MS Windows 8 Consumer Beta

[Matt_H]

I installed it under VM Fusion on my Mac, and it's absolutely awful as a desktop OS. I had to install mouse drivers. Mouse drivers! PCs haven't had to deal with that since early DOS. And the driver package left 5 new icons on my metro panel. Such clutter! And if I remove them, the file system is so masked that I don't know where I'd find them if I needed access to them at some future point.  

Also like DOS, there's no multitasking. At least, it's almost impossible to tell from the metro interface what's running. I find navigating within metro programs to be extremely difficult as well. I'll give this another few hours of experimentation, then it's going in the proverbial trash.

On the plus side, it's making me use my Amiga more!

[Matt_H]

Anyway, remember the Metro front-end is optional and not really recommended for a desktop, unless you have a nifty touch-screen. The standard desktop is much more like Win 7 and pretty acceptable.

Mike.

Metro is on by default, and I haven't figured out how to get rid of it yet. And as Triptaka. Notes, the start menu is gone. Not sure if turning off metro will bring it back. Do I have to manually navigate to Program Files to launch things?

OSNews calls these trends the War on General Purpose Computing. Windows is turning itself into a digital toy like the iPad. I wonder if this will sink them in the business market?

[Matt_H]

@ commodorejohn

My company is only just now switching to 7. My machine, which I got about 18 months ago, shipped with 7 and IT removed it and put on XP. There is absolutely no way I can do what I need to do with 8.

Good old trends! Just be because someone is doing something doesn't mean that everyone should. Lots of follow the leader in computing these days.