Windows 8 Dev build

[Lightman]

I've upgraded both my PC's to 8.1 and while HTPC went just fine I had a bit of headscratching to do on my main PC!

Simply it defaulted VGA output to switched off (not even on stand-by!!) HDMI TV so after reboot I was greeted with Windows 8 loading screen for few seconds and then BLANK black screen . I thankfully noticed HDD active light flashing so I knew it was doing something, but still waited for good 20 minutes before deciding to hard-reboot my PC. Second time it did exactly the same, so I ran Windows repair (refresh) which again fixed nothing. Only after that I started looking for some unusual possible causes of this issue and decided to try checking output on 2nd display. Plugged my TV to power socket, powered it on and bingo! I had picture!

How wired is that? I would understand if Windows decided to display picture on both screens in clone or extended mode, but on disconnected HDMI TV while leaving primary screen blank and not even off?? Crazy!

 

[liolio]

I've just found out that the Mails app is not working properly with my Gmail account, bothering.
I was responding to job ad, and luckily I double checked and noticed an error message.
I was happy with the new facebook (though a bit sucky) and this Mail apps I no longer had to keep the browser open, or keeping tabs in the browser for Gmail/FB, I could stick to IE in metro mode and its full-screen glory to do not productive stuffs on my PC, only resorting to Desktop mode and firefox for more serious tasks.

I also noticed instability since I upgrade so far I'm not sure about what is the matter but IE freezes...
I try hard to like windows 8 but... I've to say I'm failing.
Another thing I installed new AMD catalyst driver and I can no longer access the setting for "switchable graphics", not sure who is responsible here though I never had that issue before.

Overall I would not tell my dad or wife to buy a Windows 8 system, its duality makes things to complicated, and the rampant fight between MSFT and Google is not helping either. Actually both having seen my PC I don't need to they would not...
After a couples of months using WIndows 8, I feel like to get the most out of it I would need to create a Hotmail account, import my Gmail into it, etc.
May be I will as the outlook app on Android works though as a costumer I'm quite bothered by that matter of fact.

 

[Arwin]

I haven't tested that yet, I've been using Outlook 2013 and pretty happy with that.

This looks a tad ugly though:
Apparently 8.1 has some 'optimisations' that affect mouse lag for games that don't use the RAW mouse data
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-10-21-windows-8-1-causing-mouse-lag-that-badly-affects-games

 

[Grall]

Bad language within. Don't click unless you can tolerate (or maybe want a good laugh at my expense as I vent my frustrations, it's up to you! )

Spoiler

Fuck microsoft. Seriously! Burn their sites to the ground and piss on the ashes.

Why?

Here's why: windows 8.1 not available through windows update tool. Only that god-fucked stupid idiot metro-shit-fuck ugly useless microsoft store app. So now you can't monitor progress or nothing while you're actually USING the computer. Bringing up the task switcher shows an image of the app store app - but it's not live updated, it just shows the last frame that was displayed before switching out of the app. Bullshit!

And after it has finished with whatever it wants to do, it forces a reboot on you after 15 minutes WHAT THE SHIT! Seriously, what IS that?! HOW DARE THEY!!!

I fucking restart my PC WHENEVER I BLOODY WELL FEEL LIKE IT THANKYOUVERYMUCH.

So fuck that. I aborted that sonofabitch right quick that's for sure.

Not going to try again until I figure out how to start the install without it unilaterally forcing a reboot.

 

[liolio]

Honestly I do ont get the "pretty nice" reaction to windows 8.1, imo after a couple of days using it, my feel is that it is the same thing, +a couple of better apps.

Another funny thing, on the start screen when you right click you have access to "customize", neat ain't it? Too bad it customize nothing... you can only name your groups... that is ridiculous, to do anything sensible wrt the look of the start menu and windows you need to go on the desktop and right click and then choose personalize.

I believe that MSFT has no idea about what they are doing, I had an interview for a job position yesterday, we discussed windows 8 and the professional take was it is mess.
I may find my self working for a ISP (as a hotliner) I can only fanthon how rough it is going to be to deal with clueless users that happen to have windows 8 devices, imo it is close to not "supportable".
So far I was the user so I could deal with it, now trying to explain by phones to clueless users, I'm extremely bothered...
I think the professional world might start to look at MSFT with angry eyes, if not for legacy I would expect that most would exist the windows environment at this point. With the growth of web apps and cloud I think more and more will,m that what you get when you treat your main customers (enterprises) like shit.

 

[Grall]

Yeah, MS needs a rude wakeup call BAD. The one they got from vista clearly wasn't enough. Mashing two distinctly different OS looks together like they've done is just fricken stupid, and insulting to their users.

