windows8?

Windows 8 is the next Vista. It sucks. Metro UI blows.

I'm leaving Windows 7 on my MacBook.

Originally Posted by Griffoun

windowsupgradeoffer dot com

Last night I decided to take the plunge. I entered everything then I got a 3 emails from Microsoft:
1. Confirmation email (to confirm I submitted the registration)
2. Upgrade Offer Denied email (Saying my request for $14.99 upgrade offer is denied)
3. Promo Code (contains a promo-code which gives $25 off for Win8-Pro upgrade )

So I ordered it online and sure enough the total was only $14.99 (no tax, and there's a MSFT store here in KS just 10 miles away from home)... I started the 2-Gb download and went to bed.

Originally Posted by AutoUnion

Windows 8 is the next Vista. It sucks. Metro UI blows.

While the adoption rate of Windows 8 may model that of Vista- but who can tell the future?- Windows 8 is a completely different animal than Vista. In fact, the main problem with Vista (pre SP1) was that it was bloated and killed legacy PC's that tried to use it. No drivers were available anywhere for tons of legacy devices like printers and scanners. It was also more than twice the price of Windows 8. Microsoft had a solid enough following that they felt they could rely on their ole cash cow. They've learned that lesson with 8 and are making it so accessible that many will upgrade just 'cause they can and it's so cheap.

Windows 8 is the exact opposite in regard to operating well on legacy systems. As noted in this article where the author installed it with great success on his circa 2009 PC's.

On every single one of these systems, the performance improvement over Windows 7 is noticeable. Boot up is much, much faster as well as general application and network responsiveness, particularly with the new Internet Explorer 10 browser. And all of my Windows 7-compatible application software is working perfectly.

Secondly, the reason for all of this working so well is a completely redeveloped kernel that is shared across the phone, the tablet (RT), and the Enterprise/Pro versions. Why is that common kernel important? One app can now be written and applied across the multiple platforms. The things that Windows 8 can do with memory have not been seen out of Microsoft before. I have actually seen first hand that the system effectively draws an app down to zero percentage of resources when it is simply minimized or deselected. What does this mean to average Joe? No more 24GB systems. The Great Race for RAM is over. You can do a lot more with a lot less because of these advancements. I predict that we see suffering tech companies who have hung their hat on end users needing more and more memory. This TechNet article talks about that a deep level, but it's a nice reference for noting how different things are under the covers.

Windows 8 can efficiently write the whole (private) working set of a suspended Modern app to disk in order to gain additional memory when the system detects pressure. This process is analogous to hibernating a specific app, and then resuming it when the user switches back to the app. In this case, Windows 8 takes advantage of the suspend/resume mechanism of Modern apps to empty or re-populate an app's working set.

And then there's the MetroNowCalledModernUI. I think the adoption of this interface will be driven through the tablet and Windows phone markets. I have used a Windows phone as a work device for a few years, now. Of course, my personal choice is not a Windows device, so this is far from an endorsement. Rather, I can suggest that we will see folks who understand the way the Modern UI works and evolve to being comfortable with it in tablet and- eventually- on their touch screen desktop. The interface is not horrible. It's just different.

Finally, where will this mobile adoption come from? Enterprise shops across the world who have been waiting for the promised off-the-shelf secure mobile platform that can finally dig them out of the RIM/BES licensing horror. With TPM and real processing power in tablet form, users will finally be able to hold restricted or heavily regulated data types with security right out of the box and administered from a single, familiar enterprise management console.

Of course, all of that is only if the thing actually works. I've used it for a few months and can get around with a mouse as well as I require. Any reasonable person can work through the uncomfortable changes and find their own peace with it. The nerdy things it does under the covers just have to be enough to motivate us 'upgraders' to adopt the change.

Windows 8 is a success depending on adaptability of Normal Windows users, that includes personal or professional consumers. I feel Windows 8 is in the right direction in terms of the general public and their purchase habits for tablet and other touch-input based devices. However a power user, in a personal environment (Gamers and everyone who uses the MS OFFICE SUITE) or Professional environment will hate Windows 8 initially. Its a Completely different animal, which means tons of change, which equals tons of resistance to Windows 8. Hence Windows 8 will be a reincarnation of the disaster MS had with Vista. This again is due to the mass resistance to change, the inability of many users to recreate their knowledge database of the new "tiled" UI in say 5 minutes, and the lack of touch hardware at price points that the majority of users tend to purchase (Aka i can bet if your buying a computer within the $200-600 range, your probs not gonna have a touchscreen, or nice big gesture-inputing touchpad).

Well see how it shapes up since I am not fortune teller.

