Windows 8 Consumer Preview

[SgtRock]

Greetings EEVBees:

--I put a SSD in my old Acer 5534, and it is running much cooler and much, much faster. I have Win7&8 installed dual boot. W8 makes it somewhat laborious for the Desktop user to warp to his ways, but it is doable. The preview definitely has some teething problems, for instance, it has a hard time maintaining correct icons, but it does run most of my favorite programs. So far it looks like MS thinks tablet users mostly shop and listen to music. I think I will continue to do most of my work in Win7 and continue to study Win 8, and I probably will buy to $40 upgrade available to Preview users who have a license for XP or Seven. Comments are welcomed.

"Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one. "
William Henry Gates III 1955 -

Best Regards
Clear Ether

[IanB]

I've been trying out Windows 8 a bit and it seems to suffer from an identity crisis.

Even on a touch screen tablet device I find it frustrating to use without a mouse and keyboard. Ironically the mouse interface works better than the  touch interface (in spite of Microsoft's "touch first" goals).

When using a mouse and keyboard the Metro stuff just gets in the way, and the missing Start menu is a disaster.

When using touch Metro is sort of usable, except the on-screen keyboard interface (for email and such) is completely hopeless. I use it for a moment and then scream "Where's my real keyboard!?" What idiot decided not to include tab and cursor keys on screen?

So Windows 8 is a bit of one (desktop OS) and a bit of the other (tablet OS), but flawed at each of them. It is neither one thing nor the other.

I predict Windows 8 is going to have a short and unhappy life.

[madires]

Hi!

Windows 8 is the successor of Vista :-) You should wait for Windows 9. 

Cheers
 madires

[G7PSK]

I am still waiting for something better than XP. The way things look I will go to Linux when support for XP is dropped.

[IanB]

I am still waiting for something better than XP. The way things look I will go to Linux when support for XP is dropped.

I was a die hard XP fan for a long time, and then I got to use Win 7-64 bit. Windows 7 is so much better it makes using XP like sticking sharp pins in yourself for the enjoyment of it. XP is a dinosaur. The killer for me is the way Windows 7 can use all of the 4 GB on a system to make everything run faster, not to mention 8 GB or 16 GB that XP can only dream of.

[LEECH666]

I think that's only true if you run the x64 version of Win7.
Win7 has some nice to have advantages, but also some really shitty design decisions where I ask myself "WHYYYYYY?? WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT M$, IT WORKED PERFECTLY BEFORE, WHY CHANGE IT NOW? *pummels the screen*".

I wont switch to Win8 anytime soon. I'll probably skip it completely. Just like Vista.

Cheers,
Florian

[Simon]

That is because MS killed off XP64 ! In any case 7 is good but I still fail to see the difference from vista other than it being able to compete with dos for speed. I think 8 will be a shambles and everyone but ms can see it. If the retards at ms think the pc is superseded they are very mistaken just to uphold a long standing tradition.

[madires]

Hi!

I was a die hard XP fan for a long time, and then I got to use Win 7-64 bit. Windows 7 is so much better it makes using XP like sticking sharp pins in yourself for the enjoyment of it. XP is a dinosaur. The killer for me is the way Windows 7 can use all of the 4 GB on a system to make everything run faster, not to mention 8 GB or 16 GB that XP can only dream of.

Actually a 32 bit OS could use more than 4GB RAM if the CPU supports PAE and the OS too. The address space for each process would be still limitted to 4GB, but you can run several processes at the same time to utilize the huge memory. AFAIK the only OS supporting PAE is Linux.

WIth a 64 bit OS your software needs more memory because variables like pointers are stored as 64 bit now (and not as 32 bit as for the 32 bit OS). So you lose some percent of you huge RAM for the privilege of running 64 bit. But RAM is cheap :-)

Cheers
 madires

[IanB]

WIth a 64 bit OS your software needs more memory because variables like pointers are stored as 64 bit now (and not as 32 bit as for the 32 bit OS). So you lose some percent of you huge RAM for the privilege of running 64 bit. But RAM is cheap :-)

Indeed, but the 64 bit version of Windows still runs all my 32 bit apps and they would still be using 32 bit pointers in that case. There is presumably some overhead due to the 32 bit emulation layer but not enough that I've ever noticed it. RAM is indeed cheap, and I love it. The more the better 

My main observation of Windows 7 is that the whole system is faster and more responsive than XP. Not only that, it finally became possible to run with a non-admin enabled user account without issue, something that was never fully possible on XP.