 

[Babel-17]

If you download 8.1 from the store you can hover your mouse over the progress meter and the % downloaded pops up. IIRC.

Also, don't all major updates say they will reboot unless you click "No"?

Edit: http://winsupersite.com/windows-8/windows-81-tip-download-windows-81-iso-windows-8-product-key

The good news—great news, really—is that there is a very simple workaround for those Windows 8 users who wish to download a Windows 8.1 ISO. That process is described here.
The bad news? Once you've downloaded that ISO, you still can't use your Windows 8 product key to perform a clean install of Windows 8.1. You can, of course, use it to perform an upgrade from Windows 8, which was the point: Provide a way for users to upgrade multiple PCs from a single download. I have an idea about how the clean install issue can be overcome, but I'm curious if anyone has a fool-proof method.

 

[Blazkowicz]

Yeah, MS needs a rude wakeup call BAD. The one they got from vista clearly wasn't enough. Mashing two distinctly different OS looks together like they've done is just fricken stupid, and insulting to their users.

There's a video I had seen some time earlier, where a kid films his mom trying Windows 3.11 for the first time (after trying shit like Windows 8, Windows 1, Ubuntu - I didn't care to watch these)

She likes it a lot at first then get burnt by a "distinctly different OS look" when launching a built-in DOS application, that's pretty funny.

 

[zed]

Does win 8.1 fix this
'click on my download directory' 1minute until anything is displayed! Seriously the dir contains a massive 178 items are in it
instead Im treated to this

the bar at the top creeps along, well sorta its related to the problem with win 8 when I search.
eg the bar races along to 50% full in 5 secs but that last 50% takes 5 minutes, the last couple of pixels take a minute to complete. Im looking at the screen willing it along.
Whoever at MS who has codded the progress bar algorithm needs to be put on something else.

Also have they improved the customability eg can I change a scrollbars width color etc or is it as bad as windows 8, which has gone the mac OS way of 'we know what you want'. Part of the reason I choose windows over mac is customability but if MS keep on taking this away I think I might as well go the mac way , I see today their latest OS costs nothing.
Ive been using winXP a bit recently (since photoshop only works on there for some reason) and the UI customability is so nice, its just more comfortable/easier to use

does webgl work in IE 11?, have they fixed the user interface? (one of the greatest epic fails of recent UI design)

 

[-tkf-]

That's even more annoying to have to install an app to get rid of the damn thing.

Welcome to windows 8 and how I felt about it.

Got the 8.1 ISO, tried to install on 2 machines, and it failed on both with a driver missing issue even before I got to pick a harddisk.

Yes yes, very impressive....

 

[Davros]

I had win 8 on my a few months ago took it off because i didnt like it
A few days ago i had to do something for someone on their win8 pc
norton popped up a screen and when I closed it i was at the metro interface
The guy said to the person next to him "davros will sort it he's a genius with computers"
cue me faffing about for 5 minutes trying everything to try and get back to the windows desktop where I had i.e open. I looked like a bloody amateur

 

[Arwin]

And in the process proved that bringing the Windows button back in 8.1 was a good idea.

 

[zed]

can someone explain to me why on earth in windows start screen I
right click on a program
go to the bottom of the window and select 'uninstall'
and it it throws me elsewhere which is terrible (but even worse, said program aint even selected. What the hell were they smoking when they designed this) and from here Ive got to select the program again and press uninstall

try it, if you havent already

 

[Grall]

Does win 8.1 fix this
'click on my download directory' 1minute until anything is displayed!

Haven't seen that one myself, it kinda looks like a network timeout issue, like it's trying to search for (non-existing?) remote computers, drives etc. Not sure how to prevent it from happening other than the nightmare-ish "have you tried to reinstall windows?" approach...

does webgl work in IE 11?

I don't think so. Only chrome that supports it currently? Maybe FF also since it's updated frequently. MS can't be arsed to update their shit other than once every couple years.

have they fixed the user interface? (one of the greatest epic fails of recent UI design)

No, the UI is still epically shit in IE11. They wrecked it well and good in 10 and kept it the same bad way just for kicks in 11. Reason: they want to fsck with peoples' muscle memory when hunting for UI gadgets so that you'll be confused whenever you use something other than IE. Awesome. Not.

can someone explain to me why on earth in windows start screen I
right click on a program
go to the bottom of the window and select 'uninstall'
and it it throws me elsewhere which is terrible (but even worse, said program aint even selected.