What I do know:

most personal, home builders will probs be sticking with W7.
It has all the features gamers like (lucid hydra, SSD support)
it will be supported for the foreseeable future by MS.
It also is the most stable of Windows currently offered
Most professional environments are going to have to upgrade soon, MS will discontinue support of XP late next year ( although i heard 2014)
Vista=not going to be the upgrade route for Professionals
WIndows 7 which most folks are use to, and stable, vs untried W8.....

it boggles the mind to think that desktop and large screen notebook user would like tiled application icons. if one is multitasking, they wouldn't want to move a whole bunch of windows around to get at an icon.

windows RT + upcoming AMD ARM based processors will be interesting.

Originally Posted by HW

it boggles the mind to think that desktop and large screen notebook user would like tiled application icons. if one is multitasking, they wouldn't want to move a whole bunch of windows around to get at an icon.

That's not how you'd do it and it's actually one of the new things I do like. I'm impressed they found an intuitive way to do this without danger of being sued by Apple. Switch List.

The Switch List can be accessed by either pointing the mouse cursor in the upper left corner of your computer screen or through the Windows + Tab hotkey. Taking the mouse cursor to the left top corner works in two ways. If you keep your cursor in the corner and click, it will automatically switch to the most recently accessed application, but, if you take your mouse cursor to the top left and then move it downwards without clicking, you are able to view the complete list of previously accessed applications. Just click any application to bring the corresponding application up.

Considering the lack of navigation options in the native Start Screen apps of Windows 8 (such as minimize and maximize), Switch List will prove to be a very useful for quickly navigating between running applications in Windows 8.

Originally Posted by PropellerHead

That's not how you'd do it and it's actually one of the new things I do like. I'm impressed they found an intuitive way to do this without danger of being sued by Apple. Switch List.

ok that's good at least. but from the screen that i have seen. the most useful info is displayed only when you're not using the computer. that is with no windows open.

Got the 7 Home Premium upgraded to Windows 8 Pro last night and took a quick spin, just a few quick thoughts and experience:

- I downloaded the OS via Upgrade Assistant, put the OS on a 4Gb USB drive, a couple reboots, initial setup, added Windows Media Center, cleaned up Windows 7... everything done in about an hour. That's on my Core i5 with a relatively slow SSD. It's the smoothest upgrade I've ever had since the Windows 3.1 days. The only driver problem is the video card which I haven't started looking for solution yet,, but everything's showing properly on my TV via HDMI.

- Before the upgrade, I was still looking for ways to play MKV files in W7HP's MC... it's able to play the MKV created by DivX but not the one using MKV, I think it's got to be with the codec. In W7HP, MC would say it's not able to play the file, but in W8P it simply crashed the MC. If you have any success playing MKV on your W7 MC, please feel free to chime in.

- It does take some getting used to with the Metro as the "menu" is hidden in the Charm Bar's setting button if launching apps built for Metro. When you want to configure preferences on the app, just look for the Charm Bar.

- The MetroUI is supposed to be THE user interface for one to do everything in Windows at least 90% of the time unless one deals with file structure, settings and preferences, Yes Microsoft needs to do a much better integration between these functionalists and MetroUI, but it's not hard to adjust to.

- Since I didn't use the new OS extensively, the only performance improvement I can tell immediately is the shutdown process. Benchmarks performed by other geek-sites indicate minor gain in most measurements, but will not be noticeable to most casual users.

- Windows RT is definitely not the same animal as Android nor iOS, but one should compare it with "Mac OS, Home Edition" if such thing existed.

Originally Posted by HW

it boggles the mind to think that desktop and large screen notebook user would like tiled application icons. if one is multitasking, they wouldn't want to move a whole bunch of windows around to get at an icon.

PH already addressed you on multitasking, now as for navigating tiles on the UI, just use your middle finger (yeah): The scroll wheel on your mouse move your metro UI left-and-right when you scroll the wheel up and down. It's simple and painless.

Originally Posted by NoI4plz

...

What I do know:

most personal, home builders will probs be sticking with W7.
It has all the features gamers like (lucid hydra, SSD support)
it will be supported for the foreseeable future by MS.
It also is the most stable of Windows currently offered
Most professional environments are going to have to upgrade soon, MS will discontinue support of XP late next year ( although i heard 2014)
Vista=not going to be the upgrade route for Professionals
WIndows 7 which most folks are use to, and stable, vs untried W8.....

