Windows 8 Consumer Preview Thread

RobP said:
They get their info from the Customer Experience Improvement Programme, and the correct number and quote is:

"In fact, 88% of app launches are from outside the Start menu today".

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/10/11/reflecting-on-your-comments-on-the-start-screen.aspx

Well worth having a read of that blog, give some reasoning behind the design decisions.
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I always immediately closed that and disabled all reporting to MS and i am sure most users who don't have 100 icons on their desktop did the same thing.

I use the start menu fairly frequently. I don't use the desktop. I think a lot of people use the pinned start menu items, well based on my experience.

Problem with those sorts of feedback things is that experienced users, which is ms biggest market never participate in their feedback. Fullscreen start menu... waste of time.
 
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groen said:
I use the start menu fairly frequently. I don't use the desktop. I think a lot of people use the pinned start menu items, well based on my experience.
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Many people that actually do real work on their PC's just pin programs directly to the task bar. It's quickest and one less click than opening up the Start menu. Any other functions the Metro UI is already better at, like search. There is no need for the dated Start menu anymore, get over it.
 
groen said:
Problem with those sorts of feedback things is that experienced users, which is ms biggest market never participate in their feedback.
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I'd class myself as an experienced user and I have my most used apps all pinned to the taskbar. I do occasionally dip into the start menu but mostly that's to use the search to get to command prompt / registry editor and occasionally a rarely used program. I think the 88% is probably pretty accurate for me, I think mine might be even higher!

I've also been known to provide feedback to MS on occasion...
 
Yes primary applications will be on the taskbar. But most people do not pin every application on their pc to the taskbar. They pin secondary applications to their start menu for easy access.

Unless you one of those people that just IE and go to facebook and check your yahoo mail. Then you would use windows 7 in a similar way.

They also say people like jump lists, i have never met anyone who likes jump lists working within IT. jump lists on the start menu and the taskbar are extremely annoying, at least one positive thing about the new fullscreen mess of a start menu is no jump lists.

I don't need to get over it, because one i probably won't use windows 8, because i don't have time to play games with blocks. If i do use windows 8 i will probably disable the childish fullscreen abomination and enable the start menu.


See what happens is that you get these design wackos at MS that are not IT people, they are wacko designers, they get a bunch of data from incompetent users and then they go about making a whole load of crap up to justify their design decisions. Using heat maps and other non sense to try and justify a full screen start menu, it is laughable.
 
Would i be right in assuming something went wrong in creating my bootable USB to install windows 8 if the installer and windows loading screen has a picture of a fish where the windows logo should be!? :p

EDIT: wtf and the desktop wallpaper, is that seriously what they decided to use as placeholders? rofl

My first impression is that i don't like it, but that's natural with something so different. My first thought though was to click IE, so i clicked IE looked around the page and once the address bar disapeared i just stopped and thought "ok....how do i get that back" that part isn't exactly obvious unless you've seen the videos.

Tell you what, going from XP to 7 was bad enough in a school (teachers hate change more than stuck in the past IT bods) but going from windows 7 to this in a school environment is going to be interesting to say the least!

EDIT2: ignoring metro completely for a moment, the ribbon view i like, as a network technician it's giving me a lot of my most used settings in explorer right there and easily accessible. I'm still worried about the lack of start menu but i think it'll work well so long as metro is highly customisable and easy to lock down with various policies from an education/business perspective. Looking forward to seeing Server 8 and the group policy templates next.
 
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groen said:
See what happens is that you get these design wackos at MS that are not IT people, they are wacko designers, they get a bunch of data from incompetent users and then they go about making a whole load of crap up to justify their design decisions. Using heat maps and other non sense to try and justify a full screen start menu, it is laughable.
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Bring back pen and paper!! I don't hold with all this new fangled stuff, I've done it this way for years and it's perfectly fine.. GUI? Pah, you wouldn't need to keep buying new PCs if you just stuck with a command line, what was wrong with a good batch file menu to run my apps anyway.!!!

