Windows 8 - First Impressions
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Here, if you're interested, are my first impressions of Windows 8: So yesterday, Windows 8 was released to developers on MSDN. I took it home and installed it on an old Athlon 64 machine with 2 Gb of RAM, just to see how it would perform on a slow piece of hardware. The installation took hours... and then, when it was done, the experience began... and it was an experience - I can tell you that much. Windows 8 is the John Forbes Nash of operating systems: utterly schizophrenic and completely brilliant. I can state unequivocally that you've never seen anything like it: the thing is years ahead of anything else on the market, and it completely redefines what a computer is supposed to be used for. The first thing it wants you to do is to bind your user ID to a Microsoft account, on the understanding that if you do, you'll have access to a bunch of online stuff that would normally appear opaque to you, or at least difficult to get at, such as their App store, and so on. So I did this. The setup program said confusing things like, "If you log in using your Microsoft address then you'll have access to....[a list of stuff]", so the first thing I did when I'd managed to get it to start was to open a command prompt and say, "whoami" -- it responded "dsutton"... so it had managed to retain my Windows user ID, and at an operating system level, that's who I remained. Much has been made of Windows 8's tiled interface, and that's where the fun starts. The operating system is built around the concept of feeds: a feed can be anything: a news feed, a mail server, Facebook... you name it. If you're a programmer, you can write your own feeds, or get your programs to hook into existing feeds. Microsoft (and WIndows) makes the distinction between old-style applications and "Apps", the latter being applications which run off tiles in the new "Start" screen (Windows' new RT mode). All Apps run full-screen: there's no windowing at all -- in this respect, the thing is like a phone or an iPad. The old Windows desktop is an App, as well, and with it, you get to run all the programs you're used to, and to see Windows the way you're used to seeing it. The Start screen is in some ways analogous to the main panel of the old Start menu: you can pin programs to it (they appear as "Tiles") and if you move the mouse into the corners, it starts doing stuff. You can get an "All Programs" list, which is a 2D view of the old Start Menu's hierarchy, separated into groups: right-click on anything in that, and you can pin it to the main Start
Thanks for very helpful review, Dan! :thumbsup: /ravi
My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com
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They should be separate. I'm basing it on the fact that W8 RT will run on ARM processors, but you won't get desktop on ARM. This would imply that RT is not an app built on top of desktop, but a separate path/presentation layer/environment with quick link to desktop (as long as you're running x86 cpu and not ARM). I've had W8 RC installed in virtual machine. I'm not as enthusiastic about it as you are, It's not as horrible as some people describe it, but I see a lot of the changes such as lack of start menu as huge productivity killers. It helps to accept W8 if you start thinking of RT/Metro as the new start menu, the kind that takes full screen, but it still doesn't change the fact that I can get to the most frequently used programs that I have not pinned down from start menu in W7 with a mouse only, in W8 I have to move my hand over to keyboard to do the same thing. And like you said, the way to shut down your PC is retarded. Luckily there are third party start menu replacements, but I still think it was dumb to remove start button.
That makes sense. It makes me wonder how you manage Windows services, drivers, etc. when it is running on an ARM processor. I assume the concept of services is the same, but given what I have come to understand, you will not have access to that sort of thing from the RT. A "normal" user might not need to worry about those things, but it is important to us developers. I guess I should set some time aside for installing and trying out Windows 8. Soren Madsen
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Another thought: the Desktop presents as a running application in the RT screen... and there's an option to shut it down, just like any other app. I haven't done that, though (didn't think of it at the time) so perhaps RT does take precedence: it's not as though you can shut down the Start page from the desktop... it might all be smoke and mirrors, though: you could kill Explorer in the task manager in past versions of Windows, too...
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Oh - Ctrl/Alt/Del does the same as it does normally -- you get a full screen asking you if you want the task manager, ... You could probably shut down that way (not sitting in front of it right now and can't remember). But if you ask for the task manager, it presents it in the Desktop environment. By the way, the task manager has a bunch of new stuff in it: statistics, graphs, etc. Quite cool.
