Just tested the opinion of the 'General Public'

whs

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Today I gave the last class of an eight week Windows 7 class in my computer club. During the last hour of the class I presented Windows 8 as kind of an outlook. The reaction was interesting. Not a single person disliked Windows 8 at this point. The general consensus was that it is probably easier to use than Windows 7.

Remind you, those are senior citizens who are no geeks by any imagination. They thought it was interesting and refreshing. None of these people run a business on their system. So here may be the difference.

I had to do overtime because several people asked me to copy the .iso to their external disks so that they did not have to download it for 3 hours.

Looks like Windows 8 may do better than we think. All it needs is a bit of basic education.
 
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I think what Microsoft should do, is make a big tile on the start screen saying, Quick Guide to Win 8, big bold type so that everyone can read it easily. It would only need to be 2 pages at most with the most basic steps, and then maybe a link at the bottom for a more definitive Guide. Windows 8 is easy, it just needs a little bit of fiddling around, which some people just dont seem to like doing. Its good to see the seniors taking a liking to it, hopefully the rest of the world will take to it as well.
 

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That's a good idea Bill. Once people get the basics down, it's a lot less frustrating to do anything.

whs, glad to hear your class approved, I think it will catch on.
 

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I'm waiting on "Windows 8 for Dummies" to show up in the stores. A little education goes a long way. I feel real comfortable using Windows 8 and I think it is a winner. Don't need no stinking Start button. :p

Jim :cool:
 

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It is a matter of how you personally setup your desktop. I have a totally empty one, for example. My (previous) Program menu was arranged into 10 folders. After several years of use, I new where to find any particular program, in its designated folder. The Metro screen does not bother me, visually, but, obviously, to leap from a small folder view to a random icon view of all the executives, is not a "learning" experience, but a task of getting used to a new way of operating. If MS introduce closed folders, within which I can tuck my programs out of sight, then I will feel no difference. fwiw, my son, who has several rows of shortcut icons on his Windows 7 desktop, can not see a great deal of difference. At the moment, my only other complaint, maybe related to the mediocre quality of my computer, is that I find the programs open more quickly from the desktop than from the Metro (by a very significant amount)
 

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Did they actually use it? Or just looked at you showing it?

I'm not surprised they looked at it with a smile since it was their first time to see it, and it always looks cool when it is new and this new Metro looking cool and etc, but I still think that most unskilled users will feel totally lost and will need long help before they can find the most basic things, meaning a big WTF.

I removed Windows 7 and I am only using W8. It took me some days to learn where things are and get used to it. Ignoring Metro is not so difficult and the Start Menu can be survived. I like some new features such as the new taskbar, the new squared windows, and I find it faster and in general than 7. In fact, my laptop was slower on 7 x64 while it runs 8 x64 perfectly well. This means something. It is also cool that it installs very fast and has more startup features such as the easy selection of default system boot, waiting time, etc.

In general it is better than 7, and 7 was very good.

Now, nobody is going to convince me that this Metro thing and the changes in general don't mean a stupid waste of time to do many basic things. I just hate for instance this Charms sidebar and the difficulty to open it, scrolling up and down on empty, launching by mistake many time the full desktop view when I mouse over the lower right corner, for instance, or needing all this process and clicks and waits to go to restart/shut down. Simply absurd and annoying.
 

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WOW -- you got "senior citizens" to sit through eight WEEKS of Win7 training! That is amazing -- since I'm now one of those folks myself and have a hard time envisioning my peers being able to hang-in that long.

You must have covered it in enormous detail to have taken up eight weeks.
 

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Are you sure they were all awake and paying attention?
 

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WOW -- you got "senior citizens" to sit through eight WEEKS of Win7 training! That is amazing -- since I'm now one of those folks myself and have a hard time envisioning my peers being able to hang-in that long.

You must have covered it in enormous detail to have taken up eight weeks.

Everybody brought their own laptop. I showed them an operation and then they had to immediately execute that on their own. With 27 people in the room, that did not always go smoothly. My wife, who assisted me, had to help many people to find their bearings.

At the beginning it took already half an hour to get everybody connected to the router. Then they had to download stuff from my blog and the internet. That was not always smooth either. But at the end everybody said that they learned a lot and are already asking for an encore. Well, that will be in the fall because I am not here during the summer.

I just hate for instance this Charms sidebar and the difficulty to open it

You can use Win+C to get to them.

a random icon view of all the executives
I put mine into groups and named the groups. That makes navigating a lot easier.

What I would really like is when you would be able to customize the tiles. Right now, all the user created tiles look the same and it is more difficult to id what you are looking for. But that should be possible because the tiles that come with the system are customized.
 

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I took a laptop with Windows 8 CP installed with my customized Start Screen, and some friends and fellow coworkers were awed by that and thought it was really cool. They were impressed, mind you, these are average consumers of PC devices as well. I showed a coworker that was considering an ipad, and showed them the Start Screen and told them why a Windows 8 tablet would be better, and they were sold.

