My test of Win8 CP

Executive summary: Forget it. They can keep this crap.

Perfectly fine for touch interfaces I am sure, but completely inappropriate for a standard desktop environment. Who was the Einstein that decided that because Windows needs to be relevant on touchpads, now everybody needs to operate their computer like a touchpad? What would have been wrong with offering Metro as an option? I won't even start to list the number of places where the forced touch metaphors are just plain awkward, or make no sense whatsoever. Given that there's almost no Metro apps out there, and taking into account that even the vast majority of applications that come bundled with Windows are not, and do not make sense as, Metro apps, why are we forced to muddle our way through an interface that simply does not belong on the desktop?

O.k., here's a real simple example: After I have booted my machine, what do you think I might want to do? Look at a pretty picture? Or, log in, perhaps [gasp!]? So, once we have established that chances are pretty good I might want to log in, why in all the world do I have to jump through some inane hoops to do so? I certainly have no interest in performing some awkward mouse gymnastics for no good reason whatsoever. Sure, I can just hit Enter, but why is that step even necessary on a desktop? I know this might seem petty, but it's symptomatic for the rest.

Another example: I happen to have very significant number of applications and utilities, large and small, installed. There's hundreds of those, in fact. It is very easy and intuitive to access them through a well-organized start menu, either by clicking through a simple hierarchy, or by typing in the Search Box. In Metro, searching through screen after screen becomes a nightmare of pointless mouse acrobatics. Sure, I could search for the application, but what if I don't even remember its name, or I want to access some utility that has a generic name? What if I happen to just want to look at the Help file for an application?

In addition, by now we have split up configuration settings into an even more mysterious mess of Control Panel plus "PC Settings" plus other stuff, depending on where you are. Clicking on tray icons randomly brings up either a menu, or a Win7-style info window, or a Metro-style sidebar (in the case of the WiFi connection icon). There's a "Personalization" item in "PC Settings", which has somewhat similar, but really different stuff in it from what's in "Personalization" under "Settings". You got to be kidding me. Not sure whether to laugh or cry at that kind of idiocy.

While we're at it: What's supposed to be the point of bringing up some random little window showing time, date, battery status and WiFi signal strength if I activate the Charm Bar? Believe it or not, all of that information already is in my taskbar on the desktop, by default!

And don't even get me started on the inanity of having to activate that Charm Bar by navigating with the mouse all the way over to the top-right corner...

So, who designed this? I am sorry, I am one of the people who feel that quite often Microsoft indeed manages to design good products, but certainly not this time. The UI of Windows 8 is a train wreck, plain and simple, and I have a hard time seeing them being able (assuming they'd even be willing) to fix this by the time this has to be released.

In my opinion, at this point they have two options: Either make their Metro stuff an option that is automatically selected for touch devices, but allow desktop users to continue being productive in a startmenu/taskbar environment, or loose (again) the goodwill of millions of customers, along with the customers themselves.

For me this is thanks, but no thanks. Maybe there is something to this idea of Microsoft making progress with every other version of Windows. If it's true, then maybe Windows 9 will be o.k. again. I'll check it out when they release that one, but until then I'll stick with Win7. Too bad.

 

Same here , I formatted it after 10 minutes not 20 though.
It's polluted OS , and it's obviously not meant for PC.
Metro interface is not mouse/keyboard friendly.

 

Pirx Excellent points, I would add no AV installed by default? Or did I just miss it? thanks Prix,
I used method 2 here to get the start orb back where it belongs - rather convoluted but effective!!
http://www.askvg.com/how-to-enable-good-old-start-button-orb-and-start-menu-in-windows-8/
This fix will load the desktop after login http://www.addictivetips.com/window...creen-to-jump-directly-to-desktop-on-startup/
MSE seems to be called windows defender now, JEEZ now I am confused not LOL

 

I think you missed it, kind of. As I understand, MSE is now integrated In Win8.

 

Change is hard.

Use it for a month unchanged, and then say if it's appropriate or not, that helps you fix your prejudgement based on the fact that it's different. Don't judge it any moment before that.

Well, then again, wait till it's released and do it then, as the apps are right now very few and of quite low quality.

