Windows 8 Developer Preview

Ok no updates for a long while....... a really long while
What with all the various SC 2012 incarnations, Windows 8, IE10, changing job and and and its all been firmly in the too hard basket.
So here's the start of some more regular posts.

Windows 8.
I am dual booting Windows 8 (64bit full developers release) and Windows 7 on my work laptop (a Dell E6400) with Windows 8 as my primary and my existing Windows 7 there for safety and in case the boss wants me to do something Windows 8 cant.  In for a penny, in for a pound!
Initial impressions (3 days) are good. I have deliberately avoided reading too much about Windows 8 and allowed it to wash over me like a user and try to just use it without too much prior knowledge and prejudice.  Its unusual to be able to do this as we techos usually need to know as much as possible as quickly as possible so we can advise our customers, but with this dev release there is some breathing room.  Some....

The Good.

• Metro, Personally I am a fan. Most of my esteemed colleagues? Not so much.
• New logon screen, control panel, and all the other pretty.  I like it a lot.  I do a lot of SOE designs and its amazing how many otherwise business savvy IT techos, completely disregard the importance of the user experience.  Getting that look and feel just right can make a big difference in how an SOE is viewed by the users.  They report to their bosses who talk to your boss you know.
• Touch screen - Windows 8 looks like it might actually be that 'touch screen enabled OS' they talked about with Windows 7.  Bring it on. That and screens that bend down to the desk. Imagine a screen that has an angled section at the bottom with a display that you can program to do different things with different programs. Personally I like keys that move (not haptic feedback) so I wont be leaving my keyboard behind just yet,
• Ribbon enabled explorer, I am a big fan of the ribbon.  I know its a love it or hate it thing but once you realise that the context sensitive tabs are your friends the desktop becomes an inviting place.
• File copying, I don't know whether its a feeling (haven't run IOMETER yet) or whether I am just distracted by the new graphs in the detailed copy dropdown or what, but copying does seem to be smoother, quicker (in terms of total time, a new OS doesn't make your hardware faster without new drivers) and more efficient.
• Everything I have tried to run is working except active-x RDP in IE10. 
• All my hardware is working except the WWAN (no data SIM so I haven't tried to fix that yet)
• Native ISO mounting - YAY - about freakin time. Thanks guys.

The Bad

• The start button takes you back to the Metro interface.  I know, I know, it has to - but it is a real mental gear jam, especially when you are trying to do something that you are concentrating on.
• I can't find any (sensible) way to customise the layout or look of the tiles.  If I want a single column of tiles followed by a 5 wide column then that's what I want, and I am not hex editing dll files just to change the background colour. I am sure they will fix this before release but right now it is sending my OCD completely round the twist.
• Adding an app like office adds tiles for all the normal crap that you never want to see (e.g. Digital Certificate for VBA) onto your Desktop/Tiles Space/Metro start screen/whatever you want to call it - again I am sure this will get fixed pre release.
• No folders or sub folders on Metro - Not sure this will get fixed a-la Android and I am in two minds whether it would be a good thing to do or not anyway.  On one hand some people use a lot of applications and shortcuts, on the other hand folders would defeat the purpose of Metro...... 
• A lot of it is clearly still Windows 7 in the emperors new clothes but it is only a dev preview, so lets be reasonable here.
  

The very very ugly

• The Metro version of IE has no plug-ins available - WTF! - Earth to Microsoft, seriously guys.  According to some things I did read, Microsoft have released the following on their building Windows 8 blog.

Microsoft invested significant time researching the decision. The IE team examined the top 97,000 sites around the world, determining that, of the 62 percent of those sites that use Flash, many of them already have an HTML5 option as well. Beyond Flash, other plug-ins were rare, with the next most common one used on just 2 percent of sites examined

1. Seriously, there are a LOT and I do mean A LOT of companies out there who are still having a massive struggle getting IE8 to work with their internal and usually business critical apps. Now you want to remove all plugins on the Metro IE10 all that's going to do is make corporations turn off Metro. Maybe that's the thinking already, 'Normal' UI for business with normal screens, etc and Touch screens and Metro for home users, if that's the case then fine, if not you are all off your trolleys ;-)
2. Is it me or is 97,000 sites a very odd number to check? I would be very interested in knowing what the next 3,000 sites on the list had on them that precluded them from being counted and checked
3. Whilst I am on the subject of Microsoft slipping back into bad habits, 62% of 97,000 is 60,140 so just how many is 'many'? How many of them had HTML alternatives?

Is it recommended? So far so good, but then I liked ME (the bastard son of '98) and hated VISTA (the operating system Microsoft had to have - for all my fellow Aussies) when they first came out so who am I to judge, try it out and make up your own mind.