Windows Redesign A Problem For Microsoft Users

As Microsoft Corp prepares to show the world what its new Windows 8 can do on the next generation of high-powered tablets, initial reviews of the new operating system on existing hardware underscore the challenges the company faces with the radical redesign of its flagship product.

The world’s largest software company says millions of people are already using a downloaded pre-release version of Windows 8 on PCs, laptops and touch-devices ahead of its full introduction this autumn. At a media event in Los Angeles on Monday, the company is expected to discuss its plans to take on Apple Inc’s all-conquering iPad this holiday shopping season.

So far, most reviewers have praised the look and feel of the touch-friendly “Metro” style of Windows 8, which is based on colorful squares, or “tiles,” that depict applications such as email, and update in real time. But they have also stressed how difficult it will be for users to move away from what they know and trust.

“It’s a bit of a struggle for people who are deliberately oriented on a PC, that are used to a mouse feel,” said former Microsoft strategist Al Hilwa.

Now an analyst at tech research firm IDC, Hilwa has been trying out the latest demo release for two weeks. “Without a touchscreen, I struggled with a mouse to do certain things,” he said.

The new Metro interface only runs programs written for it, so users have to switch back to the traditional desktop to do certain tasks, like listening to music on Apple’s iTunes.

“The thing that really infuriates me is that it seems like Metro apps, and apps running in the normal desktop don’t have any knowledge of each other, ” said Forrester Research analyst David Johnson. “There’s no easy way to navigate between them, and I’m not quite sure why that is.”

The latest test version is not yet finished software. And outside of a few industry testers, no one has tried out Windows 8 on a tablet powered by ultra-efficient ARM Holdings chips, which is the closest Microsoft will come to challenging the iPad.

Microsoft is expected to say more about that on Monday, and there is talk that it might introduce a tablet under its own brand name. The company declined to comment on the reaction to the new system and its plans for the Monday event.

Nevertheless, Microsoft has not persuaded some of its most loyal users just yet.

“Right now, I’m not sold,” said analyst Michael Cherry of Directions on Microsoft, an independent research firm that focuses on the tech giant.

Cherry said he had persevered with Windows 8 for a few days, but had problems setting up email on his test machine. “I can’t rely on it as a production tool,” he said. “I can’t switch over yet. At this point, I should be able to leave Windows 7 behind.”

A former Microsoft program manager, Cherry worries that the initial complexity of the new system will prevent it from being an instant hit, like its predecessor, Windows 7.

“If a guy who has used Windows since Windows 1.0 can’t figure it out, then I’m going to guess there are other people out there who aren’t going to figure it out,” he said. “We won’t see line-ups at Best Buy at midnight. I’d love to see that, but it’s just not there.”

Mainstream tech reviewers like the Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg or the New York Times’ David Pogue have not yet weighed in on the third and latest “preview” of Windows 8, which became publicly available online on May 31.

The smattering of reviews on tech-centric blogs have generally praised the new look of Windows 8, but almost every one has stressed how difficult users will find the switch.

“I’ve felt almost totally at sea – confused, paralyzed, angry, and ultimately resigned to the pain of having to alter the way I do most of my work,” wrote Farhad Manjoo, technology columnist at online journal Slate, even as he acknowledged that there is a lot to love about Windows 8.

GeekWire — Microsoft’s hometown technology news website in Seattle — was no kinder, featuring a video of one reader’s father, completely stumped by how to get back to the Start menu. ( http://www.geekwire.com/2012/real-user-windows-8-they-drive-mac/ )

“Bottom line, I’ve spent the past day feeling lost, and a little grumpy,” wrote GeekWire’s Todd Bishop, who has followed the software company as a reporter for more than a decade.

“Microsoft likes to use the words ‘fast and fluid’ to describe Windows 8, but two other words keep popping to my mind: ‘New Coke,'” wrote Bishop, referring to Coca-Cola Co’s short-lived attempt to reinvent its core product in the 1980s.

Gizmodo reviewer Mat Honan praised Windows 8’s “subtle elegance” and said the Metro apps were better and easier to navigate than the last test version, but added there was nothing that “bowls you over.”

ZDNet reviewer Ed Bott, a previous skeptic of Windows 8, liked the “rich and polished collection of Metro-style apps,” and was the only high-profile reviewer with a wholly positive reaction.

To be sure, any great change to a system used by more than 1 billion people every day is bound to meet with resistance.

Microsoft’s Vista operating system got off to a terrible start in early 2007 due to its heavy memory demands and finicky security settings, but recovered somewhat in later updates. Almost three years later, its successor, Windows 7, became the company’s fastest-selling system to date, and has now racked up more than 500 million sales.

But Apple’s intuitive iOS mobile system has raised expectations, both for aesthetics and ease of use.

“I would not be able to give my mother – who is 76 – Windows 8 and expect her to be productive with it,” said Forrester’s Johnson. “But I’m also not sure that somebody in their 30s, or even 20s, wouldn’t be confused initially by the Metro interface either.”

Individual consumers and potential iPad buyers, rather than corporate customers, are the primary target for the Windows 8. Many big companies are still in the process of spending millions of dollars upgrading to Windows 7.

The success of the software will depend in part on the quality and price of machines running Windows 8, which is in the hands of PC makers such as Hewlett-Packard Co, Samsung Electronics, Lenovo Group and Acer Inc .

