Windows 8 Consumer Preview Thread

i'm getting used to the start screen now. once you've installed all your programs, arranged the ones you regularly use and deleted all the junk that gets dumped there by default, it's much better.

i'm also ignoring all metro apps. they are beyond useless. :p

this_is_gav said:
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.
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browse to

c:\Users\YOU\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows

right click recent items and pin to start. ok it's not expanding like on the old start menu but a shortcut to the folder location in explorer is good enough for me.
 
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Wow, loads more apps in the pipeline and are going to keep adding them to the store as and when they're ready. I thought as they are "free" we might not get anymore apps till launch.
 
Ok I loaded windows 8 yesterday and had no problems loading along side windows 7 in a separate partition. In fact, the new OS selection screen looks slightly better than the old DOS style selection.

First impression of the desktop - Android / Linux.

Windows as we know it doesn't seem to exist unless I'm gravely mistaken. I taker it you can still run apps and windows side - by - side?

One of biggest bug bears with android is the lack of consistency and the inability to actually close an app therefore freeing up memory. The few apps I have loaded appear to have no close function. Is this right? Does this mean we'll be using a task killer to save on memory?

For MS to compete in the market, it doesn't mean that Windows has to look and feel Android.
 
Admiral Huddy said:
Windows as we know it doesn't seem to exist unless I'm gravely mistaken. I taker it you can still run apps and windows side - by - side?

One of biggest bug bears with android is the lack of consistency and the inability to actually close an app therefore freeing up memory. The few apps I have loaded appear to have no close function. Is this right? Does this mean we'll be using a task killer to save on memory?

For MS to compete in the market, it doesn't mean that Windows has to look and feel Android.
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Desktop is there and stil fully functioning, just click on the desktop metrology tile.
Apps you can close, just click at top of screen and pull all the way down to bottom, there's also a keyboard short cut, but can't remember.

However there's zero need to close apps. If you Goto task manager. You will see all the apps are suspended and are using zero CPU time. Again his applies to all apps as its built into the OS.
 
you don't need to close metro apps. task manager automatically suspends them when not in focus to save power - this is very important for maintaining battery life on tablets etc.

if you really must, you can close them simply by grabbing them at the top middle of the screen and dragging them right off the bottom of the scren.

edit: beaten like... an egg.
 
Admiral Huddy said:
First impression of the desktop - Android / Linux.

Windows as we know it doesn't seem to exist unless I'm gravely mistaken. I taker it you can still run apps and windows side - by - side?
Click to expand...

Have you literally used it for 5 seconds?? What you're looking at is NOT the desktop. You need to click on the desktop tile. Everything there works the same as Windows 7 for the most part. But the biggest changes are no more Start menu, Explorer now has the Ribbon, and theres now way better multi monitor support.
 
There's a couple of ways
Take your cursor to the top left corner of your screen, you would see the most recent app which you have opened, if you want to close that app then just right click on it and click on close, if you want to close some other app then just move your cursor down and you would see other apps. Now just right click on the app and click on close.
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Another way to close metro app is to take your cursor to the top left corner, select the app and then just drag the app to the bottom left and your app would be closed
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Photek said:
Have you literally used it for 5 seconds?? What you're looking at is NOT the desktop. You need to click on the desktop tile. Everything there works the same as Windows 7 for the most part. But the biggest changes are no more Start menu, Explorer now has the Ribbon, and theres now way better multi monitor support.
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As well as new network capabilities, especially with those stupid pop up annoying login pages
Cloud integration.
Sharing information between apps
File handling and cloud services
The new refresh & reset options
better task manager
Better file copying manager
Windows to go (run from flash drive)
And a host of other stuff
 
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Anyone have any idea what the tiny pc they have in the keynote. Grey cube slightly larger than fist. Full PI running dual core AMD, they usually say who's made it, but they didn't on this one.
 
I'm impressed with it so far. The Metro UI is decent for doing everyday things like browsing and checking email etc.

Will play about with it a bit more at the weekend and going to grab Visual Studio 11 beta as well.
 
Glaucus said:
Keynote is up, going to watch it tomorrow.

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I suggest you guys watch the keynote in full or from 25mins as I did last night.

Understand that this is revolutionary... I'm not a m$oft fanboi, in fact I love my linux far more but microsoft have delivered what everyone has been talking about for the last few years. Truly innovative and a massive step up from yesteryear's operating systems.

Either stick your head in the sand with windows 7 or help build
 
I am not sure if it has been mentioned already, but has anyone had problems shutting down their PC?

Even when I click on the appropriate command, mine still seems to restart again, rather than shutting down, but without any network connection... a bit of a pain really.

I know it is only a 'beta' version still, but something like that can be rather annoying.
 
Just finished watching it, good keynote like usual.

Next keynote is at CeBIT at end of month. Where. They will go into all the enterprise features of windows 8.
 
I'm going to spend a few days with Windows 8, to see how it performs.

I really like the idea of storage pools. IE fills the screen and hides the menus. Windows 8 looks like it was design for modern HD monitors too :D

I play games on my PC, and play around with IIS and tidying up my HDDs. So, i'll have fun playing :)

See if I can get out of my "windows 7, it just works". It really is pretty much windows 7 underneath.
 
