Windows 8 RTM Benchmarked

jjslash writes "Microsoft's PR machine has been hard at work over the past few months, trying to explain the numerous improvements Windows 8 has received on the backend. But are there real tangible performance differences compared to Windows 7? TechSpot has grabbed the RTM version of Windows 8, measuring and testing the performance of various aspects of the operating system including: boot up and shutdown times, file copying, encoding, browsing, gaming and some synthetic benchmarks." Lots of other sites are running reviews including: Infoworld, CNET, Computerworld, and Gizmodo, with very mixed opinions.

Comments

Paid for

[ozmanjusri]

Lots of other sites are running reviews including: Infoworld, CNET, Computerworld, and Gizmodo, with very mixed opinions.

You mean they're mixing the real opinions with the bought ones?

Re:Paid for

[Zaelath]

It's putting lipstick on a pig anyway. It would have to be orders of magnitude better "under the hood" to put up with driving something that fugly.

Re:Paid for

[jhoegl]

Hehehe, although it does look like WIndows 8 can "legally" claim faster.
I wouldnt call it an improvement though.

Re:Paid for

[RightSaidFred99]

I don't know why you think MS's competitors would go to the trouble of _buying_ bad reviews for Windows 8. I mean, you're not just making stuff up out of your asshole, I know that much, so there must be some other explanation for the bought reviews!

Re:Paid for

[SerpentMage]

So I read the article and only one thought went through my mind.

"Are you fucking kidding me?"

So here is the deal, I get a worse user interface, get to pay more for an operating system that offers virtually no benefit. Man I am so glad I shifting to OSX and Linux around the time Windows 8 was announced and released to devs. This is going to bite them in the ass and IMO with what I am experiencing with OSX and Linux, Microsoft really does suck!

And this is from a used to be Microsoft development author, Regional Director, and speaker.

BTW as a sidenote I actually really like Ubuntu Unity. At first disliked it, but have gotten quite accustomed to it. Now the other Linux distributions seem "old".

Re:Paid for

[Penguinisto]

BTW as a sidenote I actually really like Ubuntu Unity.

You don't, like, wear argyle golfing pants and a paisley polka-dot tie to work, do you?

I promise I'm not trying to be insulting, but I am curious now... :)

Re:Paid for

[geekoid]

I would not insult Ubuntu Unity's style...if it had one.

Re:Paid for

[cpu6502]

It looks like a step back to Windows 3.1 (which I hated). Instead of the convenience of having all your programs in a nice listing (the start menu), they are hidden in a bewildering mess of program groups & overlapping windows.

Curses.
Back then I avoided the mess that was 3.1 by sticking with my Commodore Amiga until Win98 arrived, but now that option no longer exists.

Re:Paid for

[aztracker1]

In all fairness, some of OSX 10.8's defaults irked me to no end... Just migrated from 10.6 (Snow Leopard) and have to say, the first 3 apps I wanted to install are not "From known developers on the Mac Store" ... then there were a number of apps I use (newest versions *only* on the Mac Store). As a developer, I expect a number of applications to not work well within the new sandbox rules, and to make the default to only allow Mac Store installs is infuriating.

If OSX gets any more big-brother, I'll probably be running Linux on my Macbook... I'm already planning on sticking with Win7 of my desktop for as long as feasible... I don't expect the Metro (Windows-8-like UI) to work at all well with multiple displays without extreme frustration. Win7 was probably my all-time favorite UI, now that's all over.

Re:Paid for

[VortexCortex]

It's putting lipstick on a pig anyway.

New Windows 8 slogan: Kiss me, I'm Bacon!

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[boblaroc]

I'm with you on Unity. Didn't like it before 12.04 but HUD has sold me. Sure I would like to configure the desktop a little more, but I am sure that will come with later releases. I think Unity wins as a Desktop/Tablet hybrid where Win8 fails.

Re:Paid for

[SDrag0n]

Everybody keeps complaining about the interface. Really it's like it just opens the start menu on bootup. From there you can hang around the desktop all you want. I didn't like it at first but then once I realized that you could hit the start button and stat typing what you wanted, similar to the current start menu, who cares? PLEASE keep bitching about the same thing thinking it'll change. Thanks for your valuable input.

Re:Paid for

[HornWumpus]

I could be convinced to sell you my old Amiga. It won't be cheap.

Re:Paid for

[H0p313ss]

I don't even want to know what the few Windows-using relatives I have left are going to think

They're all going to wonder why you're trying to run a tablet OS as a desktop. :)

Re:Paid for

[cpu6502]

>>>I could be convinced to sell you my old Amiga. It won't be cheap.

I'll buy it but only if it comes with the latest OS 4.1 installed. (And web-capable of course.)

Re:Paid for

[SDrag0n]

>>>you could hit the start button and stat typing what you wanted

Typing??? What is this? The time before mouse inputs? You shouldn't need to ever use the keyboard just to open programs.

Don't worry, you can still do your click navigation.

Re:Paid for

[Smauler]

So here is the deal, I get a worse user interface, get to pay more for an operating system that offers virtually no benefit. Man I am so glad I shifting to OSX and Linux around the time Windows 8 was announced and released to devs. This is going to bite them in the ass and IMO with what I am experiencing with OSX and Linux, Microsoft really does suck!

Don't fucking use it then as you obviously have done. Why the hell are you complaining about an OS you're not going to use?

I'm still running Vista, which was slated by just about everyone. It's stable, runs what I want, and I really can't complain about it. Dropping a few services makes performance comparable to 7, and I've got a decent system anyway that doesn't suffer from slowdown because of Vista being a hog. I've had about 6 months uptime on this system, which I use for gaming, work, surfing, etc.

If you don't want to use the software, why are you moaning about it? I'm not going to use it, either - there's no reason for me to upgrade at the moment.

Re:Paid for

[HornWumpus]

It plays marble madness! Has the memory expansion that hangs off the side and two floppys. It's a pre-release. Shipped to SW companies early. Most of the docs too. Haven't booted it in a decade. Call it a barn find.

Re:Paid for

[Barlo_Mung_42]

I'm guessing you've not tried it. Win8 is actually better on multiple displays because the task bar is on both.

Re:Paid for

[darkmeridian]

Yeah, anyone who disagrees with you is a sycophant or astroturfer. You speak the unimpeachable Truth and all others are Damned. Please spare me this BS. I don't disagree with you, necessarily, but I hate the demonization of those who disagree with you. Dissent is healthy.

Re:Paid for

[exomondo]

get to pay more for an operating system that offers virtually no benefit.

More than what?

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[Darinbob]

The biggest trouble I found was lack of documentation. Trying to figure out how to use Metro on your own is not trivial. While one article touted that you really didn't need start menu after all and that you could do the same thing with Metro, it took me a half hour to find a slow way to get up a menu, and another half hour to find a fast way to do this! If you're used to Windows or any other mouse based desktop system you may think that you can use the right mouse button, or maybe bring the mouse to the various sides of the screen, or click left or right on any blank spot on the screen (very few places not covered with "click here to buy stuff" icons).

I was baffled until I found a tiny spot to move the mouse where something happened (all the way to bottom right, size of a hanging chad). Eventually I found the _real_ way this is intended to be used. The Windows Key. You know, that key that most real computer users laughed at when they first found it and have not used it since. Just push it by itself and release and something happens. Sure some Windows experts may have memorized things like Windows+S for start menu or things like that, but most people I know never use it, or consider using it by itself and not as a modifier key. It's an extremely inconvenient key for touch typists as the placement is awkward. I always though it was a bit underused in most Windows versions, compared to the Command key in MacOS. But once you know to push this key all sorts of things can get done with metro, including popping up an amazingly ugly menu full of tiny black boxes. If you want to use Metro effectively you will need to learn a set of keyboard shortcuts!

That's the weird thing. How is anyone going to know based on their past experience to push this key as the primary means of UI interaction? On my android phone that came with zero documentation at least I saw three buttons at the bottom I could tap with my finger and eventually things would happen. Even the Nokia Lumia with the same basic look as Windows 8 comes with some buttons to push. But a windows user would naturally assume they need to click stuff with a mouse, and there's nothing to click except the default applications (not even real applications, they're more like smart URLs such as a "travel" icon with photo of eiffel tower, most of which no professional will ever use).

In the past people with visions were sometimes called mystics, sometimes called possessed, and sometimes locked up for their own safety. Today though people with visions are put in charge of product design.

Re:Paid for

[Windowser]

I'm guessing you've not tried it. Win8 is actually better on multiple displays because the task bar is on both.

you mean like it's been on my Linux box for years ?
Wow, seems like windows is finally catching up to some Linux features !

Re:Paid for

[Darinbob]

There is no "start button" to "hit" from what I saw. Instead there is a Windows key on your keyboard and you can hit that and release, if you know to try that. If you try to use just the mouse you will get nowhere for a long time. If you just start typing you won't get anywhere either. If you accidentally clicked one of those big square buttons and now you want to get back to where you were you will be in for a lot of frustration.

Everyone who says it's obvious only says that because they have learned the trick of how to get Metro to do something. People who are relying upon their past experience with Windows, MacOS, X Windows, Amiga, SunOS, etc, will not know what to do. Even people who say "aha!" and try to use it like a touch screen will be a bit lost as they try to flick things back and forth or use gestures. But you really don't get anywhere until you learn where that small spot on the screen is to click your mouse to get a menu, or realize to use the Windows key to open a menu. Things that are obvious only in hindsight are not obvious.

Re:Paid for

[Barlo_Mung_42]

Some of the features may seem like they are just catching up but in most of the important ways Windows is just plain better. Sorry but that's a fact. Linux is free while Win7 costs over $100. If something that is free still can't compete *at all* then there is very little room to say it's better or even nearly as good.
Maybe you like it better. A few people do. That's fine but you are not typical.

Re:Paid for

[Darinbob]

Which is not an obvious thing to do. The only thing really obvious is how to slide the prebuilt list of applications back and forth. Everything else is somewhat mysterious until you figure it out. Including how to leave an application if you accidentally activate it while sliding the icons back and forth.

This thing needs to come with a default help/tutor application, similar to what came with some earlier versions of Windows.

Re:Paid for

[Darinbob]

This will be the new Ubuntu Unity marketting pitch: "At least it's not Metro".

Re:Paid for

[Darinbob]

You don't have to use the apps store on OSX. The app store exists but you can still just download stuff from the web, install from a shared drive, or stick a DVD in the slot.

Re:Paid for

[R3d Jack]

Thank goodness for 12.04! I was holed up on 10.04 and wondering what I would do next. I actually considered installing Win 7 (I run it in a VM for my "legacy" app.) Unity isn't perfect, but it is quite usable now, and there is quite a bit I like about it.

Re:Paid for

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft addresses your entire post the first time you log on into a new account by telling you to "move your mouse into any corner" and shows the charms menu popping up. The start key is only the primary method of accessing the start menu for the keyboard. For the mouse it's the charms menu or the bottom left corner (not the size of a hanging chad but infinitely sized as it touches the edge of the screen). For touch, it's the start button that will be on every tablet.

Re:Paid for

[Penguinisto]

I didn't mention "anyone", or intimate that disagreement meant anything in the way of sycophancy or astroturfing, so I suspect your strawman may need a bit more stuffing. ;)

Re:Paid for

[renegadesx]

I'm all for Microsoft bashing but the "bought opinions" accusation is so 1990's.

Re:Paid for

[morkk]

BTW as a sidenote I actually really like Ubuntu Unity. At first disliked it, but have gotten quite accustomed to it

And how did you cope with Unity stealing the ALT key? Just 3 minutes of battling with that bullshit was enough for me.

