[Eggman]

Loving Windows 8 from vids I've seen until now. People complaining about the Metro should give it some time.

I just don't get the apps. What's the point of using apps when you're using a PC? Always thought they'd only be available for handheld devices.

[maeh2k]

I wonder if there will be a office 365 "free" version coming to replace hotmail/msn messenger/skydrive (or live custom domains). This version integrating with skydrive goes away from the current office 365 subscriptions so why still call it office365? doesn't really make sense unless there is a new version coming targeted to combat the free google apps option.

Microsoft already has free Office web apps that use skydrive. These web apps will get an update with a more Metro look and probably some new features.

[jagowar]

Microsoft already has free Office web apps that use skydrive. These web apps will get an update with a more Metro look and probably some new features.

I'm talking about branding it office 365 (and then using skydrive).... office 365 right now is a completely separate service to hotmail/skydrive/msn messenger.

I could see them (as part of the metro rebranding) make everything office 365 and create a free version. This has always been one of my issues with ms is they have multiple products that do the same thing and wasting time writing features separately for each product. It seems office 365 is where they are going so it would be smart to make that the service everywhere (and offer free domains using their hotmail/live/skype/etc).

Office 365 Home Premium: Can be installed on up to five devices; users get an extra 20GB of SkyDrive storage; Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, OneNote, Access and Publisher are included.

http://www.engadget.com/2012/07/16/m...ce-15-preview/

[Akyan]

Loving Windows 8 from vids I've seen until now. People complaining about the Metro should give it some time. I just don't get the apps. What's the point of using apps when you're using a PC? Always thought they'd only be available for handheld devices.

I'm quite looking forward to giving the tablet versions a go, but share the shame concerns about quite how well apps will work on a non-touch desktop. Think it'll be a bit weird on my dual screen setup.

[StudioTan]

Loving Windows 8 from vids I've seen until now. People complaining about the Metro should give it some time. I just don't get the apps. What's the point of using apps when you're using a PC? Always thought they'd only be available for handheld devices.

Well, a couple of thing, all the apps that are currently available were required to be free, so we're not exactly seeing top tier stuff yet.

Having said that you're likely not going to be using many Metro apps on a desktop because they tend to be designed more for touch use. There are some that are cool though.

On a desktop PC you're going to be using it mostly as a launcher. In that capacity it works better than the old Start menu in most cases.

[PG2G]

I just don't get the apps. What's the point of using apps when you're using a PC? Always thought they'd only be available for handheld devices.

Why wouldn't you? The app experience is superior than visiting a website in pretty much every way. Then you also get notifications and live tiles that are useful.

[dLMN8R]

Microsoft confirmed that the version of Office included on Windows RT is the full Office 2013 Home and Student:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/...6OfficePR.aspx

Included in Windows RT. Office Home and Student 2013 RT, which contains new versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote applications, will be included on ARM-based Windows 8 devices, including Microsoft Surface.

[VanMardigan]

This is a disaster, it is performing more poorly every time I boot it up. I knew it was beta software, but damn, I want to wipe my hdd right now and go back to sweet, sweet windows 7. What's the easiest way to undo this huge mistake I've made?

[Windu]

Onenote Metro http://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft...Neowin+News%29

[Jzero]

This is a disaster, it is performing more poorly every time I boot it up. I knew it was beta software, but damn, I want to wipe my hdd right now and go back to sweet, sweet windows 7. What's the easiest way to undo this huge mistake I've made?

You must of fucked something up because performance-wise Win 8 runs much better. But yea you just have to clean install Windows 7 again.

[rozay]

Microsoft confirmed that the version of Office included on Windows RT is the full Office 2013 Home and Student: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/...6OfficePR.aspx

I hope a manufacturer is shipping RT tablets with digitizers, they'd be great for students like me. I feel like it's going to fall short if Apple releases an iPad with full pen support next year though.

Surface RT with a digitizer would've been amazing for engineering classes.

[Zabka]

Loving Windows 8 from vids I've seen until now. People complaining about the Metro should give it some time. I just don't get the apps. What's the point of using apps when you're using a PC? Always thought they'd only be available for handheld devices.

Certain types of programs and games really thrive in an App Store type system. I think MS is hoping they get a cut of the next Angry Birds / Draw Something / Words with Friends.

The suspended multitasking makes video apps pretty useless for me on a desktop. There really needs to be some kind of power setting that lets you use full multitasking in Metro apps.

