I have just been looking at some of the pre-views and articles on the web.
 
Looking at most of what I found you could be forgiven for thinking the desktop is not there and all people want to do on a computer is use social media. In addition to music I use computers extensively at work for both technical and office type applications and cannot think of any situation where I would find Metro better on a desktop or laptop. Tablets are a different thing and of course need touch screen control.
 
Having used touch screens on technical equipment I always regarded them inferior to good old buttons and keypads and assumed primary driving force as being miniaturization and cost reduction. I have resisted the touch screen craze, my iPod is the classic model and my Nokia phone has a QWERTY key pad, real buttons and bigger than those on a Blackberry which serves my needs nicely.

The 'classic' desktop is not going anywhere its going to be with us for a long time.

If you dislike the metro interface you don't have to use it; just think of it as a visual start menu. You can remove all metro apps from it and just add normal desktop app icons. Searching for apps is faster and better than using the start menu; press your windows key and start typing and it will dynamically start finding what you are after.

Process of getting to the desktop from boot.

     Login -> Press the desktop tile...

Tablets and the metro interface = the future of general purpose computing (along with iOS, Android). With MS/W8 you get the best of both worlds. Dock your tablet and you get the power of a full desktop, undock it and you have a killer tablet. No one is saying that complex apps are going to be immediately touch friendly, its going to require a whole new paradigm of UI and clever thinking. Also this is metro v1.0 the very first interation there is still a long way to go. 

I've been running RTM since it was uploaded to MSDN and I'm developer when I have the 'classic' desktop open and am working I rarely ever see metro.

We are a MS partner as well and I installed Win8 the same day it was released on MSDN. Sadly the Roland Quad Capture doesnt work at all under Win8 at the moment. Not using compability modes or anything. So I reverted back to Win7.

/M

I can look past the UI as long as performance is there.

It's not even about being touch friendly, I don't care how much they optimize it, nobody is going to sit all day at their PC waving their arms in the air using a touchscreen on a desktop PC, it's daft to even show the metro UI on a desktop PC, just detect if it's installed on a tablet or stationary and disable metro if it's the latter.

Same with touchscreen TVs, it's laughable. Yeah sure, I'm going to get up off the couch every time I want to change channels by touching my screen.

Touch UIs belongs on tablets and phones and something like MS Surface, not on a desktop.

Does it seriously not multitask?

A300 Pro drivers have issues being picked up on Windows 8, I tweaked the .ini file so it was recognised and it installs ok.

Can't you just turn it off and be done with the touch screen and work in the time honoured way?

I agree with whoever said this looks like the Microsoft every-alternate-release-is-a-dog curse again. I'm giving this a complete steer for the time being, not really interested in it at all. Performance enhancements are all well and good, but I never get anywhere near maxed out on my current system anyway, so it's not a pressing concern. And I can't really see what else it offers for desktop use.

mattox82


The 'classic' desktop is not going anywhere its going to be with us for a long time.

If you dislike the metro interface you don't have to use it; just think of it as a visual start menu. You can remove all metro apps from it and just add normal desktop app icons. Searching for apps is faster and better than using the start menu; press your windows key and start typing and it will dynamically start finding what you are after.

Process of getting to the desktop from boot.

     Login -> Press the desktop tile...

Tablets and the metro interface = the future of general purpose computing (along with iOS, Android). With MS/W8 you get the best of both worlds. Dock your tablet and you get the power of a full desktop, undock it and you have a killer tablet. No one is saying that complex apps are going to be immediately touch friendly, its going to require a whole new paradigm of UI and clever thinking. Also this is metro v1.0 the very first interation there is still a long way to go. 

I've been running RTM since it was uploaded to MSDN and I'm developer when I have the 'classic' desktop open and am working I rarely ever see metro.

+1. Yes you can treat the metro interface as a different representation of the start menu. In fact there are some new extensions already available that allow you to use a classic start menu if you so desire. I think its unfortunate that they baked metro in without an easy way to change the workflow to favor desktop vs metro. I think of metro as a different view of the desktop which is more suitable to touch interfaces - that part is good but it should have been optional.
I'm running Win8 on a touch enabled ultrabook currently and have kind of gotten used to metro for some things but thats primarily because its easy to swype to it using the touchscreen. On a desktop it gets annoying with all the mousing.


The performance gains are nice though. I don't really care one way or another about the OS's GUI. Its not like I'm staring at Windows itself all day. I just want it it to get out of my way. 

Beepster


Well that's good to hear but what about that horrid UI? Did you switch it to the "classic" view or whatever it's called? If Win8 has an option to switch to a Win7 style interface then I'll take a look at it. The weird default set up looks unusable to me. I'm old and dumb and easily confused. Extra performance would possibly entice me away from my beloved Win7 though.

It's really not that bad. I think the UI in Sonar X1 was more of a learning curve than WIN8 was. I actually prefer the tiles to having a bunch of clutter on my desktop. I think the simplicity and clean look of all of the new windows stuff looks so much better than iOS ever has..