How are you guys liking Windows 8 so far?

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mknlb50

Limp Gawd
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Feb 2, 2006
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I want real opinions from the people who have used it extensively and please NO OS FIGHTS!

I went to Best Buy today to try out Windows 8. It took me less than 2 minutes to get used to the metro interface. Keep in mind, I've never watched any of the Windows 8 tutorial videos. It was THAT easy to use. Right now I am installing Windows 8 Enterprise on my Samsung Series 7 laptop so I can play with some more. Why not on the desktop? From my experience so far, Windows 8 works the best on computers with either touch screen or touch pad. I thought using Win 8 with traditional mouse and keyboard was a bit too limited.

I'll play with it a bit more to see if I should buy a MS touch mouse to use it on the desktop later. Sometimes, change is a good thing. I think MS made the right choice seeing how more and more average consumers are moving away from the traditional desktop computers. Only time will tell.
 
I've always stood by that on a tablet / phone / Zune its going to be fine.

Desktop w/ mouse + keyboard = epic fail

The UI in the Zune was awesome, loved it, and it worked great, for that.
I don't need to touch everything with my fingers, this isn't sci-fi land,
I need to get shit done and fast, and my fingers typing and on a mouse
work 1000x faster than tapping screens all day long.
 
I love it. I'm using it on the desktop with mouse and keyboard. Nothing bad about it at all. Scroll wheel is great on Start Screen. There are a few little quirks that I hope get fixed soon, but they aren't enough to cause a stink over.

I am currently using it with a single monitor, though.
 
I've upgraded all of my machines. On the outside, it's Windows 7 with a different window theme, but faster.


Touchscreen would get old real quick. I've got no interest in that.

I went to Best Buy today to try out Windows 8. It took me less than 2 minutes to get used to the metro interface. Keep in mind, I've never watched any of the Windows 8 tutorial videos. It was THAT easy to use.
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Really, any modern OS is probably easy to use. I'm sure you just opened a few apps and what not. Win7 wasn't any different... start menu or "modern ui" launch screen thingy... look for what you want, point, click.
 
Explorer still has all the bugs and quirks its had for ages - e.g. kill a process and its statusbar icon won't go away till you mouse over it, slow network access still hangs explorer etc etc. My point is they barely spent any time refining or fixing the desktop experience besides adding the ribbon to Explorer.

I'm using it and don't mind the Start Screen at all, though I do miss recent programs. Even found a few nice Metro apps, though I prefer the desktop version of apps such as Kindle, Pandora etc since they are much easier to use with other app the way most people multitask, rather than the stupid side dock mode that takes up 1/3rd of my monitor or making it fullscreen.

It's a much better Windows 7, faster and lighter, the new stuff is just meh. Doesn't make anyone more productive, after a while you get used to the new settings etc and just move on.
 
Played with it in a VM when it was in beta. Didn't really care for it. I think for tablets it has promise, but adds no value to the desktop.
 
londonandlawson said:
I think hardcore tech nerds are overreacting
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That is often the case, like when many of them predicted a mass exodus to OpenOffice when the ribbon was introduced in Office 2007.

Really, how many people care about an app launcher? The issue will be how easy it is for the average person to pick this up. While Microsoft has had its share of issues over the years, the inability for people to pick up how to use it's products really hasn't been one of those issues.

There will be pain no doubt but we are looking at a whole new ecosystem of apps and hardware, and some of the hardware that's coming out is just killer stuff. Pricy, but it's making those MacBooks look a little dated.

Honestly, as much as people think I am a Windows 8 lover I really can't say that I'm in love with it, I am in love with the CONCEPT though, and that is one OS that can drive any device I want to use. Windows 8 does achieve this goal better than anything else before, but honestly no one has really tried this before, and the idea that a big company like Microsoft is taking such a big risk, creating all of this controversy, Windows really needs this. It's gotten to stale, it's not well aligned with causal computing tasks or hardware. Windows needed a shake up and a wake up call. It got it.

The launch web cast starts tomorrow at 11:15 Am EDT.
 
