Friday, July 13, 2012

Why I'm not writing this on Windows 8

After spending three hours downloading, 45 minutes burning, and an hour installing Windows 8 - I think I understand what Microsoft is trying to do.  Make the OS easier to use, will reducing the usability as a design choice.  I'll go out on a limb and say, don't bother reviewing Windows 8.  Take the opportunity to learn from my experience, and avoid it as long as you can.  Microsoft will tweak this sucker 100 times before you'll want to form an opinion of it.

1.  Microsoft's high stakes bet here is that they will make billion when everyone concerges on the same interface across all of their devices, their ecosystem is so large, if they can permanently capture users as Google, Amazon and Apple have done, they will rule the world...  If they fail, the OSX exodus will gain momentum and Windows 8 becomes the newest Vista, and operating system discussed often but seldom seen.

2.  It's fast, it's clean, and great for consuming light online content, social interactions and media.  Driver support is great, atitech.com listed Windows 8 is the manual driver selection and my HD6540 had a driver.  It's going to be a fine operating system, no doubts there.  But will you MMC work?  Will you find a command line?  Is this the OS to install all the tools you need to do your job?  Probably not for years.

3.  It's confusing, frustrating, non-intuitive, dumbed-down, shortcut-key driven, bastardized Microsoft Office Ribbon theme soup from hell!!!  I'm not kidding, review and analyze it if you must, but I suggest you save yourself the 5 hours I wasted, let it sit for a year then check it out.

When you find yourself spending 15 seconds to turn off the computer, or looking for a link to a program you want to use frequently, or trying to minimized the running program in order to check you mail - you realize that Windows 8 changes these common tasks dramatically, usability it actually reduced on purpose!  Think about that for a second.  It's either brilliant or intuitively awful as many IT vets will agree, the verdict is still out.  Stay away from this one, Windows 8 should not be on your to do list for a long time.