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Pros of owning windows 8
Intuitive gestures that make using a touch-screen very easy and fast.
For developers, Windows 8 is going to make it easier to build Metro apps for the system. In essence, a developer will only have to know web scripting and formatting languages, such as CSS, JavaScript, and HTML5. It will make for a quick, simple, and more efficient development process.
Which also means that there will be a dedicated app store for windows 8, this will make buying apps a breeze.
Another major advantage is that the Task Manager has been revamped to best cater to the needs of the regular user while still providing enough sophistication for the power user. When launched, the window will only display a list of running applications and those that are unresponsive. There is a ‘More Details’ option for power users that displays the Services, Processes, Performance, and Networking tabs.
Boot times are now down to around 8 seconds!
Syncing. Microsoft’s shift to a unified, cloud-touched Windows Account login was a stroke of genius. It’s wonderful signing into a completely new Windows 8 PC and finding your desktop, contacts, email accounts and SkyDrive contents sitting there waiting for you, identical to the setup on your home computer.
Multi monitor support is finally here and vastly improved:
We recognize that a key value of using multiple monitors lies in the desire to increase multitasking. This is especially true of those of you who spend time arranging your desktop windows to maximize the available real estate across multiple displays. Speaking firsthand, most developers and testers at Microsoft have a multi-monitor setup in their offices, walking through the hallways one sees a wide range of monitor configurations from 2 to 4 or more monitors among the engineering team. This affords two important scenarios. First, developers can use a tool like Visual Studio on one screen and have the running/debugged program on another, or they can add an additional monitor and reserve it for side tasks such as email or web browsing.
With that in mind, we set out to achieve the following goals for those using multiple monitors with Windows 8:
Make the desktop a more personal experience. Perhaps the most personalized feature on the desktop is the ability to customize the desktop background. We set out to make this a great experience on multiple monitors too.
Improve the efficiency of accessing apps across monitors. In Windows 7, the top request from people using multiple monitors was to improve the taskbar efficiency.
Improve the efficiency of accessing system UI. In Windows 7, you could only access the Start menu on one monitor. With the introduction in Windows 8 of new UI that puts controls at the edges of the screen, we wanted to make sure that it’s still easy to access Start, the charms, the clock, and your recently used apps from every monitor.
Allow side-by-side Metro style and desktop apps. You can launch or move a Metro style app to any monitor, side-by-side with desktop apps on another screen.
Read more on multi-monitor support on MSDN
True PC power in portable tablet form. Tablets just never had enough oomph for me. Even top-of-the-line tablets with quad-core mobile CPUs seem to chug when I push them hard enough. Windows 8 devices bring true Intel Core processor to the tablet form factor, and the extra horsepower shows. Check out this impressive speed test clip at Maximum PC, which shows an Acer Windows tablet running a lowly Intel Atom processor. Upper-end convertibles bring even beefier Core i5 and i7 CPUs to the table, albeit for a truckload of cash.
Now for the Cons of using Windows 8:
1. No Start button. Really, Microsoft? Protip for PC users: in Desktop mode, slide the cursor down into the lower-left corner. A picture of the Modern Start screen will pop up. Ignore it, and right-click instead to bring up a big list of desktop options, including Run and Control Panel options that help you avoid the Modern Start screen as much as possible. It’s no Start button replacement, but it’ll get you by.
2. Jarring Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde interface. Despite my extensive Windows 8 use I’m still not completely comfortable with its “two operating systems in one” interface. Classic-style Windows programs run in desktop mode; new apps stick to the Modern interface. Swapping between the two depending on which app you’re using just kinda makes your brain hurt, though the ache slowly starts to dull after time. It’s so… inelegant, compounded by the fact that Windows 8 apps and Desktop apps sport totally different control schemes. More annoyingly, Windows 8 treats the Desktop as a singular entity, no matter how many programs you have open inside of it, and classic programs don’t enjoy the same auto-update feature offered for Windows 8 apps.
3. Windows 8 sucks with a mouse. This is a big one. Navigating around Windows 8 with a mouse flat-out sucks, and it’s compounded by the operating system’s less-than-streamlined design. The far-ranging Live Tiles on the Start screen require much more scrolling than Windows 7′s neat and compact Start button (See: Number 1). Right-click options suck too, appearing at the bottom of Windows 8 apps rather than where you’ve clicked. Closing an app requires clicking at its top, then dragging it down to the bottom of the screen; easy on a tablet, an annoyance with a mouse. I could go on.
Using a touchscreen or a multi-touch touchpad makes some of those qualms go away, but it’s irritating that Windows 8′s mouse controls and gesture controls are slightly different; finger finaglers can swipe in the Charm bar from anywhere along the right edge, while mouse jockeys need to hit what feels like a specific pixel in the lower-right hand corner. The poor mouse controls alone pretty much ensure I won’t upgrade my desktop to Windows 8 anytime soon. Keyboard commands work well, though.
4. Crappy multitasking. Android and iPad owners will love Windows 8′s Snap feature, which docks a Windows 8 app to one side of the screen and allows you to run a second app in the remaining 75 percent of the display. Computer users engrained in having a half-dozen windows open at once will hate it. Fortunately, you can still resize open windows to your heart’s content in desktop mode.
5. The app store does make it easy to browse and buy apps, but at the same time if you dont like them you'll hate how the OS is constantly asking you for credit card details to buy them.
6. In reality the whole operating system was created for tablet use and NOT for desktop power users.
7. For IT infrastructure it's going to be a ball ache, virtually everyone in the office will need re-training on the new desktop and how it works as nothing will be where they expect it to be. For small companies this could be a massive cost in both downtime while training and the actual cost of tuition. For large companies it will mostly be the tuition cost that will hurt. Factor in the recession and you'll see the uptake of this OS will slow down greatly once past the first couple of months.
8. The 8 second boot times require expensive Solid State Hard Drives.
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I can now see why Steam is moving from Windows to Linux for it's Steam Box console, and it's not just steam that think windows 7 might be the last OS that they'll use.So what are the alternatives?
Linux is one alternative, but it's a hard one to get used to. Your best be for going down this route is install it on a second PC if you have one, and get familiar with it before going all out. Or you could ignore me completely and just go for it.
A brilliant but non-existent alternative is OSX. OSX is for Macs right? Well yes, but with some tinkering it can be installed on a PC.
It's fast, easy to use, made for office and professional environments, but it doesn't run games very well, they are out there, but not as prolific as the PC market. It's also the same for Linux.
If Apple were to release a PC version of OSX then I can see Microsoft struggling to shift more than a handful of copies of Windows 8
My advice, dual boot linux and Windows 7 on the same PC and get the best of both worlds.
