Verno wrote on May 4, 2012, 15:50:
I think you're soft selling it quite a bit there, Metro has major usability problems on the desktop that people aren't likely to adjust to. With the ribbon the problem was moving common shortcuts people used, that's a much more simple concept. I've made many adjustments personally but it regularly disrupts my workflow. Maybe in the future Microsoft can improve it but I highly doubt we'll be deploying this at all in its current form.
Don't get me wrong, there are certainly issues with Metro in the Consumer Preview. The hot-corners work poorly on multi-monitor systems and there are quite a few quirks that seems counter-intuitive but it also adds a lot. People love customising their workspace, as evidenced by the variety of wallpapers (and back in the day screensavers) - with Metro people can drag tiles around, resize them, group them, change the background colour and shapes, see dynamic information, etc. And the majority of time is still spent on the desktop, which is virtually unchanged.
The real test will be next month when the Release Preview is released. That will feature the tutorial, new cursors / sounds, new background colours / shapes, a redesigned Aero (flat colours rather than gradients) and presumably plenty of tweaks to Metro and the hot-corners. It will also be interesting to see if the removal of DVD/Blu-ray support leads to a cheaper price, especially given how radical the change is.
pnag wrote on May 4, 2012, 15:51:
Except for someone like me, blu-ray (although still compressed) doesn't look like the shit you can download. The level of compression is awful for most of the digital distribution I've tried, but then I'd have a 35mm projector if my wife would let me.
Most movies and TV series have decent 720p/1080p rips. And streaming services are finally starting to make some progress, though few even come close to Blu-ray quality. I agree that Blu-ray is better quality but not enough to justify the inconvenience. I got fed up of hundreds of game cases clogging up my room and it's the same with DVDs and Blu-rays. Digital distribution really is the only sensible solution and it's shocking that content producers have been so ridiculously slow at adapting. I can redownload games on Steam infinitely, yet for some reason most media websites have only allowed you to download the once.
I'd love to support my favourite TV shows like I do with games on Steam but Blu-rays are expensive and impractical, while DVDs are impractical and shit quality.
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance."