Windows 8 Developer Preview

Anyone else wondering if this OS will be another WinMe, Vista fiasco? MS seems to get it right every other OS, in our current case it would be Windows 7 and before that XP.
 
What kind of apps do you get with Win8/7 on a tablet? Wondering if I could shoehorn win8 onto my touchpad, so long as it can run current win7 apps.
 
TwistedAegis said:
What kind of apps do you get with Win8/7 on a tablet? Wondering if I could shoehorn win8 onto my touchpad, so long as it can run current win7 apps.
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AFAIK, it will run ALL windows 7 apps on an x86 processor. They may not be the Metro versions, but they will all run in the classic mode or whatever.
 
synthetikv said:
applying this registry fix allows you to turn off the touchscreen menus and have a classic start menu. basically making it windows 7 with some tweaks. but much more usable on a standard pc than it is by default.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer

change value of RPEnabled from "1" to "0"

stolen from http://www.neowin.net/news/windows-8-how-to-re-enable-the-classic-start-menu
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Thank you so much.. I hate their new tiles. Retarded to mix touch screen w/ keyboard/mouse
 
My god. That was the shortest amount of time I've ever played with a new MS OS. Tried the classic tweak, even then it's not for me. Don't feel like putting up with a beta OS right now.

Back to 7x64, it just works damn well, I can't think of anything that 8 offers that I want or need.
 
Katalysis said:
AFAIK, it will run ALL windows 7 apps on an x86 processor. They may not be the Metro versions, but they will all run in the classic mode or whatever.
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Not to derail the thread, but I'm genuinely interested. It appears that this is not the Win8 ARM compatible OS; therefore not able to be modified onto a touchpad? Reading some other forums, sounds like the consensus is that Win8 ARM won't be an OS you can just purchase, but only comes pre-loaded on select hardware.
 
synthetikv said:
applying this registry fix allows you to turn off the touchscreen menus and have a classic start menu. basically making it windows 7 with some tweaks. but much more usable on a standard pc than it is by default.
Click to expand...
... and therein lies the issue. Why should I buy Windows 8 when it is just Windows 7 with an optimized touch-screen interface?

MS is betting on the tablet market but having an Asus R1F and having had the Asus Transformer I find tablets entirely useless for basically everything I want to do with a PC. I can't imagine that I am the only one.

It will be interesting to see how Windows 8 will work out as a strategy.
 
Please ignore my last post, should have done some basic reading first. ;)

As for Win8, I think they're putting themselves in a good position for the future. Perhaps tablets and other such devices aren't useful yet, I think as they grow in power we'll really start to see computing change, as some have said, to something what the Atrix is trying to do now. Win8 will be in a great place to have a unified platform across any and all of those devices.
 
Thuleman said:
... and therein lies the issue. Why should I buy Windows 8 when it is just Windows 7 with an optimized touch-screen interface?

MS is betting on the tablet market but having an Asus R1F and having had the Asus Transformer I find tablets entirely useless for basically everything I want to do with a PC. I can't imagine that I am the only one.

It will be interesting to see how Windows 8 will work out as a strategy.
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That's the thing, though--they want Windows 8 to bridge the gap between both. I use my iPad and a netbook because the iPad can't run a full OS, but I would buy a Win 8 tablet device and fix that issue.

I think this is a good idea, so long as you can turn the Metro UI on and off at will. Looking forward to seeing how this all plays out, and hope we see a Win 8 tablet sooner rather than later.
 
Is there a program that allows to boot directly from an ISO file on the hard drive?
I don't want to burn DVDs or create bootable flash drives when I already have the ISO file, sounds redundant and utterly unnecessary for beta releases.
 
Thuleman said:
... and therein lies the issue. Why should I buy Windows 8 when it is just Windows 7 with an optimized touch-screen interface?

MS is betting on the tablet market but having an Asus R1F and having had the Asus Transformer I find tablets entirely useless for basically everything I want to do with a PC. I can't imagine that I am the only one.

It will be interesting to see how Windows 8 will work out as a strategy.
Click to expand...

There is some truth to this there's a lot more to Windows 8. First and foremost will be the apps, and while most will be junk there will be thousands and thousands of them and some will be useful, fun and cool. This developer preview is far from wall that Windows 8 will be a year from now.

