Was Windows 8 THAT bad?

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Windows 8 was ahead and behind its time simultaneously

Windows 8 was the point that microsoft decided to start blatantly dictating to users how they will use windows instead of just having windows to facilitate the user's needs.

The typing sound on the stock keyboard with the windows phones was the most pleasing sound I’ve ever heard. I’ll never forget typing on those phones. Probably the last time I actually had sounds enabled on my cell phone. 😂

The first time I used windows 8 in 2023 I had to search how to shut it down💀

I was actually working at Best Buy as the newly minted Microsoft Associate, got full advanced training on Win 8 and all. It was... Rough. Even proponents of 8 had these same criticisms. When we were doing pre-orders for new devices, I had a woman come in to buy our absolute cheapest desktop to give to her 6 year old nephew. The idea was that his little mind would learn it quickly and she'd have her own little tutor. Absolutely genius.

not sure if they did this intentionally, but this video is published almost to the exact 10 year anniversary of when the first Surface Pro was released. 09 Feb 2013. I woke up early that morning to get the Surface Pro at the Microsoft Store popup on Michigan Ave in Chicago, which was delayed a bit against the Surface RT, which came out a few months earlier. It had Windows RT, the Metro only version. I have a failed unboxing video of the Surface Pro with a "Year of the Snake" keyboard cover that will never see the light of day. That keyboard was unusable. To think, I could have been a tech YouTuber during Linus' NCIX days... 🤨

I love listening to Linus talk about past Windows. I vaguely remember listening to my older brother telling me how bad it was and that there was no point upgrading the family computer from Windows 7.

I used Windows 8.1 for a brief time. It wasn't bad, but it felt awkward, and as soon as my system said "you can upgrade to windows 10" I did (which came with it's own hurdles).

I used to work at Office Depot and per their contract I was forced to promote and educate customers on windows 8. I didn’t meet a single customer that liked it especially because of the missing start button.

Windows 8 ended up being a lot like Vista, underneath it had a lot of good power and features, but most people only got to use them with 7 and 10.

My issue with windows 8 was that you HAD to restart in 15 minutes for updates. Your options were "restart now or in 15 minutes". I was in college at the time and a lot of tests were done online, and there were people who lost time on their tests because of this. One failed because he couldn't get back in after the restart. I can understand their goral, but at the same time, make it a setting you can turn off, and have it off by default.

I used 8.1 on my Thinkpad from '20-'22 because I wanted to give it a try out of curiosity. It definitely wasn't as awful as I remembered it was at launch and I would've continued using it had they not killed it off. But now, having moved to a debloated version of Windows 10, I don't remember the upsides of running it vs running Win10.

I had forgotten about all the weird stuff Win8 did because the first thing I did when I got it was installing Classic Shell. What a wild time this was!

I know of a number of corporate IT administrators who felt that the Win8 UI was a step too far for their corporate environment, and had zero interest in installing third party apps to make the experience more familiar for their users. So their decision was to stick with Win7 as long as they could, and hope that MS came to their senses!

The swipe from left and right side shortcuts were very handy on touch screen devices, good for running full screen apps and doing tablet things. I put about 3 years of school/uni notes into the metro version of OneNote on the og surface. It was basically built to sell the surface line, like they bet it all on touch screens becoming the norm on all laptops.

I used the full screen tiles for the start menu on Windows 10 for a while just because I think it looks so good. I actually don't remember if I have it set or if you even can on Windows 11, I'll see probably in a day or two when I have my PC running again. The Windows phone was awesome as well, and the tiles design looked so good on that as well.

With the update to 8.1, Windows 8 did eventually get pretty useable. I remember Luke saying that a long ways back on the WAN Show. Still a misstep, especially in terms of backwards compatibility, but most all complaints were fixed in 10, and as you said, a lot of cool features were added. I feel like the only reason Vista had so much adoption was because gamers wanted the best of the best, and DX10 (I believe) was Vista exclusive, and I believe Halo 2 and Gears of War were Vista only as well. It was also flashy, pretty, and had a truly functional x64 version (XP x64, I love ya, I enjoyed ya, but man were you a pain).

Lets not forget how lean Windows 8 and 8.1 were on system requirements vs 10 on the same hardware. The last os you could truly run from a HDD, and was very good and snappy on even lowly bay trail atoms.

The one panel I ever used on Windows 8 was the desktop panel. It's honestly funny how arbitrary that whole UI became