The rest is just a matter of habit, nothing else. You'll believe otherwise, and you can enjoy doing so, but habits can change over time and do, so the problem won't be a problem anymore, then.

Anyways, i'll have to stay out of win8 hate threads for a while.

 

Dave, spare me. From another posetr over at the Win8 Blog: " There's nothing wrong with change at all, ill-conceived change to cash in on an unproven market at the expense of a proven one however is sheer idiocy."

I have seen enough in the couple of hours I used it today. Besides, how many people do you think will say, "Oh well, right now I think it really stinks, but I'll give it a month or two, maybe it'll grow on me"? What planet are you living on? Dave, this is not how things work, and this is not how products become successful on this planet. This is how products, and companies, fail around here.

Incidentally, I visited a number of Microsoft forums today (their official Win8 CP forum, and their Win8 Development blog), and all I can say is "Wow"! These guys have a full-fledged disaster at their hands. Feel free to not listen to or believe me, but if you look at the sheer amount and intensity of the criticism there, that should tell you a story. Like somebody else has said, if I was Sinofsky, or work in his team, I would be afraid. Very afraid.

Specifically, it is entirely clear that Metro as designed right now cannot be a replacement for the start menu, for fundamental reasons, because it does not allow for a hierarchical structure (you cannot nest groups of tiles within a tile).

Like I said, if things don't change significantly, and I don't dare to hope they will, then I'll pass on Windows 8. Another five years or so down the road, and I may not be interested in a Microsoft OS anymore at all.

Nonsense. I am quite capable, as are others, of distinguishing between habits and necessities.

Here, I'll give you something on your way out: The graphical design of some of the UI elements I see in the CP is among the most pathetic excuses for design that I have seen in a long, long time. In fact, the graphics for some of those "switches" in Metro comes right our of early-day DOS. That's now, what, 30 years ago or so? Is this supposed to be some sort of a sick joke? Plus, all of the work on jump lists, graphical app switching, etc., etc., all thrown out? If I was in charge, I'd fire the whole Win8 UI team, starting with Sinofsky, and start over. Yes, that is going to be painful, but unless something happens before the release of Win8, some very serious damage will be done to the Windows franchise, right when it has just barely started to recover from Vista.

 

I disagree. Metro is useful for purely laptop/desktop use once you re-organize it to fit your needs. It needs re-arranging, and then it's brilliant. Try this. This way, you can launch everything you normally use in a Windows desktop environment with one tap of the Start key and one click of the mouse. That's it.

Column 1: Frequently-used folders in Windows explorer (work files, etc). You can pin individual folders to the Start window, and I've done so with my most-frequently-used half-dozen folders.

Column 2: Productivity programs (for me, this is Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc).

Column 3: Email client, music player, apps for news sites, FB when they release a FB app.

Column 4: Games.

Column 5: Everything else (i.e., stuff I almost never use).

Everything is now launching into the desktop instead of staying in the Metro UI (except for the news sites), but launching them is faster than using the Win 7 start menu. One keystroke and one click to open an Excel window, or to open Client X's file. That's it.

That's not how Metro is organized straight out of the box, but once you do that, I think it works great.

 

And when you begin to install more programs the metro start screen will populate more and more. Your column structure begins to lose integrity if the list gets too large. Because you want to categorize everything this means you have to delete all the unwanted tiles and shift them to their appropriate place everytime you install an application. Anytime an application is installed a new tile is created in the start menu. Also what happens when metro apps come out and it fills up more of the screen. Sure its all possible to move the tiles where you want them to be and if you never install another application for a while it can be great to access commonly used stuff, but its more of a pain than not IMO.

 

I tried it yesterday... Kinda liked the Metro UI and the revamped Aero windows, BUT it really isn't suited for power users and productive work. I have all the apps I use running all the time, so I'm pretty much in desktop mode all the time (thankfully, Dexpot still works), switching through them (and killing Metro apps because they clutter the ALT-TAB window). I still haven't found a way to open a new tab in the new Internet Explorer.

On a high resolution display, it's also a bit distracting having to go to a full screen interface to open a new app or use the search feature, especially since I'm never running them full screen. A few years ago, I was still running most apps in full screen, like a noob :-D and I would've liked Metro more back then.