I think I like it for the most part. Tiles actually seem pretty handy. Toss a website on there, email. a game or two and off you go. I had it on standard hard drive and it seems to boot about as fast as my ssd. One thing I am not sure if I like is when I hit alt+f4 it goes to the start screen instead of the desktop. Usually when I close something I am expecting to go back to a folder instead of the tile screen. Maybe there is another shortcut to do this I haven't found. I will be picking up a couple copies Friday, probably won't change the main beast around until a drive dies or something else happens though.
 
I've had it installed for over a week on my laptop.

Initial response was: Where the hell did I put the windows 7 CD.

after now using it for a bit I will probably keep it installed, very few/no drawbacks, uses less ram boots fairly quick, sure the metro stuff is pretty pointless without a touchscreen but I dont see it most of the time anyway, most stuff sends you to the desktop when you start it anyway.

I would say great for touchscreens but has little advantage over 7 if you using a normal PC.
Install it if you like trying new stuff.

I can't figure out why so many people hate it. props to MS for trying something new.
 
I've had it as my only desktop OS since the Consumer Preview. I like it.
The mouse/keyboard thing isn't really an issue for me. I open the start menu with the windows key and then either click on a pinned shortcut or type what I want which is the same process I've been using since Vista. Even though I mostly use desktop programs I still like the under the hood changes and the file explorer ribbon is pretty nice too.
 
I like the new File Copy Dialog and Task Manager.

I think Network copy performance is better than Windows 7.

I use Classic Shell to get rid of as much of Metro as possible. It simply is not efficient with a Keyboard/Mouse, and it gets even worse if you have multiple monitors.

The old trick of re-adding the Quick Launch bar still works.

Definitely boots faster, but that has created complications with F8/Safe Mode that everyone should research out before you need it.

My Stability was fine, right up to the point where it blew up on me when opening a PDF file. None of the restoration/fix features would work including System Restore. It continuously crashed and restarted explorer. I had to bare-metal restore from a server backup. Hopefully it was a one-time event.

Sleep/Hibernation seems to finally work right.
 
Tablet was a mixed experience. Liked the metro only for Mahjong with my GF. The ofcourse I could have just got a ipad to do the same. Tablet use of desktop is pita, try and use outlook with your finger its a friggen nightmare.

Desktop has been a pretty big FAIL. Hated it on the desktop. More clicking more large movements with the mouse. Hate the search with a fucking passion. I hate the subcategories of files, settings, apps. Win7 search would cross all three.

I hate the look of metro I hate the color schemes, reminds me of duplo blocks. I hate the gigantic tiles and inability to have cusomization of my start screen. (as far as icons go) I really hate the side ways scrolling in metro with a fucking passion.
RDP into win8 sucks.

Stability has been good to very good, except for IE 10. Speed of shutdown and startup is nice but since I never really shutdown thats a moot point. I also work on a rdp of a vmed win 7 desktop the metro interface is a giant pain the the ass.
 
Veilrap said:
I've had it as my only desktop OS since the Consumer Preview. I like it.
The mouse/keyboard thing isn't really an issue for me. I open the start menu with the windows key and then either click on a pinned shortcut or type what I want which is the same process I've been using since Vista. Even though I mostly use desktop programs I still like the under the hood changes and the file explorer ribbon is pretty nice too.
Click to expand...

if youre coming from vista, anything will seem like a godsend
 
stiltner said:
I've always stood by that on a tablet / phone / Zune its going to be fine.

Desktop w/ mouse + keyboard = epic fail

The UI in the Zune was awesome, loved it, and it worked great, for that.
I don't need to touch everything with my fingers, this isn't sci-fi land,
I need to get shit done and fast, and my fingers typing and on a mouse
work 1000x faster than tapping screens all day long.
Click to expand...

right. and the world is still plagued by BSOD too.
 
Wrench00 said:
Tablet was a mixed experience. Liked the metro only for Mahjong with my GF. The ofcourse I could have just got a ipad to do the same. Tablet use of desktop is pita, try and use outlook with your finger its a friggen nightmare.
Click to expand...

Outlook 2013 is quite useable with touch. There are elements and dialogs that aren't touch friendly and I don't know way those weren't updated but the common tasks work pretty well. The RTM just came out yesterday and there were some tweaks to touch in the apps that while not huge did improve a bit on the touch UI.
 
