Windows 8 Features Revealed

J_E

http://www.neowin.net/news/simple-registry-hack-reveals-early-windows-8-features

While Microsoft is hard at work creating Windows 8, hackers are hard at work unlocking all of Windows 8's secrets.
The first build of Windows 8 leaked across the web just last week, and a number of new features have been popping up all over the web. The new advanced task manager has been unveiled, along with the ribbon UI, similar to that of the Office 2010 ribbon. There has also been a number of other small tweaks and features popping up.
As hackers dig deeper into the registry of Windows 8, some interesting applications have started to appear. First up, a native webcam.exe application has been discovered. Although the application is unfinished, it does give us clues that Microsoft is working to tightly integrate webcams into Windows 8, (Kinect + Windows 8 anyone?)
As Neowin previously revealed, Windows 8 will also come with a native PDF reader, also mentioned as "Modern Reader".
The interesting thing about all of the above features, is that they are found in Windows 8 M1 build 7850, the same build that previously leaked. Through a simple registry hack, these features can be unlocked.

Looks like we're finally going to get a native webcam application, which I think has been desperately needed for a long time now. Can't say I'm a huge fan of the ribbon UI being used throughout the whole operating system though. Apparently there will also be a new 'aurora' colour for Aero that matches the colour of what's behind it. It's nice to finally see some new features.


(Oh, if you're wondering, this is a very early build of Windows 8. I think the first beta is coming out in September)

AlmightyCushion

Hopefully, September is right for the beta and hopefully it's just as stable as the 7 beta. What little I've seen of windows 8 is looking promising.

dlm

Mandatory ribbon interface = skipping Windows 8

Odaise Gaelach

Windows 8 looks promising indeed. Here's hoping it's going to be as ****ing amazing as Windows 7 is.

Trevor451

I cant wait

partyatmygaff

Looks like Microsoft are on to another winner...

It's great to see how they've bounced back from the Vista semi-fiasco.

TiGeR KiNgS

The ribbon will be excellent imo,tab's just make everything more logical and intuitive.

norbert64

There's been a 2nd version leaked now
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/226206/another_windows_8_prebeta_surfaces.html

Overheal

dlm wrote: »

Mandatory ribbon interface = skipping Windows 8

according to the gizmodo release it's not mandatory, but it is default.

http://gizmodo.com/#!5796979/windows-8-7-things-we-know-for-sure

I can understand why theyre introducing it though: Touchscreens. They will be everywhere. HP Touchsmarts? that sort of thing? They aren't going anywhere. You'll see more of that.

the Ironic thing about touchscreens of course is you can't right-click, so expect to see plenty-more touch-friendly interfaces.

demanufactured

Why are they even releasing this????
Windows 7 is still fairly new , and by the looks of things it will be the next XP , as in it will be used for a long time.
I dont see the point in upgrading to windows 8 if you have just started using windows 7.
Cant see a lot of enterprises making the move anyhow.

xsiborg

demanufactured wrote: »

Why are they even releasing this????
Windows 7 is still fairly new , and by the looks of things it will be the next XP , as in it will be used for a long time.
I dont see the point in upgrading to windows 8 if you have just started using windows 7.
Cant see a lot of enterprises making the move anyhow.

i was going to say it nicely that MS need a "filler" OS in between Win7 and a proper next gen OS, but then that made me think of WinME and Vista, both fillers between great OS's, I think we all remember Vista pre-SP2, but WinME is probably best just forgotten about.

Win3.1 -> Win98 -> Win XP -> Win7 would have been a great path to follow.

Instead we have:

Win 3.1 - Win95 (filler) -> Win98 -> Win98SE, WinME (fillers) -> WinXP -> Vista (filler) -> Win7 ->... you guessed it -> Win8 (filler) before proper OS.

Sometimes even Microsoft never learn.

SickBoy

xsiborg wrote: »

i was going to say it nicely that MS need a "filler" OS in between Win7 and a proper next gen OS, but then that made me think of WinME and Vista, both fillers between great OS's, I think we all remember Vista pre-SP2, but WinME is probably best just forgotten about.

Win3.1 -> Win98 -> Win XP -> Win7 would have been a great path to follow.

