What do you want from Windows 8 RTM?


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I'm going to give kudos to how Windows 8 behaved today.

I built a new desktop today and the only thing I used from the old tower was my primary HDD. Thought I was going to have to do a complete reinstall, but the damn thing booted right up and configured the new hardware, no user intervention required.

Went from

Motherboard - Asus M2N-X

CPU - A64X2 5600+@ 2.9Ghz

Memory 4GB Corsair Value RAM DDR2 667

GPU - Sapphire Radeon HD3450 (Discrete)

To

Motherboard - Asus M4A88T-V Evo

CPU - Athlon II X2 260 @ 3.2GHz

Memory - 8GB Corsair Dominator DDR3

GPU - Integrated Radeon HD4250

Seasonic X series 560 modular PSU

LOL yeah, I know, my new rig is still "old" but it's faster than what I had and it does what I want. Besides, it was cheap to build :D

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I'm going to give kudos to how Windows 8 behaved today.

I built a new desktop today and the only thing I used from the old tower was my primary HDD. Thought I was going to have to do a complete reinstall, but the damn thing booted right up and configured the new hardware, no user intervention required.

Went from

Motherboard - Asus M2N-X

CPU - A64X2 5600+@ 2.9Ghz

Memory 4GB Corsair Value RAM DDR2 667

GPU - Sapphire Radeon HD3450 (Discrete)

To

Motherboard - Asus M4A88T-V Evo

CPU - Athlon II X2 260 @ 3.2GHz

Memory - 8GB Corsair Dominator DDR3

GPU - Integrated Radeon HD4250

Seasonic X series 560 modular PSU

LOL yeah, I know, my new rig is still "old" but it's faster than what I had and it does what I want. Besides, it was cheap to build :D

marginally faster.

if i were would stay with that till it die then get a real upgrade

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marginally faster.

if i were would stay with that till it die then get a real upgrade

I'm probably going to upgrade to at least a 500GB HDD and throw in a Radeon 6670, but thats about as far as I plan to go. Originally bought a 3.4GHz Athlon II x2 270 for $55, but the ebay seller decided not to send it so I bought this CPU local. I could probably pickup a Phenom II x4 for a boost later if needed. As it is, no performance issues with Windows 8, but the previous rig ran fine with it too. Got a micro ATX that the CPU/RAM from old rig is going into to make a HTPC. Just have to get a decent HTPC case that won't break the bank.

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I would to see the metro interface with not so big fonts and more mouse/keyboard friendly.

Windows 8 RP is, amazingly, the most keyboard-friendly Windows since Windows 2000 Professional. I think you mean more *mouse* friendly.

If you are referring to the StartScreen, simply zoom out (Ctrl+DownArrow OR Ctrl+mouse-down) - default is zoomed-in.

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I'm probably going to upgrade to at least a 500GB HDD and throw in a Radeon 6670, but thats about as far as I plan to go. Originally bought a 3.4GHz Athlon II x2 270 for $55, but the ebay seller decided not to send it so I bought this CPU local. I could probably pickup a Phenom II x4 for a boost later if needed. As it is, no performance issues with Windows 8, but the previous rig ran fine with it too. Got a micro ATX that the CPU/RAM from old rig is going into to make a HTPC. Just have to get a decent HTPC case that won't break the bank.

I *have* a 1 TB boot drive (acquired before the Thai floods as part of another job) which I used first for the CP, and now the RP, as a boot drive. The CPU remains the Q6600 I got last year, and the GPU is the HD5450 from two years, two CPUs, and a motherboard ago. My ATX mid-tower is eight years old (I replaced the two dead fans a month ago), while the motherboard currently *in* the case is mATX. A *minimus* IB upgrade is not even $400 (CPU and motherboard - I have 8 GB of DDR3-1333 I bought last year for this planned upgrade; while I do plan on buying another 8 GB, unless there's another BBQ gone wrong at Sumitomo, I don't see DDR3-1333 returning to even last year's prices until 2014 at the earliest). So why the upgrade? The one thing that puts the pressure on power-wise; desktop virtualization - not gaming. For Windows 8-compatible games (that is *all* games I have thrown at it that I would normally run on 7 except a mere two), performance is equivalent to, or better than, Windows 7, on the same settings and same hardware. Also, the motherboard has hit the memory wall (it has two DDR2 DIMM slots, and both are populated with 2 GB DIMMs). Buying another LGA775 motherboard - even one based on DDR3 - is investing in a dead socket; why should I do that?

The Minimus Ivy Bridge Upgrade

CPU - Intel Core i5-3570K - http://www.microcent...duct_id=0388577

Motherboard - ASUS P8Z77-V - http://www.microcent...duct_id=0386886

And that's it.

The current "brand X" 600W PSU can stay (i5-3570K, even overclocked to 4 GHz, uses less power than Q6600 at stock).

