Maximum PC

From what I've seen so far with Windows 8, it seems like it's really made for touch screens. The only problem is, I don't want to use a touch screen when I'm sitting down at my desktop. It seems like microsoft is basically taking a tablet OS and using it for desktops (with some Windows 7 features along with it). Will Windows 8 suck without a touch screen?

Windows 8 from what I've used is quite poor in terms of performance if you don't have a start menu because metro is very cumbersome if you don't have touch screen. There are programs people have developed that give you the start menu in windows 8 like stardock and pokki . I would suggest Stardock because its better than pokki in terms of its UI but Stardock is 5 dollars and more customizable while pokki is free and isn't very customizable. Windows 8, however does have an insanely fast boot time on both mechanical and solid state drives and it pretty much works the same as Windows 7 minus the start menu. If you have Windows 7 there's not much of a reason to upgrade, but if you are considering Windows 8 I would still stick with Win 7 its more proven and you know what your getting with Windows 7 an extremely solid OS probably which is the best OS Microsoft has ever made.

https://www.pokki.com/

http://www.stardock.com/products/start8/

Exactly how is it hard to use without a touch screen?

The windows orb has been replaced with a hot corner. It works exactly the same. Move you mouse to bottom left, click. Or press the win key on your keyboard.

You can search through all your programs by hitting windows, then typing the name, exactly like in Windows 7. But instead of an ugly list, with tiny icons, you get gorgeous squares. Keyboard navigation still works, so you don't have to use the mouse; and unless your sensitivity is set really, really, really low, the icons are really easy to click because of their size. Much easier than when they were in tiny list form in Windows 7.

You can use the scroll wheel in metro as a replacement for touch-to-scroll, and it works perfectly.

Alt tabbing works perfectly, even between metro and desktop apps.

In fact, you don't want to, you don't even have to use metro except for the second it takes to search for and launch your apps. And in that case metro is much easier to use than the old start menu because metro isn't the butt-ugly and hard to use list of "all programs" we've had to live with for years.

From my playing around with Win8 so far, it works just fine with a mouse (in fact, I found the touch features a bit odd especially when trying to edit documents--I can't see using it on a tablet to be honest). Just add your apps to the Metro interface and desktop and you should be fine with a PC w/o a touchscreen. I'm not big on touchscreens yet. I dislike my Android tablet sometimes because of this.

Then again, I grew up with the old DOS prompt (that's how I learned most of my stuff about computers-programming, repair, configuration, etc), where you didn't even have a GUI or a mouse... heck, at that time, if you had Windows, that was considered a premium to have it. Now its just the standard.

But for win8, expected it to be not as good. Here's how I see the Windows releases...

DOS = Good considering what was available at the time. Although now, a cheap flipphone can run circles around these old PCs in terms of performance...
95/98/98SE = Good, first real gaming platform for PC gamers, fairly stable
Me = we won't talk about this one.... we'll just pretend it never happened. That's all I'm going to say about this OS
2000 = OK, but it used a lot of memory and CPU power
XP = Great
Vista = Bad
Win7 = Good
Win8 = Not sure, but leaning toward the "unneeded OS release" option--Win7 is only 3 years old. XP's been around for about 11 years now.
Win? = Hopefully good (and I hope they reinstate the start menu--or something like it--for whomever may still be using a PC w/ a mouse at that point).

Well i began using Windows 8 preview in Oracle's Virtual toolbox and then when the Surface was released I decided I wanted to be able to use desktop applications and then Best Buy offered an Acer with touch screen and a backlit keyboard on black Friday for $510. I purchased it and said wow it's so much better then having it as a virtual machine. I purchased a $14.99 Microsoft mouse along with it. The first thing I did was uninstalled Mc Afee security and downloaded one of the Norton 360 licenses I already owned. My experience is I really don't use the touch screen much at all. I only seem to use it to get to the charms menu. I did create a shutdown on my desktop to make shutdown a one clock process. I went into the setting and clicked on control panel so the icon is on the desktop. I added Opera, Firefox and Chrome browsers and attached them to the taskbar. I also installed registry mechanic and Anti-Malwarebytes and the shortcuts are on the desktop.

My company has it set up where we can connect to a portal using our account and then we can remote to our work computer using our same work username and password. Our administrators haven't even comfigured the portal for Windows 8. I tried connecting using IE 10 and couldn't log in. I tried using Firefox and I was able to connect and log into the portal. One in the portal i click on a option to allow me to use remote desktop and it installed software called Junos Pulse. I then switched to a Metro remote desktop application I had downloaded for the MS store and it asked the name of the computer i wanted to attach to and the windows XP login screen appeared. I logged in and went in and did some work. I informed the adminsitrators I did and they were surprised because they hadn't configured it to work with Windows 8.

I rarely use the metro and 95% of the time I'm using the desktop. I'm 99% of the using the mouse and not the touch screen. I installed Start8 and I didn't like it at all. I don't miss the Start button at all. I wonder now why I ever used it.

For better or for worse, Microsoft's decision is a reflection of the times, and those times are changing into tablets and touch based interfaces, with minimal real action with the keyboard. Think about it, in a GUI, the keyboard plays second fiddle in navigation. Sure, you still need it to type up web addresses and stuff and after using a tablet and scoffing at the idea that virtual keyboards alone won't suffice, well that's not really the case for me anymore. I don't mind virtual keyboards as long as it's designed correctly.

If you don't want a touch screen, that's fine. But what about those people back in the early 90s who scoffed at the idea of using a GUI as the primary means of interaction of computers? After all, it seemed faster to type in "cd [destination]" rather than click in a few folders to where you wanted to go. But hey, the times changed, GUIs made computers more accessible to the laymen, and now most computers have a GUI as the primary means of interaction.

Software makers have to cater to most of its users which change with the times, not a select few who want things to stay the same. If you want things to stay the same, then you can either stay with what's comfortable, or go find that niche that caters to you.

But in the end though, there's not much reason to go to Windows 8 if you're happy with Windows 7. While there are some nice improvements to Task Manager and Windows Explorer (I hear), I don't need them. And Windows 8 doesn't provide enough features or improvements to warrant an OS upgrade, unlike Windows XP to 7 or Windows Vista to 7.

Either way, you don't want Metro? Get a Start Menu program, buy a touch pad, or just ignore Microsoft. They obviously aren't catering to you. Computers and software are tools. If the tool isn't to your liking, find another one that is.

So I was at Best Buy and decided to test out Windows 8 in a little more earnest some more on one of their laptops. All I can say is... I can live with the Start Screen and Metro apps. In fact, I may find it a nice change. And here's why:

• I can use the Start Screen how I normally use it: a repo of shortcuts and if I need something, I just start typing and it pops up.
• I don't have to mess with a cluster bleep of folders and icons in a cumbersome menu if I really wanted to look around in it.
  
  • I also found it interesting I could just going to the left side or right side to scroll instead using the scroll wheel
• The right hot corners I found interesting. May not actually use them a whole lot, but interesting

So yes, I think the Start Screen adds functionality, and the only jarring thing about it is it takes up the whole screen.