I installed Win8 last night on an old PC (Core 2 Duo 2.5GHz, 4GB RAM) with mouse and keyboard. I'm an OS X user and hate Windows with a passion, but I honestly, really wanted to enjoy Windows 8 and wanted it to be good (not that I would ever use it; but it would stop OS X from going more mainstream which is a good thing cause Apple can still "innovate" if not 95% of PCs are running Lion).
It was bad. So bad I can't articulate its dreadfulness...
Animations were jumpy, to open an app that's not in the "start screen" you have to right click and press some button to go to another screen, to switch apps you have to hover your mouse on top-left corner and wait 400ms for the list of open apps, there's no way to "search" for apps.
If you're in the (classic) desktop mode, you have to click on bottom-left to go back to start screen, then right click on the screen and click on "more" and manually select the app you want to open.
It took me 3 minutes to find a way to turn off the damn thing (you must hover on top-right, wait for a kinda contextual menu, go to "Settings -> Power -> Turn Off".
I played an AVI movie, and the default player (I don't know what it was, but didn't look like Windows Media Player) was sooo bad it's not even funny. Whenever you move the mouse, on-screen controls appear and you have to right click two times to get rid of them, and I think there were no volume controls either. And by on-screen controls, I mean on-screen, in the sense that it dims your movie, places a gigantic status bar and some buttons in the center of the screen, and doesn't respond to keyboard commands.
The PowerShell is a joke. I accidentally right clicked on it and for exactly 2 minutes, it was displaying errors. Even simple commands like "ls" were slow (like you're using telnet on a dial-up modem).
Internet Explorer was very nice.
The Finder (don't remember what it's called on Windows) was much better, but that Microsoft Office 2007-like bar on top was a little buggy and confusing (You click on items to open it, but if you want to close it, you can't click on the same items again. You have to click on a button that's appeared in the right side).
I'm an Apple fan, but I can assure you, I really, really did want Win 8 to be good, even though I would never use it. But it was worse than what I expected, and now I'm certain that it'll be worse than Vista for MS. After all, when someone like me (who was an advanced Windows user up until 4-5 years ago, and is very comfortable with computers) was confused by the changes and the stupid UI (with many mistakes is usability), how would average users react to it?
The choppy animations can be due to your GPU (intel?) or driver. FWIW I do not experience choppiness with the Release Preview + Intel HD3000 (MBA 2011).
To open an app that is not in the start screen, type its name. This also searches for apps.
Switching apps can be done with Win-tab or Alt-tab
Use the winkey to go to the startscreen.
Winkey+I = Settings
There are a lot of other shortcuts.
PowerShell 3 (ISE and normal command window) are pretty quick for me. What errors did you get?
Agree with you on the default video player. These apps still need a lot of work. Media Player is still there. VLC and XBMC are just a download away.
Thanks for your response. As I'm a Mac user, I'd completely forgotten about the WinKey. And now that I think about it, I guess it was silly of me not to try alt,win-tab.
The jumpiness I was mentioning is hard to explain. But it's not my graphics card, I'm sure. Most animations are just fine, but when you 'snap' an app from the top and drag it to the middle, there's an odd jumpiness in the way the window scales up. In 150ms, it goes from 20% to 50%, then instantly (less than 10ms) scales to 90% and then it takes another 100ms to fill the screen. It's just not natural IMO.
But, still, I guess most (naive) Windows users aren't familiar with WinKey and alt,win-tab and must be "educated" beforehand, and that could be tough for Microsoft to do adequately, and it could lose them significant market share. Win8 on a tablet is of course completely a different situation and could be nice and pleasant.
With your shortcuts, I think I can manage to use Win8 (for the very limited tasks that I need it, a few times a week) after all. Thanks a lot!
It was bad. So bad I can't articulate its dreadfulness...
Animations were jumpy, to open an app that's not in the "start screen" you have to right click and press some button to go to another screen, to switch apps you have to hover your mouse on top-left corner and wait 400ms for the list of open apps, there's no way to "search" for apps.
If you're in the (classic) desktop mode, you have to click on bottom-left to go back to start screen, then right click on the screen and click on "more" and manually select the app you want to open.
It took me 3 minutes to find a way to turn off the damn thing (you must hover on top-right, wait for a kinda contextual menu, go to "Settings -> Power -> Turn Off".
I played an AVI movie, and the default player (I don't know what it was, but didn't look like Windows Media Player) was sooo bad it's not even funny. Whenever you move the mouse, on-screen controls appear and you have to right click two times to get rid of them, and I think there were no volume controls either. And by on-screen controls, I mean on-screen, in the sense that it dims your movie, places a gigantic status bar and some buttons in the center of the screen, and doesn't respond to keyboard commands.
The PowerShell is a joke. I accidentally right clicked on it and for exactly 2 minutes, it was displaying errors. Even simple commands like "ls" were slow (like you're using telnet on a dial-up modem).
Internet Explorer was very nice.
The Finder (don't remember what it's called on Windows) was much better, but that Microsoft Office 2007-like bar on top was a little buggy and confusing (You click on items to open it, but if you want to close it, you can't click on the same items again. You have to click on a button that's appeared in the right side).
I'm an Apple fan, but I can assure you, I really, really did want Win 8 to be good, even though I would never use it. But it was worse than what I expected, and now I'm certain that it'll be worse than Vista for MS. After all, when someone like me (who was an advanced Windows user up until 4-5 years ago, and is very comfortable with computers) was confused by the changes and the stupid UI (with many mistakes is usability), how would average users react to it?