The Surface wars .. Win 8 fights with Win 7, users loose. PLEASE MS .. fix it!

[Vasculata]

So ..

I bought an RT and was pretty happy ... until Google and MS wnet to war and now the RT is pretty useless for gMail. Until then I was fairly happy working in the Win 8 environment.

Tehn MS was great to me and allowed me to upgrade to a PRO. Since I already use a Win 8 largely in Win 7 mode on my desktop I thought this would be fine.

The problem with Win 8 on the PRO is that the PRO is really made for Win 8. The screen is smallish but Win 8 and the stylus solve the scale ... if you can get Win 8 to work with Win 7!

1. file management ... even with third party add ons to replace the mssing explorer 8, win * apps generally can not even do a good job of saving a file UNLESS you have set up all yur folders in Win 7! This is crazy but ry saving an email attachment to a new folder! No way to make one from gMAIL touch!

2. share ... sharing is intrinsic to Win8 ... only t doe snto work with all apps. The old right button elgance of having a menu pop up that can use emails or apps? gone in Win 8. Why?

3. email/calendar/contact integration .. bye bye gMAIL means you are stuck with the largely dysfunctional win 8 apps. OK I can run my gmail from Chrome but chrome does nto integrate very will with win 8 apps. Will Outlook for Win 8 fix this?

4. One Note ... it actually works in the PRO because of the pen BUT there is no way to selct part of the screen other than text! How long since anyone built a graphics app that could not do cut and paste?

5. THE $$@ Start Button .... Mama Steve B doesn't want su to have one? OK, then why didn't he put the same fucntionality into tiles? Why isn't there a simple tool for adding apps as tiles? Why isn't there a recent app tile or a recent files tile. Yeh .. you can add on Start buttons but then you loose a lot of the power of a touch screen.

6. Howsit that Alt Tab and hover on lefty edge give two different sets fo running apps?

 

[Rallicat]

If I can consolidate your complaints somewhat;

1: You're unhappy with the experience of using Google's services within Windows 8
2: Other general issues with Windows 8

The first point is largely valid, in time I hope that Microsoft will implement the necessary features required to support all the Google services, including CalDAV for calendar, and the contact sync protocols etc. The Mail / Calendar / People apps do need updates, but Microsoft are already showing that they are committed to doing this. Only a few weeks ago updates were released for these apps, and there is no reason to suspect that they don't plan to release more updates in the months ahead.

On the second point (and affecting the first a little too), remember that all the 'new' stuff in Windows 8 is very much 'version 1' in nature, and with some of your complaints, you're not the only one suggesting this kind of feedback. We're already seeing leaked information on Windows 8.1 trickle out (which hopefully will be a free update) - and some of what we're seeing there would address your concerns, including it seems the potential return of the start button (although whether we'll also see a start menu is another matter entirely!

I'd say all in all, Windows 8 / RT is an excellent first stab, and for tablet users, results in an experience that I feel is far more functional than what you experience from Android or iOS. It's not perfect, but updates and improvements will come over time, all of which will bring Windows 8 to a much better place.

 

[mitchellvii]

Nobody liked Ribbons in Office and MS kept those. Don't expect Windows 8 to change much. I see no evidence whatsoever that MS user groups anything before releasing it. People hated the Modern UI in beta phase and they didn't change it at all. MS thinks they are right and visionary with Modern UI and we "just don't get it". No MS, we "get it".

MS may add some different icing in 8.1 but this cake is baked.

 

[Mr.NK]

The problem with Win 8 on the PRO is that the PRO is really made for Win 8. The screen is smallish but Win 8 and the stylus solve the scale ... if you can get Win 8 to work with Win 7!

1. file management ... even with third party add ons to replace the mssing explorer 8, win * apps generally can not even do a good job of saving a file UNLESS you have set up all yur folders in Win 7! This is crazy but ry saving an email attachment to a new folder! No way to make one from gMAIL touch!

2. share ... sharing is intrinsic to Win8 ... only t doe snto work with all apps. The old right button elgance of having a menu pop up that can use emails or apps? gone in Win 8. Why?

There's definitively a big amount of work to do on this 2 essential things. The need to switch to the desktop explorer or use apps like metro-commander to create a new folder seems very limited. But you don't need to use Win7 for that.
What i don't get is your critique about the old right button. Yes there's a problem with the broken link to share between desktop and metro, but i've been running into this problem rather rarely (on the desktop and the rt, despite running chrome as main browser on desktop) and the problem of not be able to share between apps is more due to poor programming by the developer. But maybe i got you totally wrong or my scenario of use is another.

3. email/calendar/contact integration .. bye bye gMAIL means you are stuck with the largely dysfunctional win 8 apps. OK I can run my gmail from Chrome but chrome does nto integrate very will with win 8 apps. Will Outlook for Win 8 fix this?

