Has anyone DL'ed and tried the Windows 8 beta on their M17x's?

Just curious what they think...

 

I'm probably going to give Windows 8 a miss. It looks great for tablets and other socially orientated devices but not for me. Lack of a start button doesn't seem to sit too well with me. I might consider it when utilities come out for it that allow the end user to ignore Metro completely.

If it offers new things like DX12 or something I'm not that fussed. As I recall, DX11 was a Win7 exclusive but an update came out for Vista that gave it accesses to DX11 as well.

Windows XP is still being supported at the moment so I'm sure Win7 will stay strong.

 

^^ I think windows 8 is for tablet environment and they will keep windows 7 for pc environment anyway

 

Yeah I like to keep my computer simple and with all those social tablet additional thingies it does not appeal to me at all. But ofcourse if people who tried it writes some info we can get more insight.

 

I will be loading it on my w500 tablet tomorrow, if you want a brief view of it, I can post it in a few days, I cant spare any laptops for now but may try kicking it on my m9750 next week

 

:thumbup: Thanks @KCETech1.

 

I'm running the consumer preview right now. I'm getting extremely low fps on aion. I'll give some more info after a while.

 

I downloaded it, but I need to find some time to get everything setup in a virtual machine and running efficiently.

 

I didn't use virtual pc. I took one for the team. I'm going to revert to windows 7 right now. It's to buggy for me. White screens at login forces me to restart several times. Aion is giving me 10fps and random black screens of death and freezes. They're bugs that can be ironed out later on. As of the OS, I really love the look and and the apps design. I

 

Thanks for talking one for the team. +rep'ed

 

We loaded it up on an old Thinkpad T61 at work today. What were they smoking when they came up with that interface? I was trying to navigate around in there to try some things out. It's like poking yourself in the eye with a sharp stick.

 

I downloaded and installed it on my M17. Perfect timing actually because I need to reinstall my OS anyway (having trouble with shut downs on battery power and I can't fix it).

So far it is interesting, but hardly impressive. I have not expereinced any crashes or bugs, but I haven't gamed on it yet. The lack of a touch interface makes the main user expereince largely unless to us. It took me almost 30 seconds just to figure out how to shut down my laptop, and I hope that isn't the only way because it took me like 8-10 clicks or something (normal Windows 7 would be 2 or 3). So far I see no compelling reason to keep it, but I may do my fresh install with Windows 8 just because I am considering switching over to OS X, and I figure I better give Windows 8 a fair shot before I move my entire home network over to Apple stuff (already running 1 iphone, 2 ipads, and a Hackintosh desktop), my M17 is now my only Windows machine.

The install is painless, and it is easy to switch to desktop mode, which makes it just like windows 7, except there is no start button I can find, and that irks me.

Still Windows 8 is an a crucial Microsoft piece, if it doesn't turn into a major hit, Microsoft could loose all future mobile devices (and the future of computing altogether) to Apple and Google. That could mean the eventual end of Microsoft outside of the corporate sector.

 

I've installed it on a small partition on my M17x. I'm really surprised by it. I wasn't expecting it to be so different to Windows 7 but the whole Metro UI is just plain weird on a desktop. I really like the look of it but the new UI seems counter intuitive on a desktop. Especially coming from Windows 7 which I think is a very high point for Microsoft as far as a desktop OS.

On a touch screen tablet, I think Windows 8 would work beautifully, no question about it. Keyboard and mouse... different story. The culling of the Start button has also saddened me more than I though it would. The OS seems to run very smoothly and I only had about 34 processes running on idle but at this stage I definitely don't see myself trading Windows 7 for it.

 

I installed it on my work laptop, a Studio XPS 1640 and it works very well (not saying I like the Metro stuff...)

I'm not willing to commit my Alienware to testing, but overall the OS seems speedier than Windows 7.

How is it for gaming? have you had any issues with the ATI drivers? is Crossfire working?

If all this 3 are no issues, I will update my beast!!!

 

I installed it on a virtual machine. Didn't want the hassle of partitioning a drive just yet.
It's running smoothly on the virtual machine. But still some is needed to get used to the whole metro interface.

 

Installed in a new partition on my SSD with dual boot, which Win 8 does for you. Working pretty well so far, but difficult to find your way around initially (devil of a time figuring out how to shutdown Win 8 the first time). Gets better quickly. Nvidia 295.73 drivers install easily, look great. WEI makes your components look faster (guessing that they recalibrated the performance indices, at least for some).

​

 

looks cool, how big of a partition did you use? I might take 25gigs or so and install it just to mess around for a while, but not do anything to crazy.

 

I used a 64GB partition, way more than needed for a look and see, but didn't (and don't) know what else I'll want to install. I still have 40GB free, after installing a few items and copying several GB of images and a movie; 25GB should be doable, but tight, 32GB would be better.

 

alright, i got plenty of room to spare so ill go for the 32gigs. +rep (when allowed) for the help.

 

3dMark11 works fine under Win 8, same scores as under Win 7. GPU-Z and HWINFO64 (including fan applet) seem to be doing well, but CPU-Z identifies the CPU accurately but reports the Bus Speed at 208.4 MHz. So, not perfect but not bad for a new OS, better than I expected.

 

Downloading now, I need to do a full re-install of 7 anyway, so I'll play with 8CP for a bit.

