thoughts of win8

Running the Technet Enterprise version here.

If the nay sayers cba to spend an hour with it they will realise how wrong they are, yes I hated it at first but as soon as you get used to hitting the windows key to toggle the metro ( or whatever it's called this week ) interface it makes more sense, tiles are much easier to access than expanding menus.

It'll get even better when there are more useful live tile apps.

I hated the ribbon in Office when it was released but I find having it in Windows Explorer is very handy, the new file copying system is excellent - I must admit to copying many isos for no other reason than watching the dynamic progress bar :D

Dunno if my previous W7 install was getting tired but W8 feels snappier and certainly boots faster, I think the last time I did a clean install that didn't need any drivers it was a mac.

Just my 2p :/
 
ringo747 said:
What's your standby issue? I noticed something strange going on when waking from sleep sometimes but very rarely.

With an SSD maybe your not meant to let laptops sleep are you? Too many writes?
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It doesn't wake from sleep properly at all. Fans spin up, but monitor doesn't come back on and keyboard appears to still be off (no lights on for numlock etc). Have to hit reset to get it working again. I have to do a full shutdown at the moment, which is irritating as the affected machine has a TV card in and is used occasionally for recording, and that relies on standby to work.

I have a feeling it's the ATI drivers judging by the few people I've seen over on the AMD forums talking about it.

Waiting on a newer set of ATI drivers to see if there's a fix in them.
 
theheyes said:
Anyone with average IQ will have no problem. It's not difficult.
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Not really sure on what this is meant to be.

I personally don't like the OS. I agree with DanF's post about it being a marmite OS.

Purely from a business point of view it's great for tablets. For someone doing there day to day job on a desktop I wouldn't have it - it would be such a massive change to how they work.

Personally still think it should be like Windows Media Centre so that you can boot to it and have it enabled if you want but forcing it down everyones throats is a mistake. I know they want everyone to use it and force it on you this way but I seriously think, based on the number of people who are complaining, that people still want a traditional desktop where they can have it exactly as they wish. With Windows 8 it's a lot harder to do and the back and forth of applications between 'Metro' and the desktop is stupid (i.e. using cmd, telnet, etc.) and when you use these applications every day having them take you to a traditional desktop and then back to 'Metro' to run them again is stupid.


M.
 
I disagree about it being a Marmite OS, it's simply different enough to make people have to think, i'm not saying that's a good or a bad thing. Try to use a G13 or Nostromo for gaming - it is better or not? Probably neither, but it'll suit some people more than others and generally only those who sink the time into try it. Same applies to Windows 8, I remember when Windows 2000 came in, it was very different from 95/98 and people really weren't sure about it at first, but eventually ( several SPs later) it was much beloved by folks at my work, I think the same will happen with Windows 8 but it'll take time.

I'm honestly not really for or against it, I don't really see any advantages of it other than some security enhancements but I'll buy it anyway as it's cheap and the apps could prove to be good, especially if they sort out the mail one which is currently a bloody joke.
 
m4cc45 said:
With Windows 8 it's a lot harder to do and the back and forth of applications between 'Metro' and the desktop is stupid (i.e. using cmd, telnet, etc.) and when you use these applications every day having them take you to a traditional desktop and then back to 'Metro' to run them again is stupid.


M.
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There really is no need to be in Metro all the time for the common things.

Win+X & Win+R. Worst case scenario (using Metro) Win+search.

If you're using stuff a lot pin them. This is exactly it, you're trying to use it exactly as you did Windows 7. It takes some time to change how you do things you've done the same or similar ways for 15 years. But if you put the time in it really is no more difficult.

For desktop use there really is little need to see and use the Metro desktop regularly, unless you want to use the Metro apps - which are at this stage - very weak.
 
Infidelus said:
It doesn't wake from sleep properly at all. Fans spin up, but monitor doesn't come back on and keyboard appears to still be off (no lights on for numlock etc). Have to hit reset to get it working again. I have to do a full shutdown at the moment, which is irritating as the affected machine has a TV card in and is used occasionally for recording, and that relies on standby to work.

I have a feeling it's the ATI drivers judging by the few people I've seen over on the AMD forums talking about it.

Waiting on a newer set of ATI drivers to see if there's a fix in them.
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I'm suffering the same issue but I get to the login screen and everything is running except for input devices, doesn't seem to care if I plug them back in which is bloody annoying. I did run into one other weird issue where opening a moderately large pdf in the default app caused the machine to start performing very poorly, I've not been able to reproduce it but it was troubling.

