The Windows 8 Thread

[MR.B]

Moarrrrrr stuff...


> Sign in with a picture password

For anything with a touch screen you can now sign in with a picture password instead of a text password. You can select any picture you wish and use it to sign in by drawing circles, lines or dot gestures on the picture in different combinations and in different areas.

A picture password with just 5 gestures has 70,441,983,603,740 combinations. Compared to an eight character text password which only has 182,790,400 (thats also including numbers and other characters). When using just 5 taps alone and not even drawing any circles or lines you still have 15,344,276,658 combinations.

Another security benefit is that key loggers obviously don't work with a picture password.

For more details, or if you're wondering how just 5 taps on a screen has more combinations than a 8 character password see this for an explanation. And theres a follow up post that addresses any security concerns here.

 

[MR.B]

And more stuff...

> Easier and faster installation

• Easier upgrade
  
  The upgrade process for Win 8 has been greatly streamlined, integrated and simplified. Things like Upgrade Advisor and Easy Transfer are now integrated in to one end-to-end experience, where as on Vista / 7 these were separate. It can take as few as 11 clicks to install Windows 8, but all the advanced options are still there if needed (no capabilities have been removed).
  For people who download Win 8 a new integrated download manager provides time estimates, data validation, the ability to pause, resume, and re-download only parts of the file if something goes wrong.
  When upgrading from Win 7 - all programs, Windows settings, user accounts and files can be transferred. With Vista everything but programs can be transferred.
  
  Heres all the screens you'll see when doing a typical upgrade to Win 8...
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Faster installation
  
  Previously when upgrading a PC that had loads of files that had to be kept it could take hours to install Windows. But now the time isn't much different from a clean install (see chart below). One reason for the greatly improved times is because Windows 7 and older OS's used to copy each individual file to another location, where as Windows 8 uses hard links instead. This means a link is created to the actual data on disk, without having to physically move the file. Full details here.
  
  
  

 

[MR.B]

It could never be quite as simple as Ubuntu, because when installing that OS it dont have to check all your current Windows software, user accounts and settings for compatibility, then transfer them. I think the Windows installer is now about as easy as it could possibly get. It's now at the point where someone who's totally computer illiterate should be able to do it.

 

[MR.B]

More news...


> Easy and fast mobile connectivity

Full details here. But heres the main new features...

• Theres now no need for 3rd party drivers or software to connect to a mobile broadband network, as Win 8 supports the Mobile Broadband Interface Model (MBIM) specification standard. Win 8 uses a single built-in driver that works with all modern mobile broadband hardware and providers and this driver is kept up to date with Windows Update. Connecting to mobile broadband should be as easy as with any modern smartphone.
  
  
• Win 8 automatically disconnects from mobile broadband networks and connects to Wi-Fi networks whenever they’re available to reduce data usage with costly mobile broadband. And, when appropriate, powers down the mobile broadband hardware/device, which also increases battery life.
  
  
• Support for popular Wi-Fi hotspot authentication types. Windows 8 also manages the authentication for you when you come within range of a Wi-Fi network, so you won’t have to re-authenticate each time (for instance, by going to a web page).
  
  
• You can change any connection type to "metered" or "non-metered" to reduce data usage. Mobile broadband will be set to metered by default. New developer API's have also been added so if a network is metered an app can automatically choose a lower bandwidth option. For instance if watching a video it can automatically use a low quality video stream instead of an HD option on a metered network.
  
  
• Win 8 maintains an ordered list of your preferred networks based on your explicit connect and disconnect actions, as well as the network type. For example, if you manually disconnect from a network, Windows will no longer automatically connect to that network. If, while connected to one network, you decide to connect to a different network, Windows will move the new network higher in your preferred networks list. Windows 8 automatically learns your preferences in order to manage this list for you.
  
  
• To help mobile broadband data usage and costs, Windows Update will not download any updates until you connect to a non-metered network, such as your home broadband connection. There is one exception, and that is in the case of a critical security update to fix a worm-like vulnerability. Windows Update will download the critical update regardless of connection type, but this behaviour can be adjusted manually if you like.
  
