Windows 8 Consumer Preview Thread

MR.B said:
So no ones actually posted about all the new hardware shown off lately at Computex? :confused: Well, without seeing this stuff i can understand why some people still dont get where MS are going...
Anyway, AnandTech have a preview of the upcoming Acer W800 Win 8 tablet...

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This thing has a 1080p IPS screen :cool: and uses a new ultra low voltage Ivy Bridge CPU (it's looking like a custom design). It's meant to have 8 hours battery life, which is extremely good considering the high performance CPU that is vastly faster than any other tablet. It will have an SSD too, not the typical slower nand storage found in current tablets. It's basically laptop hardware in a tablet.

It also has USB 3.0, HDMI and Thunderbolt:

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Video:


AnandTech was impressed and says it was the best thing seen at Computex this year. I honestly think this type of thing is the future and will replace laptops/desktops for atleast 80% of people.

Theres also the Acer W510 which has a keyboard dock that doubles batter life to 18 hours (this uses Intel Clover Trail CPU, which is a new Atom, and has similar performance and battery life to ARM's new A15 CPU's).


Asus also have Win 8 tablets coming (videos on page), similar to the Transformer Prime (with keyboard docks):

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The above is the Asus Tablet 600 and runs Win RT so it's ARM CPU based. But Asus also have the similar Tablet 800 which is Intel x86 based and runs Win 8.

Theres loads more similar Win 8 devices on the usual hardware sites.
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There is a thread in mobiles about them. :)

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18408944

Personally I prefer the Transformer book

http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/04/asus-transformer-book/

i7 Ivybridge, 4GB Ram, 1080p display etc.

The CPU's don't need to be custom ones however, the current crop of ultrabooks are similar thicknesses and they last 5-7 hours and have keyboards, trackpads and fold out screens included. Take the aforementioned bits away and you could easily name a tablet very slim with a good battery life like that of the above. They will however be heavier than the Arm tablets (and generally bigger), but they will be tablets you can really call all in ones. Add a keyboard dock for when you need a tablet and 10+ hours battery life and a desktop dock to use it as your main computer at home (attached to a big monitor/keyboard/mouse/external storage). For most people that would be good enough for all their needs.
 
Glaucus said:
Great post, can you explain these new CPUs. Which are arm and which are x86 and got any links power and performance charts as well as general details?

"Could conceivable pay be connect to gfx card"

Can any one explain? Is there gfx card that connect via thunderbolt?

Damn it I can't wait for win8 tablets :(, so much nicer than apple or android.
Just hope the store quickly takes off and we aren't waiting months or years for apps.
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on the GFX front, yep, you can attach a GFX card via thunderbolt. Have a look at the Sony VAIO Z series for how it could work.

The Z is an ultraportable (ultrabook in size but more powerful and more expensive), it has a quad core x86 CPU and integrated graphics, but has a proprietary thunderbolt slot (couldn't call it thunderbolt because Apple had a exclusive at the time) which is used to attach to a dock that contains a DVD/BD drive and a dedicated mobile graphics card.

It would work exactly the same as the tablets could. Use the integrated graphics when out and about so battery life is better, tablet is smaller and it doesn't get as hot, then get back home, mount it on the dock and use the dedicated card to output to your big screen. Obviously the dock also means every peripheral is attached straight away.

EDIT: For example

http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc...and-netbooks/sony-vaio-z-series-983367/review
 
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Glaucus said:
Great post, can you explain these new CPUs. Which are arm and which are x86 and got any links power and performance charts as well as general details?
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I included some links in the post, but if you go to anandtech, engadget, or theverge and search for Windows 8 tablets you'll find lots of info.
And as far as i know theres no benchmarks yet for any of these devices.

I can tell you about the CPU's though!... many Win 8 tablets will use Intels new Clover Trail CPU. Which is dual-core and based on single core Medfield (benchmarks). Medfield is Intels first CPU for smartphones which has just come out. It's only single core but compares to dual-core ARM A9 CPU's in performance and battery life. Being as Clover Trail is dual-core though, then compared to other ARM tablets (iPad and all Android tablets) i'd expect a Clover Trail Win 8 tablet to be atleast as fast as any of them, if not faster, while having roughly the same level of battery life.

Other Win 8 tablets (like the Acer W800 above) will user Ivy Bridge CPU's, but obviously because of this the battery life will be lower and they'll have cooling fans. Where as all ARM and probably Intel Clover Trail tablets should be completely fanless.

The ARM based Win 8 tablets all use new ARM SoC's based on current ARM CPU designs being used in phones/tablets (A9 and A15) but the GPU's and other things (like SATA controllers) have been specifically created for Win 8, because they all have to support Windows/PC things like SATA, atleast DirectX 10.1 and WDDM 1.2 graphics driver.


Amp34 said:
The CPU's don't need to be custom ones however, the current crop of ultrabooks are similar thicknesses and they last 5-7 hours and have keyboards, trackpads and fold out screens included.
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True but Anandtech thinks the Acer W800 uses a Ivy Bridge design. Intel worked closely with Acer on the W800, so i wouldn't be surprised if it was lower clocked and uses a new smaller package to save space.
 
