Windows 8 Consumer Preview Thread

Installed this on a virtual machine and it just seems slow and clunky....took far longer than 10 seconds to boot too.

EDIT: Do I really have to right click to change web address in metro?

EDIT AGAIN: how do you scroll across aswell? (Or is that just my spazzy vm?)
 
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A clean boot (or whatever they call it) isn't much faster than Windows 7, and I must admit on a spinning disk I don't feel a significant improvement in Win8.

I suggest avoiding the Metro IE if you're using the desktop. Plus a VM just gives you a generally bad experience unless you install the guest additions where available and run it full screen.
 
theheyes said:
A clean boot (or whatever they call it) isn't much faster than Windows 7, and I must admit on a spinning disk I don't feel a significant improvement in Win8.
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On my Samsung 830 SSD, boot time in the Win8 preview is significantly quicker than under Win7 with pretty much exactly the same other software (browser, e-mail client, Office, three or four other applications and a couple of games) installed. Power up, POST, briefest flash of that fish logo (sometimes not even that much) and then I'm on the lock screen. On 7, the loading animation had time to complete and then some when booting.

Overall, I'm liking 8 so far. Some stuff needs work - some of it out of MS's hands, such as ATi driver performance in one of my old racing sims (GPL) which frankly sucks right now and didn't on Win7. And it does seem specific to ATi, because I swapped in an old Geforce 9600GT to test it out and it blew my 5770 out of the water. But overall, it's been impressive for a preview OS. Scratch that - impressive, period. If IE10 Metro wasn't so feature-poor and clunky to use compared to other browsers I actually would spend a lot of time in the Metro environment.
 
Yeah I don't doubt it for SSDs - my experience is using a traditional spinning disk as pointed out. I notice it boots very quickly when I launch the VM instance I have at home and that's with an intel x25-m which are pretty old now and relatively slow.
 
Number_25 said:
I'm actually missing the classic Windows theme quite a lot.

Metro isn't really an issue, but I'm seriously considering reverting back to Windows 7.
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If metro isn't an issue for you - and it really need appear whilst one is working - is it the lack of a start button? If it is, you could try Classic Shell which is free and neatly pops back a start button and XP style menus.

personally, I got used to Windows 8 and was working fine with it for a month. I only reverted to 7 a few days ago to see if I missed anything - oh and no by the way!
 
Currently running this on my laptop without any issues.

Whats the best way of installing it on my main system with two SSDs in RAID 0? Install it through windows via the download or do I format and install off a usb stick?
 
JamesM said:
Currently running this on my laptop without any issues.

Whats the best way of installing it on my main system with two SSDs in RAID 0? Install it through windows via the download or do I format and install off a usb stick?
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if you download it via the web link this then save the existing Windows directory as windows.old but leave your existing applications still working. Disk clean-up can remove the windows .old folder.

personally, I would prefer to reformat and start again even though it means reinstalling the programmes. This latter might make more sense if you are dealing with raid.

incidentally, how well does raid work with SSds?
 
Yeah thought that was the case, will do a format and fresh install.

Has been trouble free since I started using them before Christmas, speeds are still good and the M4 garbage collection seems to be working fine (no TRIM in RAID, etc)
 
I don't like it. It feels like a touchscreen UI, not a keyboard and mouse one. :(

I can see this being amazing on tablets, but Metro should be optional and uninstallable so that you can revert to standard Start Menu Windows for keyboard and mouse users.
 
Desktop is still there. Look at metro on a desktop as a full screen start menu. It's also a much better start menu, much more efficient. Not only is Tge layout better, can fit more on it and off course it can present information instantly.
 
Glaucus said:
Desktop is still there. Look at metro on a desktop as a full screen start menu. It's also a much better start menu, much more efficient. Not only is Tge layout better, can fit more on it and off course it can present information instantly.
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The thing is I want choice. Currently I have zero icons on my desktop - I like a nice background and that's it - everything else is hidden away in my start menu. I don't want to have a hundred icons on my desktop which is why I don't like Metro. If I only had touch available then it would be good but I have a mouse and keyboard which no touchscreen and nor do I want to invest in it as I'd then be too close to the screen.

Roll on Windows 9 when, hopefully, they'll realise that people actually want a traditional desktop O/S rather than a tablet O/S/



M.
 
m4cc45 said:
The thing is I want choice. Currently I have zero icons on my desktop - I like a nice background and that's it - everything else is hidden away in my start menu. I don't want to have a hundred icons on my desktop which is why I don't like Metro. If I only had touch available then it would be good but I have a mouse and keyboard which no touchscreen and nor do I want to invest in it as I'd then be too close to the screen.

Roll on Windows 9 when, hopefully, they'll realise that people actually want a traditional desktop O/S rather than a tablet O/S/



M.
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Sorry, I don't understand why you're being forced to use the desktop for icons all of a sudden? You've still got a start menu, but it's full screen now - and I totally get it if you don't like the look of it :)

Also what's wrong with pinning icons to the taskbar - far better than the start menu or desktop icons IMO - I just get the impression a lot of people never got familiar with that feature in Windows 7 so it's a double hit to them now.
 
ChileanLlama said:
Sorry, I don't understand why you're being forced to use the desktop for icons all of a sudden? You've still got a start menu, but it's full screen now - and I totally get it if you don't like the look of it :)

Also what's wrong with pinning icons to the taskbar - far better than the start menu or desktop icons IMO - I just get the impression a lot of people never got familiar with that feature in Windows 7 so it's a double hit to them now.
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Agree completely with this. I also hate Icons all over the desktop - I like it clean and sleek. In Windows 7 I pin my most used stuff on the taskbar. In Windows 8 it's all there on the Metro screen. For Windows 8 desktop I use RocketDock as well - then everything else is grouped in a nice looking bar at the top (or wherever else you like) of the screen. All very clean looking.

I'm loving Windows 8. It took a while to get used to the best way of doing things, but now I feel like everything is so much easier than previous Windows. Perfect example is the new version of IE. I hated it at first.....now I find it the most intuitive and fast browser out there.
 
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