  
• When you resume from standby, Windows can reconnect faster to your preferred Wi-Fi networks from new optimizations in the networking stack. Now when your PC resumes from standby, your Wi-Fi adapter already has all the information it needs to connect to your preferred Wi-Fi networks. This means you can reconnect your PC to a Wi-Fi network from standby in about a second.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Real time estimated data usage displayed for each individual network connection being as many mobile broadband packages have data caps and high costs. You can reset the data counter whenever you want, which is useful for monitoring your usage month-to-month for example.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• The new Task Manager provides more detailed information showing how much data a particular app has consumed.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• As with many smartphones Win 8 now has an "airplane mode" that can be turned on or off with one click. The new network settings also allow you to turn individual radios on and off (Wi-Fi, mobile broadband, or Bluetooth). This is new to PC's but obviously has been around on phones for years.
  
  
  

 

[MR.B]

There will be tons of tablets to choose from on the release of Win 8, both x86 and ARM. Many of them better than anything else out now and guaranteed to work with all the new features (like DX11.1), so i'd just wait anyway

Heres some preview pics of the new Windows Store...

Very much like the new X360 dashboard update, but with the grey background removed. More stuff here

 

[MR.B]

Moarrr W8 news added, and this one is great because i cant tell you how many times this ******* problem has annoyed me on Android and iOS! ...


> Sensor Fusion

Ever had a tablet or phone app where the controls mess up when you lay the device flat on it's back and tilt it to either side? This is because the accelerometer (the thing that determines the devices orientation) only has limited capabilities and 3 axes. Sensor Fusion combines multiple sensors from the accelerometer, 3D magnetometer and gyro sensor for a 9-axis sensor fusion system which stops things like this happening. Plus many other benefits... More details here.

 

[MR.B]

Heres some changes made to Win 8 since the Developer Preview. These changes will be available in the BETA in late Feb!

• Ability to add folders and executables to the new metro Start screen.
  
  
• File copy transfers will automatically pause when going in to sleep or hibernation, and can be resumed on wake.
  
  
• File copy interrupts, which in past versions of Windows have stopped the copy operation until the user clicks through them (i'm sure we've all been annoyed with these!), will now queue and display after Windows has copied everything it can.
  
  
• Explorer now supports camera EXIF data rotation on images, so it automatically displays images in the correct rotation (both thumbnail images or enlarged). So if your camera sets this value (nearly all do), you will not need to correct the orientation.
  
  
• The new Ribbon interface is still present, but it is minimized by default.
  
  
• Customizations you make to the Windows Explorer view settings will also now sync between your Windows 8 systems when syncing settings using your Windows Live ID.
  
  
• When files in a copy operation have conflicting names, Windows will give you the option to skip files that also have the same timestamp and file size while copying over files. It also saves your chosen setting so you dont have to select this again.
  
  
• Win 8 will now switch to the fastest available network connection, including in mid-operation, for those cases when you begin a file copy to another PC over wi-fi and then decide it would be faster to plug the PC into the network with a cable.
  
  
• The addition of an "Open PowerShell" option in the File menu.

 

[MR.B]

What are we looking at in terms of release date chaps ?

I'm not sure if I should install the developer preview(assuming that is the latest version) or windows 7

If you can wait until late feb the BETA will be out, and it has many improvements over the Dev Preview. Plus it should be atleast very near to fully featured, because the Dev Preview is also missing loads of things (Xbox Live, new media player, media center and loads more...)

 

[MR.B]

I just don't want to spend too much time tweaking just to see myself wipe it all again

You wont have to! Another new Win 8 feature is being able to sync settings across all your PC's You can setup a Live ID account in Win 8 and it syncs the following:

your profile,
application settings,
lock screen picture,
desktop background,
bookmarks,
Explorer view settings,
browser history and more.

Can also use your live ID to login, instead of a normal account password.

 

[MR.B]

Just found out the minimum requirements for tablets....

• At least 10GB free space
  
  
• UEFI support
  
  
• Wireless and Bluetooth 4.0 + LE
  
  
• Support for DirectX 11 with WDDM 1.2 Driver
  
  
• Resolution of 1366 x 768 or higher
  
  
• Atleast 720p Camera
  
  
• Ambient Light Sensor
  
  
• 3 axes Accelerometer
  
  
• Gyroscope
  
  
• USB 2.0 (at least one port)
  
  
• Speakers
  
  
• Minimum of 5 finger multi touch
  
  
• NFC (Near Field Communication) “touch marks”
  
  
• Driver upgrades that don’t require a reboot!
  
  
• Must have 5 hardware buttons (apparently, no more and no less).
  The buttons will be: Power button, Rotation lock, Windows Key, Volume up, Volume down.
  