I don't know why Microsoft decided to exclude the domain feature from WindowsRT, simply in terms of effort and how much bloated it could be to add that into RT, but it should easily satisfy most enterprise business users. Anyhow, MS can also squeeze more from 8 Pro sales for sure. Win7 is stable but we can't say W8P isn't stable. One can only say XP to 7 upgrade path has the least user impact. ie no training required and less IT support in terms of answering questions like "How do I shut down this laptop running Windows 8??"

Originally Posted by Griffoun

f you have any success playing MKV on your W7 MC, please feel free to chime in.

I have no problems with MKVs, FLV, or pretty much any other format with W7 MC.

Here's a discussion on AVS

I'm running the shark007 codecs. I think (its been a bit) I also ran the v7-WMP11-MKV-MKA-x64 registery tweak they talk about, but I'd try it without first.

Originally Posted by cwsqbm

I have no problems with MKVs, FLV, or pretty much any other format with W7 MC.

Here's a discussion on AVS

I'm running the shark007 codecs. I think (its been a bit) I also ran the v7-WMP11-MKV-MKA-x64 registery tweak they talk about, but I'd try it without first.

Will check it out tonight

Originally Posted by Griffoun

I don't know why Microsoft decided to exclude the domain feature from WindowsRT, simply in terms of effort and how much bloated it could be to add that into RT, but it should easily satisfy most enterprise business users. Anyhow, MS can also squeeze more from 8 Pro sales for sure. Win7 is stable but we can't say W8P isn't stable. One can only say XP to 7 upgrade path has the least user impact. ie no training required and less IT support in terms of answering questions like "How do I shut down this laptop running Windows 8??"

The enterprise user has to evaluate cost on every front from licensing, to installation and maintenance, and support. Win8 = will have a significantly higher cost to an enterprise than W7. In addition, the hardware isn't mature enough (price and availability) to support the upgrade.

Microsoft is taking a play from the Apple playbook, force users a completely new technology, in hopes of revolutionizing the market. This does work, but will take time for market-wide adoption, which tends to mean the first couple of years, and products, will not sell in the same manner as say, Windows 7 had. This in conjunction with struggling PC sales due to the onslaught of personal tablet devices, and smartphones offers some grim news to major oems. Will they all fail due to W8= probably not. Will they have to reduce their profits=HELL YEA. The landscape is changing in PC land (ie Microsoft has begun manufacturing their own hardware)

But anyways, this a BMW forum, WTF

Originally Posted by NoI4plz

But anyways, this a BMW Off-Topic forum

Fixed it for you

I don't see Windows 8 bringing up the compatibility problem like the launch of Vista and 7 had, so it's a good thing. The only thing new Windows 8 brings is better features for touch-enabled desktop and laptops, otherwise like PH has pointed out, it doesn't demand higher-spec than its predecessor.

Originally Posted by Griffoun

Fixed it for you

I don't see Windows 8 bringing up the compatibility problem like the launch of Vista and 7 had, so it's a good thing. The only thing new Windows 8 brings is better features for touch-enabled desktop and laptops, otherwise like PH has pointed out, it doesn't demand higher-spec than its predecessor.

True, but I feel im on the Tomshardware or Anandtech forums LOL

I think, most users, as long as they buy software that was designed from the ground-up on the W8 platform, they wont have many problems. But individuals will have some compatibility issues with applications designed with the W7-prior applications. That's what windows technically has been for most users who havent jumped ship to Mac. You can use ur legacy programs with Windows, you might have some issues. But Windows 8 is a ground up change compared to previous MS Oses. Althought the MSDN blog says they did test a fair amount of software on W8, I believe these were recent applications, which can be updated in a jiffy, some legacy application makers either discontinued development or they just shutdown. what then lol. But yea, we will see once MS publishes there W8 upgrade stats (i think 4 million so far).

Help is here (Directly linked to PDF), in case you need it

Originally Posted by cwsqbm

I have no problems with MKVs, FLV, or pretty much any other format with W7 MC.

Here's a discussion on AVS

I'm running the shark007 codecs. I think (its been a bit) I also ran the v7-WMP11-MKV-MKA-x64 registery tweak they talk about, but I'd try it without first.

Still doesn't work in WMC after the codec (even though it said it's for Windows 8) with or without the registry update... What software did you use to get your media into MKV?

Originally Posted by Griffoun

...The only driver problem is the video card which I haven't started looking for solution yet,, but everything's showing properly on my TV via HDMI.
...

It's actually the ATI Catalyst that throwing a fuzz, not the driver - the driver was perfectly fine. So I installed the latest version from ATI, but now the screen is not fully used despite the correct resolution setting..

