The Windows 8 Thread

unwashed potato! · 8 Sep 2011 at 18:15

theheyes said:
The jury is still out for me as to whether Microsoft should have gone down the separate mobile OS road (like iOS) but I'm a bit more confident having seen what I have so far.

thinking about it i think it's a much better idea then going with 2 os one basic that doesn't do much, one not, as there is already a market for tablets that do not much, so it's not like they can come in and show a better way to do nothing. instead they'll have a market which only they can really be in unless ios ditch the basic tablet os as well.

seeing the way webOS deals with mutliple devices is somethig i'd also like to see in win8. for instance i really like how you can just put a palm phone on a touchpad and it'll info between the 2. would be cool to be able to work on a pc, then swipe the stuff you're working on onto a tablet to work on drive home and then when home be able to literally swipe it right back onto a pc

NathanE · 8 Sep 2011 at 19:28

Microsoft has made the right gamble.

History has shown that what was once the size of a desktop PC, or even a mainframe, eventually ends up as the size of a mobile device.

Apple made a bet, which was good at the time, that native code execution was the way forward for mobile devices. At the time, most phones used Java to run third party apps which was hideous. Unfortunately Apple's solution was somewhat of an overreaction and overkill of the problem.

Microsoft has struck the right balance. But they had the benefit of watching their rivals make obviously unsustainable choices.

The Apple iPad as it exists today is just a stop-gap. At some point in the future Apple will need to place a full OSX experience onto their tablet device like what Microsoft are doing. Otherwise they will very quickly find themselves losing the tablet market to their arch-nemesis.

ng93 · 8 Sep 2011 at 20:18

AcidHell2 said:
But I want one, so badly. As I've said before all the upsides of IOs and android with none of the downsides.

Same here, when my HTC Desire contract runs out next year I may very well get a Windows Phone 7 mobile and Windows 8 tablet :cool:

Seems weird that only a couple of years ago I couln't do enough to get away from Windows (Vista), now I can't wait to go back

Edit: thats assuming it lives up to the hype, of course

WatchTower · 9 Sep 2011 at 01:58

I wonder if it will be MacOX Lion. As in pay about 20 to 30 quid and download and update. I just bought Windows 7 retail for 95 quid and would appreciate a download update and not have to pay 130 for a new retail DVD which is just an interface update.

Abooie · 9 Sep 2011 at 08:52

Instant boot? http://www.winrumors.com/microsoft-reveals-incredible-instant-boot-feature-of-windows-8/

I'm in.

MR.B · 9 Sep 2011 at 09:19

WatchTower said:
I wonder if it will be MacOX Lion. As in pay about 20 to 30 quid and download and update. I just bought Windows 7 retail for 95 quid and would appreciate a download update and not have to pay 130 for a new retail DVD which is just an interface update.

Comparing it to OSX updates isn't right. Pretty much all OSX updates are more like Microsofts 'Service Packs'. Theres way more changes in a new version of Windows, and with Win 8 theres more changes than probably any previous version of windows to date (which you would know if you actually bothered to read my post).

No way will it cost £20 - £30. But theres rumours going around that MS will have an option to buy a cheap very basic version, where you can later purchase other Windows features/addons separately if you ever need them.

Abooie said:
Instant boot? http://www.winrumors.com/microsoft-reveals-incredible-instant-boot-feature-of-windows-8/

I'm in.

Niiiiiice. Added to my post :cool:

i was expecting this and it makes it even better for tablets. Win 8 is shaping up so well, i've never seen an OS look so good...

unwashed potato! · 9 Sep 2011 at 09:30

Abooie said:
Instant boot? http://www.winrumors.com/microsoft-reveals-incredible-instant-boot-feature-of-windows-8/

I'm in.

the exact same thing was said before win7 was out. i remember thinking wow boot instantly will be amazing, ended up with sleep mode and i'm guessing that's what they just booted from.

MR.B · 9 Sep 2011 at 09:40

Mammalian said:
the exact same thing was said before win7 was out. i remember thinking wow boot instantly will be amazing, ended up with sleep mode and i'm guessing that's what they just booted from.

As you can clearly see in the vid the laptops battery is removed. Sleep mode requires constant power so this isn't sleep mode. This is a completely cold boot. Similar to Hibernation mode but instead the users settings and open software are not saved to disk. With this the user account is closed and all drivers are re-initialized, effectively making it the same as a cold boot. This really is as good as it sounds this time! Details here.

