Windows 8, My thoughts.

[wakadoo]

So it's time for me to try out Windows 8 and see what it’s like, I have seen and heard a lot of negative things about it, but then again I also heard the same when XP, Vista and Windows 7 were being touted around and most people were just talking utter rubbish, oh and it was amazing to find that most of the haters had never even tried them, go figure.

First off i wanted a fresh install with no dual boot so idecided on a new SSD hard drive to try it on, on checking around for a cheapie i found a OCZ Petrol on PC World website for £59.99, now that was a must for a128GB ssd, site said 3 GB/s but when i collected it they are 6 Gb/s , result.

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/ocz-ptl1-25sat3-128g-internal-2-5-sata-ssd-128gb-12872039-pdt.html


Install and setup was just easy as pie as ever and i was ready to play and see what impact it was going to have on my computing life, below is where i am at the moment.

Ok, i love it, yes i do and i expect a bit of flaming for saying it but it was not love at first sight. To start with i pondered and fussed about the missing start bar/menu, then i thought about how much i use it, er yes, i shut my pc down or restart it and i also use search about once a week so i soon got used to the fact it was not there. I did add a gadget to the desktop for the shutdown/restart function though as the windows 8 one is a few clicks to many to be useful, so here’s how it looked after i altered it to suit me.


(This is setup on 2 monitors by the way)







The side menu bar or “charms” opened up on the main monitor and that was a worry as i did not want it over on the far right of the second monitor as they are 27” screens and it a long way lol, the
task bars and wallpapers are customizable to the point i no longer needed ultramon installed to do the job and it was easy to get the taskbar to display what i wanted over the 2 monitors.








I have now got used to going to the old start location in the lower corner of the screen and just right clicking for the menu, and to be honest it’s a lot easier to find my programs in the window than it was in the small windowed list that was in previous windows releases.







Click “search” to bring up the apps page.







Ok it’s time to talk metro, i do like the metro side even on a keyboard/mouse it’s so easy to use and after an hour all the swishing and sliding becomes as natural as using the mouse itself, i have a bamboo touch tablet and will be trying that out at a later date. Got to say though the metro page is becoming untidy as i install my usual programs, you can shuffle stuff around and delete unwanted but why not just one tile for a program instead of many tiles, just take a look at nero for instance in the picture below, shocking.....
One tile for nero that opens up the menu would have been sufficient,even vlc managed to spew 3 tiles onto the metro screen.







Just a few initial gripes and i bet one of you can help me out here.
I would like the apps screen shortcutting to my desktop.
There does not seem to be any volume control/slider in video or music player (see pics below)








Few things i have done to make it suit me are assign pics to a viewer and same with audio, if you don’t they will open from the desktop into metro and that gets tedious when trying to multitask, other than that i am very happy with it.


One more thing, the logon and typing passwords, set a picture one and use mouse clicks or swipes as it’s so much quicker and easier, i used the piccy below and chose the eyes as click points in a certain order to log in, very fast and very easy to do.






The only program i could not install was Kaspersky and every bit of hardware i have is fully functional, Games are running sweet and no crashes yet.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and let’s have your thoughts, good and bad.

Wakadoo...

[wakadoo]

sorry its all squashed together but my "enter" key will not function when typing a post or replying to them, not even the on screen keyboard works either, any ideas ??.

[DJ OD]

sorry its all squashed together but my "enter" key will not function when typing a post or replying to them, not even the on screen keyboard works either, any ideas ??.

Try uninstalling windows 8?

I can see why some would like it, but I couldn't cope with it on my laptop let alone on your setup. It would kill me having Lego like spawn all over my 27" screens.

I know there are/were a lot of people before with previous versions of windows slagging it off, but I feel I am not just slating it for no reason. I liked most versions of windows with 7 being the peak in my opinion. ME was their first cock up. Then vista, now win 8. They all failed for the same reason. MS were stubborn. They didn't get what the users wanted. They thought they were right and the people were wrong. Each time was a gamble for them. But they redeemed thereselves after.

Metro UI is not for desktops and laptops. It just isn't. Given that technology is changing and computer hardware is this may not be a problem for MS. It could tho be the biggest mistake they've ever made.


DJ OD

[wakadoo]

First off let me say thanks for the watermark removal program.. this enter key is really pissing me off now lol so you can be sure my reply will be a bit messy. Its hard to please all of the people all of the time and you could add suggestions from every windows user but you will only ever please a few no matter what. The way it all works has made me one of the small percentage of users that like it as it is, don't get me wrong, its not perfect and I will customize it until it looks and works the way I want it. Now I don't own an xbox or a tablet so maybe its just that the metro is a bit of a new thing to me and I may be just getting a little to enthusiastic as its all flash and fresh to myself but time will tell. The way I have it now where windows and metro are almost 2 separate operating systems suits me fine, I feel metro has an android thing going on so windows 8 is running with the only 2 things I am familiar with. I must also point out that I am a patient person and I will stick at things until ii thing I have given them a chance and my all, yes windows me was just a gloss over and vista, well I loved vista and never had a problem with it, I lot did and when folks came to mine moaning I found most had put it on hardware that was well outdated. I still get the XP lovers round who will never change and I chuck em into the same category with the PS1/Megadrive/etc is the best, move on suckers. I do hope MS or a third party make the metro look nicer than its current win95 theme and maybe a 3D desktop could do that, anyhow enough babble from me as I have the rest of my carling to destroy. I am sure the debate will be a long one and lets see what happens.