Re:Paid for

[jd2112]

It's putting lipstick on a pig anyway. It would have to be orders of magnitude better "under the hood" to put up with driving something that fugly.

Windows 8: The Pontiac Aztec of the computing world.

Re:Paid for

[black6host]

Ah, the return of Clippy? "It looks like you're trying to use Windows" or some other inane or obvious comment. Or perhaps Bob? Damn, where are they when you need them.

Re:Paid for

[MacBurn11]

Unfortunately, Metro is a turd hidden deep inside that cake.

I'd say the cake is a turd with a few ice cream bits on top.

I really like the new file transfer dialog and the improved task manager, but that's about it. I have read several reviews of the release preview, and I couldn't find anything else that i would be really looking forward to, especially not their appstore. That whole concept of fullscreen Metro apps is horrible in itself.

Normally I don't care much about the appearance of a desktop environment, but this has to be the ugliest one I've ever seen. Even if you could switch to the old start menu, there would still be the charms menu, which is just a huge ugly black bar that covers 20% of your screen when opened to access a handful of options

The combination of the old desktop and the metro interface seems halfhearted and unfinished at best, it looks like they just stitched together two completely different environments without too much thought. Apart from the strange functionality, I feel that from an aesthetic point of view it's just awful.

Re:Paid for

[PmanAce]

>>>You shouldn't need to ever use the keyboard just to open programs.

I always wondered who put this into law? Keyboard shortcuts are way faster than using the mouse. Mouse users tend to be lazy...

Re:Paid for

[scialex]

Nah Gnome3 already called it.

Re:Paid for

[jader3rd]

More importantly, how are tablet uses going to press the Windows key when they don't have a keyboard?

All Windows 8 tablets are required to have a physical Windows button.

Re:Paid for

[slashmydots]

Hey, give them a break. They figured out and fixed just barely in time the fact that purple everywhere + the name metro = metrosexual connotation lol. I wonder what they're going to do when people realize tablets are netbooks without keyboards. It's the netbook crash all over again! I refuse to touch my PC monitor so, they seem screwed lol.

Re:Paid for

[shutdown -p now]

In RTM, hotspots are there on all monitors, so you can just swipe till stopped.

Re:Paid for

[Anonymous Coward]

>>>you could hit the start button and stat typing what you wanted

Typing??? What is this? The time before mouse inputs? You shouldn't need to ever use the keyboard just to open programs.

You're kidding right? You shouldn't have to use *the mouse* to open programs.

Re:Paid for

[davester666]

Um, Win8-based tablets aren't. They seem to pretty much need keyboard and a stylus/mouse/touchpad to, you know, do anything non-trivial. Cuz Bill says so.

Re:Paid for

[epyT-R]

1. Defending something repeatedly without a solid argument doesn't make a good case for it either. Take your own advice.

2. Starting a program should not be a full screen modal interruption on a modern machine. this is fine for tablets....or ms-dos, but not workstations. This trend of forcing users to get used to 'full screen only' again is part of that current dumb-it-down 'undevelopment' race to the bottom. It must stop.

3. The whole point of a gui is avoid having to type repetitive, simple commands. If their design actually takes longer than typing it out, like the playskool menu does, they've failed. The search box is an admission of failure. Just give me a console a-la quake; hit tilde and down comes a prompt ready to go...or leave the start menu alone. It works fine. The windows 7 start menu search is also stupid for the same reasons.

Re:Paid for

[Anonymous Coward]

Above the slogan is the face of Kevin Bacon. Pure advertising genius!

Re:Paid for

[epyT-R]

'better' without clarification is specious at best, and the latter half of your statment is argumentum ad populum.

Re:Paid for

[epyT-R]

Why the hell are you complaining about an OS you're not going to use?

because he's joining a conversation about it on the internet to voice his opinion?

If you don't want to use the software, why are you moaning about it? I'm not going to use it, either - there's no reason for me to upgrade at the moment.

so you complain about him complaining about an os he's not going to use, but yet you feel the need to post about his post when you also are not planning on using it?

Re:Paid for

[epyT-R]

how is the taskman improved? from what I saw of the preview, it had even less useful information than the vista/7 taskman, which in turn had less info than win2k/xp. However, the win2k/xp taskman actually had more useful info than the NT4 taskman. What really got me was the change of memory usage from actual values to percentages... how annoying.

Re:Paid for

[RR]

I'm still running Vista, which was slated by just about everyone. ... I've had about 6 months uptime on this system, which I use for gaming, work, surfing, etc.

How many viruses do you have on that machine? There's no way you can install all the security updates for the past 6 months without rebooting several times.

Not to mention all the stability problems that come from running closed-source software. My Windows 7 computer rarely goes above 2 weeks without the ATI driver crashing so badly that it needs to reboot.

Re:Paid for

[ais523]

I rebound that to alt+space. (And rebound super to alt+super, because I kept hitting it by mistake.) Look in CompizConfig Settings Manager.

I rather like the ideas behind Unity, although it's still very buggy, and the default bindings are unfortunate. (And it's missing some features it badly needs.) It's what I'm using at the moment, and I'm hoping it'll become more usable over time.

Re:Paid for

[dave420]

Calm down, scared old man. You can still use your mouse, but if you can type, and are not scared by this paradigm, you can find anything you want by pressing the Windows key, then typing, then pressing enter. It's so much faster than any menu, including the Start menu.

But I'm sure you're correct and all the intelligent people who made it are incorrect.

Re:Paid for

[hairyfeet]

Now now lets be fair...it does work on touchscreens, oh and little bitty screens like netbooks. So right there you got....what? 4% of the market that will actually enjoy Windows 8?

Trying it on my 22 inch though was just fucking PAINFUL. I mean WTF were they thinking making every damned thing full screen? And what moron decided TIFKAM (The Interface Formerly Known As Metro) should put every God damned shortcut in a fucking tile? do you have ANY idea how many damned tiles you end up with if you actually install a decent amount of software on it? It looks like a fricking shotgun blasted icons all over the damned screen! Hell it looks worse than those PCs i have to deal with where the user just dumps everything on the damned desktop because at least there you CAN quickly make a folder or two and clean that shit up.

So here is a totally 100% unbiased review of TIFKAM and Win 8...If you have a little netbook, say 10 to 12 inches? Then its fine as you'll never do more than 1 thing at a time on a screen that small anyway. Do you have a small touchscreen device? Works there too. do you only use one program at a time and ALWAYS go full screen? Well then its fine. Only install a couple of programs at most? Then TIFKAM won't drive you up a wall.

Everyone else that doesn't fit in the above list? RUN. Run as fast as you can, grab you a copy of Win 7 and hold onto it like a fat lady grabbing the last chicken wing at the buffet table because TIFKAM will make you want to pull an Elvis on your PC.

Re:Paid for

[MachineShedFred]

Windows 8: Get a few percentage more compute performance, at the cost of tens of percent of your time trying to figure out where your apps and documents are.

Probably not the most effective marketing campaign.

Re:Paid for

[MachineShedFred]

You know what? If we keep bitching about it, and Fortune-100 doesn't buy it because they don't want to retrain millions of office workers on their time, it WILL change.

Microsoft's Windows division is what keeps that company afloat, and that happens on the back of large business. If Windows 8 sells like Vista, they're going to make some rapid changes in order to bring big business along.

Re:Paid for

[hairyfeet]

Also note that the startup and shutdown tests? LIES all lies. Win 8 does NOT do a full shutdown or normal startup, what it does is similar to hibernate so if one wanted to compare you'd need to use a similar hibernate schema on Win 7 to compare.

But its nothing like a full shutdown or startup so no shit its gonna be faster, no different than how MS Office used that hidden OSA service to run 24/7 and they'd brag about "How fast Office starts". Well no shit it starts fast if the damned thing is running all the time, same kind of cheating here.

Re:Paid for

[MachineShedFred]

Oh, you mean like multiple displays on Windows NT 4? What a step forward!

Re:Paid for

[hairyfeet]

So I pay MORE money to have a shittier looking desktop so I can have the "thrill" of...doing the exact same damned thing i could do in Vista and 7? Well why didn't ya say so! I'll just open my wallet right now! I mean WTF did I ever do with these beautiful wallpapers of the galaxies, when i can have tile spam and MSFT trying to sell me shit?

Re:Paid for

[MachineShedFred]

Here's a handy CLI for GateKeeper to enable / disable as well as configure: http://krypted.com/mac-os-x/manage-gatekeeper-from-the-command-line-in-mountain-lion/

Re:Paid for

[RaceProUK]

I still don't know how to exit metro applications.

Did you try Alt+F4? You know, the shortcut that's worked for over a decade and a half (maybe longer)?

Re:Paid for

[RaceProUK]

More importantly, how are tablet uses going to press the Windows key when they don't have a keyboard?

Same way the phones do - with a Windows button.

Re:Paid for

[RaceProUK]

The fucking windows key ? I remove that key from all my keyboards so i wont get the start menu popping up during my gaming session!

Take a look at a gaming keyboard - a number of them have a switch that disables the Windows keys. I know my Logitech does.

Re:Paid for

[RaceProUK]

There is no "start button" to "hit" from what I saw

No problem for me - I can't remember the last time I actually clicked on the Start button. I just hit the keyboard key instead.

Re:Paid for

[RaceProUK]

The Office division makes a tidy sum too, which should keep MS bobbing until Win9.

Re:Paid for

[RaceProUK]

Win 8 does NOT do a full shutdown or normal startup

Then why does my Win8 laptop tell me it's shutting down when I shut it down? Maybe because it's shutting down? Otherwise it would say it's hibernating.

Re:Paid for

[RaceProUK]

Only Windows Virtual PC. Win8 works OK in VirtualBox et al.

Re:Paid for

[d3ac0n]

Yes. All those "Intelligent" people who made the decision to design Win8 this way because of data collected from the "Windows Experience" system. A system which only the lowest of the low end users ever partake in.

My Technological Luddite in-laws knew to chose "decline" on this when it popped up on their new PC. I shudder to think of the quality of users who's computer interactions informed this design decision.

So yeah. You have fun with your UI designed by Monkey Committee. I'll be sticking with something NOT brain-dead in my dual-boot Win7/Xubuntu laptop.

Re:Paid for

[neonKow]

GUIs may be slower than keyboards for power users, but they are far less intuitive and useable for the majority of the computing world, and honestly, if you're designing a GUI these days, you should be able to jump in without a manual and just start using it. Something that Windows 8 has failed at.

There should still always be a way to use the mouse to do something as basic as open an application.

Re:Paid for

[metalmonkey]

What I'm dreading the most is remote desktop (or other remote access).
1. sometimes the windows key is not forwarded to the remote machine - brings up the local start menu. If I'm using windows 8 then my whole desktop gets cleared out for the metro search. If the remote machine is running windows 8 I'll have to figure out another way to bring up the start menu search equivilant.
2. if it is a slow connection, clearing and re-drawing the entire desktop area every time I need to open another app twice - once to bring up metro and again to go back to the application I just started.
Yuck...

Re:Paid for

[Bedouin X]

On number 1 I haven't had a remote desktop session where my Windows key isn't forwarded in a long time. I think the newer rdp clients - which I'm sure Windows 8 ships with - have that problem licked.

A shortcut on the taskbar or desktop should take care of number 2.

Re:Paid for

[Bedouin X]

I'm confused about #3. The Win8 Start screen displays way more apps than the Win7 Start menu. If anything, the Win8 screen greatly increases the chances of the app you want being right there and not requiring a click of All Programs so I don't see how it is any less efficient. From what I have seen, the only advantage the Start menu has over the Start screen is easier location of recently installed applications.