I like all the other features of Windows 8 - fast boot, great task manager, smarter copy/move operations, etc., and if there's an option to disable Metro, it would be a perfectly fine desktop OS.

By the way, the one thing I actually hate is the super dumb settings in Metro - you have to search for the Control Panel in order to access the more advanced settings.

 

When I found out you actually have to look around a decent bit just to turn off the computer...fail.

How to, uh, turn Windows 8 off | Microsoft - CNET News

 

first hour of install on desktop i was lost i didn't know if i want it or not after spending few hours on it i find it joyful very easy and a lot faster than windows 7 in fact im going to make my main OS on desktop, laptop and future tablet when the final version released i really like it a lot

 

As some one who has resisted change, I too found the linux ubuntu distro switch from gnome 2 to unity hard to stomach... but after spending some time with it, I eventually found it almost unbearable to use anything else.

Windows 8 is riding a very fine line though. Some features are pretty awesome - e.g. LOVE the search - exactly how I use unity, search for everything! but dislike the convoluted mouse movements. It is riding a fine line between being a hindrance and a different way of doing things.

I daresay metro may be less "forced" in the final release. If apps etc are implemented correctly, however, I see no real reason why many of the more "home" users (think outdated parents ) will not enjoy windows 8.

The pseudo-hibernate shutdown/startup (if implemented correctly) would be neat though - my win 7 startup time on an i7 (1st gen) has skyrocketed, almost twice as long compared to an old core 2 duo 2007 macbook.

 

I found myself on the dektop most of the time. I tieid the metro apps out but with mixed results. I could not do a straight shut down as there was a thread error and it just restarted me.

I use RocketDoc so this saved me from loosing the start button. It is what I use all the time anyway. Why if you are working a desktop do you want to constantly have to switch over to metro to launch a new app and be switched back to the desktop?

I can see where as a social machine, IM'ng, web email, social sites and even MM stuff Metro could be great over time. For productivity all I can say is YUCK. Win8 needs some major changes to bring it back to Win7's level of use for productivity and then further to go to make it worth an upgrade.

Metro is a memory HOG. those running apps take up some ram. Where with win7 I rarely see 2.5 GB ever get use up and usually run at 2GB metro had me running 3.2GB like nothing just a few apps. Now with 8GB this is not an issue but those with just 4 should watch out.

I want to like it, I really do. I even tried it twice and if things change a third time. For now I see where as an entertainment machine and social communication device this may make it. Problem is we already have extremely portable communication and MM devices out there.

I should note IE10 was awesome and some of the Metro apps were nice like weather, music and camera. For all its productivity issues the few cute functional metro apps do not give Win8 a passing grade.

As another side note; Most want eye candy! This is why we spend so much for powerful nachines and demand high resolution. Win8 to me is a major step backwards here. The biggest issue is this will be forced on all new systems eventually, what a shame (maybe time to relearn linux or hackentosh?)...................

 

installed W8 on my elitebook and the only thing it did for me was hated my laptop even more lol, I couldn't stand the metro interface and especially the stupid lock screen / login screen. I reverted back to my W7 pro install after a few hours of playing around with that junk UI, this OS is made for tablets/touchscreen computing.

I felt all the power user interface was gone. W8 is also target for grandma or grandpa that dont know how to navigate all that well.

The only thing I look forward to is W7 Sp2!

 

Well, under the current system, your Start menu gets more and more populated, so you have to scroll and scroll to find the programs you want. For people who have seventy programs installed instead of seventeen, it's going to be difficult either way. Once I re-arranged the programs into sensible groups based on how I used them (as opposed to their publisher), with the most-used groups and most productivity-oriented groups furthest to the left, I found it really easy to tap Start, click a program, and go. Much faster than the start menu in my opinion.

You're right, moving a tile into the right place in your Metro UI every time you install a program is a bit of work. Not a lot though; they move easy enough. It's really just one click-and-drag every time you install a new program.

 

Just remember to do it ASAP after installing the program(s). Or it will be a real PITA if you try to organize everything at once after a while.

 

This is the most puzzling aspect of Windows 8. There are reports of a possible Windows 8 "power regression" causing major drops in battery life on notebooks in comparison to Windows 7, reports of excessive hard drive activity, and excessive RAM usage. I think we all know that most current ARM devices are shipping with no more than 1 GB of RAM, and at best, upcoming ARM devices will only be offering 2GB when Windows 8 launches.

