Windows 8

Maura74

I maybe purchasing a laptop soon and am looking at windows 8 OS, dose anyone have experience of this system and how does it compare to windows 7.

Thanks:)

Bad Panda

It won't be on general release until October.

It's designed with to work with a standard laptop/PC or touch screen enabled.#

I don't really like the the look of it myself.

You can get a laptop in the meantime and 'upgrade' to WIN8 for 40e, just make sure the one you get can be supported on it, but you shouldn't have any problems.

yellowlabrador

I tend to wait a while after a release to see how it gets received and to allow bugs to be ironed out. In any case, Microsoft is offering a 40$ upgrade from any older operating system. I also think that it might be more suited to a touch screen computer, so I'd go with windows 7 for a while.

yellowlabrador

hoe funny we posted within seconds:D

chin_grin

My only opinion of it thus far is that it has a horrible GUI! I know it was a leap from xp to 7, but they're getting quite rediculous expecting one standard UI across the board to appease tablet and mobile users.

uncle_sam_ie

Don't you get a free upgrade to win 8 if you buy a new PC though?

yoyo

Moved to Windows

Bad Panda

uncle_sam_ie wrote: »

Don't you get a free upgrade to win 8 if you buy a new PC though?

I don't think so (unless PC World or whoever is offering it); you'll get WIN7 on your new machine, but if you then want WIN8 it's just 40e.

They're trying to compete with Apple (which I'm moving to) by offering low cost upgrades to new OS's. For as long as I can remember, it's only been about 30e to update OS X to the next version.

JustAddWater

chin_grin wrote: »

My only opinion of it thus far is that it has a horrible GUI! I know it was a leap from xp to 7, but they're getting quite rediculous expecting one standard UI across the board to appease tablet and mobile users.

The GUI in particular the metro UI is horrible on laptops and prob desktops too! The startbar removal from the UI is not being very well received at all

That said, the ability to pause copy/paste, merging multiple copy/paste jobs to 1 window, as well as the revamped task manager are all excellent but really UI comes first and it's quite hard to find basic things

Try shutting down without the start bar. It's OK if you remember the shortcuts but if you don't...

OP if you're buying a laptop now, check first, you should get an upgrade voucher

Capt'n Midnight

uncle_sam_ie wrote: »

Don't you get a free upgrade to win 8 if you buy a new PC though?

some places are offering it as an add on for €15 when you buy a new machine - check before you buy
it would be €40 later

nearer the time it may be a free option - who knows ?

Microsoft are not a charity.

and as far as the license is concerned it's a one way upgrade, if you don't like it you aren't supposed to go back

stevenmu

JustAddWater wrote: »

Try shutting down without the start bar. It's OK if you remember the shortcuts but if you don't...

It's in the Charm Bar, no need to remember short cuts or anything like that, it has just moved from one place to another.

Maura74

Thanks guys for help, I have to get a new laptop as my Sony Vaio is a pig now, it has a line running all the down the screen and it would be very expensive to get it fixed. I have looked in shops and have seen ASCAE laptops selling for £479 with a 17" screen and with windows 8 as well as a large memory.

After reading your answers, I think it is a good idea to wait until all the gremlins are ironed out

stevenmu

Maura74 wrote: »

I have looked in shops and have seen ASCAE laptops selling for £479 with a 17" screen and with windows 8 as well as a large memory.

Are you sure it wasn't Windows 7? Windows 8 hasn't been released yet, it hasn't even been finalised and given a fixed release date yet, so it shouldn't be on sale anywhere.

Firblog

With the last 2 releases, xp to vista, and vista to win 7, you could upgrade for free when buying a new computer within a couple of months of the release of the new o/s, depending on the make you purchased; ie tosh charged nothing, but hp charged 20 when 'upgrading' from xp to vista.

calex71

Put it this way OP i would not buy a new laptop or desktop that came with Windows 8 unless a) I had a copy of windows 7 to install on it or b) it came with a downgrade option.

The new UI is just not for devices without a touch screen, from the last build I tried it was just horrible on a desk top with mouse and keyboard, the new apps can't be X'd out of or scrolled in a way that is natural even... you have you use the bar, left /right arrow keys didn't work, and closing them while they do look nice was a pain having to mouse top left screen, right click close.

Once you get back to windows proper, the new additions to explorer are nice , but having to mouse over different corners of the screen to get to various places is a chore and not worth even the rock bottom $15 "upgrade" fee. I would be very surprised at any business who adopt it in its out of the box form.

