Displaying items by tag: Customer Preview Program

Today marked the day that Microsoft released Windows 8 to the general public. We have tinkered with several builds of Windows 8, but so far we have not been all that impressed with what the guys in Redmond have come up with. Our big issue has been the lack of functionality and usability in the new MetroUI. In our last public coverage we had to switch back to Windows 7 after only three days or testing. So now let’s take another stab at getting Windows 8 running on current hardware, namely our Asus EEE Slate EP121.

When I first started working in technical journalism I wrote a short article about the psychology behind the need to hate Microsoft and other big companies. I talked about the need to assign personalities to them and to identify them with certain character traits. It actually was fun to write, but as you can imagine was not well received by many readers. Still it has become almost an ingrained part of the global psyche that Microsoft is bad and incompetent to boot. So much so that after months of Windows 8 blog entries the big news is not what Microsoft is screwing up technically, but the new Windows Logo… really guys, Is that all you have?

Microsoft is once again betting on a losing horse. After failed attempted to form HDCP (High-Definition Content Protection) into every aspect of the Desktop with Windows Vista and failing to motivate people to buy the OS they are now pushing a UI that has failed to capture the markets imagination. The funny thing is that they are admitting to this and still cannot see what they are doing. As we have told you before, Microsoft tends to ignore what the public actually wants and seems to make business decisions based on what they think “should” work.