[syadasti]

I tried to install it last month but my emulator needed an update which finally was released today. Running it with 2 CPUs, 3GB RAM, and 512 VRAM allocated. Pretty annoyed that the emulator doesn't support DXVA but then again it is an emulator and it can still playback a beyond bluray 1080p test clip with 75% max CPU via software decoder...

I feel like I have to jump through too many hoops to get to various things (task manager, control panel, have to uninstall programs via control panel>programs etc) but I guess most end users won't care about most of those things...

 

[snake666]

 

[Silver]

Meh. I'm on 10.6 and Win7.

Assholes at both places haven't figured out that if I wanted a tablet, I'd get a tablet.

 

[snake666]

my win7 machine is very stable, never locks up. no desire to move on"

And I'll probably upgrade when Win 9 comes out.

It´s true. Windows 8 might do some tablet business, but for desktops & laptops - 7 is the lucky number

 

[iandude94]

Xp will always be the best. I watched my first porn on xp and half the computers I access today still use xp, The computers at my job run 98. Old school windows was the best.

 

[4gnegative]

Windows 8 looks interesting. I expected to see all the negative feedback due to this new iteration of windows provides an almost completely different gui. Most people have a hard time dealing with change so it will take time for users to come around. Some may not come around at all. Windows is losing ground big time from osx and android so they have to innovate in order to compete.

The interface actually makes sense to me, I use both a pc and a mac. But my 2 year old macbook is starting to get a little old and I am beginning to look for a viable replacement. Especially since the new macbook I want has an msrp of $2199. One of my favorite things about the mac pro is the track pad with its multi touch capabilities. If windows 8 can provide a similar or better experience, than an i7 notebook will be the next computer I buy.

 

[binary visions]

...except Windows 95 wasn't **** at all, it was completely new and innovative. '98 was better, but mostly because MS had time to polish their new OS. They missed Windows 2000, which came out after '98 (because it didn't fit their neat mold, since it was excellent), and really Vista's "problems" were totally overblown. The UI was too heavy, so it gave the feel of bad performance (when it really wasn't bad), and most of the bugs were just new OS bugs. Which 7 didn't go through, because it was only a minor upgrade over Vista. So really it went:

3.1: Good
95: Good
98: Good
2000: Good
Me: ****
XP: Good
Vista: Meh
7: Good

 

[norbar]

...except Windows 95 wasn't **** at all, it was completely new and innovative. '98 was better, but mostly because MS had time to polish their new OS. They missed Windows 2000, which came out after '98 (because it didn't fit their neat mold, since it was excellent), and really Vista's "problems" were totally overblown. The UI was too heavy, so it gave the feel of bad performance (when it really wasn't bad), and most of the bugs were just new OS bugs. Which 7 didn't go through, because it was only a minor upgrade over Vista. So really it went:

3.1: Good
95: Good
98: Good
2000: Good
Me: ****
XP: Good
Vista: Meh
7: Good

I'm with you on that. Never understood the 95= bad. I was a kid when 3.1 and 95 went into computers but I had a computer with both and the 95 felt quite ok. It was easier to use and it felt much better than the 3.11. It's true I was very young then but still I liked it.

As for 2000 - never knew it was good. I remember it had some average rep too but that was very early.

Vista at start was horrible due to how heavy it was and how many unecessary think for the user functions it had but a large portion of the people who critique it are mac users and OSX thinks for you even more and is even heavier compared to modern computers (4gb ram on a 2011 mac is not enough for it to be smooth even at browsing + office. It never happened to me on vista with 1.5gb ram old 300$ Toshiba)

 

[johnbryanpeters]

The UI's hard to get used to at first, and some administrative tools are buried sort of deep, but you can rearrange to suit yourself. I have been running it on one laptop and one desktop for a while now and have had no significant issues.

 

[syadasti]

Just look to kernels in general, NT is superior to DOS

3.1: Meh (DOS kernel)
NT 3.1: Good (3.1 NT kernel)
95: Meh (DOS kernel)
98: Meh (DOS kernel)
2000: Good (5.0 NT kernel)
Me: **** (DOS kernel)
XP: Good (5.1 NT kernel)
Vista: Meh (6.0 NT kernel)
7: Good (6.1 NT kernel)

 

[bean]

I've got this on an actual test machine now instead of a VM, and I just hate it more and more. I really don't see how putting the metro layer on top improves anything. I'm not against new things. I actually loved Vista when it came out. But this is just ridiculous.