Though I have to also say that in Win7 (and XP and Vista) I start programs either from a taskbar shortcut or by using Window-R to bring up the "Run" dialog which is analagous to the Quake console. Fortunately I can do the same thing in Win8.

Re:Paid for

[PmanAce]

Maybe the mouse is going the way of the dodo and you guys are failing to realize this. Windows 8 was made with touch screens in mind...

Re:Paid for

[jellomizer]

Because the next set of PC's will have more tablet features in them. For Most People. You buy a computer and you keep your OS version for the life of the computer. If it came with Windows 7, the PC was designed to run Windows 7... You stay on Windows 7 until you want a new computer.

Now after Windows 8 comes out, you will fine more and more PC's with multi-touch screens. (I myself have a Lenovo 220t, with Windows 8 RTM on it, and the interface is really nice and I like it better then Windows 7), because windows 8 supports it it means more PC manufactures will use it. Thus Microsoft tying to make multi-touch better.

This Windows 8 Touch Screen seems like the same debate 20 years ago, when PC's started to ship with a Mouse as a common device. It started out as a toy, with only a few applications that used it. While Apple had the mouse common, the PC was mostly still Keyboard, CPU, Monitor. Then when Windows 3.1, Most PC's started to come with a mouse standard, as well the applications for Windows started to use the mouse more. There were a ton of people who hated it, and we still get the debate today. However it is a case of Software that Drives the hardware. So when you next Laptop/Tablet/PC it will probably be reconfigured to be used as a touch device.

Re:Paid for

[godefroi]

Alt-F4 doesn't exit Metro (sorry, Modern) applications. Thanks for playing, though.

BTW, in case you're curious, the answer is, "you don't, not without pulling up the task manager and killing it". Windows (apparently... my 8 experience consists of an hour or two yesterday) "pauses" or "freezes" these apps when you switch to something else, and will close them later if it deems it necessary.

Re:Paid for

[bkcallahan]

Please don't compare the pulling one's own tooth (I've done this) to Metro. Metro *scares* me.

Re:Paid for

[Bedouin X]

The Start screen will not take up both monitors, it will take up one at most. I've used multiple monitors for at least 10 years (I'm a developer FWIW) and nomally my "off" monitor - which is normally a lower resolution than my main one - is running an app full screen like a web browser or OneNote. In using Windows 8 and Metro I haven't noticed much of a difference in practice but obviously YMMV. Even still, you can have two apps - including a desktop app - running on the Metro screen. It has quirks but I have found it far from frustrating.

Re:Paid for

[gozar]

I think the default is to only run signed apps, no matter where they come from.

Re:Paid for

[H0p313ss]

Well said, +1 internets for you sir.

Re:Paid for

[RaceProUK]

So, the same as apps that sit in the Notification Area then, except that they are eventually terminated.

Re:Paid for

[cpu6502]

>>>>>You shouldn't need to ever use the keyboard just to open programs.
>>
>>I always wondered who put this into law?

It's a Graphical user interface. It is meant to be used with a mouse. If you have to reach for a keyboard just to open a fucking program, then you might as well dump the GUI and go back to a blinking cursor on a damn-text screen.

For me everytime I HAVE to reach for a keyboard, I consider that an example of poor implementation by a lazy programmer (and not user friendly at all). You shouldn't need a keyboard when using the GUI desktop. These are modern day PCs with mouse-accessible commands, not Atari 800s or Apple IIs with CLIs and inch-think manuals full of commands.

Re:Paid for

[mcgrew]

Some of the features may seem like they are just catching up but in most of the important ways Windows is just plain better. Sorry but that's a fact.

Better how? It's prettier, but hardly better. It takes ten clicks in Windows to do what takes two in Linux. Linux updates take one click and no reboots. I can boot my Linux box and it comes up exactly like it was when I shut it down. Windows can't. I can configure a Linux box to boot without having to enter a password, Linux enters it for me. Windows can't. I can use movies as wallpaper, windows can't. I can have a wallpaper slide show. Windows can't. Linux can run on everything from a wristwatch to a supercomputer. Windows can't. And the list of things Linux can do that Windows can't is way too long to list. What can Windows do that Linux can't? Nothing I know of.

Yes, I run Win XP, Win 7, and kubuntu. Kubuntu is clearly superior in every way I've found. Your "it's a fact" is the opposite of the truth.

Linux is free while Win7 costs over $100. If something that is free still can't compete *at all* then there is very little room to say it's better or even nearly as good.

Windows has a multimillion dollar advertising budget, Linux doesn't. OK, that's one thing Windows can do that Linux can't, but the fact is, nobody but us nerds have ever heard of Linux. Well, except for Android, which is Linux, and is beating the shit out of every other phone OS in terms of sales.

Now tell me this -- Windows comes installed on almost every computer sold. Why would anyone replace it with Linux unless Windows was clearly inferior?

Re:Paid for

[hairyfeet]

I could hack the reg and have it tell you its doing The Hustle, does that mean its doing The Hustle? Of course not. MSFT needed a selling bullet point and it got it by doing a hack on the boot sequence, that's all. Again MSFT bragged for years about how fast MS Office started up while neglecting to mention it had a service called OSA running that preloaded it into RAM so if they lied to you once why do you think they'd tell the truth now? I'm at the shop and about to greet another customer but Google is your friend, look up something like "Windows 8 boot really hibernate" or a variation thereof and you'll find the info. It puts the kernel in a hibernate file and keeps the userland in RAM....where did I see something similar? Oh yeah, on win 7 that's called "hybrid sleep" and is crazy fast as well.

Re:Paid for

[cpu6502]

>>>Calm down, scared old man. You can still use your mouse, but if you can type, and are not scared by this paradigm, you can find anything you want by pressing the Windows key, then typing, then pressing enter.

Wow cool. Typing commands. It's like I've returned to my roots on an old Commodore 64! How primitive.
Next I bet Microsoft will come-out a Model T and call it "progress". Damn idjits

Re:Paid for

[RaceProUK]

So are you going to bother posting links to back up your claims? Or should I just take your word for it as a self-elected God of Technology?

Re:Paid for

[aztracker1]

Sorry, but do have to take a few exceptions to things you've said.

• 10 clicks vs. 2 - depends on what you are attempting to do, there are other ways, beyond mouse to make most adjustments in windows.
• updates without reboot - unless the kernel changes, and often even if not, can have issues, leaks
• Precise reboot state - I've not really seen this work well in either environment.. some apps specifically do okay, or better than others
• Auto-login - admittedly it's easier in linux, but you can do it in windows too.
• Movies for wallpapers - you can use an embedded html as a wallpaper, this can have movies in it, as well as multiple wallpaper selection. This doesn't include 3rd party apps/utils.
• Embedded to Super Computer - windows does scale pretty well, and there are embedded/light versions, which is where WinRT actually started, which brings a separate issue, on windows the vast majority of applications written even 15 years ago can run on a current version of windows, without a source rebuild.
• What can windows do that linux can't? Beyond the above-stated binary compatibility, which is imho huge, and a consistent binary API can't think of much.

All of this said, I tend to use Windows, OSX and Linux regularly, along with a couple single-purpose BSD installs.

Re:Paid for

[aztracker1]

There are *SEVERAL* applications that currently *ONLY* install via app-store, there's no separate download from that apps website. I went through this recently, I didn't bother backing up the apps I had, as most were free/open-source and figured I'd just download the latest versions... more than a handful had their download links going to the Mac Store...

Re:Paid for

[justthinkit]

Since they removed window shadows, it sounds more like Windows 3.0

Re:Paid for

[justthinkit]

Mouse users tend to be inefficient
.

FTFY

Re:Paid for

[justthinkit]

Any votes for AMC Pacer of the computing world?

Re:Paid for

[exomondo]

Wow cool. Typing commands. It's like I've returned to my roots on an old Commodore 64! How primitive.
Next I bet Microsoft will come-out a Model T and call it "progress". Damn idjits

So you enter search strings with a mouse do you? I mean since using a keyboard to type in what you're looking for is so primitive.

Re:Paid for

[jd2112]

Any votes for AMC Pacer of the computing world?

Not only was the Aztec one of the most hideous looking vehicles ever made it is considered by some to be the cause of Pontiac's downfall. (although in it's defense I've known a few Aztec owners and apparently it's actually a decent vehicle, at least by GM standards of the time.) As bad as the Pacer was it didn't single-highhandedly bring down AMC, who had several monstrosities working against it. (the Gremlin for example)

Re:Paid for

[justthinkit]

The only "muscle car" I ever owned was a Gremlin X. 305 cubes in such a small car...I enjoyed it while it lasted.

Re:Paid for

[ninjacut]

exactly, the interface is quite easy and hardly takes 5 minutes to orient and understand. The RTM version has quick help to re-iterate this. All the hue and cry is over nothing, and looks like coming from people who have not used it at all

Re:Paid for

[RaceProUK]

Update: Looks like I need to issue a retraction - GP was spot on. Looked at the drive of a 'shut down' Win8 install, and lo and behold, there was hiberfil.sys.

Re:Paid for

[hairyfish]

, you can find anything you want by pressing the Windows key, then typing, then pressing enter. It's so much faster than any menu, including the Start menu.

I haven't paid much attention to Win8, I prefer try it myself with a full release version without prejudice. But one thing I like is browsing for info. I hate context sensitive menus (CSMs), I hate searching (due to the unreliable nature of Windows search - eg search compmgmt comes up with nothing -why?), I want to click a menu and see all my options. This is why I still use XP. I click Start->Programs and I see all my programs laid out in front of me. I haven't been able to figure out how to do this in Win 7 ( the programs menu is a fixed height window and only displays a certain number of apps which you then have to scroll through (yuck)). From what I have seen of Win 8 it gets worse. I use Outlook.com (hotmail upgraded to Metro) and the CSMs annoy the fuck out of me. I like to see things laid out out in front of me before I begin, but you can't do that with CSMs, everytime you click something your menus change so you have to re-read the page to see what changed. Doing this multiple times per task is annoying.

Re:Paid for

[hairyfish]

This Windows 8 Touch Screen seems like the same debate 20 years ago, when PC's started to ship with a Mouse as a common device. It started out as a toy, with only a few applications that used it.

This is the key point that the haters seem to overlook. Win8 might suck, that is possible, but the alternative which I have seen very little press on, is that Metro introduces a new era of 'way to use a computer' and MS wins. In 5 years we might look back on the old desktop and wonder how we could ever live with that. A unified platform for phone, tab, laptop, PC, console and TV, once the apps are developed to take advantage of the new era, all the haters will look like grumpy DOS fanboys in 1998. Of course I'll repeat, Win8 could just as easily be a lemon, only time will tell, but I think these discussions should at least try and provide some balance. I'm sure a lot of us remember these exact same conversations back in 1995.

Re:Paid for

[quantumphaze]

and lo and behold, there was hiberfil.sys.

My properly shut-down Windows Vista partition has a hyberfil.sys file too. I think it just keeps it there so it doesn't have to reallocate the space. It is not a suitable test to see if Windows 8 actually shuts down.

Re:Paid for

[RaceProUK]

In which case I retract my retraction, and reinstate my original posting i.e. Win8 tells me it's shutting down because, oddly enough (hairyfeet), it's shutting down.

Re:Paid for

[godefroi]

Well, no, not really. More like apps on your phone. They're still "there" but they don't show any UI or consume CPU. The "notification area" on Windows is purely a UI thing. There's nothing special about icons there, or the processes that create them. They're exactly like any other process, except they're more likely than normal to hide their main window.

