Windows 8 Windows 8 beta has arrived ...

[V_R]

Right, downloading and then i'll have a play....

 

[Ian]

Are you going to dual-boot or use a VM?

 

[Abarbarian]

@ 3.3gb download may wait till it comes out on a pc mag cover disc.
with our bb it would take about 30hrs+ to download!

If you asked sweetly enough I'm sure someone would burn a copy to dvd and post it to you.

 

[V_R]

Are you going to dual-boot or use a VM?

Not sure tbh Ian. Was thinking about partitioning my SSD and installing on that? Is that possible? Obviously the last thing i want to do is bork my Win 7 install...

If not then just bung it on an old drive i've got knocking about.


The only thing that i've foreseen being an issue is my creative sound card and the drivers.....! lol


BTW, Nvidia 64 bit Windows 8 compatible drivers here....
http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7-winvista-64bit-295.73-whql-driver.html

 

[floppybootstomp]

Now have it fired up on a 120Gb hard disk it has all to itself.

First impression - Yuk. Yukkety yuk yukking yuk even, I do not like like it at all.

However..... I know I should give it more time and get used to it and I intend to do that. I've only got a 120Gb HDD and my Steam folder is around 460Gb but I think I'll install Steam and then install a few games from disk into Steam and play them, that should be a good test.

A lot of my dislike stems from the fact this is a very intrusive operating system. Microsoft seem to want to control every aspect of your machine and aprove or disaprove of every single piece of software you want to use. I chose custom install and if you do then you'll see just how much MS want to more or less take over your machine. And there's a couple of optoions that can't be disabled.

I used my Windows Live password and gmail address to log in, you will need a Windows ID of one sort or another to use Win 8. On boot, which is remarkably quick I have to say with the bare bones OS, you are presented with a set of squares just like the touch screen on a mobile phone. My initial reaction is one of discomfort and bewilderment but I dare say I could get used to it. 16 years of a Windows based OS is hard to shake off though.

So I go online and Bing is the default search engine, I haven't worked out how to make Google default yet. If you want to turn off safe search in your search engine you will have to tell Microsoft you are over 18. When I eventually found my way out of Bing and IE I returned to something resembling the kind of desktop I'm used to. That's better, starting to feel comfortable with this thing now.

Win 8 couldn't enable my Creative X-Fi Audio soundcard which is odd cos all Linux distros I've used with this machine have recognised all hardware, including the soundcard. So I'll try the motherboard drivers and Nvidia video drivers shortly.

MS now have a link to their store, something wich Apple have been doing since the Industrial revolution, took 'em long enough to catch on. Whilst I do object to MS's interference in the way I use my computer I do not object to them having a store, after all, I might want to buy something, you never know.

And that is my very first initial impression, no doubt to change with familiarity. I really do not like MS's intrusiveness and it's this factor which makes Linux Mint 12 KDE an even more attractive proposition than it is now.

 

[Ian]

Not sure tbh Ian. Was thinking about partitioning my SSD and installing on that? Is that possible? Obviously the last thing i want to do is bork my Win 7 install...

If not then just bung it on an old drive i've got knocking about.

Yeah, partitioning the SSD is fine if you go the dual boot method... but if you've got a spare drive then you may as well keep the SSD all for your main OS .

First impression - Yuk. Yukkety yuk yukking yuk even, I do not like like it at all.

I'm in two minds about it, but I think that's just because I don't like the new start page. I'll just disable Metro once it is released, as it's next to useless on a desktop - then it should be almost like Windows 7, but faster .

 

[V_R]

Yeah will probs just install onto a new drive, would like to see how it runs off the SSD but not sure i cba with quite so much faffing...

From what i've read it seems Win8 runs faster and uses less RAM. Most seem to think Metro is great on phones, and a touch screen device. On a PC with M & KB it seems its not so good....

But i will see what i make of it myself this weekend when i have time to play....

 

[V_R]

Windows 8 Consumer Preview keynote at Mobile World Congress 2012

 

[V_R]

So what's peoples thoughts on this?

I still haven't had the time to try it, was going to on Saturday, but just never got round to it in the end....

Will try and have a play this weekend.....

 

[Ian]

I've not had a chance to use it much more either - but I'm not a big fan of the consumer preview so far. Once the tablet parts are out of the way, there are some really nice features under the hood - even little things like the task manager and disk tools.

In a few couple more weeks I'll have more of a chance to play

 

[Abarbarian]

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/zxue/archiv...consumer-preview-power-user-howto-series.aspx

Windows 8 Consumer Preview Power User How To Series

To help users quickly ramp up their experience of working with Windows 8 and find shortcuts of getting things done, I will start this “Windows 8 Consumer Preview Power User How To Series” or “Win8 HowTo“ for short or Twitter hash tag “#Win8HowTo”. To avoid reinventing the wheel, I will try to find useful info on a how-to topic from the Internet or other sources, add my comments if necessary, and share it here. I will certainly create some how-tos to share my own experience here. If you want to share your how-tos, please let me know. I will make sure I cross-reference yours in my blog.

Thought you folks might find this useful. It was posted at the other place I haunt and caught my eye.

 

[Zema Bus]

I have a feeling MS will try to force it on us, by tying it to the next Direct-X version, just like they did with Vista and Direct-X 10

There is one way to get a menu from the desktop that gives you access to most of what the old start menu contained. All you have to do is create a toolbar on the Taskbar.

