Windows 8 Consumer Preview to be released 02/29/2012

bendit said:
no. you think the people moving from DOS to win 3.1 thought it was seamless and didn't have to learn anything? window 3 series to win 95? This happens every time there is an advance. People hate change. they resist change. then they eventually embrace it. this will be no different.
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I don't recall any of those sporting two separate, disjointed interfaces.
 
griffinhart said:
On the desktop, I will not run metro apps. Why? because limiting myself to two apps on the screen at once, (one taking 25% of the screen, the second the rest) does not suit my needs. Metro apps, so far, are a massively inefficient use of screen realestate on larger higher resolution monitors. I want my desktop to use the Windows 7 Desktop experience simply because it's a superior paradigm for a desktop workflow.
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Windows 8 is going to launch with thousands and thousands of Metro apps with thousands coming out every month. In time I think that most people that are thinking they will never run Metro apps on the desktop are going to start seeing things that they will be quite happy running on desktops and laptops, especially stuff like content readers and games that very often are run anyway. There are a couple of news apps that I like to run on my desktop, the USA Today is absolutely beautiful on a big screen though they need to work on the keyboard and mouse navigation. The MSNBC is nice as well and works great with a mouse and keyboard. I'm actually loving the Music app in side-by-side mode.

griffinhart said:
For Tablets and small screen devices, I like windows 8 a lot. Metro and Metro style apps make a lot of sense here. And it's great that I can still run my desktop apps on these devices. I will use it on my Convertable Laptop and on my Asus Tablet. But, again, not for my desktop machine. I will use a product that I feel is more conducive to my computing needs.
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But what I also love is the ability to run Metro apps on the desktop.
 
When you say "metro app on desktop" how are you doing it?

Is it splitting 2/3 of the screen with desktop and 1/3 with the metro app?

I was reading stuff and they said all metro apps are "made" for fullscreen. Just wondering if I'm missing anything specific.
 
I had a high hopes for Windows 8 but Microsoft has dropped the ball again.

The constant switching between Metro and the Desktop is annoying beyond belief. They should stick to one UI. If Metro is the way to go, then launch apps on top of metro and have a metro taskbar. I'm not going to complain about other features as this is one fundamental flaw of the OS. Stop being all things to all people and focus on one thing.

Windows 8 CP is just another half-ass product - regardless of it being beta.

If Windows 8 was more like the screenshots here ( http://goo.gl/uMnGD ), then I would go for it.

Lastly, Microsoft should focus more on the API, make it available to developers, so the UI layer is completely up to the user. I don't need Microsoft to dictate to me how my desktop should look.
 
I ran battlefield 2 bc on w8 cp and it would give me a dark screen with effects quality above anything but low. Is that w8 related? Default ati drivers from w8 cp and no ccc ... official drivers w8 cp series 5000 and 6000 >.>

On steam Skyrim won't launch... says unavailable. :/
 
maw said:
Every time I see that I cry for what could have been. Whoever MS hired for their so called "focus groups" should all be locked in a room beaten with garden hoses.
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A new desktop UI that looks like Ubuntu that no one would really have cared about.
 
wonderfield said:
I'm a bit blown away that the pinball app can run dive below the 120 fps mark at times on my mid-range gaming PC, without any form of anti-aliasing. This kind of thing should be incredibly simple to optimize for on the rendering side, so I can't help but wonder what's going on behind the scenes that yields such terrible performance.

If this is as good as it gets with respect to performance for 3D apps in Metro, in a near best-case-scenario with respect to the simplicity of rendering optimization, there is something quite severely wrong with this platform.
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Noticed near the same thing playing solitaire.

I did notice that both installing the OS and loading windows at start-up seemed faster. I also like the new task manager a lot more.

Things generally aren't intuitive though, and require learning the new interface.
 
I'm personally loving Consumer Preview. While I'm unsure about Metro it is growing on me. I had my first real test for the explorer ribbon and low and behold - it worked wonderfully - BETTER than Windows 7's explorer.

