Excellent, I’m never a fan of eye candy on desktops. I’d rather use as much of the resources on the software I’m running. The less resources the OS uses, the better.

Eliminating or optional? I mean Win7 also has an “old look” with the blue desktop and gray win95-ish style, this would be a nice replacement. On the other hand Aero is aided by the GPU, so it should not take near as much resources with glasses, transparency, shadows and everything, as much the “old look” takes when calculated entirely by the CPU.

What are the resource usage differences between Aero and non-Aero? Something like: Aero: GPU + CPU + memory + other stuff and non-Aero: CPU + memory + other stuff. Also, how do these usage number translate to power consumption especially on battery operated devices.

This all sounds like functional improvements. The common UI elements in Windows, toobars, titlebars, buttons, file operation dialogs and Windows Explorer are very important to get right. Microsoft have been awful at that historically. Each new Windows iteration have improved some things but messed other things up in that regard. The key mistake: lack of easy ways to customize everything about that in straightforward way. For example, I hate how there’s no obvious and simple way to replace and reorder the suggested paths in the left hand pane in Windows 7 Explorer.  I also want the full path displayed like it used to in the explorer path bar, not segmented. I know that there are various custom hacks and add-on to fix some things like that. But Microsoft’s big mistake is making it hard to come up with such fixes.

thats ’cause of the arrogance of redmonders “to know” whats best for the dumb everybody’s on the street user.
the whole blog about win 8 again is full of this attitude. they do not want to learn the lesson. one example for this: one one hand they praise the advantages of metro for touch … on the other hand they overimpose now everywhere the silly ribbon menus everywhere, which is one of the most touch unfriendly (and – pardon, in my opinion – most stupid) features intruced ever.

2012, guys.
MS should be able to provideus with  better looking DESKTOP-like windows/interface (even as an option we can switch off like we can with Aero) AND a more functional UI.

I think that beside ressources (cpu/memory/gpu charge), it must be a pain to implement and conflict with the new Metro UI.
I sincerely hope that this last one will be optional (or at least customizable).
I want my desktop still.

And from the look of the screenshot above, it doesn’t seem that simplified nor space efficient to me.
It’s like being on MS Word… in an explorer window. All you can do with a simple right click is placed on a big chunk of the screen…

every element that led to the non touch friendly argument and criticism is still present … and then some.
and a lot of silly marketing talk, talk why the same stuff in win up to 7 was rubbish, and now with a few design glitches here and there at once shall be the good sent optimal solution. there will be no completely new rabbit out of the cylider at the end.

 Originally, when Windows 8 was first pitched, it was suggested that it would configure itself according to the device it was installed on and even with the last preview release it was still possible to registry hack to restore the original Windows Start Menu.

So a lot depends on whether MS comes through and provides the final release with enough customization options to choose between Metro and Traditional Desktop setups.

Right now they are just working on making the transition between Metro and the Desktop less jarring but it may only be the default and not the only configuration.

While the choice seems mainly for benefiting tablets, providing better
thermals and power consumption with less work for the GPU. 

I’ve also learned that Microsoft also stated that only a few of the
visual changes in Windows 8
will be present in the Release Preview scheduled for release next month.
So to see them all we will have to wait for the final release of
Windows
8.

So even with the Release Preview we may have to wait till final release to see all the options they will provide and they’re really cutting this to the last minute.

While even if they don’t do enough, Windows is usually more flexible than other Operating Systems for allowing things like themes.  So it wouldn’t be long before custom UI’s would become available for Windows 8… at least the regular versions that won’t be restricted like Windows RT.

For example, you can make XP look and act a lot like Windows 7… including the Aero effects.

Though if feeling pessimistic, like optimismprime pointed out, MS will still support Windows 7 till January 14, 2020…  and we could be up to Windows 10 by then.  So we can wait till they do get it right…

My argument is pointing out it’s too early to be so pessimistically critical. While on the legacy side of the system you won’t necessarily be hit with all the Metro changes on the desktop mode.

What hasn’t been address yet is whether that goes far enough to satisfy traditional desktop usage but that all depends on how much customization MS allows with the final version.

But like I pointed out with my reply to Guest008, MS won’t even have everything finalized for the Release Preview, it’ll just be mostly finished at that point.

So we really can’t be assuming too much from the first two previews. The first was just Windows 7 with Metro thrown on top to give developers a head start and the second more or less just was for promoting Windows 8 on tablets but it was still mostly Windows 7 with Metro on top.

I’m not saying there isn’t anything to be worried about or that we shouldn’t be critical of where it seems to be going but we’re far from being able to go to doom and gloom phase yet and most of the criticism is based on assumptions at this point.

No, that’s inaccurate…  Thinner and lighter is the general goal of laptops.  No one wants to carry a brick.  While portability isn’t only solvable by making increasingly smaller laptops as that too is a compromise on usability.

They’re just limited by what the technology allows right now.  While Ultrabooks are a attempt to push those limits and expand the present usage range of laptops.

So it’s mainly just a question of whether Ultrabooks are developed enough so that the compromise is good enough at this point but that varies per person and their needs.

Meaning don’t assume people are choosing them on just their looks.

However, the technology will eventually catch up with the idea, which will probably start happening next year with the Haswell update and Intel starts actually reaching their original design goals for Ultrabooks.

While visual appeal is more a factor with software UI than hardware.  So it remains to be seen how most people will respond to the design changes MS is implementing but at least they’re responding to some of the initial complaints and that will hopefully lead to a much better end product.

Ya, most people are choosing ultrabooks on looks mostly.

I’m really not sure what MS are up to, but someone needs to change their meds. Metro is horrendous for desktop users, my only hope for Win8 was the ability to disable Metro and run a “regular” Windows GUI arriving some time down the line. I like my desktop to be a nice place to work and some eye candy helps that along. This feels like another GUI backwards step. I can see how mobile/touch devices are going to be increasingly important, but I feel MS are “throwing the baby out with the bath water”. They risk alienating their core customers with Win8. I think we all know how industry/government customers will respond, Mom & Pop buying a new Dell or HP will be utterly confused, power users will shun it, who’s left? Who will want to run default win8? How long before Dell and the others implement their own GUI shell over Win8 to keep Mom & Pop happy. Remember back 15/20 years when they all had their own shell GUI over Win3.1. What a mess.