Windows 8

So I guess Jayhawker wouldn't mind, then, if Microsoft came and put up billboards on his lawn.

I think it's just a thing some people have gotten used to now, the other big example would be ads on a subscription TV service you pay for compared to something like the BBC (license fee, no ads).

Can we not be dismissive of one another, please?

Some of us find the inclusion of ads in a product we paid for reprehensible.

Some of us don't care.

Let's just take those as a given a move on, yes?

So that argument aside, I've been using win8 for 4 or 5 days now. Is there anything about it you guys recommend that I check out? I wanted some hands on time so that I knew what I was doing in the event I have to deal with a win8 machine for work but honestly, I'm not finding much about it that tells me it's a long-term OS solution for me.

It seems to have the same features as 7 just in different places or and seems to take a bit longer to navigate, probably because I'm still not used to it.

It seems fine, I just don't know why I would upgrade other than I needed to try it. I mean, it's pretty. And I'm getting used to the start screen, I think that's probably something I can deal with in time. I have a pretty hard time navigating to things like the control panel or administrative tools. Is there a power user UI for this or something?

Is there a fast way to turn off my computer? Going to the lower right and then settings and then power is a bit more effort than it really should be.

Can I change the settings in Solitaire? I didn't spend a lot of time looking but I like of hate the timer. I'm not kidding =)

oilypenguin wrote:

Can we not be dismissive of one another, please?

Good grief, I hope so.

oilypenguin wrote:

It seems fine, I just don't know why I would upgrade other than I needed to try it. I mean, it's pretty. And I'm getting used to the start screen, I think that's probably something I can deal with in time. I have a pretty hard time navigating to things like the control panel or administrative tools. Is there a power user UI for this or something?

Is there a fast way to turn off my computer? Going to the lower right and then settings and then power is a bit more effort than it really should be.

For the first, start typing "Control Panel" from the start screen. At this moment, I suspect the Desktop is the power user UI, if only because it covers scenarios that haven't been thought through and presented in the new UI (and which may never be). For the second, Windows+C at least brings up the charms bar in a non-peek-a-boo fashion.

The reason I'm thinking of going to Win 8 on my main machine is Storage Spaces. I love the pool of drives for storing media, because it's easy to just slap another drive of any size into the pool at any time. Also, it's great to be able to set the critical stuff to mirror on multiple drives. I'm thinking my WHS v1 box is getting a bit long in the teeth, and I might just move the storage off to my main PC. Backups will likely still be done via WHS, but with a lot less drives, and maybe an upgrade to the newer version that doesn't have the storage pools.

Also, supposedly Win 8 is better at multiple desktops, and I run two monitors all the time.

Malor wrote:

Dude, when f*cking Solitaire has ads, that's uncalled for.

Like oily said either people really really care or some people really really don't. I have a hard time not laughing at someone saying "it will be the only safe harbor soon" when the discussion is talking about ads in solitaire. Seems a tad bit dramatic and hyperbole.

Gumbie wrote:
Malor wrote:

Dude, when f*cking Solitaire has ads, that's uncalled for.

Like oily said either people really really care or some people really really don't. I have a hard time not laughing at someone saying "it will be the only safe harbor soon" when the discussion is talking about ads in solitaire. Seems a tad bit dramatic and hyperbole.

I use Windows 8 and don't really care. I am not trying to be overdramtic, just saying that if you do not want ads or other revenue streams in your OS then you will need to go FOSS.

oilypenguin wrote:

I've been using win8 for 4 or 5 days now. Is there anything about it you guys recommend that I check out? I wanted some hands on time so that I knew what I was doing in the event I have to deal with a win8 machine for work but honestly, I'm not finding much about it that tells me it's a long-term OS solution for me.

Windows 8 has a ton of desktop improvements that I love (specifically the downloader and improveed task manager) as to the Metro dashboard the only real thing I have found that I dig is the Sports tile set to my team. It is a neat way to keep track.

task manager is pretty sweet. I forgot to mention that =)

I noticed the improvements to the task manager too. Seems like they added some of the stuff that used to be split off in resource monitor into it.

oilypenguin wrote:

I have a pretty hard time navigating to things like the control panel or administrative tools. Is there a power user UI for this or something?

Is there a fast way to turn off my computer? Going to the lower right and then settings and then power is a bit more effort than it really should be.

Check out the Win+x menu. The combination of that and Start8 have made me happy with Win8

LiquidMantis wrote:

Check out the Win+x menu. The combination of that and Start8 have made me happy with Win8

I don't even bother with Start8.

There was a bit of a learning curve getting used to using Win+X, but once I got accustomed to that one thing I really have no issues with Win8. Just works.

oh!

Yes. That's all the stuff I want. How did I manage not to find that on my own?

Thanks, guys. Now I can honestly assess this thing.

