Windows 8 Dev build

time to add a stick of memory to that mac.
my ghetto PC only has 2GB till I fix that, but it was a lot cheaper.

I've seen windows 7 run well enough on 768MB and 1GB computers by the way!
would be interesting to try 8 on an old clunker.
 
Windows 8 Works!

Yay, so I futzed with the old 19.5GB Western Digital hard disk (which I bought in 1999) and worked out how to get a legacy Vista driver (Catalyst 10.2 I think, AMD website's suggested driver for my card) to install under W8CP and am now happily typing this message.

The AGP X1950Pro scores 5.9 on WEI, which I think is pretty good. The A64 X2 3800 manages 4.8, the 2GB of RAM is 5.5 but that lickle hard disk does let the side down somewhat with a score of only 3.1.

As an upgrade to Windows XP I have to say I like it. I'm prolly suckered by some of the shiny, but it's working better than the XP install (that has just died on me :rolleyes:) when I push it hard, e.g. 40 tabs open in Firefox.

One of the consequences of this slow hard disk is that the first attempt at running a metro app will "fail" due to what I suppose is some kind of OS level response-guarantee/time-out. That is a bit disconcerting since there's no feedback on the decision that the OS has made, but a bit of persistence produces a result.

Which reminds me, Setup, which I ran off a DVD-R, starts with a plain blue screen, with nothing on it. It was 3 or 4 attempts at running Setup before I "accidentally" found out that Setup is waiting for me to press a key when this screen of nothing but blue shows. Utterly bonkers.

I haven't really done anything with the Metro apps, but I really do think the premise of the Start screen with apps that can show you stuff dynamically is pretty nifty. e.g. an app that shows the latest picture from any of your Flickr contacts or an app that shows the text of the latest posting to a subscribed thread on this forum. etc.

At the same time I'm a little puzzled at the apparently draconian attitude the OS has to non-foreground apps, i.e. closing them. I haven't experienced this, merely what I've read about. But if you're running a powered device like a PC, that kind of non-configurable app treatment seems like a step back into the 1980s.
 
Jawed said:
At the same time I'm a little puzzled at the apparently draconian attitude the OS has to non-foreground apps, i.e. closing them. I haven't experienced this, merely what I've read about. But if you're running a powered device like a PC, that kind of non-configurable app treatment seems like a step back into the 1980s.
Click to expand...

I believe I read there's an option to turn this behavior off. And there'd better be as right now I have 9 applications open, and obviously only 1 in the foreground. Granted, a few of them could be put to "sleep" but the other's are still doing stuff even if extremely infrequently.

I still haven't gotten around to taking time to wipe my Slate PC and putting this Win8 on there to try it myself. /sigh.

Regards,
SB
 
Ah, OK, that must have been what I read then. Hmmm, trying to think if that'll be a problem on my slate which I'll generally probably want in Metro mode.

Regards,
SB
 
I guess it is windows 6.2?
yes no big need for it if you already have 7 or even vista but if you don't have either it's not harmful to get it. except for the damn price :) and the fact you could be running something like linux mint instead.

it has a newer kernel and stuff so it may run slightly better. like 2000/XP/2003 : 2003 is the best one, seems to have swapping working a bit better, I installed it (warez) on two very old computers and it ran great. but free antiviruses refuse to install on it.

so, 8 is a refined Vista with some new features. like ReFS, which might be for pro/business/ultimate though.

I'm sure all the hate can be covered with a few third party .exe that will add back a start menu or launcher and bypass metro if you want.

there are some niceties, such as task bar on multiple displays, multiple wallpapers, they are referenced there :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_8

even the file manager with ribbon is an improvement IMO. they got rid of the useless "Organize.." bar and put back more useful buttons such as "copy", "paste", "new folder" and tucked the odd things in tabs.
 
I had to search for, then pin to Start, the "Recent Files" folder just to get back this default functionality from WinXP. Am I missing something, is there a way to see recently opened/edited files?
 