Instead we have:

Win 3.1 - Win95 (filler) -> Win98 -> Win98SE, WinME (fillers) -> WinXP -> Vista (filler) -> Win7 ->... you guessed it -> Win8 (filler) before proper OS.

Sometimes even Microsoft never learn.

You forgot Windows 2000 which was between ME and XP and was by no means a filler.
By that logic it would make XP the filler OS which it most certainly was not.

xsiborg

SickBoy wrote: »

You forgot Windows 2000 which was between ME and XP and was by no means a filler.
By that logic it would make XP the filler OS which it most certainly was not.

i didnt actually forget it SB, but it wasnt a product aimed at the home comsumer market, actually if you think about it, Win2k was squeezed in there between WinNT4 and XP if you wanted to go that route, and from thereon i have no experience with Win2k8 so i couldnt comment...

Capt'n Midnight

xsiborg wrote: »

i was going to say it nicely that MS need a "filler" OS in between Win7 and a proper next gen OS, but then that made me think of WinME and Vista, both fillers between great OS's, I think we all remember Vista pre-SP2, but WinME is probably best just forgotten about.

Win3.1 -> Win98 -> Win XP -> Win7 would have been a great path to follow.

Instead we have:

Win 3.1 - Win95 (filler) -> Win98 -> Win98SE, WinME (fillers) -> WinXP -> Vista (filler) -> Win7 ->... you guessed it -> Win8 (filler) before proper OS.

Sometimes even Microsoft never learn.

Very wrong
16 Bit OS's
Win 3.0 - First usable windows
Win 3.1 - First really common windows OS
Win 3.11 - like 3.1 except it had networking , Major \o/

In parallel there was 32 bit OS Windows NT for the corporates , networking from day 1
WinNT 3.51 was probably the most stable of the classic windows OS's

Then in 95 came windows 95 which many people hoped would incorporate NT features , but it was really a 32 bit OS on a 16 bit shell with Dos underneath if you dug deep enough, it had a few service packs, the most notable one being called windows 98 but you had to buy it - BTW if you used the shell from windows 95 on a windows 98 install it used to fly along.

windows NT 4 was released at the same time, but you had to wait till SP3 to use as a server !

Then came windows 2000 which we hoped would unify the win9x and the WinNT families just like 95 was supposed to , instead they never released a windows 2000 Home (instead there was windows Me - most people were better off using 98 instead)

Finally they tweaked the user interface of windows 2000 and it was a bit more than a service pack so they called it XP, and more importantly for Home users the grand unified OS that was waited for since '94 finally arrived with XP home. XP was mostly based on 2000 so no major hiccups once drivers became available.

The user interface for XP was so good :rolleyes: that windows server 2003 used the old windows 2000 user interface because admins just hated the Fisher Price look and feel of XP

Then came Vista , which wasn't ready for use until service pack 1 , Windows 7 is just vista with lots of tweaks and some speedups so again no major hiccups with it.

Windows server 2008 is based on Vista while Windows server 2008 R2 is based on windows 7 to give you an idea of how close vista is to 7 - you can even download the windows server trial tweak it to be a workstation and use it for 240 days


so 98 , XP and 7 are all filler OS's

lookup WinFS to see how long promised features can be delayed and dropped

byte

Windows 7 is just vista with lots of tweaks and some speedups so again no major hiccups with it.

It might explain why Windows 7 is, on my machine anyway, classed as Version 6.1.7600

Capt'n Midnight

byte wrote: »

It might explain why Windows 7 is, on my machine anyway, classed as Version 6.1.7600

2000 was NT 5 and XP was NT 5.1 ....

xsiborg

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

...

Then came windows 2000 which we hoped would unify the win9x and the WinNT families just like 95 was supposed to , instead they never released a windows 2000 Home (instead there was windows Me - most people were better off using 98 instead)

...


so 98 , XP and 7 are all filler OS's

lookup WinFS to see how long promised features can be delayed and dropped

Daaaahhhm Capt'n!! :eek:

ah no, fantastic post, but the only reason i highlighted the bold part was because at that time i had told my in-laws not to worry about all the hype with the millenium bug, (they wanted a computer for my sister in law for christmas), and i ordered a Dell Dimension 4100 with windows 98SE, of course when it came it had Millenium on it... :rolleyes:

As for WinFS, yep, heard of it, ah no i mean i've heard of all these things but i was purely talking from a consumer perspective, most people on this forum would be more about the nuts and bolts nitty gritty of the OS that your average home consumer would never need, nor need to worry about...

stevenmu

From the various romours going around about Windows 8 it seems like it's going to be the biggest leap in a long long time. Of course a big leap means the potential for bugs etc, but I think Win8 is going to be so vital to Microsoft's strategy going forward that they'll put a lot of effort into getting it right.

