[zaroth]

Every time I sit down in front of Win8 I feel like my head is going to explode. Earlier this evening I was on the phone trying to walk a tech-challenged colleague through removing an existing account in 'Mail'. He had switched mail clients, and the new client would work once and then fail for hours, and then work once, etc. It hit me that Windows 'Mail' was trying to login with an old password, and must be causing his account to lock out. Of course he didn't know his current mail password either, so the best option was to just delete the account from Windows Mail.

It took several minutes just to explain how to get into 'Settings'. Then after finally selecting an account, he couldn't figure out that the right-hand panel with the settings actually scrolled. Then when he clicked 'Remove Account' and it gave a cryptic error about how the account couldn't be deleted, because it was his "Microsoft Login" account even though it looked like the work email account. Finally we found the right account and removed it. Almost 30 minutes of my life lost to something which should been about 5 clicks max.

I feel like literally everything about Win8 was designed as the complete opposite to how I would want my computer to actually function. First, the idea that Microsoft is sync'ing settings between machines in ways that is extremely difficult or impossible to turn off is worse than creepy, it feels like a back door. Then every time an app comes up as "Metro" styled or whatever, it seems incredibly wasteful, out-of-place and practically ridiculous looking. No, thank you, I don't want my 4K monitor taken over by a full screen of purple and a tiny bit of text at the top. Then there are things like 'Camera' app which when it fails simply says 'Camera cannot start' and give you absolutely nothing to do about it (all the while Skype video-conferencing is working perfectly).

It's like Microsoft thought, well most of our users don't even know how to use a computer, so lets make an operating system for them! I must have some sort of PTSD from it because I often end up loudly cursing Microsoft's existence any time I need to even approach a Win8 machine.

In short, if Microsoft is making a "case" for Windows 10 to anyone like me, it better look fuck all like Win8.

Yet I am convinced Microsoft still completely does not get it. My desktop is not my phone, and I don't want to run smartphone apps on my desktop. There are incredible opportunities for tying together the computing experience between desktops and phones, but unifying the user interface is just dead wrong. It's like the whole thing is just completely lost in translation. A unified experience does not mean a unified GUI! How can they get this so wrong even after 5 years of staring their failure in the face?

[WalterGR]

     Every time I sit down in front of Win8 I feel like my head is going to explode.

I use Windows 8 at work. I power it on, dismiss the new 'start screen', and from that point on it's almost EXACTLY like every version of Windows that came before it.

Look: you don't like Metro apps? Then don't use them.

As it stands, your problems - and the problems described by every other person on HN who has had their good sense similarly assaulted by Windows 8 - are entirely self-inflicted.

You have a choice and you choose to stick with what brings you displeasure.

[Goronmon]

Yeah, it's funny. I use Win7 for work and Win8 on my home computers. I don't even really notice the difference anymore. 99% of the time I'm starting a program with something on the Taskbar or "Windows Key + 'chr'" or "Windows Key + 'visua'". And that never changes.

I mean, I get there are scenarios where some people get frustrated about some default behavior, but I run into something like that once or twice a year, and the rest is smooth sailing.

[zaroth]

For now I just avoid it. I don't use a Win8 machine myself, so I have never had the cause to modify one back to Win7 behavior. But the Win8 machines I have had to use seem to push you back into Metro no matter how often you try to Win-D out of it, e.g. like the Network Settings example I got down-voted for below.

[WalterGR]

   I don't use a Win8 machine myself, so I have never had the cause to modify one back to Win7 behavior.

You don't need to "modify it back to Win7 behavior." Dismiss the Windows 8 'start screen' then don't use Metro apps. Magic.

    But the Win8 machines I have had to use seem to 
    push you back into Metro no matter how often you
    try to Win-D out of it, e.g. like the Network
    Settings example I got down-voted for below.

You're doing something to cause the behavior you don't like.

Were this any other platform, the advice on HN would be: 1. Figure out what you're doing to cause the behavior you don't like. 2. Stop doing it.

[zaroth]

> You're doing something to cause the behavior you don't like

You mean, like clicking the Start button? Clicking the 'Start' button in Win8 brings up a metro-style screen which annoys me every time I see it. You can pin as many programs on the taskbar as possible, but if you want to run a one-off program, the only alternative is Win-R and knowing the name of the executable. Can you get back the standard Win7 start menu? Possibly, but like I said, I don't use Win8 enough to bother trying to modify it back to Win7.