How does any of this make sense for a mobile, touchscreen oriented operating system? Is Microsoft really serious about Windows 8?

Actually, I find that I pin the two of three most commonly used applications ot the task bar and simply use desktop shortcuts for less frequently used programs. It's quick and simple, and the folder view start menu in Windows 7 is reasonably compact.

 

When W7 was first released, I got noticeably less battery life in it than with Vista. I'd pin that on the lack of optimized W8 drivers at the moment.

 

Oh, so that's all? Awesome. You know that you can do this with a single click on the Taskbar from the desktop, right? Or, use the same keystroke and click on the Start Menu. So, what is it again that Metro does for me here?

No, it doesn't. First of all, keep in mind that you have single-click access to a significant number of items on your desktop already. I have about twenty items on my Taskbar, quite a few of which have jumplists as well. Frequently used folders are, of course, already present as jumplists (either automatically, or pinned, or both) from the Explorer shortcut on the Taskbar. I am also using a dock on the left side, so I have single-click access to roughly 30 items right from my desktop. With the two clicks that are needed for the Metro nonsense, I can easily get access to a few hundred items in Taskbar and dock if that is what I decide I need or want. So, how's that Metro screen treating you with, say, 150 tiles on there?

Now, at this point I haven't even touched the Start Menu once. Of course, that will also offer me two-click access to a significant number of items. I counted 27 in my start menu, but I could easily extend it to hold 40-50. So now we're at almost 200 items I have two-click access to. Still with me on your Metro screen?

Most importantly, however, pretty much the only reason I ever go to the start menu is those obscure little utilities, or perhaps the Control Panel, that I need very rarely. But if I need them, it is very easy to find those items by going through the well-structured hierarchy of the Start Menu. I just checked, and I happen to have a total of over 1000 items (not a typo) in my start menu. Not everyone will have that many, but a few hundred is not unusual at all. Some applications install 10, 15 start menu items for themselves. How do you think that Metro screen will treat you with 1000 tiles?

Sure, you can remove some stuff, and then use Search to find a shortcut. So, let's say I'd like to look at the Help file for some obscure little app. I type "Help", up pop a couple dozen choices. Good luck... By the time I have managed to find what I need I may have forgotten what I was doing on my desktop, which has disappeared, for no good reason, while I am trying to find that Help link.

See, there's two main issues here:

Number one, the Metro screen does not truly allow for a hierarchical organization (which, by the way, both iOS and Android do provide), which severely limits what can be accomplished with it.

Number two, the switch to the Metro screen takes you out of your current work context, and is needlessly disruptive because of that. Heck, all I want is to start a program like I have done hundreds of times before. There's no need for me to look at and potentially be distracted by all sorts of crap on a pretty screen ("Oh, look, Apple stock just went up 20% after the Win8 CP was released", "Wow, Santorum said what, again?", etc., etc.).

No, you don't. It's very easy to implement a hierarchy in the Start Menu in such a way that you'll never have to scroll, ever. This is in stark contrast to the Metro screen, which does not give you that option, at all. Sure, if you only have maybe one or two dozen items you care about, it kind of works, but it fails completely if there's more.

It's going to be difficult in Metro, but there's no issue with the start menu.

That's an illusion. It's not objectively faster at all. Remember, for the few items you are talking about here, a single-click on the Taskbar is all you need. On the Start Menu, it's two clicks (or key+click), exactly the same as in Metro. The difference with the Start Menu is, it stays out of the way entirely when it's not needed, and when I need to go to it, it stays out of the way as much as possible, without needlessly interrupting visual continuity.

At this point I haven't even started talking about the abomination of having two wildly different design languages randomly intermixed, namely the Aero-Glass theme of the desktop, versus the Mickey-Mouse graphics of Metro. Microsoft, and others, had invested millions into taking advantage of the graphics capabilities of modern hardware, in order to harness them for better productivity rather than just eye candy. With Metro all of a sudden all of that is thrown out the window (pun intended). That decision made a minimal amount of sense when you had to deal with the limited performance of last-generation phone hardware. Even with the latest generation phones, let alone tablets, laptops, and desktops, this makes no sense at all.