Yoof of today and their new confusi.. err.. childish GUIs...

:D
 
the more i use it the more i find it annoying

all i wanted to do is shut down the only way i have found so far is cntrl+alt+del and click shut down from there

anyone got a faster way?
 
winkey+i > power

or good old fashioned alt+f4 (click a blank area of the desktop or taskbar so no app has focus)

or create a shortcut and pin it.

shutdown -t 0 -s
 
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smithy83 said:
the more i use it the more i find it annoying

all i wanted to do is shut down the only way i have found so far is cntrl+alt+del and click shut down from there

anyone got a faster way?
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Power button on your PC (quick press, not press and hold for 4 sec hard power down)?
 
i would love to see my dad try and use windows 8 if i am having trouble with finding things i would hate to see him try and figure it out

they should have went all the way one way either get rid of the desktop altogether this just seems like a compromise that does not work for me
 
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Hi guys

Sorry if this has been asked already.

Has anyone tried any gaming on this yet?

I read on a Skyrim mod site it helped with a few peoples framerates on ATI systems?
I only really play the above and BF3 and was going to try this when I get my new SSD.

I'd try to dual boot but am a bit wary on doing that has anyone got any good instruction links for them steps?

Thanks
 
don't know about those games but i've had a quick blast on GTA4 and it runs just as fast as under windows 7. i need to test more though to see how stable it all is.

rather comically i had to bypass the GFWL client as it causes the game to crash. if i use a single DLL (xliveless) to bypass it, the game works fine.

i made this post earlier about dual booting....

marc2003 said:
yes there is an easier way. don't even bother with DVD/usb. simply make sure your spare drive is already formatted as NTFS and has a drive letter. mount the ISO within your current windows desktop. virtual clone drive is good for this if you don't already have a tool....

http://www.slysoft.com/en/download.html

after the ISO has mounted, DO NOT run setup from the root of the drive. instead browse to the sources folder of the mounted drive and run setup.exe from there. just follow the prompts on screen and make sure you choose a custom install and pick your empty partition/drive.
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marc2003 said:
don't know about those games but i've had a quick blast on GTA4 and it runs just as fast as under windows 7. i need to test more though to see how stable it all is.

rather comically i had to bypass the GFWL client as it causes the game to crash. if i use a single DLL (xliveless) to bypass it, the game works fine.
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That's the other game I was wondering about thanks. I always use the xliveless.dll anyway for the mods so cheers. Now it's just BF3 :)

Downloading it now.

Cheers for the dual boot tips too
 
Does anyone know if you have to enable the ACHI driver in the registry when using an ssd like you do with windows 7?
I tried the manual method after installing windows 8 in IDE mode but could not find the folder location in windows 8 using the method bellow, i also tried the windows automaticfix it program which failed to run. so i changed the setting from IDE to ACHI in the bios anyway and windows 8 booted fine.

This is the manual method i tried to find the location of the registry.

To resolve this issue yourself, enable the AHCI driver in the registry before you change the SATA mode of the boot drive. To do this, follow these steps:
Exit all Windows-based programs.
Click Start, type regedit in the Start Search box, and then press ENTER.
If you receive the User Account Control dialog box, click Continue.
Locate and then click one of the following registry subkeys:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Msahci
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\IastorV
In the right pane, right-click Start in the Name column, and then click Modify.
In the Value data box, type 0, and then click OK.
On the File menu, click Exit to close Registry Editor.
 
I'm no doubt being retarded but I cant make my start screen look all pretty and tidy and organised like they have it in the keynote.... How do you group icons into ... well groups. And can you stop the icons snapping up the columns? Sometimes i want a space there etc and cant organise it properly with KB&M.

Finally why is the music app so utterly crap? You can choose between albums view, artists view or songs view.. great. artist. click an artist you like lets say tool. Ok now lets select the album from that artist... oh wait no I can choose play all or shuffle all.... shame because the app seems quite good but the navigation is pap. of course the video app doesnt play any good formats either. Back to VLC.
 
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