Windows 8 Beta

The screen with customizations for the window padding and title bar size (among other things) has been yanked or moved. Please don't tell me these options are going away. I need my thin windows.

I had better be able to change the Metro UI screen from green to anything else. I'm also gonna need more visual cues for things like finding the Start menu.

Glitchy but cute, I'm interested but a bit concerned. I'm curious what a Metro version of Live Mail will look like.
 
Still can't get the download to complete. Two different machines, one pc, one mac, multiple browsers, it just hangs at about 3.4gb and won't finish. Driving me nuts.
 
heatlesssun said:
It's made for touch, mouse, pen and keyboard running on form factors from a tablet to a laptop to a desktop.
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I was thinking more of the Sammy tablet they gave to BUILD attendees. It has the same "home button," which is really a Windows key. It would emulate the functionality that some would find annoying on a traditional laptop or desktop.

Not only that, it's, well, a tablet with a touchscreen.

But then again, as someone has already noted, this is for devs, not the general population (and most of us here are the general population, IMO).
 
Has anyone tried the Windows Basic theme? I think it looks a lot cleaner and more pleasant than the Aero theme. It reminds me of the watercolor themes from the early Windows XP builds
 
christianw said:
my favorite part is how a bunch of people that arent developers are expecting things from a developer preview.
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I definitely expected that. I'm a hobbyist developer and grabbed Win8 to play with, but not program with straight away. I'm just playing with it for fun and to check it out. I'm always under the mind set that it's not a beta and is only a dev preview.
 
just installed it alongside pinguy to have a play with..
cant say i am a big fan of the interface, but as someone pointed out, this is a developer preview, so i am not gonna judge ms on this one.
first impressions:
boots quickly :)
i wish i could find stuff in it :( (such as the "settings charm" for ie10, so that i can make normal ie default browser)
interface is great for tablets and stuff, its almost getting to unity standard of usability. :)
this is a developer preview, so i am hoping that there are major changes before release, as complaining about anything now is just retarded.

EDIT: Is there a way to restart windows without the hibernate thing going?? its lovely to have it booting so fast, but I need to run update-grub so i can add it to my grub menu, and grub wont do it with a hibernated windows..
 
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cold&damp said:
just installed it alongside pinguy to have a play with..
cant say i am a big fan of the interface, but as someone pointed out, this is a developer preview, so i am not gonna judge ms on this one.
first impressions:
boots quickly :)
i wish i could find stuff in it :( (such as the "settings charm" for ie10, so that i can make normal ie default browser)
interface is great for tablets and stuff, its almost getting to unity standard of usability. :)
this is a developer preview, so i am hoping that there are major changes before release, as complaining about anything now is just retarded.

EDIT: Is there a way to restart windows without the hibernate thing going?? its lovely to have it booting so fast, but I need to run update-grub so i can add it to my grub menu, and grub wont do it with a hibernated windows..
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It was on the blog it think its shutdown.exe /full. But do a shutdown.exe /? to be sure. To lazy to go look ;)
 
cold&damp said:
i wish i could find stuff in it :( (such as the "settings charm" for ie10, so that i can make normal ie default browser)
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With IE open, move your mouse to the lower left corner until the Start menu pops up, click on Settings. And I believe clicking "Default view for links" is what people are talking about for IE.
 
Ravynmagi said:
With IE open, move your mouse to the lower left corner until the Start menu pops up, click on Settings. And I believe clicking "Default view for links" is what people are talking about for IE.
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ahhh, thank you!!
any ideas from anyone about the hibernation thing?
edit: Sorry i didnt read the post above..

fake edit: graphics performance has taken a hit.. windows index score is down from 7.9 for graphics to 7.3. i will run 3dmark to see if this is an actual difference, or if they have adjusted the scale. so far i am liking the new ui though, its hella different.
 
