Why do people hate Windows 8.?

[afnan_mc]

Been a while since the 8.1 update and a surprising lot on the internet still seen to have it out for the OS. Which makes me wonder if I'm missing out on a lot with my choice of operating systems. I'm actually considering Mavericks and maybe Linux. Those of you who have had experience with these OS's, do share your thoughts.

As for me, I'm loving Widows 8.1 on the desktop (no touch) and haven't had any issues with it. Just wondering why there's so much hate towards it.

 

[anon(8657436)]

People hate it because they are used to the familiar things. They get scared.

 

[xandros9]

Windows 8 was a dramatic change.

First of all, Microsoft. they can do no right, and its fashionable to hate on their products.
Second, it was forced to fit the good/bad pattern that was established.

Because it designed to also work better on touchscreens, it automatically must suck in traditional desktop activities, despite be practically unchanged for the most part.
Its like the Xbox/PS argument I've seen. The Xbox is worse because it does more than just gaming. Regardless of how well the gaming section actually is, it can be perceived as worse because it has other features. There's an official name for this, the something-something fallacy.

Because of the seemingly redundant Dr Jekyll/Mr Hyde UX, people jumped on that. I did too.
A couple of design decisions can be seen as confusing.
The fullscreen startscreen rustled some people's jimmies.

People do not like change.
Nope, change? Ew.
I guarantee it someone complained about the addition of the start menu in 95. Just less of an internet to scream on.

Its arguably a circlejerk, people see it, parrot it elsewhere, and it snowballs.

It also sucks too.
Its bad.
Windows 7 was the best, Windows 8 doesn't boot faster its fake, MS should stay the same forever. (My condolences to a friend who uses Windows 7 on a tablet because 8 apparently doesn't do x86 programs, and did not work with a random dude's printer on the internet.)

 

[jimkraz]

I have just read a letter in ComputerActive magazine from a 70 year old, he was asking what was the problem with Windows 8.1, he had just moved from XP and was finding Windows 8.1 a doddle and no more difficult than XP to use, in fact he said " I had more problems with getting used to my new mobile phone". That says it all. I am in my middle sixties and have been using windows 8 since public trials were released, never had a problem. Jim

 

[anon(8657436)]

That's the exact reason it was made Jim. They wanted it to be easy for anyone new to computeres but most of the people who use computers got angered by that. I also agree that if you have used Windows 7, you will find 8 a bit lacking. And mind you, it is the only touch centric OS so far.

 

[iamtim]

It also sucks too.
Its bad.
Windows 7 was the best

I was totally with you until that. For my part, Windows 8 is the only desktop Microsoft operating system I've wholeheartedly adopted. I used Windows because I had to - for work and whatnot - but 286, 3.0, 3.11, 95, 98, NT, Vista... I did not like any of them. Windows 7 came along and I actually found myself using it by choice, although I was using it by choice on a Mac (yay Boot Camp). I love Windows 8, it's everything I want in a modern operating system.

But yeah, I think you're right on with respect to all your other points.

 

[xandros9]

I was totally with you until that. For my part, Windows 8 is the only desktop Microsoft operating system I've wholeheartedly adopted. I used Windows because I had to - for work and whatnot - but 286, 3.0, 3.11, 95, 98, NT, Vista... I did not like any of them. Windows 7 came along and I actually found myself using it by choice, although I was using it by choice on a Mac (yay Boot Camp). I love Windows 8, it's everything I want in a modern operating system.

But yeah, I think you're right on with respect to all your other points.

I was meaning it as a sarcastic jab, but I don't think I pulled it off correctly.

 

[Sport Driver]

I have Windows 8.1 now for a bit more than a week on my PC and I'm loving it. Before I had Windows 7 and first thing I noticed is that it boots much faster than w7 did. It also has some nice features like split screen and APIs for Facebook and Twitter are very useful. It's crazy simple to use, could be because settings look more like phone than PC's control panel. Next are parents .

Sent from my Nokia Lumia 820 using Tapatalk

 

[borhan48]

Windows 8/8.1 is notably less responsive than windows 7.

 

[link68759]

I've talked to many people on IRC who have told me windows 95 received about as much hate as 8 is right now.
Also 98
Also XP.
Also vista

In fact whenever there was a change, there were people threatening to switch to linux.

