I'm usually not an early adopter of new operating systems. After trying Windows 8, now I know why.
I've been using Windows 8 for about a month now on my home PC. I've decided that that's long enough to give it a fair shake, and now I can switch back to Windows 7 in good conscience.
There's a slight chanced I would have stuck with Windows 8, despite its many annoyances (which I will enumerate below), if it otherwise worked correctly. But I've had no end of problems with network configuration, driver setup, Windows updates, etc. It just isn't worth my time. As a 20 year veteran software developer and systems engineer, I know a turd when I see it. And if I can't figure out how to make the thing work without wasting hours of my time, how is a non-technical user supposed to get by?
But as I said, even if I wasn't having all of these technical problems, I would still prefer using Windows 7. Here are my top five reasons why, in no particular order.
#1) Metro Apps
Great idea for tablet or phone. Horrendous for a PC. When I'm working on a PC, I frequently work in multiple applications at once (be it spreadsheets, documents, image editing), and I will often position the windows so I can see two or three at once, and quickly move back and forth between them. Maybe I want to position two documents side-by-side so I can compare differences, or compare data in a spreadsheet and a financial application. Or just compare two browser windows.
Since the Metro apps are all full-screen, it takes away the most important and useful part of Windows, namely, THE WINDOWS. Hello!? Why call your operating system "Windows" if it no longer features the window concept?? Someone at Microsoft (or perhaps a whole department) should lose their jobs over this one alone.
#2) The Start Screen
The new start screen is just a bad idea. Again, it probably works well for tablets/smartphones, but on a desktop PC (especially one that isn't touchscreen) it is just plain silly. It makes switching between applications a horrendous pain in the rear. I eventually broke down and installed a third-party application that restores the missing Start menu from the desktop (which Microsoft completely removed in their finite wisdom). This in turn forced me to ask myself, why even bother using Windows 8 at all?
By the way, I don't believe a touchscreen PC would improve the situation all that much. I suspect my arms would get tired if I had to hold them up to the screen for hours on end pushing tiles around. It's one thing when the touchscreen is a tablet sitting in your lap, but when it's a monitor sitting across the desk? Using a PC shouldn't become a form of manual labor.
#3) The Hybrid User Interface
Some apps are the new Metro-style apps. Most are still "desktop" applications. Switching back and forth between the two is very clunky, especially since, as mentioned before, you can't put the metro apps into a window where you could easily use them alongside the desktop apps.
For those like me who are (unfortunately) old enough to remember early versions of Windows, it's that bad. In those days you had a mixture of the old-style MS-DOS applications, along with the newer Windows applications. Switching back and forth between them was somewhat clunky. But at least in those days you could still host most of the DOS apps in a
Window alongside your desktop apps. Windows 8 doesn't give you that option. Another step backwards.
#4) Active Tiles
The "active" tiles on the Start Screen turn out to be a worthless feature. I'm not going to sit there and stare at the Start Screen in the hopes of seeing something useful. The reality is that 99.99% of your time will be spent inside a metro app (which hides the start screen) or in a desktop app (which hides the start screen). Which means any effort given to updating that content is just wasted CPU cycles.
I listened to a YouTube video of a guy saying the active tiles were a good idea because (A) they made use of the otherwise wasted space on the desktop, and (B) they provided you with updated information, such as when you have a new email. But you can get the same notifications less obtrusively from applications that are properly implemented to use the system notification area. And you don't have to switch back to the start screen to use them. As for the "wasted desktop" notion, there are two problems: One is that it isn't a desktop. It's a gigantic full-screen implementation of the start menu. The desktop is still there and ends up being where you'll spend 99% of your time. Second is that I know lots of people who -- for better or worse -- store a shit-ton of files on their desktop, presumably for easier access. So to them, it wasn't wasted space at all. In fact it's space they'll miss now that it's cluttered with huge application blocks.
#5) Blocks
The new UI-motif is very two-dimensional and blocky. When I look at it I just can't shake the feeling that it is a huge step backwards. After the whole computing industry has spent years and years developing pretty icons and 3D screen elements, it seems strange to throw that all away in favor of icons that look like something created by a kindergartener before morning recess. The new icons don't look "clean", they look "cheap". There is a difference.
In Summary
Avoid Windows 8 for your laptop or desktop PC's at all costs. It's just a bad idea.