Again i think this seems to be more a 50/50 problem - on the one side there's no sharing between desktop and metro on the other hand, i think chrome could be better if they would implement better code for the metro-mode.

5. THE $$@ Start Button .... Mama Steve B doesn't want su to have one? OK, then why didn't he put the same fucntionality into tiles? Why isn't there a simple tool for adding apps as tiles? Why isn't there a recent app tile or a recent files tile. Yeh .. you can add on Start buttons but then you loose a lot of the power of a touch screen.

If you mean legacy apps - just right click and choose pin to start - so every legacy app is showing on metro-start-screen. I've been pinning legacy apps, that i'm using regularly with a large number of files on the task-bar -> right/long cklick and i'm able to select my desired file i want to work with. Truth to be told, i've done it this way since the option was available on win 7 (not sure about vista).

6. Howsit that Alt Tab and hover on lefty edge give two different sets fo running apps?

Why not - the gesture is for using primary metro-apps, while the other is for desktop-power user, which are likely to have a keyboard. I see this more a concession to the existence of both desktop and metro users.

Nobody liked Ribbons in Office and MS kept those. Don't expect Windows 8 to change much. I see no evidence whatsoever that MS user groups anything before releasing it. People hated the Modern UI in beta phase and they didn't change it at all. MS thinks they are right and visionary with Modern UI and we "just don't get it". No MS, we "get it".

MS may add some different icing in 8.1 but this cake is baked.

I like those ribbons. And even if office isn't perfect for touch yet, it seems like a ok-ish solution. In fact i've switched from 97/2003 to 2007 as i began studying and the improvements where showing after a (really) short period of customization. The old ui was good for 4:3 monitors with a low resolution, but i think the ribbon-thing was a needed step - as is the step to a next-gen ui for touch.

Summarizing, there are some (at some point huge) lacks of functionality at the moment and the 8.1 patch/update (what ever), won't fix them all - but if you're reading about the leaks, you'll get, that ms seems to actually listening to most of its costumers and try to make things better without doing a 180°-turn (back to old school desktop).
The reason for doing this? Because pc-sales are on a decline (not only because of win 8) and touch-enabled devices of every sort are more likely to fulfill the needs of the average costumer in computing: internet on a couch, doing some writing/excel with a virtual or a detachable hardware-keyboard, while being lightweight and on battery for x hours. At the same time, there's a gap for the professionals. MS is trying to outsource everything likely to a cloud-service and at the moment it's not clear to me, if it will work out, but it has been their idea for future working situations for decades. Like on the future updates on Win, we'll see what times will bring.

post scriptum: I'm not a big fanboy of microsoft, as they've made some awkward decisions and still have to gain up speed to match with google/amazon in terms of new ideas and speed/qualitative execution. Anyways i like my rt and 95% of my Win8 on desktop, as their idea of a more unified OS on mobile/stationary devices is more appealing to me atm than the more sperated OS/iOS or this really light-OS called Chrome.

 

[Vasculata]

Excusing Win 8 as being a good first try is not very different from say8ng MS released Win8 as an alpha.

Even that would not be so bad BUT then they should have been mroe cleaver and used a marketing scheme that includes initial purchasers in an upgrade scheme.

I see all this tied to Mama Steve B's lousy marketing. The ads make the pubic see the Surface as if it were an iPAD. The ads do nto show why thesurface is so much more then a tablet ... along with the pathetic effort to creat an IPA like app store. (How mnay developers will work for $100???)

Customers use the Surface despite Mr. Balmer's bad marketing, experience the huge advantages of having a file system and having multitasking (as well as a real USB) .. only to find that MS has not implemented a lot of the advantages of having a full file system and multitaskign in the Win 8 interface.

As for the comments about Metro and its ilk ... these do no answer the problems of applications that access Win9's system level file management wit its lousy navigation and inability to create folders.

Does MS read this stuff?

 

[J515OP]

Windows 8 is far from an Alpha or even a Beta. Those are too loosely thrown around. It is a full fledged OS and is ready for mass consumption though it does have some issues. All OSes do no matter how long they have been out that is why there are always new versions released.

Vasculata you seem confused about multitasking in Windows 8. There are several threads covering this but Alt + tab cycles through all open apps including through the individual desktop apps. Windows key + tab cycles through the open apps, of which desktop is one (but not the individual desktop apps). So Win + tab is what you are looking for when you want to cycle through the apps the same as you would see in the multi-task sidebar.

