Download Windows 8 Consumer Preview

tikiman2012 said:
My AMD E-350 does seems to be a little snappier though.
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My E-350 was snappier as well. Combined with an SSD, Windows 8 plays very well on my DM1z.

As far as Windows 8 goes, I really enjoy the MetroUI. Its simple and straight to the point for most people. You want your email? Click here. Pictures? Yup right here too. Music? All here plus an integrated music store. Sweet.

I see what Microsoft is trying to accomplish here and I applaud them for it.

Is it sad that my favorite part about the MetroUI is that the email is integrated like a phone app?
 
fps4ever said:
The people in here pointing fingers at the bitcher's and whiners and how change is good have probably never had to train a lot of other people how to use a new OS. From XP to Win7 it was pretty painless and low cost...Windows 8 would be not so much. Of course you all go out now and by the latest iphone and grab a latte because this is the next best thing since sliced bread.
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My mother is as computer-stupid as they come. She is also in another country to me, so all my tech support for her is over the phone.

She has a netbook which runs Gnome3, and I just talked her through the install and setup in Windows8 CP Edition(I love calling it that) on her old xp laptop and she absolutely LOVES it. I showed her how to move around the start screen and add apps to the screen and she is totally in love with it.

This is the target market.

Honestly, the only change I see is that the start menu is bigger, it gives me weather, rss feeds and media controls right there, and.. thats it.
I only use windows for skype and steam, and honestly I could care less about the interface.
I dislike change as much as the next guy, and I understand that this is a big change that needed to be more gradual, or give more options for customization.
I like how fast it is. I have done a few very basic seat of the pants tests, and while gaming type stuff is about the same, stuff like launching programs, file copies, etc are MUCH faster. It also seems to run a lot lighter than Windows 7, which itself was no slouch. It does take a few hours to get used to but overall I like it.
 
And so begins the Microsoft apologist propaganda campaign. Not interested, sorry.
 
BDS23 said:
I guess people here stablized too much on Win7 that they hate change. Just like how the XPers saying how much easier it was to find files and documents in XP than 7, then they adapted.
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But the XP GUI is similar to Win7 GUI and is not a drastic change. Win8 GUI is a drastic change and I hate it. I couldn't even see an X to close open apps, they just stay open when you close their window. WTF is up with that?
 
Windows Experience Index goes up to 9.9 now. Anyone have anything that hits 9.9? The highest I have is 8.3.
 
Moving the mouse to the corners. Does this get in the way of full screen games? Last thing I want is every time I move the mouse to a corner while gaming is going to pop up some kind of small window.
 
kontact said:
But the XP GUI is similar to Win7 GUI and is not a drastic change. Win8 GUI is a drastic change and I hate it. I couldn't even see an X to close open apps, they just stay open when you close their window. WTF is up with that?
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kontact said:
And that is an improvement? Like fuck it is.
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You can close a Metro app with Alt-F or drag from the top and down. And here's the thing that is an improvement, you really don't have to close Metro apps.

The propaganda being spread is by those that are just freaked out by the change and haven't figured it out yet.
 
IMO The desktop view should come with the default start menu, or at least an option to enable it. :rolleyes: Just because some of you never use it doesn't mean nobody uses it.
 
Forgot to say, I did an in-place upgrade of 64-bit.

That being said, Win8 borked half of my installed programs including live mail. It removed all the links in the start menu to many programs that Microsoft is trying to push away from. The new Metro mail doesn't show my other email folders. The sent mail, the saved folder, & all the others are not there in Metro Mail. It doesn't delete emails when I delete them either.

The Program folders need to be collapsible in the start menu. Having every program folder open that you have is just asinine. Creates quite a mess. Metro also seems to have a problem uninstalling programs. It keeps the links in the start menu when the program is removed.
 
Nvidia_ATI said:
Sorry if this has already been posted. I have not read the entire thread. I found this video on youtube that describes a registry hack that enables the regular Windows 7 style start menu. Has anyone tried it?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CAuvlmPbJE&feature=fvwrel

I also found videos of third applications that can be downloaded to enable the start menu as well.
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I tried the hack. Doesn't work, they disabled it.
 
Don't like the "tablet-ized" interface. Don't like the "app market". Don't like that I need to be connected to do anything...

When I use my desktop, I want a desktop.
 
Remember - it's a consumer review.