It's true that MS hid some of the more advanced system features away so that novice users are less likely to mess with them, but on the other hand the search feature on the Start menu allows you to find almost anything with a few keyclicks.

@Simon: Maybe Win 7 is similar to Vista, but in the evolution of Windows Vista was just a temporary detour on the journey from XP to 7. There is no reason to consider Vista these days.

[Monkeh]

Hi!

I was a die hard XP fan for a long time, and then I got to use Win 7-64 bit. Windows 7 is so much better it makes using XP like sticking sharp pins in yourself for the enjoyment of it. XP is a dinosaur. The killer for me is the way Windows 7 can use all of the 4 GB on a system to make everything run faster, not to mention 8 GB or 16 GB that XP can only dream of.

Actually a 32 bit OS could use more than 4GB RAM if the CPU supports PAE and the OS too. The address space for each process would be still limitted to 4GB, but you can run several processes at the same time to utilize the huge memory. AFAIK the only OS supporting PAE is Linux.

Actually, 32-bit Windows OSes support PAE and have done for a long time, since Windows 2000. They do not, however, support actually using PAE in the name of 'backward compatiblity' (ie. coddling the idiots who write drivers), except on server versions.

Other OSes (FreeBSD, Linux, Solaris, for example) have supported PAE properly for many years. 1998 or so for Solaris, 1999 in development kernels for Linux, FreeBSD took until 2003 to get it in a release. OS X up to 10.5 was a 32-bit kernel only and had PAE support for up to 64GB RAM. 10.6 came with a 64-bit kernel you could optionally use, as well as PAE support, and 10.7 is 64-bit by default.

[OndraSter]

Sure 32bit systems support PAE. But since there are problems with drivers, it is not recommended anyway.

I moved onto 64bit Vista years ago (around the time when Vista SP1 came out) and I was one of those people who actually enjoyed Vista - it was great compared to XP, at least for me. Then I moved onto W7 Professional 64bit.

W8 will have issues with non-touchscreen PCs, yes. People need to get used to new interface. But the issue is - most of the negative feedback is caused because people like to:
a) Read news and believe everything they read and rephrase it without actually trying the thing (Vista was a great example of that - the magazines ran it on 1GHz singlecores - no wonder it ran like crap).
b) It is cool to bash Microsoft

Also, there is nearly zero speed hit when using 32bit applications on 64bit systems - long mode supports regular 32bit processes natively in our CPUs. Something like VM86 mode back in the 32bit days .

[Monkeh]

Sure 32bit systems support PAE. But since there are problems with drivers, it is not recommended anyway.

The only reason there are problems with drivers is because the programmers are incompetent and Microsoft encourage them to be!

Any Windows XP, Vista, or 7 32-bit OS on a modern machine runs in PAE mode automatically. They just don't make use of it.

[IanB]

W8 will have issues with non-touchscreen PCs, yes.

I have a Windows 8 PC on custom touch screen hardware. And still I find it more comfortable to use with a mouse.

If touch screens were the answer to a problem we would have been using touch screens years ago. It turns out touch screens are the answer to a problem--on phones and tablets. Hence, that's where they got introduced. Do touch screens answer a problem on a typical PC? No. In that space it is a solution looking for a problem. A classic case of technology becoming detached from function, rather than function driving technology.

[OndraSter]

Is it a tablet? Touchscreen PCs are not a future for sure. I tried W8 release preview on some tablets (pre-production devices from ASUS, x86 arch; current Samsung and Dell devices and some more) and it was great experience.

Tablets are not for everyone - I like the idea of Surface though.

But since people want tablets, MS had to make an OS for them. And honestly, when comparing iOS, Android and W8RP the W8 absolutely wins.


