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Microsoft Launches Windows 8 Consumer Preview
suraj.sun writes "Microsoft on Wednesday made the Consumer Preview of Windows 8 available for download to the general public. Built with touch computing and apps in mind, Windows 8 is crucial to Microsoft's efforts to make inroads against Apple and Google in the red-hot tablet market, where the company is significantly behind rivals. Windows 8 marks the biggest change to the OS since the aforementioned 95 flavor (which, shockingly, turns 17 this year). With Windows 8 comes the introduction of a Metro-style interface, inspired by the lovely and intuitive presentation found in Windows Phone. In it, apps and functions are pinned to tiles and, to interact with those apps, you simply tap those tiles. The former Start Menu has been replaced by a full-screen view of tiles that you can scroll through horizontally. You can pin applications, shortcuts, documents, webpages and any number of other things, customizing the interface in any way you like — so long as what you like is rectangular and only extends from left to right."
MrSeb wrote on with info on generating a USB stick installer from the available images, and itwebennet with details about IE10.
I had the Win8 Developer Preview, and I *HATED* the Metro Interface. IMHO it was ugly and a PITA to use. It does not scale well to a standard WIMP interface.
Maybe for a tablet, it's OK.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
As such I will not buy any computer with Windows 8 on it. Hope Apple realizes this before the next OS X is released, but I doubt it.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Does anyone else take exception to the use of the word "consumer" instead of "customer"?
We called iconic borderless buttons "tiles"!
Aren't we cool and relevant and creative and all that shit?
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
My organization is in the middle of deploying Windows 7 to replace XP desktops.
Given the costs and time of doing this, it will likely be several years before this gets replaced.
I wonder if other organizations are only just getting to Win 7, if Win 8 might become one of those releases that everyone bypasses since they just finished upgrading. That would likely hurt MIcrosoft.
Anybody got any screenshots for the new interface? I'm curious to know how trying to make something optimized for phones and tablets is going to work as an actual desktop interface. It sounds like they might be trying a bit of a "one size fits all" approach, which doesn't always work so well.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
How are they mimicking iOS? Aside from lots of use of multitouch, I'd describe it as a radically different UI style.
From a geek's perspective, ever since iOS came out, OSes have been competing to out-crapify each other.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I was just watching the Developer's Preview. They were touting "a new kind of copying files ... you don't have to copy files to your hard drive anymore, they can just stay in the cloud".
Well how nice! Why have the tedium of being sure your files will be there when you go for them, when you can suddenly become dependent upon a third-party service? It's not like they've ever ratcheted up the price on their customers before.
I'm just waiting for them to abandon the hard drive entirely, in favor of a coin slot. Using your computer will be just like internet video poker.
The Wolfpack Project: BitCoin + Crowdfunding = Political Accountability
"HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer" in regedit, set "RPEnabled" to "0". Haven't tried it myself (don't have Win8), but supposedly it completely disables all the Metro and Ribbon stuff in Explorer.
all of this low-level technical registry mumbo-jumbo that Grandma could never handle is why we will never have the Year of the Windows Desktop...
I used the Developer Preview as my main OS for a few weeks. On Windows 7 I pin all of my apps to the taskbar. I did the same thing with Windows 8. So I had all the goodness of Windows 8 but all the availability of Windows 7. I came to think of it as Windows 7 on steroids.I may well go back to Windows 8 as my OS of choice.
You should do your homework and find out where are the roots of the Metro interface, then you'll see iOS was not even in Jobs' wildest dreams when they started.
Neither was the first mac when windows 1.0 came out, but that doesn't stop the fanboys from claiming windows stole something.
checking dates:
"Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS"
"The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984"
It's hard to see why one could claim that the first mac was "not even in Jobs' wildest dreams" when Windows 1.0 came out, since the mac had been on the market for nearly two years by the time Windows came out.
Why is this post moderated "informative"?
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Because Microsoft believes, and correctly so, that no matter what they do to their OS PC manufacturers will still preload it on all of their hardware. This will lead to more developers targeting metro apps which, in time, will lead to a more robust ecosystem for their phone platform.
grape - the GNU free, open source rape
Remember them? When your ISP still thought that you would visit their home page for anything else but to find the way to cancel the service?
Yahoo was just one of many to do this and often it meant that what you came for was completely impossible to find. MS has never lost this, its web presence is a design nightmare. There really even isn't one. Every little thing gets its own site, often barely working and then gets forgotten. It also happens to bigger things, MS pushed its own solution for selling music for music players, then it dropped it completely when it launched the Zune and then it dropped the Zune. Games for Windows has had many forms, launched and forgotten again.
But now... this approach has made it to the desktop and it ain't new at all. Active Desktop, widgets,gadgets, someone at MS seriously believes that people spend all their time looking at their desktop. Are you? Right now, how much space on the screen in front of you is taken up by the browser?
Right... where are all those Metro blocks supposed to go?
The engadget article doesn't suprise me. Did you see the monitor in the video? I didn't even know they still made them that small. The original Mac had a bigger screen for fucks sake. Now try the same interface and the scroll down for start menu on a triple 30 inch monitor setup. And I am thinking of going to 6. Apples unified menu system, Unity, Gnome 3. They ALL suck with big screens. Of course not everyone has a big screen... even more reason to use the available space for what you are working on. Where are the metro apps? Hidden... now you want something else... so you are supposed to minimize all applications, then click on the desktop and get that app running fullscreen because you need full details... that is handy?
