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Comment by jasonkolb | Hacker News Reader

I'm using 8 on my primary desktop right now, haven't upgraded to 8.1 yet. Typing this comment on my Macbook Pro.

After using 8 for a while, I honestly don't see why people hate it so much. I don't use the Metro stuff, and the traditional Windows desktop experience is much faster. As a development environment I quite like it, and prefer it mightily over OSX as Apple tries to shoehorn that OS into an iOS-like frankenstein's monster.

I'll be upgrading to 8.1 as soon as I feel like it, but I just came here to chime in that I really don't get why people abhor 8 so much in the first place. It kind of feels like piling-on to me with no real substance behind. As a developer anyway--I can't speak to a non-technical user's experience with it.

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We bought my junior high-aged son a laptop for Christmas last year, and it came with Windows 8. He hates it. I promise you I didn't say anything bad about it (because who wants to convince someone not to like the gift you just gave them?), but he came to me a few days later asking if I could "upgrade it to Mac OS". His words, not mine.

I think the reason he doesn't like it is that it's different from any computer he'd ever used at home or school before, and without any real benefit. He loves the Windows 7 gaming desktop we have in the living room but sees 8 as "weird" without a good reason for being so.

I personally didn't have an opinion on it until I tried to install a network printer and ended up bouncing between the Win 7-style control panel and the Win 8-style wizard thingy because neither one held all of the settings required to make it work. After a few minutes of that, I was about ready to pitch it out the living room window.

TL;DR it radically changed the UI without offering any noticeable advantages for having done so. That's why we came to not like it.

The mix of Metro UI and the old desktop has been the primary reason for people to not like windows 8. But they have made a lot if small tweaks to minimize the transition from Metro to old UI. That is the best part of Windows 8.1 to me.

Are there tweaks to completely get rid of metro? Will upgrading mess up things like classic start menu?

I don't want to transition to a UI which, IMHO, is completely inappropriate for a normal desktop with a mouse and keyboard.

I don't think there are ways to get rid if the Metro UI completely or at least I haven't come across any. Probably because I wasn't looking for one. The sequence of pressing Windows key and typing the name of the program is what I was using in Windows 7 anyway and that just works. One of my annoyances was how the control panel was still old UI and that has gone Metro in 8.1 which is nice. Also now since links from within IE open side by side and you have more control over how to layout windows in metro, I actually see myself using it more and more.

one of the reasons for liking Windows 8 way more is getting a touch screen laptop. Metro is just so much nicer in a touch screen.

I notice here a lot of people seem to use the keyboard more than the mouse. My experience is the opposite. I want to click once or twice, not type stuff in. If I wanted to type, I'd use a command line, not a GUI.

As for the touch screen thing, well, that's just it, isn't it? Its designed for a touch screen, not a K&M. But, sorry and all that, but Im happy with my current hardware and way of working. Am I now supposed to buy a 21inch touch screen, or mess up with fingers? Which is further away from my keyboard? Its not reasonable or practical. Let alone economic.

All MS have to do is split the product. Win8 for computers, Metro for tablets. But no. For some bizarre reason us desk top users are having life made hard for zero good reason.

You may not want to type, and that's fine, but, in the same amount of time, I can do a lot more work typing than you can by clicking around various windows and lists. Want to open a file? Win+e, alt+d, start typing the path, let auto-complete do it's thing, tab, repeat, type file name to filter, enter. I'm done and you're still scanning lists to see which directory to double click next.

Want to get things done fast? Use the keyboard. Take away my ability to get things done fast? I'll move on to something else.

Our hospital received number of complains about colonoscopy procedure. So we added lubricant.

Bit worried my experience will also be voted down...

...but I had 2 kids (12 and 14) who also got new laptops and also hated windows 8. No, they didn't do a PR thing for Apple (ah, the vote down?), they wanted Windows 7 back. The daughter stopped using the laptop in favor of a tablet, which in its self is interesting, and boy asked for a Win 7 desk top for the following birthday, which he got. The two Win 8 laptops are currently sitting under my desk gathering dust as I type.

