Windows 8 thread

[Bill Bumface]

Originally Posted by sebc

when was the last time ms released two hit operating systems back-to-back?

2000/xp

[sclitheroe]

You have no chance to survive make your time

http://venturebeat.com/2012/06/08/ho...der-navigation

[opendoor]

Having played around with it for a while I'm actually impressed with it. It ran just fine in a virtual machine on my 4 year old iMac and I don't mind the interface at all. It's not the most attractive thing I've ever seen, but I think the UI is a step in the right direction. I'm not really sure why people are so married to the start menu, because I think it's been long due for replacement.

The biggest problem in my mind is that Windows 8 feels like 2 operating systems stuck together with the desktop and the Metro UI. The most noticeable part of this was having 2 drastically different looking Internet Explorers depending on where you launched the program from. That seemed odd to me. I do wonder if they should've had the desktop visible behind the tiled UI so they'd feel more connected. Then it could've been simply a more elegant and useful start menu.

As it is, the desktop environment almost feels like a virtual machine running an older windows. I'm sure after using it for a while it wouldn't seem that way, but it was something I noticed at first. When using the full screen programs (News, Sports, etc.) it felt more like using a kiosk at a museum or something than a personal computer. They were nice looking, but again it felt jarring to go from that to the old Windows desktop environment.

All in all it seems pretty solid and I hope people will get used to the lack of a start menu. It was a great way to navigate when we had 800X600 resolution, but there are other ways to do things now.

[photon]

Yeah it's not so much the lack of a start menu (I hardly ever use it anyway, I use launchy to launch most everything, and when I do I use the search functionality), it's how you say that it's like two OSes mashed together, so how things work seems to jarringly switch back and forth, rather than being consistent across everything.

[freedogger]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

Did you want to talk about application sandboxing, online self-healing NTFS, storage spaces, easy restore capabilities, or lower latency multimedia? There's lots of good stuff in Windows 8 if you can get beyond the application launcher

Yes please, I'll probably get over it and just slap slickrun on it anyway.

[Mike F]

Originally Posted by photon

Yeah it's not so much the lack of a start menu (I hardly ever use it anyway, I use launchy to launch most everything, and when I do I use the search functionality), it's how you say that it's like two OSes mashed together, so how things work seems to jarringly switch back and forth, rather than being consistent across everything.

Isn't jarringly switching back and forth what people do multiple times per day right now? You sit at your home or work PC with the classic desktop environment to do "content creation", then, when you want to go mobile or consume media you pick up a nice tablet with a touch-centric UI.

Windows 8 allows you to do both without having to buy two devices.

What I've been waiting for since the first iPad made tablets a success is the ability to finish at work at the end of the day, or finish a detailed Word / Excel / Photoshop project at my desktop at home, then just pick up my monitor and go sit on the couch to watch a movie or browse the internet. My hope is that is what Windows 8 will accomplish.

[photon]

Originally Posted by Mike F

Windows 8 allows you to do both without having to buy two devices.

Windows 8: Twice as much jarring in half the time!

[HPLovecraft]

Originally Posted by Mike F

Isn't jarringly switching back and forth what people do multiple times per day right now? You sit at your home or work PC with the classic desktop environment to do "content creation", then, when you want to go mobile or consume media you pick up a nice tablet with a touch-centric UI.

Windows 8 allows you to do both without having to buy two devices.

What I've been waiting for since the first iPad made tablets a success is the ability to finish at work at the end of the day, or finish a detailed Word / Excel / Photoshop project at my desktop at home, then just pick up my monitor and go sit on the couch to watch a movie or browse the internet. My hope is that is what Windows 8 will accomplish.

You've been waiting to be able to pic up your 24" monitor and sit it on your lap as you watch a movie on the couch??

[Mike F]

Not everyone has a 24" monitor. I'm thinking more of one of the ultrabooks with the detachable screens.

[HPLovecraft]

Originally Posted by Mike F

Not everyone has a 24" monitor. I'm thinking more of one of the ultrabooks with the detachable screens.

I don't think an ultrabook counts as a desktop . . .

[TorqueDog]

I've been pretty absent from this thread, owing to the fact that I had yet to install Windows 8 on anything beyond a VM that I wouldn't really use much.

So yesterday afternoon, I did a full image of my production work notebook, and installed the following:
- Windows 8 Release Preview
- Office 15 Technical Preview
- Lync 15 Technical Preview

Yeah. Recipe for disaster, right?

Well, here's the kicker - it's the end of day 1, and I am not ready to restore back to my backup of Windows 7 yet. I like it.

I'm running an HP 8440w with a solid-state hard drive, Core i7 processor, and 8 gigs of memory. I use a docking station with two 22" HP monitors. The machine is joined to a domain. I did an UPGRADE instead of a fresh install.