Microsoft's stated strategy for the future is to have 3 screens and a cloud. This in essence means that your data, and in time your applications themselves, will live in "The Cloud" (or potentially "a cloud"), i.e. they will be stored online. The 3 screens are (iirc) PC, TV and portable (phone/tablet). The philosphy is that with your data and apps in the cloud, they will be available across each of your 3 screens all of the time.

From the news and rumours about Windows 8, Microsoft seem to be positioning it as the OS that drives your 3 screens.

First of all, Windows 8 will run on Desktop PCs, laptops etc, nothing new or surprising there.

Next it has been confirmed that Windows 8 will run on ARM hardware. This is essential to getting Windows 8 onto non-PC devices. Currently tablets, phones, set-top boxes etc all run on ARM hardware. Windows 8 running on ARM means you'll have the same OS running on your PC, your tablet, your phone, your set-top box, or possibly even built into your TV (yes a Windows TV, you heard it here first ).

Rumours have it that Windows 8 will have two UIs, the normal aero that we're used to, and 'Mosh' a touch friendly UI. I personally suspect that Mosh will be heavily based off the Metro UI currently used in Windows 7 phones. This will of course make it much easier to use Windows on a small touchscreen device than it is now. Just a guess on my part, but I suspect there'll be different editions of Windows again, some stripped down in terms of services etc to run better on phone and tablet hardware, but essentially it'll be the same underlying OS.

So you'll have the same OS on all of your 'screens' but that's not much good unless you have the same apps on all of them. That's where the next rumour comes in. Microsoft are supposedly working on a new application framework called 'Jupiter'. Under Jupiter, applications will be Silverlight based and bundled into .appx packages (very similar to the way WP7 apps are done now), this will let an application be written once and then be available for each of the screens. Application packages will be made available through the marketplace, again very much like WP7 now.

So all in all, this is going to a much bigger leap than 7 was over Vista, lets face it, 7 was really just what Vista should have been in the first place. If it all pans out according to the rumours, it's probably the biggest leap since DOS -> Windows.

jay93

Altough it will be interesting to see what windows 8 will bring i think they are releasing it a bit too early i mean like windows 7 has barely even taken off yet most people are still on vista/XP.

Unless there is a whole bunch of new features in windows 8 i won't be upgrading from 7 as windows 7 seems to be the most stable so far.
Hopefully they won't feck up windows 8 like they screwed up Vista:eek:

stevenmu

Microsoft have revealed some of the features of Windows 8, along with giving a demo of the new UI. Article with video at Engadget:

http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/01/microsoft-unveils-windows-8-tablet-prototypes

The new UI looks awesome to me. It's an evolution of the Windows Phone 7 interface, for those of you not familiar with the WP7 UI is very very nice. It's really easy to use, displays information in a very easy to read way and looks really nice. It'll make a great basis for a touch UI in Windows.

The new app format is mentioned briefly, with apps being created in HTML5/Javascript, I'm a little surprised there's no mention of Silverlight, but that may come yet. I'd expect Silverlight and/or XNA to be supported as well. From the video the apps demo'd look really nice. They also seem to do a few things not typically possile with HTML/JS so I'm assuming that MS are exposing some APIs to JS to help make the apps more 'native'. Developer tool support will be key to making the new format a success, but this is an area MS is always strong in. Visual Studio 2010 already has fairly decent HTML and Javascript support, I expect the next version will have much better support and specific support for the new Windows 8 app format, and I'd hope for a whole bunch of nice UI controls built in.

IMHO Windows 8 looks like it'll run great on PCs, with keyboard and mouse, and on tablets with touchscreen. A full featured, full functional tablet OS that's also touch friendly could be a game changer and take the tablet experience to the next level.

