Windows 8: The Animated Evaluation

I'm an Ubuntu Linux and OS X user and have been trying to like Windows 8.1 in the last weeks. The problems I have in no particular order ... - network management in Windows 7 was usable, whereas in 8.1 it is totally fucked - Microsoft accounts are on their way to become mandatory, as creating a regular account is not user friendly and there's a big and scary warning when you go that route; they are basically trying to resurrect Windows Live ID - Microsoft has started to force people on using their products - I could not figure out a way to turn OneDrive off completely, or to use anything other than Bing as the search engine in their "Search Everywhere" (this also happens on Windows Phone) - I haven't seen a "modern Windows" app that I like, they are all pieces of crap, including stuff from Microsoft; modern Skype for example is lacking crucial functionality; their app store is filled with trademark-violating malware and I've never seen such a low quality app store - from a usability perspective Windows 8 is a failure - there's something inherently different about a PC with 21 inch monitors, keyboard and mouse, versus a tablet, yet Windows tries to unify both worlds, becoming hostile in the process - see this funny video on the subject - ▶ this video - of course, you can totally ignore the "modern Windows" side of the coin for now, except that's where Windows is headed - I bought the standard edition, then I discovered that I needed the Pro version to get disk encryption or to connect to it through Remote Desktop; plus you need the Enterprise edition to make it boot from an USB stick - apparently Microsoft considers disk encryption and Remote Desktop to be meant for businesses and not for personal usage - for software developers Cygwin is the only thing that makes Windows tolerable and Cygwin is awful The only thing that Windows is good for is for playing games. I'm only keeping it around for playing Heroes of M&M 3 (the classic one) and Path of Exile. And every time I try Windows, I end up appreciating just how awesome Linux is.

>unattractive, resource-intensive, usability damaging Subjective, compared to what, subjective > simple, efficient, usable flat design is in. subjective, subjective, subjective. I don't know where this utterly moronic "flatten ALL THE THINGS" design meme comes from, but I wish it would die in a fire. Flat UI, at least Microsoft's implementation of it, has a great deal of fail about it. It's hard to tell what's clickable and what's not, things are not organized in a logical or easy to reach manner, and on and on. Have a look at this if you have about 20 minutes to spare. Someone goes into a great deal of depth on the 8 UX: ▶ this video

Microsoft made a mistake trying to force a made-for-touch interface on PC users, and in the end the strategy is not that different than forcing a PC interface on a touch device. It may actually be worse, because at least in that case you would be familiar with the interface, so at least it would have that advantage. I think this video explains most of the problems with Windows 8: ▶ this video