The Windows 8 Thread

This is going to cause a world of pain with our existing apps.

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It is supposed to run 100% of WIn7 apps you know

Whats the problem the Metro stuff?

AcidHell2 said:

Wow, that was worth 2hours. No wonder they haven't released a tablet. Apple and android are going to be massively behind when this ships.

And very nice move, shipping pre developer with visual studios.people can start developing there apps and see how they work, with probably a year before release.
And they have to do so little work,I thought visual studio 8 years ago was amazing, but now it's so much easier.

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http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?p=19298965#post19298965

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?p=19916947#post19916947

Look at the reaction I got to the last one... Sheer disbelief that anybody could come along and do things better than Apple. Their fanboys are in for a big shock next year when Win8 hits the ground

Why, all aplication that worked on win7, work win8.

leaskovski said:

Just played with a windows 8 box that we now have set up in our lab, and my god, I hate it.

This is going to cause a world of pain with our existing apps.

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But people hated Windows 95 at first too. They hated the Start Menu, the Task Bar, the silly clock in the corner, the System Tray. Everything. People also hated XP's "fisherprice" look'n'feel. People hated Vista for some sort of perceived "bloat". People hated W7 because it was barely any different from Vista except the taskbar. There is a pattern emerging here?

People change. Windows 8 is finally delivering on Bill Gates' token "On any device" dream that he kept reiterating during the 90's and early 2000's: http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=bill+gate+"on+any+device"

Nobody was really quite certain, even probably himself, quite what his vision would amount to back then. But it has been pretty crystal clear for a couple years now what that was. And how it can be realised, today. Windows 8 is the realisation of that dream.

Microsoft will no longer need to be embarrassed by their "tablet PC" offering. They were first to market with this form factor. But they are finally doing it the "right" way with Windows 8. They're merging together all these new concepts over the last decade of tablet PCs, cloud computing, web services, mobile devices and they are delivering a single OS that will do it all.

Other OSes like Linux and OSX are still fumbling around merely trying to get hardware accelerated desktop to work in a meaningful way. Microsoft cracked that back in 2006 with Vista.

Apple is forcing people to develop with their proprietary "Objective C" piece of **** language and compilers. Microsoft isn't, and never has, forced a language choice on their developers. Windows has always been language-agnostic. And the new WinRT continues this trend, and actually further improves Microsoft's commitment in this area.

It just goes to show how Microsoft's rivals are, on some tracks, at least 5 years behind the game.

Apple is going to regret putting iOS onto their iPad, in a big way. It was a smart move originally, as it let them get to market quicker. But it isn't scalable and is merely a stop-gap measure. At some point (if not already) Apple will realise this and start putting in place a similar development track on OSX as what Microsoft are doing in Windows 8.

It feels like Microsoft has been in limbo since around 2001. But actually they've just been quietly plotting and building up for the next major overhaul of the Windows platform and their ecosystem in general. All the work they've done, from .NET, Silverlight, IE9's HTML5 engine, Vista's desktop compositor/GPU hardware acceleration have all been leading toward this big step. This step is on par with the step between Windows 3.1 to Windows 95, probably actually a greater step. It's of course larger than the step between XP to Vista.

Just playing around with it on my test PC

I'm unsure of the tiled interface, are they actually intending for it to try and be the norm for desktop PCs or are they just showing it off in this test? As my one major gripe straight away is: how the hell do i actually close the programs besides going to the desktop view > task manager > ending the task

It seems very clean, but if this is intended to be the new desktop experience i'm not looking forward to having to do all the group policies for this in order to lock it down within a school environment.

EDIT: Does anyone know if it's possible to simplify the horrible ribbon bar? I can't stand the giant chunky pictures.

I'm sure it will be highly customizable for various environments.

I think they are trying to really get developers invloved in metro now so when it launches there will be a heathly selection of apps to really show it off.

You don't need to close software. They go into hibernation mode and use next to nothing.
I really think for home users metro will be the standard and developers will use desktop. Both are avilable.

I really would recommend watching the keynotes, to see how it all works. It is mind blowing. There's enough in there to show how all the interface works.

AcidHell2 said:

You don't need to close software. They go into hibernation mode and use next to nothing.
I really think for home users metro will be the standard and developers will use desktop. Both are avilable.

I really would recommend watching the keynotes, to see how it all works. It is mind blowing. There's enough in there to show how all the interface works.

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Being the performance whore that i am i can't help but be a bit skeptical about programs hibernating instead of completely closing.... but i'm sure you can understand why

I'm brainstorming as to what it might look like and what customisation they're going to allow, the more i look at it the more i'm thinking the metro view might work in a school, so long as i can put the tiles in to tile groups with headings etc. Certainly looking forward to seeing the finished product now that i've seen this though.

EDIT: anyone know a way to change the background colour to the tile section? the green is pretty manky

Without sharing the fanboy enthusiasm shown by NathanE ... I must say I ' l i e k' and welcome change / innovation

If all the above is true then it's exciting.

Tiles are dynamic so can display info, wether and email are the obvious ones.
In desktop mode you get the normal chrome interface with close buttons, all keyboard shortcuts still work and they have implemented more, so can probably close in metro like that.
After watching it other than heavy work related comps, I'm not sure why people would want an empty desktop over live tiles.

There's a he'll of a lot of info in the keynotes.

Testing it atm and I don't like it. Anyone worked out how to turn the kiddy ui off yet?

Just press window key and you can flip between desktop/metro.

Kiddy userface, lol.
So rarer than a 25by25pixel picture, live tiles that actually show you relevant info and customisable are kiddy.
People always hate new stuff, then shortly fall in love

There's even keyboard shortcut to switch between metro and desktop, whilst in an app. For example if your in ie9 metro, you can do keyboard shortcut and it instantly morons into the desktop version. I forget which keys it is.

It's all in the keynotes. Again watch it, realise how powerful, simple and easy w8 is.

Epic new BSOD screen is epic:

Ha ha

Awesome! That's almost desktop wallpaper worthy

mrbios
Awesome! That's almost desktop wallpaper worthy

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I agree. lol

Though a :'( smiley would have been even better

You are joking right?

AcidHell2 said:

Just press window key and you can flip between desktop/metro.

Kiddy userface, lol.
So rarer than a 25by25pixel picture, live tiles that actually show you relevant info and customisable are kiddy.
People always hate new stuff, then shortly fall in love

There's even keyboard shortcut to switch between metro and desktop, whilst in an app. For example if your in ie9 metro, you can do keyboard shortcut and it instantly morons into the desktop version. I forget which keys it is.

It's all in the keynotes. Again watch it, realise how powerful, simple and easy w8 is.

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That's what they said about Vista. After the Vista shambles i'll never trust MS again.

How many of you are online account registration vs local accounts.

I'm wondering if the online accounts are portable as in Joli OS

Edinho said:

You are joking right?




That's what they said about Vista. After the Vista shambles i'll never trust MS again.

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Am now taking bets that this post was written on a Windows machine. Odds are extremely favourable.