Recently, I saw a fellow contributor, discussing visiting Windows7. He (Ted) had been spending a majority of time w/ Win8 for several wks. But, certainly visiting 7, periodically, @ least updating & maintenance.@ the latest of such an occasion, Ted had come to find 7 'slow' & clunky or 'chunky', were close to his 'feelings'. Win8 had a better snap or 'feel'.

Taking nothing away from noticing differences, there's a human quality here. We trend to have comfort be directly proportional to familiarity. Same as ppl balk @ changing from 1 OS to another. After spending a chunk of time on one... it gets to feel comfy. One is not in one's comfort zone YET and the other isn't in your comfort zone anymore... familiarity, amount of time spent, impacts on comfort zone which, impacts on 'feel'. Grow accustom, as a concept, plays heavily on things.

To put another take on it yet, same moral... I, too, have been non-stop Win8 since 29/2. I, too, visit 7 to tend to it. One, I realize a moment's thought go through my head, "Oh, right, this is different" & LOL. However, I do not find it slow or clunky or chunky BUT,, that's not to say I didn't, also, notice something; here's the irony...

After, all the discussion in forums regarding the lack of the old start button & menu, the dreadful Metro UI & APPs... Things can be found, accessed, used, opened quicker, more directly, more simply & easily, more readily & efficiently available w/ Windows8. It is, actually, in reality, a less cumbersome, less complex, more enjoyable & productive User Experience navigating Windows8

The punch line being... That includes NOT using or visiting Start, btw; 100% Desktop.

Cheers,
Drew

I will add the same thought as in the other Forum:

Win 8 navigation seems intuitive once you have set it up the way you want it. Yes, I have installed Classic Shell and will on Win 8 Pro (I am assuming here that something similar will be available in Win 8 Pro). But For most apps I do NOT use the Classic Shell interface. I use the Shortcut Toolbar that I made and set up on my taskbar. I could have just as easily pinned the Programs folder as a Toolbar on the Taskbar, but I do not often use many of those apps. I put my oft used apps in my Shortcuts Folder so they so up on my Shortcuts Toolbar. I use Classic Shell for other things, like Favorites, Control Panel, etc. I could have just as easily set these things up as Toolbars as well. And after using them for a few days, the Start Orb would seem clunky.

The whole point is set this OS up the way you use it. I have, and I've posted many of the ways I have done this in various threads. When I first visited Win 8 I also said, "No Way"! But then I started researching how to customize this OS. And it accepts customizing very well.

Yes, when Win 8 is released there will be a lot of grumbling, after all right out of the box it is so different, and we will be busy in this Forum. We will be even busier in Win 8 Forums. But getting through the learning curve is so much easier with some minor customizing. One of the biggest problems is to get people to read through some of the posted threads. In a Win 8 Forum I participate in, the majority of posters never look at any other threads, including the Customization or Tutorial threads, before asking a question about how to find their apps, or how to shutdown or how to get to the desktop, or any other topic that has been discussed at length in another thread. I guess human nature is impatience.

Others have suggested a training manual be shipped with Win 8, or downloadable with Win 8. If people will not read threads, what makes anyone think they will read this manual? My belief is that initially many more Win 8 OS's will be downloaded than bought retail. People most likely will not even see the downloadable manual if one were presented.

By the way, another question Drew, What advantage do you find with the Taskbar on the Right side of the screen? Does this interfere with the Charms Bar?

im sure microsoft have said there removing code that allows start menu hacks to work in final version

I think we both know that the people that program these Start Orb replacements will have work-around's released shortly thereafter. That's the way the world works.

We don't often use the "H" word here or in any forums for that matter, but lets get real, for a moment anyway....
We all know that there are some very good and creative "Programmers" in the world that do not work for Microshaft.

"Hacker", is just another word for a system programmer that's NOT on Microsoft's payroll. These Non-MS programmers will always succeed in modifying existing code to fit their own ideas of what's right, or FIX things that MS either couldn't fix or were too embarrassed to admit even exist.
Witness the new "Classic Shell 3.5.1". It's every bit as professional code as W8 itself and with fewer glitches.

I install the W7 Classic Shell for all my new W7 customers....those are the people with Windows XP machines that have finally died. When I explain what the Classic Shell can do for them, they opt for it without hesitation.

They also want Windows Mail activated, which I have no problem doing for them. It's O.E.6 on steroids and will accept their old address book without a problem. I set it up to look and act just like O.E.6 and my customers love it.

In many cases, New is not better! I wonder how many of these 'New' computers coming out of the stores today, will still be alive and running ten years from now. I look at the quality and I'm very doubtful.
Many can't even make it out of warranty.

I run an admittedly 10 year old OS on a 7 year old motherboard (recapped last year) and it still outperforms many of the new W-7 computers I install for my customers. I'm not bragging about my own PC, but I bemoan the quality and efficiency of the New computers. It gets worse every year. "Made in China" has become a real slap in the face, of technicians everywhere.

A brand new W-7 computer with only 2 gigs of ram and a 300w PSU, is abominable. And those Mini's, have only a 150w PSU and no room for any growth. I just added two more gig's of RAM to an eMachine mini this past week, to try to eeek some performance out of it. It came with Windows 7 Home Premium, 64 bit and only two gigs of ram.
Only two gigs of ram for that OS, is criminal!
It barely runs better than their ten year old eMachine that died, due to a crashed WD hard drive.
I've tweaked and tuned that OS (W-7, Home Premium) for maximum performance, and it's still very UN-Impressive.

What was the topic again?
TM

As we get older, we start forgetting our thought process while we are the middle of the thought, and ..... what was I going to say, I forget.

Sorry for this off topic frivolity. We have to chuckle once in a while.

Irony!
It's ironic, that the faster we go, the slower we get!

It's ironic, that a computer I built in 2000 is still running like a champ, now upgraded from Windows ME to Windows XP-Pro-SP3 and with NO bulging capacitors. It's just a tad slow for today's HUGE programs, but for email, solitaire and some browsing, it works just fine. It's now my second backup PC.

A PC built with top quality components can virtually run forever, with just a little TLC.
Keep it clean, keep it cool and keep it dry! No biggie!
Ironic? No, just common sense.

TM

Really MS deserves a F minus for the poor way they introduced the whole Metro mess. First a lot of the apps are broken, work sporadically or look like crap. Their excuse is they are in development. They should have been polished gems that were flawless since Metro is such a radical change. They should have made a video and put it in the installed OS showing how to use Metro and the hot spots. When Metro didn't go over well in DP they should have had second thoughts about booting to it only instead of their up yours attitude and disabling the work arounds people had already figured out. I know we can customize our desktops but everybody isn't that knowledgeable and in the business setting the desktops may be locked down so they are stuck with what the IT people setup.
Joe

I understand where you are coming from Joe. Unfortunately, just as people do not read any of the excellent threads we have posted herein before posting a question, I do not believe people will read any info or watch any videos MS included with these OS's. Plus right now we are still in beta. Perhaps when the OS is actually released there will be more info like that.

I cannot blame MS for the Metro apps. They were trying to get these beta OS's out to beta testers as quickly as they could. I have tested many other beta apps that were far from complete when they were released to beta testers.

I believe the biggest mistake was releasing these beta OS's to such a large group of people. They could not control the experience level of those who installed it.