Fysh

I'm about ready to punch someone from Microsoft right in their face and/or ballbag for their ridiculous one-size-must-fit-all approach.

Instead of one core kernel and half a dozen ridiculous variations on a theme (Starter, Home CrappyBasic, Home Not Quite So CrappyPremium, Professional[/b]Business, Enterprise, Ultimate ripoff) they should have Windows Phone OS, Windows Touch and Windows Standard. If it weren't for the implications for hardware support I'd like to see an equivalent for what Apple do, but realistically it's probably unfeasible to make WinPhone scale up to serve all tablets (even Android has acknowledged this) so why in the name of God are they trying to make one OS that works for desktops, workstations, laptops, netbooks and tablets? The hardware profiles and usage scenarios for those things vary wildly and based on what I've seen of Starter, Home Basic and Home Premium at least half the versions of Vista and 7 are hobbled and crappy, so losing them wouldn't be a bad thing in terms of reputation or user experience. It'll be the usual silliness of needing to sell a cheap crap version for vendors to preinstall, as though that does anyone any real favours.

Based on having used an android phone for 2 years, I do not see how you can have one OS that serves both the needs of native touch interface and the needs of those without touch interface. Simple things like trying to scroll a webpage without accidentally clicking on a link become tedious and suddenly the tech's getting in your way instead of quietly letting you get on with whatever you were trying to do.

stevenmu

I agree about the ridiculous versions, having deliberately limited versions is just a pain.

I feel the opposite about the one-size-fit-all approach though. For me the ability to have the same OS, with the same configuration, running the same apps against the same data is huge. From what they've shown of the UI so far it looks like it'll work extremely well across a desktop/laptop with keyboard and mouse, a touch tablet/slate, and possibly even down to a phone.

It'll put some pressure on UI designers to try and design interfaces that scale well, or there may be some mechanism to build slightly different UIs targetted at different screen sizes, which will be extra work. But, it'll be significantly less work than having to build one app for windows desktop, another app for windows tablet and a third app for windows phone.

Capt'n Midnight

Fysh wrote: »

I'm about ready to punch someone from Microsoft right in their face and/or ballbag for their ridiculous one-size-must-fit-all approach.

you forgot embedded and datacentre etc. :pac:

I love the way the server UI tends to be the previous UI with most of the new features turned off.

Simple things like trying to scroll a webpage without accidentally clicking on a link become tedious and suddenly the tech's getting in your way instead of quietly letting you get on with whatever you were trying to do.

+1


I'm getting tired of trying to figure out where things have moved to in each new UI , from windows 3.x items in the control panel have moved half a menu deeper with each release - Hands up who couldn't find Add/Remove programs in Vista ? Hands up if you know how to someone the exact instructions on how to change from a US keyboard in all versions of windows.

BTW: anyone know if windows 7 drivers will work in it or will they need to be recertified ?

stevenmu

I think I read somewhere that the driver model is rumoured to be the same. Drivers will probably need to be recertified to be "Windows 8 Compatable" but will probably still work without that.

Fysh

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

you forgot embedded and datacentre etc. :pac:

I love the way the server UI tends to be the previous UI with most of the new features turned off.

Yeah, since the XP Fisher Price Theme they've been getting worse and worse. I know some numpty in MS thinks that guff like Aero sells it to the plebconsumer market, but most people I know want their computer to do things, not waste resources on pointless shiny crap.

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

I'm getting tired of trying to figure out where things have moved to in each new UI , from windows 3.x items in the control panel have moved half a menu deeper with each release - Hands up who couldn't find Add/Remove programs in Vista ? Hands up if you know how to someone the exact instructions on how to change from a US keyboard in all versions of windows.

My personal favourite is the way that in Devices and Printers you can now only get at the Print Server Properties if a printer is installed on the system, because if you don't highlight a printer, there's no Print Server Properties entry in the menu. Because it's not like I wanted to be able to manually add all the LPR ports for our departmental printers before I go through the tedium of installing the printer and associated drivers, is it? (Well, to be honest what I wanted to do was script up something to enable the LPR Port Monitor, create the LPR ports, install the HP Universal Printer Driver, then install the printers using a defined naming convention, but given that the starting point is printing to non-MS print servers, it was never going to happen, was it?)