In retrospect I asked them both why, and both said it was essentially that Win 8 is an OS for a tablet, not a laptop or desktop. On a tablet, fine, other wise, not frustrating and close to unuseable.

Later on, I had to rush out and immediately buy a new PC for me. I had zero choice and had to buy a Win8 PC. I nearly cried. I hated it, and couldn't get my head round how I could have several application running, switch, and all that. It was like everything is locked in to full screen, and so on. The one single thing that saved it, was installing the classic menu thing, which I could configure to make Win 8 have a start menu, boot to desk top and remove the hotspot things. Now Win 8 runs like Win7, Vista, etc, Im fairly happy with it. The only problem for me now is that nagging feeling that a load of un-necessary Metro stuff is chugging int he back ground.

Lastly, No1 son (20) had to get a new laptop, and was again stuck with Win8. The classic menu thing has saved his day too. Shame I didnt know about it at the time for the other two.

No3 son (16), is due a new PC, and he was essentially refusing anything with win8, and was prepared to go second hand to avoid it. Now he knows he can get round metro in various ways, he's much happier about the idea of a Win8 machine.

Over all though, the one thing I want to know is why on earth a UI so obviously designed for a touch screen is being forced on laptop and desk top users which mice and keyboards and not touch screens. I have not used Win8 on a touch screen tablet, but I imagine it might work well. Now, Im quite happy with Win 8 as long as I get straight to the desktop, have a start menu as it vaguely was before, and can completely avoid metro. Win8 is fine, its just having this tablet UI forced on to my PC I have areal issues with.

Oh, never found a way for my 2nd screen to work with the metro thing either.

Lets hope my experience is somehow valid enough not to be voted down.

Consider getting your kid a touch screen laptop if you are still in the market for one. I wasn't a bug fan of metro until I got one and now I use it more and more.

And how much extra would that cost?

I don't think it costs much extra. I have seen a decent touch screen laptop at around $500. Many lower than that. Find some here. http://www.edealpc.com/ Filter by touch screen.

I've been thinking about a surface, anyone have any anecdotes about how their kids responded to that? I selfishly want the Wacom stylus functionality for myself.

A friend's children (aged 6 and 8) use my Surface occasionally, mainly for the Fresh Paint drawing application. They love it, and have very few problems using it -- sometimes they misjudge the swipe gestures but they have learned how to recover in most cases. (They also enjoy ArtRage on the iPad, so it's not that Surface is the only thing they know.)

I have been using Apple machines since, I was 11, now 26. One year in high school, after I moved districts, I had to use Windows OS. I never used it too much as a teen or kid. A job after college required me to use a Windows XP desktop and it was un-fun.

Alas, I now have a Surface Pro. And it has become my sidekick, my go-to, it sleeps on the floor next to me. I still use my iMac, but its rare.

I have very few complaints for Windows 8 running on the Surface Pro. I think the OS was designed for machines just like the Pro. You can call them hybrids, for lack of a better term. Something you can use for both leisure and work.

Windows 8.1 is downloading right now on my Pro. And, not going to lie, I am still new to Windows and a little nervous. I hear so many stories of Windows "going bad" but that is on non-Microsoft made machines.

I guess what I am getting to, is Windows 8 was designed for machines with touch screens. It really excels in that format, but OEMs a year ago, were not selling hardware to support that.

I would pick up a Surface and give it shot.

>I use metro on a secondary monitor when hooked up to my Pro, without problems.

EDIT [long answer] When the iPad came out, I was happy and disappointed at the same time. I had dreamt of a tablet machine that could run Adobe CS Suite and Ableton, and more...But it didn't. That was okay, I still liked it, and iPad 3 was awesome. But still, I since a kid, dreamt of that "all in one machine." I at one point was saving up to buy an third party created macbook touch.

When the Surface Pro was announced, I was hooked. It was finally going to exist, a portable touch tablet with a pen that could run desktop programs. Not going to lie, its been great so far. If Apple makes a comparable tablet, I will buy that! Windows 8 felt like a compromise at first. Now, all the swipes and features are second hand, and work very well!

