The Windows 8 thread.

[alex666]

decided to jump right in and updated my win 7 to win 8 and go at it full bore. D3 did not work, found some work-arounds I had to use to get it to play, but seems to be working fine now. Other than that, everything has worked.

Well, take that back, as I was writing this I needed to find something, so brought up app search, backed out to metro, and that locked up my PC.

I'll still play with it and give it a good month or two, but I'm still skeptical

I updated from a very lean Vista install to Win 8, and it did not transfer all my programs. So beware. But really, the only apps I had on it were Office 2007, and that was easy to reinstall. It did keep the cpu-z hw monitor program oddly enough, but that program has actually crashed a couple of times.

Usually I do clean installs, but I upgraded this just to see what would happen, and despite a few glitches, it's running very well. That said, I would not want to upgrade to Win 8 from an older pre-Win 8 install that had lots of lots of programs on it. Like with any new OS, I could imagine lots of problems doing that.

marty

[alex666]

Check this out, I saw this at Anandtech today.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5968/a...blet-windows-8

Scan down to the video. This was at Computex.

Pretty impressive, what Win 8 will look like on a fast tablet, which then could easily be converted to a desktop et al. Anand has some interesting commentary in the brief article. Very impressive IMHO.

[alex666]

I'm looking at several articles on the new MS Surface, and first appears it just seems dumb. I have yet to see one picture showing it used as a tablet. It simply looks like a mini notebook. I guess the cover/keyboard detaches, which begs the question of what are you going to do with a loose cover/keyboard.

No hardware specs, and possibly even a different version of Windows 8. I'm anxious to see how this plays out.

Why don't they just build the absolutely best tablet they could.

[mmettin]

I'm looking at several articles on the new MS Surface, and first appears it just seems dumb. I have yet to see one picture showing it used as a tablet. It simply looks like a mini notebook. I guess the cover/keyboard detaches, which begs the question of what are you going to do with a loose cover/keyboard.

No hardware specs, and possibly even a different version of Windows 8. I'm anxious to see how this plays out.

Why don't they just build the absolutely best tablet they could.

GO to the source

http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en/us/about.aspx

http://www.microsoft.com/global/surf...especsheet.pdf

[alex666]

I did go to the source, saw that first link, did not see the second. Neither answers the following: cpu? Display? RAM? Battery Battery life? Picture of someone using this as a tablet. Is there a camera?

Geez, the cheaper one (on left) only has USB 2.0. They have got to be kidding.

I was really hoping for something much much better than this, as I would love to see someone put Apple's feet to the fire.

marty

[alex666]

Okay, PC Mag finally had some goo info. Here's the link.
The "professional" version includes an i5. That's pretty hot. The "consumer" version only has USB2 among other features, ARM processor.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2405989,00.asp

[grimmster]

2 weeks in on win 8 full time. I am still missing the real start button. Steam sometimes loads, sometimes it does not. A clean install might have helped.

Maybe after a few more weeks it will become easier to use and find things.

[miguelsantana]

Want the start button back go here:

http://www.stardock.com/products/start8/

just installed it on the RP 8400

just not the same as windows 7

not much works, has the search option

apps section works as for settings nothing here
but the apps does bring up everything you have installed

just have to mess around with it

my issue is the netgear wna1100 issue- won't take ssid password . and the colors bleed on the words , maybe i can change fonts ?

[miguelsantana]

Not sure how many use Chrome browser but it works fine so far in 8

[miguelsantana]

for those looking for windows 7 looking start it can be downloaded here

http://lee-soft.com/news/windows-8-start-menu/

looks just like it should

[kbohip]

Why doesn't MS just go ahead and call their newest OS what it so obviously is....Windows 7-Tablet Edition.

[alex666]

Why doesn't MS just go ahead and call their newest OS what it so obviously is....Windows 7-Tablet Edition.

Supposedly, and I cannot recall where I read this, Wim 8 has a lot of changes from Win 7 under the surface, e.g., security and the like. Otherwise, it does just look like a tablet-version of win 7.

[Bryan]

Well like Vista MS is pulling features out of Win 8, just hope it doesn't follow that example.

[alex666]

Okay, I beat up on the Surface a bit the first day it came out. I finally watched this:

http://techreport.com/discussions.x/23154

and now I definitely want the Pro version with the i5 chip. This also brings Win8 into perspective as a very flexible OS for MS' own very flexible tablet. I suspect those Pro versions will sell like hotcakes if they work as well as they appear to in this video, and there's no reason why there should be any problems.

Also, I have had several weeks now to use the latest version of Win 8 on my old laptop (2008 Gateway C2D 2.0GHz) with a Mushkin SSD and I it has been nothing short of amazing. It is the fastest thing.

So maybe, just maybe, MS really has something genuinely "hot".

[alex666]

I happened to watch that video from above and I noticed that they made reference to a key on the Surface keyboard that is apparently unique for Metro. That could be interesting and perhaps will fill in a few missing links, like being able to quickly shut down with minimal steps.

For various reasons, I watched that whole presentation from beginning to end, and I must say the Surface is very intriguing. It does have a camera built-in on both sides. I still think USb 2.0 on anything new hardware sucks, but there is USB 3.0 on the i5 version.