Windows 8, worst conceived OS in history

NO!

A lot doesn't play nice with windows 8... trust me on that... I run high end application in parallel... I've reinitialized my top end system 3 times today... I've probably restarted or forced restarted 50 times today. The start menu is silly, its all set up the way MS wants you too use it (the one item MS always had over apple was flexibility). The sad part is its all about selling products at there store...

Boy, everyone is recommending MINT and ubuntu variations... things may have changed, haven't used linux in a few years. I'll do the research.

But, yes, I do feel its the worst "conceived" OS in history; it probably also happens to be really fast when it works, and appears to have a better core scheduler than win7. Again, the biggest problem is that they took a highly flexible OS used in every notch our society has, and turned it into a dam smart phone. I don't feel this change was honest, everything technical will be tougher in windows 8. I mean, you can't even organize the tiles the way you want, the move around when I drag them, but to use this thing I need to define my own groups, column counts, order, etc... no auto sort, only auto align would be nice.

No start menu.... so how are we supposed to find stuff? The start menu right... and whose going to buy me a $1000 touch screen that cost $15 to manufacture?

An OS like windows needs to be intuitive and flexible, this is neither... its a departure from a "satisfy the customer" design philosophy, to a "make products cheaper to make and more profitable, regardless of what we do to or how we are perceived by the customer".

When it does work, I can see its got a good backboned to it... but primarily because it's a small (no HDD requiremnt increase from win7, which is historically unique I think...usually the OS gets bigger) efficient OS. I think they accomplished this by taking some lessons learnt on smart phone OSs, which isn't bad... but then someone got the bright idea, lets make the experience as trackable and market controlled as a smart phone! Bad idea taking away the one thing allowing MS to be so versitile and putting them more inline with apple (even worse in my opinion... I'd rather have the apple OS than win8)... and they won't let me return it, after 20 years of loyality to MS. Screw em, they are official crap producers... yes, worse "conceived" than windows ME, definitely worse "conceived" than Vista.... Vista and Me had serious implementation flaws, but the idea behind what they were trying to produce was far better than the idea of win 8... and chances are, they aren't going to be either removing or completely rebuilding it.. so I honestly feel this departure is going to be a death sentence for windows on the desktop (perhaps servers as well, lord knows what they are planning to do there)... which likely make active directly far harder to deal with and that'll be the end of windows server. I really think, windows is done for technical computing environments. Which is bad for them considering their smart phones really kind of suck compared to android... and apple for that matter.

On top of all that, windows 8 is buggy as hell.... freezes and stutters, auto screen shot off works but requires restart to get it back.

I mean, why am I going to buy "apps" from the MS store when I have an Iphone... Except in rare circumstances, why the hell would I want an "app" on my desktop computer anyway? They are designed for smart phones... tiny little htmls, scripts and... are there really programs or just scripts? Its fine if MS wants to make a phone app desktop interface like apple did with itunes, but to make the center of the OS and to design the OS interface around an app selection interface is tarded, very tarded. Now, perhaps if they make this app selection interface as versitile as the desktop and touch screens come down in price at least 80%... and they fix the installation process which was the worst I ever went thru, 8 hours...and if they fix the bugs, and wait 5 years for everyone to buy a touch screen, maybe then this new OS will work out ok for them... but because they like intel appear to be getting out of technical computing business (opting for cheaper "all-in-one" chips); Sadly, I don't think MS will survive this one... the phones suck in comparison to android and apple, and they based the desktop around the phone. Saves development costs now and in the future... but what a risk to take so prematurely and to implement so poorly, and in such a dangerous time for the market, so stupid. Ha... Mozilla just frooze up for like 45 seconds, I'm back!

Day 4, post windows 8:

I've been hoping the OS would slowly grow on me... nope, its getting worse. Keep in mind I've been using windows since the beginning (DOS for that matter) and have always been a loyal loving customer (even when they screwed up, I trusted them to correct it), and I know how to design OSs (part of being a CE). So to begin, there is no windows media player, there is only a tiny "app" version of it, all my movies default to this crappy app that takes 10 times longer to open than VLC player yet is a far less robust media player (what do I expect, it was designed for tiny devices).