On a side note, I took my Windows Phone 7 and put it next to the laptop. The Start Screen tiles on the laptop were red and the background was black, just like on my Windows Phone, and it was the coolest thing EVER. I'm really liking the concept of One OS to Rule Them All....Windows style! Aw yeah! :cool:
 

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I just hate for instance this Charms sidebar and the difficulty to open it

You can use Win+C to get to them.

The sky will fall over my head before I use keyboard commands.

No thanks. That is what the touchpad is for. And it is just annoying and an awful idea.

So many times I open either the charms or the left popups when I try to reach something else.

Incredibly wrong and annoying design and concept.
 

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So many times I open either the charms or the left popups when I try to reach something else.

Incredibly wrong and annoying design and concept.

+1

I understand MS has less-than-average users to make the OS useful for, but this same thing happens to me too. In reality, Charms is useless and should be scrapped altogether. No need for that monstrosity to pop up for any reason at any time.

Does MS have a reason to believe search on Metro, The Control Panel, The Device Manager, classic sharing and Homegroup sharing are all not enough? (rhetorical question)
 

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I took a laptop with Windows 8 CP installed with my customized Start Screen, and some friends and fellow coworkers were awed by that and thought it was really cool. They were impressed, mind you, these are average consumers of PC devices as well. I showed a coworker that was considering an ipad, and showed them the Start Screen and told them why a Windows 8 tablet would be better, and they were sold.

On a side note, I took my Windows Phone 7 and put it next to the laptop. The Start Screen tiles on the laptop were red and the background was black, just like on my Windows Phone, and it was the coolest thing EVER. I'm really liking the concept of One OS to Rule Them All....Windows style! Aw yeah! :cool:

Exactly! This new concept of having all your Op systems/Metro page in sync is just starting to get people's attention.

All a person has to do it to use your Windows live account to sign in, after that all your personal settings and other stuff is copied over to your newly installed Op system on which ever device you are using the minute you install it.

The cloud apparently has some advantages that people aren't aware of yet....
 

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I meet so many people who use computers and all they do is check email, look at Facebook page and maybe download some pictures but ask most of them what browser are they using and there mind goes blank. They are clueless about any other part of there system as long as it works when it is turned on all is well with the world, if it doesn't work they take it to some computer repair shop that sells them more than they bargain for or charge them way more then the problem actually was with said system and they are more than happy to pay the say $50-200 dollars to get there system running again. Granted not all people are like this but there are quit a few out there in Internet land. I personally can't wait for the final version of 8 I love it but I also love using Windows Home Server 2011, and Windows 7 and i Love to have a install of XP or Vista in Vware just to keep up on the older operating systems.
 

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I meet so many people who use computers and all they do is check email, look at Facebook page and maybe download some pictures but ask most of them what browser are they using and there mind goes blank. They are clueless about any other part of there system as long as it works when it is turned on all is well with the world, if it doesn't work they take it to some computer repair shop that sells them more than they bargain for or charge them way more then the problem actually was with said system and they are more than happy to pay the say $50-200 dollars to get there system running again

Those are the people I run into all the time - the clueless types. And I think that is the majority of the PC users.

The other day a lady came up to me in one of my classes claiming that she has used the PC since 20 years. But she had never heard of Disk Management or Device Manager. That was all Chinese to her. She just know her 5 icons to click on and that was all. It is depressing.
 

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WHS, that is why these types of people have people like us that beta test and use Windows forums. haha :)
 

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Wolfgang,
I didn't know you meet my wife. :p

Jim :cool:
 

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Wolfgang,
I didn't know you meet my wife. :p

Jim :cool:
I know what you are talking about. My wife sits in all my classes because she helps me with the setup. And there she is picking up bits and pieces. Maybe you should take up teaching.
 

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I'm waiting on "Windows 8 for Dummies" to show up in the stores. A little education goes a long way. I feel real comfortable using Windows 8 and I think it is a winner. Don't need no stinking Start button. :p

Jim :cool:

Totally agree. I've been using Win 8 for a few days and I really like it. It's different but in a good way, IMO. I've been in the IT/Computer world since I was 16(50 now) and I've used so many different things that this was not a big deal for me to get used to. I remember IBM OS/2 and that was just junk. Yes, Warp was much better but I had to use earlier versions. SO far I have to give Win 8 a thumbs up.:thumbsup:
 

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Wolfgang,
I didn't know you meet my wife. :p

Jim :cool:
I know what you are talking about. My wife sits in all my classes because she helps me with the setup. And there she is picking up bits and pieces. Maybe you should take up teaching.

I use to teach a Unix class when I was with ATT in the late 80's to my fellow employees. Learned a lot myself but forgot most of it now.

Jim :cool:
 

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