Removing Windows 8 is better than... | Hacker News Reader

Removing Windows 8 is better than...

extremetech.com

16 pointsdiwank8 comments

I've installed Windows 8 on a VM and played around with it for a couple of hours, and I'm honestly wondering if I've missed an option somewhere - I cannot believe that what I'm using is meant to be the next version of MS's main desktop OS.

Just about every W8 program seems to want to run only as a single window full screen app which seems to go against pretty much everything that window-based OSs (certainly multi-tasking ones) were introduced to do. Even trying to switch between multiple open browser sessions was horribly clunky, although at least you do seem to be able to run IE on the old Windows desktop if you want - an option that I couldn't find for most of the other apps.

I'm sure this may work great on a phone/tablet, but seems totally wrong on a standard computer. Apple has had a go at fittin similar iOS features into MacOS (tablet-style program launcher/full screen mode etc), but at the moment they are thankfully entirely optional.With Windows 8, this looks to largely be the only choice.

You should use the "old desktop" on a PC. Also, you can divide screen between metro apps or between metro and desktop, and it's not that bad.

>Let me tell you, that whole process was far and away the most invigorating and intensely satisfying experience I had all week

For me, this puts the rant in the proper perspective. I recommend stepping away from the computer and going on a date.

Ranting about the Windows 8 Consumer Preview seems a bit unfair. It says "Consumer" and "Preview". Both words indicating it is not for the more advanced user.

At work we always use Windows Server Edition as workstation OS. I must say that those Server Editions are very good.

So if you don't like the bling just don't use the Consumer Preview but install a Server Edition instead.

I pushed aside the psychological torture of opening program after program and never closing one, despite knowing I would never come back to it.

Does this mean Windows 8 doesn't let you close programs? Have they abstracted away a layer of resource management from the user to the OS?

You can close them actually, but they basically hibernate so you can switch back to them quickly. If you swipe from the left (or put your mouse in the upper left corner) it will show a list of all the apps and you can pick one. Or just swipe a couple of times to swap between them all. Also you can pull one out and dock it to the left or right so you can have two apps running simultaneously. You can right click or press and hold on the apps in the left side list and a menu with the option to close them appears.

And actually if you pull the app off of the left and off the bottom edge it will close it also. There are gestures and keyboard shortcuts for all of this.

But yes, the apps will actually be hibernated if they're in the background long enough and they will also be closed completely if not switched to eventually. There are api's for the apps to detect these switches and persist state. And the process will be forcefully killed if the app takes to long doing it.

So it's TSR 2.0.

I have trouble trusting this. Years ago everyone pissed and moaned about how terrible Vista was, only to have 7 be received as The Messiah, even though it was basically the same as Vista. I feel as though a narrative is being set up where 8 will be the terrible horrible worst thing ever ever, and 8.1 will be incredible genius by golly MS has done it again.

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