Sorry, haven't seen this one myself. I've only ever tried to uninstall metro apps from the goshdarned triple cursed start screen, and that doesn't throw me at least anywhere else. I could imagine if you try the same with a desktop app it throws you back to the desktop. Is that what you're referring to?

 

[Arwin]

Will try it at home, but I can easily imagine what happened there: there are two different systems for installing and uninstalling applications: 1 for Windows Store Apps (which run on WinRT) and one for traditional Windows software. I agree though that it is a shame that they couldn't manage to automatically activate the right uninstall option directly, though I also think it's not trivial.

 

[liolio]

can someone explain to me why on earth in windows start screen I
right click on a program
go to the bottom of the window and select 'uninstall'
and it it throws me elsewhere which is terrible (but even worse, said program aint even selected. What the hell were they smoking when they designed this) and from here Ive got to select the program again and press uninstall

try it, if you havent already

I did too and indeed it sends you back to the good old "uninstall/modify" (for desktop apps) but the application is not selected.

To honest I said earlier Mail failed me and well it was a one time error, I've made tests and it works don't know what happened.

What is your take on the "customize" button on the start screen? It serves ~no purpose as one as to go in the setting (start screen or desktop) to make significant changes... that is really dumb too.

 

[Arwin]

I did too and indeed it sends you back to the good old "uninstall/modify" (for desktop apps) but the application is not selected.

To honest I said earlier Mail failed me and well it was a one time error, I've made tests and it works don't know what happened.

What is your take on the "customize" button on the start screen? It serves ~no purpose as one as to go in the setting (start screen or desktop) to make significant changes... that is really dumb too.

Yes, I noticed that too, it's a bit silly. The customize only allows you to modify group names, basically, whereas the right panel / settings is the 'proper' customise, that allows you to modify your backgrounds. All the themes you can select there that have color modifiers feel distinctly Indian or something to me, by the way. This is coming from a European though, so I hope that comment isn't too wide off the mark, but all that's missing is some glitter.

Definitely still feel, by the way, that the whole UI needs to be a bit more 'sexy' on the Desktop. Give some options for transparency, 3D / shadow effects, etc.

 

[liolio]

Yes, I noticed that too, it's a bit silly. The customize only allows you to modify group names, basically, whereas the right panel / settings is the 'proper' customise, that allows you to modify your backgrounds. All the themes you can select there that have color modifiers feel distinctly Indian or something to me, by the way. This is coming from a European though, so I hope that comment isn't too wide off the mark, but all that's missing is some glitter.

Definitely still feel, by the way, that the whole UI needs to be a bit more 'sexy' on the Desktop. Give some options for transparency, 3D / shadow effects, etc.

Indeed their scheme for customizing things is weird /inconsistent.

I agree the desktop needed a revamp, with more features for power users:
different charm bars, a better more interactive systray, more "desktop", etc.
There could be useful live tile to be bind on the desktop (like those old widget that got discarded).
One area where a fullscreen would make sense is when you do alt+tab, I've seen users with a lot sessions open on many servers or lots of docs, that is a spot where it would make sense to call a fullscreen windows to ease the selection between many (opened) apps. They could go further and allows the users to select multiple of those apps (sessions, programs) old ctrl+click and to open that in a new desktop +> introduce a shortcut to switch between desktop => useful stuff for power users.

Though RT and vanilla Windows are chasing different usage, blending was (and remains) a bad idea.

 

[Arwin]

Except it isn't a bad idea per se. My wife has a Book 9 Lite touch screen capable laptop, and I love it (and so does she). There's a lot of things it can do that the iPad can't, but it can do a lot of things better than a Desktop. For this, Windows 8 is perfect. Also, there are a bunch of Apps that are not available as regular software that are popular here (WordFeud for my wife, for instance). Finally, I can develop an App for my son to learn the alphabet, having access to both (enough) power (energy efficient quad core, 128GB SSD), a good keyboard, and a touch screen. My son uses the app now to learn the alphabet (already nearly finished, only has a few letters left now that he sometimes finds difficult).

I think Microsoft just needs less paperwork and more hunger and ambition among its designers and developers.

 

[Arwin]

This is a good overview of the new features:
http://www.technologyguide.com/feat...ow+To+Do+Everything+New+in+Windows+8.1_swhite

Some interesting stuff in there that I hadn't realised before. The most important one is that the snap view can now be applied to 5 apps at the same time, and that you're not limited anymore to a fixed size. That has a little bit of an impact to designing your apps for sure ... and basically means that what I was doing already, making them work as if they were running in a rescaleable Window (which they are, because I have and use ModernMix, which should have been default in Windows 8.1 imho.