Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Even Windows 8 early adopters prefer Windows 7 by two to one

zdnet.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 53 posts

Re: Even Windows 8 early adopters prefer Windows 7 by two to one

#41

Post by cryptoz »

cube13 wrote: post #28
enraged_camel wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows 7 had the perfect balance. It made significant improvements in many areas that XP was insufficient at and Vista sucked at, while keeping the fundamentals the same. Windows 8 though... I haven't used it myself, but from what I'm hearing, it sounds like it's slated to be a bigger disaster than Vista.

I think the jury's out on that. Vista was a disaster because of MS' focus on security. UAC is a usability disaster, both because it's not clear exactly when it is triggered, and the behavior of the system when it is triggered(blanking out the screen then the dialog, etc.). Also, the driver signing meant that a lot of suppliers weren't able to get drivers out quickly enough. Plus, Vista was a pretty huge system hog, a…

> blanking out the screen then the dialog

That was a much bigger issue than people give it credit for, especially since Vista shipped on a number of underpowered systems. My first encounter with UAC scared the living daylights out of me: I had just bought a new laptop. A few minutes in to setting things up, my screen turned off. For about a minute. Maybe two minutes. I was freaking out. Eventually it came back with a dialog asking if I would give permission to move a file.

Disaster.

Re: Even Windows 8 early adopters prefer Windows 7 by two to one

#42

Post by taude »

pragmatic wrote: post #10

While I happen to agree...a poll on an intranet forum is less than scientific. Also, I don't think Windows 8 is going to work in a corporate environment. The training, etc is just going to be too costly. Windows 7 is the next Windows XP, and that's a compliment to Windows 7. Underneath the UI cruft of Windows 8 is a great, solid desktop just waiting to get out.

I agree on on the corporate envirnoment. I wonder if MSFT is even expecting Win8 to penetrate that market. I welcome them taking the big changes and moving forward with Win8. I'll have to wait and see how the hybrid tablet thing works out, but i'm going to give it a go.

Re: Even Windows 8 early adopters prefer Windows 7 by two to one

#43

Post by Encosia »

jtreminio wrote: post #25

What I really want is to make my Win7 install look like Win8. Not the touchscreen-friendly big buttons, but the flat color style, ala outlook.com Does anyone have any pointers on this?

Install Windows 8 and stay in desktop mode. It's faster and has nice improvements to things like task manager, file copies, etc. There's no need to spend significant time in the "metro" part of Windows 8 if you don't want to.

Re: Even Windows 8 early adopters prefer Windows 7 by two to one

#44

Post by [deleted] »

pixie_ wrote: post #32
lini wrote: post #18

I have been using Win8 as a main OS for the past 4 months. I can't seem to find anything I need that was there in Win7 and missing in the new version. I love the new keyboard shortcuts (esp. Win+X, A). Metro is by no means a requirement - the old desktop is still there and all programs (even games) run the same. I guess it's just easier to bash MS than to really see that Win8 is not just Metro/Modern, at least on the…

How do you open an application quickly? For instance, in windows 7 I click start, start typing the name of the app I want, press return, and it opens. I thought the start menu in Windows 8 loaded the Metro UI. How do I use that to launch my app quickly? All the time it takes for the full screen metro UI to animate into and out of view, is time I could be searching for something.

[deleted]

Re: Even Windows 8 early adopters prefer Windows 7 by two to one

#45

Post by IanDrake »

nahname wrote: post #9

Says a group of people, 20% of which, are on a 12 year old operating system. Is the problem that Windows 8 sucks or that these users are extremely adverse to change?

I thought the same thing. If 20% of the group polled likes XP over Windows 7, you have to wonder who is in this poll.

I bet most of the people in it haven't tried Windows 8, since at least 20% of the people haven't even tried Windows 7...I know that because no one (in their right mind) honestly likes Windows XP over Windows 7.

The other problem is you have no idea what hardware they're trying this on. Windows 8 will make a lot more sense when you run it with new IO devices that support Win 8 gestures.

The writers at ZDNet just love to hate on MS.

