Windows 8 Release Preview open for download After much speculation, Microsoft has opened its Windows 8 Release Preview for download, the last major update before the client code is released to manufacturers. "If the feedback and telemetry on Windows 8 and Windows RT match our expectations, then we will enter the final phases of the RTM process in about two months," said …
Another thought.. as someone who's generally downloaded every MS OS at beta just to make sure the stuff I write is compatible with it (I even suffered Vista for 9 months) I really can't get any enthusiasm for Win8, or even get interested enough to download it. Must be getting cynical in my old age... Is it just me?
Would generally agree, though Microsoft offers concrete proof that there's exceptions to every rule. Shouldn't they be smart enough now about Windows to not make egregious choices like making Metro the default start menu? Personally, I'm out. I have every intention of going straight Linux or BSD once they kill support for Win7.
Why wait? Heck, start with running various variants in VMs to get your feet wet, should you haven't done that already. Since things will be different, not to mention the many, many things to try, you will need some time. Even if you decide to stick with macosx or even windows after all, it won't have been wasted time.
"I really can't get any enthusiasm for Win8, or even get interested enough to download it. Must be getting cynical in my old age... Is it just me?"
I doubt it's just you but it's also not universal. I develop primarily on UNIX systems (I've done the odd bit of Windows work here and there), but I've been reading through the development blog for Windows 8. Apart from the suitability or not of Metro on the Desktop, which I've yet to make my mind up about, Win8 is actually reading like they've put a lot of thought into assisting developers. It is well worth the time to have a read through the articles on their blog where they explain a lot of their reasoning. For example this article on screen resolutions:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/03/21/scaling-to-different-screens.aspx
Might seem a bit dry by topic, but things like native Vector support in applications so I can construct the whole application as vector graphics, the APIs for scaling, layout handling, automatically using selecting images based on the user's screen DPI, et al. are actually quite enthusing me. I particularly like the development tools that let me at a touch, switch between all the supported screen resolutions for testing. Similarly at the more techy end. I like how Chkdisk can now function on a mounted volume and can drop repair time down to <2secs. That's even faster than my ext4 partions. There's a lot of stuff like that.
Also, I was initially concerned about Win8 being dumbed down. It's well worth reading this (again from their design blog) article on the Enterprise features for "Bring Your Own" PC.
I'm still not 100% sure what to make of Win8. It looks like Fisher Price, but take the time to read through the design blogs first. It looks like it's going to actually be a dream to develop for.
This is it people the game changer. This is the modern OS that is the future of computing. Forget the outdated Start Menu people need to get with the times!
Microsoft have a vision and Windows 8 is the first step on the road for the next 15 years of computing. Fast boot times, vastly improved security system, long overdue rethink of the Start Menu and more efficient code that uses less resources than Windows 7 and Vista.
Once people see this thing out in the wild they'll soon realise the fantastic productivity savings and innovative features that this OS offers and they'll switch in their droves. I expect this to be the most popular Windows OS yet
I think you're trolling, but I'm not sure.
So, productivity then?
How do you open two documents, the second based on the content of the fist? Because metro seems to hide the whole screen while you're deciding.
Metro is a UI for a phone. I can't help but think that the Chinese have a ten year plan to destroy America by getting US designers to make all their software pointless.
Productivity? As someone that needs multiple windows open, copy pasting between applications, etc. Metro apps are biggest nail in the coffin of productivity the world has ever seen.
I don't know where you got the idea that you can't do exactly this just as you can on Win7 (and rather better if you use multiple monitors) on Win8.
Have you been accepting the word of trolls on the Register as fact or something?
Because you can easily do that. Ignore the Metro launcher. It's just a launcher.
Nothing like a thorough, considered, evaluation.
Sometimes though you don't need a thorough evaluation.
When running windows desktop apps, it's quite likely win8 will end up pretty similar to win7 in use, however there's a rather obvious and jarring paradigm shift in the interaction with the computer as a whole that's immediately obvious.
For some people, this is probably enough to move them away from windows, simply because if you're going to adapt to a new paradigm you might as well take the time to adapt to a different OS instead.
Personally I've stuck with windows because it has become 'good enough', windows 7 is a nice little OS that makes an okay job of years of bloat and UI cruft; windows 8 is different enough that I'll consider giving Gnome 3 a try.
In contract, I installed the win 7 CP in a VM and had a quick play, liked it enough to install it on my desktop, and am still using that same install several years later (upgraded to the release version of course.)
Unless Windows 9 is a serious refocus on the desktop I can see more people making the switch once 7 gets long in the tooth.
