I also noticed that some of the metro 'apps' were pretty poor. Navigation (on a normal touchpad laptop) in the 'Photos' app was not very intuitive with almost no visual cues. In the short time we were going through it for the life of me I couldn't find any Print options when viewing a single photo, so I just fell back on the keyboard shortcut. I knew it of course, but it was something the person I was helping had never used.
I'm not sure about this because right now there is nothing on win update for me to try, but I remember there was a notification on settings menu and the same annoying message to postpone the restart etc Win7 has was present still when I was updating. don't think it's any different.
Well, in the three hours I was there we never saw the notification. In addition, on the traditional start menu it would give you and icon on the shutdown button to let you know it was pending. Initially she was having all sorts of problems, including none of the shortcuts on her desktop actually opening anything and I eventually figured out the system needed a restart as some updates needed to process.
Network and Sharing center is exactly like Win7, just right click on the network. when you click the network icon instead of the old menu, a menu in new style comes in the left side of screen full screen which I don't like either but has same amount of into, it's just larger. I guess it was necessary to have it work between both UIs.
Control Panel is in the settings menu which I wish we could customize to add more to it. it's not hard to access imo but looks like people have problem with concept of settings menu, it takes getting used to I guess. You don't need to go into Start Screen to access control panel, it being bloated or not it's nothing to do with CP access. You can actually add all the admin tool to start screen by just a check box in settings.
Yeah, you can pin whatever you want too.
Yeah, I'd imagine with enough time I'd have gotten used to Settings and explored a little more there, just threw off my work flow when all I normally needed to do was hit start and stuff like Computer and CP were options. I would likely customize it using the options you stated, but again, if looking at it from a casual user POV that really isn't a positive.
I don't think I understand the issues. you wanted Chrome in metro? I think you have to set it as default browser. Firefox doesn't have metro UI yet, it's in development.
Nope, I mean Chrome wouldn't even launch from the desktop. I reinstalled just to make sure and it did prompt for default but I wasn't looking to do that. Don't know what happened, but like I said I didn't get much of a chance to investigate. Luckily she was more keen on Firefox and it did open.
So, if she wants to run Chrome from the icon on the new metro Start Screen, does the default matter?
I think a lot of users use quick search in start menu to find what they want, it works like that here too, it's just full screen now which might break work flow for some, that's a valid point imo. Otherwise if you didn't use search before accessing everything is same as before really, you relied on shortcuts then?
Well, I think it probably bothered me because of what you stated, that it's like stepping out of the desktop work flow when it wasn't necessary before. Just feels really disjointed, though I'm sure I'd get used to it.
win8 desktop is hardly different than 7 really with added ribbon UI which I quite like.
For new UI and learning curve, casual users should look for hardware that supports win8 features with touch screen or track-pads with gesture support it's really easy for the most casual user imo which this new start screen is designed for, otherwise there is no point in upgrading for those if you can't use the new features.
New hardware - especially when the hardware they bought for 7 is not that old - isn't really an acceptable solution for many users, unfortunately.