I'm curious if there is a way to replace your hot corner with an icon that did that action instead. Think Android launcher App drawer for the Start Screen
 
Rusty4560 said:
I'm curious if there is a way to replace your hot corner with an icon that did that action instead. Think Android launcher App drawer for the Start Screen
Click to expand...

There are methods of adding back in the start button. As for the charms bar and app drawer menu, I'm not aware of any methods.
 
The only thing that bothers me about 8 is the hot corners. I would like to be able to run those 3 tasks by clicking an icon. The way I move my mouse around I tend to hit the hot corner more than I would like to. So my idea would be to replace the hot corner with a launcher that had those 3 tasks on it as well as my running applications. That way I could say goodbye to the hot corners and the task bar all together.
 
londonandlawson said:
I think hardcore tech nerds are overreacting
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I dunno... people said this about the Ribbon in MS Office 2k7 too. "oh, it will be so much better for people who don't use office everyday". Well, that POS has been out for 5 years and I know a shit load of people who still bitch about how much worse the ribbon makes their Word experience. None of these people are tech geeks. I think Metro is the same damn thing as the ribbon. Microsoft thinks they know a better way to do everything, but in reality they're just changing it for the sake of changing it on the desktop. People who use Windows regularly now will be confused as hell by Metro. In fact, I think the average person will probably be MORE confused/obstructed by Metro than the hardcore tech nerds. See, we tech nerds know how to navigate a GUI, or at least figure it out.. average people who don't know computers tend to learn GUI's through memorization rather than logical deduction, and this new system completely blows up the old one.
 
you can drag and tab your apps and also tab your history like previous apps and programs you had open
its pretty cool
 
heatlesssun said:
I do too but just because come people are complaining about it doesn't mean that it wasn't successful. Office 2010 with the ribbon was the best selling version of Office ever.
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That may be true, but my feeling is that its probably despite the ribbon, not because of it. Thats the kind of thing that drives me nuts about the way marketers work. Somebody will say "hey, we sold XXX million copies with the ribbon vs XXX-100 million without, its a huge success!". Well, maybe, but you also changed the default file formats to .docx and added some new features and everyone who skipped upgrading to 2k7 from 2k3 now really feels like they need to update to 2k10. Either that or the market has grown, in which case units shipped != market penetration. Lastly, Office basically has a monopoly on all corporate productivity applications in the free world, so no matter what they do its going to sell out of necessity or through corporate adoption

By the way, I have only ever heard people complain about the ribbon. Not once have I ever heard anyone say "i'm so happy they changed to this ribbon thing". It seems like a lot of the same thing right now with Metro. People either hate it, or make excuses for it ("they had to because tablets.."). Very few people are salivating over the idea Metro from what I can see

Rusty4560 said:
While I don't fully agree with all of you points I think that this is very well put.
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Thanks!
 
Activate: AMD said:
By the way, I have only ever heard people complain about the ribbon. Not once have I ever heard anyone say "i'm so happy they changed to this ribbon thing". It seems like a lot of the same thing right now with Metro. People either hate it, or make excuses for it ("they had to because tablets.."). Very few people are salivating over the idea Metro from what I can see
Click to expand...

I've never heard any say they liked the Start Menu. People close to this stuff will have poignant views, most people just need to know how it works and don't really care. As for the ribbon, most people where I work like it, I support Office add-ins for suite of apps so I deal with a lot of users with Office.
 
heatlesssun said:
I've never heard any say they liked the Start Menu. People close to this stuff will have poignant views, most people just need to know how it works and don't really care. As for the ribbon, most people where I work like it, I support Office add-ins for suite of apps so I deal with a lot of users with Office.
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The first version of the Start Menu that I have used that I didn't find poorly designed was Win7's.

That being said, does anyone know how badly this new UI works or doesn't work under Eyefinity or multi-head? My concern is largely academic at this point, but who knows I might switch in the future.
 
Skripka said:
The first version of the Start Menu that I have used that I didn't find poorly designed was Win7's.

That being said, does anyone know how badly this new UI works or doesn't work under Eyefinity or multi-head? My concern is largely academic at this point, but who knows I might switch in the future.
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Support is pretty bad for eyefinity/nvsurround, although this is more of nVidia's and AMD's drivers than the OS's fault. Eyefinity/nvsurround makes the OS think that the 3 screens are one screen, and the drivers need to rectify this.