Saying that the stand by issue is a small price to pay as it happens maybe once a week and otherwise I find Windows 8 pleasant to use, I would have been happier if Microsoft could have spent more time producing Metro and desktop versions of all their applications e.g. if I use windows media player I'm stuck with metro which is fine but then I run notepad and I'm in the desktop, shouldn't there be a Metro version of notepad and all the other very basic stuff people are going to want to do? Plus I hate the fact that some of those Metro apps are missing features which people are going to notice, not the end of the world but Microsoft is a big enough company to deal with these issues.

It's a shame because I think a casual user is going to have no problem using the Metro interface but right now they can't stick with it and when you're just trying to use a device it's jarring to be thrown to a different UI for no good reason.

In short they should have gone further but I think they're on the right path.
 
Been using it for ages. it's ok. No great leap. Live tiles are anything but good as more often than not they just tell you rubbish information. If I need info, I use the browser, simple. Metro is ok if you completely ignore it. To do that, you have to be familiar with shortcuts. Hyper-V is one of the reasons I plummed for this as my main OS. Sadly, it's backfired. After living with VMware Workstation 8 for over a year, Win8 hyper v is massive backstep.

No WiFi vlan adapter
No resolutions set to that of the laptop (there's a max console resolution) this can be overcome with an RDP session except for the fact that all my machines run on an internal network
no drag and drop (the biggest omission from Hyper V since it's inception).

The rest is just a hybrid of Win7, WHS and WinServer 2012
 
ChileanLlama said:
For desktop use there really is little need to see and use the Metro desktop regularly, unless you want to use the Metro apps - which are at this stage - very weak.
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Really this is the issue though, the main base of W8 is a decent upgrade with many parts being improved from W7. Unfortunately someone high up in MS has decided to force Metro upon all users of W8. If it was an optional extra it would be fine, the majority of users could just ignore it and carry on as normal with the people who like it still having access. For anyone who doesn't like it I guess we can just stick with W7 since there's absolutely nothing wrong with it.
 
Lucero said:
Been using it for ages. it's ok. No great leap. Live tiles are anything but good as more often than not they just tell you rubbish information. If I need info, I use the browser, simple. Metro is ok if you completely ignore it. To do that, you have to be familiar with shortcuts. Hyper-V is one of the reasons I plummed for this as my main OS. Sadly, it's backfired. After living with VMware Workstation 8 for over a year, Win8 hyper v is massive backstep.

No WiFi vlan adapter
No resolutions set to that of the laptop (there's a max console resolution) this can be overcome with an RDP session except for the fact that all my machines run on an internal network
no drag and drop (the biggest omission from Hyper V since it's inception).

The rest is just a hybrid of Win7, WHS and WinServer 2012
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Adding to the Hyper-V list:

No native USB support

I've got an old USB scanner that I use once or twice a year that doesn't support anything newer than XP, so I'd planned to create a virtual machine with Hyper-V and boot that up as and when needed. No such luck. If I want USB, I apparently need to either use a different bit of software, or buy a USB network hub or pay for a software solution.
 
Can only echo what others have said. For tablets it's brilliant and makes a lot of sense. For desktops it's pointless and I don't know why they're trying to force everybody to use it. Why not just have a tablet version and an "enterprise" version without the touchscreen design? Sure, one day in the not-too-distant future, the traditional desktop may be dead - but we're not there yet. And the typical desktop business user will not want Metro. I still have users at work who are on Windows XP and throw a strop when they have to switch to Windows 7. Trying to get them to use Windows 8 would be hilarious!

Summary: Windows 8 is ace - but MS are shooting themselves in the foot by trying to force everybody onto it. It's not time yet.
 
DanF said:
Really this is the issue though, the main base of W8 is a decent upgrade with many parts being improved from W7. Unfortunately someone high up in MS has decided to force Metro upon all users of W8. If it was an optional extra it would be fine, the majority of users could just ignore it and carry on as normal with the people who like it still having access. For anyone who doesn't like it I guess we can just stick with W7 since there's absolutely nothing wrong with it.
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It's not an issue though, as you say people can stay on Windows 7.

With a bit of retraining it's the same but different, and it only gets in the way if you let it. Otherwise it's there if you need it, and as someone else has pointed out in this thread, there may be a time when there are some great apps for it.

Why all the angst about it, it's not as though most of those with complaints have pointed to must have features they are going to be missing out on - so why so vociferous about it?
 
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