The Windows 8 Thread

[MR.B]

How long is that post? ... still reading it but nice to see them listening to feedback from the dev preview.

I like the new apps screen shown on that post, on large monitors like mine (2560x1600) you're going to get a ton of icons on screen, making it a LOT easier to find stuff compared to scrolling through the "All Programs" list in Vista/7 which only shows a pathetic 20 folders/icons no matter how high your res is. This is definitely an improvement as it shows more icons with screen resolution/size:

...BTW for anyone who dont know, the Apps Screen is NOT the new metro Start Screen. To get to the Apps Screen do this on the desktop: move the cursor down to the bottom left of the Start button (dont click it) and a menu will appear, then go to: Search > Apps. (But in the latest Win 8 build it's one less click - you just click on Search).

Theres probably a keyboard shortcut too but not looked.

 

[MR.B]

If you're paying full price, have zero interest in Metro and hate the Start screen then I don't think you'd be at any particular disadvantage if you stuck with Win7 for a few years.

Metro and the Start Screen are very small things overall. I wouldn't even mention them to someone asking whether they should upgrade (unless they're using a tablet).

Far more important things are the improved security, better performance, faster boot, less memory usage, Xbox Live, ARM support, better multi-monitor support, infinite backwards compatibility (Hyper-V)...

 

[MR.B]

Theres a new MS blog post about the improved Task Manager (in the latest build), one of my fave things and which was already great in the dev preview, but now it's even better

The below shot shows it with 160 logical processors. Apart from showing the percentage of CPU load for each core, each block gets darker blue the more loaded that core is.
Win 8 also now supports up to 640 cores(!!!), Win 7 supported up to 256, and i think Vista supported up to 64.

Compare that^ to this ugly thing Win 7 has and with less options (which hadn't changed since Windows 2000)...

 

[MR.B]

And I can't agree that Metro and the Start screen are very small changes

I admit i shouldn't have used the words "very small", but for desktops/laptops i'd definitely still put many other Win 8 features before Metro, because theres still much stuff thats a way larger leap than what Vista was to 7.

I like Metro but for most PC users, even though Metro is a massive UI change and definitely the biggest since Win 95, i dont think it's going to make much difference for non-touch based desktop/laptop users. From MS's own stats 88% of Win 7 users launch software/games or folders from either the desktop or the new taskbar, being as you can now pin shortcuts/folders/sites to the taskbar itself. Only 12% of the time is the current Start Menu used. Cant see Metro/Start Screen changing this for these people.

And i'm not sure if you can relate the new store to Metro, it may end up being for all Windows software and not just Metro app downloads/updates. Although obviously for desktop apps you will always be able to download from the makers sites, which i think many will still do especially if MS take a sales percentage on there store (Apple take 30% on everything) so things on the store may be more expensive.

 

[MR.B]

That looks very nice, but I want that many cores!

Check out the Memory and Disk stats too... 1TB RAM and near 1GB/s disk performance...

This is one the the best things about Win8, how it scales from low-end mobile touch devices to super computers

 

[MR.B]

quick question, tempted to have a play with this, but i like my gaming,

anyone know how this version is with games? i assume all my win7 drivers etc will work fine for gpu etc?

I've not tried it myself for gaming so dont know how drivers are, but people are getting some games to work fine, others dont work at all. There will also be a new DirectX version for Win 8 but it's not included in the dev preview. I wouldn't use it for gaming until the BETA release.

 

[MR.B]

Yeah its crazy!
8x20 core processors in one computer as well !
i guess the RAM is a little OTT for everyday use

I figure it uses an eight socket server mobo with 10 core Xeon processors, possiby these...

But they have hyperthreading so each core is seen as 2 cores, so 20 cores total each

£3500 for just one of them processors!

ARM are bringing out up to 128 core CPU's to compete in the server market and they might end up in desktops at some point... being as Win 8 supports ARM CPU's maybe one day places like overclockers will end up selling there CPU's... being as AMD's Bulldozer is such fail maybe ARM will be the new AMD one day (they're also based in Cambridge, England! ).

