Windows 8 Cheat Sheet

Thanks for the post. I wish I had found it earlier because I could have used it. A few weeks ago, an executive at my company got the first Windows 8 machine in the building; a touch-screen ultrabook. While it wasn't too massively difficult to set up and I read about the gestures earlier from another source, it was extremely cumbersome and unnatural. After I got his email and VPN working (the built-in email app stinks when you have an inbox with 80 some folders and god knows how many folders inside those) I then created a virtual machine with Windows 8 for more thorough testing in our business environment and to teach myself the basics. The learning curve was ugly; nothing was "intuitive" from a good UI standpoint. The biggest, stupidest "two operating systems in one" split for me was how some control-panel items can only be accessed from the desktop control panel, and others only from the Tile-World settings.

After a day of playing around with it mouse-and-keyboard only, I had to recommend to my company against getting it on any new systems aside from touch-panel laptops and tablets and continuing with Windows 7 on new desktops. My stance was the mandatory "mouse gestures" were too confusing and unintuitive for our office employees; most of which are 40 and older and don't take change well regardless, and while more natural with a touchscreen, we would probably never be getting touchscreen desktops in our office because nobody wants to lose the desk real-estate (sitting at my desk, I have a pair of 24" widescreen displays and I can't even comfortable reach my screens without leaning forward and stretching; most of our desks are 36" deep!)

I like Windows 8's core concept, but I think it would be a far better OS if it had a "gesture-less" mode of operation more suited for non-touchscreen users. Start-up to the desktop, replace desktop icons with live-tiles, have it's signature start button and the "start screen" be an overlay to the desktop and all Metro applications just open inside a desktop window rather than in some weird, inflexible fullscreen environment. I'm sorry but we're treating Windows 8 like another Vista.