Has anyone been having any trouble with metro apps not updating properly after windows sleeps? I've noticed that all the metro apps I try to use don't seem to update correctly after sleep, i.e. IRC clients don't reconnect and IM clients fail to update who's online and wind up showing everyone who has been online before sleeping (even though they aren't actually online.)

Just FYI, i'm bootcamping this off a Macbook Air, so it may just be some weirdness from that.

Interested to see what methods they came to that conclusion with. The site's giving a Bad Gateway error right now but I'm anxious to read that.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:

Interested to see what methods they came to that conclusion with. The site's giving a Bad Gateway error right now but I'm anxious to read that.

I am quite aware that statistics are the worst lies. Getting a bad gateway as well now. It was posted on reddit. Maybe their server came down.
They did mention how they measured it. Trying hard to remember how. Hopefully the site comes back up soon.

To make it fair, I think they would have to add Windows XP onto that graph. Both Vista and 8 came after OSes that were/are extremely popular.

I just got that link from Reddit and was coming over here to post it; it seems to be working now.

Note that they're cheating a little with this number, because they're only including three weeks of December. The last week will definitely raise the figure. But I think it's unlikely that it would reach Vista's level. It slightly outsold Vista at first, but the next month is sharply lower, which I read as people being Not Impressed.

Maybe cheating slightly there. But the most Christmas shopping would have been done around the 22nd. Although there are lots
of last minutes sales and then there is boxing day of course.
Even if that would be added and end up in a more positive way, it is still pretty bad I think.
And I am not surprised. Windows 7 is actually that good, that it is directly competing against Win8.

And remember, Vista was considered a disaster, and it's looking like 8 is much, much worse. If those trendlines continue, it's barely going to be selling at all.

Taking it at face value, how much of that is down to people not specifically upgrading an existing machine, not buying an OEM PC with it preinstalled (either in preference to a preinstalled Win7 or to another not-windows-PC device), or the economy and just not making a purchase that involves Win8? It seems to me there's many factors you can look at beyond the scope of "is Win8 good?" that make a like-for-like comparison hard.

It'll be interesting to see the implications of the stats (again, taking them at face value) in developer land, will metro development dry up after the initial land grab and 'interesting new thing' period dry up, and developers need a good enough ecosystem to be able to put food on the table and make it worthwhile investing time/money in, and will they adopt anything MS keeps exclusive to Win8, such as the full-fat version of DX11.1.

When it's doing even worse than Vista, I don't think there's any way you can come up with a positive spin. Unless things change in a big way, that's an OS that's (rightfully, in my view) dead on arrival.

It could have been so much different, if they hadn't gone for lockdown and forcing a tablet UI on desktop users.

Scratched wrote:

Taking it at face value, how much of that is down to people not specifically upgrading an existing machine, not buying an OEM PC with it preinstalled (either in preference to a preinstalled Win7 or to another not-windows-PC device), or the economy and just not making a purchase that involves Win8?

Indeed. Analyses of that article mention that corporate refreshes happen in 3 year cycles, but my own employer's moved to 4, and not even fully adopted Windows 7 at this point.

Malor wrote:

When it's doing even worse than Vista, I don't think there's any way you can come up with a positive spin. Unless things change in a big way, that's an OS that's (rightfully, in my view) dead on arrival.

It could have been so much different, if they hadn't gone for lockdown and forcing a tablet UI on desktop users.

For PC usage in general, I wonder how much windows is now in a 'stable' place where it doesn't need fixing up, just as xp was for a while and win7 seems to be now, that there's not much broken. Even ignoring metro completely, I find it a big ask not for the £15 to upgrade (for the next 30 days until normal pricing resumes) but to be bothered with switching for under the hood tweaks, shaving a few seconds off boot/shutdown doesn't really do it for me as an 'essential' thing I need in my life.

Back to ragging on metro, for me personally and for most people I know, I can't see the value it adds. It's a nice little thing I suppose if you're into that usage model, but right now it's among a big long list of nice little interesting things that I don't use.

Did anyone just do an upgrade from a well-used Win7 installation? I don't want to have to re-install everything but I would like to throw up the new OS. I have a lot installed and would loathe having to re-install my apps.

I did just to try it on a 4 or 5 month old 7 install. Process was totally smooth.

I haven't done it yet (though I'll be trying it) but the Vista to Windows 7 upgrade process was the best Windows upgrade I've ever seen. Almost everything worked, what didn't was clearly labelled as such and it felt like a new OS when it was done. Microsoft has figured out the upgrade process finally, though all of these OSes using the same kernel kind of helps too.

Well I may just bite the bullet and do it.
My biggest issue is re-installing all my steam games. I can reconnect to my existing installations though, can't i?

groan wrote:

Well I may just bite the bullet and do it.
My biggest issue is re-installing all my steam games. I can reconnect to my existing installations though, can't i?

You can copy your games right into the steam folder again.