Author: J

I have tried to use Metro as much as possible lately, mainly because enlightenment kept eluding me. For some reason I could never really get the hang of it, which made me think that using Metro the desktop was a bad idea.

I am nothing if not stubborn, so instead of giving up, I have been using Metro as my primary desktop for a couple of days now. To be perfectly honest, I like it more and more. My main concern was running multiple apps and switching between these. Normally I have a bunch of apps running at the same time, and I keep switching between them. This is very straight forward, when you use the desktop, after all, we have been doing it for 20 years, however, the Metro UI seemed difficult for me to use.

That has changed for me though. Getting used to moving the mouse to the upper left hand corner is rapidly becoming an easy thing to do, and the  notification I get, when a new mail arrives, or when I get a new IM makes a lot of sense. For instance, a new IM is shown in the upper right corner in a colorful metro-style bar, and allows me to easily switch to that app. Furthermore, I am really starting to like the full screen mode, which makes everything easier to see.

In addition, Scott Hanselman has a very good blog post about pinning useful stuff to the start screen, which greatly helped me making my start screen more useable. I highly recommend reading it.

Verdict so far: Looking better by the minute

I know we are not supposed to call the new interface Metro, but since that is how we have always talked about it, I think we will keep it for now.

So, the metro interface of Windows 8 has gotten its fair share of criticism lately. There are also a lot of people who like, however, why listen to others when you can try for yourself? Personally, I really like the Metro tiles on my Windows Phone; as far as I am concerned, it is much better than iOS, which I use on my iPad. The interface is designed for touch though, and since I don’t have touch capabilities on my desktop/monitor, the experience is somewhat different.

I have discovered that I still use the desktop as my primary “workbench” in Windows 8. Whenever I boot up the machine, I log into the desktop nine out of ten times I would guess. It’s not that the Metro interface sucks, but I seem to only use it for causal computing, much like I use the iPad. Pure consumption, no creation outside of an email or a chat once in a while. I am not sure I need to be able to boot directly into the desktop, or have the Start button for that matter, but I have yet to fully use Metro outside the aforementioned scenarios.

One thing about the Metro mail app is that it seems to crash when I used IMAP on my domain mail account, which sucks a little bit. I cannot map the folders either, which would have been nice.

The nice thing about Metro is of course the live tiles. Usually my computer is running all the time and whereas before, when I had to go through a whole bunch of applications to get updates, I get the whole thing in one screen now. Much like Windows Phone, I get all my updates at a glance. That is really nice. The downside is that since the same apps exist in Metro and the desktop at the same time, I get a lot of double notifications. For instance, try to chat with someone on Facebook using Messenger, while having Outlook.com and Skype open. I suppose it is my own fault for having everything linked to each other, but it makes for a weird experience.

Verdict so far: I haven’t bought a Mac yet.

I finally got around to installing the 90 day trial version of Windows 8 and Office 2013 this weekend. I have used the preview a little bit on an extra partition, but I have decided to go all in and only run Windows 8 on my machine. I like metro a lot on the Windows Phone, however, I have not been totally sold on the desktop, so now I am going to give it a real shot and try to work with it on an everyday basis.

I did a clean installation, which took around 15 minutes I’d guess, which is very fast. I think it could be done a lot quicker on newer hardware, but I am pretty impressed by the speed none-the-less. I am using 5 year old hardware, and so far I have had no driver problems whatsoever, which surprised me to be honest. I know OEMs are pretty good at back porting their drivers, but this is still a pleasant surprise.

I have also noticed that my computer runs quite a bit faster than Windows 7, which was fast as well. Come to think of it, the last two versions of Windows have definitely breathed new life into my hardware. I bought this machine during the Vista era and ever since my WEI score has improved with every new edition of Windows. Granted, it is not the most impressive WEI score, and I could probably benefit quite a bit from a new processor, but still, it suits my needs just fine.

for the time being, I don’t miss the start button, which many people have been complaining about, but I might in a few days. It takes a little getting used to having to go to the metro interface to do some of the thing I used to do with the Start button, but for now it doesn’t bother me.

Verdict so far: So far so good.