But even if the machines are slick, Microsoft’s online Windows Store is still no match for Apple’s App Store, and will probably take several years to build momentum, which in turn removes incentives to buy tablets running the new Windows.

“I really want to use Windows 8,” said Cherry of Directions on Microsoft. “But I’m not sure they’ve gotten to nirvana. It’s a stake in the road that shows us where they want to get to – I’m not sure they are able to get there in one release.”

Ever heard of Gentoo Linux

Gentoo is a free operating system based on either Linux or FreeBSD that can be automatically optimized and customized for just about any application or need. Extreme configurability, performance and a top-notch user and developer community are all hallmarks of the Gentoo experience.

Thanks to a technology called Portage, Gentoo can become an ideal secure server, development workstation, professional desktop, gaming system, embedded solution or something else — whatever you need it to be. Because of its near-unlimited adaptability, we call Gentoo a metadistribution.

Of course, Gentoo is more than just the software it provides. It is a community built around a distribution which is driven by more than 300 developers and thousands of users. The distribution project provides the means for the users to enjoy Gentoo: documentation, infrastructure (mailinglists, site, forums …), release engineering, software porting, quality assurance, security followup, hardening and more.

Get if from http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/where.xml

The development project and its products are named after the fastest-swimming penguin, the Gentoo, to reflect the potential speed improvements of machine-specific optimization. Gentoo package management is designed to be modular, portable, easy to maintain, flexible, and optimized for the user’s machine. Gentoo describes itself as a meta-distribution, “because of its near-unlimited adaptability”, in that the majority of users have configurations and sets of installed programs which are unique to themselves

“Microsoft Account” In Windows 8

The long-running “Live” name Microsoft has placed on its many connected services (Mail, messenger, photos, etc) is coming to an end in Windows 8, as part of their ongoing, major brand rehaul. Zune, of course, has been on its way out for some time, but will receive the coup de grace in Windows 8.

Their main services are being rolled into bundled applications with a native Metro look and simpler names — Mail instead of Windows Live Mail, Photos instead of Windows Live Photo Gallery, and so on. The new apps will be tightly integrated, as we’ve seen in demos, and will retain much of the Live cross-service functionality. They’ll be unified by a single “Microsoft Account.”

But Live isn’t going away entirely: the name is too strong to take away from Xbox Live and its subsidiary components, and in fact Xbox Live may be coming to Windows as the main entertainment brand — for music, games, and video content. This will replace Zune, which Microsoft has been gradually sweeping under the rug over the past two years. Zune fans mustn’t despair, though: Zune pass functionality will remain intact, and chances are the old desktop player and Zune hardware will continue to be supported in some way. And the fact is that Zune has left an indelible mark on Microsoft’s operations, pioneering the look and feel found in Windows Phone 7 and Windows 8.

Smaller services, like Writer and Games for Windows Live, will likely be rolled into existing products. It’s in major brand shakedowns like this that one starts to realize just how many platforms and pieces of software Microsoft actually has and supports. This coalescence of services is probably coming as a huge relief to the company, though the labor involved in repurposing them is, naturally, Herculean.

Conspicuously absent from the lineup mentioned is Messenger, which may be seeing some integration with Skype. A multi-service messenger/video-chat app with Skype built in seems likely, though Skype would definitely have to have a discrete presence as well for power users.

No doubt they’ll leave behind many irate users who want things to remain the same — and indeed how Microsoft intends to accommodate these legacy users isn’t clear. Their new clean-break approach maroons many people on the old Windows XP/7 mainland, where they’ll likely remain until the launch quakes of Windows 8 clear away and the new land is safe for colonization.

Windows 8 : Bye Start button?

With Microsoft’s latest operating system looming large on the digital landscape – set for a public beta launch at the end of the month – casualties are beginning to emerge.

It turns out that the launch of Windows 8 could see Microsoft’s iconic Start button going the same way as Clippy.

Now a mainstay of personal computing, the Start button was launched 17 years ago amidst a massive advertising campaign featuring the Rolling Stones song “Start me up“.

With Windows XP/Vista and 7 installed on a huge portion of PCs worldwide, the Start button has become a design icon that is effectively synonymous with the Redmond based software giant.

Sadly in Windows 8, rumours are that Microsoft has decided to kill off the Start button, with the space to be occupied by what is being called a “hot” corner.

In essence this will equate to moving the mouse pointer (if on a PC) into the corner which will fire up the new full-screen Metro-style start screen. Tablet users will be able achieve the same result by flicking their finger to the same bottom left corner of the screen.

Windows 8 will perhaps sport the most radical interface overhaul since Microsoft jumped from Windows 3.11 to Windows 95, and killing off the Start button will arguably free up more on screen real-estate.

From a cursory play with the new interface at Microsoft’s CES stand recently, the new interface may have impressed, but it is likely that many long term Windows users will find it baffling.

For first time users the news is potentially worse as there’ll be no visual cues for returning to the full-screen start menu of Microsoft’s newly minted Metro interface.

With the Windows 8 public beta due out in a couple of weeks, the Start button could possibly reappear by then, rumours are that die hard windows users shouldn’t get their hopes up.

So will there be a wake held for the soon to be deceased Start button? Will there be much of an outcry?

This remains to be seen, but the good news is that the Windows key on the keyboard of most PCs will still have the same function as it has today under Windows 8 and will pop up the Start screen – which should at least provide a solution for some frustrated users.