Windows ME, Windows Vista, and Windows 8- what do all three have in common? All three versions of the Windows operating system were about as welcome and well received as wasps at a picnic. While Windows ME was basically a cosmetic and bug-laden change to Windows 98 and Vista was a crash-tacular, slow moving, and bloated stepchild to Windows XP, Windows 8 is a very touch friendly operating system that definitely has its niche given the popularity of tablets. If you are a classic mouse-and-keyboard kinda guy (like me); however, Windows 8's "metro" interface and changes to navigation is sort of like a "Twilight Zone" episode where you wake up after a long coma and find the familiar very different.
The "Metro" start screen does have some appeal such as the constantly updating "live tiles" which can keep you up to date on almost anything including sports, weather, news, e-mail, social networks and more. This appeal gets tarnished quickly when you suddenly find yourself trying to tickle the corner of your screen with a mouse to open the charm bar or trying to locate common functions you always needed and used deep within layers of navigation. With a finger these movements would be quick and easy- with a mouse...not so much-- especially if you have a multi-monitor setup and find yourself bleeding onto the other screens in trying to hit the right corners.
As for the actual "operating" part of the "operating system"- Windows 8 (so far) is performing well. Aside from a little extra work with my embedded bluetooth card, the in-place upgrade from Windows 7 Professional to Windows 8 Professional went very smooth and virtually every device and application worked perfectly afterwards. In some cases I saw improvement such as my NVIDIA GT660M video card creating much richer textures under Windows 8 than it ever did in Windows 7 and a much quicker system start up by a few seconds. Once I am able to slip into the desktop mode past the Metro interface and perform my usual tasks, the experience seems very familiar until those moments I need to access items like the control panel or "My computer" and am faced with fighting instinct to locate these items in "metro".
After 8 1/2 days with my Windows 8 upgrade I can sincerely say that Windows 8 is pretty good but to be truly enjoyed and appreciated it ~has~ to be used in a touchscreen environment. Installing Windows 8 on a non-touch device destined for a user with a less-than-intermediate level of navigating their PC with a mouse and keyboard is a complete no-no. Put that sucker on grandma's PC and you'll be getting frequent calls that start with "How do I....." Microsoft should have created an option to either install in a Metro-free mode or allow users to disable the Metro environment after install to accommodate the mouse-and-keyboard users. Who knows? Maybe they'll add this feature in a future service release. For now, I'd say keep the installs of this on non-touch systems to expert use only.
The only other annoyance with Windows 8 was the requirement to pay extra ($11.50 CDN$) to have "Windows Media Center" and connect and stream to my XBOX 360. I was fortunate in some respects-- people without the "Pro" version of Windows 8 need to pay even more to step-up to Pro to be able to have Media Center.
I haven't felt the urge to divorce Windows 8 yet but I do still have my system backups with Windows 7 on standby... just in case.
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