Re:Paid for

[RaceProUK]

True (and I know all that already), but it's not outlandish to think of WinPhone having a 'notification area' that you just can't see, and that's where the apps lie. I was trying to describe an analogue rather than a true equivalent.

Re:Paid for

[quantumphaze]

Time the booting sequence, then try renaming the hiberfil.sys file and booting it again.

This could break your system or worse; cause you to redact your redaction of the original redaction.

Re:Paid for

[RaceProUK]

But what if I have to redact the recation of the redaction of the original redaction? Or, how many redactions must a man redact, before he can stop redacting? :)

Re:Paid for

[quantumphaze]

I think at this point it may be better in the long term to implement a redact button in the style of undo in 1990s Windows apps that will redact the redaction if you click redact twice. I will post it to github when ready.

Re:Paid for

[quantumphaze]

Do the hotspots work with asymmetric monitors?

Xorg (or Kwin) finally fixed the mouse clipping issue where it could move into that void space you get if one monitor was shorter than the other. But now the bottom right hot-corner can't be reached. Does this happen in Windows 8?

Re:Paid for

[shutdown -p now]

I don't have any machine with such an arrangement to try, unfortunately

Re:Paid for

[hairyfeet]

Wish I could spare the time to find ya a better link but I'm ass deep in work right now bro and when you type shutdown and Win 8 in Google you find 50 bazillion people having problems...gee i wonder why? Anyway this is the best I can do but el Reg reported after the CP release (maybe you should search their site) that this is indeed the default behavior and you have to use a MS KB article to disable and force "classic" shutdown. Maybe look up "Win 8 hybrid boot"? I just ain't got the time to spare friend, sorry.

Re:Paid for

[hairyfeet]

Just got off work so here ya go friend and the keywords to Google it are "Win 8 hybrid boot" which brings up 20 million fricking pages all about it. again its the old hibernate trick with a few nasty hacks thrown in, not something i'd get jazzed about. But if you want feel free to rename hiberfil.sys on your system and time the reboot, just make sure you have access to the console in case its left unbootable. Of course if it IS left unbootable then you'll know its using the hiberfil instead of doing a cold boot, but I wouldn't want you to end up with a broken system just to say "I told ya so".

Now if you'll excuse me its been a long day and the oldest boy just dropped me off a lotsa meat with extra meat and cheese so my butt is gonna kick back and enjoy some top notch pizza goodness...Peace.

Re:Paid for

[RaceProUK]

And you missed the one difference between hibernate and hybrid boot: the user session. Hibernation preserves the active sessions, and restores them on boot. Hybrid boot closes all sessions so new ones start on boot. No matter how you spin it, hybrid boot is *not* hibernation.

Re:Paid for

[godefroi]

It's even less outlandish to think of WinPhone (and pretty much every other OS) as simply having the ability to hide and show the UI of a particular process on demand. I don't understand at all what the 'notification area' has to do with it.

Re:Paid for

[RaceProUK]

Like I said, I was going for an analogue. Why do I feel like you're trying to win an argument where no argument exists?

Re:Paid for

[godefroi]

I understand you were going for an analogue, but it made no sense. You should've involved cars somehow instead.

Re:Paid for

[RaceProUK]

Fair enough. In which case, I only need to mention BMW's iDrive system, which operates very similar to a modern smartphone.

Stupid summary

[fustakrakich]

What do we get here? The teaser! Just cut to the chase, would ya?

Re:Stupid summary

[shutdown -p now]

Boots much faster than Win7, otherwise so similar that you won't notice outside benchmarks.

Worse for Games

[bobbutts]

Windows 7 won by a small margin on the 3d and gaming benchmarks.

Re:Worse for Games

[Hadlock]

The new version of windows always sucks for games until nvidia and ati get around to tweaking things. Give it 6-8 months for everything to catch up. If you plan on installing Win8 on day one and expecting everything to work as good as, or better than the 36 month old Win7 ecosystem, you're insane.

Re:Worse for Games

[equex]

yeah one is called insane if one expects something new to be better than something old.

Re:Worse for Games

[thegarbz]

Why is this necessarily the case?

The driver's job is to talk to the hardware.
The API's job is it talk to the driver.

Windows 8 uses Direct X 11 as the API, same as Windows 7.
The driver is the same the hardware is the same, there's been no major change in the driver systems in Windows 8 which has been documented (unlike the move to Vista).

Given this why am I not right to expect Windows 8 to perform identically to Windows 7 from day one?

Re:Worse for Games

[CAIMLAS]

Not true. W7 was better than Vista for pretty much everything, even before RTM.

Re:Worse for Games

[Hadlock]

Welp, get enterprise level IT on the phone right away! They've been doing it wrong all along! We're going to need 50 million copies of Win 8 to blindly install on all their existing machines. Their reasoning : because it's new and thus must be new! I'm glad we have you around for your deep insight and lack of shift key.

One benchmark, 4 reviews

[Anonymous Coward]

And the benchmarking methodology is pretty fucking terrible. (Lets not do something interesting like Chrome W7 vs. Chrome W8)
As for the reviews, wasn't this about benchmarking?

Answer please

[hcs_$reboot]

- But are there real tangible performance differences compared to Windows 7?
- TechSpot has grabbed the RTM version of Windows 8, measuring and testing the performance of various aspects of the operating system

Expected a "... and" followed by the TechSpot answer!
What the point of TFS if one has to read up to TFA? /. writes interesting summaries based on interesting stories.

No Chrome on W7

[QuantumBeep]

The sly omission of Chrome on Windows 7 from the browser benchmark is face-meltingly biased.

Re:No Chrome on W7

[jhoegl]

Doesnt matter, Chrome is obviously kick ass on Windows 8.

Re:No Chrome on W7

[Chuck Chunder]

I don't see how it indicates "bias". It does indicate an inability to produce a relatvely meaningful benchmark (as in one that allows comparison).

Similarly the "Windows logo to desktop" seems like a strange benchmark as the benchmark result would be improved by simply showing the Windows logo later. Why wouldn't you just compare the time from power on to desktop (which is presumably what people actually care about)?

Re:No Chrome on W7

[Stalks]

Shenanigans. Using the same bench system would rule out any differences that the bios would make in a simple comparison such as this.

Re:No Chrome on W7

[espiesp]

(I admit I didn't read the article, or even the summary)

Except, when comparing two identical machines like they should have done, there should be zero differences except for the OS. So, from the first push of the button to the desktop is a good metric.

But, what I think is an even better metric, is from push of the button to USABLE desktop. I noticed that Win7 seemed faster to boot than XP on an equal machine, but I think Win7 may just in fact be faster to get you to a desktop, and it keeps loading things in the background. The first 30-60 seconds after you get to the desktop, things are sluggish anyway. Might have been my imagination, or I remember XP through my rose colored glasses...

Re:No Chrome on W7

[epyT-R]

Nothing beats an xp or win2k machine stripped down to 12-15 processes. It might take a a few extra seconds to get to a login prompt, but the login prompt to desktop was diskless on my machines. It was instant. This is impossible to do with vista/7 without breaking needed functionality.

Re:No Chrome on W7

[Patch86]

That would only matter if you're comparing two different hardware set-ups. If Win7 and Win8 are on identical machines (or better yet- both installed on the same machine, dual boot or sequentially), then power-on to desktop is the more meaningful measure.

As the GP said, there's no reason why the logo would be displayed at exactly the same point of the boot-up process in both OSs. Case and point- my Xubuntu box boots from logo to desktop in about 3 seconds, but only because the Xubuntu logo only seems to appear at the very end of the boot-up process, moments before it's completed. If I went from "moment the Grub option was selected" to desktop, I'd get a considerably different result.

Re:No Chrome on W7

[theswimmingbird]

It's right below Chrome on W8, in second place under the Google V8 tests.

No real difference

[linebackn]

So after reading through the entire article (wait, was I supposed to do that?) the bottom line is that there is no significant difference that any regular user would care about.

I don't think shaving a second or two off of boot time is going to impress people when they see the user interface is "all different" now.

Re:No real difference

[MachineShedFred]

It boots 2 seconds faster, and then you spend 20 seconds asking what the fuck is this shit when you don't get a Start menu, and you can't figure out where your stuff is.

What a great tradeoff.

Re:No real difference

[pinkeen]

I just played with it for a while and it feels way much more snappier and responsive. The application start perceivably faster. That is the thing that nobody benchmarks, but it could be benchmarked with a clever approach.

That's why everybody says MacOS is so fast - because it *feels* snappier not because 10GB files copies faster. That's what the developers should strive for, not a win in some synthetic "how long does it take to do X" benchmarks.

BTW In my definition responsiveness, loosely, is the time between taking an action and receiving feedback.

DISCLAIMER: I am a hardcore linux user and occasional window 7 user.

Re:No real difference

[thegarbz]

I don't think shaving a second or two off of boot time is going to impress people when they see the user interface is "all different" now.

Getting the right hardware makes many times the difference as minor software changes. I used to boot up my computer as an excuse to go and get a cup of coffee. It would be done right about the time I got back down. Took about 1 and a half minutes to get from power off to desktop. Enter a SSD. The computer boots to a fully usable desktop in about 20 seconds. Of this about half the time is in the BIOS.

Chasing an additional second at boottime may be relevant if you're running a media centre or waking a phone from a sleep state, but it's a complete waste of time if it's all bested 1000 fold by the end user spending $100 on some new kit.

Where is that first post

[ls671]

Where is the first post from a uid above 2600Hz uh, I mean 2600000 praising windows 8 ?

Did we get rid of them ? Slashdot will live for ever, forget about the 6 digits or lower uid posts that say /. has come so low they will never come back. They are lying. /. is too addictive and funny also.

Re:Where is that first post

[skipkent]

That's it /. has come so low... I'll never come back!

Re:Where is that first post

[zlives]

damn (1510) you can't be yelling at the kids :) you don't own the lawn at the retirement community

Re:Where is that first post

[DAldredge]

He has a 4 digit UID so don't trust a damn thing he says.

Re:Where is that first post

[PopeRatzo]

That's it /. has come so low... I'll never come back!

Goodbye cruel world.

Re:Where is that first post

[FreakyGeeky]

/. is so low I will never come back.

Re:Where is that first post

[splutty]

This is just an attempt to farm low UIDs, isn't it? Just admit it! You want old farts to respond to your post.

Ha! I'm not falling for it. Nosiree!

Re:Where is that first post

[ls671]

I work for the first church of appliantology and we are currently conducting a survey on uids below 1000000. No need to be afraid, it is all for global and/or universal advancement.

http://wiki.killuglyradio.com/wiki/Appliantology

Benchmarks don't really tell the story...

[dhavleak]

• Steep learning curve (nothing to 'learn' obviously -- it's just a new interface -- but it's very different from Windows 7 and definitely takes some getting used to)
• Tangibly faster startup / shutdown / resume etc.
• Tangibly faster switching between apps / windows etc.
• Unfinished in terms of adopting to the new UI paradigms. Several places where you end up back in the old way of doing things, or going back to the control panel to look for settings. It's clearly still there as a catch-all.
• Some awkwardness in terms of managing processes. Clearly, it's designed for you to not think about that stuff. But windows users of old aren't used to that and want to know how to exit an app. You can kill apps quite easily, but it's part of the so-called learning curve.

Well done, but job not finished.

Re:Benchmarks don't really tell the story...

[shutdown -p now]

Wait, there are old Windows users who don't know about Alt+F4? (it also works for Metro apps)

Re:Benchmarks don't really tell the story...

