Has Microsoft Pulled Off Its Biggest Reinvention Ever?

I did the Upgrade (Full clean install) and it was fine... Only hiccup was that I had to run the Setup for my network card as Admin or it would BSOD when connecting... Personally, I like it just fine... I'd rather it boot to the Desktop and just give me the Start Menu when I ask... Also I'd like the Start Menu to look more Professorial and less like something from FisherPrice Toys... Those are my only real issues and they are small ones at that...
 
running windows 8 and I am not to happy with this new interface. Its not user friendly enough and making me learn everything all over again is just not on.
 
wilsonrdfl said:
Yet it its been a part of the Start menu since...never. So why would people expect one w/Win8? As soon as people realize the Start screen is just the Start menu reinvented, they will stop whining about it and realize that 99% of your time will be spent on the desktop, same as Win7 and anything before it.
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You can't tell what the time is out of the box on the start screen. You have to go to the desktop to look in the bottom right corner, where it has been located for forever. If you want to know what time it is on the start screen, you have to fish through a plethora of free and paid clock apps to get a tile. This is pretty silly.
 
Paid clock apps? Are you serious? ROFL. Windows 8 is like one big DRM experiment. StartIsBack seems like the savior though
 
Funny how this guy is ranting and raving about reinvention yet at the end of the article says how the reviews have been sucking dick.
 
SkribbelKat said:
As much as I don't care for the interface changes, I haven't seen anything like that so far. I haven't played at all in the store to load programs yet, but the few things I've loaded in the release version and the stuff from the previews didn't do anything crazy like that.
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/usr/home said:
You obviously have other hardware issues or driver issues then. It's worked flawlessly on the 8 devices I've installed it on so far.
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Nope - Just google KB2756872 (or simple 2756872) - to see the common problem with the updates.


As far as the sound issue - I heard there might be something with realtek - but that is hands down the most common on-board sound. Either way, it isn't on my end - there is nothing complex about it.
 
lchan said:
running windows 8 and I am not to happy with this new interface. Its not user friendly enough and making me learn everything all over again is just not on.
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I don't really know what you are talking about, unless you did everything from the start menu it's exactly like win7.

click on desktop, you got your file folders on the bottom right, if you need the computer options, right click on corner where start menu was.

its super user friendly, you don't have to learn everything, just a couple of things, and I remember coming from DOS to windows, don't complain about simple stuff like this.
 
Badger said:
You can't tell what the time is out of the box on the start screen. You have to go to the desktop to look in the bottom right corner, where it has been located for forever. If you want to know what time it is on the start screen, you have to fish through a plethora of free and paid clock apps to get a tile. This is pretty silly.
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The built in clock display in windows was unneeded bloat and unfairly leveraged their OS market share to monopolize the clock application market.
 
Once Metro goes the way of Zune, I'll gladly pick up a new copy of Windows. Until then, I'm starting to like Ubuntu now that I've been trying it out for a while.
 
SkribbelKat said:
You guys should really consider getting an all Intel system. Take out the video card and whatever other add-in parts you have and go for like a single hard drive and integrated graphics with motherboard sound and it'll work lots more betterer. Honestly, you're probably giving it too much hardware and making it confused.
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Currently running Windows 8 on:
- Core i5 2500k in an Asus P8Z68V/GEN3 motherboard with 16GB of DDR3 1600 RAM.
- Radeon HD 6970 (primary graphics card with Eyefinity configured).
- GeForce GT430 (PhysX card, patched Nvidia drivers).
- Asus Xonar sound card for speakers.
- Realtek integrated audio for my headset.
- Samsung 830 SSD for the OS drive on SATA 3.
- Caviar Black 1TB for storage on SATA 2.
- BluRay combo drive.

No issues with there being "too much hardware" here. Runs the same as 7 did...
 
Super-D said:
Once Metro goes the way of Zune, I'll gladly pick up a new copy of Windows. Until then, I'm starting to like Ubuntu now that I've been trying it out for a while.
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Metro already has gone the way of Zune...where do you think the Metro look was first used? Guess you'll be picking up a copy tomorrow :D

/runsandhides
 
The problem with Microsoft has always been: fear of taking chances, playing copycat with tired trends, a confusing diversification of their product line, milking their user base for the smallest of revenue, and not giving users what they want. Therefore, this is either a last gasp to stave off competitors or a brilliant move.

