Official: Windows 8 Release Preview Now Out

[StinkyPinky]

Before windows 8, I would agree with this statement when Microosft rolled out a new OS, but Windows 8 is different. I'm not the smartest person here at Anandtech, and I've only used a multitude of oparting systems since my atari 400, but win 8 is just unusable to me. I loaded it in a virtual machine several time, trying to learn it. I then decided that maybe it would be best if it was my true system os, that I may would get a true impression from it. To me it is unusable. I thought $40 to upgrade was a great price until I tried to use it this past week. At this point, I would not even pirate windows 8.

I want to see windows 8 to be accepted, but I'm not very confidentr that it will.

How is it unusable?! Just use the Desktop and it's just like Windows 7 with more admin-friendly features.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

How is it unusable?! Just use the Desktop and it's just like Windows 7 with more admin-friendly features.

You can't just use the desktop, which is the problem.

 

[tommo123]

^ agreed. what they should have done is a transformer tablet type deal - the win8 tablet with intel in it at least since that'll be a real PC not a toy like winrt

tablet on it's own = metro interface. no problem at all with that. but when you dock the tablet with the keyboard (like with asus trans) then you're now using a laptop with a mouse and keyboard and the GUI should flip to windows classic.

hell, you could dock that keyboard at home, connect via hdmi to your TV/monitor and it becomes your PC.

that would work IMO but forcing metro on a desktop isn't going to cut it. as said earlier, i wouldn't even pirate this and i've bought a copy of every win OS since win 3.1 (bar the NT variants apart from win2k which was awesome)

i don't hope for bad things for companies but i do hope this fails and win9 (if for no other reasons than to not freak business users out) will be an upgraded win8 with a classic start menu/UI. i imagine they'll have no choice but to do this as the cost for a big company to train all it's users on an OS change would be astronomical. it's not like they can just upgrade to win8 and hope for the best as the calls to IT support would be crazy

 

[StinkyPinky]

You can't just use the desktop, which is the problem.

Yes you can. Apart from the initial log in I never see the metro screen.

 

[piasabird]

I am posting this with Win 8 release preview. I was using Vista on this computer. I am running on an Intel E7200 and 2 gigs of DDR2 . . .

Release Version: 8400

It took a while to start realizing how this kind of interface for the operating system was set up. At first it seems goofy and unusable until you figure out that a lot of the controls are in fact hidden. When I started moving the mouse around I started discovering how it works a little. Sometimes the navigation is like win7 up and down with sliders and more often it is sideways. Then it also makes everything look like it is full-screen with no menus. However when you move the mouse to the side or top the sliders show up. Go to the bottom right corner and there is a way to go back to the main window with the goofy boxes. However, if you do nothing at the start menu and it goes to what they call the desktop. I am just playing around at this point.

I did download a free APP for Toms Hardware??? Did not notice one for free from Anandtech . . . . Gotcha baby!

 

[piasabird]

On the Toms Hardware site there was an article that Microsoft was trying to reserve a certain amount of touchscreens from manufacturers. They did not say they would purchase them, but they said if they could not be sold that they would purchase the excess. Sounds interesting. It would be nice if touchscreens would start to come down in price due to the economies of scale.

 

[piasabird]

You can use Internet explorer in full screen or from the desktop. However, from full screen I could not readily see a way to open a second tab?

 

[piasabird]

I would urge people to give this a try and not just slam dunk it. I read something somewhere that if you buy the upgrade, you might be able to get the media center for free??? Maybe someone will check that out. Microsoft offers an upgrade path from XP, so if you do the upgrade for around $39 it is cheaper then WIN 7!

This may be a bit radical for big business to embrace at this point.

 

[WildW]

I am going to have to download this and give it a try before I dis it - actually I may do that retrospectively and dis it now instead.

So long as they keep selling Windows 7 side-by-side with Windows 8 then we'll all be okay.