How Real People Will Use Windows 8
Click to expand...
Its not just real people.
I've tried the same experiment on a bunch of our tech support staff.

Universally they had nearly the exact same complete failure to find Start & "WTF Microsoft???" response.

Some found the Start icon thing in the corner & every one of them tried to move mouse into the middle of the icon only to have it disappear 2 or 3 times before they caught on.
 
What I find annoying is that the right hand end of the taskbar is a hidden "show desktop" hotspot, whose only purpose appears to be to show you gadgets - not that I have any.

This hotspot clashes badly with the hotspot for revealing the charm bar, which is what I'm normally trying to do. I think I'm going to tturn off that stupid show desktop hotspot.
 
hoom said:
Its not just real people.
I've tried the same experiment on a bunch of our tech support staff.

Universally they had nearly the exact same complete failure to find Start & "WTF Microsoft???" response.

Some found the Start icon thing in the corner & every one of them tried to move mouse into the middle of the icon only to have it disappear 2 or 3 times before they caught on.
Click to expand...

if they're doing an interface with invisible UI elements such as the hot corners why not, but they should do an interactive tutorial and put it as a default tile app right on the default screen.

anyone remembers the tutorial in windows 3.0 and 3.1? it taught you mouse use, window management and UI controls in an excellent manner.
I'm puzzled at why I didn't ever see it in any other OS. I guess I will go as far as running it through dosbox and hand it to computer illiterate persons.

since there exists a video of anything on youtube it's there (warning, click the mute icon)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJhG-uds0-o
 
Or they could just fire the guy who thought it would be a good idea to remove the most iconic Windows GUI item for the last 15 years at the same time as they're redesigning the OS around making more use of said GUI item :rolleyes:
 
Dominik D said:
Win7 numbering was caused by the back compat requirements, not by the scope of changes if that's what you imply.
Click to expand...

Maybe so, but Vista (particularly latest SP) and Win7 are pretty similar internally I'd say. The main difference being a better user-interface? I know there's more, but it seems similar to going from 2000 to XP. If the change for Windows 8 is primarily Metro support, then 5.2 makes sense (I assume 5.2, not 6.2). On the other hand, Windows 8 is also supposed to support ARM? That could lead to more fundamental changes (but definitely doesn't have to).
 
windows has been multi-arch from the beginning (in the NT line). there was an internal version of windows 2000 running on 64 bit alpha CPU, also windows has been supported on three architectures for a decade : x86, x64 and itanium ( :devilish: ).

though windows 7 server, a.k.a. Windows Server 2008 R2 is the last one to support the itanic processor.

windows even has had multiple "susbsystems", the only useful one being win32, but there was an OS/2 mode that went nowhere and a seldom used but still supported POSIX compatible mode. so, I wonder if WinRT is running as such a subsystem, I dunno :).
 
For Power Users

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/zxue/archiv...consumer-preview-power-user-howto-series.aspx

---

It's amazing how "obvious" things are broken though. For example it's possible to snap the "People" app to the left or right as a "narrow" app, i.e. only taking up about 20% of the width.

So, right now I have my desktop filling the left-hand 80% of my monitor and the People app taking 20% at the right.

While using the "What's new" view it initially looks fine, the panels which contain the updates from each person are arranged vertically, filling the 20%-wide column. But when you use the scroll wheel on your mouse, these panels don't scroll vertically!!!!

Instead the whole of the People app scrolls horizontally (which is the normal behaviour when the app is running full screen, since the panels are arranged left-to-right).

The scroll bar works fine though.

Considering how simple the UI is, and that this is pretty much a core app in the new experience that MS is promoting, it's quite amazing that no-one at MS noticed this bug.

Since I started writing this and have played some more with People snapped small at the right, I have now entirely lost scroll wheel functionality in "What's new". Oh dear.
 
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