Windows 8 relieved (video)

[Steedie]

I am loving that

 

[Deleted member 77746]

Looks interesting but I don't think you'll see all that touch interface on a normal PC, only if you have a touch enabled device.

I can't help thinking it's running on some hot i5 with 4Gb of ram and a 60Gb SSD drive which is exactly what I don't want from a tablet device.

Once when Windows 8 is released hardware prices should drop too therefore a working PC with a good decent set of hardware for buttons! Hopefully.

 

[Tilluss]

Looks interesting but I don't think you'll see all that touch interface on a normal PC, only if you have a touch enabled device.

I can't help thinking it's running on some hot i5 with 4Gb of ram and a 60Gb SSD drive which is exactly what I don't want from a tablet device.

The demo at D9 was running on an intel atom, it didn't mention the storage type. But even so, the media that were there said it was running very smooth which should build peoples confidence a bit.

I think the demo has raised more questions than it has answered for both users (consumers and businesses alike) and developers. It will be interesting to see what other details come out over the following months to hopefully answer some of these questions.

 

[Brabbinho]

Looks too much like a mobile phone for me. Looks like it will be brilliant for Tablets though. I think I will stick with windows 7 if it is going to look and operate like that

 

[theheyes]

My missus commented while i was watching this video 'What are you watching with such disdain?'


First impressions, i really, really don't like it. Looks OK for tablet and touch screen. I can't see any benefit for desktop.

Also, it is very obvious to me that demo system is using an SSD. I wonder what performance will be like on the billions of platter HDDs, given SSDs are still priced out of the market, when pulling all that media data off the hard drive.

That's a bit like judging Windows 7 on a demo of Media Centre. I don't think anyone in their right mind are going to use that interface with a keyboard and mouse. And in regards to the SSD I think it's safe to assume that even now, anyone working with a touch screen is using flash storage. I'm not worried about the hardware performance either because it's just going to explode over the next few years.

I want to know more about how it works under the hood but I don't think we'll have those details for a while. Part of me thinks if MS weren't so stubborn about "Windows everywhere" they could have had a clean break with the tablet OS. At the moment I can't see the value in dragging the traditional desktop onto the tablet screen except for maybe accessing the file system, which is a chore with a touch screen.

I guess I hope they don't deliver an OS that spreads itself too thinly across platforms and doesn't really excel at anything and, worse still, uses the legacy stuff as a crutch. As it stands I can still see Windows tablets having to be rebooted every month (are they all going to spring to life at 0230 and restart for updates?), still need some sort of active malware scanner, Flash updates yadda yadda - basically carrying forward things I find annoying about PCs. And that's not to say the alternatives do any better (having to sync to a computer and reimage the device for a couple of updates is ridiculous - you know who I'm talking about) but I don't think they're being as bold or radical as they're making out when it comes to challenging the things we've learnt to begrudgingly accept about the desktop. Look past the flashy UI and I'm still seeing the same old Microsoft.

Lots of questions to be answered over the coming months!

 

[NathanE]

They were just demoing the new touch screen experience. There will be tons of stuff in Windows 8 for the "traditional desktop" market as well.

It's not just Windows 7 with a TouchExplorer.exe

 

[Macro]

Like others have said, don't forget it was and early, pre beta, demo of the touch interface, designed primarily for slate/table devices. We've not yet seen anything about the update to the "traditional" desktop/Laptop PC UI, or even much under the covers stuff.

With ARM powered slates you should be able to get 7+ hours batter life and the interface looks promising. I'm hoping for desktop PCs there will be better UEFI support which coupled with the drop in cost of SSDs (at least those of a size to work well as a boot disk even if data is on a traditional mechanical disk) we should see much faster (almost instant on? maybe a few seconds) boot times.

 

[mrk]

SSDs are cheap now, plenty of cheap SSDs about up to 120GB and up to Fall 2012 they will get cheaper still.

Looks fab, integrating Tablet WITH the desktop PC (using some kind of awareness) so you can fling screens from a tablet to the desktop seamlessly (like when you "bump" smartphones to send/receive data) would be something amazing too.

 

[sarge78]

^ Phones too. (if they've improved power efficiency )

 

[maxilive]

I wasn't liking it to start off with then he just dragged a traditional looking Windows 7 desktop into the picture and could still use the new design which made me happy

It does look like this will take a while to take off though with current software needing some extra bolt-ons to make the most of the new Windows experience, but developers are becoming more happy to code these days with the likes of Android/iOS. Also with Windows 8 supposedly working on tablets, netbooks, laptops, desktops and maybe even mobiles in 2 years time developers would probably buy into the new Windows 8 features a little quicker than usual.

 

[Deleted member 66701]

Also, it is very obvious to me that demo system is using an SSD. I wonder what performance will be like on the billions of platter HDDs, given SSDs are still priced out of the market, when pulling all that media data off the hard drive.

Why is it obvious?

I run AmigaOS4 off an ancient 80gb Maxtor and it's like the proverbial **** off a shovel - no reason MS couldn't do the same with Win 8.

 

[NathanE]

It probably was an SSD. The tablets coming next year certainly won't have HDDs inside them... Microsoft will be producing the software to match the hardware it is going to be running on.

That said, HDD won't be that much slower. This is where the investments made in Superfetch and ReadyBoost with Vista start to pay off.

 

[unwashed potato!]

i bet mutli mon support will still be complete rubbish

 

[Antelopethy]

i bet mutli mon support will still be complete rubbish

This is pretty much the one thing I'm hoping is improved in Win 8 - I probably won't have any kind of tablet PC for a very long time yet.

 

[The Asgard]

From a industry point of view this will be a complete failure. I can't see any of my customers touching this with a barge pole. It looks like change for change sake. The Windows 7 desktop should be the primary system with this Phone type OS secondary, like media center.

Big fail!

 

[Muffin`]

Is this going to replace Windows 7? Or is Windows 8 a code name and that it may just becalled Windows Tablet 2012 and it runs along side complementing Windows 7?

 

[Chaos]

Some vids from the partners preview.

 

[vintage-x]

From a industry point of view this will be a complete failure. I can't see any of my customers touching this with a barge pole. It looks like change for change sake. The Windows 7 desktop should be the primary system with this Phone type OS secondary, like media center.

Big fail!

who is to say that there wont be a business edition without all the touch screen stuff?

At the end of the day we don't know a lot about windows 8 and this was just them showing off the touch features.
If it can run on low end ARM ect then maybe this could be the OS which finally replaces XP for the business sector

 

[Klo]

It does look pretty awesome, I hope there some more stuff for mouse and keyboard users as well though. It does seem Microsoft is trying to innovate again.

 

[The__Malteser]

Looks amazing!