 

By the way, I fully agree with this. There's plenty of things to like about Windows 8, but the UI isn't one of them.

 

How true Pirx, I can only wholeheartedly agree with you. I had the Developer Preview on one of the old laptops at home...

Usability = zero.
In fact, if I were to be forced to use a Windows 8 device with metro (or something similar) I would possibly be forced to use the illegal route of making an old Windows disk at home work or would have to go down the Linux route...

Metro on a non-touch device can only be described as unusable.

On a side note, does this still work? That worked on the developer preview:
MiKTeX on Windows 8

 

Ahh. Didn't realize there was one right opinion on windows 8. Guess if its a fail for one its a fail for all. Failure to adapt perhaps? Guess ill wait till I am forced to upgrade to windows 63.

Wasn't it designed primarily with touch screens in mind anyways? I don't see why everyone has their panties in a wad. If you dont like it don't use it. Don't see why its necessary to bash people who are able to adapt to it. Not like their opinion is more or less valuable then anyone else's. Certainly not wrong.

Im not sure Im getting the big deal here. Guess I have to play with it later.

 

I suppose Windows 8 might be for the mentally challenged...

There is change that takes getting used to, and there is change that is idiotic:
- A structured (alphabetical) list vs a mess of tiles.
What do you prefer to select a program? The former is also easier to explain to novices.
- Clicking and dragging through a list with a mouse when in the past one could use a scrollwheel? Might work on a touchscreen, but NOT on a computer without.
- Menus: I wonder if they changed it since, but in the developer preview the search was a mess... in Vista (or Win7) you search and get the options. Search for "update" and then select which category it belongs in... yay... now how is that determined? (For MS applications easy, else?)

On this note, I can only agree with Pirx on Win8 - on "conventional" computers, at least with Metro, a usability train wreck.

 

Agreed, But I can come up with one reason. We have to wait for RTM before we know for sure.

I think MS is trying to push the Metro UI into the market as much as possible with the W8CP, and if this causes to much negative feedback, they'll add a Metro/Start menu switch.

After all, it's better that MS is forcing us to use Metro now, so that we honestly can tell what we think of it before MS decides on how RTM will work,
than giving us the option of the start menu switch in the CP as well, AND THEN forcing us to use Metro in RTM.

Think about it, why was the switch there at all in DP otherwise?

 

For two or three programs, that works really well. For one to two dozen programs, it doesn't work as well. You can still do that with the two or three most important programs.

@Pirx--instead of a point-by-point response, how about we just say that I'm really excited about using Windows 8 for productivity purposes as well as family use--I've already experimented with using it for my work (no touchscreen, purely productivity oriented) and for me, it works great. But you're going to continue to use Windows 7. So we can agree to disagree as to which is "better"? It is a somewhat subjective question, after all.

 

Nope, RPEnabled is gone. No Start Menu, at all. We're out of luck here.
There is some speculation that Microsoft will offer their Professional versions of Windows 8 with the option of a Start Menu, but it's pure speculation at this point. But, hey, after all, this is a Consumer Preview, so maybe there is some hope.

 

Too bad.
I really don't want to be forced off Windows - or off the legal path...

I don't know when I will buy a new computer, but whenever I do, it will be in the Windows 8 era...

I do have a Wind 7 Professional disk from MSDN-AA lying around at home... but that would not be legal to install any more.

 

It's really funny because a lot of the problems you described are so easily avoidable.

One example is the "moust gymnastics" for logging in. You realize that hitting any key makes the picture disappear right? You mention this so I don't see the issue, really. Like... *gasp* you have to hit a key.

Anyways, this is a fairly typical response to a drastic UI change. You haven't learned the shortcuts, you haven't learned how to make use of the UI.

 

Oh sure, absolutely. I have no doubts that Metro works well for you, if you say so. Let me emphasize that there is nothing wrong with finding Metro productive, or even superior to the Win7 way of things. All I am saying is that it does not work well at all for certain usage patterns, and that (a) those particular usage patterns are perfectly valid, and (b) not that uncommon for professional use.

