Windows 8

MannishBoy wrote:
tuffalobuffalo wrote:

I agree and could see the tiles being absolutely wonderful spread across three monitors.

Also agree. I'm very curious as to how this will work on multiple monitors, but I can see it being a very good thing the more thought I put into it.

I could have my main application on my primary screen, then similar to how I do things now, I could have multiple tiles for media, Tweetdeck, email, etc on the secondary monitor(s). Right now the second monitor is a jumble of windows, but an organized tile layout could be better. Especially for things that I don't have in the front and have to pop to the front when I might just need a glance at the most relevant info from the top and not the whole window.

As to the jumble of Windows, I do the same thing. In essence, I struggle to achieve a "faux" tiled desktop across 3 monitors. I generally have eight or 10 things open at any one time and snap 3 of them to the 3 monitors. A tiled UI could make things so much cleaner.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:
MannishBoy wrote:
tuffalobuffalo wrote:

I agree and could see the tiles being absolutely wonderful spread across three monitors.

Also agree. I'm very curious as to how this will work on multiple monitors, but I can see it being a very good thing the more thought I put into it.

I could have my main application on my primary screen, then similar to how I do things now, I could have multiple tiles for media, Tweetdeck, email, etc on the secondary monitor(s). Right now the second monitor is a jumble of windows, but an organized tile layout could be better. Especially for things that I don't have in the front and have to pop to the front when I might just need a glance at the most relevant info from the top and not the whole window.

As to the jumble of Windows, I do the same thing. In essence, I struggle to achieve a "faux" tiled desktop across 3 monitors. I generally have eight or 10 things open at any one time and snap 3 of them to the 3 monitors. A tiled UI could make things so much cleaner.

Pics!

BNice wrote:
tuffalobuffalo wrote:
MannishBoy wrote:
tuffalobuffalo wrote:

I agree and could see the tiles being absolutely wonderful spread across three monitors.

Also agree. I'm very curious as to how this will work on multiple monitors, but I can see it being a very good thing the more thought I put into it.

I could have my main application on my primary screen, then similar to how I do things now, I could have multiple tiles for media, Tweetdeck, email, etc on the secondary monitor(s). Right now the second monitor is a jumble of windows, but an organized tile layout could be better. Especially for things that I don't have in the front and have to pop to the front when I might just need a glance at the most relevant info from the top and not the whole window.

As to the jumble of Windows, I do the same thing. In essence, I struggle to achieve a "faux" tiled desktop across 3 monitors. I generally have eight or 10 things open at any one time and snap 3 of them to the 3 monitors. A tiled UI could make things so much cleaner.

Pics!

What I mean is that I usually have 3 big tiles by snapping things to monitors. I would much rather have this new UI tile approach where you can view 10 pieces of information all at once rather than just the 3 that I usually deal with.

Everything old is new again. Memories of Andrew WM drift into my forebrain...

(Welcome to the early 80s, MS.)

I wonder how similar Opera 11.5's dynamic speed dial will be to this

It seems like something that would be hybrid. I use Metro UI when I'm out of the office and when I get back I drop it into a dock which has usb/video ports that I can connect to a monitor, keyboard and mouse and use it like a traditional desktop, if it's got enough grunt then that might be an idea.. I'm pretty sure I'd want to kill myself if I had to use a touch interface to write any kind of large word document or excel spreadsheet..

Mysteri0 wrote:

I'm pretty sure I'd want to kill myself if I had to use a touch interface to write any kind of large word document or excel spreadsheet..

I don't think that's the point at all. I don't think MS is suggesting touch screens replace keyboards and mouse for things like that. Metro UI layer on desktop or not.

Switcher is a couple years old, but some may find it useful. It's an Exposé clone for Windows.

Looks like I and the business world will be continuing the skip every other Windows OS routine. I don't think I've ever been so repulsed by a Windows OSt before, it was like HP's Touchsmart overlay but worse and less intuitive.

If you watch the video you can clearly see that the old interface is still there for PC and laptop users. The new interface is an overlay for tablets and touchscreens.

breander wrote:

If you watch the video you can clearly see that the old interface is still there for PC and laptop users. The new interface is an overlay for tablets and touchscreens.

You should be able to use the new interface with a keyboard/mouse too.

To me this makes a lot of sense. I like where they're going with this. When I was a Windows Mobile user (starting with Windows CE in 1997 going through my HTC Touch Pro in 2007) I really really loved the "Agenda" view and the Agenda enhancements you could purchase. Basically I really loved having the ability to see my upcoming appointments, frequent contacts, news, etc. all at a glance. Having this on a computer would be boss.

breander wrote:

If you watch the video you can clearly see that the old interface is still there for PC and laptop users. The new interface is an overlay for tablets and touchscreens.

Watching the video again, It does kinda look like it's basically a glorified version of a widget overlay like OS X's Dashboard.

The transition from the overlay back to "real" Windows is... abrupt.

Oh, really? They haven't committed to a real UI paradigm shift? Just another layer on top of Aero on top of Windows 2000?

It's a slick show case and it looks great.
So now we know what Microsoft promises us.
Lets wait and see what they deliver.....

DSGamer wrote:

Oh, really? They haven't committed to a real UI paradigm shift? Just another layer on top of Aero on top of Windows 2000?