 

[MR.B]

I have just installed the developer preview on my dell duo (hybrid laptop tablet with a touchscreen). Don't really know what I am doing yet, but it already feels a massive improvement over w7 for touch.

How do you close apps? I have been using task manager, but surely that is not necesary?

In the Metro UI you cant close apps, they're open all the time, but once the app is off screen then it wont use any resources or CPU cycles, it's kind of frozen.
The only problem is when you have loads of open apps then you can be there all day swiping through them all, so hopefully MS will have some kind of close option before the BETA next year.

 

[MR.B]

Is the Win 8 beta good enough as a stand-in/stop-gap for a new PC so as to hold out until the real thing releases instead of buying Windows 7?

Nope because it's not even a BETA. It's hardly even an alpha version. It's a dev preview so devs can start making apps. Loads of stuff is missing from it and the rest isn't even near finished.

 

[MR.B]

Seems the Win 8 BETA is out in late February! It's been confirmed in the video here where MS are showing off the new Win 8 app store, which will also be available at the same time.

With Windows 7, the BETA was in early January 2009, and the release candidate was released April 30th, then the final RTM version was released in July.

So if things stay the same here then Win 8 should be out around late August.

 

[MR.B]

Atleast 90% of games seem to work on Win 8 dev preview.
Some games i know that definitely dont work are:

MineCraft
Just Cause 2
Dynasty Warriors (Online)
Age of Empires (Online)
F.E.A.R. 3
Grand Theft Auto 4
Borderlands
Flight Simulator X

For online gaming it's worse though, because many things like Punkbuster dont support Win 8 yet. But if you dont play online you should be ok. Personally i'd only use it for web browsing or what it's intended for - testing Win 8 apps. Even though i've had no serious problems with the dev preview i definitely wouldn't use it for actual work (as with any OS in such an early state).

 

[MR.B]

Added some new stuff to my original thread post, but here it is...


> DirectX 11.1

Not much info on this yet, but this will mostly be a performance enhancer rather than something that adds many big new features (like with Tessellation on DX 11).
According to MS every individual DirectX graphics API is getting some kind of improvement in DX 11.1 - likely performance improvements and tweaks mostly for the mobile GPU's used in tablets, but there will be some improvements for desktops too.



> Storage Spaces

Big feature this. Many people were very annoyed when MS decided to remove Drive Extender feature from Windows Home Server 2011 (which was one of the best things about WHS). Well now it's back and even improved with Win 8, but now it's called Storage Spaces. What this basically lets you do is create a "pool" that contains multiple hard drives but the whole pool is treated as a single disk and appears as a single disk in Windows as well as to software or anything else. It's a bit like RAID but way more flexible, modern and easier to create. You get the performance from RAID-0, and the option to mirror data that you get with RAID-10. You can mirror data 2 or 3 times. If one disk dies the Storage Space will continue to work as normal and automatically create a new mirror of any data that was lost on the defective drive. You can also add as many new drives to the storage space as you like after it's been created. SSD's and HDD's can be used together (in different sizes too), as well as different connections like USB, SATA, or SAS, all in single Storage Space. Theres also no limitation to the amount of drives you can add, so in theory you can add a ton of SSD's and get insane performance.

Theres a lot more to Storage Spaces so check out the MS blog post.



...Storage Spaces will pretty much make many 3rd party software RAID options obsolete overnight. As well as hardware solutions like RAID storage enclosures and things like Drobo and ReadyNAS.

 

[MR.B]

iPad will be (even more) useless when Win 8 is out.

Imagine the Asus Transformer Prime with Win 8 on it, because thats what will start appearing soon. Tablets with keyboard docks that also have another battery in these docks that extend battery life further (up to 18 hours on the Prime). Then on top of all this you'll have a full blown OS, not some highly cut down mobile OS.

