what I mean. Being able to do so how I want, and make them the way they want. I could have bookmarks in 7, vista, xp..... It's 2012, come on Microsoft. The iPhone facebook app has push notifications which allerts you when you get a status update or message, changing the logo to include a counter of notifications. Very simple live tile that keeps you up to date and you can know information about it at a glance. The Windows phone facebook app does not have this and Windows 8 doesn't even have a facebook app.... The only somewhat interactive tiles I've seen so far is the weather. This OS is supposed to be tile based, make it so!
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 7 ultimate
    CPU
    AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 5200+ 2.70GHz
    Motherboard
    Phoenix tech 6.00PG 8/7/2008
    Memory
    4.00 GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    Nvidia GeForce 210
iOS 4 allows you to switch apps, but the majority of them do the same thing. They are suspended when they are not the active app. Like Windows 8, some apps can be written to use a special background API, but by default apps are suspended. I'm pretty sure Youtube on iOS also suspends when you switch to a different app.

I was countered in that Youtube stops once minimized, because "it's a video streaming site, why would you want to stream video minimized". Now although this is a really bad answer, and most of Youtube is music, here's another example. Open a streaming radio station or music media, then open the start menu. Your music will stop. So I'm forced to either download a radio app (which some of my internet sites don't have apps for) or use Zune.
Precisely, that technology is 3 years old on handheld devices. My PC should be able to do more, and can do more on any other Operating System. I don't want my apps suspended, if i didn't want them running I'd close them. My probelm isn't really that youtube specifically halts when minimized, it's the entire mechanism that makes it so, that will do the same for any other browser streaming media.

Also I'm not talking about radio apps, I don't want "apps" I want my browser to work as it should. Go to google, type in "internet radio" tune in, then home out, it will stop. Like I said a lot of the radio stations I listen to don't have apps, they aren't that big! And the last time I checked the windows marketplace on my phone it was still growing slowly, that's the bullet you bite when going to Windows phones, but relying upon that entirely for internet radio would be a sad experience.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 7 ultimate
    CPU
    AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 5200+ 2.70GHz
    Motherboard
    Phoenix tech 6.00PG 8/7/2008
    Memory
    4.00 GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    Nvidia GeForce 210
GoodBye IPad, HoneyComb and Laptop, Hello Windows 8 Pro Slate.

It seems like it was just yesterday when I was so happy to be the owner of a 64 GB apple IPad, an Apple MacBook pro and a 64 GB apple iPhone. However, as most tech savvy individuals will attest, owning any of these devices makes one thing abundantly clear; apple products are not for the technically inclined. The best way I can explain this is with analogy. It’s like being a surgeon and being handed a butter knife to perform a surgical task. It’s like being a soldier on a battlefield and being handed a slingshot to defend oneself. The feeling can only be described as a lacking of options, possibilities, and flexibility with a foreboding yet a subdued sense of restriction.
Fast-forward 18 months a Samsung Galaxy Tab2 7 inch, an Asus Transformer TF300t and now I am the proud owner of the Samsung Series 7 Slate running Windows8 Professional on a power sipping Intel i5 processor with 4 GB of Ram. The device uniquely covers both the needs of a laptop as well as a tablet. The Modern (previously Metro) interface allows the user a functionality best described as a casual one. A functionality and interface that appear to be perfectly adapted for use on the go, on the train, on a plane, in a cab, in the park or at the local coffee shop, Library or Cyber Café. Tasks can be performed with the touch or swipe of the finger, all, unbelievably, with the simplicity of the IPad OS but with the elegance, power and flexibility of the Android OS. This symbiosis of characteristics had to be intentional on the part of Microsoft engineers because the interface works so cleanly , all while the desktop offers the user the familiar interface and full-fledged applications we have all come to know and love for sit down productivity sessions.
The Microsoft Apps market, like the Android and Apple Markets, provide the user with the casual apps one would need for things like weather, news, sport highlights and gaming.
The two environments function as one to a point where they flow together in a way that forces one to forget that the OS is still just Windows. The user is engulfed by the experience once the learning curve has been achieved.

Advanced functionality is now just a right click or a press and hold away. Goodbye Tablet and laptop, hello Windows 8 Slate. I am pleasantly pleased and abundantly surprised to be able to say that THIS Windows Iteration Really, Really Just works and works well, very well. 10 points Microsoft and welcome back to excellence..
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    windows 8
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Samsung Series 7 Slate
    CPU
    Intel Core i5
    Memory
    4Gig
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