Nitpicks with Windows 8

Posted by jhoff80 on March 1, 2012 09:48 am 38

So I really do like Windows 8, but I can't help but feel that there's some things that are still really rough around the edges.

First of all, on desktop mode, each window's top left button needs to be moved over like 15-20 pixels so that you don't get the top left hot corner and accidentally switch to a different app when using it.

Secondly, it seems that while most of the built in stuff uses the mouse scroll wheel to scroll left and right (which works great), quite a few apps do not. This to me seems to indicate that each app has to decide this scrolling feature, when it should be universal. Ie, developers should have to opt out of that instead of opt in. USA Today, for example, is useless with the keyboard and mouse, because you can't scroll through all of the articles.

The built-in preview apps are the roughest around the edges, though I do expect their issues to be fixed.

The Mail app is clearly the best out of any of them. That being said, there's no way to customize the reply-to address, signature, anything like that, which needs to be added before the final.

The Calendar app doesn't let you customize which calendars to display; maybe I want to sync my Gmail, but not Google Calendar. WP7 already allows you to do this, and that needs to be available in Windows 8. Also, the colors aren't customizable.

The People app desperately needs a setting to filter certain accounts like Windows Phone does. I don't want people on Twitter showing up in my contacts unless I already have those people added on other services. And the "What's New" section wastes a ton of space.

Maps can't find my location, despite the fact that every other app can at least guess the right town.

Camera still can't detect my webcam.

Photos isn't finding my local photos added to my Windows Library.

Like Zune, Videos is only capable of playing AVI and MP4, it seems. This is despite the fact that I installed codecs and both WMP and WMC can play my MKV properly.

Music is horrible. The background shows a bunch of top hits, not my own personal library's cover art like Zune does. And it's missing most of the functionality of Zune, so no podcast support, and worst of all, no Zune Pass support. I mean, I'm paying for Zune Pass, shouldn't I be able to stream the music like I can in Zune, instead of only having the option to buy it with MS Points?

There's no support built in for syncing my WP7 phone either.

The Store is nice, but how come the apps I already have installed, like Mail and Skydrive as an example, still show an "Install" button?

Like I said though, I fully expect a lot of the problems with apps to be remedied by final release.

Now, I know this post has been pretty negative, but overall, I really do like the experience. It's not perfect yet, that's a given, but it does work surprisingly well for me with a keyboard and mouse. (I have a touchscreen but am having driver issues; I can scroll and swipe with the screen, but not click). It'll be hard to tell until we see some real productivity type apps in the Store, but I was excited about the promise of Windows 8 from the Developer Preview, and I'm more excited with the Consumer Preview.

I'll probably be using this as my main OS for a while, so I'm hoping that feeling sticks with continued use.