The only difference between the hate on 98 and the hate today, is that social media has significantly evolved and adoption of a social media network is near universal. Those people who complain about nothing, can now be heard far and wide, and since hating microsoft products is the bee's knees, no one actually needed to try 8 to know they 'hate' it.

To further compound the issue, most of the 'hate' started with the 8 Developer Preview, which was _not meant for consumer use_. Some bloggers loaded it up on their computers, misunderstood how it worked, misunderstood that it was a pre-alpha, and forever tainted the image of all future releases.

Here are the facts.

Windows 8.0 and 8.1 are lighter and faster than 7 and Vista (although not lighter or as fast as XP, but remember XP is ancient and is rather bare bones by today's standards). All of the improvements under the hood that went into 8 are the exact reason why it is objectively better than 7- 8 features an updated, overhauled, improved NT kernel. 8 is pretty vastly different from 7 even without the touch friendly tweaks.

If someone installed 8 and found it to be slower than 7, there are a number of reasons that could be, but it comes down to an end user problem.

1) Unfortunately, 8 won't run perfectly on all hardware (that of course will improve over time). In my experiences, this is actually *incredibly rare*, but one person tweets about how slow it is and ignorance spreads... Since 8 is lighter than 7, it's definitely a better bet that 8 will run faster than 7 on older hardware though.
2) Drivers. Most Vista and 7 drivers will work fine on 8, but not all. There are a few pieces of hardware in driver limbo- rarely, a 7 driver won't work well under 8, and the manufacturer will never update it to work with 8 because it's old hardware. This isn't exclusive to 8- I have a PC that won't run 7 well because all the XP drivers just don't work well with 7. Not 7's fault. Not 8's fault.
3) If you buy a PC with 8 on it, you're not getting vanilla 8 more than likely. You're getting the **** encrusted OEM branded windows install. So yes, a fresh install of 7 will definitely be faster than that- but you can see why users in this scenario do not have the ability to make a fair comparison. If they had done a fresh install of 8 instead of 7, they would have found the fresh install of 8 to be faster than whatever tainted version of 8 was preloaded onto the PC they bought.

OP asked how this compares to other OSs? XP will always have a place in my heart, but it's dead now. I did not use 7 for a very long time actually, because I was very unhappy with how bloated 7 felt. 8 has all the benefits of 7 and more, with a lot of the bloat reduced.

HOWEVER, 8 & 7 require at least 16GB of space, and I have several devices with 16GB SSDs. I installed 8 momentarily on one, it worked, but with 500MB of space free... I opted to install linux on those devices. The distros of linux I use take up maybe 400MB of space. So if you're using devices with less than 30GB, space is going to be a concern, and that's a valid reason to stay away from 8 AND 7 (7 also requires at least 16GB). I've seen a lot of complaints that 8 takes up too much disk space... completely ignoring the fact that 7 was no better.

What with all hardware being made with 8 in mind, it won't be long before 7 has 'driver limbo', where most drivers either won't work with 7 or won't work as well on 7 as they do on 8. I predict the next iteration of windows will add some polish to 8's interface with not much changed under the hood, and people will try it again and think "wow how much better than 8 this is!"... not realizing it's the same OS with a slightly better skin.

Another thing- many judge things by visuals, and to each his own, but most of the voices "hating".. anything, not just 8, are 12 year old kids and manchildren- these people decide something is bad over the most insignificant detail. Having already made up their minds, they then do the bare amount of research, only looking for negatives, and well, confirmation bias is a powerful thing.

 

[Bobvfr]

My lad had a Windows 8 laptop and to be honest I did not like it one bit, when I bought my wife a laptop at Xmas it came with 8.1, what a difference.

All of a sudden I have 8.1 on my desktop, laptop and Surface Pro, my lad has upgraded his laptop after struggling for a year and even he begrudgingly likes the difference, so much so he went out and bought a gaming PC and my wife now has a Surface 2

My only issue has been both my desktop and laptop came with Windows 8 and it took some doing to upgrade from 8 to 8.1 because you have to fight 8.

I can see plenty of people who have bought devices with 8 on it getting fed up and giving up before doing the upgrade.

