Windows 8 stable enough to use as Main OS?

By McKay
in The Fast Ring (Insider Previews)

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Thunderbuck

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The Windows 8 blog advises the Developer Preview will NOT support an upgrade install.

I've got Win7 Ultimate, and I'll be installing the Preview as a VM in VirtualPC myself. That makes it eminently "disposable"

Grand Master

giantpotato

Posted
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While the safest route would be to dual boot, I definitely do believe that it will be stable enough to run as primary OS.

Remember Win7 developer build? That was stable right from the start and never went back to Vista at the time.

I seem to recall a Windows 7 bug that destroyed MP3's, so no, it was not stable from the start. :rolleyes:

Edit: Well, after reading the rest of the thread, Denis W seems to have already pointed this out. :whistle:

Grand Master

.Neo

Posted
Posted

Labels, not letters. Windows does the letters. And if you don't label them, they're just called Local Ha....never mind, what the heck am I doing?

Honestly don't know what you're getting worked up about. Does it affect you in any way that someone else isn't labeling their drives on their computer?

Grand Master

PGHammer

Posted
Posted

The Windows 8 blog advises the Developer Preview will NOT support an upgrade install.

I've got Win7 Ultimate, and I'll be installing the Preview as a VM in VirtualPC myself. That makes it eminently "disposable"

I'll be doing both bare-metal and VM-based installs; however, the bare-metal install will be on a different drive from my existing Windows 7 install (I have a drive more than large enough for this).

The VM installs will be a straight bitness shootout (x32 vs. x64) with identically-configured VMs - the bare-metal install is for comparison against 7 x64 with SP1.

However, notice that I said *drive* - not partition. The Windows 7 drive won't even be physically connected during the installation of the Developer Preview.

Proficient

Thunderbuck

Posted
Posted

I'll be doing both bare-metal and VM-based installs; however, the bare-metal install will be on a different drive from my existing Windows 7 install (I have a drive more than large enough for this).

The VM installs will be a straight bitness shootout (x32 vs. x64) with identically-configured VMs - the bare-metal install is for comparison against 7 x64 with SP1.

However, notice that I said *drive* - not partition. The Windows 7 drive won't even be physically connected during the installation of the Developer Preview.

That sounds like a sensible approach. I'm studying for 70-686 this week, so I might try a few test deploys to VMs, but I'll wait for a beta before I can bothered with a physical drive.

Grand Master

McKay

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Posted

Is the OP's question a joke ?? Please say yes.

No it wasnt a joke, I my roommate during training used Windows 7 Pre-builds and betas as his primary OS and never encountered any issues, I was wondering myself.

However now I'm going to make a partition to dick around with it.

Apprentice

KangoChad

Posted
Posted

How much space would you recommend for a partition to install W8 on? I'm using a laptop with about 250gb HDD - 30gb goes to the main OS and programs and the rest goes to data.

Would 20gb be enough just for a little tinker around?

I intend to dual boot.

Thanks in advance :)

Mentor

Jen Smith

Posted
Posted
Would 20gb be enough just for a little tinker around?

If you get the one without Visual Studio/Blend/etc, I don't see why it wouldn't. No guessing on the other one, Visual Studio can be pretty hefty depending on what they included, plus they said there's samples and a ton of other materials too.

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Ambroos

Posted
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You know what you can always do...

Install Windows 8 to a VHD. It's just a file on any disk you want, it's easy to replace and to delete, and it works perfectly :)

Steps will be the same as you did for installing Windows 7 on a VHD.

Guide: http://forums.techarena.in/guides-tutorials/1175447.htm

  • Dreamspell and KangoChad
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Apprentice

KangoChad

Posted
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Cheers Ambroos - I've seen VHD files before, and obviously forgot about them. This could be a better solution for me.

Just had a quick skip through the install instructions and it says to make about 7gb available on your physical drive.

Does this mean I have to store the VHD on my C drive? This drive is only 30gb in size and is pretty much full. Also, I don't want to uninstall any of my programs to make space as I need them all.

Could I place the VHD in my D drive, where there is much much more available space or will this not work?

Thank you.

Proficient

Buendia

Posted
Posted

You know what you can always do...

Install Windows 8 to a VHD. It's just a file on any disk you want, it's easy to replace and to delete, and it works perfectly :)

Steps will be the same as you did for installing Windows 7 on a VHD.

Guide: http://forums.techar...als/1175447.htm

That's great tip and I was just thinking about doing that :)

Thanks for the link

Grand Master

PGHammer

Posted
Posted

That sounds like a sensible approach. I'm studying for 70-686 this week, so I might try a few test deploys to VMs, but I'll wait for a beta before I can bothered with a physical drive.

The only reason I'm going the bare-metal route is because I actually have a spare drive more than big enough.

I'll also be doing VM installs in both 7 x64 and the Developer Preview, comparing VPC with Hyper-V.

That comparison is warranted for two reasons - first off, Hyper-V replaces XPMode/VPC 7; second, Hyper-V as a *desktop application* has real competition - namely, VirtualBox. While both are free, VPC7 has usability issues compared to VirtualBox, especially for non-Windows guests - does Hyper-V address this even a little by comparison?

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