Microsoft blames OEMs for slow Windows 8 sales, plans February "relaunch"

[backscatter712]

167. My critiques of Windows 8:

Unintuitive interface whether you're using a touch screen or a mouse. Even worse when using a mouse. Oh, I'm supposed to go to the Charms menu? It'd be helpful if someone told me what the Charms menu was, or that I had to throw the mouse to the corner or swipe the right edge of the screen - the system doesn't show anything on the screen as a hint to indicate you need to do that.

You've got two interfaces now - the gimped Windows 7 style desktop and the Start Screen.

The Start Screen is an angry fruit salad with all those colored tiles, and animated widgets - gets obnoxious in a hurry.

Too many things are thrown off-screen entirely - you don't have a start menu anymore, you've got the Start Screen, which you can get to if you tap the corner of your screen or throw your mouse to the corner (assuming you remember that's how you do that - nothing on the screen is dropping hints.) Not only do you have to remember where things are because you're navigating without a map, but you've got to click the mouse or tap the screen more times to do what you want.

Personally I'm surprised nobody's tried the route of turning a tablet into an input device for the PC. Integrate them together, and you can do stuff like work on your document on the tablet, which is good on the go, but you've got the small screen, maybe a keyboard if you took the trouble to bring it with you, but when you put your tablet on your desk, your desktop and your tablet recognize each other, communicate over wi-fi, the tablet goes into Desktop interface mode, and that document you were working on in your tablet automatically fires up on your desktop, comes up on the big screen, and your tablet puts up the UI for your word processor.