Also once you have negative press it takes some doing to get passed it, I was speaking to one so called IT expert, hated 8 and wont touch 8.1, unfortunately the IT world is full of luddites ;-)


I did see one post online complaint by a girl that struck me, on the Windows phone you can change your theme so for example most of the tiles can be one colour, on Windows you pretty much get what you are given, shame they didn't copy the theme tile colour change idea, I am sure it will come later, but they lost at least one customer who wanted purple tiles over this.


Bob

 

[iamtim]

I was meaning it as a sarcastic jab, but I don't think I pulled it off correctly.

Oh. Well then. There it is.

 

[sibeans]

• I hate that previously installed desktop games load faster & slightly better
• I hate that I can run desktop programs side by side with Metro applications seamlessly
• I hate that my old Thinkpad cold starts faster & wakes up from sleep in an instant
• I hate the latest additions of keyboard, mouse, trackpad shortcuts since they pretty much makeup for running 8.1 Pro on a non-touchscreen laptop rather than not

forgot to add running remote desktop off my smartphone too

 

[Angry_Mushroom]

Why do they hate it?

-Change is bad.
-Not hating MS would be a change.
-Listening to reviewers is easier than trying it out yourself.

 

[anony_mouse]

People are entitled to their opinion, whether favourable or unfavourable to Windows 8. Let's keep this nice.

 

[type687]

Maybe the really hate rectangles?

 

[anony_mouse]

Maybe the really hate rectangles?

Actually that's my reason - I don't like the metro UI on a PC. I know I can avoid it to some degree, but it still seems to get in the way too often.

Plus it costs money to buy Windows 8. I can think of better things to spend it on.

 

[BobLobIaw]

People are entitled to their opinion, whether favourable or unfavourable to Windows 8. Let's keep this nice.

I think people are correctly pointing out the difference between an opinion and an informed opinion. I rarely hear anyone give specific reasons why they don't like Windows 8 or 8.1. I never hear people actually say "I wish they hadn't gotten rid of the start button." It's generally "people don't like the fact that they got rid of the start button." The actual complaints are also usually blanket statements like "what an abomination" or some other rhetoric that assumes as a fact that it is a bad OS. I think the criticisms in this thread are actually a good analysis of what happens with your average person that "hates" Windows 8.

 

[DavidinCT]

No question people hate change. When it comes to computers, it's MAC or Windows... (Yea, there is flavors of Linux but, it's not as main stream). It all really started with Windows 95 going to the start menu (did anyone here use Windows 3.1 ?). So we have had the same thing from fall 1994 (for us beta testers).

Now you have people who have lived with the start menu for many years, the change now goes more of a touch screen based. It's a major change that should not of been forced on people. I personally think Windows 8 should of came out with a Option, Windows 7 style or Windows 8 style, not to force the new interface on people who dont like it. As time passes, people will get tired with W7 look and give a try more and more to the 8 style.

The "hate" is because of the major change...and this will not changes till we have a solid option to get the start menu option back...

Right now, it's a love/hate thing, some people love it, some people hate it, others like me are ok with it but, not in love with it.

It's fine on a tablet, actually it's pretty awesome on a tablet (ever tried Windows 7 on a tablet, was not fun to use) but, with a keyboard and mouse, still after 8.1 and update 1, still not crazy about it, I can be faster to do things in Windows 7....but, that is my thoughts and everyone will have different thoughts..

I have seen EVERY version of Windows....from 1.0 to today...Still think Windows 95 was one of the best out of all of them (because of the redesign that we used the same basic layout till Windows 7)

 

[a5cent]

I know I can avoid it to some degree, but it still seems to get in the way too often.

Some metro related settings can only be made from the metro settings pages, which most users would never spend much time in anyway. The other place metro can't be avoided is the start screen, which is a more functional version of the dinky start menu that it replaced. Overall I'm much faster with the start screen + context menu than I ever was with the start menu, but it did require that I do a bit of reading. The worst thing about the start screen is that not everything is immediately obvious, which I suspect is the biggest issue people have with it.

I've also never had a metro app unintentionally pop up on me or "get in the way". If you don't want any metro apps, then just uninstall them. What's the problem?

Finally, yes, people are allowed to believe whatever they want, but not all beliefs deserve to go unchallenged.