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heatlesssun said:
It's made for touch, mouse, pen and keyboard running on form factors from a tablet to a laptop to a desktop.
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No. They are very clear that its a 'touch first' UI. Of course it works with a kb+mouse, but that doesn't mean it was designed for those devices or that it works well.

On a pc, the Metro UI is clunky, wasteful and pointless.
 
still no luck getting the pc to not hibernate.. tried shutdown.exe /full /s, and /r, both of them hibernated. it looks like it is hard coded into the kernel that the machine will hibernate regardless of what you do

i will cut them plenty of slack though, it is only developer preview, so absolutely no judgement on anything here
 
MrCrispy said:
No. They are very clear that its a 'touch first' UI. Of course it works with a kb+mouse, but that doesn't mean it was designed for those devices or that it works well.

On a pc, the Metro UI is clunky, wasteful and pointless.
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I've been playing with this preview for all the free time I could spare since last night and there's just nothing clunky about it. I'm not saying its perfect and there's some ideas I have that I would think about if I were Microsoft, live vertical scrolling of the tiles, I've tried most tasks what I would normally do with a Windows PC, write documents, write code, surf, most everything besides game and it works beautifully going from keyboard and mouse to dual monitors to touch and pen. Touch first doesn't mean everything else second, Sinofsky has made this point before.

Right now I've got my EP121 hooked up to a 1920x1200 monitor with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse and it really works better than Windows 7 out of the box on dual screens I think. The Start Screen with dual monitors isn't any more clunky than the classic Start Menu. Yes it takes up a screen, and then disappears just that fast. It's simply hasn't gotten in my way. Different, yes, less efficient, not all all.
 
I stuck it on a PC at work and tried to work with the new touch interface but not being able to grab and move it with the mouse was annoying and when I got to the traditional UI (Windows key) the Control Panel was empty (Windows key + Pause/Break). If I could grab that touch interface anywhere with the mouse and move it then that would be nice but having to drag the bar at the bottom sucks.

I disabled that fancy new UI with the registry setting and it mostly returned to Windows 7 mode.

When trying to install (WIN7 64bit) drivers under the new UI I'd get this annoying screen filter box and had to click past it every time.

I connected it to the domain and installed SCCM which seems to be working OK but I wasn't there long enough to see if it pulled anything into Run Advertised Programs. It appears to have pulled group policy but the EULA screen we have does some funky stuff and the ACCEPT/Enter button is hidden off screen so I've had to hit TAB to get down there and pass it. Our proxy and homepage info doesn't populate IE but maybe that has something to do with it being IE10. Don't know how they control that on the back end.

I changed the power settings to the max setting because I didn't want the machine to sleep but I guess we'll see how that turns out when I return in the morning.
 
dr.kevin said:
I don't adapt well to change.

I like my interface minimal.

gimme my classic view.
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+1, for some of us, the PC is a tool, and we like our tools to stay consistent, especially when it really wouldn't be too hard to include the classic theme...
 
I'm actually surprised at how usable the underpinnings are already.

But the touch experience is a mess. It's better than Omnimo-ing Win7, but not much better. The new Explorer is particularly an experience in half-assedness so I don't expect it to be able to work on a slate. I REALLY hope they have a Metro'd file manager somewhere along the line.
 
Arainach said:
And on what basis do you make this statement?
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Uhh... what basis do I need? I, like many other people, like certain things to stay consistent... for example, some of us actually *like* the classic windows 95/2000 look, and would love it to use it in Windows 8....

Didn't think I needed a basis to have an opinion...
 
Ronco said:
I'm actually surprised at how usable the underpinnings are already.

But the touch experience is a mess. It's better than Omnimo-ing Win7, but not much better. The new Explorer is particularly an experience in half-assedness so I don't expect it to be able to work on a slate. I REALLY hope they have a Metro'd file manager somewhere along the line.
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They will, this is just a rough cut and it's not all there yet. The touch experience in Explorer in the desktop is very useable for me but then I've been using Windows 7 touch devices since day one so anything I guess is an improvement.
 
brucedeluxe169 said:
Uhh... what basis do I need? I, like many other people, like certain things to stay consistent... for example, some of us actually *like* the classic windows 95/2000 look, and would love it to use it in Windows 8....