It will also pretty much kill laptop sales as they'd be no need for laptops anymore. The docks can also have extra connections and slots on them too - HDMI, DP, USB, card reader and so on (again like the Prime).

Win 8 will run of the exact same hardware used in the Prime (ARM quad-core). If i knew for sure that i could install Win 8 on the Prime and Asus dont somehow block it then i'd buy one right now.

 

[MR.B]

At ces microsofts keynotes had a prototype tablet running on tegra3. However I think the prime is still useless for windows8 what pixels is it? You need 1388 wide minimum.

Theres a 1080p / 1920x1080 version of the Prime coming out late february i believe Asus announced it at CES. It's exactly the same as the current version, just a higher end model with a higher res screen.

The current Prime is 1280x800 but win 8 will work on lower than 1366x768 res - you just dont get all the metro features.

 

[MR.B]

Ok kids heres even more cool new Win 8 features that i've just added to my original post ...


> Refresh or reset your PC easily

This will save a LOT of time for many people.

• Reset: This resets Windows 8 by formatting the drive and installing a fresh new Windows 8 copy. This is especially useful if you're selling your PC for instance as all settings and personal data are erased. The data is thoroughly wiped and random patterns are written to every sector of the drive to make sure data recovery is pretty much impossible.
  
  
• Refresh: As with "Reset" this will refresh your Windows install by installing a fresh copy of Windows 8 - However it places all your settings, data and apps to one side (on the same drive). Then restores the data, settings, and apps into the newly installed copy of Windows. Windows 8 PC's will all come with a Refresh image file so the PC can be restored to the exact state it was in when you purchased it.
  You can also create your own Refresh image - useful for when you've just installed Win 8 along with all your apps and customised system settings. However desktop software will have to be installed again manually, as only Metro apps are restored. This is done because if the PC has a problem or wont boot it could be the desktop software thats causing this problem. You can also use the Refresh feature without having to boot in to Windows (if you've truly messed Windows up). You can even create a bootable USB flash drive so that even if the Recovery Environment dont start you can use the flash drive to boot from instead.

Both Reset or Refresh are fully automatic will take just minutes to complete (6 - 8 minutes on the Samsung developer tablet that was given away by Microsoft).

 

[MR.B]

Metro is better for the "average" home user, but it's also better/quicker for pretty much anyone, including for work use...

First, look at the current start menu on Vista / 7...

... As you can see theres a VERY tiny space that lists your installed programs which you have to scroll through constantly. What makes things worse is that you have to hunt through folders and sub folders to find something. When opening all these folders it makes the list longer so you have to scroll even more. On my monitors (2560x1600) this really is an insane waste of space as no matter how high your displays resolution is the list does not scale with res and only ever shows 20 folders / programs!


One way to solve some of these problems is to use the old XP style menu's (heres an example when used on Win 8)...

... This atleast makes more use of space - but it's still a total mess to look at, and you still have to search through sub folders, which again makes sub menu's appear, sometimes going down a few layers of sub menu's. It's also awkward when you do have to scroll up and down as the list auto scroll's and sometimes goes past stuff you're looking for. So once again, not exactly great.


Now we have Metro...

... With this it finally uses the whole screen to display software/apps. And this scales with screen res, showing more apps with larger displays, so on my 2560x1600 display i'm going to get a **** load of apps shown to me - 150 to be exact! compared to just 20 on Vista / 7. It's also organised in alphabetical groups with larger easy to recognise icons, plus you can simply start typing and it automatically searches as you type (no need for a search box).

Yes Metro takes up the whole screen (which is GOOD thing) so if you're watching a video it will get in the way, but with these cases you simply pin your most used apps to the taskbar as you would in Win 7. According to MS's stats taken from millions of PC's, 88% of app launches don’t actually originate from the Start menu anyway, they're from the taskbar, Explorer, and the desktop.


BTW the above pic is different from the Dev Preview - MS has improved Metro and the apps screen since then. And if anyones wondering you can get to this apps screen in Win 8 by hovering in the bottom left corner of the Start Button –> Search. Or by pressing Windows Key + S (i think).