In short it's a touch screen os , whoever thought it was a good idea to implement it as it is for desktops and laptops should be fired quite frankly.

It's not as if they were short of inspiration either , all they had to do was look at the unity desktop or what apple have done and come up with something usable

Odaise Gaelach

calex71 wrote: »

...and closing them while they do look nice was a pain having to mouse top left screen, right click close.

Move your mouse to the top of the screen until it turns into a hand. Then click and drag the app down, until it "falls" to the bottom of the screen, then release.

calex71

Odaise Gaelach wrote: »

Move your mouse to the top of the screen until it turns into a hand. Then click and drag the app down, until it "falls" to the bottom of the screen, then release.

Having a red x that appears when you mouse over top right that you click to close the app must have been ruled a no no by the developers, why would they want to make it easy for us sure

Truly baffling some of the stuff that has been implemented, even on a tablet a long click on a red x would have been better than what they came up with.

Sonics2k

I was having major issues with the Metro tiles not opening properly. They'd pop up and close, but it seems to be sorted now after I changed the Screen Resolution once or twice.

IE10 metro is still not working properly, which I admit isn't exactly a great loss, but it's annoying as I was starting to get used to the new version.

Applebhoy

Have been using the full final release since August 15th (I am a technet subscriber) ,and really impressed with Microsoft this time.
The Operating system really flows easily, and boot in approx 5-10 seconds.
It takes a few hours to get use to the changes, but its looks and feels really good.
I also have installed office 2013 preview and both work well together.
I am not a big Microsoft fan, as i use Mac's 90% of the time, but fell they deserve alot of praise on this one.

_Kaiser_

I genuinely don't get this obsession with boot time.

I mean, my Win 7 laptop (and desktop) both get to the login screen in about 10 seconds from cold - is maybe 2 seconds THAT much of a saving?

Surely the true test is to see how long it takes to be READY after you log on, let all your tray apps, toolbars, side widgets, preload bloat, whatever finish setting up? Personally I like a clean desktop, tray so I only have the essentials running on startup.

But for the average user, I'm sure once you take all that into account there'll be virtually no difference myself... except one has a usable, efficent, refined and proven desktop interface and the other... wellll...

testicle

Kaiser2000 wrote: »

I genuinely don't get this obsession with boot time.

I mean, my Win 7 laptop (and desktop) both get to the login screen in about 10 seconds from cold - is maybe 2 seconds THAT much of a saving?

Surely the true test is to see how long it takes to be READY after you log on, let all your tray apps, toolbars, side widgets, preload bloat, whatever finish setting up? Personally I like a clean desktop, tray so I only have the essentials running on startup.

But for the average user, I'm sure once you take all that into account there'll be virtually no difference myself... except one has a usable, efficent, refined and proven desktop interface and the other... wellll...

Win 8 is ready in that time, not just booted.

Capt'n Midnight

testicle wrote: »

Win 8 is ready in that time, not just booted.

Gone are the days when you had to reboot windows on a daily basis.

Resume is much faster.

Fysh

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Gone are the days when you had to reboot windows on a daily basis.

Resume is much faster.

+1

It's been about 5 years since I made the switch to using hibernation rather than cold start, and I haven't seen any of the changes in Vista or 7 make anywhere near as big a change in this regard as I'd like, especially if you're talking about untinkered systems (ie those where nobody has spent a few minutes with msconfig ensuring that unwanted crapware doesn't launch on startup/login).

I would expect, from what I saw of the Release Preview, that switching to an SSD would make a much bigger change to Realistic Startup Time (ie time from hitting power button to being able to get work done in Application X, rather than time from hitting power button to seeing login screen) than any improvement in Windows 8 over 7. I'd be delighted to be wrong, but I've gotten used to treating MS' claims about "faster boot times" the same way I treat their claims about "minimum supported specifications" - they're at best aspirational goals, but achieving them requires some fairly specialised conditions....

CSU

...it boggles my mind why MS didn't try to make W8 an all in one solution, they're saying it was designed around the touch screen...but only that, just the ruddy screen.

How flucking awesome would it have been if W8 could run on anything from old arm tablets and laptops to the higher end PC's of gamers? W8 requires too much of the hardware resources (something I feel all MS OS's have done).

