Windows 8 Consumer Preview Thread
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Yes. you could consider pressing the start key and gettign metro up as being the same as the start menu with pinned programs (just a bigger full screen display so you can pin more if you wish). Right click with the mouse and select all apps then shows the same as the old 'all programs' button. Searching is far better as you get more apps with better descriptions.
Yeah, I thought the battery monitor was going down slower on my Mini 311C. Surprised I could notice it though with that narrow a difference on your charts.
The first time I tried to turn it off I gave up and used the power switch. What an absurd place to hide the turn off menu.
Installing the ION drivers, having disconnected from 3G, was annoyed to have to reconnect for Windows to have to check the file. A nice feature but couldn't it check straight after the download?
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Caporegime
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My netbook seems well faster than usual.
Right i have read the first 6 pages (set to expert mode) and this last page but could not see any info.
What is the multi display mode like on this compared to windows 7.
I.e can i turn my main monitor off without all my icons etc transferring over to the second display.
Can i set up a screen saver on one monitor, while the other one does not have one.
Basically is there better support for dual monitor support.
What is the multi display mode like on this compared to windows 7.
I.e can i turn my main monitor off without all my icons etc transferring over to the second display.
Can i set up a screen saver on one monitor, while the other one does not have one.
Basically is there better support for dual monitor support.
On my two screen, I had the start menu ( tiles) one one screen, my secondary screen was the normal desk top. If i turned off the screen with the tiles I was just left with the normal desktop, thats all I know for now.
Any ways, after using it for a bit, I like it, I can see past the immediate " its different, therefore its kack" thing, always happen when theirs change from people, dont see the big fuss about the start menu/ tiles thing, no big deal, just a way of doing things.
Any ways, after using it for a bit, I like it, I can see past the immediate " its different, therefore its kack" thing, always happen when theirs change from people, dont see the big fuss about the start menu/ tiles thing, no big deal, just a way of doing things.
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I'm playing it with it on a VM right now. My first thoughts are that Metro looks like an ugly mess, but I'll keep playing and see if my opinion changes.
First thing I did was install recommended updates, and was amused to discover that Windows still has to be rebooted after updating. I guess some things don't change
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really liking it so far only played about for 15 mins but first impressions are good
Soldato
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must confess I also like it, use Windows Vista usually and decided to hold off for Windows 8. so far it seems no different to most other Windows version except it now shows me processor as being 4 Core, 8 Thread and things seem to run notably better, also Cinebench score has improved by ~0.8 points compared to Vista with no changes in any other settings, average frame-rate in Starcraft II also seems a bunch better and it feels much smoother. also much to my surprise that irritating 'core jumping' business I have noticed with this processor where core usage would randomly jump between cores, appears (touch wood) to have disappeared, as a result temperatures are coming in lower and Turbo Core appears to actually work for once! 
Edit: on a more negative side, took me about ten minutes to figure out how to 'shut down' computer, there is no obvious option anywhere at all, also uses your Hotmail, Live or whatever password to sign into computer, which threw me off for a while since don't remember telling it to do that?!
Double Edit: also cannot for the life of me get Catalyst Control Centre to work properly and display fan settings and what not for my card, which sucks somewhat, no support for HD 4*** series?
Edit: on a more negative side, took me about ten minutes to figure out how to 'shut down' computer, there is no obvious option anywhere at all, also uses your Hotmail, Live or whatever password to sign into computer, which threw me off for a while since don't remember telling it to do that?!
Double Edit: also cannot for the life of me get Catalyst Control Centre to work properly and display fan settings and what not for my card, which sucks somewhat, no support for HD 4*** series?
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Got this on my laptop/tablet so have the best of both worlds.
First off the touch drivers seem worse than with the dev preview (its a fresh install)
I am getting 1 out of 5 of my touches not registering and I have done the cilabiration.
Second half the apps keep crashing. I have 6gb of ram and ok the processor is old and slow but I never had one crashed app on the dev preview and I had them all open at the same time once.
The mail app is disappointing. I have my gmail account attached to it but it doesn't seem to display my conversations properly like on the real gmail.
The facebook integration could do with some work I do like how I can pull my photos into the photo app but the facebook app seems all over the place and kind of confusing.
My biggest disappointment is the music app. When it does work it shows random albums and not in any kind of order but most of the time it crashes when I am browsing my albums. It also for some reason doesn't put all the songs from one album in the same place so I would have two bon jovi cross roads albums one with 9 songs and the other with the other 5 its annoying as hell and I really wish someone could make a music app that isn't so stupid.
The control panel from the dev preview seems to have disappeared.
The typing in the start screen to find an app is great one big problem though......… How the heck are you supposed to do that on a touchscreen :\
Startup and shutdown are a touch slower than the dev preview. I don't like the fish icon when booting up its ugly.
At least my brightness controls are working properly again
Dont get me wrong I love windows 8 but I wish they would do what they did with vista and bring out beta 2 and rc1 and all that so we can see the improvements and fixes weeks instead of months later.