 

[MR.B]

Lol never knew you could do that

But it still dont automatically scale with screen res. Metro is still an improvement

i hope the metro screen is easier to organise in the beta of windows 8. it's crap in the dev preview.

They made organisation / customisation improvements for the Beta. Theres a post on the MS blog about it but cant remember which post it is...

 

[MR.B]

Manually navigating through the start menu is a bit annoy, but then who does that? I search all the time and fly through the thing.

Regularly used items are either pinned to the task bar or start menu.

Simiarly, if when installing a new application you take some time and care and change the default paths presented you can get a much cleaner and easy to use start menu. If you leave installs to default paths and don't use search I can see your point, but then you could argue that#s just lazy and not the start menu fault.

Well like i said, 88% of people already dont use the Start menu to launch apps, but atleasts theres improvements in Win 8 for when you do use it.

1. You can search atleast as easily with Metro as it displays things full screen and in a way that isn't a mess, with larger icons you can quickly recognise, and with app suites grouped together. Not everyone will like it i'm sure but it's definitely more user friendly for most people.

2. You shouldn't even have to change any paths in the first place. If you manually have to change many things in the current Vista / 7 Start menu to even get it usable then of course it's the Start menu's fault. Even the default size is useless and doesn't scale with res. The whole thing is really poor and the only reason people find it acceptable is because they've been using it or similar designs for so many years.


@EDDS: the link in your sig needs it's own thread LOL

 

[MR.B]

Just added this to original post... shame it's only for the Server version, for now.

> New file system - But only for Windows Server 8

ReFS (Resilient File System) is the new file system used in Windows Server 8, it will replace NTFS but is also build on the NTFS foundation to maintain compatibility. As with all new file systems from Microsoft it will first appear on the server version, and then likely make it's way in to the next home versions of Windows (Windows 9). Loads more details and a FAQ on ReFS can be found here.

Key new features (some of these features are provided in conjunction with Storage Spaces, mentioned previously, which is on all Windows 8 versions):

• Metadata integrity with checksums - Verify and auto-correct data. Data can get corrupted due to a number of reasons and therefore must be verified and, when possible, corrected automatically.
• Integrity streams providing optional user data integrity
• Allocate on write transactional model for robust disk updates (also known as copy on write)
• Large volume, file and directory sizes - Optimize for extreme scale. Use scalable structures for everything. Don’t assume that disk-checking algorithms, in particular, can scale to the size of the entire file system.
• Storage pooling and virtualization makes file system creation and management easy
• Data striping for performance (bandwidth can be managed) and redundancy for fault tolerance
• Disk scrubbing for protection against latent disk errors
• Resiliency to corruptions with "salvage" for maximum volume availability in all cases
• Shared storage pools across machines for additional failure tolerance and load balancing
• Never take the file system offline. Assume that in the event of corruptions, it is advantageous to isolate the fault while allowing access to the rest of the volume. This is done while salvaging the maximum amount of data possible, all done live.

 

[MR.B]

I was obviously missing something, but I couldn't find how to bring up the traditional Start menu which meant having to go back and forth between desktop and Metro just to open apps. The fact that it wasn't obvious or intuitive shows that something is clearly wrong.

Thats because there is no traditional Start menu. It's gone for good. You use Metro. See this post for an explantion of how it works and why it's better.
But basically the Apps screen replaces the Start menu's "All Programs" list and search box. You can get to this screen by hovering in the bottom left corner of the Start Button –> Search. Or by pressing Windows Key + S (i think). It's quicker and easier.

You don't exit apps, why would you. Windows8 has a very good sleep for apps not in use which means zero CPU time. Do you go though closing all your apps on your phone?

You can actually close Metro apps now in the latest Win 8 builds. You simply drag your finger from the top to the bottom of the screen. You can see here at around 1:05.
At 0.35 theres a multi-tasking drop down menu shown at the top as well which makes it quicker to switch through open apps, which i think is also new.