I have the CP installed on a 2.66GHz P4, 2GB RAM, 160GB hard drive. Runs fine, though it needs an occasional restart when sleeping/waking repeatedly. The "Upgrade Adviser" says the machine doesn't meet the minimum requirements to run Windows 8. Even though it's already running it.
Paris, best icon for FAIL. Now I'll have to decide if I'm going to install from the ISO -- if it requires reloading everything I'll just throw my Windows 7 drive back in and call it a lesson learned.
I found the answer in the forums pretty quickly. As of this release, Windows 8 requires NX/XD (no execute/execute disable,) SSE2, and PAE. The CPU the on which the Windows 8 consumer preview lacks NX capability (at the very least, as I suspect the system itself does not support PAE.)
It's a shame. Windows 8 runs very well on this architecture otherwise. Actually slightly better than Windows 7 in video playback performance. So I'll run this preview until it expires then swap back to Windows 7. (It's an old, crappy Dell connected to my TV, so it's not like it's critical.)
Paris, not like she's critical.
I know I'm not going to enjoy it.
Heck; even looking at the screenshot in the article shows the idiocy (my opinion) of Win8.
You can see a live tile called 'pictures'. I also have that sitting on the main screen of my Windows Phone, I actually like it. Its a tile (using the full width of my phone's screen) which rotates between pictures which I marked as 'favorite'.
So I use my phone and I often see parts (picture obviously doesn't fully fit so it scrolls) of the pictures I like to see. Given that I don't go over my picture collection on a daily basis its always a nice extra touch (IMO of course).
But on Windows 8? Let me put it this way: Why would I want to have rotating screenshots visible on my start menu (also knowing this gobbles up hardware resources). In a *start* MENU.
Even if you go with the "Metro doctrine" it makes no sense. The start screen (the official name!) is after all meant to /start/ stuff.
If you like stuff such as that (I do to be honest) you'd have it on the location you use the most /AND? reside in the longest. Yes; I have a pictures gadget sitting on my Win7 desktop. It makes sense because I get to see that quite often.
Why would you want this on a start screen only used to quickly start stuff ?
To me Win8 is becoming more unappealing by the day it seems...
I generally found that Windows 7 works better on any given hardware than XP. I've even got it running reasonably well on a 7 year old Dell laptop (and certainly better than xp sp3 on the same machine).
If you're ever going to have to upgrade OS you're probably want to get 7, not 8. I've no idea if MS are going to keep selling 7 once 8 is out...
Seconded. I'm pretty certain we'll have downgrade rights for a certain amount of time, though I have no confirmation of this suspicion. I've now installed Windows 7 on a couple of really old Dell laptops (Inspiron 6300 and 8600) and even with the lack of Dell-provided drivers I've been able to spend a minor amount of time getting properly working drivers with surprising performance.
I have a Core2Duo 1.66GHz Latitude which still runs XP x64. I gotta stay here until I get 802.1x over wireless working in 7.
Paris, because why not?
Yup. My server at home is a 1GHz Athlon with 1GB of RAM. It manages to run Win7 Prof, a mail server, an FTP server, an audio media server and a video media server. The UI is a little sluggish sometimes but tolerable for a server. At work our test VM workstations all have 512MB assigned to them and they run just fine.
Maybe, but they did cut out a lot of useful stuff to get the improvement. For instance, you can't say that Windows 7 file explorer is better the the one in XP - well you can but you'd be wrong. (Speaking who someone who does use lots of files rather than using than the 'puter as an interface to the TV).
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> So you're working somewhere that hasn't bought a new PC for 5 years? Sounds like they really value their employees.
There's a recession on. Hadn't you heard?
Some of us would prefer to keep all our colleagues rather than exchange them for a shiny new PC. YMMV.
I don't see W8 failing like Vista failed, I see it failing because it will not serve it's purpose correctly, in fact it's purpose is still very vague and difficult to define.
It is not a full blown Tablet OS and it is no longer a full blown desktop OS. They have bastardized W7, thrown in some Winphone and are praying that we will shout out "New Paradigm".
But it is not a new paradigm, it is a mixture of several existing ones, "prior art" anyone.....
I have the feeling that MS will alienate the office users and that is a very dangerous game to play.
I downloaded the intial release but I am in no hurry to download the RTM. - I found that the Metro interface interfered with the workflow rather than improving it.
At least there was a reason for trying to make the Darleks bigger.
When they had two short arses in the cast the old Darleks looks OK (actually designed to be about the same height as B.Piper), but next to a guy who is a very tall lanky fellow and the red-head with the long legs they looked a bit titchy.