So far, I'm VERY impressed. I'm under NDA so I cannot tell you anything about the Lync/Office 15 product, but Windows 8 is all sorts of killer. The Mail, Calendar, and People apps integrate seamlessly with my Exchange mailbox. The Metro Start screen really isn't that intrusive. The only adjustment is that I have to take icons for newly installed applications (that I don't need regularly) off the Start screen, but that's as simple as right clicking a bunch and then selecting 'Un-pin'.

As a Windows Phone 7 user, it was really easy to get the hang of the interface. I will say some experiences are still quite disconnected. The two different Control Panels will take some getting used to. Changing the settings in an application isn't terribly obvious and it took me Googling to figure out that 'Settings' corresponds to each app, not the system (use Metro and you'll understand this comment a little better).

The multi-monitor experience, I really don't mind. I like that Metro apps can be stuck to the side of the display so you can always have, say, the Mail app visible.

The OS is fast, works with nearly everything I've thrown at it*, and all in all I'm impressed so far.

*VMware Workstation 8 does not work with it, but this is moot since Windows 8 includes Hyper-V. Also, the Cisco AnyConnect VPN v3 does not work out of the box, but will work with a small change in the registry (the virtual interface name is incorrect).

[photon]

http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b...for-39-99.aspx

Upgrade is going to be $39.99, that's a pretty big price drop for MS. Still not at OSX levels, but at least upgrading to Windows 8 won't be a huge mental price barrier.

[TorqueDog]

FYI, I'm on week three of using Windows 8 and still have no desire to move back to Windows 7.

I am curious how well it will work in a HTPC setup, but I'll wait for an RTM copy to do that with.

[RedMileDJ]

I just bought a new PC for my wife, this past Friday. The sales guy said something about how she'll get a FREE upgrade to Windows 8, because we bought her PC within a certain time period of the Windows 8 release.

Does anyone have a link or info on this? I haven't seen anything. He said it would come down in her Windows Updates, once available.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by photon

Yeah it's not so much the lack of a start menu (I hardly ever use it anyway, I use launchy to launch most everything, and when I do I use the search functionality)

I was reading an interesting article about the start button and the telemetry Microsoft has collected on Windows 7 usage patterns - apparently, once people got the ability to pin apps to the start bar (not unlike Metro tiles, when you think about it), Start button functionality dropped off enormously - so much so that they don't predict it will be a significant issue for most of the user base.

[photon]

Yeah I read the same article, and that makes sense, except that people getting upset over something that doesn't make sense is a staple of human nature, so I still think there'll be a big reaction to it. Will MS stick to their guns, or enable it in a patch is the question

[Hemi-Cuda]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

I was reading an interesting article about the start button and the telemetry Microsoft has collected on Windows 7 usage patterns - apparently, once people got the ability to pin apps to the start bar (not unlike Metro tiles, when you think about it), Start button functionality dropped off enormously - so much so that they don't predict it will be a significant issue for most of the user base.

the problem is they're removing the choice. i like a clean taskbar, i only pin stuff to it that i always have open (like Windows Explorer and Firefox). all the other stuff is pinned to the start menu, and i can still drill down into the programs list to find stuff that i need once in awhile. MS removing that ability and making it far more difficult to run those "once in a while" apps is not good design

[TorqueDog]

Originally Posted by Red-Mile-DJ

I just bought a new PC for my wife, this past Friday. The sales guy said something about how she'll get a FREE upgrade to Windows 8, because we bought her PC within a certain time period of the Windows 8 release.

Does anyone have a link or info on this? I haven't seen anything. He said it would come down in her Windows Updates, once available.

No, it doesn't just come down in her Windows Updates, lol. I'm not sure how the program works but I am pretty confident that is not the delivery method.

What kind of PC is it? You may want to contact the vendor about the promotion.

[Rathji]

If it is anything like similar previous deals, you should have received details about how to receive the upgrade once it is release. It will almost certainly be a send in card or a website address that will get you an upgrade disc sent out.

Look through your stuff, and if there isn't anything there, contact the store again.

[RedMileDJ]

Originally Posted by TorqueDog

No, it doesn't just come down in her Windows Updates, lol. I'm not sure how the program works but I am pretty confident that is not the delivery method.

What kind of PC is it? You may want to contact the vendor about the promotion.

It's a Gateway. Just a simple 2 core system with 6GB of ram and a 1TB HDD.

I'll check with Gateway, but I'm not sure she's sold (or even myself) on Windows 8...based on what we've seen.

We're moving from XP to Windows 7 (myself in the last 6 month) and we both really like it.