1. Degraded shell and user interface features:
● Start Menu has been removed. Here's how the Start Menu was superior to the Start Screen:
- No full-screen requirement, it doesn't disturb your workflow and gets out of the way quickly
- Had quick access to shutdown commands
- Special folders 1 click away and expandable
- Expandable Recent documents
- Start Menu jump lists for pinning documents associated with that program
- Frequently used programs list
- Neatly organized All Programs list by folders
- Does not cover the Taskbar and the notification area
- Search results are in a single unified list of Programs, Files and Settings for easy up/down keyboard navigation but still neatly categorized
- Context menu options of our choice not present in Start screen. Whatever limited context menu actions Start Screen has are at the bottom of the screen which means more movement between the tile and the bottom actions
- No context menu options available at all for settings and files on the Start screen
- Launch multiple apps quickly by holding down Shift (Classic Start Menu in Windows XP and Vista had this ability)
- Less items fit on the screen at a time due to the large size which means more scrolling unnecessarily for keyboard and mouse users
- The hot corner has poor discoverability
● The menu bar and contextual command bar (toolbar) in Windows Explorer have been removed and replaced by the Ribbon. Here's how the Ribbon is far more inferior:
- Wastes vertical screen estate due to increased height
- Wastes horizontal screen estate by leaving empty space to the right of the commands on each Ribbon tab
- The earlier 'Command bar' (toolbar) of Explorer was contextual, it wasn't static, so all the commands were on a single row, yet had 1-click access, now the commands are at least 1 more click away, hidden in Ribbon tabs and more than 1-click away if you can't remember which Ribbon tab
- The File menu also showed context menu (right click) commands of shell extensions but the File button or the Ribbon tabs do not show these
- The Quick Access Toolbar's usability is poor because it uses 16 x 16 sized icons! (So much for a touch-friendly OS).
- The Ribbon requires a click to activate each tab unlike a menu which activates by 1 click and then you can move through all menus by hover. Thus, the mouse usability of the Ribbon is slower.
- Keyboard usability of the Ribbon is poor because in a menu, the first letter of any menu command or Alt+keyboard combination key is underlined and placed sequentially making it easier to read. On the Ribbon, the keyboard shortcuts aren't shown in a sequential row making them harder to read
● File operations like Rename, Delete can no longer be undone for UAC-protected locations
● File search for items in indexed locations is broken in the Start screen. I get many file results for search terms I type in Explorer that I do not get on the Start screen. I also used to get these results in the Start menu. It looks like the Start screen file search only looks in Libraries.
● Application installers or apps themselves can no longer programmatically configure, change or query file associations or set themselves during installation as the default for a file type or protocol! File type associations have to be and can only be configured manually by the user from Default Programs Control Panel! The Windows 7 Open With dialog already respected user choice. If a program was associated with a file type from the Open With dialog’s 'Always use the selected program to open this kind of file' option, there was no issue of programs taking over the user's file associations,
● Many commands are missing on the Ribbon which were there on Explorer command bar like Compatibility Files, View Remote Printers etc and others for special folders and namespace extensions. They just forgot to add these to these commands!
● The ability to boot directly to the desktop and not load the Metro components in memory is not there. Items in various startup locations (Registry, startup folder etc) are all loaded with a delay of few seconds with no way to load them instantly.
● The Lock screen is the place where you can now display custom background instead of the Logon screen, but unlike the Logon screen, there seems to be no way to programmatically change or cycle through a group of images for the Lock screen background. It must be set manually by the user from PC settings on the Start screen.
● The "Unblock" button previously available on the file properties dialog for unblocking downloaded files (removing the NTFS Alternate Data Stream from the downloaded file) has been removed.
● Explorer copy engine issue:
Folder conflict prompt when merging/overwriting folders is removed. Explorer silently merges subfolders in a copy operation, you get prompted for the individual files in a subfolder, but you cannot choose entire subfolders to skip or overwrite
● Explorer: Ability to enable both Details pane and Preview pane simultaneously in Explorer for display of file metadata as well as preview, or, Details pane to be always shown and only the Preview pane toggled is gone.
