James E. O'Brien

I just read through an article posted on ZDNet by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes about what he feels are design flaws in the Windows 8 operating system. While some of the points he makes are more like personal preferences, albeit good ones, he points out 4 items that I think could be serious flaws against Windows 8 in a desktop environment

Those flaws include:

Users are limited to two applications running side-by-side in Metro Apps on Windows 8. This may be OK for a tablet, but not for a desktop. Especially for power users who typically have numerous screens and apps running at the same time.

Continually switching between the Metro User Interface (UI) and the Aero UI.  This basically means that the Metro interface that Microsoft is so proud of is nothing more than a user interface that sits on top of Windows. In my opinion, that’s just another layer of something I don’t need, and it’s another drain on system resources.

Metro is OK for touch-screen tablets, but not for desktop or notebook environments. I rarely ever see touch screen monitors in home environments, and seldom in the business environments. Besides that, touch-screen monitors don’t always work very well and are prone to breaking. However, there are circumstances where a touch-screen monitor is a good solution, so this may not be so bad in those circumstances.

No ALT+Tab screen switching. On a tablet system with a touch-screen, you can swipe from one application to the next, but on a desktop computer, that’s not an option unless you have a touch-screen. For myself, this could be a deal breaker if I was considering upgrading to Windows 8. I need to have my ALT+Tab ability.

These might not be serious issues in a tablet, or as Adrian points out, for casual users who may typically have one or two applications running at a time. But for the those of us who use our computers to get serious work done, Windows 8 on a desktop might not be a good move. If you are considering Windows 8, you might want to read the article and add it to your consideration.

You can read the whole article here:

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/windows-8-design-flaws-microsoft-must-address/14917

In closing, I use Windows 7, Windows XP, and Ubunto. I love them all, and I am not thinking about upgrading. If I was thinking about upgrading to Windows 8, I’d need a hell of a lot more incentive before I moved to Windows 8!

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