I am not a big fan of Windows 8, but it came with this computer built. So if I removed it and install Windows 7 pro on, it could void the warranty. So I guess I just leave it on and get used to it. So far so good.

Originally Posted by The_Raven

Like Vista, I don't ever see myself using windows 8. Looks disgusting.

XP till I can't use it anymore, then windows 7

+1

Got a look at it while browsing in bestbuy yesterday - talk about dumbing things down, jeez.

Having PCs move toward Android's setup is def not the direction I think they should be going. Call me a purist, but I want to see a file structure - it gives order to chaos. What I saw of 8, it's tiled confusion set to a harmony of photobucket. Have we given up on literacy altogether?

As far as Vista - been using it on the desktop for years, never a problem - I suppose I've not really tested its capabilities, but for my use, it's never given me pause.

Am shopping laptops for some consulting, and will definitely try to keep it to XP, if possible, then Vista, and 7 if neither are available. Do not like the 64-bit aspects of 7 though, messes up working with ODBC in that MS DSNs mostly call for 32-bit drivers and that, at least as far as the platforms I've dealt with. You ever try to walk a user through cleaning up the registry to back out the defaults? I at least don't want to have to deal with that on my own machine.

Torrented Windows 8 and installed it over my Macbook's bootcamp's Win7 partition. I was updating the drivers and it crashed. Restarted and got the blue error screen. Anyway way to go back to Win7 without reformatting?

Originally Posted by AutoUnion

Torrented Windows 8 and installed it over my Macbook's bootcamp's Win7 partition. I was updating the drivers and it crashed. Restarted and got the blue error screen. Anyway way to go back to Win7 without reformatting?

Sounds like a rotten torrent- not surprising. Why torrent when it's so cheap to buy?

I've learned that you can't attempt to reason w/ a guy who tried to flag and report a Moderator for rude post... Ha!!

After trying the windows 8 GUI for an extended period of time I've considered the following for my next computer:

1) windows 7 or xp
2) Wubi Ubuntu or Ubuntu partition
3) Mac with boot camped xp or 7

Truly vista has a successor in windows lineup ala windows 8.

Sad part for everyone purchasing any laptop is that if it ships with 8 your stuck on 8 since oems have promised no driver support and/or warranty void status.

If your a desktop person, your lucky, you can build your own and stick it out with 8.

Also numbers report. Windows 8 hasn't sold as much as windows 7 in the same period of time. So not statiscally a vista (at least not yet) but user experienc wise it's pig in pigs clothing.

Originally Posted by NoI4plz

After trying the windows 8 GUI for an extended period of time I've considered the following for my next computer:

1) windows 7 or xp
2) Wubi Ubuntu or Ubuntu partition
3) Mac with boot camped xp or 7

Truly vista has a successor in windows lineup ala windows 8.

Sad part for everyone purchasing any laptop is that if it ships with 8 your stuck on 8 since oems have promised no driver support and/or warranty void status.

If your a desktop person, your lucky, you can build your own and stick it out with 8.

Also numbers report. Windows 8 hasn't sold as much as windows 7 in the same period of time. So not statiscally a vista (at least not yet) but user experienc wise it's pig in pigs clothing.

It does suck big time. A good friend just got a Lenovo Ideapad Yoga. Cool little toy, but we're been trying to get drivers for everything for about a week now. Lenovo won't help out and the online community is still trying. Win8 blows.

Originally Posted by AutoUnion

Torrented Windows 8 and installed it over my Macbook's bootcamp's Win7 partition. I was updating the drivers and it crashed. Restarted and got the blue error screen. Anyway way to go back to Win7 without reformatting?

I don't know if you are using "torrented" in a loose kind of a language. But if you actually used a torrent and not a direct download, I would recommend you to use warez-bb dot org, where you can read users feedbacks and the uploader is there to answer questions. A bad uploader will be permanently banned.

It is also much safer to download from one server than to download while uploading from and to tens or hundreds of internet users. It also have a much lower risk of flagging or alerting internet watchers and your ISP.

Originally Posted by MatWiz

I don't know if you are using "torrented" in a loose kind of a language. But if you actually used a torrent and not a direct download, I would recommend you to use warez-bb dot org, where you can read users feedbacks and the uploader is there to answer questions. A bad uploader will be permanently banned.

It is also much safer to download from one server than to download while uploading from and to tens or hundreds of internet users. It also have a much lower risk of flagging or alerting internet watchers and your ISP.

Yeah, it was actually torrented. I've been on Warezbb for a while now. I'm just not a fan of the hosting sites anymore. I used to pay for yearly memberships from rapidshare and megaupload. Too bad MU is gone and RS has jacked up their prices too much.