I was actually also going to ask what the Windows keys on the keyboard do when you are in the RT/Metro environment. Do their actions seem to make perfect sense or do they feel more like something that had to be massaged in there to fit? Alright, I will take a crack at installing the darn thing as soon as I have a little bit of time :-O Soren Madsen
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I was actually also going to ask what the Windows keys on the keyboard do when you are in the RT/Metro environment. Do their actions seem to make perfect sense or do they feel more like something that had to be massaged in there to fit? Alright, I will take a crack at installing the darn thing as soon as I have a little bit of time :-O Soren Madsen
If you start typing when you're in the Start screen, then it switches to a "Search" type thing which lets you find programs by name. The main Start screen displays a selection of stuff... but typing the name of something searches all the programs - not just the ones you can see (you can also show the entire list using the "All Programs" thing). It seems that the "Windows" key (which looks like a Window) has become a toggle between the desktop and the Start Page (which is kind of handy).
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Thanks for very helpful review, Dan! :thumbsup: /ravi
My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com
I have been running the consumer preview with this 3rd party start bar. http://lee-soft.com/vistart/ Ms is said to have been working on prohibiting 3rd parties from do this. Mind trying it on your test machine and tell me if it still works? Thanks, :Ron
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I have been running the consumer preview with this 3rd party start bar. http://lee-soft.com/vistart/ Ms is said to have been working on prohibiting 3rd parties from do this. Mind trying it on your test machine and tell me if it still works? Thanks, :Ron
You may want to post a reply to Dan's message. /ravi
My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com
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Dan Sutton wrote:
(remember I only have 2 Gb in the machine in the first place)This was very impressive to me.
Good to hear this. I am interested to know how fast was the startup (boot) time? Nice post, BTW :thumbsup:
I have an old HP DV7, Centrino 2 4Gb RAM. Windows 7 took around 1 minute to start. I counted around 20 seconds to be able to log into Windows 8. Take in account I only have installed VMWare Player :)
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I have an old HP DV7, Centrino 2 4Gb RAM. Windows 7 took around 1 minute to start. I counted around 20 seconds to be able to log into Windows 8. Take in account I only have installed VMWare Player :)
Please, come back and let us know what's the boot time once you've installed everything you need in your brand new W8 installation. Looking forward to know what the results are. ;P ;P
Juan José Arana. ;o)
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Here, if you're interested, are my first impressions of Windows 8: So yesterday, Windows 8 was released to developers on MSDN. I took it home and installed it on an old Athlon 64 machine with 2 Gb of RAM, just to see how it would perform on a slow piece of hardware. The installation took hours... and then, when it was done, the experience began... and it was an experience - I can tell you that much. Windows 8 is the John Forbes Nash of operating systems: utterly schizophrenic and completely brilliant. I can state unequivocally that you've never seen anything like it: the thing is years ahead of anything else on the market, and it completely redefines what a computer is supposed to be used for. The first thing it wants you to do is to bind your user ID to a Microsoft account, on the understanding that if you do, you'll have access to a bunch of online stuff that would normally appear opaque to you, or at least difficult to get at, such as their App store, and so on. So I did this. The setup program said confusing things like, "If you log in using your Microsoft address then you'll have access to....[a list of stuff]", so the first thing I did when I'd managed to get it to start was to open a command prompt and say, "whoami" -- it responded "dsutton"... so it had managed to retain my Windows user ID, and at an operating system level, that's who I remained. Much has been made of Windows 8's tiled interface, and that's where the fun starts. The operating system is built around the concept of feeds: a feed can be anything: a news feed, a mail server, Facebook... you name it. If you're a programmer, you can write your own feeds, or get your programs to hook into existing feeds. Microsoft (and WIndows) makes the distinction between old-style applications and "Apps", the latter being applications which run off tiles in the new "Start" screen (Windows' new RT mode). All Apps run full-screen: there's no windowing at all -- in this respect, the thing is like a phone or an iPad. The old Windows desktop is an App, as well, and with it, you get to run all the programs you're used to, and to see Windows the way you're used to seeing it. The Start screen is in some ways analogous to the main panel of the old Start menu: you can pin programs to it (they appear as "Tiles") and if you move the mouse into the corners, it starts doing stuff. You can get an "All Programs" list, which is a 2D view of the old Start Menu's hierarchy, separated into groups: right-click on anything in that, and you can pin it to the main Start
As a business user, I don't like Windows 8. I do not need to use Apps for tablet or phone at work. I like to work in a familiar environment. If the interface of Windows 8 is similar to Windows 7, it will be ideal. A better approach is that Microsoft should name Windows 8 as Windows Metro mainly for tablet, phone and home users and the name Windows 8 is reserved as the upgrade version of Windows 7. I am even more disappointing that Windows 2012 Server uses Interface similar to Windows 8. System Administrators usually have to work with different versions of server. Forcing them to work with less familiar interface will make their lives more difficult. They want better functions or performance, not beautiful interface.