Maybe, just maybe, what we're being shown is the home user version of Windows 8. . .There's a Windows 8 Professional version aimed at business users, right? Well, since nothing that you'd expect to run in Metro has any place in a business environment, logically Metro will be hidden away. I mean, if someday I have a Windows 8 PC forced on me at work, if the boss looks over my shoulder and sees absolutely any Metro app running, he'll know I'm playing instead of doing my job.



Edit: So I installed Win 8 preview on my laptop to play with, I'll keep this brief because the obvious things have been said many times already. So far the normal Windows desktop stuff looks fine - everything works, some nice touches on the new things. No complaints.

I've played with the Metro apps now - their primary purpose seems to be to try and sell me new things instead of helping me navigate the things I already have. Most of the screen is taken up with big pictures of things I can buy, while navigating the things on my hard drive is quite difficult. Copied my music folder over to try things out. . . navigation was not pleasant. Similarly I thought XBox Companion looked promising - you can trigger your XBox to start up and run a game, but only if its one of the few most recently played. . .can't seem to browse the games I have installed. I can however "Explore the Game Marketplace" to buy new things.

Metro apps in general are confusing. There doesn't seem to be a common interface between apps - I keep getting random menus pop up when I point in different places, and quite a few times I've accidentally made something appear for a moment and then been unable to find what arcane movements made it appear.

I suspected it before, but now I've used it I can say it with some conviction; None of this Metro stuff belongs on a desktop PC.

 

[Continuity28]

For anyone wanting to test Windows 8, there's a known bug in the Release Preview that causes system freezing. To fix it, you need to disable dynamic ticks by opening an elevated command prompt and entering:

bcdedit /set disabledynamictick yes

Article: http://www.withinwindows.com/2012/06/28/workaround-for-windows-8-freezing-issues/

 

[piasabird]

Microsoft is betting on the idea that tablets will outsell desktops in 2013. I read an article on toms hardware where Microsoft was predicting this. I was using one of the toms hardware apps, so it did not give me a link address.

I was using an Asus tablet and I don't really like it. Navigation is slow and clumsy without a keyboard and mouse. I think it might be better with a wireless mini keyboard. This might just be the OS that they put on these things. They load pages slow and are just a pain. Maybe I am to critical. It is kind of funny how people get these small net top laptops and then try to use a New OS like Win8. Most of them don't have high enough screen resolution to run it.

 

[Chiefcrowe]

this seems cool -

Protecting user files with File History

https://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive...-files-with-file-history.aspx?Redirected=true

 

[ViRGE]

this seems cool -

Protecting user files with File History

https://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive...-files-with-file-history.aspx?Redirected=true

I figured MS would come up with a Time Machine facsimile sooner or later. So this isn't particularly surprising.

 

[hhhd1]

Here is a good idea .. lets through away multi-tasking and make a tablet friendly os for desktops ..

I am hopping that this metro style is optional .. , and there would be a way to get the old non-intrusive start menu back

Other than that, the changes made to windows explorer are pretty good.

 

[piasabird]

I think the Metro Bits and the Desktop app are kind of intermingled. However, it seems to have two different browsers for Internet explorer. One form an app and one from the desktop. The app explorer uses flash in a different way. I could not get it to go into full screen mode. It is possible my screen resolution was not good enough to get it to work right. It must be that my old integrated video is only 720p. I was reading that Microsoft is limiting flash based on internet trusted site addresses for video.

Maybe this is Microsoft's attempt to make the OS more compartamentalized and object oriented. It is hard to say from a user's perspective.

 

[hoorah]

For anyone wanting to test Windows 8, there's a known bug in the Release Preview that causes system freezing. To fix it, you need to disable dynamic ticks by opening an elevated command prompt and entering:

bcdedit /set disabledynamictick yes

Article: http://www.withinwindows.com/2012/06/28/workaround-for-windows-8-freezing-issues/

Appreciate this. Mine seems to spiral out of any sort of stability after going to sleep and resuming. I will give this a try.

 

[Slaanesh]

I'm still not sold on the Metro screen.