●
Flip 3D (Win+Tab) is gone. Win+Tab includes a Metro-style switcher that is just like Alt+Tab, only places the thumbnails vertically. Also, it does not work when only desktop apps are running.
● The
AutoPlay dialog is now a toast notification instead of a proper window and so it does not stay open for more than a few seconds. After inserting the removable flash drive, if you do not take action within those few seconds, the dialog closes! This is good example of total user interface disaster.
● The
AutoPlay dialog removes the option to always open a particular program based on the file type.
● The "Compatibility" tab for an application's properties no longer includes 'Windows 2000' and 'Windows NT 4.0' modes. You will be forced to use
Application Compatibility Toolkit to set these OS modes.
2. Removed appearance and personalization features:
● Aero Glass transparency is gone and the rich, glossy Aero look has been replaced with a flattened and ugly look.
●
Advanced Appearance settings which let you adjust colors, sizes and fonts are removed. Although Windows themes and UI elements based on
visual styles such as the Aero-based themes ignored
some of these settings,
some aspects of the
visual style-based themes were still customizable with this dialog.
● The Windows Basic and Classic themes have been removed. These were the only themes that fully respected the system colors and window metrics (which have also been removed as stated above). All themes are now based on Visual Styles.
● Due to inability of Desktop Window Manager to be turned off, desktop themes that worked only with the legacy window manager (compositing=off) cannot be used.
●
Sound events for 'Exit Windows', 'Windows Logon' and 'Windows Logoff' are removed
● Mouse control panel option to allow or disallow themes to change mouse pointers is removed from the GUI.
3. Dumbed down/removed Control Panel settings:
● Running Internet Explorer purely in 64-bit mode is not possible unless Enhanced Protected Mode is enabled which disables all addons. Otherwise, 64-bit IE10 opens 32-bit tabs.
● Search option to use natural language search has been removed from Folder Options.
● Windows Update
settings for showing notifications and allowing all users to install updates have been removed. Windows Update no longer notifies with a balloon notification that there are new updates available.
● The ''Snap To'' mouse pointer option to move the pointer automatically to the ''default button'' in a dialog is broken on many re-designed system and application dialog boxes and windows in Windows 8 (e.g. the new file copy conflict dialog). The mouse pointer does not move or ''snap to'' the default button in several dialogs which are re-designed.
4. Dumbed down system behavior and administrative tools:
● In a dual boot scenario, the ability to directly boot into another OS besides Windows 8 is slowed down because the new Windows 8 boot shell/loader reboots to load the other operating system
● Chkdsk when run at startup hides any information about file system repairs besides % complete. This
screen with scanning and correction details is gone when Chkdsk runs at startup and replaced by just a “Scanning and repairing errors” message with % complete indicator.
● Device Manager
no longer shows Non-Plug and Play Drivers or hidden devices. The "Devmgr_Show_NonPresent_Devices=1' environment variable has no effect.
● Security Essentials settings for configuring default actions or real-time protection have been removed. (
Security Essentials is now built-in as Windows Defender)
●
WinHelp has been completely discontinued. No download will be available.
● MSConfig's Startup tab has been killed and replaced by the Task Manager's Startup tab that doesn't have the 'Location' column which was useful for example to know if the process started from HKCU or HKLM.
● The command line tools, DiskPart.exe, DiskRAID.exe, and the Disk Management GUI are being deprecated and replaced by the WMIv2-based Windows Storage Management API with the Storage PowerShell command line utility. Dynamic Disks are being deprecated as part of this transition.