I read someone comparing it to the Windows Media Center interface, or Front Row on the Mac, in that it sort of pops up and overlays over the normal UI, which is still back there waiting for you.

Watching the demonstrator show clicking the tile to launch a "real" Windows program, and how *poof*, away the overlay goes and back comes Windows 7-style UI, the comparison does seem apt. Especially as how when he demonstrated how "all your files are there", he was scrolling through Windows Explorer, not anything in the "new" interface.

Maybe Windows Media Center isn't the closest MS product comparison, because I know Microsoft tried this auxiliary launcher + widgets interface thing before. Now what was it called...

Of course, this is all just judging from the video. It's possible that they have aims to integrate the new interface deeper into the OS experience later.

*Legion* wrote:
DSGamer wrote:

Oh, really? They haven't committed to a real UI paradigm shift? Just another layer on top of Aero on top of Windows 2000?

I read someone comparing it to the Windows Media Center interface, or Front Row on the Mac, in that it sort of pops up and overlays over the normal UI, which is still back there waiting for you.

Watching the demonstrator show clicking the tile to launch a "real" Windows program, and how *poof*, away the overlay goes and back comes Windows 7-style UI, the comparison does seem apt. Especially as how when he demonstrated how "all your files are there", he was scrolling through Windows Explorer, not anything in the "new" interface.

Maybe Windows Media Center isn't the closest MS product comparison, because this sounds really familiar...

Of course, this is all just judging from the video. It's possible that they have aims to integrate the new interface deeper into the OS experience later.

That's the impression I got. I definitely think Windows 8 will be a stepping stone UI-wise. I'm all for that, because we'll be able to choose which UI we prefer. Everyone wins!

I think you have it right, Legion. For enterprise if nothing else, they'll want to have the legacy functionality there at least for awhile.

They did show browsing files both through Windows Explorer and the new interface, which would seem necessary on a touch only installation. So I suspect if you want to, you could stay nearly out of "Windows" on a tablet if used the way most people use tablets: as a consumption device with apps designed for that.

*Legion* wrote:
DSGamer wrote:

Oh, really? They haven't committed to a real UI paradigm shift? Just another layer on top of Aero on top of Windows 2000?

I read someone comparing it to the Windows Media Center interface, or Front Row on the Mac, in that it sort of pops up and overlays over the normal UI, which is still back there waiting for you.

Watching the demonstrator show clicking the tile to launch a "real" Windows program, and how *poof*, away the overlay goes and back comes Windows 7-style UI, the comparison does seem apt. Especially as how when he demonstrated how "all your files are there", he was scrolling through Windows Explorer, not anything in the "new" interface.

Maybe Windows Media Center isn't the closest MS product comparison, because I know Microsoft tried this auxiliary launcher + widgets interface thing before. Now what was it called...

Of course, this is all just judging from the video. It's possible that they have aims to integrate the new interface deeper into the OS experience later.

I think its a bit harsh to compare this to BOB from one video... its also not nearly as specific in function to Media Center. Theres definitely enough integration from what is shown so far that for a good chunk of daily use you would "live" in the new UI.

Yeah...nice demo...will believe when I see it and once I've used it for half a year...

Looks like they're doing the same trick Ubuntu does -- get the UI up as instantly as possible, and then continue to start services in the background. It's actually much faster to shut down a Ubuntu VM and restart it than to hibernate it with VMWare.

I also wonder if the "metro" shell is lighter to load into than a Win 7 shell, and that Win 7 shell is still loading up.

But it does look nice, however it works.

The key difference between Windows 8 and Windows 7 is that the kernel session is now placed into hibernate mode instead of being closed down.

This significantly improves boot times because reading the system state and memory contents from the hiberfile and reinitialising drivers is much faster this way, Aul explained.

Aul pointed out that Microsoft has designed Windows 8 so it should not have to be booted that often, but the fast loading times will be very welcome for those who switch off their machines at the end of each day.

Resuming from hibernation has also been improved in Windows 8 with a multi-phase resume capability that uses all of the cores in a multi-core system in parallel, splitting the work of reading from the hiberfile and decompressing the contents.

"The fast start-up mode will yield benefits on almost all systems, whether they have a spinning hard drive or a solid state drive [SSD], but for newer systems with fast SSDs it is downright amazing," Aul added.

http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/21080...

Something I've been wondering is when I'm researching my next motherboard purchase, where to go looking to find out what ones have the fastest POST hand-off to the OS. For desktops it really does seem down the list of priorities.

//tagging

Huh, hadn't thought about that before, Scratched, but that's an interesting point. I don't think it's terribly important for desktops as a general rule, since you don't typically power them on more than once a day, but that's suddenly going to be an issue with laptops. If you can de-hibernate that fast, it's going to become pretty appealing, and a fast POST will be important.

Just thought of this.... what if you can specify what to boot even. So that in the end you can have an optimized gaming boot up?
Leave out the rest of the crap, just load the bare necessities that are needed for my game to run.

Something I never understood was how Apple's OS managed to wake up instantly while Windows always took seconds, nearly a minute and even more so on old computers.

What exactly happens under the hood that Microsoft has never been able to replicate?

Hobbes2099 wrote:

Something I never understood was how Apple's OS managed to wake up instantly while Windows always took seconds, nearly a minute and even more so on old computers.

What exactly happens under the hood that Microsoft has never been able to replicate?

Unix vs. non-Unix?