As far as your other points I think they have mostly been addressed and many have been discussed at great length in other threads. If you have an issue with Google's offerings and implementation/integration of apps (or lack of) then you need to take that up with Google or the app developer (most "Google" apps are not made by Google including Gmail Touch)

 

[kristalsoldier]

@Vasculata...one other point, it may surprise you to know that Steve Ballmer is unlikely to be in charge of the marketing. MS has a dedicated division for that. Mr. Ballmer operates in the rarified realms of high finance and global technology policy. This does not mean that the Surface marketing was any good. In my opinion, it was quite horrible, actually (though I am not willing at the moment to explain why I think so) and they could have made it much more effective than what it was/ is (my personal opinion). You can also be sure that MS's telemetry is quite detailed. There is huge amounts of money at stake here - for MS and the industry as such. What you and I see are is but one tiny sliver of that whole pie. As an aside, this is another thing that get at me sometimes - when I read stuff that tech commentators (bloggers, really) put out (Paul Thurrott comes to mind readily though are others and Thurrott is more nuanced than his brethren), I am amazed! They write as if they have the answers to the problems of MS - be that of Win 8, or Win 8 RT or the Surface machines etc. They presume to comment based on insider info but I am willing to bet that their insider is also not someone who has the full picture or what in my field of work is called the "common operational picture". This makes their comments - much like yours (and I apologize in advance if I appear to be impolite) - somewhat difficult to accept seriously.

 

[mitchellvii]

Windows 8 isn't an alpha or a beta. Windows 8 is "ribbons" on steroids. It is the result of a wrong turn MS made 10 years ago with their Office product when they decided they needed to become Apple and appeal to the big pretty pictures crowd.

No Windows 8 is EXACTLY what MS wants it to be. This IS their vision. That's why they won't change it - it reflects the core of who they are. Unfortunately they are wrong. If people weren't so invested in MS on a legacy basis, Windows 8 would have killed the company. As it is, they have just opened the door for innovators to grab their market share.

In the sports world we call this an "unforced error".

 

[Vasculata]

May I suggest ... whether one is a super moderator or just a peon, that the issues really ught to be addresssed. Mr. Balmer .. like any CEO, is responsible for what his company does. In Win 8, HIS company is screwing up and it would take the sort of faith that Apple Fan bys had in their St. Steve to not see this.

Same thing for dissing Google because of their role in screwing Surface customers who use gMAIL. WADR, why should I carw whether it is Google being nasty or MS? I am a user, I just want my stuff to work. If MS cares about me as a customer, its resposne to Google (if Google is the villain here) ought to be to get mroe useful mail client working in the surface that can port ALL the gmial data (calendar and contacts). How hard can that be?

Back at Steve Balmer., .. I know that Balmer has other responsibilities besides marketing .. e.g. he IS buying a basketball team .. but one would assume that the man watches MS ads before they go out. If so why is MS stilll showing the Surface as if it were a kid's transformer toy crossed wiht the fizz froma soft drink? How is it that Office Depot runs ads showing Win 8 screens and finisheds with sale prices for iPADS???

OK, I am unworthy of runing MS, BUT it seems obvious that what sells either Surface model is the simple fact that they do stuff no other tablet can do. Heck, I could see a thrity second ad with just a set of different peripherals being ligged into the USB slot!


While I am dissing MS and its CEO, can anyone explain why they have made such a paltry effort at apps? The GREAT news should be that the instance of Office for Win 8 as part of RT (sadly MS chose mnto to d this on the SP).. Office, after all, has LOTS pf places to hook in great APPS. Yet not even the simplest apps seem be forthcoming. It ought not to be hard to convince some of the folks who have written impressive apps for Windows or Mac PCs to rewrite them for the Surface world .. that is by paying them enough money to do so. As a start, what abut getting someone to port a browser levelpassword manager, a better PDF reader/editor, ...

As for Win 8 being a full fledged OS ... an OS that does not handle files is not full fledged.

 

[vinumsv]

that is by paying them enough money to do so. As a start, what abut getting someone to port a browser levelpassword manager, a better PDF reader/editor, ...

browse level password manager : LastPass
LastPass app for Windows in the Windows Store

As for Win 8 being a full fledged OS ... an OS that does not handle files is not full fledged.

Can you elaborate on that ? :shocked:

 

[Agave Azul]

Vasculata you seem confused about multitasking in Windows 8. There are several threads covering this but Alt + tab cycles through all open apps including through the individual desktop apps. Windows key + tab cycles through the open apps, of which desktop is one (but not the individual desktop apps). So Win + tab is what you are looking for when you want to cycle through the apps the same as you would see in the multi-task sidebar.

Nice trick...THX for that I had not known about this!
:cool2:

 

[bikeazoid]

I love it (8), I'm a power user, and a Network Engineer, I love that I can use the desktop for work, and go to the Metro for using it as a tablet. I don't miss the start button, but if you need to make shortcuts of manage your programs, you can run %appdata% then go to \MS\Win\StartMdenu\Programs\startup, make a shortcut on the task bar if you need to. I for one never used it, especially after Windows 7's super easy "type it and it appears" search function.

Just my opinion, but I think they made an OS that functions and looks cool.