The Windows 8 Thread

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gazzamcg said:
Any news on the protogon file system thingy.
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It's in my original post near the bottom. It's called ReFS (Resilient File System).

mrk said:
I've had Win8 installed on VMWare Player for a few months now and have noticed no sluggishness in the UI and the experience has been excellent. Hardware accelerated video works as does FlashHD without issue.
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I tried the Dev Preview with VirtualBox and VMware, but even in VMware it looked like the UI was running at around 30 FPS, not 60 (my monitors refresh rate). Either way they'll always be a performance hit with virtualization, and sometimes it's only milliseconds that can make an OS feel faster. And things like the faster boot times dont work in virtualization.
 
Glaucus said:
Have we heard or seen what they are replacing Zune with?
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Zune might be within the new Windows Store when the Consumer Preview is out, for the music & videos section. Atleast that part was called Zune in this image (which is from MS). But apparently MS will be using a new name by the time Win 8 ships.
 
They've said they are ditching Zune in some of the blurb about wp8

Found this
http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/17/2807096/microsoft-replacing-zune-spotify-xbox-live-music-service
Microsoft may be replacing Zune with a 'Spotify-like' Xbox Live music*service

The plan is apparently to use the Xbox Live branding across Xbox, Windows Phone, and Windows on the desktop. That branding shift is currently slated to happen some time this summer. Later, Microsoft intends to re-launch the music service as a simpler, easier to understand, and better integrated offering that is described as very similar to Spotify. It may also include a video component. Current Zune Pass subscribers will be able to keep their current subscription model if they so choose.

The goal, we're told, is to have it all lined up well in time for the holiday season and that Microsoft will offer free Xbox Live for Windows subscriptions to new PC buyers as a way to jump start adoption of the service. Given the lackluster of the Zune branding and the fact that Microsoft is not selling Zune-specific hardware anymore, tying a music service to the stronger Xbox Live brand makes a lot of sense.
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And
http://m.wpcentral.com/windows-phone-8-details-allegedly-revealed-nokia-partner-video
Zune Desktop is going away in exchange for a more native, sync relationship application i.e. the return of ActiveSync
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Kinda Win 8 related... Anandtech has benches of Qualcomm Krait SoC for phones / tablets :)

It's a custom design of ARM's upcoming A15, many ARM SoC's will be based on A15 later this year. So performance should be very similar, and Qualcomm will be making SoC's for Windows on ARM likely based on the CPU inside Krait (but being as this SoC will mostly be inside Android phones / tablets many other components will change for WOA, including the GPU, but the CPU side should remain pretty much the same). So a possible rough idea of WOA tablet performance... it's definitely much faster than Intels upcoming smartphone SoC or any other smartphone / tablet SoC currently out.

Occasionally we'll see performance numbers that just make us laugh at their absurdity. Krait's Linpack performance is no exception. The performance advantage here is insane.
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New post about language support in Win 8

And guess what? We finally get to use real English! Not the bastardised "American English". I look forward to words being spelt correctly in Win 8.

We are proud to announce the addition of English for the United Kingdom to the list of Windows display languages. We admit that this is something we should have done a long time ago. Windows users in the UK have gotten by with the US English version of Windows, and while we Americans knew this was not their favourite, that is clearly no defence. We believe that this version of Windows will also be widely used in India, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, the Republic of Ireland and many other places.

We are releasing English for the United Kingdom as a standalone language. Standalone languages contain all the user interface components needed to be independent versions of Windows. Standalone languages can be used by OEMs to image a PC, or can be purchased as boxed software.
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Took 'em long enough. EDIT: just noticed NathanE beat me to this lol.

Win 8 also supports 114 languages (up from 95 with Win 7). Theres now a new Language feature located in Control Panel where you can easily download and switch to any language you like. No need to buy a different language version of Windows anymore.
 
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I'm starting to love Windows 8, especially with the implementation of SkyDrive.

Should be able to back up important stuff like game saves.

Oh and precious family photos.
 
ng93 said:
So Windows 7 doesn't support UK English? Got to say I've never noticed lol.
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All previous Windows version just supported the UK keyboard layout, not the UK English spelling. How can you not have noticed! with things like "color" all over the place... :p
 
Can anyone tell me that when the BETA comes out I can just install it over my current version of Windows and it'll run without any problems.

I remember doing it with Vista - 7.
 
I've only had two issues with the developers preview that's apple devices. Refuse to sync properly with it iPad/iPhone and ESNET error, which I had to reinstall. However the beta will have the new options like refresh.
Other than that it's been plane sailing.
 
Number_25 said:
Can anyone tell me that when the BETA comes out I can just install it over my current version of Windows and it'll run without any problems.

I remember doing it with Vista - 7.
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Should work fine :) 99.9% of all software and drivers that work on 7 will work on 8. I had a problem with 1 or 2 games out of about 20 that i tried, but this will likely be fixed in the BETA.
 
MR.B said:
All previous Windows version just supported the UK keyboard layout, not the UK English spelling. How can you not have noticed! with things like "color" all over the place... :p
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I'm a programmer, so unless they've added 'colour' support to .net i'll have to keep using 'color' anyway :p.
 
gazzamcg said:
Any news on the protogon file system thingy.
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That's the ReFS, Resilient File System.

It's a whole new file system but retains a API interface that is purported to be similar to NTFS.

If you want an idea of what sort of features ReFS will bring to the table just take a look at ZFS. ReFS is basically the Microsoft clone of ZFS.
 
Can't you trace the roots of ZFS back decades? From one needlessly bloated, slow and fragmented filesystem to another old one...

How does it compare to Btrfs?
 
PermaBanned said:
Can't you trace the roots of ZFS back decades? From one needlessly bloated, slow and fragmented filesystem to another old one...

How does it compare to Btrfs?
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ReFS features (this is all in my original post):

  • 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.

More details and a FAQ on ReFS can be found here. Keep in mind that ReFS will work in conjunction with Storage Spaces, also on my original post. But Storage Spaces should be in all versions of Win 8.

ReFS is only in Windows Server 8, not Windows 8. MS always release a new file system on the server version first, then bring it to home users, so it should be in Windows 9.
 
Number_25 said:
Aah poop, in a moment of stupidity I've installed Windows 8 Dev. on my Windows 7 partition.

Any chance I can go back or am I stuck moving over my stuff.
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1: Should have waited for the BETA! Only 7 days to go! :p Dev is missing many things.

2: You're stuck with the Dev Preview, if it's on the same petition it's overwritten your 7 install.

Number_25 said:
So basically, it irradicates the need for defragmenting?
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I'm not sure. But if you use Storage Spaces, then MS have said fragmentation will not occur so you dont even need ReFS to avoid that. I think Storage Spaces is one of the best features in Win 8.
 
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