This thread explains it pretty well.


If you hold your mouse down in the lower left corner you get this:

And if you right click on it (which can be tricky), you get this menu:

I played around a little with the console window. Launching the powershell allows using a familiar command that makes me wonder if it was inspired by one found in Linux/Unix shells. This was in the server version of Windows 8:

But the regular Windows 8 version also comes with Powershell:

 

[floppybootstomp]

I am having a helluva job finding my way around this thing and some controls are a bit hit-and-miss, like Zema mentioning it's hard to right click on the popup apps interface bottom left. On the right of the screen some buttons are supposed to pop out when you hover your mouse there, sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. Still, this is a beta so I expect lots of bugs will be ironed out for final release.

But I still don't like it much, I feel uncomfortable with it and I just cannot get on at all with IE9 which is installed in the beta by default. I have tried and tried and tried but cannot make Google my default search engine, it's this blasted Bing thing. It says I can pin links to favourites on the top toolbar - what frickin' toolbar? Can't figure it at all. I have IE9 on my media machine and knew I didn't like it, luckily I only use the media machine for watching video and playing music.

So if I do ever use Win 8 it will be Firefox or Opera for me I think.

Now for some positive things, my X-Fi Audio soundcard works with the Win 7 drivers from Creative. Nvidia have current drivers for Windows 8 and I have installed those. I installed Libre Office ok. Such is the level of security checking within Win 8 that I didn't dare trying to install my copy of MS Office 2003 as it's already installed on one machine and I'm sure MS would have sussed it and told me off, lol

So I'm now abandoning MS Office for good except for it's current installation on my XP install as I do need Publisher to access lots of old files. In the future I intend to use Scribus as a substitute for Publisher, am already using Scribus within Linux Mint 12 KDE.

Win 8 boots up and shuts down fast, that's a good thing.

And I installed Steam into Win 8 and have briefly played a couple of games, it works fine. Here's how I did it.

Copied my Steam installation folder from main machine (on hard drive D) to external hard disk, a total of 390Gb. Copied that to Win 8 C drive Program Files (X86) folder. deleted all files in the Steam folder except for 'Steamapps' & 'steam.exe'.

Installed Steam online and logged in and it worked. However, about three quarters of the games are updating, which is causing me a little concern, my Steam backup was about three weeks old so maybe they are just doing run of the mill updates, I hope so cos I've only got 100Gb bandwidth allowance per month with my current ISP. But I probably won't use Steam on the Win 8 install anyway, I was mostly curious to see if it would work ok.

Next up I'll be trying my new Epson P50 printer, scanner, Winamp and a host of other things. I also want to use Microsoft Security Essentials so I'll get that installed if it's not already.

All in all so far mixed feelings, things are working ok but I really don't like the new interface.

 

[V_R]

I still haven't tried this..... Not sure if i can be arsed with it if im honest, just haven't heard enough positive reactions to make me want to try it.....

Not to mention i've been way to busy to do anything at the mo!

 

[bootneck02]

I am with you V_R.

 

[EvanDavis]

I had a twiddle with the Dev Preview, couldn't be bothered really. I also think there isn't enough positive feedback because most people don't like change, And this is a major change from Windows 7

 

[bootneck02]

and you Evan Davis

 

[Anon_F]

waiting for it on the front of a pc mag dvd before i try.
downloading it is a killer on my bb.
dont think i'm missing out on anything, yet!

 

[floppybootstomp]

I think reactions here are fairly normal, it's true, people don't like change but often change can be a very good thing. I am NOT automatically against a new version of Windows, in fact I'll try my best to overcome any initial confusion finding my way round an OS and try and be positive about it.

The powers that be think we all want an apps-based OS similar to those used on mobile phones and tablets. I'm not sure. So far, must admit, I don't like it much. But I haven't formed a final opinion yet. My overall impression is that Win 8 is basically Win 7 but with a radically restyled GUI. The fact current Win 7 drivers work with Win 8 might bear out this POV.

When I clicked on a music file to play it, prior to installing Winamp, it basically told me this function wasn't supported in the UK, only the US, and tried to get me to choose a store to purchase Music. Shades of Apple there, methinks. However, installing Winamp and making it the default audio player meant no problems.

Mostly, it's ok, I think, it just seems very awkward to navigate around, I think some bugs wil eventually have to be sorted.

Looking at past versions of Windows Win 98 seemed good at the time but try it now and you'll see just how awful it actually was, it's a job and a half to get anything to run right, how anybody without a little basic computing software knowledge ever made things work is beyond me.

I never used Win 2K or Win ME (although I did try Win 2K briefly, no good for gaming as I recall) but I thought Win XP was good, Vista was a pile of poo and imo Win 7 is the best MS OS so far. And also so far, Win 8 hasn't convinced me it's a worthy sucessor to Win 7. Watch this space.

 

[Zema Bus]

I used Win 2K a lot, both at home and at work for many years, it was very good, but yeah, most games of the era didn't run on it, mainly because of the difference in architecture, as most of those games were designed for a DOS-based Windows, and Win 2K was more business oriented. So most of us had to dual boot it with Win 98. Looking at Win 8, it's hard to believe it's a descendent of Windows NT 4.0