[TerranUp16]

Download link in case MSDN is too slow :3 Windows 8 Developer Preview


Rather than have ib rage at people for clogging the shoutbawx...

So anyway, I don't have much to say yet because it isn't actually working for me yet. Installation was really similar to W7, except even faster. What has impressed me most- and scared me most as well- so far is the new boot selection process. It's been GUI-itized, providing a sexay mouse and buttons and so on.

When it first booted into that, I was panicking because I thought it was a set-up screen for W8... and I had told my system to boot into my W7 array. As it turned out, W8 just usurps primary boot functionality 'cuz it's better. I quickly found the option menu to allow me to change the amount of time it waits before continuing automatically with the default OS, to change what OS is the default, and to change a few other things. All in all, a little thing, but a nice upgrade there.

Unfortunately, I haven't gotten W8 itself working yet. It's complaining about some piece of hardware not being compatible and I can't be arsed to sequentially unhook everything atm, so I swapped my default back to W7 (and got the W7 boot selection screen back too) and everything's hunky dory again.

[ibfreeekout]

TerranUp16, on 14 September 2011 - 12:28 AM, said:

Rather than have ib rage at people for clogging the shoutbawx...

So anyway, I don't have much to say yet because it isn't actually working for me yet. Installation was really similar to W7, except even faster. What has impressed me most- and scared me most as well- so far is the new boot selection process. It's been GUI-itized, providing a sexay mouse and buttons and so on.

When it first booted into that, I was panicking because I thought it was a set-up screen for W8... and I had told my system to boot into my W7 array. As it turned out, W8 just usurps primary boot functionality 'cuz it's better. I quickly found the option menu to allow me to change the amount of time it waits before continuing automatically with the default OS, to change what OS is the default, and to change a few other things. All in all, a little thing, but a nice upgrade there.

Unfortunately, I haven't gotten W8 itself working yet. It's complaining about some piece of hardware not being compatible and I can't be arsed to sequentially unhook everything atm, so I swapped my default back to W7 (and got the W7 boot selection screen back too) and everything's hunky dory again.

Just waiting to get my new motherboard (my 2500K got in today, so just waiting on the awesome-sauce P8Z68 to get in), but I'll be installing both 7 and 8 on it so that I can test it out a bit better. Hopefully everything will go well. Also, I'm in the process of uploading the .iso file for people to my site in case they have slow downloads or whatever (depending on your connection, I've gotten a few MB/s from the server I'm hosted on, as opposed to the MSDN server where I only got around 500 KB/s while downloading the .iso).

[TerranUp16]

Yeah, outside of the bootloader, the most I've seen of W8 atm was from your VM install, but I think we both agreed not having gpu acceleration in the VM just killed that from the start.

[TerranUp16]

Wall of text incoming:


I don't know exactly what was causing the problem, but unplugging everything except my m/k made the second install process worked properly, so I'm typing this from Windows 8 and the view is pretty nice.

If you've got 2+ monitors, Metro isn't bad at all. It only eats up your main monitor, and even then getting out of Metro is a simple task of clicking the Desktop icon, pressing the Windows key, or clicking on a non-Metro screen.

Metro itself isn't all bad either. They implemented a new quick control panel of sorts into it that's kinda nice (and which offers easy access to the real thing for the inevitable). Weather is nice I guess, lol. Searching is quite nice- actually, it's REALLY NICE. Yes, it takes up your entire primary screen. However, you get a much better experience for it. It's basically W7 search + desktop-style icons + readable full-length titles (and yes, you can still press enter to launch the program- and speaking of which, I am surprised Calculator is still the regular Calculator and not some Metro crap xD).


Outside of search, I guess the weather app is nice, and a couple of times for the Quick CP and such I got to use the Metro Image browser, which wasn't bad tbh. Obviously, Windows Explorer proper is still better, but leveraging Metro for that wasn't as bad as I expected.

Biggest thing you lose with Metro is your Start bar. Honestly, you don't need it. You can add a "Desktop" toolbar, and if you're smart about managing your desktop (hell, if you don't like a clutter, you can even hide the icons), you can use that toolbar just like you used Programs in Start. Other than that, quick launch/recent programs/jump list stuff comes to mind, and I'll need to get Word and such installed to properly evaluate what's up with all of that (assuming they're planning on doing *something* there and I just haven't figured it out yet).


TLDR on Metro:
It adds some nice functionality for everyone, and it only actually replaces things that users who might be inclined to complain about Metro rarely/never use anyway (and/or have zero issue understanding and executing the work-arounds). It may not be the absolute best design for use in a desktop OS, but as a hybrid design for desktop and tablet... pretty good so far.
End TLDR


Ok, now the rest.