[dhavleak]

Man, there's old Windows users who don't know about keyboard shortcuts period. That's probably the majority of computer users across all OSes except Linux. That's who I had in mind when I mentioned a "learning curve" -- I don't expect anyone on Slashdot to have to 'learn' a UI.. hehh..

Re:Benchmarks don't really tell the story...

[CAIMLAS]

What?

Tangibly faster startup / shutdown / resume etc.
Tangibly faster switching between apps / windows etc.

I've got a VM running on a Bobcat board. It takes about 7 or 8 seconds to boot. I've got W7 installed on a physical desktop with an SSD and the boot time is less than it takes to resume from suspend. I can't hit the power button and sit down before it's ready for a login.

And how is 'tangibly faster app switching' possible when that's already instantaneous? You must be running on old hardware - or are you commenting on the supposed UI improvements which make things easier for people bad at mousing/amputees/blind people?

Re:Benchmarks don't really tell the story...

[dhavleak]

I've got a VM running on a Bobcat board. It takes about 7 or 8 seconds to boot. I've got W7 installed on a physical desktop with an SSD and the boot time is less than it takes to resume from suspend. I can't hit the power button and sit down before it's ready for a login.

You're thinking of your hw only.. I was commenting in more general terms. I've tried 8 on new hw, old hw, and VMs so far.

Re:Benchmarks don't really tell the story...

[CAIMLAS]

A Bobcat board, in case you weren't aware, is fairly bottom basement. 1.6GHz dual core, first generation of AMD's new craptastic performance range of hardware. It has performance similar to (but for my purposes, less than) a 1.6GHz Atom 330.

The desktop is a bargain price first generation i5 with a low end 60GB Corsair SSD and 4GB of RAM. Not exactly blazing fast, but no slouch, either.

I've got another laptop on which Windows 7 boots in under a minute. (Logging in takes a bit more time; this doesn't change on Windows 8. What they probably did was just push more of the user-facing services to occur later in the boot process so that they're loading in the background after the users log in...)

So it's not just "my hardware". It's "anything you'd be able to run Windows 8 on", more or less. Besides the fact that boot time is an all-but-insignificant factor (Booting impacts you, what, once or twice a day? Any more and you've got problems.)

Let me know when W8 is able to get from "fresh install" to "updates 6 months from now" without having to reboot, and then we'll talk. Boot time is all but insignificant (I've got an 800MHz machine that boots Ubuntu in under a minute, too; bfd) and really, not much to boast about until they figure out how to have instant-on last-use-state "booting" (or hibernation restore) without glitching. Rebooting shouldn't be necessary unless we're updating the kernel itself.

Re:Benchmarks don't really tell the story...

[dhavleak]

Perfectly aware of Bobcat. Typing this on a laptop with an E-350 myself. It's a disservice to compare it to an Atom 330 IMO but that's not the point. I didn't call your hardware fast (or slow). "Bobcat board" is insufficient data for such a conclusion. Your post seems to have the underlying assumption that if you are seeing 7 to 8 second boot times then everyone else is as well. The other hardware you're referring to -- under a minute leaves a lot of time for improvement.

Let me know when W8 is able to get from "fresh install" to "updates 6 months from now" without having to reboot, and then we'll talk.

Talk about what? I'm not trying to convince you or anyone to move to 8.

Re:Window 8

[dhavleak]

You can run any number of apps you want, simultaneously.

Polish a turd, it's still a turd.

[Tastecicles]

I don't really mean that. Wait. Yes, I do. Sort of.

Windows ME was awful. Windows 2000 was pretty much the first version of the platform I would call usable. Cairo was very buggy, then a little more buggy, then a little less buggy a degree at a time through SP3. Vista was the ME of NT (ie, bloody awful). 7 is a fairly decent platform. By that I mean, I haven't had a kernel crash in over a year of using it on a daily basis, and that is saying something - every single other OS I have ever used has had a kernel crash of some description in the time I've used it. If Windows 8 is going to follow the pattern, it's going to be another godawful abortion. I'll stick with 7 and probably wait for 9.

Re:Polish a turd, it's still a turd.

[dhavleak]

If Windows 8 is going to follow the pattern, it's going to be another godawful abortion. I'll stick with 7 and probably wait for 9.

There's certainly no need to switch.. I mean, OSes in general have been doing the same thing with only slightly incremental improvements for some years now..

But on the other hand, 8 is bad because it's not an incremental improvement -- it's a pretty big change, and with that change comes growing pains. It's also good, because it's not an incremental change -- for a change MS hasn't tried to support everything since 1853, and just worked on the task at hand instead.

I think for the most part it's going to get less sales than Win7, especially because corporate sales will be down -- they simply won't see value in the new UI. But I do see this as a positive step for Windows.

Re:Polish a turd, it's still a turd.

[PopeRatzo]

I'll stick with 7 and probably wait for 9.

That's reasonable. There's no reason everyone has to use the same OS, and no reason a user has to buy into every new version.

Lots of people skipped Vista.

I don't mind when companies swing and miss. I like to have lots of choices, and I don't think three is nearly enough for desktop operating systems, especially nowadays since desktop apps are a little less important.

Between my wife, my daughter and me, and all our different projects and careers, there are at least six different versions of three different OSs around the house. And you know what? It really doesn't matter to me which one I'm using at any given time. None of them are that hard to figure out and none of them are so terrible that I can't get work done or so great that I only want to use that one.

Maybe I'm just not that discerning as some of you. I'm sure if you're doing desktop support there are some that are better than others, or if you have to budget for hundreds of desktops, there are some that are more economical than others, or work with specific hardware better than others (thought I don't think so).

The desktop OS wars are kind of 1990s, you know? Or maybe I'm just not looking for a reason to get all exercised about something and don't have the energy to go to war over something like this.

Operating system lockdowns, on the other hand, do light my fuse. I really don't need an operating system telling me that I have to buy all my software from one vendor. I don't care if it's Microsoft or Apple. You want a walled garden, you're my sworn enemy.

Re:Polish a turd, it's still a turd.

[Smauler]

Vista was the ME of NT (ie, bloody awful). 7 is a fairly decent platform. By that I mean, I haven't had a kernel crash in over a year of using it on a daily basis, and that is saying something.

Did you ever use Vista? It got horrendously bad press because it was dog slow on crap machines. It should never have been installed on them.

I'm still using it, and have had over 6 months uptime. 7 might be better, but Vista was only catastrophic because it was run on low end hardware and had every possible service enabled as default. That's Microsoft's fault, completely, but Vista isn't the turd you make it out to be.

ME on the other hand, I agree with.

Re:Polish a turd, it's still a turd.

[Darinbob]

I don't know. I have a piece of petrified turd that has been polished. It's kind of pretty and you can't tell that it was a turd a million years ago.

Re:Polish a turd, it's still a turd.

[Tastecicles]

I did eight years of support, Vista was without doubt the worst of the bunch - and yes, I had to learn it so I knew the shit of which I spoke. I would say it was even worse than ME; at least you could fall back to 98 drivers for ME if push came to shove, you couldn't use 2k-specific drivers on Vista. If it didn't come with Vista drivers, you were screwed. xp drivers were more miss than hit on Vista, by a very wide margin. As to performance, I insisted on dog's bollocks machines for my support gear, and Vista was a charging slug on a quad with 16GB!

Re:Polish a turd, it's still a turd.

[epyT-R]

What value does this UI bring? Change for change's sake is not always improvement. In fact, it's usually, at best, a net-neutral shift, going downhill from there.

Re:Polish a turd, it's still a turd.

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod the parent poster down. I had a bleeding edge core2 duo (1.86ghz) when Vista came out. The machine was DOG slow and crashed ... a lot.

I upgraded to Windows 7 and everything was good again, performance and stability.

Vista was criticised because it was SHIT.

Re:Polish a turd, it's still a turd.

[dhavleak]

It should be pretty obvious -- it enables a new way of interfacing (touch). It's a consumer-focused feature, not an enterprise user or power user feature, hence my comment about corporate sales being down.

Re:Polish a turd, it's still a turd.

[dave420]

Are you talking about Vista *before* the slew of performance patches which changed everything, or after?

Re:Polish a turd, it's still a turd.

[Cro Magnon]

The problem with Vista is, if your machine had 2 GB or less, it ran like crap. If you had over 2 GB, it only saw the first 2 GB and still ran like crap.

Re:Polish a turd, it's still a turd.

[Tastecicles]

noticeable before, showstopping after.

Might as well be a BSOD.

[wild_quinine]

I don't consider myself a luddite. I usually have an open mind about change. I don't mind if the start menu changes. Heck, I don't need a start menu. I don't feel like there's something missing in Mac OS X when I use the Dock, Spotlight and Finder together to get where I need to be.

*But* the 'Metro' launcher is an abomination. Having something fill my entire screen with glaring colours and toybox tiles when I am looking to launch an application is the exact opposite of the discreet, unintrusive interface that I'm looking for on a workstation desktop.

What did users complain about with Vista? UAC. They hated that every five minutes all your colours went grey, and you couldn't continue without clicking yes on a box in the middle of the screen. But UAC did that because, love it or hate it, there was a reason for it to demand your attention and draw you out of whatever you were doing.

The 'Metro' launcher has no such reason. It completely breaks my flow of thought every time it swallows my desktop. It breaks the illusion that I am working on a constant surface. It is a jarring alteration to the consistency of the desktop experience. It causes the eye and the mind to pause, to catch, and to wonder what the fuck is going on. It might as well be a BSOD for the effect it has on my concentration.

Now with time, I accept that the 'where did all my stuff go?' feeling will dissipate. The interruption will become familiar and not shocking. We'll get used to it. But I fundamentally refuse to accept that a glaring fullscreen, interuption is a step forward in UI. Stick it on a tablet by all means. But it is simply not suited to genuine cognitive multitasking.

Re:Might as well be a BSOD.

[jbolden]

If you use OSX consider what OSX was like with regard to the Classic box. You are, using your metaphor, upset that your workflow with classic works worse on OSX than it did on OS9. Well yeah, of course.

And I would suspect for GDI applications Windows 9 is going to be even more uncomfortable. Where it will shine is Metro applications. And that's the point to start shifting the development community over to the new interface. Apple hit tremendous resistance as they moved people from Classic to Carbon to Cocoa every step of the way. But by constantly advantaging Carbon over Classic and Cocoa over Carbon they achieved the migration.

Re:Might as well be a BSOD.

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference is that it was clear with the OSX transition that the new APIs would be viable replacements for the old, whereas that is not true with Metro. Metro doesn't support overlapped windowing, multiple monitors, ClearType antialiasing, simultaneously running applications, or dynamically compiled code outside of .NET. There are entire classes of applications that simply are not supported by the current version of Metro and there is no indication yet as to whether Microsoft will update Metro to support that functionality in the future while the divisions they are causing in the user experience and development community are problems now.

Re:Might as well be a BSOD.

[Smauler]

What did users complain about with Vista? UAC. They hated that every five minutes all your colours went grey, and you couldn't continue without clicking yes on a box in the middle of the screen.

That never happened. It happened when installing drivers, programs, everything, because it should happen. Perhaps people got a bad impression early on because that's when they were installing the programs.

UAC is fine. It only throws up when you're trying to something you should need administration privileges to do. Which happens about once a week for me.

Re:Might as well be a BSOD.

[Darinbob]

I actually think I am a Luddite. I tried to join the official Luddites once but gave up because they don't appear to have a web site.

Re:Might as well be a BSOD.

[jbolden]

The difference is that it was clear with the OSX transition that the new APIs would be viable replacements for the old

I hope you check back. This was a good comment. You should get an account.