Most everything defaults to these crappy apps in the metro interface when I try to open files. Everyone of these apps is a toy designed for smart phones, with only the least knowledgeable user in mind (my 70 year old dad, who knows only ebay) and the simplest touch capabilities (i.e., designed for tiny touch screens you can barely put your figures in). Can you imagine... once I could open 10 word documents and be constantly dynamically switching between them all in an effort to write a term paper. Now I'm forced into full screen view no matter what file type I open. Switching between them is a joke unless there is something I am missing (am I?). There are strange new ways to do things like scroll down, or double click (I think they are intending to bury the double click and opt for single click behavior, all part of some naive CEO's idea to turn the PC market into the smart phone market. Which is interesting, because now after viewing this OS, I'm wondering if all this hype about PCs going out of style is merely a marketing ploy by MS... I mean, most people want a powerful machine compared to the day's standard. Smart phones will always be lowest in memory, procesing power, etc... smart, redesign and compromise a 20 year successful platform to make it fit within the market where your succeeding the least... smart phones.... the devices aren't even comparable! The only advantage is reducing development costs of the PC product. You remember Captain Kirks communicator? You think its a good idea to conform the Enterprise's Communications array to that standard? That's what we are talking about here... traditional windows was build for real machines, windows 8 was build for cheaper, more profitable and FAR less capable devices.... size will always be a limiting factor in computer design, therefore a smart phone will NEVER equal a desktop sized PC. In most cases, the interfaces and software will be total different due to these size based design compromises....

Organization is around marketing, not the user. For example, I go to the metro sexual interface and click on the icon called games, expecting to see what games are installed on my machine or at least the old accessories-->games-->solitary type games... no, it takes you straight to the windows app store.... Is this where I buy Call of duty? No, its where I buy freaking Angry Birds! Do they really think we are that stupid? Integration of sales software into an OS on such a level I never could have imagined. Sure OSs have always come with bloatware, but this is blatant and highly integrated with the system, you couldn't remove it all if you tried. It would be interesting for a lawyer to wade thru the privacy policies between the old and new windows... I bet they effectively turned the PC into the internet, in terms of privacy. They should really call this OS "Windows Angry Birds", but "Windows Metro Sexual" suffices I guess.

I'm Constantly being asked to register windows and there is no way to turn it off.... I don't want to register, I don't trust them with my information and neither should you. This is messing up my time sensitive programs, forcing me out of games for example.

Most general programs don't operates well all the time in windows, I mean.. everything from Firefox, to VLC player, to cpu-z hangs up and stops responding... I'm going to test, but it really feels like clockwork... every 4 hours, "not responding" for like 2 minutes, most programs (I'm not using the "apps" of windows.... I could have saved $1200 and bought a smartphone if I wanted an app). It wouldn't surprise me in the least if MS intentionally hard coded errors into the desktop "old" OS trying to force people to buy there $3 script files instead of the free and far more powerful equivalents. Seriously, everything that isn't a windows cheep app runs quite well for like 2-4 hours and then hangs.

I am done with em. Don't buy this OS... go with a free Linux platform or at least an Apple... When/If the Linux guys ever do start to decide to focus more on touch interfaces, I'll trust them to come up with something innovative for the PC and not comformed to the marketing, user tracking and software/device capability wishes of the Vendor.

Yeah, they think they are being more predictive of user habits and think this increases user speed, when really, it just restricts flexibility and intuition. Its great for a smart phone!

This is one of the reasons the OS is conceived so poorly. I think you are both right... I think Windows 8 was designed both to be a "new windows 7" and "an attempt to reach new markets (touch screens for desktops)"... the problem is that these two ideas conflict each other now, and likely forever, and the only reason to combine them into one OS, as opposed to releasing "windows 8" and "windows touch" as separate products (or an add-on), is to reduce development costs. Not just now, but into the future... MS had the bright idea to make one OS for everything, which is incredible stupid idea by someone who knows nothing about computers.

Now, I must say, on day 8 or so of having windows 8, that if I ignore the the metro interface, all the bloatware ingrained in the OS, all the tracking software, all the cell phone apps, all the ingrained marketing crap, all the defaulting to cell phone apps even though I have better software installed, all the application freezes and errors I'm getting, the removal of the start button when they should have just made it on/off and given the user the choice, that I think... in regards to the core operating system, I think it could be a real improvement over windows 7 if they fix the problems. There are some things I'm starting to like, things they should have fixed a long time ago. For example, my music files... they all appear now with relevant track data in windows explorer.... This was very difficult to achieve in previous versions. By the way, why the hell would they rename "windows explorer" to "file explorer"... it just shows they are focusing more on marketing than functionality. What else do I link... I think I like the ribbon in windows explorer... but again, MS should give the option to display both the ribbon and the original file menu... each can serve its own purpose at difference times and for different users... MS used to be the company of "choice", at least compared to apple, now apple... I think.... I can't beleive I'm saying this, lol, but I think apples better.

Well, even if that is theoretically true (which I doubt), I sure as hell wish they had told me that before I wasted $140.