I think it’s going to be hated on at first as people figure out how to use the thing, but in the end we will get used to it and hopefully Microsoft will make moves to improve it’s intuitiveness.

A lot of people hated the new features in Lion which are an obvious move towards touch and integrating iOS with OS X but now most people have just dealt with it.

I must admit I’m not a massive fan of Windows 8 running on my laptop but I’m sure later this year when I buy some kind of Transformer Prime Windows 8 x86 tablet, I’ll be loving it.

Of course, Microsoft will refuse to allow Chrome (10 times faster than IE8) into the Marketplace.

Another lawsuit war. How great. NOT!

Even though Vista was not a success, it IS a mature and reliable platform now and I cannot bring myself to upgrade it to Win7 even though I bought the upgrade a long time ago.

What picture gymnastics do I have to jump through to get to RUN REGEDIT to scrape the leftover crapware off the Registry left by every “app”, to use the new buzzwords, to defeat its left over spyware, adware and malware?

The main screen needs ONE button on it I don’t see [XP MODE], which will make it a fully functional XP operating system interface with all the exact same quirky stuff in exactly the same quirky spots we all know and love, shutting down all the latest crapware, spyware, adware and malware Windows 8 is surely to be delivered with….NO CLOUD, NO “STORE”, NO MONKEY BUSINESS…..

PS – Please don’t let your iPad friends see how fast DOS copies 8000 MP3 songs off onto your 100GB USB player on a new fast PC or laptop.  “What was that?” is the response I get.

What picture gymnastics do I have to jump through to get to RUN REGEDIT to scrape the leftover crapware off the Registry left by every “app”, to use the new buzzwords, to defeat its left over spyware, adware and malware?

The main screen needs ONE button on it I don’t see [XP MODE], which will make it a fully functional XP operating system interface with all the exact same quirky stuff in exactly the same quirky spots we all know and love, shutting down all the latest crapware, spyware, adware and malware Windows 8 is surely to be delivered with….NO CLOUD, NO “STORE”, NO MONKEY BUSINESS…..

PS – Please don’t let your iPad friends see how fast DOS copies 8000 MP3 songs off onto your 100GB USB player on a new fast PC or laptop.  “What was that?” is the response I get.

Hold right-click from off top and swipe down. This was less than intuitive at first, from the mouse perspective.

And yes, your right that metro ui is going to look weird in an office like environment but then almost everything ‘new’ takes time to get used to. give it a chance, preferably longer then a month and if you still don’t like it….. curse microsoft to your hearts content :)

personally, im looking forward to the change.

It makes your PC look like a Fisher-Price toy computer. It may be OK on a tablet or a phone but not on a work PC.

And this is only the look. The behaviour is an other thing. It seems it will be forced on people. You will have Metro and Desktop MOde completely separated with minimal integration between them. This is a huge problem and it will make your life miserable if you have applications in both GUI (which will be mostly the case for the next 5 years).

KDE is good and, on Linux, you have a big selection of usable desktop environment. I would take Gnome, LXDE or XFCE any day on a Metro desktop any time.

They force touch-oriented features to people who are not interested in it.

For a work environment, the traditional desktop is perfect. Windows 7 is pretty good at that but Linux desktops are close.

Let’s say you want to use the media player and Office at the same time. Media Player will have a Metro interface, Office will stay in Desktop Mode. Since there will be no integration between the two environments, you will need to switch between them whenever you want to change the song played in the background.

Even Ubuntu for Android will be able to run Android apps in windows when in Desktop Mode.

Lucky, I am already a Linux user and my workplace is before the migration to Win7 so I won’t have to suffer Metro for a couple of years.

For a tablet, I can see some potential.  While it is not very intuitive – Metro does look good.  The live tile thing seems like it would really make the device feel ‘personal’.  However for the Windows Phone, the thrill of the metro interface wore off after a couple of days.  I got sick of having to swipe and swipe and swipe to get to what I wanted.  And case in point when I gifted the phone to my mom, she could not figure the thing out.

For the desktop, I have found it to be REALLY not intuitive (complicated even) and completely unnecessary.  Metro + Mouse = Awkward  I can see no advantages for corporations to upgrade.  When I am sitting in front of my computer, I don’t to be looking at a bunch of tiles – live or not.  I want an empty desktop with application buttons off to the side.  Personally, I think Windows 7 is going to become the new XP.  10 different versions of W8 (as rumored now) is also a huge confusing mess.  People and companies are getting used to ‘simplicity’ and they are quite liking it.  Expecting customers to wade through so many options (that even IT people sometimes can’t tell a difference in) might be too much to ask these days. 