I made the decision to purchase 12 Surface Pros for our company's executive team for their need of mobile computing and entertainment in the air. They are pretty, fits all the criteria on the paper and seem more business oriented than the iPad.

Worst career decision in the recent 5 years. It's too heavy; it does not last as long; sometimes it became unresponsive; it does not have the popular app of the month; Office lost certifications between continents(how such thing happened I have no clue) it had to be re-activated multiple times while I talked my boss through the process when he was literally in the tropical jungle with a bad cell signal; our legacy business applications craps out 3 times during the week anyway... the list goes on

Such fun.

That does sound terrible. It's always a gamble on first generation products. Hopefully you returned them and got iPads. Nothing beats the Apple app store. I almost returned mine after a week.

I kept thinking, Windows sucks. The reality was, I didn't know how to use it. I do much of my work in Chrome, InDesign, Photoshop, Lightroom,and Illustrator. Haven't had any problems. Office is nice to have, but really only use OneNote.

I'm Chinese, my bosses happen to be Chinese too. We have iPads, tonnes of them, if not for the iPads laying around to distract the executives on several occasions I might be in a bigger hole than I am in right now.

I really wanted to like it, our COO still likes it(iPads everywhere, Surface shiny and not everywhere), but there is no way in hell I'm gonna let him go abroad with only the Surface Pro beside him. Never again.

Windows 8.1 fixes the 2nd-screen-with-metro problem. Now you can have metro apps on any or all of your screens simultaneously.

It's difficult to find things you want. Application paradigm is broken down and it's incompatible with previous model. What was a nested directory is suddenly a flat list, with even all the unessential help text files. The new "apps" are completely worthless and have a very poor performance. It seems to me that Windows Search doesn't work half the time. With Windows 7 it worked all the time. There's so much useless things that I have no use for that only clutter the interface unnecessarily. It's very schizophrenic. Context switching is a very expensive operation for the human mind. Doing it for absolutely no reason what so ever is extremely annoying.

Probably because it's the cool thing to do. I know quite a few people, even some Linux devs that use Windows as their workstation (and a VM for linux).

Why? Because it works. its fast. and the UI ain't bad, in fact (of the classic desktop that is).

Basically, the polar opposite of what the "cool comment against windows" says.

Because it is inconsistent, jarring I might say for no benefit to the user even after a year.

Yes, in many ways it is better than Windows 7 and in some ways it is better than OSX as Windows always has been. But in the most visible ways it is confusing, unnecessarily complex (with a minimalist style!) and get in the way of productivity obnoxiously.

1 example: Windows 8 changed the short cut for input method switching from Ctrl+Space to WinKey+Space, but take you to another dimension (aka Microsoft Design Language née Metro) with a stroke of the WinKey. Often for a multiple language user like myself, the OS beam me in and out of the full screen psychedelically colored app launcher during my Office™ sessions enough times to make me RAGE.

the traditional Windows desktop experience is much faster.

Could someone speak briefly to the "faster" part of the parent's description?

I'm currently reinstalling and have the choice between 7 and 8.

Windows 8 Boots faster, wakes up faster. The GUI seems about the same to me, a lower end machine may find the GUI to be faster as Aero is gone.

You just need to consider the Windows 8 menu screen like you would the Windows 7 start menu. It just covers the entire screen. You can ignore all the Windows 8 full screen applications for the most part, I am sure they are nice on a tablet but not on my 27" desktop screen.

I find it easier to move between a Windows 7 machine at work and my Windows 8 machine at home then between XP and Windows 7, the old work home combination.

Glass is gone. Aero isn't.

The utility of the windows 8 full screen apps has improved quite a bit now that you can partition a large screen pretty freely with three or four of them. Even before then, I quite enjoyed using a few W8 apps because they could be laid out independently of the desktop, allowing Aero-snap to work more efficiently on the more transient windows.

(These would usually be chat apps that I'd keep open in a panel).

What is your development stack? Visual Studio?

Eclipse and sometimes IntelliJ Idea. No problems with either on Windows. And if you use an alternative shell or powershell you can use all the unix commands we know and love.

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