Win 8

[dark_drake]

Tablets Suck
Soup the tablet up as much as you want. Give it more cores, more RAM, better video and it will still suck. Why? As novel as the input interfaces are, either touch screen or dictation, they suck for anything more complicated than clicking links and reading e-mail. There is a growing myth that Ma and Pa who click links and read news articles make up the vast majority of computer users. Mean while, students, power users, gamers, and corporate users are programming, gaming, writing reports, making power point presentations, making spread sheets, doing their taxes, editing photos, managing collections of files, what else? And the computer industry actually thinks touch screens and dictation can do this well? Alright, you try doing this efficiently with touch screen, see how fast you tire. Ever play Wii? Try talking to your computer for 8 hours straight (and I know a deaf guy who programs in C++ with dictation). Give me a break. Tablets suck. Don't be fooled by friends and advertisers ... they're a novelty item at best, but more like a lightbulb (look Ma, it lights the room for 9 hours straight! How power efficient!).

I'll continue to enjoy efficient input and visualization with my keyboard/mouse and dual 28 inch screen setup. If I want portability, I'll use my slightly bulkier laptop which still beats the iPad's 7 or 10inch touch screen.

I thought tablets were silly, too, but then I was given an iPad as a gift. Suddenly, I didn't have to carry around a binder full of academic papers. I didn't need to print out sections of dissertations to have easy access to them. It was convenient for me to pull something out at a bus stop or on the bus and actually use my time for something productive. Do I think my iPad will ever replace a my PC for programming, spreadsheets, Powerpoint, gaming, etc? No, I don't. Do I think the iPad is a great way to carry around a library full of relevant textbooks, dissertations, and academic articles? Yes, and it does it very well. It goes from sleeping to full speed in the blink of an eye, and it's a lot less bulky than my laptop. It's easier for me to hold the tablet comfortably and read it, regardless of my location.

In short: Could I live without my PC? Absolutely not; I need one to do all of my work. Could I live without my iPad? Absolutely, but it's certainly nice to have one.

[nslay]

Tablets Suck
Soup the tablet up as much as you want. Give it more cores, more RAM, better video and it will still suck. Why? As novel as the input interfaces are, either touch screen or dictation, they suck for anything more complicated than clicking links and reading e-mail. There is a growing myth that Ma and Pa who click links and read news articles make up the vast majority of computer users. Mean while, students, power users, gamers, and corporate users are programming, gaming, writing reports, making power point presentations, making spread sheets, doing their taxes, editing photos, managing collections of files, what else? And the computer industry actually thinks touch screens and dictation can do this well? Alright, you try doing this efficiently with touch screen, see how fast you tire. Ever play Wii? Try talking to your computer for 8 hours straight (and I know a deaf guy who programs in C++ with dictation). Give me a break. Tablets suck. Don't be fooled by friends and advertisers ... they're a novelty item at best, but more like a lightbulb (look Ma, it lights the room for 9 hours straight! How power efficient!).

I'll continue to enjoy efficient input and visualization with my keyboard/mouse and dual 28 inch screen setup. If I want portability, I'll use my slightly bulkier laptop which still beats the iPad's 7 or 10inch touch screen.

I thought tablets were silly, too, but then I was given an iPad as a gift. Suddenly, I didn't have to carry around a binder full of academic papers. I didn't need to print out sections of dissertations to have easy access to them. It was convenient for me to pull something out at a bus stop or on the bus and actually use my time for something productive. Do I think my iPad will ever replace a my PC for programming, spreadsheets, Powerpoint, gaming, etc? No, I don't. Do I think the iPad is a great way to carry around a library full of relevant textbooks, dissertations, and academic articles? Yes, and it does it very well. It goes from sleeping to full speed in the blink of an eye, and it's a lot less bulky than my laptop. It's easier for me to hold the tablet comfortably and read it, regardless of my location.

In short: Could I live without my PC? Absolutely not; I need one to do all of my work. Could I live without my iPad? Absolutely, but it's certainly nice to have one.

Agreed, it's good for simple things like reading and clicking links (I forgot reading in my Tablets Suck section!).