I'm pretty sure there is still a lot of tweeking theyre doing. This has to come out right the first when it goes gold... if it's buggy, MS will lose even more ground.

I want to like it.

I installed it on my Dell mini 9 and most of the metro shit didnt work as my machine will not do 1024x768. In the 10 minutes I played with it, it felt a lot like 7 with an odd gui. The machine ran a whole lot snappier than the XP pro that was on it prior, but it didnt run noticeably faster than it did with 7 pro.

I hope they work through the resolution limitations. There are a lot of netbooks out there that just cant run their required minimum resolution.
 
For being a tablet optimized OS, the level of bloat that metro brings is amazing. Windows XP consumed less memory than Windows 8's solitare. :rolleyes:
ssDUj.png
 
siliconnerd said:
For being a tablet optimized OS, the level of bloat that metro brings is amazing. Windows XP consumed less memory than Windows 8's solitare. :rolleyes:
ssDUj.png
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When windows xp was released, the average computer had 64MB of RAM, when windows 8 is released, the average computer has 4GB of ram, thats 64 times more ram...
 
Can someone please explain to me why MS felt the need to switch to desktop 2.0? I really don't get why MS, LInux and MAC try to reinvent whats' been working so well...

Metro UI is just another desktop but some act like it is the savior of us all?

1. You can open apps with a click, ok you can do that on the desktop.
2. You can drag apps around, ok you can drag icons around.
3. It has a hidden sort of taskbar, ok you can hide the taskbar on the old desktop.
4. You don't like the start button, ok just don't click on it or hide the taskbar?
5. Search, start typing, ok I'm sure they could add that in Windows 7 as well. is it so hard to click start button then type?
6. You can have gadgets on Metro for facebook, pictures, weather...ok you can do that on Windows desktop as well and drag them around to where you want on the desktop.
7. Keyboard shortcuts...what does that have to do with anything, both Win 7 and Win 8 have them.
8. Metro apps don't actually close they just go into a small resource state. Has anyone ever heard of memory leaks? I want my programs to close taking and use NO resources. Ask Firefox developers about that issue. Isn't that what we have superfetch for in windows to open up programs faster we use more often????

A lot of stuff they could just tweak in the Windows 7 desktop interface to make it better without making the default a phone/tablet UI...just doesn't make sense on the desktop as default? Remove the Metro UI, tweak the desktop for better search, etc, keep the start button and updated kernel and then you might have something.
 
cbutters said:
When windows xp was released, the average computer had 64MB of RAM, when windows 8 is released, the average computer has 4GB of ram, thats 64 times more ram...
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So just because there is more memory means it is reasonable to burn it on pointless things? Also, keep in mind the CPU is a i7-860 and Windows 8 is also using over 50% CPU usage for solitare on a quad core. :eek:
 
siliconnerd said:
For being a tablet optimized OS, the level of bloat that metro brings is amazing. Windows XP consumed less memory than Windows 8's solitare. :rolleyes:
ssDUj.png
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My understanding is Metro Apps, written in either javascript or C#, are all interpreted, so each individual process has its own VM running.
 
fps4ever said:
How many of you have actually trained employees, and I don't just mean a few? Its funny how a few of you make it out to be no big deal...I can probably name the users that will reply to this. And yes Office 2010 was a headache, hell I'm still getting complaints to this day. Try putting a manual in front of an employee and tell him to figure it out.
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Half my job is to do corporate training on new technology for employees. This year alone I have trained around 500 people. This is why I am one of the ones calling this a training nightmare waiting to happen.

schizrade said:
I have. Some online FAQs, and a good team of patient it staff and you are gtg. If you show people how to do the common tasks, they will be fine. If you have a customer service orientated staff, users are not afraid to ask for help. If you properly manage from the back end most of the issues are just help desk things which will exist no matter what. Training is every working day, and my guys and gals know that. That is how it should be approached, that way they are out of the way and agreeable when we make changes.

Too many IT people are untalented, antisocial basement dwellers, and the reaction to this proves this. Shit changes, adapt, learn new skills and move on or you will be that 50 year old help desk guy that is still going on about windows me and how bad ass Nortel phone systems are... lol
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Wow, what a clueless post. Some online FAQ's? Really? Either you aren't training people at all or are training people who aren't the average user. As mentioned above, half my job is to train people on new technology as we roll it out. I can promise you that no amount of online FAQ's is even remotely useful outside an extremely small minority. Heck I print out the training manual and hand it out in class and I know for a fact that most never even look at it after that class. I have people that literally attend numerous classes of really basic stuff and just don't get it. You are grossly overestimating the ability of the average user to adapt to change. Microsoft is too.