Before 10.0 was released. No it wasn't clear at all. And wouldn't be for a while. 10.0 was much rougher than Windows 8 is today and was being met with far more hostility. For example http://www.asktog.com/columns/044top10docksucks.html

Some of that stuff like multiple monitors I'm sure will be added with service packs.
Clear type is going to be replaced by high dpi monitors. I own a macbook retina you don't want this sort of rendering it looks horrible. Metro's approach is better for high dpi.
As far as "simultaneously running applications" I don't see that. Snap works fine. Possibly I'm missing what you mean?
As far as dynamic loads there are 3 methods already supported and likely more to come.

Re:Might as well be a BSOD.

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a jarring alteration to the consistency of the desktop experience..

Jarring is the exactly correct. Why would anyone want an desktop interface to be jarring unless it was warning you something bad was about to happen or just did. Security pop-ups should be jarring. BSOD is jarring. Why do I want my start menu replacement to be jarring? Why would anyone?

Re:Might as well be a BSOD.

[epyT-R]

Adding shittier solutions and forcing their use by removing what is desired is not progress, but yes it will force people... GDI was and is still a lot more flexible than these playskool single focus interfaces microsoft/apple/gnome et al are pushing us to use.

The GP is right about workflow interruption, but I'd take it further. Getting used to it is a regression. Now things take longer than they did before...and for what?

Re:Might as well be a BSOD.

[epyT-R]

Unless of course you're the type who wants more desktop space.. Then cleartype is still needed.

Re:Might as well be a BSOD.

[ruemere]

Untrue for hybrid corporate environment. You get some kind of UAC related prompt almost every time you want to access resources on the network (and don't, please don't get me started on Enable Editing dialog of Office 2010...). It used to drive me crazy until I have decided to live with this - I just click it away (and hope that my antivirus will deal with a wrong click - if I ever do one).

Once upon a time, a golden rule was that - if you need more than two clicks to get to the goal, the interface is a failure. I wish Microsoft designers heeded this lesson.

Regards,
Ruemere

Re:Might as well be a BSOD.

[Drethon]

Once upon a time, a golden rule was that - if you need more than two clicks to get to the goal, the interface is a failure. I wish Microsoft designers heeded this lesson.

Regards, Ruemere

Ding ding ding! Winner! Just wish it was more blindingly obvious to MS...

Re:Might as well be a BSOD.

[jbolden]

GDI was and is still a lot more flexible than these playskool single focus interfaces microsoft/apple/gnome et al are pushing us to use.

I don't know what you mean by "a lot more flexible". Try changing the parameters under which GDI applications operate, like drastically changing the PPI. As for playskool single focus interfaces... that's simply not true. Both Apple and Microsoft are integrating virtual desktops into window management and more or less automatically tiling window managers. In other words bringing to the masses something like XMonad's approach to window management. I'm not sure how something that in 2011 was cool but too far advanced for most Linux users is now meant for babies.

Re:Might as well be a BSOD.

[jbolden]

I don't follow. How does the font rendering method have anything to do with desktop space?

Re:Might as well be a BSOD.

[jbolden]

The programming model for OS X applications was still one that supported full-fledged, multitasking, overlapped window desktop applications. Imagine instead if Apple had introduced the restricted iOS programming model as the new model for OS X, one that simply couldn't replicate popular applications from classic MacOS like Photoshop. That's what Microsoft is now touting and pushing heavily as the new sliced bread in Windows 8.

I see good point. I don't think they want you to just replicate the applications but rather reinvent the functionality. They don't want people to just port their old application to another widget set but rather to completely rethink how the application should work. Metro takes away some features that have been standard and adds other features back in that used to only exist on very advanced windows managers (like XMonad). So they offer multiple windows but not just a simple "throw a window on the screen and let the end user resize and move it" model.

A fair analogy, to stick with OSX is what would have happened if Apple had never created the whole OS9 -> OSX Classic -> Carbon -> Cocoa migration path but instead had gone with their original plan of forcing people to jump directly from OS9 to Cocoa. (I should mention as a point of irony, Microsoft is one of the few companies that hasn't made it all the way down that path and still has lots of Carbon code in their OSX applications). Apple in 1997-2000 was just too weak to pull this off. Microsoft is strong enough to force the shift fast. And frankly they lack the time for the handholding their developers through all the intermediate steps. Apple couldn't drop classic completely until 2005-7. Microsoft developers (and customers) are not used to changing technology nearly as rapidly as Apple developers / customers are. They don't want the multiple steps. No question for Microsoft to pull this off will be rough on everyone.

I'm not holding my breath for high DPI monitors becoming popular just yet. We've regressed so far in resolution that most laptops are down at 1366x768 much less 1080p, and even at 1080p ClearType is a significant gain. Apple's push with the Retina display is much needed and will help a lot but I still think it will be years before the baseline resolution for laptops improves enough. The new Surface is still only going to be 1366x768.

Part of the new Microsoft is to stop focusing on the lowest common denominator. You go back to what computing was like in the 1980s and 1990s (or phones today) where new applications and new OSes were focused on newer equipment. There is no reason that by 2014 or so, every laptop shouldn't be high DPI. And new software shouldn't target the baseline but rather the newest generation of hardware. Old software for old systems, new software for new systems. Software targets the future hardware because hardware changes so fast you can't possible target the base. That's a real change for the stagnant market of the last decade but it was a much better world technically.

Regardless if it happens in 2015 or 2020 Metro can't support ClearType once it is clear that high DPI is the eventual direction. The Windows community is not going to react as quickly to fixing the font problem as the Apple community has (after all no developer doubts that Apple users will switch applications over ugly fonts) and Microsoft can't afford years of their fonts looking terrible during a slow transition. So planning in advance makes sense.

Metro does not allow dynamically generated code, including JITted code (direct or Reflection.Emit), downloaded code, or runtime compiled shaders. You can dynamically load modules but they must have been pre-packaged. This prohibits use of a number of scripting languages that would be performant and efficient and do not have or cannot have an ahead-of-time compilation component.

I'm not following. Python 2.7 and 3.2 run fine on Windows 8. Perl does. Which scripting languages are having problems?

Re:Might as well be a BSOD.

[giuda]

Then your network/user/AD is not configured properly.

Re:Might as well be a BSOD.

[ruemere]

Mhm. This is probably the point where we should draw our lightsabers and beat each other with our experiences.
Would you accept a conciliatory truism of "sometimes life ain't perfect" instead?

Regards,
Ruemere

Re:Might as well be a BSOD.

[giuda]

Ok. :)

Re:Real use of the OS

[Scowler]

Have you actually tried to use Metro? It's very responsive and looks gorgeous, at least from the demo apps Microsoft has created. IE in Metro mode is an improvement over IE in Desktop mode. And, if you don't like it, Desktop mode is a click away, and you are safe back in Win7 style UI environment.

In my experience

[geekoid]

boot is faster the windows 7, and file transfers, including torrents, are faster.
I have a dual boot with 7 and 8, so the machine is the same. Especially extremely large file, or large groups of files.

Re:In my experience

[Psychotria]

I am so sick of hearing about boot times. WHO FUCKING CARES ABOUT SHAVING A FEW SECONDS OFF BOOT TIMES? Sorry for shouting, but boot times and shut down times are a fucking stupid metric to judge an OS upon. The same fucktards who care about boot times install their entire OS on an SSD when in reality, _after_ booting, read-access from the "os partition" is essentially zero.

Re:In my experience

[MachineShedFred]

I'd rather have an OS that doesn't need to reboot all the time, making the reboot time essentially zero. Oh wait, I have that, and it isn't Windows.

Weird benchmarks

[flimflammer]

Something feels wrong about comparing Windows 7 /w Office 2010 and Windows 8 /w Office 2013. Will Office 2013 not be available for Windows 7 or something? Why would you compare two different Office products in two different operating systems? Seems like an unreliable metric if you're trying to compare the performance between operating systems and not different versions of Office.

Re:Weird benchmarks

[rgbrenner]

Maybe because the interface for office 2013 has been updated to match Windows 8

If they compared Windows 8 w/ Office 2010, you would have complained about the interfaces not matching.

Stop nitpicking. You were going to hate it anyway, so why even pretend there's a real reason behind it.

Re:Weird benchmarks

[avandesande]

Another thing that I thought was odd was using the HDD as the boot disk... why did they even have a SSD in the configuration? If SSD was used for boot the differences in startup and shutdown wouldn't have been as much.

Re:Weird benchmarks

[flimflammer]

If they compared Windows 8 w/ Office 2010, you would have complained about the interfaces not matching.

That doesn't even make sense.

Stop nitpicking. You were going to hate it anyway, so why even pretend there's a real reason behind it.

That makes even less sense. I never mentioned or implied what my feelings regarding Windows 8 was. I was merely calling into question the incomparable results they were passing off as a benchmark. You can't tell what resulted in any performance gains -- Windows 8 or Office 2013. They should have compared both versions of Windows with Office 2013 if they wanted any meaningful results.

You're just going to have to face the facts: A few benchmarks in this article are poorly designed.

Re:Window 8

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does everyone assume Metro Apps are mandatory? Metro is only mandatory for the ARM version. The 64bit version I use on my laptop can run Desktop Mode, and it works great, much improved over Windows 7. Other than a Metro looking lock screen and wireless network connect screen, you could hardly tell the difference by looking.

audio performance has improved

[CaptainPhoton]

I saw this cross-posted on ./ previously. Cakewalk benchmarked Win7 versus Win8 when running their digital audio software, and saw some significant improvements:
http://blog.cakewalk.com/windows-8-a-benchmark-for-music-production-applications/

The Cakewalk software runs in desktop mode, which is fine since we're all going to ignore Metro after we log in, right? :)

I've been running the Win8 developer preview with Metro disabled for months now in my engineering lab, and it got to the point that I forgot it was Windows 8.

Is the rumor true that the registry setting to remove Metro is gone in the RTM version? Now that will be annoying!

Re:audio performance has improved

[zlives]

will be available again in sp1?

Some features i actually want

[Espectr0]

I hate the new metro interface, but i like some features like: easy restore (refresh and reset), windows to go, virtualization, shorter boot times and newer windows display driver model. Let's see how it does

Re:Some features i actually want

[earl_sven]

I hate the new metro interface, but i like some features like: easy restore (refresh and reset), windows to go, virtualization, shorter boot times and newer windows display driver model. Let's see how it does

Windows To Go is only available on the Enterprise edition, therefore for most of us it's useless.

any way to back port the core speed ups to 7?

[Joe_Dragon]

any way to back port the core speed ups to 7? or get 8 without the new GUI?

Windows 8 is for post-PC world

[Scowler]

Is it worth upgrading from Win7 for a standard desktop or standard laptop? For most users, probably not. Windows 8 is designed for hybrid tablets, Kinect-style PC-interfacing, unusual monitor configurations, etc. It's for "non-standard" computing, generally. If benchmarking were updated to capture "usability" in many different computing environments, this is where Win8 would leap ahead of its predecessor.

Re:Windows 8 is for post-PC world

[pegasustonans]

Is it worth upgrading from Win7 for a standard desktop or standard laptop? For most users, probably not. Windows 8 is designed for hybrid tablets, Kinect-style PC-interfacing, unusual monitor configurations, etc. It's for "non-standard" computing, generally. If benchmarking were updated to capture "usability" in many different computing environments, this is where Win8 would awkwardly hobble before falling over and obstructing the path while shouting and pissing itself ahead of its predecessor.

FTFY

Re:Windows 8 is for post-PC world

[LodCrappo]

There is no post-PC world. There is just the same PC dominated world we've had for the last 20 years, and some tablets. It mostly works fine.