I just don't see the point of W8 TBH, tis not for me I'm afraid...all them square boxes wasting space and charm bars and ****e - get the boat:pac:

unkel

Fysh wrote: »

I would expect, from what I saw of the Release Preview, that switching to an SSD would make a much bigger change to Realistic Startup Time (ie time from hitting power button to being able to get work done in Application X, rather than time from hitting power button to seeing login screen) than any improvement in Windows 8 over 7. I'd be delighted to be wrong

You will be delighted so

SSD makes much less of a difference than the move from W7 to W8. Last of BIOS to windows logo is really only a few seconds - login is possible another few seconds later and realistic work can be done another few seconds later

Did you install Release Preview yourself (or even RTM) and have a go?

BostonB

CSU wrote: »

...i... W8 requires too much of the hardware resources (...

How so? it runs fine on my lower end hardware. I think its better than W7 for speed myself.

Fysh

unkel wrote: »

You will be delighted so

SSD makes much less of a difference than the move from W7 to W8. Last of BIOS to windows logo is really only a few seconds - login is possible another few seconds later and realistic work can be done another few seconds later

Did you install Release Preview yourself (or even RTM) and have a go?

Installed it, fought with the UI for a while, hated it, fought with it some more (figuring that there might be some things I'd grow to like about it), still hated it, decided I was sick of this nonsense when attempting to use the App store required me to log in with a Live account, set up Windows To Go on a USB 2.0 drive, tried that out, discovered that it's a lovely idea in principle but you need USB 3.0 for it to be worth a damn, decided I'd leave it alone until the RTM version was out. I didn't notice boot times or login times to be appreciably faster than Win 7 on the same machine, though that may be coloured by the extremely negative experience I had of NotMetro - ie fighting with stupid bloody tiles and trying to figure out where everything was because MS have had an attack of the Galloping Appleitis and decided that it's all so intuitive that they don't need to explain where things are.

RTM version is now out for Volume Licence customers. I'll probably stick it on a separate drive on my workstation and try it out, but I'm exceptionally skeptical about this "honestly, you're up and running in seconds" business - MS have been promising this for years, and every time a new version of Windows has rolled around I've found I'm sitting there after logging on waiting for profile to load and services to start. Resuming from hibernation to an in-progress session on a local profile remains the fastest power-button-to-useful-work transition I've ever seen (Win7 + SSD).

unkel

Fysh wrote: »

I'm exceptionally skeptical about this "honestly, you're up and running in seconds" business - MS have been promising this for years

This time they weren't lying

I've done several fresh installs in all the public releases of W8 and also a few upgrades from W7 to W8, both X86 and X64 and in all cases everything just worked (no issues with drivers whatsoever)

Fysh wrote: »

Installed it, fought with the UI for a while, hated it

LOL, me too

Fysh wrote: »

fought with it some more (figuring that there might be some things I'd grow to like about it), still hated it, decided I was sick of this nonsense

That's where I took a different approach. I was afraid of hating it, so in W8 dev preview, I switched off Metro at that stage

In W8 cons preview I just installed Vistart and used W8 like W7 (just quicker, more stable and of course free )

In recent times I have started fighting a bit more with the UI, taking it slow

I have no idea how the masses (or the corporate market) will react to Metro though. I think it is crazy MS haven't included a simple on/off switch (for either metro and no startbutton or normal desktop plus startbutton). Why take the big risk? :eek:

BostonB

Because if they make it like W7 much fewer pepople will see any reason to buy it.

Forcing people to Metro/Live will bring them to their app store and other cloud offerings.

The question is, does it have anything you need, or want, and for most people that will be no.

For others who want a cheap OS, that can be made to run like W7 its a no brainer. Cheaper and faster than Vista/W7 and you can turn off Metro.

Fysh

BostonB wrote: »

Because if they make it like W7 much fewer pepople will see any reason to buy it.

Forcing people to Metro/Live will bring them to their app store and other cloud offerings.

The question is, does it have anything you need, or want, and for most people that will be no.

For others who want a cheap OS, that can be made to run like W7 its a no brainer. Cheaper and faster than Vista/W7 and you can turn off Metro.

I agree on the motivation stated in bold above, though there are 2 problems:

1) MS are smoking something amazing if they think gamers are going to bail on Steam and start using the MS Store; if anything gamers will likely just avoid Win8 for the time being.

2) The smart thing for them to do, which they don't appear to have done, would have been to position the MS Store as a repository type system that could vastly simplify package management for corporate customers. I'm betting they opted not to do this because it might annoy the various enterprise-scale vendors who sell products to do this (the likes of Kace, Secunia, etc) but frankly every day that passes without Windows having a package manager worth a damn is a continuing indictment of Microsoft's architecture.

BostonB

Underneath it works like Windows 7 so you can use the regular Steam app?