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I just installed the consumer preview of win8 on a second hard drive. i had a chance to play around with it, but only for a few minutes.

i read someplace that it's a schizo OS: it has two personalities. after using it i see what they mean. what we previously know as "windows" is now an app called Desktop. Basically everything you know about windows from win7 is there. The Start menu is essentially the "metro" UI. I like the metro concept and i think it has great potential, however i noticed some pitfalls. i installed pidgen as my chat client. it appeared as an icon in metro, but when i got messages it didnt react. i had to go into the Desktop and then read the message. it was extra steps do do somethign that i am able to do on win7 with a glance. HOWEVER, pidgen isnt written to take advantage of win8's new UI. maybe moving forward it will.

i have high hopes for win8. i think we are ready to move beyond the traditional desktop metaphor in computing. win8 is a first stab at it. i'd like to install a few apps like flash and get my cintiq up and running properly on it, and spend a day doign actual work on it.

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I'll wait for 9.

how did you get a picture of me??

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Yeah, I have the same issue with Win8. I had it running for a bit just to take a look and it is as if they only ever tested it on a touchscreen system and never tested the interactions of things. Everything requires extra steps now to do anything useful. Visually, you can not see important information anymore at a glance. The whole thing really only makes sense on something like a tablet or phone, not something that has a large screen size, and keyboard/mouse inputs.

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My aunt got a new computer and it came with Win8. She called me over to help her transfer all her files from her old computer.
Win8 took some getting used to but I played around with it for a while.

She got a 24" touchscreen so I felt like I was in Minority Report sliding things all around the screen. So futuristic. haha
And I saw what Frank meant. The START button is pretty much gone. START is like its own little program. Desktop is one of the buttons you can hit and it will bring up a normal looking Windows Desktop, minus the START button. I was using the Windows key on the keyboard to toggle back and forth between stuff.

I can definitely see people hating it. Hating it a lot. My aunt is just a basic computer user (email, internet, office suite) and she hated it.
It will take some getting used to.

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Does it boot faster?

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"If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. "

Actually I didn't have to boot it. It was already on when I got there.

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if your aunt is just a casual user, i can see her liking it once she gets used to it. the "metro" interface is pretty slick i think, and it starts to populate with your stuff as you use it more. i think with time that interface will grow more as more native apps are written to take advantage of it, and hopefully more of the advanced stuff that's tucked in the Desktop will dovetail into the Start Menu (metro, whatever its called now).

im thinking of upgrading to it at some point. i hear that the desktop runs faster and it boots quicker. i have a pretty decent work flow right now in win7 and i'm afraid to throw a monkey wrench in it, but at 40 beans for an upgrade it's not too tough of a pill to swallow.

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i pulled the trigger and updated to win8 officially tonight. it was 40 beans so i figured eff it. its got some quirks but i like it overall. honestly, i get the feeling that my day to day with it will remain unchanged and i don't foresee myself leaving the Desktop app all that much. the tile stuff is fun though.

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