It's not really for a PC unless of course you have one of those not-so-popular touchscreen PC's sold by oems. That part of Windows 8 is made mainly for tablets. Also that Metro UI is already available for phones, known as Windows Phone 7. The Metro UI is spanning across all of MS products, even into the XBOX Live Dashboard.
It looks almost identical to windows 7 on the PC side of things. Whatever. It will be a free upgrade since I have access to technet.
What does everyone think of the Ribbon making its way into Win8? http://www.winrumors.com/microsoft-details-new-windows-8-ribbon-explorer-ui-video/
Oh wow that's pretty useful. I mostly memorized all of the locations of the commands in win7 right now and use keyboard shortcuts for everyday file explorer usage but the share and search tab look better here.
I thought I read that the tiles will be the default interface even for the PC with the classic Windows interface running underneath. So if someone wanted to use a classic interface they would have to switch to it. Could be wrong though. Lots of info floating around.
I didn't realize that the Metro UI would be the default interface.. since from the video previews, they're all demonstrated with a touchscreen. I could be wrong for the same reason. No solid info yet. Need beta release
The initial presentation I saw seemed to mention that Metro UI was default. They basically said for running legacy apps you used the Win7 interface. With them still modifying traditional explorer I kind of doubt that's the case though. As for the ribbon, I think it's a good idea and will greatly help most users, but personally I'm not all for it. You can hide and customise it though so there's no way I'll be saying they should remove it just to appease me. It does look a little ugly and obtrusive in the current form compared to the streamlined minimalist win7 look. However, it actually takes up less space when you factor in the changes they've made elsewhere, so by obtrusive I mean more in the sense of it drawing your eyes to it, where a power user doesn't necessarily need it. No drama though, just minimise!
They did have that video of a laptop booting into windows 8 in under 10 seconds, which was pretty swish.
It will be interesting to see what the differences are between Windows 8 running on x86 processors and the ARM processors typically found in mobile devices. I guess the current previews for it haven't included any ARM devices yet.
Windows Developer Preview will be available for download tonight at 8:00PM PT. 32- or 64-bit x86 machine (no activation required) http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/home/
This looks like a total Frankenstein of an OS that tries to put a mobile interface where it doesn't belong, and full fledged Windows where it doesn't belong, all in one big, messy package that isn't going to work very well on anything. I think i'll be sticking with 7.
I have another 1GB to go and then I will install this on a test box or a VM, whichever seems easier at the time. Don't have anything with a touchscreen so I think Metro UI is going to be wasted on me and to be honest at the moment I can't see the point of it at work (for us at least). EDIT: Currently installing. It uses the same installer as Vista/7 at this point in time. Using an older box with a C2D 2.53 GHz CPU and 2GB RAM. I was going to install it as a VM on one of our blades but I want to see how it performs on older hardware.
Now posting from Windows 8, will post some pics and impressions soon. Just one thing.. THERE IS NO START MENU! When you hit start it brings up the Metro UI and everything has become an App!
Not sure how I feel about it at the moment, going into the UI everytime you want to find something is a pain but you can still Win+r to bring up run in the desktop 'app'. They have changed explorer a bit but again finding it wasn't easy as there is not 'my computer' on the desktop and ofcourse there is no start menu to find it in either! When you hover down the bottom left on anything a menu appears and you can press start from here to enter the Metro UI. Its a pain as in Remote Desktop hitting start on the PC you are connected to can be tricky and hitting the windows key brings up the host Metro UI. However there is a 'search' option down here which I can found to be easier as it lists everything installed alphabetically. Also on this box it doesn't boot in 8 seconds! It takes at least 30 and I got it wrong its not a C2D 2.53 its 2.8! On the plus side it took about 10 minutes to install from USB. EDIT: I took a performance monitor screen as this has changed a bit too.
I can see this taking off with younger first time windows users. Dinosaurs like us might have issues with it. I also don’t see this taking off in the business world but I shouldn’t judge until I try it. I have an old PC I plan to put it on.