Yes, Windows systems support PAE, but there is software barrier for addressing above 4GB - because of those drivers. But 64bit should have been mandatory long time ago (W7, not just on WServer series).

[Monkeh]

And why is it 64-bit is taking so long to be adopted? Right, because those same incompetent programmers can't fix their drivers for it. Or stop using 16-bit.

[OndraSter]

Because of backward compatibility. When MS once breaks backward compatibility with something, people scream. And developers (because of the drivers mostly) too. But that's why we have such things as C and C++ or even .NET - to abstract the architecture and just re-compile it (in the case of native) without the need to (much) touch the code (unless we want to make use of the new possibilities).

At least that they fully require it on servers (no 32bit versions of WServer 2008 R2).

Oh and W8RP (and CP as well) requires PAE to be sure, that the CPU has also NX bit support. Lucky me, having Tablet PC with the 400MHz FSB Pentium M which does not have NX bit support! <3

[IanB]

Is it a tablet? Touchscreen PCs are not a future for sure. I tried W8 release preview on some tablets (pre-production devices from ASUS, x86 arch; current Samsung and Dell devices and some more) and it was great experience.

Tablets are not for everyone - I like the idea of Surface though.

But since people want tablets, MS had to make an OS for them. And honestly, when comparing iOS, Android and W8RP the W8 absolutely wins.

Yes it's a tablet. I have not just tried it briefly, I own it and I have tried to use it as if it were an iPad. But unfortunately any time I want to use it I find myself reaching for the Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. The touch interface is just totally frustrating.

The end result is that for a tablet I will buy an iPad. For desktop use I will stick with Windows 7.

[Pack34]

For those wanting to avoid the tiled interface, if you place the desktop tile on the top left position on the start screen then when you log into the computer you can simply hold down enter and you go straight to the desktop.

For the desktop, there's a lot new under the hood. It's faster, the task manager and file copy dialogs are greatly improved and it finally has really good multimonitor support right out of the box.


PROTIP: right click the bottom left hand corner to access a nice "power user" application list.

[Simon]

a) Read news and believe everything they read and rephrase it without actually trying the thing (Vista was a great example of that - the magazines ran it on 1GHz singlecores - no wonder it ran like crap).

That is where you are VERY wrong. I have both Vista and 7 on this very PC. Vista runs like SHIT and has un-explainable delays in carrying out simple tasks and is generally a very sloppy system to use, it just is NOT responsive (on a quad core 2.4GHz and 8GB of RAM with no page file with a cuda video card) !
7 on the other hand works just fine. I found this a total pain in the ars when I started using speech recognition, it was so slow on vista but much faster on 7 - same hardware.

Basically microsofts code is utter shit ! and no surprise, try running a program written on the .net framework like paint.net, this now runs a bit faster but for a long time was hideously slow even to start up. when you are using poorly optimized code you are pissing away your hardware. It is indeed a great shame that with the advent of high performance hardware coders now feel they are at liberty to piss the resources away using poor coding because they are lazy and incompetent. Think of the power wasted by poor code. if we could do the same on 1GHz instead of 3GHz think how much more a computer could do OR how much more power efficient we could be.

[ampdoctor]

Hi!

Windows 8 is the successor of Vista :-) You should wait for Windows 9. 

Cheers
 madires

Exactly!  Win98 decent, millennium edition crap, xp good, vista crap, win7 very good.  Can you see a patter emerge?  Seems like m$ likes to dip their toe in the water with an os and see how it fares with newer technology.  Then fix the screw ups and tweak it based on consumer feedback.  It's as if every other version is a beta release.

And don't underestimate the coding skills of the people writing windows OS's.  Anybody that's capable of writing an OS knows what they're doing...don't kid yourself! To use one of Apples old catch phrases...the guys at M$ are busy herding cats trying to provide legacy support all the way back to 16bit software.  Then factor in all the different hardware vendors with their own drivers as well as some of the agenda-ware that's clearly built into the systems.  It's a freakin miracle they can get the thing to even run at all let alone run decently.  I can almost guarantee any screw ups are the result of programmers taking marching orders from the suits up in the board room.