The start screen will get stretched across all three screens, and the icons made bigger than they should be. So even though it fills up all three screens, there's actually less displayed on the start screen due to how much bigger the icons are. For the moment, my remedy is going to be using the eyefinity shortcuts, where I can switch between eyefinity mode and three independent screen mode with just one shortcut key. Also, the hot corners are a pain in the ass to get to, needing to travel all the way across to the end screens to get to them.
 
Would anyone here (using Win8) revert or will be going back to Win 7 for whatever reasons? Two things stopping me is the Metro interface and driver issues.
 
Matthew Kane said:
Would anyone here (using Win8) revert or will be going back to Win 7 for whatever reasons? Two things stopping me is the Metro interface and driver issues.
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no i will not be going back to win7 because iam use to the win8 shortcuts now
i like the history tab feature on the left hand side and i also like how much quicker it runs than windows 7 and i have not run into any issues running my older software so for me its works.
 
Tsumi said:
Support is pretty bad for eyefinity/nvsurround, although this is more of nVidia's and AMD's drivers than the OS's fault. Eyefinity/nvsurround makes the OS think that the 3 screens are one screen, and the drivers need to rectify this.

The start screen will get stretched across all three screens, and the icons made bigger than they should be. So even though it fills up all three screens, there's actually less displayed on the start screen due to how much bigger the icons are. For the moment, my remedy is going to be using the eyefinity shortcuts, where I can switch between eyefinity mode and three independent screen mode with just one shortcut key. Also, the hot corners are a pain in the ass to get to, needing to travel all the way across to the end screens to get to them.
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Thx for the info! :)

Icons scaling incorrectly doesn't sound like a driver problem...sounds like massively bad assumptions about aspect ratios and scaling on Microsoft's part.
 
Skripka said:
Thx for the info! :)

Icons scaling incorrectly doesn't sound like a driver problem...sounds like massively bad assumptions about aspect ratios and scaling on Microsoft's part.
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Nah, it's the Start Screen being forced to stretch across 3 screens.

Once drivers come out that can keep the Start Screen on one screen, I'm sure it'll scale correctly. At the moment, nVidia drivers are unable to keep the taskbar on one screen, something it was able to do on Windows 7. Although I do really like the taskbar cloning across the bottom, which is why I'll have my system setup to use eyefinity in games and extended desktop mode while on the desktop.

BTW, I was using two GTX 580s for a while, going to be switching back to my 6990 once it gets back from RMA.
 
Matthew Kane said:
Would anyone here (using Win8) revert or will be going back to Win 7 for whatever reasons? Two things stopping me is the Metro interface and driver issues.
Click to expand...

I will be going back to Windows 7 for now until all of the driver issues for Win8 have been worked out. Yea, but so far I'm really liking Windows 8. Metro interface isn't bad at all actually! WIN + W to search for anything. I really love that feature. And it's FAST even on a traditional 7200rpm drive.
 
I will perhaps try Windows 8 + Start8 for a traditional Start menu and use certain "Metro's" feature such as WIN+W to search.
 
I love it. Pinned all my apps to the start screen, so it's two clicks to open everything I use, much less overall than Windows 7. I pinned a few Modern Apps (formerly known as Metro Apps), I get useful information from a variety of sources with one click to the start screen. The Modern Apps are great, it's virtually impossible (at least, significantly less so than regular desktop apps) to get a malware, or have your system or registry corrupted by them. I can download hundreds or more Modern Apps, keep the ones I want, uninstall the ones I don't, and the system is guaranteed to be in the same state as before. I can imagine this would be a huge productivity boost when users can get many of their little 'applets' from metro, instead of surfing the "wild wild web."

Win 8 plays all my games very smoothly (BF3, MOH:W, and Skyrim are my regulars.) Plays my Blu-ray rips smoother than Windows 7 ever did on this box - despite many hours of debugging, there was always at least some stuttering in whatever media player I used on Win 7, none on Win 8.

