Stardock Tiles brings Metro to the Windows desktop

Okay, so another update to be looking for.  Thank you. 

EDIT:  I looked at some Windows 8 stuff and now understand what Metro is.   I will have to wait and see but I think I will be looking for the 'Off' or 'Minimize' button for Metro. 

I wonder how this will interact with W8's bars and Charms.

Tiles is designed to address what we think will be a big issue in Windows 8 (and the build conference is making obvious) that the Metro "full screen" UI is not ideal for getting stuff done in a PC environment. 

Tiles will let users take advantage of the Metro style UI conventions but gain advantage of the big screen of a typical desktop system.

So it would seem that you and your folks are on top of Windows 8 and looking at the pros and cons and how the customizing software will work with it, cool. 

Watched the keynote (just ended). Not a terrible lot new (yet)... except the cross syncing of every device tied into Live.... Connectivity is the emphasis (so far)... and use of the Cloud based apps... makes the tablet more of a switchboard.

Don't really see touchscreen typing (is slow and laborious) as being much more than a helper app for email, etc. These tablets will have to have keyboards for any serious work. Oh yes... and mice. Forget spreadsheets with simple touch screens.

What was nice was the ability to connect to the office/home PC and extract what you need/want.

What isn't nice is that it will tunnel to the cloud and back to that PC. Too much data flying around with who knows who's watching it go by... also not keen on the legal aspects of it. The data/info isn't clearly 'in your possession' and private if it's passing through Live. Won't that make it 'public' and render the 4th Amendment superfluous?

I'm still trying to work out whats happening to .NET.  Sounds like it has been dropped.  I wonder how similar the new windows built in libraries will be to the functions we used in .NET.  I hope its not going to require us to rewrite our software.

That's a pretty cool app, I'm enjoying it a lot!

For those of us that don't know what Metro is, might have been a good idea to give a little primer, otherwise we have absolutely no idea what we're supposed to be astounded at.

I use it like a virtual Desktop . . but better.  Love it!

Metro:

Uh....ok that really explained nothing. So it's basically that awful tile interface? Hardly seems usable in a PC environment.

I've heard that Metro can be turned off thereby making Windows 8 look like 7.

Thank god for that ... Microsoft, I don't have a touch screen, I'm not about to use one and for me the Metro interface looks too flashy ... information should be easy to read.

Tiles ...

It's all because of ipods and ipads and iphones. With those you have to touch the screens and swipe. Microsoft has to do something about that and this is the answer. There's a lot more going with 8 than that, I'm sure, but I agree that this is all a bit confusing.

If you are using the regular desktop will you be able to look for stuff and go to your documents, call up programs etc. the regular way?

Is there an advantage to using the Metro environment in terms of ease of use?

So Tiles will be a stop gap or a way to combine the old and the new without completely going to one or the other?

Which is why I wrote this:

But "Tiles" might rescue Windows 8 yet.

Also, the Metro interface will probably be interchangable with a taskbar type arrangement for non touchscreen PC's. Your Vista and W7 apps and XP as well (probably) will be usable. 

However the 16 bit subsystem is going bye-bye AFAIK, so Gog.com will have to rewrite all its older games to be compatible with Windows 8.

Best regards,
Steven.

DosBox.

So Dosbox will work in Windows 8 with 16 bit games?

Best regards,
Steven.

Bebi... sorry I didn't see this. I feel badly about that, so try this..

http://www.howtogeek.com/74089/windows-8-the-gigantic-how-to-geek-screenshot-tour/

Hope it helps....

This is a pre-beta developers preview.  I think it's too early to worry about such things.

If it does not at first then its developers will likely make it work.

Yeah....I was right, that stupid Metro crap looks totally useless in a PC environment.

"the Windows 7 taskbar is still there—but sadly, as of right now, the Windows 7 Start Menu is completely gone, replaced with Metro instead."

Really hope they fix that...or I'll just stick with 7. So far I'm not impressed; they are trying way too hard to cater to/copy this whole iCrap junk.

Bebi, a quick and easy registry edit will give you back the normal start menu.  

Excerpt from the news article:

"If you want to disable Metro UI entirely, you can open up the registry editor and change the value of RPEnabled to 0 instead of 1 at the following key: (via NeoWin)

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\

Note that we’re not recommending this, because it makes installing Windows 8 fairly pointless."

Of course, at this point, that would basically leave you with windows 7....lol.

True....and I really hate messing with the registry. Hosed my system once doing that, had to reinstall. 7 isn't broken, doesn't need to be fixed.

I'm a little confused.  The Metro interface is for launching apps.  The Tiles application is for selecting between already running apps, is it not?