Windows 8 Dev build

So Last night windows 8 went up for download:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/br229516

I'm backing up then I'm going to give it a spin!

Are you going to be using that as your main os or are you gonna be slapping it in to virtual box and then giving it a spin?

I am torn between whether I want to like the Metro UI for keyboard + mouse or not. I do like tiles and what not. Love my Zune HD interface. Love the WP7 interface but as a keyboard mouse user I am not sure if it totally floats my boat.
 
im going to run it in a vbox i want see how it is before giving it a full install, still not sure about having my desktop as a app.....
 
So the beta knows the win8 release date ?
microsoft most likely already has decided opon approximate released date / goal
that should be achieved if there are no big delays
and the beta time limit should be set to round that released date but i may be set earlier than that if microsoft is planing a second beta like they did with win7
 
I've never run a virtual machine on my desktop before buthaving just read up on that virtual box it sounds pretty straight forward so I'll give it a go. Windows 8 definately has me interested, more so than previous Windows releases even though I am for the first time ever open to the concept of a none MS operating system for my main PC (given the lack of draw for the gaming capabilites these days).
 
Yeah I'm really not liking Windows 8 so far. I'm typing this on it now through Vbox. The final product will probably be a lot more polished but my initial impression is that they've just scaled up a Windows 7 phone to be desktop sized without much consideration for the mouse/keyboard control scheme. Functionality and efficiency seems to have suffered greatly in favour of a dumbed down phone type interface. And the desktop option is horrible compared to Win7 and virtually useless since the start menu only goes to the tiles screen anyway.

I'll give it more of a chance but so far this seems well suited to a tablet or phone but horribly suited to a desktop.
 
yeah i have also being playing with this a little in a vbox and im not so sure about metro just now i think it will be good for my mum or htpc, but not for classic desktop work. I think i need to give it a full install before i make a judgment on it as i haven't really tried to do anything with it yet, just messed with a clean install.

I think it would be better if metro (and the social networking stuff) was at logon level, with a user having a 7 style home desktop & taskbar with a new start menu (which would have windows "charms" rather than icons).
 
I am pretty much with you on this one pbjliverpool. Just watching the demos of the OS it looks like it will be epic as a tablet. But as a full blown desktop OS I am not sure it will lend itself that well with the whole keyboard mouse deal. I have not played with the dev build yet. I think I am going to wait for the betas before I slap it in to a virtual box and give it a shot. I did the same thing with Windows 7 and it was quite a cool experience. I especially liked the fact that when you installed the RC it was still valid like 6 months even after the OS had gone RTM.
 
Just read that Metro won't support Flash, just HTML5, from the IE lead. Will be interesting - personally I just starting having Flash issues again today after a new update, so I personally welcome it. Also interesting to see they echo Apple's sentiment there - Flash uses up a lot of power versus HTML5, and makes the system less stable. Perhaps now websites will make a more serious effort to get rid of it, but we'll see. Adobe just responded with stating that Flash will stay in the form of Adobe Air Apps.
 
I installed the Windows Developer Preview and here's some random thoughts:

-The desktop is beautiful. Absolutely beatiful. And I like the idea of live tiles.
-There's no email app.
-The UI is somewhat buggy. Sometimes the icons just disappear and the only thing I can see is the background.
-Didn't have any problems installing it to my computer. Vista / Win7 drivers seem to work OK.
-Shutting down the OS is hard. I'm not sure what is the best way to do it but I always end up randomly clicking everywhere until I find the shutdown-button.
-The IE10 without any borders is really nice looking. Though sites which use popups won't work correctly with the Metro IE. The standard version of IE10 looks just like the IE9.
-Mouse usage isn't very optimized. I presume that scrolling the windows should happen if I hold down the mouse button and then move the mouse around but in this version this doesn't happen. If you want to scroll, you must use the scroll bars.

I haven't had time to do much with the Visual Studio 2011, but from the time I've spent with it (30mins), it seems strangely slow compared to the 2010 edition. The XAML-view in particular is really slow.

I'm thinking of buying a Windows 7 tablet and installing the Win8 in it.
 
I really wanted to play with the Samsung slate that they gave away to those developers at the conference with windows 8 running in it. Reading the specs now that sounded like a proper tablet. I am really thinking that Microsoft's decision of making windows 8 run on ARM as well as x86 is a great idea. I just never understood why in a tablet form factor we have to give up that much horsepower. I don't care personally that the Samsung window 8 tablet has active cooling to me performance ha slabs been important and functionality. To me they go hand in hand. Android and ISO are great OWes oh yeah can't forget webOS but they are so clunky and limited in functionality. I don't want to only consume content I ant to be able to create content.no want to nave proper VPN functionality in a tablet and do something via a bash shell for example. Why is that's hard to do on thee oses? Windows 8 seems to be huge step in the right direction and I want to see other oses follow suit.
 
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