It has inspired a fun new game though. When people are at my house I sit them in front of the machine and ask them to do basic tasks, like open the control panel, and see how long it takes them to figure it out.

 

[$tinkle]

It has inspired a fun new game though. When people are at my house I sit them in front of the machine and ask them to do basic tasks, like open the control panel, and see how long it takes them to figure it out.

also, in vista, why did they start redefining how you add/remove programs? if i want to add/remove programs, how intuitive is it to look for 'programs & features'

in fact, i just had to look that up by typing 'add program' in the start button field

 

[bean]

Updating our documentation for this is going to be a nightmare. Fortunately, I don't have to do that. What a cluster****.

 

[binary visions]

I just stood up a new Server 2012 domain controller for our development network.

The only trouble I had was the muscle memory of dragging the cursor to the bottom left to look for management consoles in the start menu. They are instead located in the very nice server dashboard under the "Tools" menu.

I fail to see the cluster****. The start menu is, for all intents and purposes, the same - just reformatted into a tiled layout. Accessing it is available via the muscle-memory lower left corner, or via the new charms menu on the right, or by the windows key. So, all of the old ways of getting there work, and one additional new way.

The control panel is accessible from the start menu or the charms menu, so again - old way works, new way is also there.

Most of the functionality is the same, with the exception of a few menus shuffled around or what-have-you, which is pretty much status quo for any new OS.

 

[syadasti]

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/10/prepare-for-windows-8-induced-user-rage/

 

[HardtailHack]

I really like it, just changed from XP Tablet to 8 and it seems great, fairly easy to use and I seem to get up to two hours more run time on my laptop over XP.

 

[norbar]

Runing a new windows before the first SP comes out? That's some badass risk taking

 

[HardtailHack]

Meh, I did a clean install and cloned the last OS install so if it all goes to poop I just slide it into the DVD bay and boot from that and I'm back to XP tablet

I have finally worked out how to put a power button on the desktop, it was stupidly difficult to turn off for the first time.

EDIT- for GodMode create a folder on the desktop and name it whatever you want with this text afterwards- .{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

For a shutdown button crate a shortcut on the desktop and add this as the location- shutdown /s /t 0 You can then pin that to wherever you want.

 

[johnbryanpeters]

I'm liking Windows 8 more as I gain more experience with it.

 

[$tinkle]

I'm liking Windows 8 more as I gain more experience with it.

that *may* be due to aging & natural neurological atrophy

can't be too careful about these things.

 

[binary visions]

My primary work computer and my only home computer have been running Windows 8 for a while now. At work, it's been over a month. At home it's been a couple weeks.

I'm very pleased with it. I like the "snapping" of windows whereupon you can dock windows to the left or right of the screen. It's handled pretty intelligently, and the desktop is handled like another "app" so it doesn't drop you out of your docked window management to flip to it. I can see myself using this a LOT, especially on a tablet where it's awkward to, say, flip back and forth between music selection and browsing.

The only thing I wish about this interface is that it would follow mouse location. If I move my mouse over the docked app, I want to scroll there - but I have to click in order to bring focus. That works in a traditional desktop setting where you have focus indicators like a greyed out title bar, not so much in Metro.



The mousing motions to call up the Charms menu have grown on me and I no longer reach for Win+C every time. Not perfect, but a good compromise for blending touch-ability with mouse movement.

All other areas of Metro seem to be excellent for both mousing and touch. It's very well thought out, even if occasionally it startles you if you're very used to the desktop. For instance, attaching that screenshot above brought up a file handler I'd never seen before - it took about 5 seconds for me to scan the screen, re-acquaint myself, and move on. There are lots of differences, but I've not stumbled across any that I would consider bad or severely compromised to accommodate a touch interface.

I guess the worst one I've seen is the right click interface. It'd be a swipe on a touch surface, and that would be reasonable - but when you right click in Metro, the contextual popup is nowhere near your mouse, since it's at the top and bottom of the screen. I guess it's not awful, it's just weird to call up that part of the interface and then drag your mouse all the way to the interaction points. Chrome for Metro doesn't obey this interface change so you get a traditional menu at the point of click, which would not be touch friendly.

