Windows 8?

[Arjuna]

I've read reviews and seen pictures, but I haven't played with it myself. Nor do I know anyone that has.

From the looks of it it's going to be strange and unfamiliar at first, but maybe we'll warm up to it after a while. After all windows 95 was a big leap ahead in functionality and most of the other OSes they've churned out has been from that template...

...except millennium I guess, but dear god I hope windows 8 is not done with that as a base...


What are your thoughts on the next OS from micro$oft? Personally, as it looks now, I refuse to buy it...

[KysenMurrin]

I really don't know. I'm not a fan of the big chunky button look they're bringing over from mobile devices (fine on a tiny screen, odd looking taking up a 24" monitor). I'm also wary of the new internet explorer, which I've read (not sure of accuracy) is always full screen - I never use web browsers full screen on a PC, it wastes space and makes multitasking more annoying.

Apparently it will have an old-style desktop hidden away inside it somewhere.

But I'm really not sure what to think until I've actually tried to use it.

[Fetzie]

It just looks like it was designed primarily for tablets (ok, because it was). I'll be sticking to Windows 7. If you really need the new functionality you could always wait for Rainmeter to make a Win8 compatible version and design your own GUI.

[lythac]

Have no view on it. Still -

[Flex]

Windows 8 is a huge potential fun nightmare ball for MS based on what they want it to accomplish. Win 8 Pro, Win 8 RT, ARM, X64, Metro, Classic desktop and all the confusion that can bring.

[Skye1013]

I haven't played with it myself, but one of the guys I work with has. He says he doesn't like that there is no longer a Start button. He did comment that IE10 was running faster/smoother than his Chrome currently is (but that could easily be from everything that's currently connected to Chrome helping to slow it down, versus a brand new browser that hasn't had time to save cookies/preferences/whatever a browser saves.) That being said, it doesn't mean he'll be switching over to using IE10, but at least it has the potential to be less painful for those of us forced to use it at work.

[Koatanga]

Windows is a bit like Star Trek movies - it's best to skip every other one.

3.11 = good
95 = unstable
98 = good
ME = crap
XP = good
Vista = crap
7 = good
8 = ?

[Fridmarr]

That almost works, but it's one heck of a stretch to call 98 good...or even more stable than 95. 98 second edition fixed most of the really terrible memory leaks, but before that...ouch.

[Arjuna]

Well, fortunately windows 7 is stable enough to keep it for a while(heck, this computer I'm writing this on still runs XP and works just fine). I think they are thinking a bit backwards here though, they should be adapting their handheld OS to interconnect with the desktop ones, not the other way around. Desktops are still their biggest market, they most likely should look to satisfying those customers first...

[fuzzygeek]

I have Win8 preview running on an old tablet. It's surprisingly good for a tablet, and runs well even on old hardware.

I will, however, never in a hundred years use it for any serious work in its current incarnation. It is horrible for speed. Pretty transitional frippery that looks neat in technical demos that just eat seconds between common tasks and slows you down.

It's like someone thought of a phone and thought, hey, everyone wants all their devices to look and feel the same, whether they are on a tablet, phone, or pc, right? right?

[KysenMurrin]

I think that at the current time, their philosophy of designing for touch screen and then releasing it to the desktop market doesn't make sense. It works in the emerging area of tablets-replacing-laptops that they're helping along with their Surface tabs, but it'll be years yet before we might see desktop users adopting touch screen interfaces, if they do.

[tullock]

During the early trial, you could modify the registry to disable metro, microsoft blocked that from happening with the release candidate. Whether that means they intend to cram metro down our throats, or build in an appropriate way to shut it off will be the deciding factor of whether i would even install windows 8 for free, nevermind pay for it.

[gibborim]

I'm certainly not going to pay money to move from a stable, quality build of Windows like 7 to something so questionable.

[gibborim]

Hrm, it looks like they are putting a stable, enhanced version of Drive Extender into Windows 8.

[Skye1013]

If you order a copy prior to the end of Jan 2013... it'll only cost you ~$40 US. Or if you buy a computer with W7 and upgrade it, I think it's only ~$15 US. Seems they're really trying for an initial push with this one so app makers and whatnot will actually make things for their new tablet (since if people decide they like W8, and want a compatible tablet, they'll be more likely to buy the new MS one as opposed to an iPad.)

[Levantine]

Oh thank god. I thought I was the only one who had a bad taste left in his mouth by trying to use metro on a desktop. If I'm forced to use it you can pry 7 out of my cold dead hands.

[PsiVen]

Windows 8 will probably be a big thing for Intel in the tablet market, if they can actually price competitively. But since they felt it necessary to make Windows RT, I don't think that will be true for years yet.