Additionally, subsidizing users to buy inexpensively into the Windows 8 app model is far smarter than paying them to use their search engine, which btw, didn't work. Though I won't touch Windows 8 until I can seamlessly switch to the Start menu, since W8 doesn't offer much over W7 for me.
 
vista_blista said:
Yep, Metro is basically Zune 2. :)
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So it's great but people gonna hate on it?

Because short of the very first gen of zunes which had some software issues, zune was a great music/video player along with having the best music service around. 15 dollars a month you get a subscription that allows you to download and play any songs and you get to download to keep 10 songs every month, shit was great.
 
Issues with simple missing features, clock and battery on the MUI, and some programs not yet supporting multi touch like chrome. But the drivers and hardware on my W8 hybrid is really solid, havent found any issues with it at all plus its super fast.
 
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SkribbelKat said:
You guys should really consider getting an all Intel system. Take out the video card and whatever other add-in parts you have and go for like a single hard drive and integrated graphics with motherboard sound and it'll work lots more betterer. Honestly, you're probably giving it too much hardware and making it confused.
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You mean we should downgrade to get it to work lol.
 
I've been playing with all sorts of different install types using this upgrade I got two days ago.

So far, pretty much flawless.

The only issue I ran into was when I put Nvidia's latest beta driver on for my 670 card. No big surprise the beta needed work in win8. But the last WHQL release is golden.

All apps work. All games work (everything from Minecraft to BF3, XCom to Black Mesa... everything). No problem.

Video and audio playback are perfect. Codec packs install properly. Nvidia video playback acceleration working.

Dual monitor setup working beautifully. Mumble working properly. Text-to-Speech is functioning well.

Steam works. Firefox works.

Boot times are fantastic.

Anything else everyone would like to know about?
 
stealthy123 said:
I don't really know what you are talking about, unless you did everything from the start menu it's exactly like win7.

click on desktop, you got your file folders on the bottom right, if you need the computer options, right click on corner where start menu was.

its super user friendly, you don't have to learn everything, just a couple of things, and I remember coming from DOS to windows, don't complain about simple stuff like this.
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hhmmm..i dont know...but to me...additional clicks means its just not efficient. I dont understand why microsoft needs to have those tiles as they are confusing and meaningless if you keep going into desktop. I dont find them useful at all. They should keep them strictly to tablets and not PCs or at least allow us users to disable this feature.
 
Dekoth-E- said:
Post-PC world? I'm sorry, I didn't realize my PC had gone anywhere or been replaced by something better. Oh right, it hasn't. Little premature to call it a Post-PC world when the PC still dominates the market MS. I am glad to see MS looking forward even if I do find Win 8 to be a tablet OS and worthless on a PC, but sometimes marketing people need to be flogged.
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It's like calling everything after 1986 the "post-Keyboard world". Because once we got the mouse, keyboards disappeared completely and people began "typing" by clicking on giant letters on the screen.
 
Another "OS" with Internet Exploder , welcome to the future of Microsoft. Lets call it reinvention :)
in a few months we will get the cheerleading messages biggest OS launch ever and marketshare BS as well :) .
 
D-Wiz said:
Best endorsement is that ever since I installed consumer preview on my tablet pc it aggravates me that my desktop doesn't have touch, I keep finding myself reaching for my monitor and wondering why my gestures don't work.
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Heh... :D
 
Ur_Mom said:
That's the way it was with Vista. Myself, and a lot of people I knew personally (and online) never had a single problem. But, from reading the forums and boards, there obviously were some problems with it. So, I don't deny that 8 has some problems. But, it's so closely related to Windows 7 that I wonder where the fault is... Drivers, bad install, user error, compatibility with a program...
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IMO, Vista was actually one of Microsoft's best products. They managed to bring security up to the same level as the competition without hurting software compatibility or performance and they forced manufacturers to start supporting the 64-bit versions. Windows Vista was actually faster than XP, at least by SP1. In terms of compatibility the only problem I ever ran into were the handful of 32-bit games that had 16-bit installers (64-bit Windows can run 32-bit apps, but not 16-bit). Star Wars Rogue Squadron 3D and Pool or Radiance - Ruins of Myth Drannor are the only games that come to mind, and I have a fairly massive game collection.