● Subsystem for UNIX-based applications is deprecated and will be gone in the version of Windows following Windows 8
● Some Transactional NTFS (TxF) APIs like savepoints, secondary RM, miniversion and roll forward are deprecated
● WMIC.exe is deprecated (replaced by PowerShell cmdlets)
5. Removed and degraded Windows features and components:
●
Previous Versions for Shadow Copies is removed. The half-baked replacement is the File History feature which is only for certain file types (documents, music, videos and pictures) in Libraries, desktop and browser favorites. Previous Versions worked for any generic file type in any folder. File History does not even support EFS-encrypted files! File History is supposed to replace both "Previous Versions for Shadow Copies" as well as "Windows Backup and Restore" and it doesn't do 100% of either of the features it replaces! Typical Microsoft style "improvement".
● Pen, Ink and Touch Input Desktop features, including the The Tablet Input Panel (TIP) are no longer included. Some buttons ('num', 'sym' and 'web) are removed from the Handwriting input panel and UI changes to it require more clicks for example to switch from handwriting to keyboard, or access the editing commands (join, split, delete). It is now touch-friendly but no longer stylus-friendly. Desktop tablet features are replaced by a dumbed down
touch keyboard.
● Desktop games (no word on whether they will be included or dropped in favor of Metro-style games):
• Chess Titans
• FreeCell
• Hearts
• Solitaire
• Spider Solitaire
• Minesweeper
• Mahjong Titans
• Purble Place
● Windows Gadget Platform is intact but no gadgets to download as the online Gadget Gallery was killed for Windows Vista and Windows 7 users as well.
● Windows Backup and Restore is deprecated. Although the feature is still intact, shell integration of Backup features is removed. It will be completely removed in the version of Windows following Windows 8.
● Media Center is being supported "
for another product lifecycle", meaning it will be dropped in the version of Windows following Windows 8.
● Windows Live Essentials desktop apps are being replaced by "simplified" Metro style apps.
● Windows DVD Maker is removed
● Windows Briefcase creation ability is gone from ‘New’ menu (Shell templates)
● The
dumbing down that comes with Internet Explorer 9 and later versions: no dedicated search box with proper search provider functionality, no page title, no progress bar, no privacy/cookie blocked icon, no indicator of Protected Mode and security zone, no status of page rendering errors, no free moving of toolbars, no completed MB for downloads (only %).
●
Windows CardSpace is not installed even after installing .NET 3.0/3.5
●
People Near Me P2P API is removed
6. Removed and dumbed down networking features and options:
●
Network Map feature and some network profile management UI (setting a network as Private, Public, customizing the network name and icon etc) from Network and Sharing Center is missing
● The 'Set Up a Connection or Network' wizard removes the options to create a wireless ad hoc connection or a Bluetooth PAN network.
●
Redialing options (redial attempts, time between attempts, idle threshold) for VPN, PPPoE, DSL and dial-up connections are removed. For PPPoE connections, the option to display progress while connecting and whether to include Windows logon domain are also removed.
●
View Available Networks (VAN) UI has been crippled with access to the most important dialog: the Network's
Status removed. The VAN UI now covers the notification area icons unnecessarily and the Metro look is out of place on the Aero desktop
● At least for my Wireless NIC
hosted/virtual Wi-Fi does not work due to lack of in-box drivers. The virtual adapter does not get automatically enabled like on Windows 7.
● The Wi-Fi toggle tile is removed from Windows Mobility Center.
7. Broken/non-backward compatible keyboard shortcuts:
(This is the first version of Windows to break keyboard shortcuts like this recklessly and assign new ones which take over the keyboard shortcuts of existing features)
● The keyboard shortcut for Windows Mobility Center has been removed. Previously, Win+X brought it up, now it brings up the power user context menu. There is no keyboard shortcut for Mobility Center.
● The keyboard shortcut for Aero Peek has been removed. Previously, Win+Space did Aero Peek. Now it switches the input language. There is no keyboard shortcut now for Aero Peek.
8. Obsolete/Legacy features:
● Protected Storage (PStore) which was the legacy read-only credential store is gone
● Some
Audio Compression Manager (ACM) components are broken resulting in Sound Recorder being unable to do format conversion.
That's bad news for support people
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