Don't write off Microsoft just yet!
I just bought a new laptop with the cool new Windows 8 installed. I must admit that I was a bit skeptical of how the new OS would be, but its totally taken me by surprise, and in a good way!
First, I absolutely adore the new Metro layout. Its like a cool dashboard where I have all my tools and information handy for me to get started. From facebook to gmail to google search, everything is a shortcut on there. And its not just a shortcut! The mails tile shows new ones and facebook one shows the highlights - everything that makes you decide if you want to click that icon or not. Similarly, there are news feeds, weather updates and other handy info. Its really much more useful than the mostly empty windows desktop that exists on previous versions. And its much brighter and colorful too!
Secondly, IE 10 is a total pleasure to use. Its super fast, and feels much lighter. I also hear that it finally adheres to global standards too (yay, developers rejoice) !
Thirdly, each new window/ app is a full screen by default. No task bar, no title bar, nothing. It makes the full use of the screen - can it get better ?!
Oh well, some things require 2 clicks (including a right click) that should really just need one. Like closing windows. Yeah. You either drag a window to the bottom to ask it to go to hell (or where ever), or you right click, find yourself a cross button and close the damn thing. I wish there was a close button that would appear when I hover around one of the corners, closing a window should be a one click thing.
And I could not install Google Chrome on Win 8 - its just kept on hanging up on me.
I think the performance of the OS and system in general is pretty good, and the fact that the same system will run on mobile and desktop/ laptop computers is pretty encouraging. May be we should consider how we’ll develop apps for windows along with Android and iOS ? ha ha! I hear Windows 8 is all HTML and JS anyways!