https://duan.ca/tag/microsoft/ <p>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.</p> <p>What I didn't like:</p> <ul> <li>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.</li> <li>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.</li> <li>The old Mobile ATI graphic card driver stopped working after installation.</li> <li>Apps don't share same session between the tile and deskop interface.</li> <li>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.</li> <li>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.</li> </ul> <p>What I did like:</p> <ul> <li>The tile interface looked nice.</li> <li>IE10 is fast. Looked particularly smooth under the tile interface.</li> <li>For an old machine I installed it on, the whole system is very responsive.</li> <li>The tile interface is not unintuitive. When in doubt, one of these actions always gets me where I wanted: <ol> <li>Mouse to upper-right corner.</li> <li>Mouse to upper-left corner and then move down.</li> <li>Press the Win key on keyboard.</li> </ol> </li> </ul> <p>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.</p> Sat, 27 Oct 2012 23:59:59 -0600 https://duan.ca/2012/10/27/windows-8-first-impression/ https://duan.ca/2012/10/27/windows-8-first-impression/