For that reason, I strongly feel that Microsoft needs to allow those of us who want to do so to opt out of Metro, and give them the Start Menu back.

I would still say that from a purely quality point-of-view, the design of a number of the graphical elements in Metro is unbelievably poor, but that's a different discussion.

 

You realize that I specifically mentioned that in my post, right? Try to read and understand what it is I had said.

No, it's not. As you would know if you had read and understood my post.

 

I'm on an awful connection right now. I edited my post - it just took forever. I'd, of course, meant to put that in originally.

 

It just feels very weird and awkward...at best.

At worst I feel like Windows 8 is just gonna drive me insane. Simple things that I used to be able to do in Win7 feel like they take an eternity or impossible to do in Windows 8.

 

There are a lot of new features in Windows 8 that I'm loving. But, I just can't get passed the lack of a Start Button for the Start Screen. The switch to the Start Screen being in the bottom left corner, 'app' & program switching being in the top left corner, and charms in the right side are fairly annoying to me. If there was a way to keep the same Windows 7 styled interfaces with the new Windows 8 features, I'd buy it. But as of now. I don't see myself getting Windows 8 anytime soon purely because of the Start Screen. It isn't that bad, and I think on a tablet or touch interface PC it would be great. But for a power user such as myself using hotkeys and mouse or touchpad, the Metro UI start screen just isn't as easy to navigate as it should be with keyboard or mouse. And, actually, it takes longer to navigate certain things or do certain functions than what the start button allows me. For this reason alone, I don't care for it.

Change is good, and often necessary. But this complete UI overhaul is not great for mouse&keyboard interfaces in my opinion. I've used Windows 98 SE, ME, XP, Vista, 7, Ubuntu, LinuxMint, and whatever the Mac OS was back in 2000-2002 and their UIs have always been similar in style (the only UI of all of them I hate is Ubuntu with Unity). Otherwise they all work and simple for me to use. The Start Screen is clearly innovation and a radical change from anything we've seen before. And for me, it just doesn't work.

I have many Microsoft software devices. The one's already using Metro would be my Xbox 360 and Windows Phone 7 which I love and have no issues with the Metro UI on. However, on my laptop, I just don't care for it and this alone is enough for me to pass on Windows 8. Going from XP to Vista wasn't that big of a leap, the addition of the Aero Desktop was nice. The addition of better driver support and the Taskbar has made Windows 7 my favorite of anything. I've only been using Win 7 since August so I feel as if I could go a lot longer with it.

 

I have dubbed it the Windows 8 shutdown challenge.

I dual booted Windows 8 on my laptop and challenged my friends and family to shutdown the machine in under 2 minutes. 8 out of 10 failed.

 

It's almost as if a new UI has a learning curve.

EDIT: Also, a tip to see all apps.

Metro start menu -> right click area -> All Apps.

That easy.

 

I just installed as a dual boot, still want to give it a chance and have noticed a few things.

Since no longer upgraded I am on a true install at full boot.

1.) ram usage is way down. It now can run on 2GB easily x64
2.) single threads are handled differently.
3.) no more power down issues.

There is no more with an app setting affinity from the Task Manager. This goes to item 2 above. I'll use SuperPI 1.5 as my example here. I should note since Win7 was already optimized for iCore individual threads this may not apply, it only applies to CQD as there are two physical cores.

This is running at 3.2 GHz on my Q9200 and SuperPI at 2m.

Win7;
1.) no affinity set = 42s
2.) Affinity core 0,1 = 36s
3.) Affinity core 0 = 36s

Win8;
1.) Affinity not avail = 36s

Now in task manager there may be a clue. Here is what is observed again running SuperPI at 2m looking at all four individual cores.

Win7;
Each of the fours cores seems to run a shared load approximating 25% for each core. This is fairly steady through the run.

Win8;
The load for each core seems to interleave at 100%. you no longer have each core running along side one another on the same task just one at a time.

My theory then falls to this, now this will not be realized or barely if at all noticed in a C2D. The biggest performance hit in the CQD is the fact that when a thread is split and run simultaneously the CPU has to split memory loading, and off loading, to the two cores. This duplication of the memory essentially slows the CPU down where a significant performance hit happens to non affinity set threads.

