Windows 8 Might Suck

[Duce]

You will be able to disable Metro entirely.  Anything else would be suicide in the enterprise market.

That also brings up a very valid point, though.  Why in hell should I pay the cash to upgrade to Windows 8 if I have zero interest in running anything Metro?  With the Metro crap disabled, it's essentially Win 7 visually.

The answer to that is - I won't.  I have no reason to upgrade to Windows 8 on my desktops, I find Metro atrocious for desktop use, and I wouldn't touch a Windows 8 tablet with a 10 foot pole.  The tablet market is awash with options, and Win8, especially the WoA ones that will be showing up are the least attractive out of all of them.

For all that can be said against the ipad and the locked down nature, I find my ipad absolutely indispensable and it for the most part has replaced my work laptop.  If the one specialized program I require on my Windows powered laptop was ever ported to iOS, I'd likely never use my laptop again.

[commodorejohn]

That also brings up a very valid point, though.  Why in hell should I pay the cash to upgrade to Windows 8 if I have zero interest in running anything Metro?  With the Metro crap disabled, it's essentially Win 7 visually.

The answer to that is - I won't.  I have no reason to upgrade to Windows 8 on my desktops, I find Metro atrocious for desktop use, and I wouldn't touch a Windows 8 tablet with a 10 foot pole.  The tablet market is awash with options, and Win8, especially the WoA ones that will be showing up are the least attractive out of all of them.

In fairness, reports are that Win8's internals have undergone a significant refactoring and performance is noticeably better. That would be nice to have, if only the Metro thing weren't going to be such a damn millstone around the neck...

[Argo]

On a positive note, Microsoft can't possibly do worse than what's going on in Linux land as far as desktop environments go.

The stuff major distros are pushing out is bizarre. I setup Fedora 16 on a machine about a week ago. Out of the box the "desktop" has no icons. It literally does nothing. Minimize and maximize buttons are gone from all windows in all applications and there is no analog of the "dock" or "task bar". I feel that UI designers have forgotten that many of use actually use computers to do real work.

Dude, that sounds like a UI that is not a UI. Take about minimal!
Might as well dump you at a command prompt like proper Unix!:lol:

[Argo]

Yeah almost there, but that's 2 devices...

Nope, exactly what you said we would have in 10 years. Just not 25". Phone goes into tablet, you have a tablet. Tablet into keyboard dock, you have a netbook/notebook. All run by the phone. If Asus is smart they will partner or just produce a TV that can dock the phone and get in to the Roku marketspace.
I did see a video form CES this year where the phone docking setup was hooked up to a 42" TV.
Might be ubiquitous tech in 10 or less years. It starts here.

[Yasu]

Might?!?!?!

Yeah, I thought it was a given

I consider any Windows from XP and up as reasonably stable (but man do they have huge demands on your hardware!), but they are only good for using other programs. The OS in itself is just about much fun to use as watching bread go stale.

[Nostalgiac]

more or less same reaction here, so this might be boring... Windows 7 was by far the best Windows version yet. Windows 8 on a phone/tablet might be nice.. but on my desktop ? full-screen apps ? metro-start-menu (for lack of a better word) ... um.. no thanks

Tom UK