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.