Windows 8 seems to have eliminated this by taking the affinity and just moving it from core to core. It also seems to better keep the tasks at core 0,1 and then 2,3 as well but I have yet to fully test that out.....................

 

@TANWare, that's pretty interesting - so Windows 8 basically uses each core until it's 100% loaded, then switches to the 2nd, 3rd and so on. That should indeed make things faster since single threaded apps are shuffled much less between cores. Win7 slows everything down because it has to load all cores evenly all the time...

 

It doesn't look to load the cores but interleaves the load. only one core at a time hitting the L1, L2 and main memory. Makes for a huge difference in the CQD.

I ran 3dmark06 with the CPU @ 2.66 GHz. On Win 7 it was 3818 CPU marks and on Win 8 it was 4212 cpu marks at 3.2 GHz Windows 7 gives 4505 CPU marks and Windows 8 4927............

I finally installed system tools to correct clock my GPU for windows 8. The GPU scores were not majorly different. maybe slightly higher in Windows 7 but not something that can be definately looked at with any significance.

So it appears a preliminary result is the new thread handling gives out about a 10% or better increase in performance for the CQD................

Edit; I used to be a big detractor for CQD's as with XP, Vista and windows 7 the thread handling took a huge per clock performance hit over the C2D, this OS seems to have solved that issue quite a bit. It would be wonderfull if it made it too Win7 SP2.............

 

Wait, so we can't select cores manually anymore?

 

By the way, here is a very well considered critique of Windows 8, along with what I feel is a fairly good enumeration of the main drivers of Windows' evolution: Windows 8: A Giant Misstep Forward

Well worth reading, I think. Feel free to comment.

 

Metro is fine as a consumer interface. Just like other devices consumers use now. The biggest issue, especially with the audience in this forum, is PC/Laptops are production machines. Metro, just like a PS3 interface, is fine for just some casual games and the like.

M$ needs to realize this and gear the OS accordingly for either the old desktop or a reimagined Metro interface for production. Albeit the upgrade alone caused issues here but with rocketdock I did not miss the start button missing other than to reboot etc. Personally I liked coming out of desktop/work mode over to a consumer level interface for entertainment purposes.

In time there may be Metro Apps that are worth more than just casual use. Until then the desktop on a pc should be the standard, as mentioned, with metro as a fast switch option. Personally I would love to see the start button replaced an my personal favorite is a DOC. I am open to other ideas but metro for now seems counter intuative, or a step backwards, from the old start button.

Again I'll state Metro is pretty cool. Just like current Windows apps, not everyone wants, needs or will like them all. As the market builds things will get better though. It would be nice if M$ comes up with a good DOC program, or other start button replacement, to run from the desktop.........................

 

Yeah, but why didn't they make it optional on laptops/desktops is beyond me. They could've easily made it like Media Center - start it for simple use or entertainment only...

 

And if you load up Metro with Windows Explorer shortcuts and desktop applications, instead of mobile apps, that's exactly what Windows 8 already is. Microsoft doesn't have to change a thing about Windows 8 in order for you to use Windows 8 exactly how you describe. That's what I'm doing in Win 8. I use Metro as a highly-customized, graphical, full-screen start menu, with my work taking place on the desktop, and it works fantastic.

 

With a doc I can open apps right from using say IE or excel. Again though I am at 1920x1200 and do not usually run any app full screen. I do not want nor need a full screen start button...........

 

I don't mind the UI. When I used W7 for short period of time, I never used the start button, I just pinned what I needed on the taskbar. And when I got stuck with vista when that computer crashed (or blew up more appropriately....) I just used the desktop. The Start Button wasn't used much for me...

So when I use the start screen now, I don't really mind. W8 is really fast for me, and the only problem I hate is that a few security programs need a W7 or below kernel, but that's not much of an issue...

Design-wise the only thing I could suggest would be making the start screen part of the desktop. Would like having a taskbar and a start screen on the same screen.

But they should make it optional just to not annoy the crap out of the people who don't like it. Doesn't look like it would be that hard :X

 

I tried a full install but the early deal breaker is the HP software would not install. When you do just an upgrade from Win7 the tasks at single thread are 25% per core. The interleave enhancement is not there. It still is a bit faster but not by as much. So yet again back to win7 for me...........