Amp34 said:
Don't worry, MS will release it again (with a few minor changes and some optimisation) to critical acclaim and cal it Windows 9...Just like Vista and Windows 7..;)
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lol too true.

I think this time around it'll only be the people round places like here who won't upgrade, I see this as being huge in the consumer market with tablets taking over everything.
 
Installed the release preview last night on my netbook and I have to say, I love Metro! I'd much rather just work in that environment than have to switch back to the **** old desktop, and that's even without a touch screen. Embrace the future I say!

Obviously there's still a few things missing. I'm mostly annoyed that the metro apps for music, video and photo don't pick up content on my other machine (acts as a home server running win7) - I don't believe I should have to download all this content onto my local machine for metro to pick it up. I guess they're having technical issues with finding a solution for indexing network/cloud based content effectively.

Also, I'm surprised the weather metro app doesn't have a live tile, or am I missing something?

Other than that, I love it! Beautiful example of interface design, well done Microsoft.

Oh one last thing, notepad has not been updated?! It's still the crappest text editor known to man after 17 years! :/
 
ok, I have been using Windows 8 for just over a week in anger. Trying to break it basically and really getting to know it. First up I work in IT and have about twenty years experience using various OSes. First started with MS on DOS 5 and Windows 3.

Now, on to Windows 8. The first few days I loved it but now I'm finding myself slowly getting more and more annoyed.

Things I like

Hyper-V integration (Big point for me)
Fast Boot (WOW, way faster than 7)
Cloud Roaming Profiles (so long as you're careful)
Task Manager (Finally getting it right after all these years)
File Copying and general Explorer (Big improvement, but still a little way to go IMHO)

Things I'm not sure about

Actually getting work done (Desktop vs Metro)

It seems to me the experience is very much hindered by the constant back and forth between desktop and metro. By default media files are associated with Metro. This means that if you want to quickly view an image, double clicking takes you to the metro app. Yes I suppose you can change file associations but I'm trying to learn and 'get' the whole Windows 8 Metro vibe. That said, I'm not sure once you are finished using an app you can close it. Can you? example is playing a video. If I want to change the volume how do I do this without going back to desktop, or how do I stop the video playing as I couldn't even see a stop button. Couldn't see any easy way but this might just be me being stupid.

Searching for things is a pain. Let's say I know where I want to be, in Windows 7 I could simply type in Windows Updates or My Computer. Try doing that in Metro. You can't. That means you have to put a shortcut on the deskop and do it the long winded way. Unless again I'm doing something wrong?

From a techie it seems the nuts and bolts are hidden away in favor of a nice and pretty GUI for people who don't really know much about PCs. In that respect it's slower than 7, but maybe that's just because I know how to do things quickly and directly.
 
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glen8 said:
You do indeed :)

......unless you want something other than files or apps. My Computer, Control Panel, Windows Updates, Folder Options.....nada
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Simply change it from apps to settings and search for the setting you wnat to change. much much improved system.

You can of course change file settings as you say. this will be needed less and less as decent apps come available and you spend more and more time in metro. I imagine fairly quickly, work will be done on desktop and social/perosnal time will largely be spent in metro.

Close an app you just swipe down from top.


As for the rest of it, you don't need to leave metro to change volume.

How can you not find controls. They're massive and when hidden you just right click.
 
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Got a netbook for mum as she had a heart attack, now she is on the mend she is using it less and less, so will give this a shot, Tried server 8 already and liked the look so hoping this is great!
 
nero120 said:
Obviously there's still a few things missing. I'm mostly annoyed that the metro apps for music, video and photo don't pick up content on my other machine (acts as a home server running win7) - I don't believe I should have to download all this content onto my local machine for metro to pick it up. I guess they're having technical issues with finding a solution for indexing network/cloud based content effectively.
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Are you using homegroup? If not have you added the network shares to your libraries? Do you have the right credentials to access the files (which might be different if you're using a MS Account for Win 8 login)?The apps will find the media content then.

Also, I'm surprised the weather metro app doesn't have a live tile, or am I missing something?
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It does for me, but only when set to a large tile.
 
ChileanLlama said:
Are you using homegroup? If not have you added the network shares to your libraries? Do you have the right credentials to access the files (which might be different if you're using a MS Account for Win 8 login)?The apps will find the media content then.
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No not using homegroup, but I have added the network shares to libraries using symlinks which works in explorer but the metro apps still don't pick up the content.

Also on a slightly related topic, I have my photos already in my skydrive under a folder called "Photo Library", but this is not picked up by the photos metro app. The skydrive tile says I have no pictures, and I'm not sure how to get this to pick them up correctly.

It does for me, but only when set to a large tile.
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Sorted this now, I had to change my home location to US.
 
Faster boot times sound great but for Desktop Gaming, I don't see enough benefits of W8 to move from W7. W8 looks like it's more for tablets, like getting rid of Aero to save battery life!
 
Made my own fix for switching from Speakers to Headphones with no Control Panel with Asus Xonar.
In my Windows 7 partition with speakers active, exported my registry folder that contained the xonar stuff, switched to headphones, restarted PC and then exported the registry folder again.

I can double click my speaker.reg then restart and my speakers will be on, or vice versa with my headphones.
 
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