[Milchjon]

Trying Office 2013 has pretty much sold me on Win 8. Makes me not want to look at Windows 7 any second longer.

[LukasTaves]

Onenote Metro http://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft...Neowin+News%29

OMG

Finally a onenote for tablets that seems full featured *o*

[Windu]

Metro Onenote is in the store under the productivity category. Called OneNote MX.

http://www.liveside.net/2012/07/17/o...%28LiveSide%29

edit: http://hub.video.msn.com/hub/SP_MOD_...d4c220e50643e7

[Windu]

this wheel that they use in place of the ribbon is actually are really good idea. Great for adding complicated stuff to touch applications.

[markot]

Trying Office 2013 has pretty much sold me on Win 8. Makes me not want to look at Windows 7 any second longer.

Why?

You have to use office in desktop mode.... so its essentially windows 7... even in 8.

[Steelyuhas]

Metro Onenote is in the store under the productivity category. Called OneNote MX. http://www.liveside.net/2012/07/17/o...%28LiveSide%29 edit: http://hub.video.msn.com/hub/SP_MOD_...d4c220e50643e7

Thanks, I didn't see it when I searched for it earlier today, maybe it got put up in the last few hours.

this wheel that they use in place of the ribbon is actually are really good idea. Great for adding complicated stuff to touch applications.

Agreed the radial menu (I think that's what they call it) looks like a very good idea. Looking forward to trying it myself.

[Canis lupus]

If there's one thing I've taken away from the preview, it's that IE is actually kind of great now. At least, I've never been made annoyed or disgusted with it like before. It's as transparent as chrome to me now, so I've been using it exclusively on my htpc.

Is this more htpc friendly? I would think so with all the big icons. My problems with W7 is that close/minimize/max icons are so tiny on a 50" screen.

[Milchjon]

Why? You have to use office in desktop mode.... so its essentially windows 7... even in 8.

I know. It's simply visual, I never thought slapping on a bit of Metro would make so much of a difference to me.

I always hated the idea of that hybrid solution, but Office showed me that even in desktop mode, it's a great step forward visually.

[brotkasten]

Ars trashes Office 2013 touch mode.

"Why bother?"

... Using Office 2013 on a touch machine is, at least in the public preview version now available, a tremendously frustrating experience. Even with the auto-hide ribbon, the Office applications are simply too complex to cope well with half their screen being covered up by an on-screen keyboard, and their interfaces are far too big for a simple band-aid such as "make the ribbon spacing a little larger" to be anywhere near adequate. Things are a little better for stylus users—though we note that the ARM-powered Surface tablet doesn't support stylus input—because a stylus is almost precise enough to manipulate the checkboxes, radio buttons and so on—but the on-screen keyboard problems remain. Clearly, this is not exposing the full power and complexity of Office 2013 to finger users; too much is still designed around pixel-perfect pointing devices. The Office team appears to be positioning touch support more as a way of enabling simple edits to be made as a kind of fall-back—a stopgap solution for those times when the mouse and keyboard aren't available. The need for simplicity As a set of reader applications, the suite works tolerably well. Opening and scrolling through documents works, and because these are the full Office programs, files are displayed with full fidelity and functionality. However, in this context, I find it hard to understand why Microsoft made the effort it has; Even Office 2010 works adequately well for just reading documents on a touch PC. Unfortunately, as soon as one ventures beyond mere reading, the experience becomes unsatisfactory. Finger users attempting to make edits will find themselves regularly dumped into interfaces simply not designed for imprecise input, and even if they stick to the "main" user interface (the ribbon and pop-up toolbars), that interface works poorly. The interactions with the on-screen keyboard are frustrating and the interface is cluttered, leaving too little of the working area actually visible. Having the real Office applications and their perfect support for Office documents is valuable—but this needs to be married to simpler interfaces that are engineered around reading and light editing, and that remove entire features and user interfaces that are too complex for finger usage. As things stand, far from being a valuable feature of Windows RT, the Office 2013 applications threaten to make it worse.

http://arstechnica.com/information-t...touch-support/

I expect that the touch interface will improve for the RTM, but I agree on Ars that this is merely a slapped on solution. OneNote Metro shows how it should be done. But I guess Office for iPad had a higher priority or was simply first in development.

[Eggman]

Well, a couple of thing, all the apps that are currently available were required to be free, so we're not exactly seeing top tier stuff yet. Having said that you're likely not going to be using many Metro apps on a desktop because they tend to be designed more for touch use. There are some that are cool though. On a desktop PC you're going to be using it mostly as a launcher. In that capacity it works better than the old Start menu in most cases.

