Tuesday, 21 February 2012 08:24

Is the new Windows Logo Change Really That Bad?

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win8logoredesignedWhen I first started working in technical journalism I wrote a short article about the psychology behind the need to hate Microsoft and other big companies. I talked about the need to assign personalities to them and to identify them with certain character traits. It actually was fun to write, but as you can imagine was not well received by many readers. Still it has become almost an ingrained part of the global psyche that Microsoft is bad and incompetent to boot. So much so that after months of Windows 8 blog entries the big news is not what Microsoft is screwing up technically, but the new Windows Logo… really guys, Is that all you have?

For starters the new logo is a drastic departure from the previous images we know for windows. Gone is the flowing symbol that was supposed to convey a sense of ease and fluidity (intended or not). Now we have four rigid but progressive rectangles in an off color of blue. Ok, so it is different and people do not like it, but honestly who cares about the Windows Logo? We have tinkered with multiple builds of the OS and can tell you that there is more to be annoyed about that the logo.
win8logoredesigned
For starters Microsoft is making a fairly large leap of faith thinking that the Metro UI (one originally designed with small 4-inch screens in mind) will take off on desktops with displays that are only getting larger. There is also a small problem with multiple displays that Microsoft has not yet addressed.

Don’t get me wrong here; Microsoft HAS to change from the stock desktop experience, but I do not think the tiled look is the way to go. There has to be another way to get things moving in a different direction than just changing the UI. Taking a look at other parts of the OS we also find that Microsoft is cutting back on the way plug-ins work in Internet Explorer 10. If you are running IE 10 from the Metro Interface forget about getting flash support. It will run almost in a safe-mode style environment. Now on the one hand this does improve security in IE but as we all know the more you tighten security the more you lose flexibility which is something that Windows users are accustomed to. IE 10 is not the only application that will get this treatment, most of the Metro Applications will be restricted in their functionality to prevent malware, but this will also limit their use. The other item is that if you get the all of the live tiles running your new MetroUI can become very busy. Personally I do not mind a have information at a glance on my phone or tabelt, but I do not want that on my laptop or desktop system. I prefer a very clean work space and Metro is just not it.

Of course we are also only looking at the final stages of a product that is not on the shelves yet. As we have seen from Microsoft in the past their will be plenty of updates after the product is released to the masses.

The funny thing is that although there is more hype surrounding Windows 8 than almost any other Operating system that Microsoft has put out the actual consumer interest is not as big as you would have thought. Most people we have talked with are not even interested in the upcoming customer preview. We are sure there will be a rash of articles about it and we do intend to have another go at installing it on our Asus EEE Pad EP 121, but we have a feeling that there is too much changing behind the scenes to really grab consumer interest at this time.

All we can really hope is that in 8 days when the Customer Preview Program download kicks off we start to see articles that actually have some real content instead of long rants about the change of the Windows Logo… no matter how terrible it is.

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Read 2877 times Last modified on Tuesday, 21 February 2012 08:43

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