While I agree that too many IT people are what you say, them disliking this change does not make them so. I love technology pushing forward, I don't love changes that are a step backwards. Win 8's UI is a massive step backwards and an example of completely unnecessary change. It is a change that is so extreme that it is going to flatly alienate end users and just serve to make IT's life hard. The Ribbon change was an excellent change and I can holy hope that they make that an optional patch for Win 7. The start menu change was completely unnecessary and a completely terrible change no matter how much people try and defend it. It is completely unacceptable that MS did not make it optional on non touch devices. I said it once and I will say it again. Had MS made the Metro/start menu crap an Option on non touch devices and not the default no choice in the matter change, then I doubt we would even be having this discussion. Once again, Metro on a Tablet is an amazing thing, on anything that isn't a small touch screen it is pure shit.
 
cbutters said:
When windows xp was released, the average computer had 64MB of RAM, when windows 8 is released, the average computer has 4GB of ram, thats 64 times more ram...
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On the one hand, you're right: machines have a lot of RAM these days. On the other, it's still bad policy for a single, simple application to consume this much memory. It's not something we should be defending.

Remember that the volatile memory market is still very unpredictable. Just because RAM is cheap today doesn't mean it will be tomorrow: application developers still have an obligation to be considerate with the amount of memory their applications consume. If Metro does not allow for reasonable memory consumption per-application, then developers should choose another path.
 
Dekoth-E- said:
Half my job is to do corporate training on new technology for employees. This year alone I have trained around 500 people. This is why I am one of the ones calling this a training nightmare waiting to happen.



Wow, what a clueless post. Some online FAQ's? Really? Either you aren't training people at all or are training people who aren't the average user. As mentioned above, half my job is to train people on new technology as we roll it out. I can promise you that no amount of online FAQ's is even remotely useful outside an extremely small minority. Heck I print out the training manual and hand it out in class and I know for a fact that most never even look at it after that class. I have people that literally attend numerous classes of really basic stuff and just don't get it. You are grossly overestimating the ability of the average user to adapt to change. Microsoft is too.

While I agree that too many IT people are what you say, them disliking this change does not make them so. I love technology pushing forward, I don't love changes that are a step backwards. Win 8's UI is a massive step backwards and an example of completely unnecessary change. It is a change that is so extreme that it is going to flatly alienate end users and just serve to make IT's life hard. The Ribbon change was an excellent change and I can holy hope that they make that an optional patch for Win 7. The start menu change was completely unnecessary and a completely terrible change no matter how much people try and defend it. It is completely unacceptable that MS did not make it optional on non touch devices. I said it once and I will say it again. Had MS made the Metro/start menu crap an Option on non touch devices and not the default no choice in the matter change, then I doubt we would even be having this discussion. Once again, Metro on a Tablet is an amazing thing, on anything that isn't a small touch screen it is pure shit.
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Dekoth, don't bother, the same IT guru's on hear thinking it's no big deal have their mind made up. They think upgrading/training is a party everyone should enjoy instead of a necessary evil, because newer HAS to be better, right?
 
I could not get eyefinity to display properly and I still don't like the metro interface. Sorry Microsoft, I'm not feeling Windows 8 yet... better luck next time,
 
ok, after using 8 for the second day, I have to say I'm surprised about the complaints. I'm in desktop mode 90% of the time. If I need a program, there are actual icons if I want them on the desktop. I can still pin programs to the task bar. If I need to search anything, I just press the windows key and start typing.................just like W7. If I want to run an app, like email, I can just press start and its there. Easy to manipulate, easy to close. All of my programs and hardware worked upon installation. I really cannot see this being hard for people to learn. Its just like there's a shell for basic stuff that's really easy to use, and for regular things like a program at work, IT can give them tiles or just have everyone click the desktop tile. Sorry, but this really isn't hard and not to mention its running more efficiently than 7.
 
drdoug99 said:
For everyone complaining about the UI how it's made for touchscreen....this explains it pretty well how to use the kb/mouse:

http://www.winsupersite.com/article/windows8/improvements-mouse-keyboard-navigation-142337

Here's a list of new features in the CP versus the DP:

http://www.winsupersite.com/article...onsumer-preview-whats-consumer-preview-142394

