Yeah, they fixed the scrolling problem with the Start screen. However scrolling is still a PITA inside the Metro apps like Vimeo. Was hoping it was going to be some sort of API fix that would also apply to all the apps, but doesn't seem to be the case.

Agreed, but thankfully the up/down mouse wheel translates to left/right scroll on the page.


Out of curiosity, why are you hiding the SSID on your network?

 

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I installed it on my laptop using the win7->win8 upgrade option. It did not download many thing, but took forever and a day to install.. seriously, probably over 1 hour in total.. maybe 1.5 hrs. Rebooted about 5 times.

All this installation didn't leave me much time to play with it last night, but I'll use it as primary laptop OS for a while and write more once I have a good grasp. Superficial impressions here, deep thoughts later.

Anyway, once done I finally got in and was greeted with the Metro start menu. I got out of it, and lo and behold, the UI behind it is basically Win7 with sharper edges. Feels very weird and disjointed - the 2 interfaces have almost nothing in common. It is like the Metro is a patch they dragged over and used in only 1 instance in the whole OS.
You get thrown from a 2D, solid color, big block, simple Metro UI to a desktop with "fancy", shimmery, small-sized taskbar? Whaaat?
Start menu app icons are in metro style, but desktop icons, Taskbar icons are not, windows and windows drop-down menus are not....
They need to either re-vamp ALL windows and UI elements across the whole OS to have the solid color background and no borders like the blocks in the Metro UI, or change Metro to match the rest of the windows.

The inconsistency gave me a very sloppy, unprofessional feeling - kind of like early android UI - different elements have different styles. The "regular" windows UI was changed, but so little as to be negligible. It's like 2 teams worked on it and were not talking to each other but from afar, through fog, with hand gestures. Not good.

After I got to the desktop, I tried using the search tool to find Windows Update an some other programs.. well that part was sucky too - it searches everywhere but displays results in buckets. The default bucket is Apps, so of course Win Update was not there. I had to select the settings (i think) bucket to see it. I thought they said Metro UI will result in LESS clicks than before, what happened to that? Why does it not display them all on once screen?
It can certainly fit all results... if they have to be separated separate them by some line saying something like:

Apps-----------
<list of results>

Settings-------
<list of results>

, etc.

Don't make me click unnecessarily.

I still need to install a bunch of apps and see how easy it will be to find and launch them using the Metro start menu, but from what I saw I will need to do a lot more scrolling than in Win 7.

Starting Windows Explorer form the Metro ribbon icon was much slower than in Win 7. a couple of time it did not even start - I click on it, Metro UI goes away, and all I get is desktop - no Win Explorer. Is it such a heavy program to start? Blah.


When it started, another unpleasant surprise - Windows Explorer still defaults to the silly Libraries - there should be some way to let me choose where I want my Win Explorer to start without fiddling with registry and whatnot. Something like a first time use question, or an easily reachable option in the drop down menu or why not a right-click menu option "from now on start here when launched"?

Come on MS - get things right! People have been bitching about this since day 1 of Vista, websites have tutorials how to circumvent the default setting. A hint for you - when people want something to a point where it gets out of forum discussions and websites write tutorials about it - turn it into an official feature/option for the next version of your OS.


There are some good things too. For example, I do like the Windows button launching the metro ribbon no matter where you are.

I do like the copy/move windows now - the graphs, pause option and all copy windows being combined is long overdue. Will need to test that a bit more before I can say it works fine though.


A question for you guys: Can we make the metro ribbon taller so it fits more blocks on one screen?

 

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While some of the things take getting used to, and I get that, I find myself unable to say a single good thing about Windows 8 so far, other than I had fun getting it running on ESXi5.

The MetroUI will eventually be fine, I'm sure, and the uniformity across all of Microsoft's devices will improve user experience overall, especially for non-techs. The "hot corners" were annoying as heck in an RDC window, which made it equally annoying to access simple things.

Are we getting any underlining improvements that I can't see? I haven't really done my homework for sure, but based on the UI alone, I'm not compelled, yet.

 

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I'm digging Windows 8 SERVER though! Very noticeable improvements right off the bat... although MetroUI is awkward with a server, haha.

 

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I downloaded the server preview, but haven't installed it yet. I'm really surprised to hear Metro UI is enabled by default on the server edition though, Microsoft usually disables consumer UI's on server editions.

I had been playing around with Windows 8 on a spare laptop and easy to freak out over the Metro UI, but hard to really know how I could deal with it day to day in real world use. So I took the plunge, backed up my main computer's C drive and upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 8.

Only had it a few hours so far.

I have all my daily apps already pinned to my Task bar, so I really don't need to flip back and forth to the Metro Start screen much. And I guess it hasn't been all that bad. The Task bar is also nice in that it extends to both monitors and the icons for apps will switch over to the other bar if you move the window to the other screen.

The Windows Store only has 78 apps. To me that's a surprisingly small number since the Developer Preview came out 5 months ago. Was hoping for a few more apps. Also seems Metro apps don't scale up well on my 30 inch monitor at all. Most apps only use about a third of my screen space and some apps use the top third of the screen, some use the middle third, and others use the bottom third. Along with that some apps I can scroll horizontally with the mouse wheel, others won't work with the mouse wheel but work with the left/right wheel tilt, and yet others won't scroll with the mouse at all, I'll have to use arrow keys on the keyboard or drag the scroll bar.

I wish the x86 desktop app icons that are pinned to the Start screen could look more Metro like. They stick out, have tiny icons compared to the rest and have their app names above the icons, instead of under the icons like the rest of the apps. And there are a number of other things Microsoft should do to help the Metro and Desktop UI's blend together a bit more. And as I mentioned before, would love to be able to set a Start screen wallpaper that matches my desktop.


Regarding my desktop applications, I've run into two problems so far...

NewsBin is a newsgroup reader app I use. There are filters that use drop down menus. When I click a dropdown menu in this app, I can't select any items in the menu, nothing happens. I turned on Windows 7 and the Vista compatibility, neither helped.

ZoomPlayer is a video player app. Running the Install Center to update codecs freezes up.

Argh! The inconsistency navigating in Metro apps is really getting annoying. Hope Microsoft can solve that.


For some reason I don't have the Metro version of IE when I did the upgrade from Windows 7. I just have the desktop version. It's not under all apps or anywhere I can find. Weird.


Another weird thing is my laptop will not go to sleep. Sleep is set to 30 minutes on AC power, but it's been well over an hour and it's still awake. Hmm.


I'm sure this is well documented somewhere I haven't read, but I just figured out how to close a Metro app. Go to the very top middle of the screen, click and drag down to the bottom of the screen, the app is now closed. And by the way dragging to the left or right sides will put the app into a side pane if you like.

I only lasted a day using Windows 8 Consumer Preview as my primary OS. The UI just feels to half-ass, couldn't stand it. Steve Ballmer might accomplish what Steve Jobs never could, that is making me buy a Mac.

I'll switch to linux before I buy a mac.