I installed the Windows 8 32-bit operating system on my 5 year old T61 with 4GB RAM.
I upgraded it from Windows XP that I had for a couple years because I could not use Ubuntu anymore due to Netflix and iTunes not being interoperable.
The Live Tiles may be ok for a tablet with touch screen – but it is not good for programmers who are usually “keyboarders”.
You can of course disable Metro:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer : RPEnabled=0
will disable it.
However, I wanted to see if I could continue to use Metro and still have the speed and resource utilization of XP.
So the first thing I did was “optimize for performance” – this can be done from My Computer>Properties>Advanced .. > Performance
Next, I made the Windows key my friend. So Hitting the Windows Key gets you in in and out of tiles much faster than a “swipe” of the mouse etc.
Windows 8 Keyboard Shortcuts
http://howto.cnet.com/8301-11310_39-57390299-285/23-new-keyboard-shortcuts-for-windows-8/
A great blog: http://blogs.windows.com/windows/b/windowsexperience/archive/2012/03/08/getting-around-in-windows-8.aspx
http://sdrv.ms/xjdwY7 (Shortcut to SkyDrive link for PDF of shortcuts)
On another note – the whole Horizontal Scrolling of Windows Apps will be a nightmare for usability folks who have built applications to flow north-south. I like change – let’s see how others feel after a year or so.