Re:about what should be expected

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Oh no. Are we going to start this crap again?

It wasn't funny after the first person did it for Windows XP (2000 SP), nor was it funny for Windows 7 (Vista SP). Chances are good that it's not funny now.

Re:Window 8

[techno-vampire]

Well, most users rarely have more than one or two apps running at the same time anyway. Also those who use more generally have all of them maximized so that for all practical purposes they might as well only have one of them open. Considering how few people ever even try to multitask, what difference does it make if Windows 8 isn't good at it. (Assuming, of course, that it isn't. I only use Linux, so I've no idea how good Windows 8 is or isn't.)

Re:Real use of the OS

[dreamchaser]

I shouldn't feed trolls but I'll bite. I've used Metro. It *is* a steaming pile of crap. This is coming from someone who is relatively OS agnostic. I use Win 7 and love it. I use various flavors of *nix and love them for various reasons as well. I have on OS X box, it's pretty cool. I'm not too fond of my iPad (it's mostly a lab device anways for me) but I love my Asus Transformer Prime. I use many OSes.

Windows 8 is OK on a tablet device. On a desktop it is a steaming pile of turd. There is absolutely no compelling reason for any Win 7 user on a machine with a keyboard and mouse to 'upgrade' to it.

Re:Real use of the OS

[Scowler]

How was I trolling, exactly? I'm not the one using the word "abortion" or the phrase "steaming pile of crap". I agree with you that this is not a compelling upgrade for the keyboard/mouse crowd, but then again, Metro wasn't really designed for that, was it?

Re:Window 8

[lister king of smeg]

+1 insightful to you sir.

Re:Startup/shutdown? What about Windows Update?

[VortexCortex]

I love how every review mentions how startup and/or shutdown times have improved slightly, as was the case when Windows 7 was released. However, they seem to miss two somewhat important aspects of this:

1. It is not very common for users to turn their PCs on and off several times during the day. Also, there's hibernate. I, for one, keep my PC on for weeks at a time unless I'm somehow forced to reboot, which brings me to...

2. While a regular startup has been getting a second or two faster with every release, the new Windows Update subsystem (introduced in Vista) means it takes BLOODY AGES TO SHUT DOWN THE DAMN OS if there happens to be updates pending, and if you're lucky IT WILL ALSO TAKE BLOODY AGES TO START THE DAMN THING UP AGAIN AFTERWARDS, as the update process is finished. And if you turn off the computer while this is happening, you will probably have to reinstall Windows.

I've hosed a few systems by shutting down a laptop after a meeting or presentation, only to find that Windows wanted to spend the next half an hour or so installing updates.

If you can even get the damn updates to install... I stopped using W7 when after several fresh installs it hung on a few critical vulnerability fixes. Fuck that, I already feel like I'm browsing around with a bullseye on my back, I'm not strapping dynamite on too -- Windows 8 sounds like adding blinders so I won't even know what hit me...

Re:Real use of the OS

[dreamchaser]

You're right, nothing you said was an obvious troll. I just find Metro to be such a horrible interface that I tend to knee jerk when someone praises such an obviously bad upgrade option. There is not one compelling reason for any PC user to upgrade to Windows 8, but given Microsoft's track record Windows 9 will be out in a couple of years and will address that. I'm looking forward to it. Windows 8 is a non-starter. It won't gain much traction in the tablet market even though Metro is well suited to it, and I highly doubt many business users will switch to it.

Re:Window 8

[fisted]

You can't explain that.

This must be some new use of the word "fast"...

[arglebargle_xiv]

So the article shows that Win8 gets from the Windows logo to the desktop in 18 seconds. On a Core i7-3960X. With a Kingston SSDNow V+ 200 256GB SSD. This is regarded as fast.

I have Win7 running on a several-year-old netbook. It has the cheapest SSD I could find, a Corsair 32GB. Time from hitting the power button to desktop is about 20 seconds.

(That's with a very stripped-down Win7 install, courtesy of RT Se7en Lite. So far I haven't noticed any loss of functionality in this lite version).

So it looks like the way to make Windows "fast" is to bloat it up to such ridiculous levels that something that'd have rated as a supercomputer some years ago crawls under it, and then to remove some of the suckage in a later release to make it appear... well, less sucky.

Re:This must be some new use of the word "fast"...

[avandesande]

Why didn't they use SSD for the boot disk? Article is ridiculous.

How about really stressing it?

[fa2k]

The OS is supposed to manage the available resources. It's easy when you just run one thing at a time.. I want to know how Windows 8 performs when you have 3 number crunching jobs, each requiring 2 GB running at low priority, a different process which loads 6 GB of data into RAM, a steady stream of IO from each process, interactive use, and maybe some music or video too. Throw in a VM too, to really push it. Does it still manage to be responsive and interactive?

My Win 7 laptop with 4 GB RAM becomes unpleasant to use when I start a VM which uses 2 GB. My Linux box has 16 GB and it handled the above scenario pretty well, but adding another instance of the 6 GB fitting job caused it to crash! (I was swapping to something that wasn't meant to be used as swap, so my fault). Admittedly, testing OSes under stress isn't easy to do reproducibly, but I think a subjective opinion would be really interesting....

Their Conclusions

[TranquilVoid]

Since the summary is a teaser;

* Generally the same performance as Windows 7, sometimes marginally faster
* Faster startup and shutdown
* Games and web browsing the same (IE10 no better than IE9)
* Multimedia slightly faster (x264 encoding/decoding)

I'm sure corporate group policy will take care of the faster startup and shutdown times :)

Re:Their Conclusions

[Zantetsuken]

Unless its the ARM version, which doesn't even support GPO. I'm sure corporate IT departments will be super willing to allow that on their networks/domain

Zdnet article or just google "windows 8 rt gpo"

Re:Their Conclusions

[UnknowingFool]

Disabling services? Bahahaha. Sure group policy might take away a few services but most corporate environments add a ton of services. Like Norton (instead a lighter AV). Corporate Monitoring services. AD services. The list goes on and on.

Re:Real use of the OS

[Darinbob]

Naw, don't read the article. It's just another site that is all fanboy over Windows 8 while pretending to do unbiased tests (like compare several fast browsers on W8 versus a different browser on W7).

Re:Window 8

[aaron552]

You can have one Modern UI app fullscreen at a time, optionally with another tiled at 30% screen width.

Alternatively, you can ignore Modern UI apps entirely and use traditional desktop apps as you always have

Re:Window 8

[exomondo]

Then tell us, how do you disable Metro and return to the regular start menu?

He said Metro Apps aren't mandatory (as in you can run any non-Metro desktop apps you want), that doesn't have anything to do with the start screen.

Re:Real use of the OS

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you actually used Metro? It's hideous looking. It's flat and boxy, giving you very little clues as to what UI elements can be interacted with and what ones aren't. Images with text underneath are usually buttons - except when they're headers. Important UI commands are often hidden in offscreen toolbars with no indication that they're there.

IE is stripped to a bare minimal UI, with what's there always buried. It's awkward to navigate with the constant need to right click / swipe screen edges.

Metro is also very slow - the simplest apps tend to take 10+ seconds to load, with 30 seconds being common.

The desktop theme is a massive regression over past versions. The UI elements have all been flattened and lost their colors and shading. Everything blends today. Visual Studio 11 in particular is horrendous - the icons are now all black against a gray background, making them very indistinct. Text boxes have a light gray background against the slightly darker gray for the window, making them extremely easy to miss.

Windows 8 is a massive, massive regression in usability over past versions.

Re:Startup/shutdown? What about Windows Update?

[spauldo]

Windows update has always been dog slow.

I never understood why. On Debian unstable, I can go a couple months and then apt-get upgrade half a gig of packages in less time than my girlfriend's Windows 7 machine can run some routine updates. Downloading the files takes forever, which I suppose could be caused by a lack of server capacity on Microsoft's part, but why does it take so long to check for new updates or install an update?

It's been that way ever since they first implemented it. I thought it would improve once they pulled it out of IE and made it its own application, but no - it's still slow.

Re:about what should be expected

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

It's not meant to be funny, it's meant to show the similarity between this and previous operating systems. No one claimed that Vista was XP SP4

But - new operating systems are built atop old versions. Ubuntu 11 was like 10 was like 9 was like... what purpose in pointing out the obvious?

So I assumed he was going for "+1 Funny" rather than "-1 Redundant" when I made my reply. Unfortunately, he only succeeded at the latter.

Re:Real use of the OS

[TheGoodNamesWereGone]

I used the words, you betcha I did. It IS crap. It interferes with the user getting his work done in a fast & efficient manner. A desktop is not a tablet. How many times do people need to hear that? Holy Christ, this thing is going to suck wet dead bears-- No business will go NEAR it. And one more thing, if Apple is driving this headlong rush towards smartphone/tablet interfaces being out on desktop (and I'm looking at you too, Ubuntu) then why isn't OSX that way? Metro I mean Modern is shit. You know it and I know it.

Re:Startup/shutdown? What about Windows Update?

[Gordo_1]

Windows Update has become a non-issue for most users since it mostly does it's thing in the background and during idle time these days. Clearly MS just left the broken old implementation in place because there were more impactful things to fix.

Re:Real use of the OS

[Anonymous Coward]

How was I trolling, exactly? I'm not the one using the word "abortion" or the phrase "steaming pile of crap".

Prefixing the comment with "I shouldn't feed trolls but I'll bite" is just a pathetic attempt to gain leverage in the argument, he doesn't actually believe you are trolling otherwise he wouldn't have responded at all (we all know trolls only want responses so only an idiot would respond to a comment they believed to be trolling).

It's the way some of these anti-Microsoft posters roll, they are allowed to use childish phrases to describe subjective negative points as a basis for their 'objective' criticism, but you may not do that for any positive remarks. Such people have such a deep seeded hatred of Microsoft that they can't allow (even subjective) positive comments to exist without a childish name-calling rebuttal.

Re:Startup/shutdown? What about Windows Update?

[spauldo]

These days, yes, although I disabled automatic updates on my girlfriend's computer because it wanted to reboot the machine at night after certain updates, and her motherboard is flaky and doesn't reboot right sometimes.

That doesn't explain why it was slow for more than a decade.

I'm not complaining (anymore), since I no longer work with Windows machines except for a few family computers. I'm just curious as to what it's doing that makes it so slow.

Also incomparable JS benchmarks

[cmburns69]

I also noticed that the JS benchmarks were completely incomparable. Each benchmark was for a different browser, and the browser company that made each test suite won (firefox won the kraken suite, and google won the V8 suite).

I would have been interested to see Chrome on Win7 VS Chrome on Win8, or FF on Win7 VS FF on Win8, but alas.
 

Re:Window 8

[Anonymous Coward]

Two steps, 1) Click the desktop app, 2) Install Vistart, a 3rd party start menu replacement. I am not trolling, I am being serious. I can stay in desktop mode for weeks. After you wake up your computer from hibernation, type in your password, it returns you right to where you left off, in desktop mode. Default file associations might go to metro apps, but you can change those too. OK Vistart won't let me right click on anything in the start menu, but that isn't a huge deal. I don't know why that guy called me a troll. I've been using windows 8 on my home laptop for months. I am in desktop mode 99% of the time. As far as the ugly theme in desktop mode goes, no big deal. Someone will come out with a nice themeing program or hack for it at some point. I've been saying this for months. I've been using windows 8 since before they even had Metro in the leaked builds. I've had lots of time to notice the nice features.