Haven't used the CP yet, I'll do it tomorrow. But i'll actually RTFM so i'll know what I'm doing unlike half the people in here crying about how it's all different and they can't figure anything out.....well no shit it's a brand new OS with a brand new interface.....forget what you think you know about the Windows OS....this is the new shit!
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Thanks for posting that. Win 8 looks--nice. Nice enough that my Vista laptop is going to get a new install--Vista's already using all my RAM so Windows 8 can't be any worse. :D

Heatless--the ribbon is a fucking disaster. :p That's one new feature I'm never going to enjoy because it breaks some of my ALT + menu key + 'do something' key shortcuts, and using the mouse to do what used to take a few keystrokes is a loss of efficiency and therefore a disaster. /ot
 
siliconnerd said:
So just because there is more memory means it is reasonable to burn it on pointless things? Also, keep in mind the CPU is a i7-860 and Windows 8 is also using over 50% CPU usage for solitare on a quad core. :eek:
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Firstly, this isn't your old win95 solitaire program, it is an xbox live enabled gpu accelerated solitaire program. you wouldn't mind if any other game actually *gasp* used the computer's processor.

"Pointless" is subjective, if you don't want it to use resources, don't run the flipping program..... also, i should point out, when you aren't ACTUALLY playing the solitaire game, it uses ZERO resources:

blah.jpg
 
rantanamo said:
ok, after using 8 for the second day, I have to say I'm surprised about the complaints. I'm in desktop mode 90% of the time. If I need a program, there are actual icons if I want them on the desktop. I can still pin programs to the task bar. If I need to search anything, I just press the windows key and start typing.................just like W7. If I want to run an app, like email, I can just press start and its there. Easy to manipulate, easy to close. All of my programs and hardware worked upon installation. I really cannot see this being hard for people to learn. Its just like there's a shell for basic stuff that's really easy to use, and for regular things like a program at work, IT can give them tiles or just have everyone click the desktop tile. Sorry, but this really isn't hard and not to mention its running more efficiently than 7.
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It's still not enough to warrant an upgrade from W7 in my opinion.
 
downloaded x64 version and loaded it up via VM workstation 8 (didn't like v 7 - caught in boot cycle when loading ISO) on my desktop machine.

played with it for a couple hours, trying not to trash it out of hand but it seems to lack a bit of cohesion.

feels like there is a disconnect between the traditional desktop, the start screen & launched applications (refuse to use the word 'app'). only interested in the desktop part of the OS, have no real need for a table at this stage, so just evaluating with a KB & mouse.

don't mind the start screen per se, be nice if this was more customisable, kinda like creating folders in the old start menu to group 'like' programs. sure you can move the application tiles around but at this stage it's just a jumble of 'lego blocks'. if the start screen had a more logical connection to the traditional desktop, wouldn't feel so 'disconnected'. perhaps if MS blew-up the old menu to a 1/3rd of 1/2 the screen (and pinned open) and incorporated tabs, be better than a whole separate screen, at least for desktop PC usage. in my view there should be a unifying element to the operating system. in windows it's the taskbar. everything should be anchored to it (and visible) in some way.

some stuff launched from the start screen behaves strangely. not being able to exit active applications cleanly is a little annoying not to mention occupying the entire screen. there's gotta be a better way of killing programs than pulling up the task manager. some of the applications don't use the screen space that well, having to scroll across the desktop to view the whole program (using the weather application in this example) isn't great. whether is b/c it's a 'tablesk' feature or due to early version of software, don't know.

i get that MS is trying to kill a few birds with one stone here by covering different platforms, but they need to give the user the option of selecting pre-set profiles (desktop, laptop, tablet, phone etc) based on what they're using. be even better if the interface was fully customisable and let people pick and choose what they want. trying to shoe-horn all users into one UI isn't going to end well imho.

as this is just an early version, sure MS has plans on tidying up the OS. if however Win8 still looks like this come release candidate time, be a little more worried. if they can unify the, at the moment very different elements of the OS or at least give the user full customised control, i'll look at upgrading.

at the moment, i'm on the fence leaning towards hanging onto Win7.
 
cbutters said:
Firstly, this isn't your old win95 solitaire program, it is an xbox live enabled gpu accelerated solitaire program. you wouldn't mind if any other game actually *gasp* used the computer's processor.