 

It doesn't, the scale is now up to 9,9 in Windows 8 instead of up to 7,9

 

has anyone had any video issues with windows 8? i put it on a VHD and i am having issues upgrading my drivers past the last version of dells for the m17x R1...all the other nvidia installers fail during the driver installation.

basically my problem now is that when SLI is turned on i get constant screen flickering when the lock screen should be shown. my screen remains black seems to be turning off and on forever...

can anyone assist?

 

Are you using VMWare? I don't think Virtual machines support SLI or CFx

 

finally got around to installing win8 on a separate partition. I like some of the features, but its very unintuitive for anybody without a touchscreen. I think ill wait till somebody comes out with a UI mod before thinking about switching over.

Spoiler

here is my WIE score. weird how my SSD and my 6990m best your setup in their respective area's. I ran it with the dell stock drivers, still gotta get the new AMD drivers downloaded and see if it changes anything.

 

I am not using VMware. I have used the Windows 8 ultimate virtual hard disk feature to create a 100GB vhd on my C drive that boots to windows 8.

I have successfully gotten the dell drivers running with SLI enabled but it fails to boot properly about 9 out of 10 times and i just get a flickering black screen where I should see the lock screen...

 

I liked it, some really good features in Windows 8. Metro was a non issue for me, don't like it, don't use it. Likewise the lack of a start button. just hit the windows key and start searching, I find it quicker and easier than using the mouse. Also win + X to access settings

Big improvements in file copying and windows explorer.

Sadly I had to revert as my 6990m isn't working with the ATI win 8 drivers

 

Nah, your R3 is probably just faster than mine at WEI.

 

Well If this gets developed, I might be moving to windows 8 haha, start menu ftw.

Stardock CEO Developing Start Menu App for Windows 8

 

So I have access to a copy of the Windows 8 preview edition. I probably wont fiddle with actually installing it until after I have completed Mass Effect 3 in a few weeks (dont want the likely tons of driver issues messing up what I am hoping will be one of the best games ever), but I was wondering if any of you other well connected/braver people out there in the old Forum here have bothered to install it on a configuration like mine...or any other M17x/m18x. Just curious...

 

its not to bad, Just not liking having a start menu. Have it set as a dual boot and my system runs fine with all the Dell drivers + an ATI driver I found that was for windows 8. Not sure if I could find it again, but its around somewhere.

 

How big a partition did you everyone install it on?

I installed it on a 12.5GB partition and still had over 3GB of space left right after the install. I was pretty surprised that my Windows 8 install took less than 10 GB.

 

The way you guys are describing it...maybe it shouldnt be called Windows 8 if its that different? I mean, if the UI functions so differently wouldnt they benefit by calling it something else like "Windows Next" or some other corporate buzz word/phrase like that? Someone mentioned earlier that they found win7 to be a high point for the MS OS's and I have to agree. I really like most everything about win7 and dont really like the Metro interface (especially when I dont have a touch screen to make the interface function as it was originally designed in the first place). Oh well...they will probably support win7 for at least 5 more years, I'll just stick with that.

Unless they take my advice and give this OS a different name and go back to the drawing board for a new windows 8...which would hopefully not use a UI that was completely intended to be used with touchscreens when it was being designed. But hey, what do I know anyway? I just play video games.

 

So basically I decided to download Windows 8 CP last week (I know.. I know.. it's technically a beta) but that's not the issue. It runs fine. It's just that AMD have driver compatibility issues with W8CP.

So my question is this (with specs in the bottom), my temps are running dangerously high, and it's not a question of heatsinks or repasting because those won't help here. It's a question of AMD sucking and screwing with my computer (ie: drivers aren't right). So, will this driver update ( AMD Catalyst Driver for Windows 8 Consumer Preview Release Notes) work for my laptop or is it incompatible? I am currently running on drivers - 8.93.7.0

It's seriously frustrating because my friend with Nvidia graphics card (Alienware as well) is doing fine! And I can' t uninstall, it's like upgrading from Vista to Windows 7 and trying to go back to Vista.. it's hard.

Temps - temps on Twitpic (Lucky for now they don't go above 91, but this is WITHOUT gaming people...)

 

hmm not sure how something like that can make your temps high unless its forcing max usage all the time. i installed the windows 8 drivers and noticed no difference, but maybe it will help you idk. for future reference I would have installed windows 8 on a separate partition, so if you had issues like this you could have just deleted the partition and continued to use windows 7 without problems like this.

 

I've been meaning to try Windows 8 for a while. I need to create a partition first. I'll Have Win 7, Win 8 and Mint on the 160GB SSD. Been meaning to play around with it. We'll see.

 

Yes, well it's a little late (I somehow assumed that it would be an easy install and uninstall... WRONG). Either way, I updated my drivers and they all installed perfectly (which btw is a first for me) and they helped with the CCC errors at startup. Also helped with sleep resume times.

However, it seems Windows 8 was really conflicting with "launch_osd.exe" in which at the start it would literally put an extra 30% onto the cpu usage and speed the fans waaaay up. I force stopped that and fans went back to normal.

However, having done those two things, it seems that my Internet Explorer (beta 10 I believe) is now in some strife in that it barely runs. It's very slow at loading pages, it takes forever to click on something on the page, and trying to type in a web page takes FOREVER. Basically it's uselss. On the other hand, a quick venture to chrome shows that there's no internet/hardware problem.. just an IE problem. So any one have any ideas here? (ran a anti-virus/malware test already, it picked up a few things so I deleted them and it didn't help). Has this issue happened to anyone before (normally or with windows 8?).