As a desktop system, it's already a flop. Businesses will ignore it and consumers will be annoyed by the needless changes. The Windows Store on a desktop platform is going to be a disaster; I don't think Valve has much to fear from the folks responsible for GFWL.

[Koatanga]

At least we can look forward to there being no upgrade path from 7 to 9 except via 8, just like how you couldn't go from XP to 7 without going through Vista.

[Skye1013]

I think the desktop version will get some love from people using the tablets that want a similar interface. People just flat out upgrading from 7 to 8 though, I see that as less likely, unless something amazing comes out of 8.

[Nooska]

At least we can look forward to there being no upgrade path from 7 to 9 except via 8, just like how you couldn't go from XP to 7 without going through Vista.

Oh, I dunno, it could be done with a clean install.
Legally and licensewise you were allowed to, just no out-of-the box upgrade options (and required changing something in the registry), overall not that hard.

[masterpoobaa]

I work for a Large Private School Organisation (130 schools and counting, 5 office sites).

For us the official line is that thre are no plans to upgrade to windows 8.
Our current SOE is Win7(32bit) and IE9, soon to be 64bit Win7 with the hardware rollover due before christmas.

Bottom line is that while yes, the metro interface may look good and work well on mobile devices, it is not at all suited to a desktop/laptop environment. And therein lies the issue.

[Skye1013]

To be fair, there isn't really much of an incentive to upgrade to 8 from 7 in the first place. If you're on Vista (god forbid) then I could maybe see jumping to 8. If you're still using XP, you really should upgrade to at least 7, as I imagine it's not going to be supported for too much longer (if it even still is.)

I do wonder what the US military's plans are, since we tend to be behind when upgrades are concerned (I know some places that are still working on a Vista upgrade... though I'm currently on a machine with 7.)

[shadoh]

I do wonder what the US military's plans are, since we tend to be behind when upgrades are concerned (I know some places that are still working on a Vista upgrade... though I'm currently on a machine with 7.)

With the migration rolling out, i find it hard to believe we will be rolling out win 8 anytime soon. Having finished our 7 push last year, and still running a few 2k3 servers... we are way behind the ball. For once it might be a good thing, looking at it from a network admin's point of view, win 8 would be a horrible idea for productivity and hopping to it right away scares me with vulnerabilities. But it is the military so who know what we'll get forced to push onto our users.

[Mozen]

I remember reading two main points why desktop users should not upgrade to Windows 8.

(1) You cannot turn off the Windows 8 UI interface (originally named "Metro"). There's no "Classic Mode" or anything.

(2) All non-Win8 applications are still accessible, but they will all use the ugly old icons instead of automatically default to a style that fits into the Windows 8 UI.

I'm not sure if anything have changed since then, but I sure am not going to upgrade. Touch oriented interface simply won't work on a desktop where the display is usually at an arm's length.

The Leap gadget looks very promising, though. If Windows is able to integrate it in such a way that I only have to lift my hands (or even just fingers) to point at the screen and it correctly detects my gestures, then it's perfect.

But still, since I work with text just about all the time, a touch interface is more a toy for me than anything. It would do more good for CAD people, maybe?

[Arnock]

So, I bit the bullet and installed windows 8 on my desktop.


And... it's not bad. Not bad at all.

Dual monitor support is marginally better, the taskbar stretches across both monitors.

The start screen is definitely not designed for desktop use, but it does work, and I'm getting used to it. I find that I've been keeping desktop/taskbar shortcuts for my most frequently used applications, and leave icons/shortcuts for less frequently used apps in the start screen, and it's working out pretty well. I actually am starting to like it better than the old start menu.

If you really hate the start screen, you can more or less ignore it completely after booting up, and then the OS looks and feels almost identical to win7, if slightly prettier.


Some of the 'metro' (or whatever MS wants to call it now) apps are alright, built-in netflix is pretty nice.

IE Sucks... less.

But the real winner for me: Holy boot times batman.

From completely powered off to the windows login screen, it seems like it takes aproximately the same time to boot as windows 7. However, it's nearly instantaneous to go from the login screen to the desktop. Seriously, it's fast.


For $40 bucks, I'd say it's worth the upgrade for the boot time decrease alone, but I wouldn't pay full price. I like that MS is trying to standardize desktop and tablet OS/applications. iOS and android are both nice, but they're still not up to the functionality of a true destop OS, and Windows 8 is heading in that direction.

The only real downside I found was the start screen, but I've been getting used to it, and might actually start preferring it over the old start menu. The only thing that I can say that I probably won't ever like about the new UI, is that it's more annoying to power down the PC(hover cursor in top corner of screen ->settings->power->shut down.) I think think that's because most tablets are designed to hibernate/lock rather than powering down completely.