  
• New combination for CTRL + ALT + DEL on tablets: Windows Key + Power.
  But you’ll still be able to use the CTRL + ALT + DEL using the on screen keyboard.
  
  
• Two second or less resume from Standby.

No minimum hardware requirements have been said yet for CPU or RAM, but i expect it to be lower than Win 7 (the dev preview uses less RAM than 7 and is as snappy as XP on my 8 year old test laptop!).

 

[MR.B]

That will be for the x86 version, I wonder what ARM based chips are supported?

Seems to be for all tablets, x86 and ARM. See here... it mentions ARM under the 2 second resume.

ARM's Mali T658 GPU supports DX11 and Samsung will be using that late this year in their SoC's so i expect Win 8 tablets with that. Anyone can license that GPU design though so more companies might use it. Nvidia's ARM based Tegra 4 will also have support. So definitely Tegra 4 Win 8 tablets, because theres no other reason to support DX11 otherwise because Android and iOS both use OpenGL ES.

The Mali T658 will be capable of graphics about equal to a 360 / PS3 Not bad for tablets / phones. But my Galaxy S2 phone can already do graphics better than a Wii so not surprised!

 

[MR.B]

Aye, because your phone could render a game like Super Mario Galaxy 2 at 480p...

It can do better than that... so dont know what you're trying to say. Current phone CPU's and GPU's like the Mali 400 (Galaxy S2) and Power VR SGX542 (iPad 2, iPhone 4s) are more powerful than the hardware in a Wii. But it's taking games a while to catch up with hardware.

They also render games at higher res:

Galaxy S2 = 800x480
iPhone 4s = 960x640
iPad 2 = 1024x786
Wii = 640x480

The Wii is utter **** hardware wise and only has 88MB RAM. It probably costs Nintendo 50p to make. The original Xbox released in 2001 is technically more powerful.

But look at the Playstation Vita... That uses an ARM CPU + GPU that will soon be in phones and tablets within the next 6 months. The Vita has games that look about 90% as good as a PS3 and renders them at 960x540. Most PS3 and 360 games are only 1280x720 - thats not much higher. By the time Win 8 is out, there will be better hardware based on ARM's considerably faster A15 chip.

I think Win 8 tablets will somewhat harm console sales considering there CPU's + GPU's will be many times faster than current phones / tablets. You'll now have a more mobile and smaller device thats a full PC with graphics equal to a 360 / PS3, plus HD output, with support for all PC gamepads, and a LARGER game library than any console (as long as it's a Intel tablet).

 

[MR.B]

AMD finally announced new chips for Win 8 tablets and also announced they're pretty much leaving the high-end desktop CPU market!

AMD will be focusing a lot more on mobile platforms and will have the 'Hondo' platform for Win 8 tablets, the chips will be ~4.5W. Which is very low power for a typical AMD chip but still dont compare to an ARM chip (under 1W).

And Intels new Atom for phones, and likely Win 8 tablets (or a variation of it) is also lower power than AMD's Hondo platform. Although even with an AMD tablet i'd still expect much better battery life than laptops, but AMD have the advantage of a possibly more powerful integrated GPU that might just about manage running the latest PC games... at very low settings

 

[MR.B]

My precious start orb!!!

Start Orb Removed in Windows 8 Consumer Preview

Well the Start menu is already gone so it makes sense!

"This change doesn't impact the functionality of the missing Start Orb: You can tap the Start key on your keyboard (or CTRL + ESC) to mimic the behavior of the Orb, or mouse over the bottom left corner of the taskbar to bring up the Charms and screen overlay as before."

So it still works exactly the same as in the Dev Preview.

 

[MR.B]

Ah you beat me to it! ^

Looking forward to the 29th.

 

[MR.B]

So glad ARM tablets will also have the desktop Even IF theres only a desktop version of Office 15 on ARM i'm sure it will be better optimised for touch anyway.

Seriously... 2 years from now it will be like "iPAd what??"

I mean really, there is absolutely no reason to buy an iPad once these Win 8 tablets are out. Cant think of a single reason. Even when it comes to app counts, the x86 tablets from Intel and AMD will have vastly more software on release as they will work with all existing PC software. Plus all the new Metro apps, which i'm sure will grow quicker than any other platform.

Even laptops are in trouble. Why get a laptop when you could get a tablet with a keyboard dock? It's a requirement for all W8 tabs to have USB and bluetooth, so all these things we use right now (keyboards, mice, printers, external storage...) will all work with these tablets.