First off the touch drivers seem worse than with the dev preview (its a fresh install)
I am getting 1 out of 5 of my touches not registering and I have done the cilabiration.
Second half the apps keep crashing. I have 6gb of ram and ok the processor is old and slow but I never had one crashed app on the dev preview and I had them all open at the same time once.
The mail app is disappointing. I have my gmail account attached to it but it doesn't seem to display my conversations properly like on the real gmail.
The facebook integration could do with some work I do like how I can pull my photos into the photo app but the facebook app seems all over the place and kind of confusing.
My biggest disappointment is the music app. When it does work it shows random albums and not in any kind of order but most of the time it crashes when I am browsing my albums. It also for some reason doesn't put all the songs from one album in the same place so I would have two bon jovi cross roads albums one with 9 songs and the other with the other 5 its annoying as hell and I really wish someone could make a music app that isn't so stupid.
The control panel from the dev preview seems to have disappeared.
The typing in the start screen to find an app is great one big problem though......… How the heck are you supposed to do that on a touchscreen :\
Startup and shutdown are a touch slower than the dev preview. I don't like the fish icon when booting up its ugly.
At least my brightness controls are working properly again
Dont get me wrong I love windows 8 but I wish they would do what they did with vista and bring out beta 2 and rc1 and all that so we can see the improvements and fixes weeks instead of months later.
I installed Win 8 on a very old laptop with just 512MB RAM for the lolz... and it runs atleast as good as XP did!! 
The ancient laptop has been given some new life. It's single core Pentium 4 as well!
Win 7 on the same hardware feels bloated and is almost unusable, it also uses way more RAM than 8. Win 8 also boots faster than both XP and Win 7.
What are other peoples results on old or low-end hardware like netbooks? I've noticed others are seeing considerable improvements over 7 as well...
The ancient laptop has been given some new life. It's single core Pentium 4 as well!Win 7 on the same hardware feels bloated and is almost unusable, it also uses way more RAM than 8. Win 8 also boots faster than both XP and Win 7.
What are other peoples results on old or low-end hardware like netbooks? I've noticed others are seeing considerable improvements over 7 as well...
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Soldato
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Regarding people spending ages looking for ways to shutdown the thing... why don't people just press the power button? :\
Personally, I'm in two minds. As with most, I don't like Metro at all - what were they thinking in not making it an optional shell? Little else in the GUI has changed, so it's not as though they've rewritten the core of the OS. You really should be able to fall back to the standard Start button, or if you are going to make things more intuitive for tablet users, then make it so it doesn't all-but alienate the desktop power user, or make the desktop more intuitive too.
That said, I'm not sure how much Metro is going to affect me. You can still pin your most frequently used programs, hopefully developers will develop tiles where they are of benefit too (and only where they are of benefit - I really wouldn't want to see that there's a new version of Norton out the moment I switch on my PC (not that I use Norton of course, but it's the sort of thing I can see them doing).
And you can still search for programs, and with one less key press too. Just start typing and hit enter. Sorted.
I will miss the most recent documents in the Start menu, be they either for individual programs (as in Win 7) or just the accumulative ones we've had for a decade or two now. I guess now that you'd need to open a program.
There's no way on earth that corporate users will upgrade to Windows 8 - unless there's some fantastic integration with Server 8. The only ones who will consider it will be those who can genuinely make use of a tablet and want to retain 'docked' use.
Personally, I'm in two minds. As with most, I don't like Metro at all - what were they thinking in not making it an optional shell? Little else in the GUI has changed, so it's not as though they've rewritten the core of the OS. You really should be able to fall back to the standard Start button, or if you are going to make things more intuitive for tablet users, then make it so it doesn't all-but alienate the desktop power user, or make the desktop more intuitive too.
That said, I'm not sure how much Metro is going to affect me. You can still pin your most frequently used programs, hopefully developers will develop tiles where they are of benefit too (and only where they are of benefit - I really wouldn't want to see that there's a new version of Norton out the moment I switch on my PC (not that I use Norton of course, but it's the sort of thing I can see them doing).
And you can still search for programs, and with one less key press too. Just start typing and hit enter. Sorted.
I will miss the most recent documents in the Start menu, be they either for individual programs (as in Win 7) or just the accumulative ones we've had for a decade or two now. I guess now that you'd need to open a program.
There's no way on earth that corporate users will upgrade to Windows 8 - unless there's some fantastic integration with Server 8. The only ones who will consider it will be those who can genuinely make use of a tablet and want to retain 'docked' use.
Whatch the keynote. It's very easy with mouse+KGB
The start menu is much improved, you can pin documents under the pinned apps and have since w7 or was it vista.
Huge number of company's are using or developing their systems for tablets. So it's a huge selling point. Report last yeah sad nearly all fuse 100 companies where using tablets.
Ohhh the desktop is like a "big metro app" as he says. Can do snap screen and use the corner gestures in desktop. Sweeeeetttt.
Two biggest problems,, is getting people too actually try it for a good few hours for responses to become automatic and off course apps. Untill there's a much bigger range of apps. It kind of hobbles metro interface.
The way it handles app and file sharing is just crazily good.
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