petersgyoung
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Please, come back and let us know what's the boot time once you've installed everything you need in your brand new W8 installation. Looking forward to know what the results are. ;P ;P
Juan José Arana. ;o)
W7 alone took more than half a minute to boot, so it looks promising. If the boot performance worsens at the same rate as W7, within a month instead of needing 2 minutes to boot my laptop I will need just one, so I'm really happy :) :)
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As a business user, I don't like Windows 8. I do not need to use Apps for tablet or phone at work. I like to work in a familiar environment. If the interface of Windows 8 is similar to Windows 7, it will be ideal. A better approach is that Microsoft should name Windows 8 as Windows Metro mainly for tablet, phone and home users and the name Windows 8 is reserved as the upgrade version of Windows 7. I am even more disappointing that Windows 2012 Server uses Interface similar to Windows 8. System Administrators usually have to work with different versions of server. Forcing them to work with less familiar interface will make their lives more difficult. They want better functions or performance, not beautiful interface.
petersgyoung
I quite agree we should never have moved from Windows 3 to all these other UI's , I am considered reactionary, many think MSDOS was perfect and should never have been replaced.
You cant outrun the world, but there is no harm in getting a head start Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.
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I was actually also going to ask what the Windows keys on the keyboard do when you are in the RT/Metro environment. Do their actions seem to make perfect sense or do they feel more like something that had to be massaged in there to fit? Alright, I will take a crack at installing the darn thing as soon as I have a little bit of time :-O Soren Madsen
The hardest thing to do is shut it down. It needs a degree in upside down thinking to figure it out. I just removed the Windows 8 partition from my PC. Personally I hated it.
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Here, if you're interested, are my first impressions of Windows 8: So yesterday, Windows 8 was released to developers on MSDN. I took it home and installed it on an old Athlon 64 machine with 2 Gb of RAM, just to see how it would perform on a slow piece of hardware. The installation took hours... and then, when it was done, the experience began... and it was an experience - I can tell you that much. Windows 8 is the John Forbes Nash of operating systems: utterly schizophrenic and completely brilliant. I can state unequivocally that you've never seen anything like it: the thing is years ahead of anything else on the market, and it completely redefines what a computer is supposed to be used for. The first thing it wants you to do is to bind your user ID to a Microsoft account, on the understanding that if you do, you'll have access to a bunch of online stuff that would normally appear opaque to you, or at least difficult to get at, such as their App store, and so on. So I did this. The setup program said confusing things like, "If you log in using your Microsoft address then you'll have access to....[a list of stuff]", so the first thing I did when I'd managed to get it to start was to open a command prompt and say, "whoami" -- it responded "dsutton"... so it had managed to retain my Windows user ID, and at an operating system level, that's who I remained. Much has been made of Windows 8's tiled interface, and that's where the fun starts. The operating system is built around the concept of feeds: a feed can be anything: a news feed, a mail server, Facebook... you name it. If you're a programmer, you can write your own feeds, or get your programs to hook into existing feeds. Microsoft (and WIndows) makes the distinction between old-style applications and "Apps", the latter being applications which run off tiles in the new "Start" screen (Windows' new RT mode). All Apps run full-screen: there's no windowing at all -- in this respect, the thing is like a phone or an iPad. The old Windows desktop is an App, as well, and with it, you get to run all the programs you're used to, and to see Windows the way you're used to seeing it. The Start screen is in some ways analogous to the main panel of the old Start menu: you can pin programs to it (they appear as "Tiles") and if you move the mouse into the corners, it starts doing stuff. You can get an "All Programs" list, which is a 2D view of the old Start Menu's hierarchy, separated into groups: right-click on anything in that, and you can pin it to the main Start
