Windows 8 Ejects Aero, Favors Solid Ground

One of Microsoft's litany of blogs has posted a bunch of info about the upcoming Windows 8, and boy howdy does it look good.

I was never a fan of Aero. I'm on a Windows 7 machine right now with the Windows "Classic" theme active. Doing that saves me over 100MB of memory. For most people, that 100MB is an almost academic subject, since most computer nowadays come with 2GB or more of memory, so why worry about one twentieth of RAM?

Really? I guess that there is no reason. But I'm a geek. I'm also a geek who more frequently than not has upwards of twenty tabs open in two browsers at the same time. Memory is important to me.

The other reason why I hated Aero was because I felt that it was flashy for the sake of being flashy. When everyone did a "Top Tech Of The Last Ten Years" list in 2010, many, if not most, of them had Windows XP on the list and talked about how Mac OS X from 2001 felt anachronistic and dated. Windows XP was just... Windows XP. It was perfect. It still looks perfectly fine, today.

Aero will not be that. Aero, by Microsoft's own admission, already looks "dated and cheesy." For the love of Pete, the windows have drop shadows! You don't get worse than that.

So, yes. I think that Microsoft's new UI direction looks great. I don't like Metro, but that's because I don't like tablets. But this new classic interface looks glorious. Truly glorious. I feel like we will finally get our follow-up to my beloved Windows XP... with SP2, that is.

Excitement For Windows 8

I want a tablet. I think that they are unbelievably cool. But, at the same time, I can't bring myself to buy a big cell phone. I already have one of those, and its screen is over 4". That IS a tablet. Cell phones are also a fantastic toy, because like a computer, it is a toy with legitimate uses beyond being simply a toy. It's very easy to rationalize the purchase of a bad-ass cell phone. It is not similarly easy to rationalize the purchase of what amounts to a more-bigger cell phone.

But Windows 8 makes this prospect different. The boot time on Win8 appears to be nearing the instant-on nature of current tablets, although will likely never actually get there, and having a tablet mode or something similar would allow Win8 to extend the battery life to something beyond the few hours possible on most super-lite laptops. Moreover, since the OS is the same, I will be able to do actual work on a Win8 tablet.

It also prevents ridiculous artificial restrictions on tablets. For example, various tablets try to market themselves as nearly-computers, but most of the media websites that would be best-suited to the tablets: Hulu, Spotify, etc.; are blocked by the media companies. It turns tablets for the majority of people into glorified e-readers.

Granted, I think many of the problems with tablets has to do with the app development. There's very little heavy-hitting software available for cell phones or tablets, and I'm perpetually puzzled as to why. Android and iOS are HUGE markets. There should be tons of things for power-users, yet the bulk of the market is dominated by super-small little developers. Is it raging arrogance on the part of the big companies? Is it something about the phone/tablet market? What?!

Regardless, Win8 eliminate all of these issues, at least for me. I'm not saying that I would ever get a tablet. I might opt for a super-thin laptop. But at least this makes what is arguably one of the coolest things to be perfected, like, ever, a reasonable option.