Overheal

Fysh wrote: »

Yeah, since the XP Fisher Price Theme they've been getting worse and worse. I know some numpty in MS thinks that guff like Aero sells it to the plebconsumer market, but most people I know want their computer to do things, not waste resources on pointless shiny crap.

Aero does do things. What are you on about. The only thing it does needlessly is make window borders transparent. The rest is logical OS evolution. Can't convince me being able to type in the .exe you want and run it within 2 seconds is a waste of resources, versus the time it takes you to do anything in XP.

Fysh

Overheal wrote: »

Aero does do things. What are you on about. The only thing it does needlessly is make window borders transparent. The rest is logical OS evolution. Can't convince me being able to type in the .exe you want and run it within 2 seconds is a waste of resources, versus the time it takes you to do anything in XP.

Yes, because Winkey +R followed by typing the name of the exe you want is so hideously time-consuming and painful :rolleyes: (alright, you might have to tinker with your PATH settings in some cases, but you're taking the piss if you think people who want to use CLI are going to suddenly be put off by something that trivial).

I've yet to see anything about the Aero interface that actually makes my working day go more easily or faster. There are things that could, in theory, be useful (snapping two windows side by side for comparison purposes) but in terms of saving me significant amounts of time I've seen nowt. And frankly given the preposterous nonsense that Aero was first pushed with ("oooh! You can do a pointless 3-d version of Alt-TAB! I MUST HAVE IT!") I'm not convinced there's much actual substance to it...

AlmightyCushion

Fysh wrote: »

Yes, because Winkey +R followed by typing the name of the exe you want is so hideously time-consuming and painful :rolleyes: (alright, you might have to tinker with your PATH settings in some cases, but you're taking the piss if you think people who want to use CLI are going to suddenly be put off by something that trivial).

I've yet to see anything about the Aero interface that actually makes my working day go more easily or faster. There are things that could, in theory, be useful (snapping two windows side by side for comparison purposes) but in terms of saving me significant amounts of time I've seen nowt. And frankly given the preposterous nonsense that Aero was first pushed with ("oooh! You can do a pointless 3-d version of Alt-TAB! I MUST HAVE IT!") I'm not convinced there's much actual substance to it...

The search box in the start menu is like the run window but it's better. Using the run window you have to know the exact name of the exe and type in the full name and you can't use it for searching for files. The run window is grand for what it is but that search box makes things a lot easier.

busyliving

Will this Windows have an option during the install to pick what’s installed?

The one thing I really hate about windows is all the crap you get with it, like IE, Wordpad, Defrag and other things like that...Because I use Firefox, notepad\MS Word, a third party defrag & diagnostics programs.

It really annoys me, with all the junk that I get and have no need for which is really annoying and is why I’ll never pay for a MS product.

Fysh

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

The search box in the start menu is like the run window but it's better. Using the run window you have to know the exact name of the exe and type in the full name and you can't use it for searching for files. The run window is grand for what it is but that search box makes things a lot easier.

Yep, but I've found that it's slow (and this is on a high-end workstation, so it's not a system spec problem) and if you regularly use two similarly-named applications you have to type the full name (for example calc.exe and opencalc).

Maybe I'm an atypical user, but I just don't spend that much time searching for files on my machine, so forcibly merging the search utility with the run option doesn't do anything for me other than slow down the one aspect of the tool that I'm interested in.

PogMoThoin

Fysh wrote: »

Yep, but I've found that it's slow (and this is on a high-end workstation, so it's not a system spec problem)

For me its instant, I use it all the time, my c drive is indexed, bet you've indexing disabled

Fysh

PogMoThoin wrote: »

For me its instant, I use it all the time, my c drive is indexed, bet you've indexing disabled

That may be it, actually - I found indexing a pain in the hole on Vista and as I rarely use search anyway have probably also disabled it on 7.

Is there anything else Aero's useful for? From the wikipedia page on it all I can see are Jump Lists and Peek, and maybe Shake & Snap at a stretch. The rest of it just seems to be pointless (to my mind) eye-candy. (Though if nothing else reading this thread has led to me finding some additional Windows + shortcut combinations that will come in handy )

AlmightyCushion

Snap is handy for transferring files between two drives. Never use shake. Jump lists can be handy too. Peek is handy and some programs have controls in the little window that pops up. For example wmp has some of the media controls in it's pop up window. Also, I like the way when you are downloading or transferring files it shows the progress in the taskbar icon. Can't really think of any others.