Windows 8 uses less resources, it's not exactly an apples to apples comparison since I disabled several services in Win 8, but when I checked a few minutes ago I was using 1.1GBs out of 16GBs on Windows 8, Windows 7 typically always stayed above 2-2.5GBs on this machine, with a bad habit of filling up and actually running out of memory if I did something like scan my Blu-ray rip directory with an AV (note: not caching, because I would be forced to reboot because of out-of-ram errors as Win 7 would never release the ram - Win 8 never fills up the ram like this or runs out, ime.) My DPC Latency is <10µs on a slightly tweaked Win 8 install.

Other than that, it's virtually the same as I'm already used to, just use an app, or play a game, on the desktop. Just open the start screen to launch an app/game, same as opening the start menu in Windows 7 to do so, only less clicks and navigating, etc. These days, pessimism and hate are cool, so most people are just going to manufacture reasons to hate something new and different like Windows 8. I never cared about being cool, but to each his own.
 
So what kind of driver issues have people been having with win8 (besides the eyefinity thing)?

I'm thinking of installing it on my desktop, but my system is about 3 years old, and I'm a bit worried about getting everything running.
I had a lot of trouble installing a new 2.5TB drive the other day (on windows 7). I guess because my motherboard is a bit old.
 
devil22 said:
I love it. Pinned all my apps to the start screen, so it's two clicks to open everything I use, much less overall than Windows 7. I pinned a few Modern Apps (formerly known as Metro Apps), I get useful information from a variety of sources with one click to the start screen. ...
Click to expand...

I haven't used Windows 8 yet, but I don't see this any different than pinning applications to your taskbar or start menu. I think people are used to clicking Start then traversing through the menu to find their app. With W8, it appears to come down to visual appearance, and I kind of like the looks of how W8 is laid out.

I'm glad to hear you experienced better performance with programs and in the OS. This and compatibility issues are some of my concerns about upgrading.
 
Activate: AMD said:
That may be true, but my feeling is that its probably despite the ribbon, not because of it. Thats the kind of thing that drives me nuts about the way marketers work. Somebody will say "hey, we sold XXX million copies with the ribbon vs XXX-100 million without, its a huge success
Click to expand...

This. I have supported MS Office users since the 90's, and no one has ever told me they "liked" or "preferred" the Ribbon. It's because they have NO CHOICE. It has cost business dearly, as their previously-proficient users sit there and struggle to find menu items they've used for years. Corel gets it- if Mabel in the lawyer's office still wants to use Word Perfect in classic 5.1 blue sceen mode- she can.
 
devil22 said:
These days, pessimism and hate are cool, so most people are just going to manufacture reasons to hate something new and different like Windows 8. I never cared about being cool, but to each his own.
Click to expand...

No offense but that's pretty narrow minded, dismissing legitimate criticisms and concerns about the O/S as "pessimism" for the sake of being "cool". I've got easily 300 hours into Win8 beginning with the earliest betas available on TechNet last year and even with a few weeks into the RTM now forcing myself to use it as a daily driver, hoping for that "a-ha" moment where the migraines melt away, that just hasn't happened. Abso-fkking-lutely hate it.

I think people just can't understand why the biggest pushback and criticism isn't even coming from the expected external sources like Linux or Apple fanboys trying to trololol comment sections, but Microsoft's biggest proponents and fans that have been with them since MS-DOS's earliest days (I've got 28 years into MS myself and no Apple device is even allowed in my house), who are now unhappy being force-fed a dumbed-down "Lifestyle" tablet interface, the total and complete hijacking of the desktop by essentially sidebar gadgets made fullscreen and monochrome. And people have to deal with it or use third party tools to circumvent to an extent, if they simply want the under-the-hood improvements to the kernel, memory handling, better performance of regular windows apps, etc.

It's encouraging that some people have convinced themselves they like it - and maybe they really do - but the big picture here is this is an O/S in crisis. MS has really dug a hole and simply hiding their heads in the sand is going to cost them, especially in enterprise.. If you thought the "PC's shipping with Vista but bundled with optional XP downgrade" epidemic that MS was forced to relent to was the mark of a blunder, Win8 will be hundreds of times worse than that. Even Microsoft OEM's and hardware partners are already building their own Start menu replacements -- their PARTNERS.

MS is in for a bumpy ride the next 6 months as adoption rate remains poor to stagnant (not my words - that's pretty much every analyst everywhere).
 
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Installed Windows 8 a few hours ago and I've already gotten used to the new interface.

It's definitely superior to the old one.
 
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