I haven’t had a chance to play with any Windows 8-powered computers yet, aside from a very early beta version I played with last September at HP’s US operations center. Still, the idea of a single, universal layout for all your devices, be they touchscreen, laptop, desktop, tablet, or any other kind of thing is a fascinating one, though it apparently comes with a learning curve. Gone is the traditional menu system, and in its place is a series of tiles and swipes dubbed Metro by the geniuses at Microsoft. It doesn’t look particularly intuitive, and apparently some people are having difficulty with it. Fox News has put together a user’s guide to performing basic tasks in Metro.
I’ll be honest, even just looking at the instructions leaves me a little confused, so maybe it’s the sort of thing that works best when you’re also looking at the Metro interface. Might be awhile before I get that into it, though. My next purchase will be an Android-powered Amazon Kindle, not a new Windows 8 laptop or Windows RT tablet, either touchscreen or standard edition. Not that I’m not interested, but I’m not ready to learn a new OS just yet, and Metro looks like a complete change from what I’m used to.
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