Most of the issues people had stemmed from the fact that some major hardware manufacturers (Nvidia and Creative, for example) took forever to write good drivers and device manufactures like HP used Vista as an excuse to phase out support for a lot of perfectly good hardware. You can't really blame Microsoft for that. I'm also under the impression that Vista was targeted by a coordinated FUD campaign in the lead-up to the launch of OSX Leopard (Vista requires a supercomputer! Vista phones home to Microsoft and Blu-Ray manufacturers! UAC pops up every time you read an email! etc). You still see that sort of BS floating around.

I have mixed feelings about Windows 8. I like it on my tablet (I bought a WindPad specifically to play around with it), but I ran into a lot of compatibility issues with games on my desktop and I haven't been able to figure out why. I'm going to give it a month or two and try again.

Microsoft could have avoided a lot of the negative feedback they've been getting if they'd only made a few minor concessions to desktop users like not removing the start button and leaving in Media Center. The whole Media Center fiasco really makes me wonder about the people who make these sort of feature decisions. I understand that they've decided to discontinue Media Center after 8, but forcing me to buy 8 Pro and charging extra on top of that for a feature that used to be bundled with Home Premium is a little ridiculous. They claimed they don't want to have to keep paying the licensing fees for third-party codecs, but the Windows 8 Media Center 'upgrade' doesn't actually include those third-party codecs anyway... Why not just keep Media Center in without the codecs and say "hey, not many people are using this so this will be the last version." Don't piss off your customers by nickel-and-dimming them for a feature you aren't even planning on maintaining. It's like Microsoft is a poorly-coordinated fleet of ships; every time they need to make a turn a bunch of ships end up crashing into each other.
 
I still think its undecided but reports of 4mil sales is a good sign. IMHO phone and tablet market share will determine more if they pulled off their reinvention. If they can pull 10+% in 2 years I would probably consider it a success.

I must say if this works out, history will record this as the day Ballmer out-thunk jobs (and hell froze over lol). Thought I read somewhere that Apple/Jobs said they cannot properly integrate mobile and PC. Well I think this is about as good as it will get, sure add a few small things like a clock, buttons (don't really like the idea of invisible buttons, never use the Win7 show desktop button, I just forget about it).

IF they can get people to switch to WP8 to support the "metro" apps they have on their PC as well it could pay off. Though it could also bomb just like widgets (which are popular on android but failed on Win7).
 
Cyraxx said:
Tried Windows 8 today.... sooooooo buggy.

I couldn't download the latest windows update - it crashed and had to reverse the update to get back. I googled it and saw it was common

When trying to play music, it would constantly pause for 3-6 seconds... then rewind a little and keep playing. Didn't matter what program I used, WMP or winamp.

This is just what I could find within a couple hours of using it. Quickest uninstall ever. It's very obvious what this is... it's a divert from a poweruser to a home user on a couch ala Apple. Pathetic.
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Those functions all worked flawlessly on an Eeepc 2005HA series since beta up to RTM release. It may be software related, butnot OS related...as others said, check your drivers, many hardware manufacturers have been half-assing it on some of their products.
 
well I was skeptical going into win8 but have to admit it works much better then expected and I like many of the changes they've made. I've encountered almost no issues with the dozen or so systems I've worked with. Of course, I didn't personally pay for any of it so maybe my feelings would be different then, who knows...
 
waiting for a service pack for W8 but for 15$ upgrade I couldn't resist snagging a couple of keys for when I do want to.
 
filip said:
Well, I did not take time to get use to it but there is a lot more fishing around for stuff. The menus were a turn off for me (hovering over the edge of the side to see that menu option thing). Over all I don't think it is for me: never really liked the whole win8 setup.
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Yeah, they really made you have to hunt for things. You do get used to it after a while, but it isn't just a pick it up and you know it thing. Side menu thing is annoying, too.
 
I've had no compatibility or upgrade issues (apart from having to reinstall my Bluetooth driver): everything has gone smoothly. All my games seem to run at the same FPS as in Win 7.

However...

Switching between the new start screen and desktop confuses and infuriates me. MS should have either gone completely with the new Start screen as the UI or just enhanced the old desktop. The current implementation is cludgy.
 
Dekoth-E- said:
Post-PC world? I'm sorry, I didn't realize my PC had gone anywhere or been replaced by something better. Oh right, it hasn't. Little premature to call it a Post-PC world when the PC still dominates the market MS. I am glad to see MS looking forward even if I do find Win 8 to be a tablet OS and worthless on a PC, but sometimes marketing people need to be flogged.
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Yeah,

I think too much is being made of this "post PC world" bull.