Subliminal Aura · 9 Sep 2011 at 09:58

MR.B said:
As you can clearly see in the vid the laptops battery is removed. Sleep mode requires constant power so this isn't sleep mode. This is a completely cold boot. Similar to Hibernation mode but instead the users settings and open software are not saved to disk. With this the user account is closed and all drivers are re-initialized, effectively making it the same as a cold boot. This really is as good as it sounds this time! Details here.

Video cuts away as the drivers re-initialize ?

Also I see this being effective with laptops with quick BIOS POST times - not so effective with desktop motherboards that take an eon to POST. Think I prefer resume from RAM with everything ready and armed (superfetch etc)

unwashed potato! · 9 Sep 2011 at 10:10

i'm sure i've put my pc in sleep mode, unplugged everything to move it, and then turned it back on and it's come out of sleep mode. even other day i had a power cut but when it woke it was from sleep mode... and this is a desktop

Subliminal Aura · 9 Sep 2011 at 10:13

Mammalian said:
i'm sure i've put my pc in sleep mode, unplugged everything to move it, and then turned it back on and it's come out of sleep mode. even other day i had a power cut but when it woke it was from sleep mode... and this is a desktop

Suspend to RAM(sleep) and suspend to disk(hibernate) are two different things.

STR requires power to be maintained constantly to the RAM sticks

panyan · 9 Sep 2011 at 10:15

MR.B said:
As you can clearly see in the vid the laptops battery is removed. Sleep mode requires constant power so this isn't sleep mode. This is a completely cold boot. Similar to Hibernation mode but instead the users settings and open software are not saved to disk. With this the user account is closed and all drivers are re-initialized, effectively making it the same as a cold boot. This really is as good as it sounds this time! Details here.

i am tempted to say that that laptop had an ssd in it

NathanE · 9 Sep 2011 at 10:17

Mammalian said:
i'm sure i've put my pc in sleep mode, unplugged everything to move it, and then turned it back on and it's come out of sleep mode. even other day i had a power cut but when it woke it was from sleep mode... and this is a desktop

That's "hybrid sleep"... which is a combination of hibernation and sleep.

NathanE · 9 Sep 2011 at 10:21

panyan said:
i am tempted to say that that laptop had an ssd in it

Read the technical details on how it works. It won't matter whether it's SSD or not. Even a Win8 machine with a traditional HDD will see huge gains.

The hiberfil.sys has been redesigned, such that:

- it is compressed, which reduces the amount of bytes that need to be read from disk.

- it is much smaller, typically around 20% the size of physical RAM. Versus the 90% of physical RAM today on Vista/W7. So less bytes need to be read from disk.

- multi-threading is used for reading and decompression.

Nymins · 9 Sep 2011 at 10:25

SSD + Windows 8 boot = Time travel?

Subliminal Aura · 9 Sep 2011 at 10:29

Nymins said:
SSD + Windows 8 boot = Time travel?

NathanE said:
Read the technical details on how it works. It won't matter whether it's SSD or not. Even a Win8 machine with a traditional HDD will see huge gains.

The hiberfil.sys has been redesigned, such that:

- it is compressed, which reduces the amount of bytes that need to be read from disk.

- it is much smaller, typically around 20% the size of physical RAM. Versus the 90% of physical RAM today on Vista/W7. So less bytes need to be read from disk.

- multi-threading is used for reading and decompression.

So what happens after the RAM has been populated ? A lot of forking and initialisation in the background.

It's like the first thing I noticed about windows 7 ... Even though you're on the desktop the OS hasn't actually fully loaded.

NathanE · 9 Sep 2011 at 10:36

Subliminal Aura said:
So what happens after the RAM has been populated ? A lot of forking and initialisation in the background.

It's like the first thing I noticed about windows 7 ... Even though you're on the desktop the OS hasn't actually fully loaded.

Only on a normal bootup though. Those are all the background services still starting up. Doesn't happen on a resume from hibernation.

Subliminal Aura · 9 Sep 2011 at 10:38

NathanE said:
Only on a normal bootup though. Those are all the background services still starting up. Doesn't happen on a resume from hibernation.

Well this was my point as the video cut away during initialisation.

MR.B · 9 Sep 2011 at 10:46

I've found out what laptop they're using in the vid. It's a EliteBook 8640p.
Specs are: i7-2620M, 8GB, 160GB SSD

So pretty high-end. But still impressive.

Subliminal Aura · 9 Sep 2011 at 10:53

MR.B said:
So pretty high-end. But still impressive.

Not as impressive as watching Chrome OS or Joli OS boot.

I run Joli OS on my laptops and have zero desire for an SSD