 

[MR.B]

I agree that Win 8 tablet are going to be awesome for tech/power users and not so good perhaps for normal daily use.

What makes you think that? Theres over 1 billion Windows PC's, so MS already have an advantage that most people are very familiar with Windows. But most of all theres Metro, and for most people there will be no need to ever use the desktop on a tablet. IMO Metro is considerably cleaner and easier to use than iOS or Android by a long way, while still remaining more powerful.

The negatives are going to be viruses/malware etc as I don’t think anything will change in that matter.
However ipads while very limited compared to Windows 8 are super easy to use and virus/malware free.

Doubt it. All Metro apps can only be downloaded through the MS store. All these apps are scanned by MS just like with the Apple App store. Metro apps are sandboxed too so cant interact with other parts of the OS. Win 8 also scans for malware/viruses, including any connected devices, before the OS has even loaded. Theres also build in anti-virus and other security improvements on top of this. The only thing at any risk is the desktop on x86 tabs, but with the build in AV and the new Smart Screen filter the risk of getting infected is lower than ever.

If anything the iPad is more susceptible to malware and security issues as it's been around longer so people have had time to find weaknesses (i can already list more than few security issues it's had).

Also the cost, top end Win 8 tablets are going to cost a fortune compared to the cheaper ipads/android tablets.

Yes for high-end tablets, but being as this isn't Apple you will have choice. ARM tablets are meant to be significantly cheaper than x86. But i'm also sure Intel/AMD will have tablets from the low to high end, just like with PC's. Wouln't be at all surprised to see some W8 tablets cheaper that the iPAd, which is already too expensive for what you get (Apple make a massive profit on it).

 

[MR.B]

Why does the fact that it's Windows 8 make it better than iOS and Android? What power and benefits does it bring exactly? And which features surpass iOS and Android?

In simple terms it means you can use ALL existing PC keyboards, mice, gamepads, printers, external storage, card readers, USB flash drives and the million other peripherals that Windows has.

Which also means you can upgrade things like storage capacity... If you buy an iPad you're stuck with it's limited internal memory, with Android you can sometimes use SD cards and that, but thats about it. All Win 8 tablets will come with USB and Bluetooth as it's a requirement. Wouldn't be surprised if theres also tablets with HDMI output and things like that. So you could simply plug in all your normal devices, connect it to a monitor or TV, and you basically have a full blown desktop.

Theres also more programming languages you can use... C#/VB/XAML and JavaScript / HTML5. Or native code using C and C++.

On Intel and AMD x86 tablets you can run all the existing PC software and games too, so right away you have a larger game library than any other tablet platform. I dont expect them to run Crysis lol, but they will have some pretty decent DX11 GPU's in them that will atleast run most new games on lower settings.

 

[MR.B]

I'd just like to point out that while some news sites are making out that the desktop on WOA does not support 3rd party apps. MS have only said existing x86/64 desktop apps cant be recompiled, ported or emulated. Nowhere have they said new desktop software for WOA can not be created from scratch using new dev tools.

Even if thats the case though, theres always Intels new x86 Atom based SoC which is just as power efficient as ARM SoC's (finally) and should be in tablets just as small and thin. But a WOA tablet will still be far more capable than an iPad, while also remaining easier to use IMO. I dont think a UI could really get much easier and more user friendly than Metro. It also supports far more programming languages than iOS. Apps can also interface with 3rd party servers and services, and WOA devices should still support the millions of existing PC peripherals (as long as they work with the build in Windows drivers, which many do including things like USB sticks, external hard drives, mice, keyboards).

Another thing iOS cant even do is run different web browsers... all browser apps on iOS are simple UI shells. They either use a UI shell over the native WebKit renderer (like Dolphin) or they render off-device and send an image of the webpage (like Opera Mini). There are no other browsers that actually run on iOS.

Which reminds me, Firefox is coming to Metro.

 

[MR.B]

On my home desktop PC, that I use for games, will I be able to use it like I do on Win 7 or will it be all metro based?

Yep. You'll be able to use it the same as Win 7, the classic desktop is still there and works mostly the same. But it no longer has a Start menu any more, Metro replaces that as well as doubles up as the main interface for touch devices. You can switch between desktop and Metro using the Windows key or by moving the mouse to the bottom left of the task bar.