Windows 8 is the first OS that made me downgrade

[HawkMan]

Support : Ok take your finger and press the power button once with your finger on the front of the computer.

Customer: Ok I did that and the screen went black and the power button is blinking.

Support: Ok now press the power button again to turn the computer back on. This time the computer should boot back up

Customer: Ok I pressed the power button and my screen came back with all my icons

Support: Already? Wow that was fast.

Customer: It didn't boot up it just appeared.

Support: Oh it must have just gone to sleep.

The default configuration of the power button on most computers is not to turn off but to sleep the machine.

Only on laptops. And not all of them, and not from microsoft, from crappy oem's who reconfigure the defaults to make it seem like a pos Samsung can boot up in 3 seconds and restore documents even after you pull the power and battery with a renamed hybrid sleep. Which apparently no one else has...

Either way, its easy enough to guide them through the charms. Restarts are the least problem on support anyway, they've usually done that when they call and if they need to do it because of an install, guess what, the install will do the restart.

[Dot Matrix]

HawkMan: "Ok ma'am I want you to slide your mouse to the top right of the screen and a menu will pop out"

Customer: "I saw something pop out but it's gone now"

HawkMan: "Ok, try again this time move your mouse down afterwards vertically and click on the Settings button"

Customer: "Every time I try to click on the Settings button the menu disappears!"

HawkMan: "That is because you're not dragging the mouse down from the corner perfectly vertical"

Customer: "I am!"

5 Minutes later...

Customer: "Ok I'm in Settings"

HawkMan: "Ok.. *palmface* now click on Restart and wait for your computer to reboot"

HawkMan: "Ma'am, can you press the Windows key, and "I" at the same time for me?"

Customer: "OK. Done"

HawkMan: "Ok, now go to "Power", down at the bottom, click that, and then press restart."

Customer: "Ok."

[Active.]

HawkMan: "Ma'am, can you press the Windows key, and "I" at the same time for me?"

Customer: "OK. Done"

HawkMan: "Ok, now go to settings down at the bottom, click that, and then press restart."

Customer: "Ok."

You don't expect her to remember that, do you? Pretty sure with that sort of explanation you'd see her calling you every time she wants to restart or shut down the computer

[trag3dy]

HawkMan: "Ma'am, can you press the Windows key, and "I" at the same time for me?"

Customer: "OK. Done"

HawkMan: "Ok, now go to "Power", down at the bottom, click that, and then press restart."

Customer: "Ok."

HawkMan: "Ma'am, can you press the Windows key, and "I" at the same time for me?"

Customer: "Whats the windows key, I don't have one of those"

How many normal users actually know what the windows key is? If I told anyone else in my house to hit the Windows key they would ask me what that is. And then you expect them to use that in combination with another key? :laugh:

My brother needs repeated examples on how to copy pictures from one folder to another. My dad is even worse. Can I direct them to you when they have questions about how to do something in Windows 8?

[Active.]

What's frustrating about this particular issue is that it was a solved problem. This was easy enough to do on Windows 7. You could argue whether the placement was logical or not, but it worked well enough. Microsoft managed to actively make things worse in this regard.

And, by the way, it even worked rather consistently across different operating systems. On Windows, you'd click the Windows logo in the corner and click shutdown. On a Mac, you'd click the Apple logo in the corner, then click shutdown.

[Dot Matrix]

HawkMan: "Ma'am, can you press the Windows key, and "I" at the same time for me?"

Customer: "Whats the windows key, I don't have one of those"

How many normal users actually know what the windows key is? If I told anyone else in my house to hit the Windows key they would ask me what that is. And then you expect them to use that in combination with another key? :laugh:

My brother needs repeated examples on how to copy pictures from one folder to another. My dad is even worse. Can I direct them to you when they have questions about how to do something in Windows 8?

Seriously!? Every ****ing keyboard comes with a Windows key. Even my Mom knows what the Windows Key is. "Press the button on the keyboard with the Windows logo on it."

