http://venturebeat.com/2012/07/13/no-windows-8-full-retail-box/
Microsoft may drop full retail Windows 8 boxes — and that’s a good thing
Come the release of Windows 8 this fall, it may be easier for consumers to figure out which boxed copy to purchase.
Microsoft will reportedly drop the full retail copy of Windows 8 and will only offer upgrade and “System Builder” versions of the OS in stores, report Windows gurus Paul Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley on the This Week in Windows podcast.
Windows 8 by pricing it at a mere $39.99, more mainstream users will still be picking up their Windows 8 upgrade in stores (where it’ll cost them $70)
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/realworld/375166/hidden-commands-of-windows-8
(for example, to insert a section break in Word you must go to Page Layout | Page Setup | Breaks, rather than the Insert tab where you might expect).
The Windows 7 UI has some interesting quirks, too. In Windows Explorer, what looks like a very simple menu at the top of the window is actually a toolbar that has words on the left and buttons on the right; the real menu is hidden until you press the Alt key, but even then you won’t see commands such as “Add current location to Favorites”, since that’s hidden under a right-click menu on the word Favorites at the top of the navigation bar.
Unless you right-click, you can’t see that command, so the only way to add a location to Favorites is to go up to that location’s parent folder and then drag the folder into Favorites. How would you know to do that? You’d have to guess
They have no idea how useful it is because they’ve never been shown, and they’re not sufficiently confident to experiment on their own – why would they press a key when they don’t know what it does? It might break their computer or delete all their files.
Why would they try pressing it in combination with another key if they do discover what it does when pressed on its own? There are actually more than 30 Windows key combinations in Windows 8, many of which work in previous versions, too (see table, above).
But Windows 8 now hides all these cues in its Metro style apps. Even Office 15, which is still only in limited, invitation-only, technical preview, minimises its ribbon by default. Without manuals, or any visual cues as to what’s possible and how to do it, will users be able to cope with it?
If you read the reviews of sample applications in the Windows 8 store, they’re littered with people complaining they can’t find how to search for an application, delete or share content.
These mechanisms are there in the apps but are hidden under the Charms: swipe in from the right, move the mouse to the top-right corner of the screen, press Windows-C, Windows-H or Windows-Q. Or select an item (touch and drag down slightly or right-click) and tap or click the Delete button on the App Bar, or press Delete. It’s difficult to describe these actions and the different ways of achieving them, let alone to do them.
Perhaps it’s inevitable that I should become an old fuddy-duddy, who just doesn’t get this brave new world of computing being designed by and for 20-somethings, kids who are so used to and unafraid of technology that they’re happy to right-click everything in sight and try dragging things here, there and everywhere just to see what might happen.
But I want computers and applications to work for everyone – regardless of age – and I’m afraid many of those people are going to need far more visual clues than Metro style apps will provide.