Everything also seems much snappier in Win8. Transitions are quicker, boot time is faster. This is partly an artifact of a fresh install, but the UI is genuinely more responsive.

 

[sstalder5]

So my new laptop (lenovo ideapad y400) is shipping with Win 8 despite my 30 mins on the phone with customer service trying to get them to load it with Win 7 without charging $200 for me to buy a copy of it..

I guess I'll give it a shot before I wipe it clean and downgrade to 7. After reading a few posts in this thread I'm a little less worried about it than I was. Hopefully 8gb of ram will be enough to run whatever ridiculously heavy gui microsoft is using now. If not I can always go buy another stick of ram for $50 and bump it up to 16gb.

 

[canadmos]

8bg of ram should be more than enough. I only have 4gb (mind you it is quite fast ram..), but I have never performance issues with Windows 7 due to a lack of ram.

Going to install Windows 8 now and try it out for a while.

 

[Jm_]

I bought a cheap laptop at best by a few days ago so I could take the brain out of it (harddrive) and put it in my nice laptop that has a damaged harddrive. Old laptop is up and running windoze 8 and thinks it's the new laptop. Plan is to buy a cheap hardrive soon and turn the laptop I just bought into my "travel" computer, hopefully set it up as a chrome OS machine or something.

Windows 8 is pretty dumb so far. Stable, yes, but much harder to figure out where to get everything. And what's with these "apps" on a laptop/desktop computer? It's got apps AND programs? What's the difference? It's confusing. Do I want to use a program, or an app? Why aren't they all accessible from one location that I can quickly get to? I have to do a bunch of moving/swiping crap as if I was using a tablet, but I'm not using a tablet, I'm using a laptop with a keyboard and other stuff plugged in. The whole point of windows is that it's slightly more technical than apple, and allows you more flexibility and options. The interface and stability have always been the low points. This traditionally hasn't been managed well. It doesn't seem to be any dramatic improvement over windows 7 so far to me, and I thought windows 7 was more straightforward, more of the quintessential "windows" platform, due to it being straightfoward, stable, offering the options and actually working. Windows 8 seems like it's designed for tablets, and on a laptop it's confused as to what it is.

We (the gov.) uses windows 7 at work and it works great, except I have a crappy slow computer at work (the gov.) so any time I try to use google maps everything goes in slow motion, haha.

6gb of ram with windows 7 and 8 seems fine to me. No problems with maps, movies or anything on this laptop. I'm sure it's not some crazy gaming platform, but otherwise it's fine.

 

[dante]

So my new laptop (lenovo ideapad y400) is shipping with Win 8 despite my 30 mins on the phone with customer service trying to get them to load it with Win 7 without charging $200 for me to buy a copy of it..

I guess I'll give it a shot before I wipe it clean and downgrade to 7. After reading a few posts in this thread I'm a little less worried about it than I was. Hopefully 8gb of ram will be enough to run whatever ridiculously heavy gui microsoft is using now. If not I can always go buy another stick of ram for $50 and bump it up to 16gb.

Here's how to get 95% of the functionality of Windows 7 on your Windows 8 machine: Click "desktop" at the Metro UI.

There, I just saved you $200. Seriously. Think of the Metro UI as an additional layer, with lighter-demand apps instead of the traditional programs. You can still get the Desktop version of Chrome, or Skype, or anything else, but you have the option of getting the "Metro" instead (or in addition). You can use that for snapping things to the side of your screen, allowing you to keep multiple programs open at once (supposedly, I'm still on an ancient 1280x1024 that won't work with it, although a new monitor should be showing up Thurs or so).

Otherwise instead of the Start menu, just start typing whatever program you want while you're on the Metro screen. If you want "Control Panel", just start typing "Control" and it'll narrow down to the the few programs called that almost immediately.

Btw, W8 is supposedly less hardware intensive than W7, so 4GB is fine, 8GB is more than enough...

 

[sstalder5]

Well I hate to admit it... but I'm actually pretty impressed with W8. It's a huge change from XP but I'm starting to get used to it. I feel like I'm not using a lot of the features though. I've mainly just used the desktop, which is fine with me.I should probably work on learning how to use all this other crap though. Some of it may actually be useful.

 

[syadasti]

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