Windows 8: Two Operating Systems Barely on Speaking Terms - bridgesshen1994

Ericuse165 asked hoi polloi on the Windows forum what they thought of the Windows 8 Consumer Preview. I offer my ii cents.

Microsoft has created a very confused and confusing operating system. Windows 8 has deuce personalities, and they don't look to like for each one other very much.

The main one, Metro, is alone bran-new (at least for PC users). Designed for a touchscreen twist such as a pill, it presents your installed programs (otherwise known as apps) as big, angulate "tiles" happening a two-dimensional background named the Start Screen. Tiles act more the like Android widgets than conventional Windows shortcuts; you can utilize them to launch a program, but they sack also presentation live information.

Underground may leaven quick, spacious, and intuitive to tablet users–peculiarly novices. But experienced Windows users testament have to find out everything from fret. For instance, you can't shut it down by clicking the Start button because there is no more Start button.

And even when they learn Metro, they North Korean won't like the limitations. For instance, it's not hierarchical. You can choose what programs appear on the Begin screen (another view shows you wholly programs), merely you can't organize your programs into subgroups for accessories, photo programs, so on.

Another problem: This version of Windows has no more windows. Metro can't display much two programs at a prison term–and it can't even expose that many if your test's answer is to a lesser degree 1366 x 768. When you do display deuce programs, they're tiled, not overlapped.

Windows 8's other personality, Desktop, is only a Metro app. Meant to run "legacy" programs, it looks like Windows 7, except…once again, no Start button–or Start menu. I lav't believe that Microsoft failed to realize what a serious omission this is. Convenient and nonrational from its Windows 95 birth, the Start up carte du jour has grown and improved until, in Windows 7, it's a puzzle out of operable beauty. With Windows 8, Microsoft has neither kept IT, better on it, or replaced information technology with something equally utilizable. Instead, they've simply dumped it.

The Desktop's legacy programs and Underground's virgin apps are entirely different beasts, and not meant to cooperate with each other. For illustrate, Windows 8 comes with separate Metro and Background versions of Internet Explorer. And when I say separate, I mean break. Save a favorite URL in one of them and IT testament not show in the former.

My only hope: That market forces compel Microsoft to keep Windows 7 on the market until they either restore the Start button or scrape with something better.

Read the originative forum discussion.

Contributing Editor in chief Lincoln Spector writes about technology and cinema. Email your tech questions to him at answer@pcworld.com , or post them to a community of helpful common people happening the PCW Answer Line assembly . Follow Lincoln on Twitter , operating theatre subscribe to the Answer Delineate newssheet , e-mailed weekly.