Hacker News Reader

"Metro is every bit the usability disaster that people have claimed when not running on a touch screen."

It is good to see a total usability disaster in which Linux took the lead and Windows followed. It is usually the other way around. This really bodes well for Linux on the desktop.

And just like how many people are running Mate and XFCE now (gtk2 based) many people will be running Windows 7 (me) for the forseeable future!

>> "Short version - outside of Metro it's basically Win7SP3 and it works great. Metro is every bit the usability disaster that people have claimed when not running on a touch screen."

I've been using it on a MacBook Pro and with the multi-touch trackpad metro actually works reasonably well. Obviously it would be better with a touchscreen but I am able to tap to click, use two fingers to scroll left/right/up/down and moving the mouse the the screen corners activates charms/open apps/last opened app. Maybe PC mouse makers (including MS) will come up with similar mice to make the experience better for non-touchscreen devices.

Trackpoints in scroll mode are also omni-directional. But though it Just Works on Linux there are all sorts of hoops you have to jump through to get that working properly on Windows.

MS does have the wedge mouse -- perhaps they'll update it to support the correct gestures?

http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/24/3265121/microsoft-wedge-to...

I can recommend Start8 which brings the start menu back and boots straight to desktop (one of my annoyances was going straight to the Metro home screen on boot). It's $5, but worth it in my opinion: http://www.stardock.com/products/start8/

Surely you could just edit the ol' msconfig startup items for free, right?

They still have that, right? It's been a while since I used Windows.

Msconfig is in, yes, but the startup section is not. It redirects you to the startup section of the task manager, of which Metro is not an option for you to disable. Startup is simply the ability to disable services and programs that run on the desktop.

For example, mine has Java, Steam, Thinkpad Tools, Nvidia nView, Digsby, etc. Nothing Metro in there.

Plug: If you're running Windows 8 Pro and have an iPad you can try out the Win 8 Metro's multitouch features using my app (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWUEAx4dqP4&hd=1). Send me an email: support at jumpdesktop.com and I'll send you a free coupon.

I've used Jump for the past year; it's an excellent remote desktop client.

Thank you! Appreciate it :-)

Does the Android version offer the same functionality?

If it does I'll be sure to buy it for my Nexus 7. Very nice way to get an idea of how well Windows 8 works on tablets!

However it seems the android app is still at version 4.0, so I guess we have to wait for an update.

Right. The Android app doesn't have this functionality at the moment, but we're going to port it over soon.

I bought jump when it was only $7.99. It worked like magic and I never opened SplashTop since. For anyone reading this, this app is amazing and works both on iPad and iPhone. Since you can get it for free from the developer, then you can't lose. Definitely gonna try it when I upgrade my windows machine. So far it works great to access my mbp

That looks quite amazing! Thanks!

As an aside, I've actually been meaning to learn about writing drivers for a while, especially in preparation for a uni course. So with windows 8 here and all of it's cool touch gestures, it would be even cooler. So I'm not sure if you would know this, but can you point me towards any resources for essentially simulating touches? I was thinking of building a battle Etch-a-sketch app for a school project, that would actually have two players use two etch-a-sketch systems in drawing stuff. If it was only one user, I could use the mouse pointer, but being two, I probably need touches. I hope I made myself clear enough. If it's better for you, just email me at alexsb92 [at] gmail [dot] com. Thanks.

I'm not exactly sure what you want to do. If you just want to handle touch input in Windows 8 then take a look at this: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/xaml/hh... .

If you want to simulate touches programatically then take a look at this api: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/hh80...

Edit: I don't think you'll need to write a driver either way.

We have an issue with Windows 8 that stopped us to installing it on some personal notebooks until sp1 cames. We installed Virtual CloneDrive from SlySoft knowing that it doesn't support Windows 8. After having a blue screen and being not able to boot the system again we tried with booting it safely and we couldn't! so we reinstalled Windows 7 there. Although it was expectable to fail, it was not expectable to not recover.

Beyond that, we were developing interception technologies to hook inside windows 8 metro applications successfully.

CloneDrive shouldn't be needed anymore, since Windows 8 (finally) has built-in support for mounting ISO images.

The point of my comment was a weakness in Windows 8 beyond mountins ISOs

I am so glad I read this. I'm about to install win8 pro on my work 'puter and I have Virtual CloneDrive installed there! Thanks!

I've been using Virtual CloneDrive on Win 8 RTM since the first day I upgraded my computers (about 2 months ago), because I had to re-install several softwares from iso's... It worked just fine, and I actually never suspected any incompatibility issues.

Ive been running Windows 8 on a Mac inside a VM (Fusion) for about a month.

I like Metro (but this is coming from a mec geek - so there you go). BUT I agree it will take time to get used to. But I suspect a hack will be out shortly allowing you to by pass Metro completely. I can't imagine the corporate world being happy about Metro.

The question is for those of that dont hit the win key and start typing etc, can the metro dash be completely bypassed? So can I boot to a screen that looks much like Win7?

> Metro is every bit the usability disaster that people have claimed when not running on a touch screen

Is there a way to switch to 'Classic Desktop'?

The classic destkop is always there a click again in the start screen.

That's one click too many.

You do the search->run thing but average joe user is not going to be doing it that way.

Oh I totally agree. It just so happens that the new start interface works well with my existing workflow, which I think is more of a coincidence then anything else. I can't imagine what the user experience is going to be like for somebody who actually expects to navigate through a tree of folders for their applications.

Navigating through a tree has been deprecated for a bit already, given how prominent Search is placed in the Start Menu and how the tree is confined to a little section instead of eventually (after a dozen levels) covering the whole screen. But there probably are still those that like that way.