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We’ve been treated to a fairly solid consumer preview build of Microsoft’s latest and greatest, which honestly, we quite like. It’s obvious from the beta that Redmond is quite far along with Windows 8 development; it’s apparently aiming to finish up work on Windows 8 this summer, shoving it out on both x86 tablets and PCs in October with a few ARM-based Windows 8 tablets in the mix too.
I can’t see Windows 8 tablets being all that cheap, so with the iPad reportedly kicking arse left, right and centre in the premium market, they best bring some serious game to the fight. And no, just having Angry Birds or Cut the Rope doesn’t count. [Bloomberg]
Looking forward to seeing how these ARM Windows 8 tablets get on. If I’m honest I’m sort of expecting a car crash, but perhaps I’m just getting myself ready for the worst
I know what I want from one of these tablets, and it’s quite specific, I want a tablet that I can carry with me, have 10 hours of battery life, easy to navigate and easy to consume media content when on the road. I also want basic Outlook, word etc to keep upto date, and I want some time wasting apps.
When I’m back in the office, I want to be able to dock my tablet, use a keyboard and mouse and navigate it like a standard PC.
So basically your not asking for that much then
Imagine a Windows 8 ARM OQO.. damn recession.
Since when did a new Microsoft OS prompt talk about nothing but tablets?
I won’t be upgrading to Windows 8, Server or otherwise, purely because Microsoft has gone wrong. At the risk of prompting an argument, iOS is successful because it was built purely for touch-screen devices. And even if Apple did port iOS features to Mac OS X (as they already have done), most of the features can be used easily with either gestures or mouse.
Metro doesn’t do this. Metro is designed purely for gestures. Yes there is a horizontal scrollbar but since when were they looked upon in a positive manor? As I said in a previous post, if Gizmodo made their web page too wide and you had to scroll right to get more information I think people would have something to say about it.
I was more shocked than ever when I saw Metro on Windows Server 8. How many touch screen servers are out there? I’d say 2. You’re probably shouting at this now with “Few people in the industry use GUI on their server OS’s”. I do because I only manage a small school, still running on Server 2003. Metro would just make it harder to get to management panels etc. I know it certainly makes it hard to get to the Control Panel.
Microsoft, for me, perfected their OS with Windows 7. I never had many problems with Vista but it just seemed an unfinished product. I will be sticking with Windows 7/Server 2008 R2 and be happy for doing so.
The scrollbar surprised me to be honest, I expected to be able to just drag the metro screen like you would with touch gestures, it seems more intuitive these days, as you say scrollbars are more than a bit outdated particularly in this situation.