I upgraded my three year old laptop to Win 8 (along with a healthy ram upgrade it needed anyway and a hybrid SSD drive) and it's *so* much faster. That said, some things are a definite step back. None of this is a show stopper and I find the speed increase more then worth a few inconveniences here or there.
1. ModernMetro mode apps just don't work with multiple screens. Not only do they take up a screen (ignoring docking) they only work on one screen. Other screens show the desktop view and if you try to use something on another screen (using alt+tab as the mouse won't move otherwise) the system will sometimes boot you out of metro to the desktop often enough to make multitasking frustrating. A shame as they actually improved multi-monitor support in desktop view...
2. Multitasking between metro apps sucks - alt+tab doesn't really cut it if you have more then a couple of things open. The fact that the entire classic desktop view is just one tile on the metro switcher makes it useless if you're using both sorts of app.
3. Lots of stuff works in metro, but only if you know the keyboard shortcuts, of which they added a lot but it's not clear. As an example printing works fine from the metro PDF reader if you press ctrl+p which lets you select print options, but this isn't exactly obvious.
4. Sometimes installers just won't give you shortcut tiles in the start screen if you're a normal user and you've installed something through an UAC prompt as Admin. Possibly not MS's fault, but I never saw this in 7. Creating shortcuts yourself is not user friendly.
5. Most annoyingly for me they crippled the search feature that used to be in the start menu in Vista/7. Running apps or programs just by typing in the start screen works as well as used to. Settings and files are split off into separate tabs needing extra key presses (or remembering the win+f/win+w search shortcuts). I can't find any way of opening a folder now though. I'll eventually get used to it I'm sure but this one annoys me pretty much every day as I just don't see the advantages of the new system.
6. Some gesture implementations on laptop trackpads appear to be maddening. I've only used this on someone else’s laptop as mine doesn't have trackpad gestures but it just seemed too sensitive to me to the point where using the trackpad to actually control the mouse was tricky without accidently activating a gesture. The laptop owner hated it too and we found we had to just uninstall the synaptics driver. Some sensitivity settings and/or an option to turn gestures off would have fixed this (especially as said laptop had a touch screen), but they just didn't have any. Suspect this will be fixed in a service pack or something.
None of this is a disaster and I wouldn't want to put people off the OS as it is faster and the desktop mode does basically mostly work just like a faster 7 with a start screen. But it has it's annoying points nonetheless.
Miscellaneous. Eclectic. Random. Perhaps markedly literate, or at least suffering from the compulsion to read any text that presents itself, including cereal boxes.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-03-21 12:20 am (UTC)1.
ModernMetro mode apps just don't work with multiple screens. Not only do they take up a screen (ignoring docking) they only work on one screen. Other screens show the desktop view and if you try to use something on another screen (using alt+tab as the mouse won't move otherwise) the system will sometimes boot you out of metro to the desktop often enough to make multitasking frustrating. A shame as they actually improved multi-monitor support in desktop view...2. Multitasking between metro apps sucks - alt+tab doesn't really cut it if you have more then a couple of things open. The fact that the entire classic desktop view is just one tile on the metro switcher makes it useless if you're using both sorts of app.
3. Lots of stuff works in metro, but only if you know the keyboard shortcuts, of which they added a lot but it's not clear. As an example printing works fine from the metro PDF reader if you press ctrl+p which lets you select print options, but this isn't exactly obvious.
4. Sometimes installers just won't give you shortcut tiles in the start screen if you're a normal user and you've installed something through an UAC prompt as Admin. Possibly not MS's fault, but I never saw this in 7. Creating shortcuts yourself is not user friendly.
5. Most annoyingly for me they crippled the search feature that used to be in the start menu in Vista/7. Running apps or programs just by typing in the start screen works as well as used to. Settings and files are split off into separate tabs needing extra key presses (or remembering the win+f/win+w search shortcuts). I can't find any way of opening a folder now though. I'll eventually get used to it I'm sure but this one annoys me pretty much every day as I just don't see the advantages of the new system.
6. Some gesture implementations on laptop trackpads appear to be maddening. I've only used this on someone else’s laptop as mine doesn't have trackpad gestures but it just seemed too sensitive to me to the point where using the trackpad to actually control the mouse was tricky without accidently activating a gesture. The laptop owner hated it too and we found we had to just uninstall the synaptics driver. Some sensitivity settings and/or an option to turn gestures off would have fixed this (especially as said laptop had a touch screen), but they just didn't have any. Suspect this will be fixed in a service pack or something.
None of this is a disaster and I wouldn't want to put people off the OS as it is faster and the desktop mode does basically mostly work just like a faster 7 with a start screen. But it has it's annoying points nonetheless.