[hans]

I know many schools and companies still using Windows XP, even on new machines. I always scream "UPGRADE" but they always seem to say 'customer support' or something else support. Well, search an alternative manufacturer, complain about their support, or whatever.
I even knew someone who hated 2007 because of the Ribbon interface. Fine, his oppinion. Then I took my internship report to there and wanted to do some work. Oh wait, Word 2003 can only read DOCX, and is horrible in editting it. So far for not upgrading.

Anyway, that aside, when I got Vista it was: slow, a bit buggy but overall more solid than XP. I ran Vista for about a year without those issues. XP would last 4 months max.
Got an SSD and Windows 7. Works better than XP & vista, never looked back. Never had any compatibility issues at home. I got a new PC this month and thought I should format Windows 7. Tried it anways and it booted. Deleted old drivers, got new ones and I was up and running. 30 min job. I remember XP crashing over a graphics card replacement..
New PC has 16GB of RAM. I often use 7GB (in applications) when 'developing'. Allocated 4GB with RAMDISK for temporary files. I can't imagine how that would be at XP 32-bit (3.5GB max).
I also see chrome uses 400MB easily. I got 5 tabs open + 1 youtube video, 600MB RAM use. That's quite significant for older machines! When I play games I typically use 4GB or more too.

I think I wont upgrade to Windows 8. The metro interface looks horrible. Saying a mouse is equal to a finger is just plain wrong. Not even Apple is that stupid.
I tried Visual Studio 2012. Everything looked flat and Windows 3.11 like. I couldn't even distinguish a text file from a C# file by glancing at the icon (mono color icons). Different UI parts are filled up with 1 colour, no borders or seperators. The look&feel is something as I describe: "This is how I (as a programmer) made interfaces in 2005 when I was 15, I considered it as not yet finished".

Their idea of removing the start menu is lunatic. It's like removing your starter motor from your scooter. You can also get it going by running with it..
The improvement of task, file and monitor managers is not necessary. Plenty of free tools available that did it for years. Okay, if they do the same job, I guess that's good..

Don't see myself changing to Linux neither, because I am fond of my games and CAD tools only available on Windows. Running a Virtual machine is like installing Windows on a Mac; you get something really cool but still have to confess (technically a Mac is a fashion item, but let's consider that Linux is cool).

[OndraSter]

...

I might be very wrong, but my own computer history tells otherwise.

I had 2GHz or 2.2GHz dualcore or something around that with 4GB RAM and 8800GTX and it run better than XP most of the time. Mostly because it didn't start BSODing out of nothing after 4 months. Vista survived whole 1.5 years, which was then upgraded (not reinstalled, but upgraded!) to W7, which ran another 1 year or so before I had to really reinstall it.
Yes, Win7 runs better. The system dialogs (as copying etc) STAY on the view for a fraction of a second longer on Vista, yes ("lag behind"). But the OS itself was way better than XP even though it had some issues (again, I came around the same time as SP1 came out).
For me it brought finally fully supported 64bit version (I always classified XP64 as a test of WoW).

The main difference between W7 and Vista is the fact that W7 is upgraded Vista, whereas Vista is "brand new" system compared to XP. Something like WM6.5 vs WP7. (Yes, I am Lumia 800 owner even.) Vista was a required step that required way better hardware than XP. For a good reason, later called W7.

[IanB]

I might be very wrong, but my own computer history tells otherwise.

So Simon says in his experience Win 7 runs better than Vista, and you say the same. It sounds like you two are agreeing with each other! 

[Pack34]

I might be very wrong, but my own computer history tells otherwise.

So Simon says in his experience Win 7 runs better than Vista, and you say the same. It sounds like you two are agreeing with each other! 

Win8 runs even better, and boots up in half the time. I'm liking the ability to use a windows live ID (soon to be rebranded to passport) that way my settings follow me if I log into another computer. With the integration with SkyDrive your files follow you too.

[PeterG]

Hi!

Windows 8 is the successor of Vista :-) You should wait for Windows 9. 

Windows 7 is the direct replacement for Microsofts Vista mistake. Windows 8 is Microsofts latest abomination. Maybe they will get it rite with windows 9 but i'm thinking Linux is looking better by the day.

Regards