It's certainly accurate that mobile solutions with limited function sets (like tablets, and smartphones) are doing a lot of things that only PC's used to be able to do, but by their very nature, they are not going to replace PC's all together.

PC's haven't gone anywhere. In fact, despite our shitty economy, new PC sales have yet to decline, they have stagnated a bit, but I expect the upward trend to resume as the market recovers a bit.

The problem for companies like Microsoft is that it is tough to keep up with the growth levels that wall street demands when you are operating in a stagnated or slowly growing market, especially when there is a fast growing market that you can participate in.

So, PC's aren't going away, but the market is mostly saturated. People are going to use tablets for a lot of their every day stuff (email, web, outlook calendars, netflix, etc.) but when it comes down to doing work, they are still going to need a PC.

Yes, there are word processors and spreadsheets for tablets and phones, but if you've ever tried using one, you realize what a losing proposition it is.

So to sum it up. PC's aren't going away. People will still need them. (and to a certain extent, an x86 tablet IS a PC). Companies just need to grow to meet the demands of their investors, and there is more growth in tablets right now than there is in PC's.

I feel fairly certain that the PC market will still be around in 5 -10 years. People will still have similar amounts of PC's in their homes in that timeframe. They'll just - in addition to those PC's - also have a shit ton more mobile devices than we have today.

Tablets aren't a PC replacement. They are a PC complement.
 
It looks similar to Window 7, other than replacing start menu with metro interface.

I thought they would have removed the task bar too.

I haven't discovered any innvoation yet.
 
The Edsel was a re-invention too.

It's been what, a week since release? Waving the success flag is a bit early I think.

I would be more interested in how many have cast Metro to the closet with utilities such as Classic Shell, Start8, etc... Doing so lets you get to the nice OS that's under that layer of poorly designed interface crap.
 
So far everything I've seen go out the door with win8 came back as returned. One guy went back to his 5 year old vista laptop.

I'm not a big fan of windows 8, but I figure if someone wants to use it, more power to them. The last time I booted up a laptop with windows 8 I could see the confusion in the guy's face.
"What's this?" he asked. "Windows 8, Kinda neat huh?" ..He gave me one of those raised eyebrow looks then moved the mouse around, experimenting. He asked me why they changed everything. I said to make it more modern. He ended up buying a machine with 7.

I also do support for a lawyers office, after the owner there used windows 8 they switched to apple. He said if that was the future of MS he figured he'd bite the bullet now rather than do it down the road. In this case it a matter of having to pay secretaries to relearn something they viewed as radically different, while on the other hand most of them already had iphones, and used windows, so felt more comfortable shifting.


People can talk about the merits of the OS all the want, but if the majority of average people don't want it, what's the point? The PC desktop market is stagnant because people don't need or want to upgrade as often. It has nothing to do with the OS.

re-using the windows 7 theme would have totally cured all these issues.
 
Wixard said:
So far everything I've seen go out the door with win8 came back as returned. One guy went back to his 5 year old vista laptop.

I'm not a big fan of windows 8, but I figure if someone wants to use it, more power to them. The last time I booted up a laptop with windows 8 I could see the confusion in the guy's face.
"What's this?" he asked. "Windows 8, Kinda neat huh?" ..He gave me one of those raised eyebrow looks then moved the mouse around, experimenting. He asked me why they changed everything. I said to make it more modern. He ended up buying a machine with 7.

I also do support for a lawyers office, after the owner there used windows 8 they switched to apple. He said if that was the future of MS he figured he'd bite the bullet now rather than do it down the road. In this case it a matter of having to pay secretaries to relearn something they viewed as radically different, while on the other hand most of them already had iphones, and used windows, so felt more comfortable shifting.


People can talk about the merits of the OS all the want, but if the majority of average people don't want it, what's the point? The PC desktop market is stagnant because people don't need or want to upgrade as often. It has nothing to do with the OS.

re-using the windows 7 theme would have totally cured all these issues.
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It's remarkably similar - to me - to how people react every time Facebook updates their user interface.

People cry foul, want the old one back, then get used to it, forget about the controversy and move on (and then they cry foul the next time its updated).


Microsoft is big enough that this will fairly quickly hit critical mass, and people will get used to it.
 
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