Greetings all, I've been staying out of this conversation because I hadn't actually used windows 8. I decided to install it and see what all the fuss was about. So my impression after a couple of minutes poking around follows:
I decided the UI design was terrible within seconds. It's clearly aimed at small screens, which is fine. But it doesn't take into account larger screens and adjust accordingly. The missing Start button people are complaining about, as far as I could tell, is still there. It's just microscopic and invisible and activated by hovering. I tried clicking on the desktop icon (tile, whatever) and got stuck on the desktop. I had to be told about these mysterious hot corners. Any UI that has invisible elements is a bad UI. Of course, the Start button just takes you back to those enormous space wasting tiles. So then I tried pointing at corners and found a Search button. I clicked it expecting a computer/internet search and instead got a full screen style All Programs menu. That in itself if fine but why call it Search? Is that just to be different to "Apps" or did people not understand "Programs"? Anyway, I just thought people might be interested in the first impressions of a developer who has been ignoring win7 and win8 up until now. I'll poke around a bit more over lunch. David "If we can hit that bullseye, the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards... checkmate!" -Zapp Brannigan, Futurama