Windows 8 - What the fuck where they thinking.
It's going to be fun watching this tank. Surely people are stupid enough to actually want something that turns their big monitors into useless squares of nothingness?
At Microsoft Bob was a failed experiment, and Microsoft had the sense to can it. This is making it's way onto production systems. God help us.
How long before Microsoft cut short Windows 7 and Vista support lifecycles to force people to this shit?
"How long before Microsoft cut short Windows 7 and Vista support lifecycles to force people to this shit?"
It's not necessarily the official support deadlines. As I witnessed in early Windows 7 days, a whole bunch of free downloads from the MS site suddenly became unavailable unless you were running Windows 7, and in many cases that meant "Windows 7 Pro or greater".
I believe the idea for Windows 8 is that you have something like an Acer Iconia W500 tablet or that outrageously expensive Samsung Series 7 touch & pen-tastic slate.
Either drops easily onto a dock at one's desk or gets carried around, well, like an iThing.
So it's a multifunction device - desk bound and pret-a-porter. I kinda like the idea but the lack of any software worth a poo is rather frustrating, I actually do like the Metro tile with active content idea. Sheeple don't like complex ideas though & this might just be perceived as neither one nor the other.
I think the play will be for the new corporate mobile "paradigm". BYOD (Android or iPad) isn't going to work in so many places.
@pixl97
You might simply need to alter some settings in the existing BIOS, just as I had to do to get VirtualBox working on a now 2 year old AMD system.
See this earlier comment for the items you probably want to look at.
Smily icon, 'cos I've just realised I have enough posts to use HTML links.
Lots of down votes for the comments, that are all negative, but no one speaking in support of this, umm, abomination. Come on, let us know what's so great about it and how it improves productivity, and is a joy to use.
No I cant' sit on the fence either, stupid giant sized tiles (SGST)? Unless that start button, orb, whatever, comes back, properly, this is one to avoid. Played with the last release, no intention of installing this one, I haven't got the time to waste on it.
Managed to live with XP until Windows 7 quite well, and avoided Vista. I can do the same again. If it's a rip roaring success and MS change the way we use machines over the years, then it will be time to switch. If not, then their next 'fixed' OS will probably be worth the wait. But that's me, others may decide that an Apple Mac or some flavour of Linux is a better change, though watch out, Unity on Ubuntu appears to follow the Win 8 paradigm, and that attracted so much hostility that certain discussion boards were shut down over it.
That's probably because of two things:
1) Most people who like MS software have given up commenting on articles like this where the comments are just a rant fest. Look at the amount of "removed by moderator" comments and ask if that's normal when discussing an OS?
2) Many people who like MS software (myself included) haven't actually used Win8 yet, so can't really comment. This isn't stopping the MS haters from doing the same.
> This isn't stopping the MS haters from doing the same.
Well, for what it's worth, I don't hate MS (at least not for a living ). I have tried Windows 8 (for Desktop use), and still think it's an absolutely dreadful idea.
When Windows 7 came out I said to myself 'This is really nicer than XP', and bought several copies to upgrade my 3 systems.
I absolutely despise the WIndows 8 cartoony/blocky/flat/peculiar Metro interface (at least for Desktop use)...
And it's funny to see them make additional changes to prevent (some) users from trying to revert to the interface they actually liked...
"or some flavour of Linux is a better change, though watch out, Unity on Ubuntu appears to follow the Win 8 paradigm, and that attracted so much hostility that certain discussion boards were shut down over it."
Key differences with Unity are that you get a new Ubuntu every 6 months, so we probably got Unity before it was really ready (those who think this is a negative should stick to LTS releases or other distributions with different release schedules as some users would want to get the software as soon as possible, so this is not necessarily a bad thing depending on who you are and what you want). Also, there have always been alternatives to Unity: other distros with Gnome Shell, other distros that still support Gnome 2 and KDE, XFCE and the like on the Ubuntu base and on other distros.
I'm willing to wait and see where MS are taking this before forming an opinion on it. I'm not too keen on Metro on my XBox, I preferred the layout of the dash before. My biggest gripes with the XBox are that the dash is laggy, you can't turn the adverts off, and typing in some situations in cumbersome because the letters are just lined up side by side scross the screen rather than being arranged as a virtual keyboard (but sometimes you get the virtual keyboard, so we have bad design AND inconsistency). Either way, I probably won't be making the jump to Windows 8, but I won't be avoiding it either unless, after I have tried it, I really don't like it.
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