PogMoThoin

Fysh wrote: »

That may be it, actually - I found indexing a pain in the hole on Vista and as I rarely use search anyway have probably also disabled it on 7.

Is there anything else Aero's useful for? From the wikipedia page on it all I can see are Jump Lists and Peek, and maybe Shake & Snap at a stretch. The rest of it just seems to be pointless (to my mind) eye-candy. (Though if nothing else reading this thread has led to me finding some additional Windows + shortcut combinations that will come in handy )

Vista gave a few great things over Xp.
The search (as long as you don't disable indexing) is instant and much improved over the clunky one in XP, its usable for everything now. I no longer use desktop shortcuts for programs, I just start typing the first few letters of the program name and the option comes up, the few I use lots (chrome, thunderbird) I've pinned to quicklaunch. There's no need for the all programs option in the start menu, but its there anyway.
Prefetch analyses how you use your programs and loads them into memory to have them ready. If you're in the habit of opening your browser at 9.00 every morning, it will have it in memory ready for you and it will load instantly. Open an email and need to open a spreadsheet, Office loads instantly. There's no point in having 4GB of ram with half of it sitting empty.
The task bar was advanced and then even further in Windows 7. It now stacks windows and gives previews of open programs and windows on hover. I use the Snap feature regularly to open two windows side by side.
These all make day to day tasks much easier.

Fysh

I'm prepared to believe that search (with the disk-killing indexing on) is better than it was in XP. At the same time, if I don't use search more than say once every six months, a better search system isn't much use to me

For software I use a lot, I use pinning to the taskbar and for the rest I either have a shortcut or I go through start menu.

Previews of application windows are nice, though to be honest given that I used to use the TaskSwitch powertoy on XP this wasn't that much of a new thing to me.

Snap seems handy alright, shake looks like more of a salespitch than a genuinely useful tool (why would you need to minimise windows in the background if you've already got what you need in the foreground?).

Prefetch and superfetch can both die in a car crash as far as I'm concerned - I've only ever noticed them slow systems down, though again I'm prepared to accept that this may be down to my usage pattern (well, mine and everyone else in the 130-odd people department where I work...).

PogMoThoin

Fysh wrote: »

Prefetch and superfetch can both die in a car crash as far as I'm concerned - I've only ever noticed them slow systems down, though again I'm prepared to accept that this may be down to my usage pattern (well, mine and everyone else in the 130-odd people department where I work...).

I don't fully understand what the problem is with pre-fetch, all it does is preload programs in memory in case you need them. It runs without any noticable slowdown as long as you've enough cpu power and some overhead ram. Ok lots of ram is used up, but its better than sitting there empty. Do the pc's in question have enough cpu power for Vista/7 or are they struggling, single core maybe? My experience of Vista/7 has been that it really needs dual core. Have they more than 1Gb ram? Even Xp need 1Gb minimum these days and ram is dirt cheap.

Why bother with Vista/7 if you're disabling the best features, why not stick with Xp? It would fly on the same hardware.

Fysh

PogMoThoin wrote: »

I don't fully understand what the problem is with pre-fetch, all it does is preload programs in memory in case you need them. It runs without any noticable slowdown as long as you've enough cpu power and some overhead ram. Ok lots of ram is used up, but its better than sitting there empty. Do the pc's in question have enough cpu power for Vista/7 or are they struggling, single core maybe? My experience of Vista/7 has been that it really needs dual core. Have they more than 1Gb ram? Even Xp need 1Gb minimum these days and ram is dirt cheap.

Why bother with Vista/7 if you're disabling the best features, why not stick with Xp? It would fly on the same hardware.

I haven't bothered digging into it in any significant depth - after noticing that several users complained after a few months of their Vista systems slowing down I started looking into system-intensive services and quickly found that disabling indexing and superfetch/prefetch improved things significantly. This isn't just on the lower-end machines but on decently-spec'd systems too. When it has a noticeable effect on a Precision T3500 with a decent Xeon and 6GB RAM, I can't dismiss it as a problem with the system spec.