Something I have not heard much discussion about (but I think is really important) is HOW IS WINDOWS 8 GOING TO PERFORM WITH A LAYER OF VIRUS PROTECTION?

With all of this said, my prediction is that W8 will be an initial hit, but it will quickly shift to technical issues.  It is in Microsoft’s DNA to try to be everything and to put the maximum number of features into products – regardless whether they work well or not. In short, they cannot execute well. Windows 7 was a success because they fought their inner demons and ditched features. This is going to be another Vista – however Windows 9 will probably be great.

For a tablet, I can see some potential.  While it is not very intuitive – Metro does look good.  The live tile thing seems like it would really make the device feel ‘personal’.  However for the Windows Phone, the thrill of the metro interface wore off after a couple of days.  I got sick of having to swipe and swipe and swipe to get to what I wanted.  And case in point when I gifted the phone to my mom, she could not figure the thing out.

For the desktop, I have found it to be REALLY not intuitive (complicated even) and completely unnecessary.  Metro + Mouse = Awkward  I can see no advantages for corporations to upgrade.  When I am sitting in front of my computer, I don’t to be looking at a bunch of tiles – live or not.  I want an empty desktop with application buttons off to the side.  Personally, I think Windows 7 is going to become the new XP.  10 different versions of W8 (as rumored now) is also a huge confusing mess.  People and companies are getting used to ‘simplicity’ and they are quite liking it.  Expecting customers to wade through so many options (that even IT people sometimes can’t tell a difference in) might be too much to ask these days. 

Something I have not heard much discussion about (but I think is really important) is HOW IS WINDOWS 8 GOING TO PERFORM WITH A LAYER OF VIRUS PROTECTION?

With all of this said, my prediction is that W8 will be an initial hit, but it will quickly shift to technical issues.  It is in Microsoft’s DNA to try to be everything and to put the maximum number of features into products – regardless whether they work well or not. In short, they cannot execute well. Windows 7 was a success because they fought their inner demons and ditched features. This is going to be another Vista – however Windows 9 will probably be great.

The new OS takes you to sit and play with it for a while to find out the gestures but now I’m really liking it, I just need to consider a higher resolution netbook as text is a bit small.

Right click on the top of the screen and a new bar will appear along the bottom with the options for choosing email account.

No, more like pitying them.

Do you want the best desktop experience NOW and FOR FREE?
Try Linux/KDE! By far the most advanced GUI. You can have Windows 8 mode, you can have multiple workspaces each empowered with different widgets and kind of wallpapers, you can have tabbed apps inside other apps, you can have semantic functionality, the best file managers and infinite and easy customization among others…
Now if all these were provided by Microsoft, our beloved journalist would claim that a new desktop revolution is under way!

And now you’ll all be dropped into the deep end…

Plus it looks easy to use, and if it runs fast on modest hardware (like I’m hearing it does) Windows 8 really may be a winner. I’m fairly excited to try it out.

But I gave this W8 consumer preview a spin on my netbook (1.6GHz Atom, 2GB RAM, Intel X-25V 40GB SSD, Intel GFX). Couldn’t get the Metro interface running in the beginning due to my screen resolution (1024 x 600) not being supported, but managed to download an Intel driver that got it working.

Seems like a cross between WinPhone 7/7.5 and Gnome3. Not exactly my thing, but I must admit it looks very pretty. Speed-wise, it’s definitely fast. Not quite ArchLinux or FreeBSD fast, but much faster than the two other versions of Windows I’ve tried on this netbook, XP and 7, and is probably nippier than some of the fatter Linux distros as well (Ubuntu, Mint..etc).

Still early days, but I can see a lot of regular people liking Win8. Upgrading from Win7 would seem a no-brainer (as long as your current applications all work properly) since Win8 should run faster on the same hardware.

We all understand the difference.  Why should Windows suddenly try to become “hip” and try to fit in with the cool kids?

Maybe Windows *8* is unnecessary.

If it’s a simple UI enhancement, then it seems more like an App. Maybe we could choose to download it or not?