[ploxiln]

Microsoft is following the popular trends. The "other major desktop OS", Mac OS X, is similarly bad. What used to be the default desktop for most linux distros, Gnome, is also going this way.

Lots of people love it. They say "computers shouldn't bother me with details, they should just work". They say "if I should be doing something, like backing up or managing settings, the computer should do it automatically". Even technical people say this, and I think it's a fair and realistic way to portray their opinion.

The only place you can hide from this trend is one of the full-manual linux distros (or bsd). I've used them for many years, I've worked on linux kernel drivers, I do dev-ops stuff, so of course I would hate this "make it easier" trend. But I feel that I am qualified to say that trying so hard to make things easy and automatic, while also keeping up with absurdly fast changes in GUI fashion, makes things less reliable and less fixable (and thus damn frustrating).

Things are more and more "designed", more and more "streamlined" and "optimized for user experience", and people seem to get the impression that the results are good, but in practice common people still don't really know how to even use the interface. I can figure out pretty quickly what you can click and what you can scroll, but the common user can't! and I don't prefer these slick new information-starved whitespace-fat interfaces. I guess they're just for demos, and their own designers.

[sosuke]

Deleting a Mail account was very painful, but so far it has been the only painful part of 8.1 I've run into.

[zaroth]

I guess I got lucky with that one, right? I mean, who would think to go into the account settings and scroll to the bottom of a side-panel with no scroll bars to find a button called 'Remove Account'? Even the videos I was finding on YouTube were showing a way to get a 'Delete' button to show up in the Account list somehow. I mean, imagine, I have to search on YouTube for a video describing how to delete a mail account on Win8. That's just pathetic.

I've used very little Win8, because it literally triggers an unhealthy physiological response in me for some reason. But the few things I've tried have been mind-numbingly painful. The whole 'Microsoft Account' thing after initial install of Win8.1 was very user hostile. I think I had to click Cancel like 7 times before it finally just let me login to my own machine.

In Win7 I start all programs by clicks Start, typing a few letters, and clicking Enter. That sometimes works in Win8, but often you type the name of a program and the auto-complete suggestions are just complete utter Rubbish?!

I installed MegaRAID testing a new SAS setup, and I'm trying to see; "Show me the start folder with all the MegaRAID apps". In Win7, you type 'Mega' and boom you see them all. In Win8, I had to hunt for them in the ridiculous tile view because it just wouldn't show in the auto-complete. (probably it hadn't "Indexed" them yet or something).

Then there was the experience with the Camera app. I was trying to record some video, and it would tell me absolutely nothing about why it wasn't working. Apps from the "Store" likewise failed (btw, their store was incredibly frustrating to search for something like 'Video recording' if you sorted by anything but Relevance then results were completely crap). I quick Googled for some Win7 freeware and of course it worked perfectly.

Then there's the massive cognitive dissonance between Metro and Windows. I'm just constantly hammering Windows-D to try to get back to sanity. The Metro apps hide all scroll and title panes, so just minimizing the window is an act of waiting for UI elements to appear. I mean, the OS is called fucking "Windows" and they eliminated the entire concept of a window. It's just mind blowing.

Like, try to get into IP settings to change your IP address. I think each successive version of Windows has to add at least 2 clicks to the sequence required to view or change your IP. It's easier to go to command prompt now. I never understood what that weird Network panel thing is supposed to even be showing me? Why do I need half my screen to list a single network adapter? And they give it so much space but include absolutely no useful details, just a big block of some randomly chosen solid color and absolutely no affordances for what to click next? Again it just seems they are building an OS for people who don't know what a mouse is. I'm sure they would remove the entire Control Panel if they thought they could get away with it.

[Goronmon]

In Win7 I start all programs by clicks Start, typing a few letters, and clicking Enter. That sometimes works in Win8, but often you type the name of a program and the auto-complete suggestions are just complete utter Rubbish?!

I lot of the auto-complete is learned behavior. Use it enough and it figures out what you generally want to use given the keys you enter. Win7 is probably working better because you use it more.

Then there's the massive cognitive dissonance between Metro and Windows. I'm just constantly hammering Windows-D to try to get back to sanity. The Metro apps hide all scroll and title panes, so just minimizing the window is an act of waiting for UI elements to appear. I mean, the OS is called fucking "Windows" and they eliminated the entire concept of a window. It's just mind blowing.

Then don't use Metro apps? Ignore the Windows Store and Win8 functions the same as Win7.