I agree with you Greg. Having used Win8 now for a development project, I find it so annoying having to switch between the screens. I moved the blocks around so that my most used apps were sitting in the middle of the tile screen, but it wasn't enough. Anything that I use more frequently now ends up on the task bar, which also has a usability issue in that it is becoming cluttered - there needs to be a better way of separating pinned apps and running apps than just putting them all on the desktop. And I continually go for the start orb. I have thought about how I could be efficient knowing the orb ins't there, and I can't see it. I feel it is too easy to lose mental context every time I want to open up another app, and it can take a few minutes to get back to where I was. I am seriously considering getting the startdock add in now, to get my developer efficiency back.
If the aim was to reduce the efficiency of developers, then they're going to succeed. I can even imagine the developers inside Microsoft arguing about this themselves internally, and getting shutdown by management. And whoever thought putting the Power button under Settings? I mean, seriously, what were they thinking? T. From: ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] On Behalf Of Greg Keogh Sent: Tuesday, 2 October 2012 11:32 PM To: 'ozDotNet' Subject: RE: VS2012 and Metro Apps on Windows 8 >Enterprise edition requires you to enter the Enterprise MAK key to activate Take care here, as I could only activate by these commands: slmgr -ipk XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX slmgr -ato Overall though, I've got Win8 and VS2012 up and running in a VM and it's going well. After a couple of hours of using Win8 in a semi-realistic way I'm getting a feel for the pros and cons. The gaping chasm between the world of Win8 Metro and our current shell environment is starting to sting. There are not yet any Metro apps that interest me, despite trying most the standard ones and some of the store samples. As smooth and lovely as some of the Metro apps are, they are huge, clumsy and full of empty space; I feel like a 2 year old fumbling with a coloured blocks. I can't directly start any of my daily working apps from the old no-Start-button shell without making desktop shortcuts (not a habit of mine), I have to go back to the Metro Apps screen to launch something. So I'm continually going back and forth like a madman between the two worlds. It's like having two different operating systems stuck together in an unholy embrace, each vying for my attention. When I'm on the Metro side I'm utterly fed-up with having each app fill my screen. I start IE, Music, SkyDrive, Calendar, etc and each one fills my gigantic screen and I have to Alt-Tab madly to find what I was doing as I can't find a way of knowing at any time what is actually running (and my real work is back on the old shell anyway). So after a few hours my Win8 experience is not going well. Perhaps there are shortcuts and UI tricks I'm not aware of yet to help me, but they're not obvious. Developers like us are not "ordinary" users, so perhaps it's unfair to compare my experience with what your average suburbanite will feel. I remain bewildered by the split-personality operating system and the huge obtrusive clumsiness of Metro apps. I'm trying not to be biased by what I'm used to, but unless I find lots of UI shortcut tricks and tips Win8 will be mostly redundant and I'll spend my working day in the old shell which still has things called "windows". If there are developers out there now using Win8 in anger for daily work I'd be interested to hear your practical counter-arguments to my "newbie" complaints. Greg