Didn't think I needed a basis to have an opinion...
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microsoft made the perfect tool for people like you

its called windows 7
 
christianw said:
microsoft made the perfect tool for people like you

its called windows 7
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There are still people out there claiming that we don't need a GUI and should still be sticking with a command line interface... There will always be the haters!
 
christianw said:
microsoft made the perfect tool for people like you

its called windows 7
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retarded answer.... because of course wanting certain things to stay the same totally means that we'd rather not have any other enhancements to our OS....

its all or nothing for some people isn't it?
 
brucedeluxe169 said:
Uhh... what basis do I need? I, like many other people, like certain things to stay consistent... for example, some of us actually *like* the classic windows 95/2000 look, and would love it to use it in Windows 8....

Didn't think I needed a basis to have an opinion...
Click to expand...

How long is Microsoft supposed to keep dragging legacy content along to please people who are too stubborn to try something new. If you like the classic stuff that much you have plenty of operating systems with it to choose from, including Windows 7. I can only imagine the mess OS X would be if they followed that same philosophy.
 
FoxhoundOp said:
How long is Microsoft supposed to keep dragging legacy content along to please people who are too stubborn to try something new. If you like the classic stuff that much you have plenty of operating systems with it to choose from, including Windows 7. I can only imagine the mess OS X would be if they followed that same philosophy.
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I really dont see whats so hard about supporting a classic theme (like any other theme), I have no problem with Aero and other enhancements, its literally just a look and feel preference... not really sure why complaining about a personal preference not being included in a new OS release is such a problem for some on this board tho :rolleyes:
 
bigdogchris said:
For those who are unaware, the Metro theme at release will be completely optional. Microsoft has said many things are missing from this build because it's not a beta. This is a developers build to test apps to work with Metro and nothing more. There is no point in releasing anything but Metro because the rest of the OS is similar to 7. It's not needing to be tested at this point. That's what beta is for.
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Good to know. This is pretty much what I figured, thanks for the heads up.
 
brucedeluxe169 said:
I really dont see whats so hard about supporting a classic theme (like any other theme), I have no problem with Aero and other enhancements, its literally just a look and feel preference... not really sure why complaining about a personal preference not being included in a new OS release is such a problem for some on this board tho
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The Classic Theme (or, more, specifically, non-Aero) wasn't "just a theme" - it was the absense of theming, and required DWM to be off. This has a variety of consequences, many of which probably aren't obvious.
 
Arainach said:
The Classic Theme (or, more, specifically, non-Aero) wasn't "just a theme" - it was the absense of theming, and required DWM to be off. This has a variety of consequences, many of which probably aren't obvious.
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I've wanted a classic Aero theme since Win 7 came out :) I like all the features of DWM, I just personally like the freaking look and feel of windows classic...

thats all, I dont want to drag windows back to the 3.1 days as others in this thread seem to think
 
Its really annoying when people claim that if you don't like the new UI, use Windows 7. I expect innovation from Windows. Vista was a huge change (even though it was not well received), Win 7 was as well. Win 8 - all the energy seems to have speen spent on touch, its a touch-first tablet experience, the pc desktop is barely changed.

Its the same old story of MS wanting 'Windows Everywhere'. Desktop UI doesn't work well with touch, and vice versa. So what we have is combining the 2 completely opposite worlds in one UI, and switching between them. It makes so sense at all.

It would have been far better to have a lean, Tablet edition, which would only run newer Metro apps built on the new Api's. No cruft, no backward compat. Try running VS on a tablet like you can today with Win 8. Its a nightmare and unusable with fingers.