The thing that most impressed me immediately on load was that MS has taken another small step towards sporting very nice multiscreen functionality. As mentioned, secondary screens are NOT ensnared in Metro (and it's really unnecessary for them to be), and you can actually simultaneously keep Metro applications open while working on a more traditional desktop on another screen- you don't need to flip between the two if you don't want to. The next part of multi-screen niceness is that the Taskbar Properties has been expanded so you can easily expand the taskbar to your second screen. You've got just enough options to nicely tailor each taskbar to its screen. And finally, there's a new button on any secondary taskbar you may have that allows you to instantly designate that screen as the main screen. Ladies and gentlemen, this is where Metro management comes full circle in many respects because you can decide what screen you want it on in a snap (again, going back to search, it may take up a full screen, but it's not as big a deal as it sounds). Oh, and as gravy, they also tossed a new default wallpaper in that supports dualscreens nicely (used it for a minute or two before switching to one of my own, but the gesture is nice).


Next up, the task manager. ZOMG. It's frickin' modern. Anyone that says W8 is just W7 w/tablet support hasn't played with the new Task Manager. Its default view shows "Processes", complete with mini-icons for applications, full names (I'm running 64-bit, so anything that isn't a 64-bit app is actually labeled as 32-bit), CPU usage (overall is given up top, and each program has an associated percentage), Memory usage (percentage up top, each program displays a value in MB), DISK USAGE (just so that everyone can clearly see that hard drives are, in fact, bottlenecks; anyway, per program usage given in MB/s, up top is a total percentage), and NETWORK USAGE (percentage up top and a value in Mbps for each program- and yes, it's pretty accurate; Steam is reporting a 7MB/s dl atm, and Task Manager is reporting that Steam is using 54Mbps). All sortable of course. So anyway, this replaces your standard ("Applications") view of Windows past. More traditional "Processes" are displayed under a tab called "Details", and that is just about identical to what it was (except it shows a mini-icon when possible now and looks generally better).


The performance panel has been totally reworked. I'm not going to bother describing it other than to say you have really nice graphs for CPU, Memory, all disks, and Ethernet. This is all before Resource Monitor. Next tab on the Task Manager is App History. This is completely to do with Metro stuff it seems, but it shows you how much CPU time, Network usage (in MB), and "Tiles" (assuming that impacts memory; given in MB) your apps have used. For anyone biting fingernails about Metro eating performance, don't worry, almost everything for me is zero.


And now THIS deserves its own paragraph. STARTUP tab in Task Manager. No longer do you need to deal with (tbh convenient) third party applications- you can control what activates on boot right from your Task Manager now. Quite nice, quite nice indeed.


After that is a Users tab that displays the usage statistics for each user. You can expand the user to view by program. Similar to Processes otherwise. Finally, you have Services, which offers a Name, PID, Description, Status, and Group. You can Stop, Restart, Search Online, Go to Details, and more there. All in all, awesome updates to the Task Manager, and it looks a lot better too.

So what else does that leave? Windows Explorer. If you like Office 2010, you'll love the new Windows Explorer. It's got a giant File button, ribbons for Home, Share, and View, and then everything else you expect from Windows Explorer. Unfortunately, file extensions are still hidden by default (simple to fix, but why I have to fix it I shall never know). Anyway, it's all very nice (this should really make Explorer a lot more inviting to- you know those people that hate Explorer- so much more GUI for those that need it), and as with the ribbon bars in Office, if you don't want them you can just click on their ribbon tab and they will hide themselves until clicked. And if there wasn't already an option for a Preview Pane... well, there is now. I also think there are more sorting options too, but am again second-guessing myself.


Outside of all that, there are tons of little things. For example, the Quick CP has some sort of wizard to "Refresh your PC without affecting your files- If your PC isn't running well, you can reload Windows without losing your photos, music, videos, and other personal files." Unless I've just been going about things wrong, this is a feature that's been absent since XP, and the XP version didn't seek to really fix performance, it was targeted more at keeping a sinking ship afloat. This sounds like reformatting, but without the reformatting part. There's also something that talks about "resetting" your PC to easily remove all your files and etc (sounds like proper formatting, but I dunno if it's formatting++ or what).


Performance is about the same as W7 atm. Some things feel better, others feel beta. T'were it not for certain applications having stupid compatibility errors (*ahem* Logitech keyboard drivers *ahem*), it would still be a very, very nice step above W7 even as a prebeta.

Now for the cons. The lock screen is nice (as is being able to change its image without third party apps), and luckily flicking the lock image up and away is as easy with a decent mouse as it is with a tablet/touch screen. However, logging into your account basically requires you log into your Hotmail/MSN/etc account. This was pretty well-known, but fyi for those who hadn't gotten the memo. Yes, it does restrict the username you can set, and it uses the same password. In my case, that's annoying 'cuz I use my super-duper-secure password on my e-mail, but I use a less-but-still-really-secure password on my W7 computer.