Essentially I wanted to show file extensions, as I usually do on my new OS. I see the ribbon, guess that it might be the view tab, IT WAS. And to make things better it is a simple check box. Two clicks and file extensions are mine, less clicks than Windows 7. And even though I know where it is on 7 I actually got it enabled faster on 8 where I had to find it. Brilliant.
 
maboblivion said:
I ran battlefield 2 bc on w8 cp and it would give me a dark screen with effects quality above anything but low. Is that w8 related? Default ati drivers from w8 cp and no ccc ... official drivers w8 cp series 5000 and 6000 >.>

On steam Skyrim won't launch... says unavailable. :/
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Get the latest ATI drivers (no clue if they did any Win8 ones, I found Win8 Nvidia drivers after installing my Win7 ones) and try again. As for Steam, let it update itself. I found Skyrim running the same as Win7 which makes sense since it's the same drivers and whatnot.
 
After using Win8 on my desktop (mostly gaming) and my laptop (general everyday usage of stuff, IMs, etc) for the weekend I am pleased with it. Once the new shiny wears off I know I will still be content with how it works. I've already bumped around and got an idea for some of the new UI genstures to do certains tasks and I like them (alt tabbing with just a mouse movement and right click to actually close a Metro app) and see their usefulness on a mouse system. The large majority of my time was on the desktop just doing what I normally do but again it was running fine.

My only downsides was how finicky my WHS 2011 was running with it, maybe because my PCs are both using the same MSN Live for the user name and WHS is baffled I dunno. At times none of the PCs could see the server or vice versa and when they could my admin account was showing up in the Homegroup. Hopefully a patch will fix that. My other issues was things like the Video/Music collection and Xbox Companion were disabled because I'm in Canada. Lame. My Xbox Companion IOS app seems to work, enabled it in my beta!

These might of been mentioned already but some quickie shortcuts I've bumped into:
Windows + C for the Charms Menu (or hover into the top/bottom right)
Charm > Settings > Power Settings to reboot or power down (sadly this took me awhile at first to figure out)
Top left corner to display tabs along the left side. Right clicking them offers to close them. No more of that horrible Solitaire eating your precious resources!
Bottom Right is the Start Menu
 
Numan said:
Get the latest ATI drivers (no clue if they did any Win8 ones, I found Win8 Nvidia drivers after installing my Win7 ones) and try again.
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AMD — amazingly — does have Windows 8 drivers available.
 
wonderfield said:
I'm a bit blown away that the pinball app can run dive below the 120 fps mark at times on my mid-range gaming PC, without any form of anti-aliasing. This kind of thing should be incredibly simple to optimize for on the rendering side, so I can't help but wonder what's going on behind the scenes that yields such terrible performance.

If this is as good as it gets with respect to performance for 3D apps in Metro, in a near best-case-scenario with respect to the simplicity of rendering optimization, there is something quite severely wrong with this platform.
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That has nothing to do with Metro. The pinball app was probably created with HTML5. But Metro apps can still be coded in native C++. The fact that you are bashing Metro and making wild assumptions on its performance is laughable.
 
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griffinhart said:
But MS is allowing the closing of Metro Apps. The ability is actually needed simply for task managment purposes.


On the desktop, I will not run metro apps. Why? because limiting myself to two apps on the screen at once, (one taking 25% of the screen, the second the rest) does not suit my needs. Metro apps, so far, are a massively inefficient use of screen realestate on larger higher resolution monitors. I want my desktop to use the Windows 7 Desktop experience simply because it's a superior paradigm for a desktop workflow.

For Tablets and small screen devices, I like windows 8 a lot. Metro and Metro style apps make a lot of sense here. And it's great that I can still run my desktop apps on these devices. I will use it on my Convertable Laptop and on my Asus Tablet. But, again, not for my desktop machine. I will use a product that I feel is more conducive to my computing needs.
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Giving the user the ability to close an app has nothing to do with the OS's ability to end a process. Just because they provide a mechanism for closing doesn't mean they wouldn't rather people let Windows 8 handle the resource management.

Also, you seemingly mis-understood my post because you are agreeing with what I said...you are not going to run Metro apps. So ultimately you for your exclusive use of desktop apps there is virtually no difference in your usage habits between windows 8 and windows 7. As for the Windows 7 experience being superior, the only legitimate complaint I have heard so far in this thread is that some people will have a hard time remembering what they were searching for when in the full-screen Metro search and be forced to go back and forth or to write it down somewhere first.