Let's say I want to run "Remote Desktop Connection", but for some reason I don't quite remember the program's name. Let's say it's not on the standard Metro screen.
What do I do?

 

[StinkyPinky]

I'm still not sold on the Metro screen.

Let's say I want to run "Remote Desktop Connection", but for some reason I don't quite remember the program's name. Let's say it's not on the standard Metro screen.
What do I do?

What would you do on Windows 7?

You search for it. And if you use it often, you pin it to the taskbar (and possibly also the metro screen if you like).

I have about a dozen applications at least pinned to my taskbar on the desktop. That covers about 99% of my daily use. I never really see the metro screen.

 

[Slaanesh]

What would you do on Windows 7?

You search for it. And if you use it often, you pin it to the taskbar (and possibly also the metro screen if you like).

I have about a dozen applications at least pinned to my taskbar on the desktop. That covers about 99% of my daily use. I never really see the metro screen.

Nope, I know it's somewhere in the start menu so I'll find it fast. But if it's not on the Metro screen, where do I start looking for it?

 

[WildW]

If you right-click the background of the start screen you get a bar appear at the bottom of the screen with an "All apps" button. That button takes you to a screen with a big list of apps, and Remote Desktop is indeed there in relatively plain sight.

Finding that screen helped me a lot, but it was by either pure luck or clicking everywhere that I did. Not intuitive.

 

[Kristijonas]

Critical update for win8!! Can be downloaded through windows update. It's supposed to fix the freeze issue with Chrome, Firefox and skype. The only bug that was actually irritating sometimes. There are some other updates as well. Enjoy!

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2727113

"This problem may occur because of an issue in the interaction between the state-machine driving dynamic tick transitions and the state-machine-driving clock rate changes."

So it supposedly fixes the same thing as this workaround mentioned above:

For anyone wanting to test Windows 8, there's a known bug in the Release Preview that causes system freezing. To fix it, you need to disable dynamic ticks by opening an elevated command prompt and entering:

bcdedit /set disabledynamictick yes

Article: http://www.withinwindows.com/2012/06/28/workaround-for-windows-8-freezing-issues/

 

[dagamer34]

I'm still not sold on the Metro screen.

Let's say I want to run "Remote Desktop Connection", but for some reason I don't quite remember the program's name. Let's say it's not on the standard Metro screen.
What do I do?

1) You start typing letters at the start screen. When it says "No apps found", you delete all the letters and you get a list of all the apps installed on your system.
2) You press Ctrl+Q to again get a list of all apps installed on your system.

That's why by default ALL apps installed on the system appear on the Start Screen. You have to purposefully remove them for them not to be there. If it's a Metro app, you'll go looking in the Windows Store to download it again (finding out it's already been installed) and if it's a desktop app, you'll use a search engine to figure out the name of the app.

But honestly, how often do you forget the name of an app? If you're talking about your parents or someone else not used to computers, the start menu is too tiny to ever have really helped them since icons are far more recognizable than text. Leave a shortcut on the desktop for a desktop app then.

 

[hhhd1]

Metro start screen is just like windows media center, ..
both have big a** buttons and no multitasking.

was media center 'that successful' in desktop environments in the past to the level of adapting its style all over the OS ?

anybody uses media center to play movies or music (in desktop environment) ?

 

[hhhd1]

when i click left click on metro, i get a button saying 'all apps'
when i click it i get all installed apps list,

is it possible to make that behavior the default, without having to left click ..
and hide all metro apps

 

[Ichinisan]

Metro start screen is just like windows media center, ..
both have big a** buttons and no multitasking.

was media center 'that successful' in desktop environments in the past to the level of adapting its style all over the OS ?

anybody uses media center to play movies or music (in desktop environment) ?

That's not what Media Center is for. Unlike Apple's Front Row, Media Center is meant for watching live TV and recording TV as a DVR.

I have an HDHomeRun Prime triple tuner with a cablecard. Media Center is on all day long. It's a much better interface and DVR than the Scientific Atlanta cable boxes my cableco uses. Also, my recording capacity is much higher.