Okay, now I see how it works.

[Totakeke]

Why bother for ARM tablets indeed.

[AdrianWerner]

They should concentrate more on making the pen imput better than touch. I would like to scribble on document like I do on paper, cross stuff I don't want out, make changes by hand on the document instead of separate window etc.

[PG2G]

I still can't wrap by head around why anyone would want to use Office in touch for anything beyond reading and minor edits. Especially when so many of the windows 8/rt tablets are convertibles.

Im not a heavy Office user, but I can imagine how useless itd be using say... Visual Studio in touch

[Ghost]

I still can't wrap by head around why anyone would want to use Office in touch for anything beyond reading and minor edits. Especially when so many of the windows 8/rt tablets are convertibles. Im not a heavy Office user, but I can imagine how useless itd be using say... Visual Studio in touch

Yeah I'd agree, but if they are going to do it at all, do it right, between this and the fact they said they couldn't do metro apps for this release, it really just gives the impression that the Office team isn't interested in the direction the Windows team is heading, which is a much bigger problem than just having bad touch in Office 13.

[Copernicus]

1- ARM doesn't support stylus? wat

2- Ars has a Surface?

[JaggedSac]

1- ARM doesn't support stylus? wat 2- Ars has a Surface?

Yeah, they made several illogical logical jumps there.

[LukasTaves]

I zoomed the image on ars preview so it filled my whole ipad screen and it seems like it would be very usable with touch, Thereseems to be enough space so my fingers only touch one button...

The inconsistencies on the intervace and the on screen keyboard taking too much screen space (specially in widescreen tablets) could indeed become a problem.

Metro One note seems like it's perfect, though.

[Krauser Kat]

1- ARM doesn't support stylus? wat 2- Ars has a Surface?

it doesnt support wacom stylus like the pro does.

[scorcho]

considering how Windows 8 and Office 2012 is optimized for touch interfaces, wouldn't it make sense for Microsoft to follow Apple and release an official multi-touch trackpad peripheral for desktops?

Apple's Magic Trackpad drivers are horribly gimped on Windows (in addition to not being available unless you hack the bootcamp drivers installer), and it'd give desktop users without touch monitors the ability to swipe and pinch to their heart's contents within Metro.

[Copernicus]

it doesnt support wacom stylus like the pro does.

Oh right, for some reason I keep thinking OS when I see mentions of Surface. Heh.

[Utako]

I really thought that Office 2013 would have a Metro UI.

MS should have copied Apple's Pages for iPad in Metro, and use this "fend for yourself" UI in Desktop Mode.

[brotkasten]

considering how Windows 8 and Office 2012 is optimized for touch interfaces, wouldn't it make sense for Microsoft to follow Apple and release an official multi-touch trackpad peripheral for desktops? Apple's Magic Trackpad drivers are horribly gimped on Windows (in addition to not being available unless you hack the bootcamp drivers installer), and it'd give desktop users without touch monitors the ability to swipe and pinch to their heart's contents within Metro.

I'm pretty sure Microsoft is working on something like that. They're just a bit late, like with their touch mouse.



And if an OEM like Vizio is working on a touchpad for desktops, you can bet that other OEMs aren't that far behind.



I expect something from Logitech around launch.

[jagowar]

Metro Onenote is in the store under the productivity category. Called OneNote MX. http://www.liveside.net/2012/07/17/o...%28LiveSide%29 edit: http://hub.video.msn.com/hub/SP_MOD_...d4c220e50643e7

Still not showing for me.... even with a search. Had to go through the web store to get to it and still failed to install for some reason.

[Damon Bennet]

So do none of the arm tablets support digital inc/wacom or is it just the surface on windows rt that lacks the feature.

[LukasTaves]

So do none of the arm tablets support digital inc/wacom or is it just the surface on windows rt that lacks the feature.

Some android tablets do support digital ink, so in a wild guess i'd say that the reason for the absence of a wRT tablet with pen support is probably due the cost, which hopefully means someone eventually will make a pen caplable arm tablet even it's priced higher.

[brotkasten]

So do none of the arm tablets support digital inc/wacom or is it just the surface on windows rt that lacks the feature.

Just Windows RT for now. There are Android tablets with Wacom digitizer (the Thinkpad Android tablet, Samsung Galaxy 10.1). It's probably because Wacom has to write RT drivers and we all know how slow manufacturers are when it comes to adapting new platforms.