Shutting down is easy - I do it the same way I have always done it in Windows, as far back as I can remember: Alt+F4
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Here, if you're interested, are my first impressions of Windows 8: So yesterday, Windows 8 was released to developers on MSDN. I took it home and installed it on an old Athlon 64 machine with 2 Gb of RAM, just to see how it would perform on a slow piece of hardware. The installation took hours... and then, when it was done, the experience began... and it was an experience - I can tell you that much. Windows 8 is the John Forbes Nash of operating systems: utterly schizophrenic and completely brilliant. I can state unequivocally that you've never seen anything like it: the thing is years ahead of anything else on the market, and it completely redefines what a computer is supposed to be used for. The first thing it wants you to do is to bind your user ID to a Microsoft account, on the understanding that if you do, you'll have access to a bunch of online stuff that would normally appear opaque to you, or at least difficult to get at, such as their App store, and so on. So I did this. The setup program said confusing things like, "If you log in using your Microsoft address then you'll have access to....[a list of stuff]", so the first thing I did when I'd managed to get it to start was to open a command prompt and say, "whoami" -- it responded "dsutton"... so it had managed to retain my Windows user ID, and at an operating system level, that's who I remained. Much has been made of Windows 8's tiled interface, and that's where the fun starts. The operating system is built around the concept of feeds: a feed can be anything: a news feed, a mail server, Facebook... you name it. If you're a programmer, you can write your own feeds, or get your programs to hook into existing feeds. Microsoft (and WIndows) makes the distinction between old-style applications and "Apps", the latter being applications which run off tiles in the new "Start" screen (Windows' new RT mode). All Apps run full-screen: there's no windowing at all -- in this respect, the thing is like a phone or an iPad. The old Windows desktop is an App, as well, and with it, you get to run all the programs you're used to, and to see Windows the way you're used to seeing it. The Start screen is in some ways analogous to the main panel of the old Start menu: you can pin programs to it (they appear as "Tiles") and if you move the mouse into the corners, it starts doing stuff. You can get an "All Programs" list, which is a 2D view of the old Start Menu's hierarchy, separated into groups: right-click on anything in that, and you can pin it to the main Start
great post. I've been running the Consumer Preview (and then Release Preview) as my *sole* OS since they were kicked out. People were always surprised and then I simply explained it's Win7 + goodies. I would show them the lack of a start button, and you could see the panic wash over their face. My advice to everybody I've ever talked to about Windows 8 and whether or not they'll like it, if it will succeed, etc has simply been this: Use Windows 8 for 40 hours total - not 5 days where you sit down a few hours at a time, but 40 hours total before you make a judgement. Until you've done this, you haven't immersed yourself in the workflow of Desktop <-> RT, how they *can* interact (clipboard, etc) how they can't, what RT apps bring to the table, etc. So for anybody thinking about getting the RP or RTM and trying it out to see how they like it, keep this in mind before writing a post :) :cool:
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:thumbsup: Thank you for sharing this. I have not really looked for Windows 8 reviews before, but whenever I stumble upon one, they don't seem to have thought of the "desktop mode" as having Windows 7 in a VM. It seems like a great way to describe it. I was wondering what [Ctrl][Alt][Del] does under Windows 8. Is it not possible to shut down the PC that way? Soren Madsen
Actually, everyone seems the Metro interface as a GUI on top of the old Desktop, and not the other way, just as Windows was a graphical layer on top of MS-DOS, i think.
CEO at: - Rafaga Systems - Para Facturas - Modern Components for the moment...