[zx6r2004]

nice work m8 now bring me a disk down lol

[wakadoo]

its free to download from Microsoft m8

[Over Carl]

I liked most versions of windows with 7 being the peak in my opinion. ME was their first cock up. Then vista, now win 8. They all failed for the same reason. MS were stubborn. They didn't get what the users wanted. They thought they were right and the people were wrong. Each time was a gamble for them. But they redeemed thereselves after.

I remember noticing there seems to be a trend of a shit version coming out then a damn good one afterwards, noticed similar things with autocad releases.

The rumours I heard about autocad was that there was one shit hot design team would implement a load of new features which would be the shit version, then the other not so good design team would fix this up to make the next "good" release while the shit hot team would be working on new features for the following "shit" version. Also heard the same rumour but the other way round saying the good design team came up with the decent releases while the shit one did the shit releases.

I agree it's too heavily orientated towards tablets which is a shame as they only make a tiny percentage of the possible end users.

However long term I wonder if maybe we are gradually moving away from general purpose computers being the norm. It wouldn't surprise me if in 10-20 years most "computers" are conceptually massive upgrades of todays consoles - limited hardware and software but highly optimised for common tasks, while those of us who need a real computer will probably need something radically different to what most people will then consider to be a computer.

[Mystical_2K]

thanks for the info, I have had a play with Windows 8 myself but so far im not seeing any reason to move from 7 yet

[Raptor]

I absolutely hate the gui

[wakadoo]

I absolutely hate the gui

it is a whole lot better with a dual monitor setup, i have adjusted well to it now after a few weeks of using it fully and i cannot wait till the apps and such come online.

i have added my pics to the photo app for an all in one place to view them and i do like the mail app as well, it will get better and you will embrace it lol.

[MsDG]

[MsDG]

it is a whole lot better with a dual monitor setup, i have adjusted well to it now after a few weeks of using it fully and i cannot wait till the apps and such come online.

i have added my pics to the photo app for an all in one place to view them and i do like the mail app as well, it will get better and you will embrace it lol.

So basically what you are saying is... W7 was perfectly usable with one monitor,so as long as you get a 2nd monitor W8 is fine? I'm sure all those laptop users will be tickery boo carrying round a 2nd monitor!

[wakadoo]

So basically what you are saying is... W7 was perfectly usable with one monitor,so as long as you get a 2nd monitor W8 is fine? I'm sure all those laptop users will be tickery boo carrying round a 2nd monitor!

lol, i can see where your coming from MsDG and i have to say i would give a diff view if i had it on my laptop.

but...i have given my opinion on the setup i have, like any new op system its going to get a mixed review from all kinds of users, but like XP, Vista and Win 7 before it the hates will cuss it as its new and most will repeat the "windows 8 is crap" without trying out and that just is the way a lot of things pan out nowadays.

Lets be honest here, if you use a windows pc and also have an iphone or an android phone then the whole win8 thing is going to be right up your street, all the functions of win 7 with a application background akin to your phone, nothings really changed, just microsoft getting in on the app market....can you blame them for trying.

[MsDG]

No... Can't blame them for trying, but to totally remove the old start menu and not give the users the choice to use the start menu for traditional PC's / Laptops is terrible.

This will effect businesses massively... this OS is just not intuitive and in many businesses people use multiple PCs. Can you imagine daily life at work using an XP/Vista/W7 PC and also having to do the similar things on a newer w8 PC... it would be a total mind fuck!

Not to mention the fact that the same interface has been in use now for 17 years, why completely dump it just because you want to sell a few tablets. I can see the business Laptop/PC market totally rebelling on W8. Either MS is going to have to put the Start Menu back or some 3rd party software is going to make a fuck load of money!

[wakadoo]

Now then, I was horrified when I found no start menu, but the charms bar search is a really fantastic thing when you try it a few times, it works very well and also gives a better view of what you are looking for. On the downside it is awful in other ways, type in "msconfig" and you will not be going anywhere fast, in fact you will not be going anywhere ...ever. lol.

multiple pc users will find everything they need as XP, Vista and Win 7 all annoyingly moved stuff around just enough to make me wonder why they even bothered moving it at all.

ViStart puts the start menu back in all its glory so no need to worry if its a feature you need.

[crazyal]

I can see this helping Apple sell a shed load more Macs - it is re-designed for re-designing sake. The garish colours on the front screen make it look like something from Toys R Us. All them tiles look utter shit.

Perhaps under the hood it is a lot more capable than it's predecessors, but right now I'm sticking with Win7.

[Rick Sanchez]

What is the storage pool system like? I've been thinking of switching NAS software and Windows 8 seems to cover a lot of issues, mainly drive wastage e.g. similar to ZFS feature. It also looks like it can handle more than one drive failure.

[greens117]

Tried it .... my windows wireless keyboard and mouse witch was a windows product would not work after a good five hours to rectifier the problem had to reinstall windows 7, guess what my keyboard worked without drivers straight away, imo piece of shit don't get me started on the start bar omission !!!!!!!

[Lou_smorals]

Hi
is it me or does the apps page look like linux mint (cinnamon) the obvious difference would be the mint apps and the OS is free !
LS

[EvilBoB]

Cheers for the write up. My company are currently working with MS and are planning on rolling it out pretty quickly. There is a programme being run in work for people to try it out for testing purposes. I'm on the list and am quite looking forward to giving it a go. At least in a work environment it wouldn't bother me too much - Gonna stick with W7 on my home laptop for the time being though I think