Because of the power headroom I game there, any possible GPU upgrade (most likely is HIS HD7770 iCooler - http://www.microcent...duct_id=0387845) won't do an ACA on the rebuilt system.

Anything else can be done *down the road*.

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I upgraded for three reasons. The crappy nforce chipset in my old motherboard was having issues with USB data transfers and the integrated sound randomly "popped" my speakers when I would click through files in Explorer. Didn't happen often, but often enough to irritate me. The final reason was it's been a few years since I actually built a complete system and wanted to make sure I still knew how :laugh: My cable management still sucks but the modular PSU helped with that. I was able to overcome that advantage and still make damn mess though :rolleyes:

I *have* a 1 TB boot drive (acquired before the Thai floods as part of another job) which I used first for the CP, and now the RP, as a boot drive. The CPU remains the Q6600 I got last year, and the GPU is the HD5450 from two years, two CPUs, and a motherboard ago. My ATX mid-tower is eight years old (I replaced the two dead fans a month ago), while the motherboard currently *in* the case is mATX. A *minimus* IB upgrade is not even $400 (CPU and motherboard - I have 8 GB of DDR3-1333 I bought last year for this planned upgrade; while I do plan on buying another 8 GB, unless there's another BBQ gone wrong at Sumitomo, I don't see DDR3-1333 returning to even last year's prices until 2014 at the earliest). So why the upgrade? The one thing that puts the pressure on power-wise; desktop virtualization - not gaming. For Windows 8-compatible games (that is *all* games I have thrown at it that I would normally run on 7 except a mere two), performance is equivalent to, or better than, Windows 7, on the same settings and same hardware. Also, the motherboard has hit the memory wall (it has two DDR2 DIMM slots, and both are populated with 2 GB DIMMs). Buying another LGA775 motherboard - even one based on DDR3 - is investing in a dead socket; why should I do that?

The Minimus Ivy Bridge Upgrade

CPU - Intel Core i5-3570K - http://www.microcent...duct_id=0388577

Motherboard - ASUS P8Z77-V - http://www.microcent...duct_id=0386886

And that's it.

The current "brand X" 600W PSU can stay (i5-3570K, even overclocked to 4 GHz, uses less power than Q6600 at stock).

Because of the power headroom I game there, any possible GPU upgrade (most likely is HIS HD7770 iCooler - http://www.microcent...duct_id=0387845) won't do an ACA on the rebuilt system.

Anything else can be done *down the road*.

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Internet Explorer 10 fixes

Switching tabs flashes a remnant image of sorts.

All tabs that are just starting to load flash a prompt that says they are unresponsive, followed by loading. I imagine that unresponsive prompt may be longer for low-end users.

Trying to load from a poorly hosted website 200 tabs test failed - IE10 consumed large quantities of CPU and some tabs started displaying gibberish. Better yet IE10 warned me that some tabs (which were loading forever instead of timing out) had been stopped because of some security rationale.

Type this as a URL to get the warning prompt IE10 gives off if a site is loading too long (I used Google as an example)...

res://ieframe.dll/acr_depnx_error.htm#google.com,http://www.google.com

And generally, IE10 has some unresponsive quirks especially when tab whoring (100-200x tabs)

I also noticed that I could not scroll the tab bar - epic failure.

Also W8 should ban classic shell

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I'm going to give kudos to how Windows 8 behaved today.

I built a new desktop today and the only thing I used from the old tower was my primary HDD. Thought I was going to have to do a complete reinstall, but the damn thing booted right up and configured the new hardware, no user intervention required.

Went from

Motherboard - Asus M2N-X

CPU - A64X2 5600+@ 2.9Ghz

Memory 4GB Corsair Value RAM DDR2 667

GPU - Sapphire Radeon HD3450 (Discrete)

To

Motherboard - Asus M4A88T-V Evo

CPU - Athlon II X2 260 @ 3.2GHz

Memory - 8GB Corsair Dominator DDR3

GPU - Integrated Radeon HD4250

Seasonic X series 560 modular PSU

LOL yeah, I know, my new rig is still "old" but it's faster than what I had and it does what I want. Besides, it was cheap to build :D

That's actually due to a lot of the Windows 7 underpinnings underneath (Windows 7 and even Windows Server 2008 and later are THE most forgiving in terms of hardware migration of any Windows I have run across).

Pre-7, upgrading just the motherboard would have forced a reinstall - however, because I'm not only going from Intel chipset to Intel chipset, but staying with the same brand of motherboard, the ONLY OS I MAY have to reinstall would be Windows 7 (it's a triple - all of which are Windows; 7, 8CP, and 8RP); Windows 8 CP, which was installed last, is the default. (I also prefer the CP's mouse-friendly boot menu - 7 and 8RP use the older boot menu.)

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