[Greyface]

So do none of the arm tablets support digital inc/wacom or is it just the surface on windows rt that lacks the feature.

We've only seen two(?) Windows RT tablets so far, the Asus one and the Surface iirc. Microsoft has been keeping a tight leash on the arm tablets:
Where are the Windows RT ARM tablets?

On the other side of the fence, there is just one ARM-powered Windows 8 (RT) tablet at Computex: the 10.1-inch, Tegra 3-powered, dockable Asus 600 (pictured above). If you include a Windows RT prototype shown off by Toshiba and a Snapdragon S4-powered reference tablet from Qualcomm, that brings the total up to 3 ARM-powered Windows 8 tablets — a far cry from the huge number of product wins that Intel is touting. We probably shouldn’t be shocked, though. Back in March, Bloomberg reported that there would only be five ARM-based Windows 8 devices at launch, and more than 40 Intel-powered tablets (a mix of Clover Trail- and Ivy Bridge-based devices)...

There have also been rumored Samsung and Dell RT tablets. There is still a possibility that one of the 5 will support digital ink/wacom

[Kabuki Quantum Lover]

The experience on a pen-input tablet PC is close to absolute shit (2730p). It's workable, but Metro interactions is exactly like using a mouse, which is already awkward as it is. The Charms panel appears, but the start button area/multitasking panel does not. That machine will have to stick with Windows 7.

[A.Romero]

I've been using it for my main computer for about a week now. It was truly a leap of faith as i really depend on my computer.

It has been a good experience for me other than installation problems related to the RAID array that I have on my laptop but it was due to my own incompetence, not the OS.

It's kind of jarring to jump on and off Metro to use the computer as you would normally use or try to watch a video and have the video app open for you.

I totally can see how common people might like it (as opposed to porwer users). Actually, I showed to my girlfriend (who owns an Android phone and can use a computer kind of well) and she loved it. She likes the colors and she liked Metro.

All in all I think it seems to be a good OS. Pretty fast and good looking. It will be a while before I get used to use the side bar to go to the Control Panel or the Device Manager instead of just using the start menu but I guess computing had to evolve at some point. Why not now?

[Oxirane]

It seems they may have taken some stuff from InkSeine and merged it into OneNote.

[SeaOfMadness]

So do none of the arm tablets support digital inc/wacom or is it just the surface on windows rt that lacks the feature.

We've not seen too many (any?) ARM windows 8 tablets. The Surface RT doesn't support pen, but that doesn't mean the OS doesn't support it on ARM. That's a big leap to make.

[mattiewheels]

Is this more htpc friendly? I would think so with all the big icons. My problems with W7 is that close/minimize/max icons are so tiny on a 50" screen.

I have a 50" too. I just crank the text to about 175% and I'm good from my couch. You can raise the percentage of everything else through the display settings.

[Windu]

Building Windows 8 - Designing the Windows 8 touch keyboard

[LukasTaves]

Building Windows 8 - Designing the Windows 8 touch keyboard

I love these heavy investments from Ms in testing interfaces and usability... In this short video i already could spot a few solutions to some grips i have with iPad's on screen keyboard.

Hope they keep this going after W8 ships and iterate reasonably fast between designs.

[erawsd]

Is MS planning a major update of the native apps for launch? I understand that they aren't intended to be comparable to full feature desktop apps, but they all just feel *too* simple at this point.

[Windu]

Is MS planning a major update of the native apps for launch? I understand that they aren't intended to be comparable to full feature desktop apps, but they all just feel *too* simple at this point.

all of the apps in the previews are from only select developers and are pre release and are free. You're not seeing the best apps in the Previews. But yes, these apps will be improved in the final release.

[shidoshi]

So, pardon me if this is a dumb question, but I'm not really so up on Windows things.

I currently have an iMac where I have a purchased copy of Windows XP installed. I heard a few days ago on TWiT that Microsoft is going to be offering upgrades from most versions of Windows to Windows 8 for $40.

Can you de-authorize one machine running XP, and move that copy to another machine? I still want to run Windows on only one computer, I just want to switch it from my iMac to my MacBook Pro. Not being a Windows expert, though, I don't know if I get one copy of Windows, or if I basically get one machine running one copy of Windows.

[Whogie]

I don't believe there's a deauthorization process, but I shuffle my keys a lot. Just try activating. It probably will fail, so when it does, choose the option to call (if you don't get the option, disconnect from the network and try again.) The robot will ask how many computers it's currently installed on, etc, and you'll be good to go.