[contextfree]

"Click the Settings charm and then Power" (or "Click Settings in the right-hand bar that you bring up, and then Power" if they don't happen to know the word "charm")

The charms are used for so much in the OS that you more or less have to know how to access them to do much of anything, which means that anyone who's been using it for any length of time will already know. There's a reason it's the one thing that's directly shown in the setup animations.

[trag3dy]

Seriously!? Every ****ing keyboard comes with a Windows key. Even my Mom knows what the Windows Key is. "Press the button on the keyboard with the Windows logo on it."

I'm happy for you and your mom. Meanwhile, I have a realistic view at how inept people can be at using their own computers. You're giving the masses of people who will be using Windows 8 far to much credit.

[+Elі Subscriber²]

This is a good example.

Doesn't it bother you guys to know that Microsoft devoted so many resources and money to come up with something that people tend to avoid 95% of the time? That the developers purposely sacrificed the desktop experience in regards to Metro, a UI catered for touchscreen? Shouldn't they have focused more on where the majority of the users will be spending their time?

This by no means will always be the situation, as developers bring more and more quality apps to the store that people will install because they will be useful, many people will spend more time with Metro IMHO.

[freak180]

At least I found a fix for my shutdown problem for win 8 :p I'm happy now haha

[Dot Matrix]

I'm happy for you and your mom. Meanwhile, I have a realistic view at how inept people can be at using their own computers. You're giving the masses of people who will be using Windows 8 far to much credit.

And you're giving them too little credit. Believe me, I see people everyday at school using computers as they should with no trouble at all. I dunno where you hang out, but here, people are more than a bunch of Cro-Magnons beating their keyboards with their fists hoping something happens.

[giantpotato]

Why are people creating fictional scenarios of how 'laymen' users are going to have problems with Windows 8? Wait a few months until you get your first Windows 8 support call, then post about it. There's no point in making up stories about how you think users are going to react.

[bj55555]

new features well to start with

- Start screen, easier and more organized view of your favorite pinned apps (don't compare it to all apps, that's another layer in). With the ability to sort your apps into named groups.

Bingo. People don't realize that the Windows 7 "Start Menu" was just a single list of programs. What they *think* is the "Start Menu" is actually the Program Groups, which you can only get to by clicking "All Programs". Windows 8 Start Screen has an "All Apps" menu option that brings you to the Program Groups like in Windows 7, but Windows 8 also gives you the ability to group and organize items "pinned to Start", which Windows 7 DOES NOT allow you to do. Windows 8 gives you MORE functionality--not less.

[bj55555]

There was nothing stopping Microsoft forking Windows and making a touch orientated version a la iOS. Apple did it. Or they could have just used the Windows Phone 7 code base. There's no excuse for forcing this on everyone.

Other than hundreds of millions and maybe billions of dollars to support. Yeah, nothing is stopping them.

[BajiRav]

Once a decent range of software is available and people have had plenty of time to get used to it then theoretically yes. That is currently not the case so people are going to be forced to switch between them.

Those people you describe aren't the ones who need help and aren't going to call tech support in the first place to find out how to use something (they're going to just search the Internet to find out).

There is a much larger group of people (some older, some that just never "got into" computers) that are going to struggle with the change and are going to need support.

Windows 8 still has many weeks/days or at least multiple months for general release. If you follow the developer community beat, you know that the apps are coming. There will be plenty of apps by the time it is actually available for general public. Even in that sense, how many apps does a normal user need?

Browser - check

Chat - Check

Email - Check

Music - Check

Video+Photo - Check

Contacts/Calendar - Check

I know in this thread I have mentioned Apple and Mac OS X Mountain Lion a lot and I've gotten some heat for keep bringing it up. But if you look at how users have responded to Mountain Lion's changes you can see that they love it across the board. Potential customers love it, current customers love it. It provided like Windows 8 a faster boot up and shutdown and generally feels faster and it added new Apps like iMessage that let you message iPhones for free over the internet. It also brought notification centre and a bunch of other features.

No one is complaining about Mountain Lion it has received universal praise across the board from users and reviewers. Why couldn't Windows 8 been like that?