[iago]

Perhaps they're going to use this as an opportunity to decouple the UI, the way *nix has forever? That'd be a nice change.

[CrAz3D]

From my findings, it's Win7 with the start menu being replaced by the ugly tablet interface they seem to favor on Windows Phone. There's a move to whole-screen apps as well which you start from the Start Menu.

One thing I like... the new task manager. It's pretty sweet. Nice little facelift by Microsoft there.

One thing I don't.... Microsoft accounts seem to be the default thing to use as a user account. It's now an extra option to have a local user account... and to do anything with a lot of the apps provided in the Consumer Preview, you need to log into their Live service. Dumb. I shouldn't have to sign into my account to use Calendar to save events.

Another thing... the lock screen is nice, but how am I supposed to know to drag it up/down to unlock the screen if I'm not using a tablet? Clicking the screen and dragging it with a mouse on a non-tablet is a much different experience... one that is not intuitive at all.

Besides that, it wasn't much different from Win7 and I got pretty bored of it.

agreed

[nslay]

Despite my convictions toward the keyboard and mouse, the issue is really communication. Keyboard and mouse are efficient forms of human-computer communication. Touch screen and dictation are less efficient. They require quite a bit of movement or talking. Of course, communication efficiency is also related to the software interface. If software interfaces were more predictive and less verbose a lot of these smaller tasks (e.g. like browsing for folders, naming content, etc...) wouldn't really need the otherwise highly efficient keyboard/mouse. This is where NLP and AI come in. If you can issue arbitrary and vague requests (either in voice or certain usage patterns) that are understood by the computer, then you wouldn't need the keyboard/mouse to get real work done. You could get by with the less efficient touch screen and/or dictation interfaces.

Keep an eye out on Siri. While it's very specific to personal organization and internet search, this sort of interface will probably revolutionize the way applications work in general. Imagine telling Photoshop to "blur faces in the image." And Photoshop would understand this request, detect faces and blur them in the image. This is way more efficient than the keyboard/mouse. The best part is that this is all possible with current technology (OK, maybe NLP is lacking).

Of course, no software engineer wants to write complicated AI into their interface. This is something I believe the OS is responsible for. The OS should provide AI support for itself and applications that run on it and hide the complicated stuff from the developer.

[MysT_DooM]

I kinda really like tablets, if I go outa town for business or a trip, i generally just take the tablet (my asus transformer, which is awesome and you shud go buy it).   
Yeah, its not real practical in a sense of actually doing work on it, i.e typing a lot, although the asus comes with a dockable keyboard and then just attach the mouse, which then I could do all sorts of work that i could do on my PC.
Also tablets are great for just leisurely stuff.  Sure if you're into big end games, you don't use the tablet, but for casual gaming, there's tons with fun games on android, and with the tegra on asus, pretty awesome games.   
Also I feel that grabbing information is so much faster on the tablet due to all the apps.  Just one click and bam you got what you need, stocks, sports, news, email, etc.  Swipe here, swipe there, look at this , look at that.  It's just more fluid.

Of course the PC, at this day and age, isn't replaceable just yet. 

[CrAz3D]

I wonder about interfacing a tablet with a desktop monitor and keyboard.  I like my desktop monitor and keyboard, and hate sitting on the couch (at gf's) with my laptop trying to write.

Lots of my law school friends are using strictly tablets for class notes (with the little binder thing and a keyboard).  I'm curious.  They say they love it.  Better battery.  More portable.

[nslay]

I kinda really like tablets, if I go outa town for business or a trip, i generally just take the tablet (my asus transformer, which is awesome and you shud go buy it).   
Yeah, its not real practical in a sense of actually doing work on it, i.e typing a lot, although the asus comes with a dockable keyboard and then just attach the mouse, which then I could do all sorts of work that i could do on my PC.
Also tablets are great for just leisurely stuff.  Sure if you're into big end games, you don't use the tablet, but for casual gaming, there's tons with fun games on android, and with the tegra on asus, pretty awesome games.   
Also I feel that grabbing information is so much faster on the tablet due to all the apps.  Just one click and bam you got what you need, stocks, sports, news, email, etc.  Swipe here, swipe there, look at this , look at that.  It's just more fluid.