Aside from anything else, I want people in my department using a reasonably current version of the OS in order to minimise support overheads, improve overall system security and ensure they're properly able to get the most out of their hardware. For things like hyperthreading, full TRIM support for SSDs, support for Intel HD-2K & 3K graphics, you're better off using a version of Windows that's not a decade old.

I'm happy enough overall with Vista and 7 - I'm just not convinced by certain aspects of the desktop UI that they incorporate. Mind you, that could be more about what the wonks in UI design think - looking at what's going on with GNOME and what happened with KDE circa KDE4 has me thinking it can't just be some eyecandy-fetishist team in MS...

PogMoThoin

But I've not noticed Windows 7 slow down like every other version of Windows has. Reinstalling for me used be a 6 monthly thing (from an image I take, with Acronis I can install that image in 10mins), now its a thing of the past, the installed Windows doesn't seem to slow

stevenmu

Superfetch and search indexing were horrible on Vista, disabling them made it noticeably more responsive. When I started using 7 I disabled them again at first, but I've since enabled them (on a few machines from high to low spec) with no noticeable performance hit.

I have indexing disabled but am using an SSD so I don't notice any slowdown. The only Aero features I use are peek and the media controls in the taskbar preview in some apps. I hate snap with a passion and have it disabled. I also don't pin anything to the taskbar. I don't want to use my taskbar as an OSX style Dock so I just pin them to the Start menu instead.

I've been using Windows 7 for nearly 18 months now and the only real feature I miss when on XP is the Start menu search, though that's easily worked around with Winkey+R in most cases. I hate the UI but I still get the benefit from the modern features such as support for SSDs and less codec woes (I could never find a H.264 codec for XP that would play every MP4 I threw at it whereas I don't have that problem in 7).

Overheal

PogMoThoin wrote: »

But I've not noticed Windows 7 slow down like every other version of Windows has. Reinstalling for me used be a 6 monthly thing (from an image I take, with Acronis I can install that image in 10mins), now its a thing of the past, the installed Windows doesn't seem to slow

I've had 7 on the laptop for a year and a half now, going strong as ever. Vista, meanwhile, I reinstalled about every 4 - 6 months. It was awful, something was woefully wrong with the way that OS handled hard disk stuff. After 6 months you could see about 20GB of "Unknown Data" in your windirstat. And it just. kept. growing. And the desktop is just has happy with 7.

stevenmu

Karsini wrote: »

I have indexing disabled but am using an SSD so I don't notice any slowdown. The only Aero features I use are peek and the media controls in the taskbar preview in some apps. I hate snap with a passion and have it disabled. I also don't pin anything to the taskbar. I don't want to use my taskbar as an OSX style Dock so I just pin them to the Start menu instead.

I've been using Windows 7 for nearly 18 months now and the only real feature I miss when on XP is the Start menu search, though that's easily worked around with Winkey+R in most cases. I hate the UI but I still get the benefit from the modern features such as support for SSDs and less codec woes (I could never find a H.264 codec for XP that would play every MP4 I threw at it whereas I don't have that problem in 7).

I guess it's different strokes and all that.

I love snap, especially when using multiple monitors, it's great for unsnapping a window from one screen, dragging it to the other and snapping it to maximised again. Pretty handing to snap two windows side by side to copy/paste as well. (though I'll admit it's a little annoying when you want to just position a window somewhere and it keeps trying to snap).

I love the new taskbar as well, I'd have probably 8 to 10 of my most commonly used apps docked to it. And when you've a load of applications open it makes them much easier to organise. Even just being able to reorder them is very useful, I used to use a 3rd party tool to do that in XP which was good, but just not quite as good.

I've grown to love indexing and search too. This was a big leap for me, I've seen how much indexing can slow down an XP or Vista system so I didn't enable it for ages. I've always been a big Win+R user and keep most of my files in organised folder structures so didn't really see a need for it either. But the near instant searches are fantastic, and in general I find the start menu searching to be quicker and easier than Win+R. I still do use Win+R for jumping to specific folders, the autocomplete of folder paths is excellent, but for most things the start search is much better.

Capt'n Midnight

probably worth a read http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/08/a_beginners_guide_to_windows8/