Windows 8 First Impressions

So far, I think its dog shit. The interface sucks and more so without a touch screen. Oh, and nice touch making Windows Media Center a premium feature. Classy MS. But I'm sure all 50 or so Windows 8 Phone users will like the new ecosystem. I won't bother upgrading unless I absolutely have to and I'm even getting W8 Pro with Pro Pack free.

@Gonmog said:

Upgraded last night. If you have the cash, there is no reason not to upgrade it seems. It's Windows 7 with a new skin (that you can change) and it runs faster.

Yeah, I've been using it for a month or more now and this fits the description. It's basically Windows 7 but faster. It's fine.

@JoeyRavn: I will do that thankyou.

Other issue are still present. but not for my main desktop workstation. possibly for my notebook, or i should get a tablet PC. Also has made people very excited about buying computers again.

It's ok. Def worth the 40 dollars, nothing extremely better than 7 though.

@QuistisTrepe said:

So far, I think its dog shit. The interface sucks and more so without a touch screen. Oh, and nice touch making Windows Media Center a premium feature. Classy MS. But I'm sure all 50 or so Windows 8 Phone users will like the new ecosystem. I won't bother upgrading unless I absolutely have to and I'm even getting W8 Pro with Pro Pack free.

Have you used it? It's a bit unclear if your feelings are from observation or from personal experience with the OS.

@Sammo21 said:

The thing boots quick, but my current gaming rig boots in under 12 seconds...so...yeah.

How old of parts are we talking on this gaming rig? I just built one, though the parts are a bit "old" by usual tech standards (3.0Ghz i7 dual-core, 8GB DDR3 RAM, 1TB WDC HDD SATA, and Nvidia 550), and my rig takes about 8 seconds total to boot up and be ready to use.

I never recommend taking a functional computer that is working today and upgrading unless you are missing a desired feature. Especially with Windows products, it is easy to buy the wrong version where you won't know the problem till you attempt it.

ps. I could never figure out why people "liked" the Start button. It violated so many HMI rules since it is not a button, not a menu, not an explorer but all of them as well as being such an important piece of functionality at the left-bottom of the screen.

@jakob187:

Windows 7 Pro 64bit

Intel Core i7-2600 3.4 GHz

12 GB DDR3

1 GB AMD Radeon 6700 (Hopefully replacing soon with an NVidia)

1 TB SATA HDD, hopefully adding at least a 250GB SSD soon as well.

it probably takes less than 12 seconds to boot, I've never really put a stopwatch to it but just kind of guessed it. After I finish with this proposal paper I'll time it for curiosities sake.

I'm going to upgrade when I get paid. I just hope that I don't have the same problem I had with the consumer preview, where switching to my TV and then trying to go back to my laptop screen wouldn't work and I would be stuck with a black screen.

@mlarrabee said:

@QuistisTrepe said:

So far, I think its dog shit. The interface sucks and more so without a touch screen. Oh, and nice touch making Windows Media Center a premium feature. Classy MS. But I'm sure all 50 or so Windows 8 Phone users will like the new ecosystem. I won't bother upgrading unless I absolutely have to and I'm even getting W8 Pro with Pro Pack free.

Have you used it? It's a bit unclear if your feelings are from observation or from personal experience with the OS.

I use it at work. It's like Microsoft went out of their way to make the least intuitive UI imaginable. I don't get why MS still insists on multiple versions of Windows, what they consider to be a premium feature ought to be included in one single version. Another problem is the lack of a unified search function, big mistake. If you're going to release an ambitious new interface, having a separate search for apps, files, settings, etc. doesn't make any sense and that's before you get the hang of what's an "app" and what constitutes a "charm" in MS's view.

The lack of DVD playback by default had me just floored. Not that it's a make or break feature, but come the fuck on, it's 2012, not 1995. What kills me, is that there's no overall performance increase over W7. And I get that the traditional desktop is a "legacy app", but the metro UI and legacy desktop almost have the feel of two entirely separate machines with sparse continuity. It's just oh so much fun to go over it all with middle aged and elderly clients coming off of XP, whoooo boy.

I'd feel like upgrading my machine to W8 would wind up wrecking it altogether and I honestly don't care enough to use it extensively as a VM.

I really like it, for the most part it is just Windows 7 but faster and the Metro start screen but I've found myself using the metro part more than I would have expected. Having Xbox Music, which is super slick and really nice to use, open with a twitter feed open next to it actually makes use of my 2nd monitor where it would just normally sit there with nothing on it.

I've got a Surface arriving sometime this week so I'm interested what integration between to two will be like.

The best part about Windows 8 so far is win + x . It brings up a little context menu with options like, run, cmd, cmd with admin, computer management, uninstall programs, device manager, ect.

Once I get past the goddamn BIOS my PC boots in roughly 2 seconds.

