Windows 8: What Were They Thinking?

Change is inevitable: resistance to change is equally inevitable, if generally futile. I have seen both sides of the coin: at work I was frequently responsible for communicating and implementing change and dealing with the predictable opposition. At other times, both at work and in my personal life, I’ve been on the receiving end and tried to curb any hostility to the change and accept it, not always I have to admit, with the best of grace.

It is perhaps in the way in which people work and the changes that are made there, be it the process or procedures or in the tools used, that the most opposition and resistance is to be found. If you walk into any office in the UK there is a good chance that the operating system on the computers you find there is going to be Windows and over the years Microsoft have made regular changes to their operating systems, with mixed receptions it has to be said. Nowadays most people also use a desktop or laptop computer at home and in December 2012 Microsoft had a 91.74% share of the UK market. By operating system, Microsoft’s only perceived real competition, OS X (as used by Apple devices) had only 7.2% of the global market in July 2013[1] with over 81% of machines running Windows 7 or Vista. With their overall dominance, especially in the workplace, it is inevitable that Microsoft products come in for some criticism, most especially when they decide to upgrade and improve (and I use that word loosely) their operating system.

Back in the late 1980’s when I first encountered a PC it must have been running something like Windows 2.01, which came along in 1987. Windows NT was introduced in 1993; two years later there was Windows 95, followed (imaginatively) by Windows 98 in 1998, XP in 2001, Vista in 2007, Windows 7 in 2009 and Windows 8 in 2012[2]. The majority of these new systems have encompassed changes that reflected developments and improvements in the technology; sometimes the changes seem to owe more to fashion and trends than to direct improvements in functionality, but whatever the change, each upgrade takes a bit of getting used to. In my view the changes made by Microsoft in Windows 8 are trendy and fashionable rather than functional; they certainly need a bit of getting used to.

From this...
to this.

I consider myself to be reasonably computer literate; by no means a geek but certainly not a technophobe. For a number of years I was involved in testing computer systems at work; partly as a system tester and partly undertaking user acceptance testing, so I like to think that I know my way round a PC, or operating system, or an application and I have to say that I would not have enjoyed trying to test Windows 8!

What follows is not a detailed or technical review, rather these are some general thoughts on Windows 8 from the perspective of someone who has dallied with it in much the way that a new user might, having just taken their new PC or laptop out of the box.

First impressions are not favourable. Frankly it is a dog’s breakfast. The new Start screen (not to be confused with the Start Menu, which no longer exists), is attractive enough with tiles representing the various applications, although for traditionalists there is the option to go to the familiar Desktop view. It is almost as if Microsoft didn’t have the courage of their convictions; they seem to have needed the safety net of the old Desktop, but decided to make it unappealing to users to drive them back to the Start screen, viz the lack of a Start Menu.

Then there are the Charms. These are the functions that allow you to search, share photos, connect to wi-fi networks and change settings. Except they are elusive. Allegedly you display them by “swiping” to the right of the Start screen; “swiping” because the Start screen is the same design whether it is a touch screen on a tablet or uses traditional mouse or touch pad. My experience is that to deliberately get them to appear is harder than it should be with a mouse and nigh on impossible with the touch pad on a laptop; I’m not sure what the touch screen version is like, but I’m already really frustrated at the difficulty in getting the Charms (what a crass name, by the way) to appear.  Occasionally of course, the Charms appear at random, even though you don’t need or want them. Either way, they invariably disappear when you try to actually use them, seemingly never to re-appear.

As with an iPad, if you open an App from the Start screen it stays open and cannot be closed until you shut the PC down. Annoyingly, some of these Apps open unbidden. There you are, moving the mouse across the screen looking for Word (which you had to install because otherwise it’s WordPad or nothing) and suddenly, “ping” the Weather App is opening! Functions like Internet Explorer have a new look too; finding your History or Favourites is a challenge when really it shouldn’t be. Someone should really have told the developers that playing desktop hide and seek is no pleasure.

Frankly Windows 8 is a mish-mash of ideas, unsure whether it is a dedicated touch screen interface or an old school desktop. As I say, I’ve not seen or used the touchscreen version, but with the laptop I have been using I constantly want to touch the screen; I’ve even done so a couple of times and been momentarily baffled by the lack of response.

Inexplicably, Microsoft have discontinued support for DVD’s in Windows 8, so even though the PC or laptop you have bought will inevitably have a DVD drive, you won’t be able to play a DVD until you download an app, unless the manufacturer has pre- installed some non-Microsoft, DVD playing software.  Is this progress? Not really.

Apparently Windows 8 has been developed because Microsoft have” listened to feedback”; furthermore they say that “improving the product is a good thing”, which is so obvious that it is hardly worth uttering, although it is moot, and probably a matter of opinion, as to whether Windows 8 is an improvement anyway. As for listening to feedback, presumably this was a case of listening only to what they wanted to hear.

If you are happy with Windows 7 (or even the much maligned Vista, or whatever OS you currently have), then I suggest that you let Microsoft iron out the bugs and wait for Windows 8.1 or whatever comes next before even considering upgrading, because Windows 8 remains, in my view, an unfinished development; it appears to be a work in progress, with considerable progress still to be made. Ultimately it may be very good, but not at present. As with a lot of new things it could just be a question of getting used to the new operating system but I’ve been down that road before when migrating from one OS to another (both at work and at home) and Windows 8 will take a lot more getting used to than migrating from say XP to Vista. Sadly I think that in a bid to be trendy and to compete with Apple (and in particular the iPad), Microsoft have made it harder for the casual user to navigate around their system by hiding stuff and making even simple tasks  harder to accomplish than they need be.

Windows 8: Warning ! May provoke extreme reactions

Overall Windows 8 is a triumph of style over substance; a classic case of trying to please everyone and ultimately pleasing no one. For the moment at least I will be sticking with Vista when it comes to desktop computing. For everything else, there’s the iPad.

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[1] Source, Net Applications.

[2] This is by no means a comprehensive list of Microsoft operating systems.