GoHack said:
Personally, I don't like it. :(

Talk has it, that there will be several different versions of the OS when released, more than what's available w/Windows 7, w/each having some features that another doesn't.

Myself, I would like a clean and efficient one, w/no absolutely useless bells and whistles. One for both seasoned gamers, and running extreme calculations, like Folding@Home for example.

Stop supporting obsolete hardware, like single core, 32 bit processors, and address, and utilize multicore, 64 bit ones. ;)


.
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Microsoft is not going to stop supporting legacy hardware anytime soon.
 
So I've been running W8CP on my slate for a few days now both on a slate and desktop. Keeping in mind that this is a beta/alpha, I like it a lot.

I think everyone is over-complicating this. It simply boils down to it being windows 7 with a fancy full screen start menu. Yes, there are also smaller adjustments here and there (ribbons, task manager, ie10, better touch keyboard, skydrive integration, etc...). But the big "flashy" changes are the apps. I like the look and feel of the metro apps, but frankly any windows app could have been programmed to look like that for the last 10 years (including windows XP programs).

I can see an impending problem - currently programs like Outlook pack a ton of info on the screen and it's extremely usable. The metro apps are much simpler but are also far less productive in a desktop environment. So it will be interesting to see how developers address the different eco-systems.

So I think it's very usable as-is. I've had the developer preview on my slate for a few months and I've only used it a couple times. For the last few days I've been using the CP 90% of the time instead of Win7 because it is almost feature-complete. It will only get better as the app store fills up and the slate hardware improves.
 
Installed Windows 8 CP and like it so far. It takes a little bit getting used to and I will keep it on one of my work computers, but I will think twice if I want to deploy it to any of our machines at work if this is how the final version ends up being. As mentioned before in this thread simple things such as shutdown/restart or how to log back in is not very intuitive for non-techy people, and as a System Administrator/Helpdesk person I can see a lot of helpdesk calls I may want to avoid :). I don't mind the Metro interface, it can be customized for anybody's needs.

One thing that didn't seem to work for me is Synergy (program that syncs keyboard and mouse between several computers over the network). I just couldn't get it to work and ended up using ShareMouse for now. Anybody has any luck with Synergy?
 
chinesepiratefood said:
The fact that you are bashing Metro and making wild assumptions on its performance is laughable.
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I made no wild assumptions. Read my post:

If this is as good as it gets with respect to performance for 3D apps in Metro, in a near best-case-scenario with respect to the simplicity of rendering optimization, there is something quite severely wrong with this platform.
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The fact that you are lashing out at anyone who dares criticize Metro, or anything else related to Windows 8 for that matter, is laughable.
 
Casual PC users are going to shit their pants and run screaming from Windows 8 because of the lack of visual cues for common tasks (like shutting down.) The first boot after installing, I sat at the spash page until my internal "OS should be loaded by now" timer went off, then clicked on the screen. A blank 'taskbar' opened and closed at the bottom of the screen. Huh? It took a bit before I tried a keypress. (The second time I booted was when I realized how quickly the OS loads. <3)

For me, Win 8 doesn't look like a major change in the way I work, which is Desktop and winkey + type + enter to start things up, although the categorization of apps/settings/etc. is annoying and will slow me down.

The 'start screen' should let me click on the small icons to open a Metro app. Why do I need to go fullscreen to click on something that's already about the size of a file icon?

I fucking dread the day my family members start getting new PCs that come with Windows 8 preloaded, and I will recommend 7 for as long as is feasible. (Ma's still going to want XP, lol.)
 
GoHack said:
Myself, I would like a clean and efficient one, w/no absolutely useless bells and whistles. One for both seasoned gamers, and running extreme calculations, like Folding@Home for example.
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just F@H? why not run a linux distro, then.

C
 
I have a 2 imp questions -

1. Is anyone running this on their laptop. Can someone point me to a working Win 8 Synaptics touchpad driver? I tried installing the Win 7 version, and it totally disabled my touchpad. Windows wouldn't let me rollback/update since it claimed the device was corrupt, I had to uninstall the device.