I don't really like it because of metro. The start menu is a quick and simple means of opening things and accessing functions without disrupting what you're doing. Metro convolutes things by blowing up that simple, quick list into a full screen, spread out window shop thing that you have to scroll through and bounce back and forth between. There's no reason for it on a desktop pc. I don't even really think metro is an especially good touch interface, but then I don't think that android or iOS are really that good either; the only ones I've encountered that seem really effective are the Blackberry Playbook & WebOS.

Metro feels arbitrarily spread out and all the visual elements are so simplified that they don't stand apart. Icons with varying shapes and color stand out in the crowd and it's easy to pick one instantly. In metro, everything is the same shape, the same 1 tone, entirely flat color scheme, and a lot of the tiles are animated for no reason so it turns into a blended together mess. I have the same issue on the Xbox dashboard; its this mess of nearly identical tiles with lots of arbitrary animation and advertisements. Every time I look at it I have to stop and think about where I'm going; I've never had that problem on regular Windows, Android, iOS, MacOS, the PS3 interface, the old blades dashboard, and so on. And think about how slow the Xbox dashboard is; now think about Windows 8 slowing down over time with all those animated tiles and drawn out transition animations.

Ultimately this is falling on deaf ears though. Most people think Windows 8 is "beautiful" and "elegant," and they absolutely love it. I haven't actually heard anyone explain why they feel that way without quoting press hype or microsoft's marketing though. Everyone inevitably says the words "content," "cloud," "innovations," "mobile," "social," and "beautiful" over and over again in a nonsensical, box-quote sounding steam-of-consciousness type deal. So I don't really know. I guess you should buy windows 8 if you think that "innovative mobile social touch is changing the way we interact with media content cloud content media content content." If you just want to use a computer to work and play games, I don't especially think a windowshop of neon squares is in any way helpful for achieving those goals.

Absolutely hated and despised every aspect of it for the first few hours and every time I tried to do something I discovered some new thing to hate about it. After doing some looking online I managed to find some work arounds for the little annoying things and so far I have managed to get it back to being Windows 7 as much as possible.

As with most people the thing I hated the most is that stupid metro screen that replaces the start. I just gutted that thing and replaced everything on it with only the stuff that would normally be the start menu. So now it's just a giant gaudy full screen start menu.

Once I got that out of the way, and was able to get proper versions of the apps I always use to install on the PC and not in that stupid metro interface, it was back to being Windows 7. So far I haven't noticed any problems with games not working correctly, but I started playing games on my PS3 about the same time so I have yet to dig deep into my games on the PC to see how they all handle. My biggest annoyance right now is that thing that pops out on the right side of the screen if you put your mouse too close to the side. It keeps interfering with whatever I was moving my mouse over there to check on.

@Jams said:

The best part about Windows 8 so far is win + x . It brings up a little context menu with options like, run, cmd, cmd with admin, computer management, uninstall programs, device manager, ect.

Woah, that's awesome. Thanks for the tip!

Now I just wished that the passwords/usernames I use in Chrome while in metro carried over into the desktop... Why do I have to reenter that stuff? Seems like an oversight.

@OAJ said:

Most people think Windows 8 is "beautiful" and "elegant," and they absolutely love it. I haven't actually heard anyone explain why they feel that way without quoting press hype or microsoft's marketing though. Everyone inevitably says the words "content," "cloud," "innovations," "mobile," "social," and "beautiful" over and over again in a nonsensical, box-quote sounding steam-of-consciousness type deal.

Have you heard someone say something along the lines of "Christ, those fucking boot times are nuts!"?

For the record, I'm getting used to the Metro and start menu thing. I don't mind it. Someone, somewhere, will probably figure out how to jerry-rig the start menu back in there, but I don't dislike Metro enough to bother. I don't like it enough to sing its praises, and I definitely miss being able to search the computer with only one click and only one small box in the bottom left corner instead of covering the whole screen, but all in all it's not something that I'm too concerned about. I neither love it nor hate it, it's just there and I need to use it and it doesn't seem particularly unwieldy or clunky.

@Vitor said:

@Jams said:

The best part about Windows 8 so far is win + x . It brings up a little context menu with options like, run, cmd, cmd with admin, computer management, uninstall programs, device manager, ect.

Woah, that's awesome. Thanks for the tip!

Now I just wished that the passwords/usernames I use in Chrome while in metro carried over into the desktop... Why do I have to reenter that stuff? Seems like an oversight.

Well, if you have a google account you can sync all that stuff automatically.

i wanna get it but im not sure if my programs will work for it.

@TakkunZX: When you try to install it (before having to actually pay) it'll run a check to see what is and isn't compatible.

Microsoft Security Essentials was the only incompatible program I had, and that's only because it's built into Windows 8.