The Windows 8 Thread
- Thread starter MR.B
- Start date
- Status
vmware workstation isn't free either. i'm using the 30 day trial which does mean jumping through hoops registering on the vmware site. i had to make up a load of twaddle about a non existant IT company and the role i have within it.
I thought I might be able to run Windows 8 inside VMWare Player (on my Windows 7 laptop)? However, as it's not available for Mac, I think I'll just use VirtualBox.
I understand but I don't like to try software if I know I won't buy it, so it's VirtualBox for me.
Is it possible to get Win 8 running better on VMware or VirtualBox? On both i've got Win 8 using 8GB and 8 CPU cores. It still blows but it's better than Win7 virtualized. It's the same with any OS i try with virtualization though. For instance just dragging a window around the screen is laggy... i suppose this is the norm. And you can see my system specs in my sig so it's obviously not my hardware.
I'd recommend just installing Win 8 on a partition or VHD to get a proper feel for the OS. Otherwise it's like driving a ferrari with a ford ka engine.
I'd recommend just installing Win 8 on a partition or VHD to get a proper feel for the OS. Otherwise it's like driving a ferrari with a ford ka engine.
That's odd. I have been running Windows 8 using VirtualBox on Windows 7 with an allocated 4 GB RAM, 2 x 2.4 GHz Core i5 cores and 75 MB RAM on the nVidia 880M graphics chip and it's really smooth. Have you enabled full hardware virtualisation? I'm running the 64-bit version of Windows 8.
Yeah i've enabled full hardware virtualization. So it's not normal for virtualization to run this bad then? I've tried all different settings but nothing is helping, even gone up to to 12GB and 12 cores. With VirtualBox i've set 256MB for the GPU, highest it will go. VMware dont seem to have a option for that though. This is also with x64 Win 8 running on Win 7. It's just the animations and UI that lag, loading and other things are still fast.
On a setup like that virtualbox should fly. So you've got 3d/2d hardware virtualisation setup? You could try setting it to less cores, and set affinity to make sure its on real cores.
Man of Honour
I've got mine running on VMware Workstation 8 and it flies on a power 64 bit SLI system. It ran ok on 1GB and now very fast on 4GB. Says it’s using only 1 processor/core. I didn’t play with any settings and it’s automatically picked up 3d acceleration and the processor. You must be doing something wrong.
i tested windows 8 on vwmare8 with 1gb of ram assigned and 2 cores and it's fine. admittedly i've only tested a bit of web browsing and messing around with the metro apps. animations and switching apps is very snappy.
my host is rubbish: windows 7/[email protected] and 3gb of ram. in case you aren't aware, running VMs on a separate physical hard disk away from the host is an absolute must. as i only have one hard disk in my machine, i'm actually running my guests on an external usb2 drive.
my host is rubbish: windows 7/[email protected] and 3gb of ram. in case you aren't aware, running VMs on a separate physical hard disk away from the host is an absolute must. as i only have one hard disk in my machine, i'm actually running my guests on an external usb2 drive.
Soldato
It (the Start screen) will unquestionably be on by default. There is absolutely no way Microsoft are going to ship Windows 8 with the gateway to its flagship feature, and the future of the platform, disabled.
I do however think there should (and will be) a supported way to revert to a 'classic' start menu, for two reasons -
The first is, I think if it can be disabled without resorting to hacks it will go a long way to mitigate a lot of the complaints from the vocal minority. If you don't like it don't use it, and in my opinion even if you never run a Metro style app (not that disabling the Start screen would stop you) there are still a lot of reasons to upgrade especially if you can get the discount pricing. You'd hope that Microsoft have learnt to keep the vocal community on-side.
The second, and most importantly, is for corporate use. As it stands, and I think this will be true for quite a long time, the metro apps are geared towards consumption. News readers, weather apps, social apps, games - the sort of stuff I wouldn't want to encourage on a work computer. That's not to say I don't ever think you'll be able to be productive on a metro app, but the real work is still going to get done on the desktop applications. Mail apps, notetaking apps - even the Metro version of Office - are just not going to be as powerful as the desktop equivalent because it's completely at odds with the Metro-style guidelines.
It's also a support nightmare waiting to happen. Hypothetically - could you imagine if you rolled out Windows 8 in its current form over the weekend? I'd take Monday off unpaid just to avoid the worst of the backlash. "The start button just takes me to a green screen", "Where are my files?", "Which control panel are you using again?", "How do I shut the thing down?!". Oh, and the Intranet won't work because Metro IE10 doesn't support plugins - use the other IE10. If you think people hated Vista or the Ribbon, this would probably eclipse them both.
Yes, it is silly to imagine the above scenario at this point in time, but no more ridiculous than people making purchasing decisions based on a developer preview. The point is there will be lots of changes before it reaches beta, let alone hits the shelves, so making your judgements and drawing your battle lines now is a bit of a waste of time.
After watching this it seems that MS are betting quite heavily on tablets replacing laptops, or at least non-touchscreen laptops, in the future. The fact that the build hospitality package included a bluetooth keyboard and stand effectively turns the tablet into a laptop when working in the desktop mode. It also seems to put the screen in a comfy position for the touchscreen when docked which is a big problem for the traditional desktop with a touchscreen.