With the default drivers, gestures and edge scroll do no work. Without edge scroll, Win 8 is essentially unusable without a mouse, since everything in Metro needs a mousewheel.

2. With multiple monitors, trying to pixel hunt the edge of the screen is frustrating, because the mouse moves to the next monitor.

I agree with people who've said this UI is not discoverable or intuitive at all. You need to know a million new keyboard shortcuts just to navigate. Why couldn't MS have included a brief tutorial on first launch? This is meant for general release, not developers.
 
eggrock said:
Casual PC users are going to shit their pants and run screaming from Windows 8 because of the lack of visual cues for common tasks (like shutting down.) The first boot after installing, I sat at the spash page until my internal "OS should be loaded by now" timer went off, then clicked on the screen. A blank 'taskbar' opened and closed at the bottom of the screen. Huh? It took a bit before I tried a keypress. (The second time I booted was when I realized how quickly the OS loads. <3)

For me, Win 8 doesn't look like a major change in the way I work, which is Desktop and winkey + type + enter to start things up, although the categorization of apps/settings/etc. is annoying and will slow me down.

The 'start screen' should let me click on the small icons to open a Metro app. Why do I need to go fullscreen to click on something that's already about the size of a file icon?

I fucking dread the day my family members start getting new PCs that come with Windows 8 preloaded, and I will recommend 7 for as long as is feasible. (Ma's still going to want XP, lol.)
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There's a lot of things that you do on the iPad that don't have visual cues and yet people seem to figure it out.
 
heatlesssun said:
There's a lot of things that you do on the iPad that don't have visual cues and yet people seem to figure it out.
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This is true. The mouse isn't normally utilized for swipe-based action through a UI though. That's why I see Metro as an odd add-in to Windows since its based on touch-based technology rather than the mouse & keyboard. For people to start thinking outside the methodology of using a mouse would require them to view it as a touch input method.

Microsoft is really trying to force 2 spheres of thoughts & mash them into one. An example might be that you're told you need to ink a comic with a broad bristle brush instead of a pen. It might work or it might not without a lot of strenuous mental effort from some that may not be conceptualizing how it works visually. Most Windows users will be very confused when they don't understand why the mouse isn't doing what they want it to do in Metro.
 
heatlesssun said:
There's a lot of things that you do on the iPad that don't have visual cues and yet people seem to figure it out.
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People are able to figure out the iPad because -

1. Touch is the only way to interact. So its much easier to discover stuff. Nothing like 'move your mouse to top left/top, see hand icon, drag down'

2. iOS UI has been consistent from day 1. It's still the same icons at the bottom, grid of icons on home pages etc. People are used to it. Hundreds of millions of people are used to how the Windows desktop works. Now they will face a radical change which is not intuitive at all.

I'm going to say put a Win 7 user unfamiliar with Win 8 shortcuts and mouse tricks in front of it, and there's close to zero chance they'll figure them out.
 
Figuring these things out does require a good deal of experimentation. I couldn't initially figure out how to get the 'Charms Bar' to appear, as it slides straight out of the right-hand side of the desktop. I could see it appear once &#8212; coming from the side &#8212; and naturally assumed that I could pull it from the side, like I could with the notification drawer in Android or iOS. The hot spots for it, however, are in the upper-right and lower-right corners of the desktop. Why does it not slide out from those hot spots instead of sliding out directly from the side?

There are weird little disconnects like this throughout Metro. Things you expect to happen from a given action work in an entirely different, and sometimes totally arbitrary way to that expectation.
 
MrCrispy said:
People are able to figure out the iPad because -

1. Touch is the only way to interact. So its much easier to discover stuff. Nothing like 'move your mouse to top left/top, see hand icon, drag down'

2. iOS UI has been consistent from day 1. It's still the same icons at the bottom, grid of icons on home pages etc. People are used to it. Hundreds of millions of people are used to how the Windows desktop works. Now they will face a radical change which is not intuitive at all.

