Windows 8–Are you interested?
Monday, March 12, 2012 at 5:33PM There has been a lot of hype in the marketplace about the recent release of Windows 8 Consumer Preview and most people that you listen two have a very strong opinion about it. There are very few that are sitting on the fence with a wait and see attitude, they either love it or they hate it. There seems to be no middle ground.
With the advent of the Windows 8 Consumer Preview you are able to choose and in-place upgrade to install the product if you wish.I strongly urge you not to do this on a production system that is critical to your business of course. Paul Thurrot has a great guide that describes this process.
The big controversy is of course the new Metro Interface that is the primary startup screen that you will see when you boot a Windows 8 System. You do have both the desktop interface that we know as well as the Metro we don’t know at all. Why both interfaces? Microsoft doesn’t want to eliminate the legacy interface and force everyone into its simpler Metro App interface because we still need to accommodate business users and their applications. However, they see the writing on the wall and need to accommodate a touch interface that will perform better in a tablet environment. Having both interfaces provides the greatest degree of support for the widest range of applications. Just pick the application that runs best in the environment that you wish to use.
With this mixed environment the interface that you will primarily use will probably depend on what you do and what equipment that you are using. If you are primarily a tablet user you will probably live within Metro but if you are a power desktop user especially you will probably never see the Metro interface except when you boot up.
If you plan on using the touch interface you will need at least a screen that supports a minimum of five (5) touch points to take advantage of the the touch interface. You don’t need to think too much into this. Metro is a design that is going to be best used by consumer on a consumer device (in other words a tablet). The desktop as we know it now is mainly for PC’s that are going to be used for business. That’s it. That doesn’t mean that there won’t be some crossover but I do believe this is how the division will primarily work.
This duo interface for the most part isn’t going to be something that most people using it will even worry about. They will learn to use those pieces that make sense to them and not think anything more of it. It will be interesting to see how the Apps develop on the Metro side and see how we will be able to flow information between the two interfaces. I don’t think that it will be a bid deal but let’s begin working with it before we come to any final judgments.
I think that Microsoft really has a strong product here that can be something that will enhance the business side especially for tablet use and I am excited to work with it to find out how true that is.
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