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“Windows 8 is Windows 7+1”

I’ve mentioned before how much I’ve been surprised by the level of vitriol and hatred that has been unleashed against Microsoft’s forthcoming Windows 8 operating system. Everywhere I turn, on tech blogs and forums, there are articles, posts and threads complaining about the “disaster” that is Windows 8. Opinions galore, often complete with falsehoods stated as facts.

I find it all a bit bemusing. To be sure, Windows 8 is not without blemishes, but it’s hardly a disaster. I actually like it. I’ll be upgrading my release preview of Windows 8 to the full Windows 8 Pro when it is released on October 26. I certainly will not be returning to Windows 7.

So it’s something of a relief to find a kindred spirit in the form of Scott Hanselman, who describes Windows 8 as Windows 7+1:

Maybe I’m too relaxed but after a few days and some hotkeys I’ve found Windows 8 to be Windows 7+1. Works fine, no crashes, lots of improvements. I spend most of my desktop time in Windows apps, all of which work. I keep News apps or Video apps in full screen on other monitors and I do move the Start Screen around but generally the whole thing has been a non-issue.

And he actually shows why he has reached this conclusion in a detailed post. It’s worth reading.

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3 responses to ““Windows 8 is Windows 7+1””

  1. MarkB Avatar
    MarkB

    Perhaps so but for the average desktop user, there is little here for them. Expecting people to learn new windows-key combinations just because its more difficult to do familiar things is not much of an endorsement. All of the “pin it to the task bar” sounds good until you realize that the defaults are ALWAYS to Metro (sorry, Windows-8-style) apps and cant easily be changed. Double-click on a picture and you are dumped into the pic viewer and have to figure out how to get back to your files.

    For laptop and small-screen people I think all the chromeless stuff will be great, but when a tech-savvy person after having it installed for a month and is now saying “have got myself productive again” – I wouldn’t consider that much of a success-story.

    Reply
    1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
      Geoff Coupe

      Mark – yes, I agree that post-installation, file defaults are set to Modern UI Apps, but that’s only until you install further software. As soon as I installed Windows Essentials, the file defaults got switched to those applications automatically.

      By coincidence, I see that Paul Thurrott wrote about this here: http://www.winsupersite.com/article/windows8/windows-8-tip-change-file-associations-144102

      Reply
  2. Windows 10 Technical Previews | Geoff Coupe's Blog

    […] and vitriol, from many users of traditional PCs. Personally speaking, I singularly fail to see what all the fuss is about. I use Windows 8.1 on both my PCs and Tablets, and am perfectly comfortable in both environments. I […]

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