I'm going to say put a Win 7 user unfamiliar with Win 8 shortcuts and mouse tricks in front of it, and there's close to zero chance they'll figure them out.
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This is simply not the case, I've figured out nearly every shortcut I've been using in Windows 8 on my own . Only one that comes to mind that I saw in text was Win+C
 
FYI. just found this out. In metro view. control plus scroll down shows you the groups of tiles. Right click the group and you can name it.
 
harsaphes said:
FYI. just found this out. In metro view. control plus scroll down shows you the groups of tiles. Right click the group and you can name it.
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Congrats! You've just unlocked the "Minor Power User Achievement". A Bronze trophy will be added to your desktop, be sure to share with your friends using the People App!
 
maw said:
Congrats! You've just unlocked the "Minor Power User Achievement". A Bronze trophy will be added to your desktop, be sure to share with your friends using the People App!
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Coffee up my nose......thank you.:eek::D
 
MrCrispy said:
I have a 2 imp questions -

1. Is anyone running this on their laptop. Can someone point me to a working Win 8 Synaptics touchpad driver? I tried installing the Win 7 version, and it totally disabled my touchpad. Windows wouldn't let me rollback/update since it claimed the device was corrupt, I had to uninstall the device.

With the default drivers, gestures and edge scroll do no work. Without edge scroll, Win 8 is essentially unusable without a mouse, since everything in Metro needs a mousewheel.
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Yes, but:

1) I have no idea what type of touchpad it is (Gateway FX series lappy)

2) I dl'd all laptop specific drivers to a thumb drive and installed all the drivers after installing Win 8. No idea if the touchpad worked or not, but I noticed a lack of some basic features (like native res for the monitor.)

heatlesssun said:
There's a lot of things that you do on the iPad that don't have visual cues and yet people seem to figure it out.
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I dislike the silent features in OS X and iOS, too, although they can be extremely useful once you learn them. When the casual user can't shut off his/her PC, the problem is going to generate a massive outcry of complaints, FUD and trolling and propagate a negative view of Windows 8. People will eventually learn, but by that time the perception of Win 8 may be muddied beyond redemption. (I'm not going to touch problems associated with enterprise distribution.)

harsaphes said:
FYI. just found this out. In metro view. control plus scroll down shows you the groups of tiles. Right click the group and you can name it.
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That's nice to know!
 
Numan said:
Get the latest ATI drivers (no clue if they did any Win8 ones, I found Win8 Nvidia drivers after installing my Win7 ones) and try again. As for Steam, let it update itself. I found Skyrim running the same as Win7 which makes sense since it's the same drivers and whatnot.
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Effects quality @ anything higher than low = black screen .... must be drivers....
thanks 4 the advice.
There are ati Win8 cp drivers for 5000 and 6000 series ....7000 series to come later .... there are some basic drivers that come with win8 ... no ccc
 
maw said:
I don't recall any of those sporting two separate, disjointed interfaces.
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windows 8 is a breeze after about 1 hour with it. it's way better than windows 7. I am in Metro when I want to be in Metro and not any more. I don't feel disoriented at all. I use Metro as a start screen and for that purpose it's fine. win 8 desktop is a smoother faster more efficient win 7. And this is pre release software. Wait till they get to RTM.
 
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RealityCrunch said:
A start menu that takes up 8x as much room as the last one I used (and covers my screen) for the same functionality of this particular task is, in my opinion, a less efficient use of screen real-estate for this particular task. :p It's not a big deal though, in time there will likely be a number of available modifications one can download to get around these things and until then I can live with it easily enough.

What I'm really eager to see is how far the customization talented people can take Windows themes and modifications in Windows 8.
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the reason they went to this start screen is they anticipate people installing lots and lots and lots of apps, which would make the win 7 start screen unwieldy.
 
maw said:
I don't recall any of those sporting two separate, disjointed interfaces.
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people spent lots of time in DOS when windows 3.1 first came out. This is going to pass. Every major change is the same. People freak out. Then they get used to it. I am already used to windows 8 after a few hours of use. once you figure out the hot spots you are good to go.
 
What is really annoying and totally out of place is when Metro shows up in the middle of classic desktop. e.g. when you open a file and the 'choose which program to open with' is a metro dialog box with no borders.
 
So here's the best CP feature - right click a wifi network name (after you click the network icon it'll open up a Metro list), 'estimated data usage'. It's so simple and so sorely needed.

Do I get an Achievement Cookie?
 
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