Glaucus said:
Desktop is there and stil fully functioning, just click on the desktop metrology tile.
Apps you can close, just click at top of screen and pull all the way down to bottom, there's also a keyboard short cut, but can't remember.

However there's zero need to close apps. If you Goto task manager. You will see all the apps are suspended and are using zero CPU time. Again his applies to all apps as its built into the OS.
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Ok cheers. Surely there's every need to pull the application from memory on close? Although it's taking no CPU cycles, it still needs to be retained in memory and refreshed. Even if paged, the OS will surely keep looking if the apps is wanted.. This is surely a strain on resources and form mobile tech, a strain on the battery.

Photek said:
Have you literally used it for 5 seconds?? What you're looking at is NOT the desktop. You need to click on the desktop tile. Everything there works the same as Windows 7 for the most part. But the biggest changes are no more Start menu, Explorer now has the Ribbon, and theres now way better multi monitor support.
Click to expand...

I'm not going to lie.. I have only just had a few hours play around. :) but i still want windows to look and feel like windows.. If i wanted it to feel like and Android based system, then id look at Android/Linux.
 
Admiral Huddy said:
Ok cheers. Surely there's every need to pull the application from memory on close? Although it's taking no CPU cycles, it still needs to be retained in memory and refreshed. Even if paged, the OS will surely keep looking if the apps is wanted.. This is surely a strain on resources and form mobile tech, a strain on the battery.
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As i don't know the long answer.
simple answer no. we have more than enough ram these days.
take ios that leaves apps open, with little to no drain on battery and still lasts 10hours+
Why would it keep looking if the app is wanted? You click on the app and it pulls it out of suspended mode.
there's loads of specific APIs for this. Which totally suspend the app. However there are some APIs that allow certain process to continue, without the entire app running. Things like push notification.

there really isn't any need to close apps, but there is an easy way if you insist.
Little bit more info
SOFTWARE REDEVELOPER Microsoft said it will suspend Windows 8 applications that do not appear on screen in its Metro interface to increase power efficiency.
Microsoft's upcoming Windows 8 operating system will need to work on providing good battery life, as many system builders intend to put the heavyweight operating system on tablets. To help matters, Microsoft claimed its goal is to make Windows 8 Metro applications that are not visible on screen not use any battery power.
According to Microsoft, Windows 8 will bring improvements to background code execution, which Microsoft claims will minimise impact on battery life while maintaining multitasking. Microsoft has created new application programming interfaces for background processing, which the firm claims will be able to provide the multi-tasking abilities that users expect but minimise battery drain.
The firm also said its goal is getting the processor into lower power states as much as possible, meaning suspended applications will be stored in a cached state.
Microsoft claims switching to a suspended application will be instant, with the state preserved from last use. However not all applications will be cached in main memory due to space constraints, with Windows 8's memory manager opting to stick infrequently accessed applications back onto disk, which in the case of tablets is likely to be solid-state storage rather than a mechanical hard drive.
Now all Microsoft needs is for device manufacturers to make tablets that perform well compared to Apple's Ipad and the many Android devices, otherwise all its work could be in vain. µ
Source: The Inquirer (http://s.tt/15BlI)
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Android/linux cant do what windows does. Desktop is still there with massive improvements. Metro is also great and more people will use it than they think. Its same with any big change. it takes a while to get used to. but once you do. then you don't want to go back.
 
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Glaucus said:
As i don't know the long answer.
simple answer no. we have more than enough ram these days.
take ios that leaves apps open, with little to no drain on battery and still lasts 10hours+

there really isn't any need to close apps, but there is an easy way if you insist.

Android/linux cant do what windows does. Desktop is still there with massive improvements. Metro is also great and more people will use it than they think. Its same with any big change. it takes a while to get used to. but once you do. then you don't want to go back.
Click to expand...

If i use windows 8 i would pretty much gut all the new apps out of it and just use the metro as a start menu, a way to start normal applications. I have yet see any metro style apps that offer more functionality and stability than traditional style apps. If they can make gateone work within metro i might use that as a terminal emulator but i still like the transparent putty set up and a full screen shell might be a bit much at 1920x1200 but ok on a phone.
 
Very tempted to just go for it and install Win8 as my main OS. I want to try and embrace this new paradigm early so to speak (and then spend a year convincing my mates it's the way forward).

Am I right in saying that sofrware compability with Win8 shouldn't be a big problem in terms of stuff suddenly not working for me if I take the plunge from Win7? Does the Hyper-V backwards compatibility feature essentially mean that virtually everything should be fine?

I want the transition to be smooth so am hoping it's like the Vista to Win7 upgrade, which I found relatively painless.
 
groen said:
If i use windows 8 i would pretty much gut all the new apps out of it and just use the metro as a start menu, a way to start normal applications. I have yet see any metro style apps that offer more functionality and stability than traditional style apps. If they can make gateone work within metro i might use that as a terminal emulator but i still like the transparent putty set up and a full screen shell might be a bit much at 1920x1200 but ok on a phone.
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It's a consumer preview.
What do you expect. It'll take a while for apps to be built and progress.

It's like on iPad I much prefer using the BBC news app and email app rather than websites. Especially with emails bing pushed through so you can see instantly when you have a new email.
 
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