I really can see Metro replacing the classic desktop for the majority of things. I'm getting flashbacks of people complaining about the move from the MS-DOS interface to Windows 3.11 or 95. I'm sure people then were saying how useless the new Windows interface was back then as well
I'll stop you there, it isn't silly. Having done support for a few years this is practically a guarantee.
Soldato
It's hardly a "bet". More, an absolute certainty.
People like the iPad, but it is not going to reach the critical masses as it's too expensive, lacks key features that Windows users have come to expect, and it is a little rough around the edges in general. Microsoft will take the tablet PC market by storm by late 2012. By the end of 2013 they will have it all sewn up.
Just had a quick go at Windows 8 on trial edition of Vmware.
Bit of a mixed mind about it.
I am using Windows 7 64bit, and very happy with that. Obviously, I am sure there's loads of changes when the final edition of Windows 8 is released, but I don't see anything that screams to me to buy this product if it's around £100. But there is interesting positives from Windows 8.
I don't feel I am going to lose out by keeping Windows 7 and not getting Windows 8.
I like both interfaces within Windows 8 but for different reasons.
1) I like the glass style interface that seems to be nicer than the Windows 7, and I could get use to the ribbon - it can be collapsed so that's good.
However...
2) I do like some parts of Metro. It's far more suited, in my opinion, to touch screen interface and it's different and interesting to use. The start screen is very interesting and I quite like the simplicity of how it looks, the buttons etc. It's very, very clean and quite smooth to use.
There are various niggles with it that I hope will get sorted between now and release date, so it be interesting to see how it developers. What I don't want is for the new interface to take longer in accessing options than the existing Windows 7 style interface.
I don't like though how on the PC version at least it tries to have it both ways. I think it needs to be one or the other. I'd embrace Metro even more if that were to be the case.
Bit of a mixed mind about it.
I am using Windows 7 64bit, and very happy with that. Obviously, I am sure there's loads of changes when the final edition of Windows 8 is released, but I don't see anything that screams to me to buy this product if it's around £100. But there is interesting positives from Windows 8.
I don't feel I am going to lose out by keeping Windows 7 and not getting Windows 8.
I like both interfaces within Windows 8 but for different reasons.
1) I like the glass style interface that seems to be nicer than the Windows 7, and I could get use to the ribbon - it can be collapsed so that's good.
However...
2) I do like some parts of Metro. It's far more suited, in my opinion, to touch screen interface and it's different and interesting to use. The start screen is very interesting and I quite like the simplicity of how it looks, the buttons etc. It's very, very clean and quite smooth to use.
There are various niggles with it that I hope will get sorted between now and release date, so it be interesting to see how it developers. What I don't want is for the new interface to take longer in accessing options than the existing Windows 7 style interface.
I don't like though how on the PC version at least it tries to have it both ways. I think it needs to be one or the other. I'd embrace Metro even more if that were to be the case.
Soldato
win 7 will be another XP no one will need or bother to upgrade for years.
The enthusiast will most likely upgrade, but I don't see the casual person upgrading. One big reason as to why Windows 7 had a good start was the excellent price tag. Also economic times are tough and can businesses and people justify spending x amounts of money on something that is not essential?
Obviously any new PCs will have Windows 8 so will sell that way. I also don't see a big corporate take up. At my old business that was a small company and a few workstations. I only got them to upgrade to Windows 7 over the summer before I left the company. Before that it was XP on most machines and two machines with Vista that came with the machine. I don't see companies like that, especially in these economic times, spending money on Windows 8 which wont deliver them any massive benefits. Sure there's Metro and other many other features, but nothing that will make business take this up straight away.
If anything wont it cost business to train staff on how to use Metro. People already struggle with the existing taskbar style interface. Not everyone is computer literate and people do struggle with technology.
I'd like tablets to be cheaper and the Ipad is way costly, so if Windows 8 tablet can be priced much lower then I think they will do well on that front.
Last edited:
Except new apps won't work on it, as w7 doesn't have the thousands of new apis and other stiff.
People will also buy tablets, even my mum now wants a tablet from browsing in the lounge rather than sat in the study.
Once that happen monopoly takes over and you want same software running on everything.
The performance is already improved a considerable amount on this dev preview. And from past experience MS always squeeze more performance out before release. I've got Win 8 running on a ancient laptop with a P4 CPU (single core) with just 512MB RAM, and it uses over 100MB less RAM than Win 7 did, it's also noticeably faster and using less processes too - it's made it usable. On new hardware it's hard to tell any difference though because Win 7 is already fast. But maybe there will be speed improvements for gaming, networking, wifi....
Other things that will benefit literally everyone are the new power saving features, some really big improvements here not just for sleep modes. They would have to do this though because if anyones tried running Win 7 on a tablet PC before you'll know the battery life is a total joke compared to Android or iToy tablets... although half of that is from Win 7 not being able to use ARM CPU's.
But speaking of ARM... now we'll have CPU's to choose from from Nvidia, TI, Qualcomm, and others all using ARM based designs. This will bring all new kinds of tiny PC's with fanless designs, not just tablets.
Then theres much improved security, and Xbox Live for the gamers. All this stuff alone is probably more of an upgrade than going from XP to 7 for most people. Theres more stuff i'm just too tired to type...
- Status