Secondly, Windows 8 is going to be more efficient than 7, this preview already runs overall a bit better than Windows 7 did on my EP121.
 
Blauman said:
Anyone else wondering if this OS will be another WinMe, Vista fiasco? MS seems to get it right every other OS, in our current case it would be Windows 7 and before that XP.
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Good observation, who knows! Looking forward to Windows 9
 
Win8 seems just like Vista. A big push to a new direction, one that they must go.

Most people will talk smack about it as usual, but all we have to do is get used to it. It's the same thing when I put Win7 on my parents' machines, or Office 2007/2010. At first they HATE HATE HATE it, now they can't stand XP anymore.
 
TwistedAegis said:
Not to derail the thread, but I'm genuinely interested. It appears that this is not the Win8 ARM compatible OS; therefore not able to be modified onto a touchpad? Reading some other forums, sounds like the consensus is that Win8 ARM won't be an OS you can just purchase, but only comes pre-loaded on select hardware.
Click to expand...
That is disappointing. I have a Pandaboard sitting here that I would love to try Windows 8 for ARM on.
 
Stimpy88 said:
I've been using this for a few hours now, and can say that in it's present form, it's crazy to have a touch-screen interface mixed with the traditional desktop. It's a mess, and really is not very intuitive.

I managed to get it to open a full screen IE window, and ever did figure out how to get out of it!

I'm going to keep trying it, as I really like the updated shell elements. This version also seems very fast. I hope MS do some more thinking about this Metro stuff, as it has no place on a system without touch screen control. Unless you have a need for a Fisher-Price interface.
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right click and it brings back the address bar




Installed it today and giving it a try. Doesn't seem to fully like my touch screen on my laptop. not sure if it is just the build or my hardware. it knows that i'm touching the screen. i was able to play a few of the games, but trying to click on buttons and stuff are not registered like a click.
 
Exavior said:
Doesn't seem to fully like my touch screen on my laptop. not sure if it is just the build or my hardware. it knows that i'm touching the screen.
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I've noticed that the touch seems a bit off at times on my EP121, I did calibrate it and did seem to help a good bit, still a little off but I was sort of noticing that touch seemed a bit off with the Microsoft demos yesterday. Have you tried calibrating your screen yet? At any rate there's little doubt that drivers are going to improve and for a first release it actually works well. The touch IE 10 is freeking fast though sometimes it does run into pages it doesn't like.
 
heatlesssun said:
I've noticed that the touch seems a bit off at times on my EP121, I did calibrate it and did seem to help a good bit, still a little off but I was sort of noticing that touch seemed a bit off with the Microsoft demos yesterday. Have you tried calibrating your screen yet? At any rate there's little doubt that drivers are going to improve and for a first release it actually works well. The touch IE 10 is freeking fast though sometimes it does run into pages it doesn't like.
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Thanks, no haven't tried that but I will and see if it helps. did notice it was off a little bit some. and yeah, i don't expect perfect drivers at first. I used Windows 7 in early releases and used Office 2010 in its alpha stage so unlike some people i understand the meaning of alpha and don't expect too much from the early builds.
 
tried the calibration and it doesn't want to detect that i'm even touching the screen for the process. Tried to install the windows 7 drivers in compatibility mode but it didn't like that.

I'm thinking it is something to do with my screen. its a duosense. it is a multitouch screen that works with touch or with a pen. But it is showing up in the device manager as wanting a driver. So I'm thinking that till i can get a driver that it just won't fully work. which is fine. I'll just play around with the other features and wait for either new drivers or a new build
 
Exavior said:
tried the calibration and it doesn't want to detect that i'm even touching the screen for the process. Tried to install the windows 7 drivers in compatibility mode but it didn't like that.

