I use KDE on Arch Linux for 80% of the time, OS X the other 20%. But I got a copy of Windows 8 Pro for free as student so I decided to install it along with Visual Studio 2012 Ultimate so that if I ever need to develop on any Microsoft platforms, I'll have the environment ready. I jogged down these impression after about a 30 minutes trial.
What I didn't like:
- I have to use a .iso file the hardway (in my case, burning it to an usb drive)even if I only wanted to upgrade from Windows 7.
- When upgrading from Windows 7, only the free space is counted as usable for the new system, which means upgrading is not an option for I have a mere 26G partition reserved for Windows.
- The old Mobile ATI graphic card driver stopped working after installation.
- Apps don't share same session between the tile and deskop interface.
- Contacts from different accounts (in my case, facebook and twitter) are mixed together and there doesn't seem to be an easy way to filter them.
- I signed in with a Mircrosoft account for the operating system. But when I started Visual Studio, it asked me to sign in with the same account.
What I did like:
- The tile interface looked nice.
- IE10 is fast. Looked particularly smooth under the tile interface.
- For an old machine I installed it on, the whole system is very responsive.
- The tile interface is not unintuitive. When in doubt, one of these actions
always gets me where I wanted:
- Mouse to upper-right corner.
- Mouse to upper-left corner and then move down.
- Press the Win key on keyboard.
I'm not going to speculate on whether the general public will love or hate this version of Windows. But one thing is for sure: there is going to be an reaction. I can see it go both ways.