No... this is a classic designer mistake, it looks pretty but it isn't usable. If you demo it, you have only one app running and as you make the metro desktop appear you pause and show the wealth of information available to you and how easy it is to get a detailed view open... very nice, very smooth and totally NOT how you do it when you are working.
Jagged Alliance 2 was a turnbased game that on every move, had the bottom 3rd of the screen drop out and appear again to change the display. Very pretty... once... the millionth time, you want to exterminate the designer and everyone he ever met.
I just don't see people use their PC's the way the metro app seems to think. Most people I know work with either full screen applications or have them covering the desktop and switch them the taskbar or by alt-tabbing. The desktop just never is in view. That is why Active Desktop never got anywhere, people never saw it. With the new linux desktop Enlightenment it is possible to make animated wallpapers... cute... and there is a reason nobody else has bothered with it, because you never see the damn thing. The desktop and start menu are there to get you started... from then on, you switch between applications and never ever close them. Only the most infrequent users and under powered constantly shut down their PC and start it up again. I know one person like that and she has firefox on autostart and arranges it to cover the desktop with her IM.
The Metro style is the domain of movie UI's. I remember one Sci-Fi movie with I think Robert Sellect (magnum PI) in which he goes through a morning routine with a robot. It is a common enough scene in future movies and it just doesn't happen. A: No human being can possibly care to be informed in detail about the weather outside, the news, appointments, social chat with relatives, banter with the AI before they got a cup of coffee. B: Any AI system at the moment that would display so much information would display the wrong thing at the wrong time and C: INFORMATION OVERLOAD.
I check my mail... then I read the comics... then I check the weather. Display them all at once... and WHERE ARE YOU GOING TO PUT THE ADS FOR THOSE FREE SERVICES?
I think this will be another MS Bob. Vista? To small a disast
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I'm a longtime Apple guy who also owns, uses, and mostly enjoys Windows Phone 7. Metro is a fresh take on what software should look like, and since Apple hasn't done any graphic innovation since 2007 I really appreciate it.
But on the desktop? Mixed in with traditional Windows applications? On your boss's computer? OMG train wreck!
Mixing two UX metaphors is an unbelievably bad idea. It's a big reason why Linux on the Desktop is a hard sell. It's why people intuitively avoid Java applications. It's why Adobe has struggled on OS X. And in all three of those cases we're talking about power users having trouble switching UX contexts.
If you do this in plain vanilla Windows you're going to have confusion on a whole new level. Grandma is not going to understand why some apps work this way and some apps work that way. Or why there are two versions of Internet Explorer. Or what happened to the Start button that I've been clicking to do *everything* for the past 15 years?
I have a lot of respect for Metro and what the team behind it is trying to do. They should just stick with a phone/tablet OS that is Metro-only all the time and not try to do this unholy mix on the desktop.
I have to believe this is one of the new "sales" type posts on slashdot. The part saying "inspired by the lovely and intuitive presentation found in Windows Phone" sounds more like a sales brochure, than a post about a new OS product on a Slashdot front page...?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
As such I will not buy any computer with Windows 8 on it. Hope Apple realizes this before the next OS X is released, but I doubt it.
I'm pretty sure Apple is quite happy to sell you a computer with no trace of Windows 8 on it.
1) Click the Desktop "Tile"
2) Open up File Manager and point your browser to C:\\Windows\\System32\\
3) Rename shsxs.dll to old_shsxs.dll
4) Confirm UAC Dialog Prompt
5) Reboot the Operating System
6) On the new login screen, click the mouse button and drag up
7) Login to the machine
8) Your operating system should act like a desktop OS without the "crap"
It's always been this way.
I suspect Windows 9 will bring orgasmic joy to those who opt to suffer through 8.
Also, the conspicuous lack of 2000 is intentional; while it is unarguably the best Windows ever(tm), it (like NT before it) was not targeted at the LOL I M USING TEH INTERNETS crowd.
Since you'll otherwise just get a bunch of sarcasm...
* Memory page de-duplication (automatically reduces system memory usage in most use cases).
* Lower base memory usage than Win7 (pretty impressive, IMO).
* Improved file operation interface (copying/moving files now shows all ops in one window, allows pausing, and generally provides more info).
* IE10 is built in (I assume it will be backported; it's a nice release).
* ISO mounting without additional software (finally!)
* App Marketplace (not mandatory, but convenient).
* Sign in with your WLID (now called "Microsoft Account"; enables syncing favorites, settings, and user-selected files/folders, plus downloading your Marketplace apps on other PCs).
* Automated ability to restore the OS to basic post-install state without losing the user's files or customizations (simplifying and speeding up the "pave-it-over" solution).
* Vastly improved multi-monitor support (taskbar spanning both monitors, wallpaper spanning the monitors, separate wallpaper on each monitor, each monitor gets taskbar icons for the apps open on that monitor only, and other options).
* Improved theme capabilities (automatic selection of chrome color based on current wallpaper, even during "slideshow", for example).
* Built-in antivirus option (Microsoft Security Essentials is now integrated into Windows Defender).
There's more, that's just what I remember from some of the demos I saw and my own personal experimentation.The "BUILD" conference demoed a lot of stuff, and that was before the release of the previous preview. I'm also just mentioning things that matter to the user, not mentioning the new developer features (though of course BUILD had a bunch of info about those).
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...