Has anyone noticed that since about Windows XP that Microsoft has mostly stopped adding new applications to the OS? They added Notepad, Paint, Calculator. These are useful applications but since about XP apps like these have not been included in the OS. In-fact they even removed a lot of apps since Windows XP. Apps like built in messaging. Metro now has Apps like Messaging which should have been desktop apps in Vista or Windows 7.

If Microsoft had included the Weather App, Stocks, Messages, A new Photo gallery system and other features like that as desktop applications shipping with the OS I think that would have pleased current users enough. The Windows 7 desktop is very powerful and it works great it just needed a few tweaks and some fresh applications in my opinion.

How many times Apple users have given pass to Apple eventhough there were solid problems with their software/hardware? Lion is a very recent example of this. Yeah those guys complain for a few mins about shape/colors of trivial things such as scrollbars or the traffic lights and then open their wallets. Microsoft doesn't get as much wiggle room as Apple does. They get roasted for simpler decisions of restricting browser on Windows RT when Apple has been doing it since first iOS release.

[Sarah Beland]

What games are you playing? I tried Diablo III and LA Noire and a couple of others and they all crashed. Was using the AMD Catalyst release preview driver, but it may have been my soundcard that was the problem...

Also felt weird using Zune on Windows 8 to sync my phone. Will be interesting to see what the new version looks like

Are you referring to Zune software or hardware?

Zune Software

[BajiRav]

At least I found a fix for my shutdown problem for win 8 :p I'm happy now haha

Doesn't that reset after reboot?

[Rickkins]

Here's the bottom line.

The metro interface(or whatever they're calling it this week) is the ugliest turd ever released by ms. Everybody knows this to be fact, but certain elements will never admit it. So be it, and frankly, who cares.

That said, there is nothing really wrong with win8 that can't be fixed with a couple addons etc. Indeed, I never even see the metro screen(using rp). My setup looks and acts pretty much exactly as it did with 7.

Continuity....that's the word for today....

[WinMunkee]

HawkMan: "Ma'am, can you press the Windows key, and "I" at the same time for me?"

Customer: "OK. Done"

HawkMan: "Ok, now go to "Power", down at the bottom, click that, and then press restart."

Customer: "Ok."

HawkMan: "Ma'am, can you go to the desktop and press Alt+F4?"

Customer: "OK. Done"

HawkMan: "Ok, now select shutdown and press OK"

Customer: "Ok."

[Active.]

HawkMan: "Ma'am, can you go to the desktop and press Alt+F4?"

Customer: "OK. Done"

HawkMan: "Ok, now select shutdown and press OK"

Customer: "Ok."

HawkMan: "Ma'am, can you press the Control key, the Alt key and the Delete key all at the same time for me?"

Customer: "OK. Done"

HawkMan:"Ok, now select the Power icon in the lower right corner, then press restart."

Customer: "Ok."

easy-peasy

[+Fahim S. MVC]

The metro interface(or whatever they're calling it this week) is the ugliest turd ever released by ms. Everybody knows this to be fact, but certain elements will never admit it. So be it, and frankly, who cares.

Some 'elements' as you call me, actually think that this is the best UI design to come out in a long while - you shouldn't presume to know what others are thinking, because unsurprisingly you are wrong.

[Rickkins]

because unsurprisingly you are wrong.

Er, no, I'm not. Not even a little.

[+Fahim S. MVC]

Er, no, I'm not. Not even a little.

So you aren't telling me that I'm not a fan of the design language formerly known as 'Metro'? Seriously?

[Sebass]

Just tried Win 8 RTM on a VMware machine and honestly I could not find single thing that would make me more productive in my line work.

I guess Windows is now just for browsing, checking email and looking at full screen videos :rofl: .

Cheers

Just tried Win 8 RTM on a VMware machine and honestly I could not find single thing that would make me more productive in my line work.

I guess Windows is now just for browsing, checking email and looking at full screen videos :rofl: .

Cheers

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

It's why I made the comment I did above. Power users are prideful in the extreme - most also have the sensitivity of House (or Joy Behar).

It's why I made the comment I did above. Power users are prideful in the extreme - most also have the sensitivity of House (or Joy Behar).

Oh no! This guy said the worst profanity that mankind has ever produced! Joy Behar! Oops, I said it too. Where's the swear filter? LOL