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great post. I've been running the Consumer Preview (and then Release Preview) as my *sole* OS since they were kicked out. People were always surprised and then I simply explained it's Win7 + goodies. I would show them the lack of a start button, and you could see the panic wash over their face. My advice to everybody I've ever talked to about Windows 8 and whether or not they'll like it, if it will succeed, etc has simply been this: Use Windows 8 for 40 hours total - not 5 days where you sit down a few hours at a time, but 40 hours total before you make a judgement. Until you've done this, you haven't immersed yourself in the workflow of Desktop <-> RT, how they *can* interact (clipboard, etc) how they can't, what RT apps bring to the table, etc. So for anybody thinking about getting the RP or RTM and trying it out to see how they like it, keep this in mind before writing a post :) :cool:
I've running it as my primary OS (almost sole OS) since the Developer Preview and i found it quite good, it got me a little job to get used to the interface (specially when they quit the Start Button), but now i can be very productive with it.
CEO at: - Rafaga Systems - Para Facturas - Modern Components for the moment...
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Here, if you're interested, are my first impressions of Windows 8: So yesterday, Windows 8 was released to developers on MSDN. I took it home and installed it on an old Athlon 64 machine with 2 Gb of RAM, just to see how it would perform on a slow piece of hardware. The installation took hours... and then, when it was done, the experience began... and it was an experience - I can tell you that much. Windows 8 is the John Forbes Nash of operating systems: utterly schizophrenic and completely brilliant. I can state unequivocally that you've never seen anything like it: the thing is years ahead of anything else on the market, and it completely redefines what a computer is supposed to be used for. The first thing it wants you to do is to bind your user ID to a Microsoft account, on the understanding that if you do, you'll have access to a bunch of online stuff that would normally appear opaque to you, or at least difficult to get at, such as their App store, and so on. So I did this. The setup program said confusing things like, "If you log in using your Microsoft address then you'll have access to....[a list of stuff]", so the first thing I did when I'd managed to get it to start was to open a command prompt and say, "whoami" -- it responded "dsutton"... so it had managed to retain my Windows user ID, and at an operating system level, that's who I remained. Much has been made of Windows 8's tiled interface, and that's where the fun starts. The operating system is built around the concept of feeds: a feed can be anything: a news feed, a mail server, Facebook... you name it. If you're a programmer, you can write your own feeds, or get your programs to hook into existing feeds. Microsoft (and WIndows) makes the distinction between old-style applications and "Apps", the latter being applications which run off tiles in the new "Start" screen (Windows' new RT mode). All Apps run full-screen: there's no windowing at all -- in this respect, the thing is like a phone or an iPad. The old Windows desktop is an App, as well, and with it, you get to run all the programs you're used to, and to see Windows the way you're used to seeing it. The Start screen is in some ways analogous to the main panel of the old Start menu: you can pin programs to it (they appear as "Tiles") and if you move the mouse into the corners, it starts doing stuff. You can get an "All Programs" list, which is a 2D view of the old Start Menu's hierarchy, separated into groups: right-click on anything in that, and you can pin it to the main Start
The Anti-virus is still there, it's now part of the base install. It's under the guise of Windows Defender. Call it up from the Control Panel and you'll see it looks just like Security Essentials. Maybe this is just me, however, I did like the fact that in previous versions of Windows, you could see Security Essentials running down in the taskbar and easily view its status, not so in this version.
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The Anti-virus is still there, it's now part of the base install. It's under the guise of Windows Defender. Call it up from the Control Panel and you'll see it looks just like Security Essentials. Maybe this is just me, however, I did like the fact that in previous versions of Windows, you could see Security Essentials running down in the taskbar and easily view its status, not so in this version.
Yeah - I found that out later... of course, Windows is so friendly now that it doesn't bother to "worry" you about such trivialities!!
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Shutting down is easy - I do it the same way I have always done it in Windows, as far back as I can remember: Alt+F4
Huh. I tried that but it didn't work. So, because I'm too lazy to keep doing it the way Windows wants me to, I created a CMD file which says, "shutdown /t 0 /s" in it, so now I can just double-click on it.