Windows 8 on NP9150/NP9170?

Has anyone tried installing Windows 8 on their NP91xx yet? I'd be curious to know how it went. I'm seriously considering bypassing Windows 7 and jumping straight from the Windows 8 Preview into the the release version in October.

What hardware was detected? What wasn't detected?
Does all the hardware work?
Were you able to get working video drivers (specifically for Nvidia 680m)?
Does the keyboard backlighting work?
Have you noticed any increased battery life on Windows 8?

 

Actually I was considering throwing in an old 60GB SSD I have and giving it a go just for fun.

 

I installed it on my Asus, and everything seemed to work by default except LAN for some reason. It was detected and installed but just wouldn't work.

I've also installed it on a CR-48 and it ran really well with zero problems.

We'll see how it goes in a week or two. Still waiting on the delivery man.

 

I have a 9130 - but my experience with windows 8 was great, except for being stuck on the HD4000.

For the life of me I couldnt get a new set installed, and installing the drivers from the CD that shipped with my Laptop would go smoothly but still never utilize the card.

I eventually gave up and went back to 7.

 

I tried it. everything was going swimmingly until I started futzing around with pagefile, and reducing size, and on reboot the screen constantly flashed. Will have to toy with it again later.

 

just gotta keep waiting for steam on linux....... then it is ubuntu only.......need to be more patient.....

 

Are there that many games users can play on linux other than a handful of indie titles though?

 

They announced left 4 dead 2 will be the first steam title available on ubuntu. Others to follow

 

There should be more games to play, Linux users generally have to run them with WINE to get them to work.

 

According to Gabe Newell at Valve, he (and others at Valve) don't really like the direction that MS and Apple are taking with their App Stores and locking down people's computers (Secure Boot, Trusted computing, etc) so they are putting quite a bit of effort into getting their games to run on Linux and trying to convince others to port their games to Linux as well.

I hope they're very successful. I would love to be able to switch my primary OS to Linux. I game pretty often, so it isn't very practical at the moment.

Here's an announcement they made yesterday about their Linux efforts.

Exciting times to be sure!

 

i could already dump windows since i'm not a pc gamer......................
buuuuuut i am planing on getting me a gaming laptop this year(or next one or one after that xD) and going back to windows from ubuntu and the slower system and all the things i have to pay to get.......... would just be a huge letdown so i guess i'll just stick to windows now and pretend i never tried ubuntu and liked it WAY MORE!! :<

 

Definitely exciting, however:

 

Very true, but sometimes all the effort is worth it. It can lead to some pretty amazing results.

 

I have it installed as a virtual machine...probably not what you're looking for.

 

It's funny, I actually made my statement before I found that information which was posted here It's official: Valve is working on Steam for Ubuntu 12.04 Linux - TechSpot News

 

You guys are some kinda bold. Aren't there enough driver issues on Win 7, an OS that's been out for years??? ;-)

I think Win8 will only start to shine when they put it in tablets. For a desktop, I don't know what Win8 has to offer over Win7. Setting up a Win8 VM is not a bad idea though. At least that will provide a test environment that can easily be reset.

-J

 

There have been some performance improvements in Windows 8 even for gaming. But I just can't get used to the UI.

 

Sorry to dig up a thread that's been idle for a month, but I figured I'd chime in & say I've been running dual boot Win7 & Win8 almost since I first got my NP9150. Win8 works great except for one thing: there doesn't seem to be a proper driver for the 7970M. In Device Manager, it shows the little exclamation point on the icon, and says:

AMD Radeon HD 7970M (Engineering Sample - WDDM v1.20)

The HD4000 looks to have proper drivers. Basically Win8 is ready to go... except for heavy duty gaming. Which is why I'm still using Win7 most of the time. Sad that we're ~2 months from Win8 release, companies already have the RTM, and there's no proper driver. Before I got my NP9150, I had the same dual boot on my old XPS laptop, and found I was using Win8 most of the time. It's really not THAT different from 7 for desktop/laptop use IMO, just some things that are hidden away in different places than before. I wouldn't pay big bucks to upgrade from 7 to 8, but I wouldn't avoid 8 either. Unless you have a device with a driver issue... hopefully they work that out by October.

 

I upgraded to Windows 8 on my NP9170 just now - wondering if you ever figured it out. As you said in this age old post, I had a device with a driver issue . About to attempt the new driver installation from Software Upgrade now!

 

Yeah, I don't think the gaming industry is going to follow Valve other than the few indie developers.

 

Get me a build of linux designed to work with all games and guaranteed to work with my entire steam library and I will consider it.

 

+1 to this. I would switch over as I wouldn't mind if there are more games using OpenGL. DirectX seems to be getting in the way of PC hardware. I'm not saying no to Linux, I just don't think it's going to take off, especially not until Valve can prove OpenGL can compete with DirectX. Rage is OpenGL and doesn't run very well. And TF2 OpenGL runs at half the performance on Windows.

 

Unless its just as easy to use and just as compatible people will not move over en mass.

It's as clear cut as that.