I'm thinking it is something to do with my screen. its a duosense. it is a multitouch screen that works with touch or with a pen. But it is showing up in the device manager as wanting a driver. So I'm thinking that till i can get a driver that it just won't fully work. which is fine. I'll just play around with the other features and wait for either new drivers or a new build
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What machine do you have? All the pen and touch drivers loaded automatically for me on the EP121, Wacom digitizer, in fact even the installer was touch and pen enabled.
 
heatlesssun said:
What machine do you have? All the pen and touch drivers loaded automatically for me on the EP121, Wacom digitizer, in fact even the installer was touch and pen enabled.
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Dell Studio 17

It is telling that that touch and pen is enabled with 4 touch points, but the duosense device under device manager is showing that it needs a driver.

it is odd, got a few of the touch games to work just fine when i clicked on stuff. but in the metro UI i can scroll but i can't click on anything. same for IE, i can scroll up and down a page, but can't click on buttons and can't use the motion for going forwards or backwards for a page. from the desktop i can get it to let me highlight stuff but thats it. can't use any of the motion controls or anything
 
Still haven't fixed Windwos Explorer where it will show all your details by default with a bunch of files selected. Maybe there's a place to turn this on, but you shouldn't have to. At least they went up from 15 to 100.
 
Just tried it. It's not bad and it would take a while to get used to with all the new mechanics of the operating system.
 
Honestly, I'm on Windows 8 right now as I type this, and it's not much different other than that flashy metro UI. You should have an option to enable it and disable it by default. For regular computing, the Metro UI is absolute trash. The Metro UI is trash and should be disabled by default on a desktop. Microsoft better not release the it with the Metro UI as the default. My computer feels like it's gotten stupider since I installed Windows 8. Btw, I'm running the 32bit version and apparently it's recognizing all 12gb of ram...
 
Aaron and other fellow [H]ers, once you start using Windows 7 on a tablet convertible, you may find that a need for an alternate GUI/API to be something that is sorely desired, which is why we're not looking at Metro negatively. The ability to disable Metro I think is a foregone conclusion, so I look at it as getting better support for touch interface when we need it on the part of Microsoft... cause frankly, Windows 7 leaves things to be desired for touch and pen use, even if we enlarge icons and put Rainmeter on our machines...
 
DOwnloaded last night and loaded on a flash drive

Gonna load it on my ASUS EP121 and see what happens.
 
jroe52 said:
in response to ntfs question:
vista was suppose to replace ntfs, it didn't.
windows 7 was going to replace ntfs, it didn't either.

then windows 8 or other "secret" os/s were declared to finally replace ntfs.

so the question is, whats the hard drive format or what possible formatting options do you have in win8?
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While still called "ntfs", ntfs has undergone pretty major changes and updates over the years/between OSes. Microsoft is working on a new file system called "Protogon" for Windows 8 although it is unclear if this is another enhancement on top of ntfs or a replacement (and emulating ntfs for compatibility), or if it will include parts of or be a reincarnation WinFS (which was previously discontinued).

There are so many things Microsoft has not yet revealed for Windows 8. Even this preview build is very much locked down and many features have not been enabled. I'm sure MS will have many more surprises for us soon.
 
FrEaKy said:
DOwnloaded last night and loaded on a flash drive

Gonna load it on my ASUS EP121 and see what happens.
Click to expand...

So far love it on my EP121 though a lot will depend on how ton like the fusion of Metro with the desktop.
 
unab0mb said:
While still called "ntfs", ntfs has undergone pretty major changes and updates over the years/between OSes. Microsoft is working on a new file system called "Protogon" for Windows 8 although it is unclear if this is another enhancement on top of ntfs or a replacement (and emulating ntfs for compatibility), or if it will include parts of or be a reincarnation WinFS (which was previously discontinued).

There are so many things Microsoft has not yet revealed for Windows 8. Even this preview build is very much locked down and many features have not been enabled. I'm sure MS will have many more surprises for us soon.
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To add to your comment, I don't think Microsoft suggested at all they were replacing NTFS in Windows 7 since it was obviously based on Vista. Especially people keep thinking that WinFS was supposed to "replace" NTFS but it wasn't doing that because it was adding features on top of the NTFS concept. So Protogon may as well be WinFS renamed.
 
Still really confused on how this OS will work. I am hoping that windows 8 allows me to have some like a ARM tablet running a full version of windows....I want to be able to load my old windows apps (like Zsnes for example) on there and go to town.

I am not sure if it being on ARM changes the way Apps have to be written, but what if windows 8 is on an x86 processor?

Is there no longer the regular desktop? I have heard that it is merely an "app" running on the metro UI.

So confusing.
 
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