"Pointless" is subjective, if you don't want it to use resources, don't run the flipping program..... also, i should point out, when you aren't ACTUALLY playing the solitaire game, it uses ZERO resources:

blah.jpg
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Seeing how bad Games for Windows Live is, being live enabled isn't exactly a plus. Especially for a single player game like solitaire. I probably used the wrong term with pointless, the big issue is the metro apps seem overly bloated. If something as simple as Solitare takes that much memory and CPU, what is that going to say for some game or application that is actually complex or needs to be half way efficient?
 
I've used it in a vm for a bit, and I don't mind it on the desktop. It's not as good as windows 7 for desktop use. In general though, I didn't find it will hurt my productivity in any way.

On the other hand, for touchscreen interfaces it's a huge step forwards, and if I end up getting a tablet, it will almost certainly be a windows 8 one. I know upwards of 20 people, some of who already have ipads, that are waiting for a good, windows based alternative to come out so they can use thier tablets more effectively for business purposes.
 
cbutters said:
Firstly, this isn't your old win95 solitaire program, it is an xbox live enabled gpu accelerated solitaire program. you wouldn't mind if any other game actually *gasp* used the computer's processor.
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I don't dig your argument here. Being GPU-accelerated should not ordinarily yield an increase in system memory usage. In reality, the larger the data set that can reside on video memory, the less data required to reside within system memory. If free video memory should happen to run out, resources can always be brought in from the hard drive to system memory, but they need not permanently reside in system memory. GPU acceleration should also decrease CPU usage, not increase it, when utilized appropriately, so the 62% CPU usage indicated is truly baffling.

cbutters said:
also, i should point out, when you aren't ACTUALLY playing the solitaire game, it uses ZERO resources
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I see a memory commit size of 104.8 MB. How is that zero?
 
Haven't seen this asked but for dual booting does it install a manager like Win7 does? I don't want to blow my Win7 partition yet but have tons of space on another partition to try it on my desktop and laptop this weekend.

I tried the developer trial on an older Dell laptop, I thought it was alright but I didn't do much with it. Seemed alright for just standard PC usages, which included going to some websites, checking the weather and opening file explorer and copying stuff. I'll try adding my Steam/Origin/Office shortcuts this time around. I'm not completely sold on it from my old experience for a mouse/kb but I think that's just the,"it's new and I'm thinking of old crusty ways" thinking. I wonder how many people will scream of the UI for Snow Lion or will they just blindly praise it since it's going the same 'phone/tablet on your desktop' design?

I've been skimming through most of this thread and I'm confused with some of the hate. Ok if you tried it on your rig and don't like it fine but screaming about deploying to enterprise. Hell if your company is like mine you're still stuck on WinXP with IE6 and Office 2003 so don't sweat it, nobody will upgrade anything since they just payed for Win7 (IF they did) and won't want to redo it again, at least until after Windows 8 Server comes out which I'm sure won't have the fuzzy cuddle UI in it.

And yes I have tried training people to use everyday work software and do daily although it's not my job. All I can say is when people refuse to want to learn then it doesn't matter how small or large the change is, they will fight it. My coworkers get mad if you can't save everything to the desktop because no matter how many times you show them File Explorer they refuse to want to learn it. But in a whole our department only uses a few apps so if you can pin those to an icon/taskbar/metro screen then there's half the battle gone. I guess I'm just saying stupid people that don't want to learn and fight it are stupid.
 
Also that much ram for solitaire seems wrong. How much ram does Cut the Rope use? The H screen shot showed it in the store. You can also play CTR now with IE9 and do a comparison of system usage between Win7/IE9 and it's Metro counterpart.

Is there that many hosts because Win8 is possibly sandboxing to some degree?
 
It's Solitaire for christsakes. Do we need hi-res card-back textures and hardware accelerated card dealing?
 
Numan said:
Haven't seen this asked but for dual booting does it install a manager like Win7 does? I don't want to blow my Win7 partition yet but have tons of space on another partition to try it on my desktop and laptop this weekend.
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You'll be fine. Windows boot manager will recognize two Windows installs and allow you to pick at boot.
 
Riddlinkidstoner said:
I see what Microsoft is trying to accomplish here and I applaud them for it.
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i wouldn't go as far as that but if any, it did stoped my random daydream fantasies envolving murdering the MS development team in a ugly way one in front of the other after i spray painted their ugly faces in that horrendous baby MS blue that only they seems to love it...
 
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