I've been playing around with it a bit on a partition. Not particularly impressed...Metro apps are practically useless since it's impossible to multitask with them, and the start screen is needlessly convoluted. Stuff is hidden in really odd places. On the positive side, it's ridiculously fast!
I loved it, as mentioned it was basically Win 7 just with some nice UI improvements (Including loading screens, task manager, etc.). And yeah it was pretty quick. I don't think the metro screen was hard to navigate or anything, just confusing at first. Once I got used to it I found it better than the start menu.
I like 7's UI better, haha. I miss Aero - Metro is just way too minimalistic for my tastes. And there's just way too much of a disconnect between the start screen/apps and the desktop.
My manager has it on his new computer and showed us on lunch once. I was not a fan. It looks so strange and purposefully "innovative". I just can't get into it when it feels so forced. I haven't heard a thing about it, positive or negative, though.
My sister has it installed on her new computer because she was silly enough not to evolve with the rest of the family and buy a MacBook. She's slowly adjusting to it but she says every day that she wishes she bought a laptop that came with Windows 7 instead. From what I've seen, the whole thing just reeks of trying too hard and I honestly can't fathom what they were thinking. Change should be evolutionary, not revolutionary. That's the first thing they taught me in business school. Seems people forget more the higher up they go :P
Well, aside from the fact that Win8 Metro is just an evolved set of principles they've been using since Microsoft Encarta 95, I'd imagine they just wanted to get something out that tablets could use. Apple already had iOS and Google had Android, so combining a mobile (Tablet) and desktop OS must have seemed like a good move (I personally think it was). Other tablet OS seem to be pretty limited when it comes to expandability (I can't even use a USB on an iPad?). Making the transition from Windows 7 to a tablet using Windows 8 seems like a very simple thing to do, when comparing it to others. They didn't really revolutionize anything with it, tiled design interfaces were around since before that, and again the Metro design language has been in use for years. Honestly had they not added in the metro side of things to Win8 and released it on tablets I can imagine there would be much worse feedback for it. Win8 was built mainly for touchscreen, so really it shouldn't be compared to their desktop only OS. It's like comparing Android to Linux, in which case THAT would be trying to revolutionize. Just my opinion, but I really feel a line should be drawn when it comes to comparing apples to oranges. Use it on a tablet (Or touchscreen desktop) before saying it's a horrible OS. xP Even still I prefer it on a desktop over Win7 lol.
Wait, what? Yeah, it'd be ridiculous to compare Linux and Android. Android was never made for computers so they have completely different markets. But comparing Windows 7 to Windows 8? Yeah, Win8 is for phones/tablets as well but if it is also their main OS for the computer market, comparisons are fair game. Win8 could perform amazingly on a tablet/phone--I don't know, I don't have one--but that doesn't excuse poor performance or design choices on the computer. I know they wanted to consolidate their market and keep the OS as one big thing but if the only way to justify some of the design/implementation choices of the OS is to excuse it by "oh, well, it was meant for another kind of device", then it's not a very good OS. I feel like you're coming at this from the wrong angle (or at least a completely different angle from what's expected in the PC gaming forum :P) because you're excusing any bad design choice based on the fact that it works really well on tablets. And that's fine, but if it doesn't work equally well on a traditional computer, they should have just kept a separate varation of the OS for tablets and left it at that, instead of making the same one for both. Say what you will but the Metro-or-whatever-they're-calling-it-now style was obviously designed for tablets/phone and it just doesn't have the same charm, aesthetic, or functionality on a phone and I think it's going to suffer for that.
I just think it's holding them to really high standards to expect perfection in their (Or anyone elses) first shot at combining a desktop and mobile OS. Was just mainly trying to point out that they aren't revolutionizing, just taking what was already there and "evolving" it. Sure, I hadn't considered the section I was in. xD But I don't think I'm excusing "bad" design choices, as I don't personally think they're bad. I think they're optimized for mobiles, but work just fine on desktops (I haven't noticed any loss in usability). I personally would have loved to see Win Mobile just get improved to a full OS (Like Android), but only time will tell if combined systems are the future.
My friend got it as soon as he could, and I have to say it looked pretty cool. At least, his set up was pretty cool- mind you, he has a touch-screen laptop (which was just a gimmick of the laptop, a feature he didn't use or necessarily like), but it works wonders with Windows 8. To be honest I didn't see enough about what didn't work/what was completely different between 7 and 8, so my judgement is that I'd get 8 if I had a touchscreen laptop, not otherwise :P