Why does typing "Paint" into search bring up "PaintPlay" as the first of two results? That doesn't sound like a big gripe, but when you use search to launch programs, it gets real annoying real fast- exact matches should take preference, tablets be damned (in case you were wondering, yes, PaintPlay is just Paint for tablets).

To wrap things up, I've only just gotten a taste of W8, and I've gotta say I'm really liking it. It's definitely a lot more than W7 rebranded with tablet functionality- there are some serious changes and improvements in here that really boost the core desktop experience, things that almost mimic Vista in their audacity moreso than W7. At the same time, while I mostly didn't make a big list or anything above, I've also quietly been observing many small improvements and additions, the kinds of things that characterized W7 and which made it hugely successful. So fear not, W8 is bringing some new stuff, and fixing some old stuff. I like the spot it's in atm and more or less where it's going.

PS: Just as I was going to post this, I came across the "How do you want to open this file?" dialog, which practically isn't even a dialog anymore and is over 9000 times better. Little stuff FTW.

[Daman]

yeah the task manager seems really nice, from what I've seen posted about it. if they'd just update w7 with that, I would have zero desire to buy w8!!!!

[Brain?!]

TerranUp16, on 14 September 2011 - 06:54 AM, said:

And now THIS deserves its own paragraph. STARTUP tab in Task Manager. No longer do you need to deal with (tbh convenient) third party applications- you can control what activates on boot right from your Task Manager now. Quite nice, quite nice indeed.

Start -> Run (or in Vista/7, just start typing) -> "msconfig" -> press enter -> click "startup tab"

Doesn't seem third party to me

This post has been edited by Brain?!: 14 September 2011 - 08:26 AM

[TerranUp16]

Brain?!, on 14 September 2011 - 09:12 AM, said:

Start -> Run (or in Vista/7, just start typing) -> "msconfig" -> press enter -> click "startup tab"

Never actually worked or had really limited selection and etc. This just works and has pretty much everything.

[Brain?!]

TerranUp16, on 14 September 2011 - 02:50 PM, said:

Never actually worked or had really limited selection and etc. This just works and has pretty much everything.

Really? It's never not worked for me, not sure why it wouldn't for you...

[TerranUp16]

Brain?!, on 14 September 2011 - 02:53 PM, said:

Really? It's never not worked for me, not sure why it wouldn't for you...

Really persistent services I guess? xD

[Oen386]

TerranUp16, on 14 September 2011 - 02:57 PM, said:

Really persistent services I guess? xD

Stop downloading viruses?

[SniperX]

TerranUp16, on 14 September 2011 - 02:57 PM, said:

Really persistent services I guess? xD

protip: blaster.32 isn't the thing that runs your sound card.

[Blaze]

Am I the only one still on XP that continues to have no desire to change to the "better" OSes?

[TerranUp16]

Blaze, on 14 September 2011 - 05:00 PM, said:

Am I the only one still on XP that continues to have no desire to change to the "better" OSes?

Can't stand XP anymore. A couple of months with Vista started that, and Windows 7 just put XP in its grave. So slow, so clunky, so prone to corrupting its installation... And fugly to boot. But then I never liked XP all that much.

[Brain?!]

TerranUp16, on 14 September 2011 - 05:38 PM, said:

So slow, so clunky, so prone to corrupting its installation... And fugly to boot. But then I never liked XP all that much.

Not if you configure it properly...

I've never had major issues with XP. I'm actually running it right now on my netbook; I feel as though it's a better OS for light or mobile computers, like laptops. On the other hand, Vista was the "slow, clunky" one for me. I ran that for a while but then upgraded to Win7, which I'm much happier with.

[Daman]

Blaze, on 14 September 2011 - 04:00 PM, said:

Am I the only one still on XP that continues to have no desire to change to the "better" OSes?

yup

also yeah msconfig has always, always worked!!

[TerranUp16]

For anyone having issues with drivers, Joga made the facepalm discovery that setting the driver setup file to Windows 7 compatibility mode fixes overly-detective driver installers. So... installing my keyboard and headset drivers atm.

[Joga]

Just installed and played around with it a little bit. The Startup thing is literally identical to the old msconfig version (aside from the "Startup Impact" information), Terran's just whack:


Also regarding Paint Play showing up before regular Paint in Search - it sorts it by most-used, so if you use Paint like twice it will start being the first result when you search "Paint". (Which I think is the same behavior as Windows 7)

Other than that, I do really like the new task manager and control panel. Desktop experience is pretty similar to Windows 7, but it will definitely take some getting used to the lack of the traditional Start menu though. Didn't realize quite how much I used it - usually for quick access to the Libraries. The new Start screen is pretty though.