Of course the PC, at this day and age, isn't replaceable just yet.

I agree. This is why I think Microsoft is making a terrible mistake trying to aggressively adopt a tablet/phone interface ... especially for desktops (this is one of their biggest markets). The mouse and keyboard aren't going away on desktops, so why a tablet/phone interface there?

[CrAz3D]

what do yall think about the new touch mouse?

[Sidoh]

What do you mean "new"?

Apple has had the magic mouse for quite a while. I have one, and love it. Other designs seem gauche in comparison.

I'm sure there are applications for which a physical scroll wheel is desirable, but none that I'm currently interested in.

[MyndFyre]

What do you mean "new"?

Apple has had the magic mouse for quite a while. I have one, and love it. Other designs seem gauche in comparison.

I'm sure there are applications for which a physical scroll wheel is desirable, but none that I'm currently interested in.

I have a Magic Mouse that came with my iMac and I hate it.  On Mac, the only useful thing IMO that it really does is backwards/forwards navigation (and of course scrolling).  Four fingers is too many to coordinate simultaneously for me on a mouse surface (which is why I have stayed away from the "Magic Trackpad").  On Windows, it's entirely useless.

On the other hand, I have a variable-DPI mouse that has four primary buttons, a mouse wheel that acts as a fifth button, and the mouse wheel supports both horizontal and vertical scrolling.  While that mouse is extraordinarily amazing in Windows (it supports backward and forward navigation, and I don't need to hope that the computer correctly processes an analog hand gesture), it's completely useless in Mac because Mac only has the concept of a two-button mouse, something that realistically has been obsolete since probably 1995.

[Sidoh]

I have very little use for more than two buttons, but it does seem like a pretty silly limitation if that's true.

I tend to find other mouse-like input devices clumsy compared to apple's trackpad. In retrospect, I regret not getting one of those instead of the magic mouse.

I love two finger scroll, and I moan to myself every time have to use any laptop that doesn't support it. I love the four-finger up/down gestures in Snow Leopard (display all apps running, display all windows of the currently active application).

The pinch-zoom is pretty great too. Thumb-forefinger rotate is super intuitive.

Gestures are awesome. They'd be terrible if they weren't processed correctly less than 999/1000 times, but Apple does a pretty spectacular job with this.

[deadly7]

I have very little use for more than two buttons, but it does seem like a pretty silly limitation if that's true.

I tend to find other mouse-like input devices clumsy compared to apple's trackpad. In retrospect, I regret not getting one of those instead of the magic mouse.

I love two finger scroll, and I moan to myself every time have to use any laptop that doesn't support it. I love the four-finger up/down gestures in Snow Leopard (display all apps running, display all windows of the currently active application).

The pinch-zoom is pretty great too. Thumb-forefinger rotate is super intuitive.

Gestures are awesome. They'd be terrible if they weren't processed correctly less than 999/1000 times, but Apple does a pretty spectacular job with this.

It most certainly is not "intuitive". Everytime I use a friend's MB/MBP that has one of these I find myself doing stuff I have absolutely and no idea how to prevent it. So I usually just stick to clicking on the spotlight and searching for everything and avoiding the mouse.

[Sidoh]

Your normal use of a trackpad must be super derpy if you trigger gestures with normal use. ;p

The rotate gesture in particular is quite intuitive. It's quite a bit like the motion you'd make to rotate a photo if it was sitting in front of you. I didn't say any of the other gestures were intuitive, if you'll notice. They're easy to remember and use after forcing yourself to use them for two minutes, though, which is why I like them.

[MyndFyre]

Your normal use of a trackpad must be super derpy if you trigger gestures with normal use. ;p

The rotate gesture in particular is quite intuitive. It's quite a bit like the motion you'd make to rotate a photo if it was sitting in front of you. I didn't say any of the other gestures were intuitive, if you'll notice. They're easy to remember and use after forcing yourself to use them for two minutes, though, which is why I like them.

Other than rotating a photo... what's the point of the rotating mechanism?