Re: Even Windows 8 early adopters prefer Windows 7 by two to one

#46

Post by vaultboy21 »

pixie_ wrote: post #32
lini wrote: post #18

I have been using Win8 as a main OS for the past 4 months. I can't seem to find anything I need that was there in Win7 and missing in the new version. I love the new keyboard shortcuts (esp. Win+X, A). Metro is by no means a requirement - the old desktop is still there and all programs (even games) run the same. I guess it's just easier to bash MS than to really see that Win8 is not just Metro/Modern, at least on the…

How do you open an application quickly? For instance, in windows 7 I click start, start typing the name of the app I want, press return, and it opens. I thought the start menu in Windows 8 loaded the Metro UI. How do I use that to launch my app quickly? All the time it takes for the full screen metro UI to animate into and out of view, is time I could be searching for something.

you can essentially do just that, and the process is exactly the same:

(1) mouse-over to the bottom left of the taskbar (same place as before) and in place of a fixed icon (start ‘orb’) a small image of your start screen will pop-up which you can click to open the start screen

(2) from there just start typing (as before) and it will automatically change the layout showing you results for apps. by default the first app in results is selected so you can just press enter to launch it or navigate to others via keyboard/mouse (same as before). that’s it.

you can, of course, still just hit the windows keyboard button and start typing as well which i find faster. there are also now additional keyboard shortcuts that let you quickly search for specific items (win + q/f/w allow you to narrow search between apps/files/settings respectively)

pro tip: if you right-click in the same space (bottom left of taskbar) a menu comes-up with more power-user specific commands (run, command prompt, admin tools, etc...)

Re: Even Windows 8 early adopters prefer Windows 7 by two to one

#47

Post by louthy »

lini wrote: post #18

I have been using Win8 as a main OS for the past 4 months. I can't seem to find anything I need that was there in Win7 and missing in the new version. I love the new keyboard shortcuts (esp. Win+X, A). Metro is by no means a requirement - the old desktop is still there and all programs (even games) run the same. I guess it's just easier to bash MS than to really see that Win8 is not just Metro/Modern, at least on the…

I totally agree. I thought the developer preview was a bit flaky, the left/right-scrolling start-screen was too jolting for example (so it was good to see that's been replaced with a fade-in/out). Having now installed the RTM I really rate it.

It's so much quicker and more responsive than W7, the start-search feels more accurate too and again much quicker.

Some of the UI changes take a little getting used-to, like the charms pop-ups, but it also brings some consistency to things like per-app settings.

For anyone who wants to largely keep the W7 experience there's no reason to worry, the desktop is there, the start-bar is there, the start button is there (just without a logo), and the start-screen works very much like the start-menu, you can still alt-tab between screens, and as mentioned above the shortcuts make some of the power features easily accessible without going through the start-screen.

There's always going to be people afraid of change, but I really don't see what there is in here to be so scared about. You're not forced to use the Metro apps at all.

Re: Even Windows 8 early adopters prefer Windows 7 by two to one

#48

Post by nahname »

marshray wrote: post #31
nahname wrote: post #9

Says a group of people, 20% of which, are on a 12 year old operating system. Is the problem that Windows 8 sucks or that these users are extremely adverse to change?

Are you trying to say this is not representative of Windows users?

Not at all. I would expect these kinds of numbers and I thought that it was worth pointing out another possible reason for the surmised "conclusion".

Re: Even Windows 8 early adopters prefer Windows 7 by two to one

#49

Post by marshray »

bloaf wrote: post #15
JimmaDaRustla wrote: post #2

My take on Windows 8 is simple, as a desktop OS - you can't take core features and remove them without a viable alternative. My biggest beef is the removal of the start menu and the search bar on it - I could do/find anything from there. My other beef is that the Metro UI gives you all these "fullscreen" applications, but no way to window them. Windows provided me with a train of thought, but when you make everything…

I think the full screen start menu is fine, Windows isn't the only OS to use it, look at Gnome and Unity on Linux. My biggest complaints are that system settings are difficult to find and navigate. It took me quite some time to figure out how to even shut down the computer the first time. I do agree that the distinction between the Metro programs and the desktop programs feels arbitrary and frustrating. You can "Dock…

Ubuntu Unity has hardly been a huge hit with users either.

I understand the abstract appeal of having a "unified experience" across multiple product lines. But people just don't want to use an interface designed for tablet interaction on their desktop PC.

Why is this so hard for product designers to understand?

Re: Even Windows 8 early adopters prefer Windows 7 by two to one

#50

Post by pbz »

Metrop0218 wrote: post #23
pragmatic wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The search is broken, unless you remember to do Windows + W, the search by default won't search files or system settings, just apps. I don't get that, even though there is room on that full paged search screen, they only show a couple of apps. You have to click on options at the right to have it search settings or files. What a stupid, stupid oversight.

It really doesn't matter. The reason this was done is because it fits in better with each application being searchable (you see how this is more consistent?). Once the user realizes this once, the problem is gone. It's really not much harder to search 'settings' if you're looking for a setting than to search apps if you're looking for an app now is it? I don't understand how people make a big deal out of things like…

Then I should be able to search the "Windows" app, and have a list of other apps underneath. Search in all three categories by default and let me filter later if I want - it would rarely happen.
Post reply on HN