Windows 8 book authors dish on Windows 8

14 top-selling writers who dug deep into Windows offer a range of perspectives that show how controversial the new OS is

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Galen Gruman

Galen Gruman
GalenGruman_Win8book.jpg

No stranger to controversy, InfoWorld executive editor Galen Gruman claims a wide range of interests, from mobile computing (he writes the Mobile Edge blog for InfoWorld) to BYOD to Apple products ("OS X Mountain Lion Bible" and "Exploring iPad for Dummies," among others) and much more. Galen's "Exploring Windows 8 for Dummies" takes a visual approach to getting started with Win8.

His comments:

I was eager to explore Windows 8 when it first came out and happy to be lead author on a book to help people make the transition.

But the more I used Windows 8 and had to tell people how to switch to it, the more frustrated I got. It was confusing to do and so confusing to explain. The Metro stuff does make sense internally, but it's limited and can take a lot of extra effort compared to what is simple in other operating systems. The essentially separate Windows 7 environment always felt like it was a different OS forced into a shotgun wedding with Metro -- and it felt really dated when used with Metro. Windows 8 was awkward in the traditional desktop PC context and in the new touchscreen tablet context, and it never lost that feel for me.

Compared to my experience with my iPad book aimed at a similar audience, working with Windows 8 felt clunky, not very intuitive, and lacking both sophistication and capabilities. What started as something I was eager to dive into ended up as something I couldn't wait to get done so that I could stop using it every day.

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