And have a regular Win 8 desktop edition, with improvements to normal desktop apps, and not just adding a ribbon in Explorer.
 
heatlesssun said:
They will, this is just a rough cut and it's not all there yet. The touch experience in Explorer in the desktop is very useable for me but then I've been using Windows 7 touch devices since day one so anything I guess is an improvement.
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Yeah - see, any 'touch' OS on a PC-sized screen you have to actually aim your finger is not a touch OS. As things stand you're dropped into the 'traditional' interface too often from Metro even for the basics like the Task Manager. I do wonder how much of this will persist - my feeling veers towards 'too much', but I'm a pessimist.
 
It doesnt make any sense to limit the resolution of metro apps to 1024x768 or higher only, Netbooks have a standard of 1024 x 600 and they are the ones that could benefit from the metro apps, it seems a bit backwards imo.
 
Ronco said:
Yeah - see, any 'touch' OS on a PC-sized screen you have to actually aim your finger is not a touch OS. As things stand you're dropped into the 'traditional' interface too often from Metro even for the basics like the Task Manager. I do wonder how much of this will persist - my feeling veers towards 'too much', but I'm a pessimist.
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But not every app really needs to have a optimized UI. How many people use a tool like a task manger on a tablet? And again, this release doesn't even have a native touch based media player, which of course that will be there. Just a little early to get a feel for the total touch experience, this preview was just enough to get into developers hands to get them going.
 
heatlesssun said:
But not every app really needs to have a optimized UI. How many people use a tool like a task manger on a tablet? And again, this release doesn't even have a native touch based media player, which of course that will be there. Just a little early to get a feel for the total touch experience, this preview was just enough to get into developers hands to get them going.
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Yeah. I think I'm done with it for now. I'll wait for a beta. And it does appear to *need* the Task Manager.
 
Ronco said:
Yeah. I think I'm done with it for now. I'll wait for a beta.
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It is a developer preview so if you're not a developer that makes sense. My main goal was to get my feet wet with writing Metro apps so I'm a Windows 8 user from here on. I was thinking about put it on a desktop and a secondary hard drive for my x220t since that has the resolution to support side by side metro apps.

It's a rough release but this thing does run faster on my EP121 than Windows 7 and all of my productivity tools that I use on it work, even in this state going back to Windows 7 on the EP121 would be a bit of a downgrade.
 
Will you hate me if I used Windows 8 for 5 minutes and say that Metro feels like Windows for the Ultimate Dummy?

Maybe if this was on an iPad, but seriously on my desktop computer? I don't like where this is going.
 
atreidesgoldenpath said:
Will you hate me if I used Windows 8 for 5 minutes and say that Metro feels like Windows for the Ultimate Dummy?

Maybe if this was on an iPad, but seriously on my desktop computer? I don't like where this is going.
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they kept the start menu in the OS, just hid it.... I'm guessing that they put the metro interface front and center in order to entice the developers that they are hoping to hook into Win 8 development, to develop with this interface in mind so that when Win 8 *does* hit tablets, the metro interface has some content...

I agree with you, on the desktop, metro has pretty much no place.... on tablets and smartphones, the classic desktop has no place...
 
where do installed app shortcuts go? i installed a game (fallout3, still trying to get through it lol) and other than insert the cd and use autorun/goto explorer and select the .exe, i cant seem to find the shortcut anywhere in metro
 
brucedeluxe169 said:
I agree with you, on the desktop, metro has pretty much no place.... on tablets and smartphones, the classic desktop has no place...
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But what if single device is more than one of these:

100_0568%20-%20Copy.JPG


If an program only works for a touch device, then simply don't use it on a non-touch device. If an app needs a keyboard and mouse then don't use it on a touch only device. But then even a touch only (well and pen) can be connected a keyboard, mouse and monitor.

The argument for Windows 8 is compelling because it doesn't force one to chose other than to chose the appropriate tool for the given situation. I think this is why Windows 8 will be a big success and it will probably offer more for around the same amount of money as a lot of mobile OS devices.
 
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