Paul Allen baffled by Windows 8
 

One of Microsoft's founding fathers, Paul "Idea Man" Allen, admitted that he was a little baffled by the new Windows 8.

The man who is more familiar with rocket science these days said he found Windows 8 a little tricky to manage when he first tried it.

In a post to his personal bog, which appeared to be written in the third person, Allen said he has been running Windows 8 Release Preview on a traditional desktop as well as on a Samsung 700T tablet.

Allen said he encountered some puzzling aspects of Windows 8. The biggest being the dual, and sometimes dueling user interfaces.

He said that the bimodal user experience can introduce confusion, especially when two versions of the same application can be opened and run simultaneously.

Allen also repeated criticisms of Windows 8 and said there should be a way to set the desktop as your default view. He was not happy about the lack of the familiar Start menu.

Windows 8 does not help users to learn the new Windows 8 style UI, he added. It should not hide the shutdown command either.

He said that it would have been nice to provide some sort of a visual cue indicating that commands are available, and how to invoke them.

"I found myself wishing that a Power tile was available on the Start screen to make these commands more accessible," Allen said.

Microsoft has an animated tutorial during setup that demonstrates how to access the Charms menu, but that's the extent of its opening-round assistance.

But he said that even with its out-of-the-box quirks, Windows 8 would be manageable by users and that Microsoft would address them in the next release.

"While these changes may prove confusing initially, after a short period of discovery most of these changes should quickly become familiar," said Allen.

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