Seriously, use windows 8 with Vistart. It's a free program. You may miss a few advanced features of the Windows 7 start menu, but you will like all the positive changes of Windows 8 more than the negative ones. Here is just one example. Windows 8 does not interrupt your presentation to remind you to reboot your computer to install an update. It gives you days worth of warning before it nags like that. Another example, if you are copying a bunch of files and one can't copy, you can just hit skip, and it will continue with everything else. You can also pause fie copying. Plus, Windows 8 doesn't have that nasty explorer refreshing bug that Windows 7 has. I haven't tested this, but I bet it doesn't have the nasty failed backups if you use a custom library bug that Windows 7 has. What is Windows 7 biggest missing feature? Native ISO mounting? Windows 8 has that. I've reinstalled Windows 8 several times over the past year, 2 or three leaked builds, then three official betas, then the RTM. I never had to install Daemon Tools or Security Essentials as part of that process, because those features are baked right in.

Plus, Internet Explorer 10 is nice. It is standards compliant. I am developing a website and targeting Chrome/Safari as the recommended browsers, but I would like it to work in IE10. It mostly works in IE9, but that required a lot of work, some features will never work in IE9. My modern HTML5/CSS3 website using canvas and FileReader API works just as well in IE10 as Chrome.

If you only mess around with Metro for a couple hours, how do you expect to notice all the changes under the hood? I have been using Windows 8 for months. Actually, I have been using Windows 8 for over a year now. I am still discovering nice new features. I've been using since you had to hack Metro into it, because it came disabled in all beta builds before developer preview.

Come on moderators, give me a few points so people can read this. Windows 8 in desktop mode with Vistart is a very nice experience. You can't review an OS in a weekend, I've been using it for a year and a half or so.

Re:Window 8

[epyT-R]

to what end?

Re:Window 8

[epyT-R]

Since when? Most users I've seen have plenty of windows open. ..and no I'm not talking about sysadmins or developers.

Re:about what should be expected

[JonJ]

You don't have to pay for the latest Ubuntu.

Re:Window 8

[epyT-R]

1. If a product comes out of the gate needing a hack to bring in critical but missing functionality, there's something seriously wrong. Vistart is a nice tactical fix, but it doesn't change the fact that the only reason microsoft removed the start menu was to force people to interact with metro. This was done for marketing reasons. It's in users' best interests not to support this behavior with their money.

2. presentation interruption/file copy bugs/iso mounting etc. all of these are simple additions that could come with a service pack or hotfix. These are all trivial bits of code, combined.

3. metro is designed for tablets with touch screens. Ergonomically, a desktop touch screen is a horrid concept rife with fingerprints and long delay context switches between keyboard and screen. It's worse than switching from keyboard to mouse. Metro is horrid for mouse users.

4. IE10 may be better than the previous versions, but it's still a shitty browser.

5. Learning a new environment that's truly better than the predecessor shouldn't take a year and a half.. It should be minutes, maybe an hour. The problem here is that metro is not better than the traditional windows layout for desktops.

Re:Real use of the OS

[epyT-R]

Of course not, but then you knew everyone here was discussing it from the desktop/laptop perspective, so why pretend otherwise? If the best things you can say about it is 'responsive' and 'looks gorgeous', then there's something seriously wrong.

Re:Real use of the OS

[epyT-R]

Don't worry, osx will be ios'd soon enough.. by 10.9 or 11.2..

Re:Window 8

[Patch86]

My mum is a bit of a computer dunce, but she works as a secretary. Her job involves having Quickbooks, Excel, and emails from customers open at the same time side by side, so she can compare and amend. If Excel and Outlook went Metro (both being MS products, that sounds likely), she'll find her job considerably more difficult.

If "moving to the new system will make my job more difficult" is a sentence that can be used honestly, something has gone terribly wrong.

Re:Window 8

[dhavleak]

To the end that it just seems like a more natural way to use a tablet.

The app takes the full screen, and several gestures are built into the screen edges and the gestures aren't ambiguous that way. Tablets generally don't have huge screens anyway.

It's definitely a bit of a hodge-podge. No denying that. When you're using Windows 8 on a 17" laptop if you keep hopping back and forth between the two modes its like using a slightly schizophrenic OS -- but if you're a power user there's certainly nothing preventing you from always being in power user mode (aside from the boot-to-new-start-screen thing, but that's pretty minor). I really would be surprised if power users adopt Windows 8 in large numbers. It's very clearly targeted at the tablet/consumer/entertainment crowd who would generally always be in the metro interface.

Re:Window 8

[Alkonaut]

Yes, metro is designed for touch interfaces. One can question the decision to remove the "start directly to desktop" possibility, but I assume they reasoned that it is easier to provide this option later, than to remove the option if they realize this is the correct way to go. I don't see it as a big problem anyway (one presses enter ONCE to get from the start screen to desktop. Similar to what one always has done with the start screen showing a list of users in the home editions).

Calling IE10 a shitty browser is a bit of inflation in that term I believe. Those who still have to care about IE6 knows what a shitty browser really is. When you can write apps for newer versions of chrome and IE only, you suddenly find both of them to be very good browsers compared to what we had a few years ago.

How do you know it will take a year and a half to learn how to use the new interface? What is going on here is microsoft saying that a) "desktop env. is crap on a touch device" (no argument from anyone) and b) "having the same env for all classes of devices is good". The last point can be argued back and forth but at least they have a consistent plan and try to make the best with that plan. If it turns out to be a disaster, I'm confident they will back off from it. The point is, all changes are always resisted by us the vocal 1%. Ribbon UI is a good example (where ms was right, but some on /. would still be whining I suppose).

Re:about what should be expected

[dave420]

And it shows.

Re:Real use of the OS

[dave420]

According to you. I've used it a lot (I'm typing this in Windows 8 now), and I've not found any of these issues. It's not interfered with my work one iota - it's fast, does exactly what I need, and is integrated into everything I could possibly want it to be integrated into. It's great. I guess time will tell.

Re:Window 8

[MachineShedFred]

Well I'm sure glad that I can get an UI that it optimized for a tablet on my 27" desktop displays.

This is why people are pissed.

Re:Window 8

[thegarbz]

Why do you allow yourself to compare Windows 8 + 3rd party program to only native Windows 7?

My Windows 7 has an explorer replacement program that natively mountes ISOs, doesn't have a problem with backups, allows you to pause copying, can skip the single file that fails to copy. A simple setting means it never nags me to install updates.

Sounds like the only benefit that Windows 8 will bring is the joy of having to road test a different program I've never heard of to allow Windows to do the same thing I've been doing for the past 2 years.

You're really not providing a fair comparison.

Reverse Moore's

[gmuslera]

At last Microsoft figured out how to defeat that law. Instead of doubling the speed up the PC or the OS, now the goal is slowing down the user. A breakthrough in computer science.

Avoid it like the plague!

[sudden.zero]

I beta tested Windows 8 and it is not ready. It actually "killed my computer" by that I mean when I installed the beta release trial it worked fine for a couple of days, then I started having issues with video, for some reason no matter what my power settings were set to my monitor would go to sleep after 5 minutes. I went to the forums asked for help, and got several answers from Microsoft forum moderators. I tried them all and none of them resolved the issue. Then a couple of days later I was writing some code and my computer shut down (which seems to be normal with a windows system) so I powered it back on and is shut off immediately again. So, I cracked the case open to see if my video card or something had come unseated. When I grabbed my video card to check it, it was so hot that it burned me. I waited for it to cool, unseated it, fell back to my on-board video card, and powered her back up. I then realized that not only did it fry my video card but my 4 core processor was now only running on one core. Here are my system specs for those curious.

Black Edition AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4ghz Processor
Asus Motherboard model M4A785-M
4gb (2gb x 2gb)Crucial Ballistix DDR2 RAM
ATI Radon HD 3600 Series 512mb Dual DVI Out Video Card
Western digital 250gb IDE Hard Drive
Thermaltake 430w Power Suply

With that said I would highly recommend staying away from Windows 8 for a while to come!

Re:Real use of the OS

[Bedouin X]

Sounds like you haven't been paying attention to the obvious iOSification of OS X.

Re:Window 8

[techno-vampire]

I spent almost eight years in a call center once, and never understood why almost all of the junior techs maximized everything. I don't know how geeks work today, as I'm retired, but back when I was in the trenches, it was fairly rare to see somebody who didn't maximize everything. YMMV, and clearly does.

Re:Window 8

[dhavleak]

You don't have to use the new UI -- you can use your existing apps exactly as you used to, keep shortcuts on the desktop, pin to the task bar, snap windows to the left right, etc. exactly as you used to. You don't even have to upgrade to Windows 8 -- if 7 does the job for you keep using it. Some people are just looking for things to get pissed about.

Re:about what should be expected

[TemporalBeing]

Oh no. Are we going to start this crap again?

It wasn't funny after the first person did it for Windows XP (2000 SP), nor was it funny for Windows 7 (Vista SP). Chances are good that it's not funny now.

Well, it wasn't the case for 2k->Vista; however, Vista, Win7, and Win8 are following what they are doing in most of otheir other products lines - Release, one service, new release; possibly with a second service pack in there. They started that with MS Office 2007, and Visual Studios 2002. It works very well to incrementally improving the system overall; and even adding in some major new functions in general (e.g. VS2008 to VS2010 to VS2011 to VS2012).

And yes, it's not meant to be funny - it's fact.

Re:Window 8

[cavebison]

you will like all the positive changes of Windows 8 more than the negative ones.
Here is just one example. Windows 8 does not interrupt your presentation to remind you to reboot your computer to install an update. It gives you days worth of warning before it nags like that.

So does killing the update service. In XP, I had a Start menu shortcut to the Services window. Two keystrokes and I'm there, kill Automatic Updates, get back to work. Remember to reboot a couple of days later or whenever. Same deal in Win 7. Could have made a shortcut to a batch file to kill it instead, but meh.

Another example, if you are copying a bunch of files and one can't copy, you can just hit skip, and it will continue with everything else. You can also pause fie copying.

Yes, it's called TeraCopy. For XP or 7. Great little utility. Does Win 8 *queue* new file copy tasks as well, or does it still stupidly try to copy concurrently? TeraCopy fixes that too.

Plus, Windows 8 doesn't have that nasty explorer refreshing bug that Windows 7 has.

Neither does XP. :) But if you mean when renaming files in Win 7, just hit TAB instead of ENTER, and it moves you to the next file to rename, without refreshing. Obscure but neat trick.

Native ISO mounting? Windows 8 has that.

Meh. If you're keen enough to use ISOs, you're keen enough to download a free utility for them. When Windows started handling Zip files like folders, did we all stop using utilities like WinRar? Windows can burn CDs too, but do we stop using Nero or whatever? Specialised programs will always do more and do it better.

If you only mess around with Metro for a couple hours, how do you expect to notice all the changes under the hood?

The point is I don't have to. Nothing you've mentioned is anything I can't do in Windows XP or 7. Why upgrade. It doesn't sound like you've discovered the ability to do anything *new* in Win 8 that you couldn't do before. All I see is the novelty factor. And a Start Menu that gets all up in my face - no thanks.

For the record, yes I've played with in in a VM for a few days. Then I got back to being productive and haven't looked at it since. That's how compelling it is. Nothing about it is going to improve my day. Games won't be better, work won't be quicker. So... why?

Re:Window 8

[CAIMLAS]

Vistart is a piece of shit that installs the babylon toolbar and a bunch of other things (some of which don't "remove" properly).

Sorry, W8 is toyware.

Re:Real use of the OS

[exomondo]

And one more thing, if Apple is driving this headlong rush towards smartphone/tablet interfaces being out on desktop (and I'm looking at you too, Ubuntu) then why isn't OSX that way?

It is, these big touch-friendly UIs.