official Windows 8 Consumer Preview Discussion

[Zain Adeel]

Hate to say this. CP is too unstable. App quality is not up to the mark I had set in my mind.

Im talking about IE10 immersive.. Really buggy..

Some apps don't even open. They show the loading screen then go away. And I see them suspended. I have to close them and open again. The gestures work great. The scrolling and all that is great with the mouse. Hugely improved over DP. but the apps are ****!.. plain ****!

they had a lot of time to get good apps ready. But they didnt.

[efjay]

Did Microsoft do any user studies to see how straight old people keep the mouse pointer when they click? They click and then jerk or jerk and then click. I can't see them keeping it that straight in the corner.

There will be a hardware Windows key on their device, no need to hit a small area of the desktop if you dont want to.

[McKay]

Wouldn't it be 1995 to 2012?

Nah, I started using Windows in 1998, so I've been using a Start Menu 1998-2012. The time period was only our time together.

[V23]

I was all set to download the ISO and install on a VHD but the download link from Microsoft's website downloaded an installer rather than an ISO file. Do I just select 'install on another partition' and it should work fine?

[remixedcat]

Still not a fan, will be fine as a tablet/touch screen OS but don't see the advantages for a desktop OS. Removing the start button on the desktop is silly, not obvious how you go back to the start screen (I know but it's not obvious). Plenty of things are simply more fiddly than before if you're using a keyboard and mouse. The live tiles are nice but not really a big step forward over desktop gadgets.

Managed to crash VMWare by loading Metro IE10 and clicking yes to the do you want daily pics question, not a big deal but first time I've ever had Workstation crash.

Actually doing anything in IE10 kills vmware

LOL VMWare!!! Nice one!!

[McKay]

So far, the only part Ive been unimpressed with is the Metro apps, they are buggy and often unresponsive. I cannot add my @me. account to the mail app, because it only supports Hotmail, GMail and Exchange.

Apart from that, the non-metro stuff. (The Aero desktop) is top notch, improved everywhere, and incredibly stable.

[Guest]

Is this right? Most Metro apps don't work at 720p?

I'm asking because I honestly can't believe that!

Why on earth would you use the standard of 1024x768 when 1280x720 is so much more common these days?! I mean, sure, maybe if we're talking about old legacy hardware but this really isn't for that kind of hardware!

I usually run windows on my PC at 720p, everything is simply too small to read at 1080p.

Now, I could use 1080p with the accessibility option to "make everything bigger" but it doesn't make everything bigger. It makes the tiles bigger and leaves the text tiny still :(

On another note, anyone know how to choose a different colour from the like.. 12 they offer? They're all pretty garish!

[statm1]

Found a small UI bug: Shift-rightclick on the closed IE icon on the taskbar and there will be a "run". Doubt thats supposed to be there.

Drag stuff off the taskbar? Was that something in the DP? I certainly can't do that in Win7.

Ok so you could never drag icons off the taskbar before my mistake..

[lt8480]

Could someone enlighten me / show me if "sync center" is in the CP and whether it has changed ... at the moment I'm syncing a drive on my HP TM2 to my desktop, would love to give it a spin as its a multi touch device :)

[bbfc_uk]

I don't know what to think of it. I can see it being amazing on a tablet or a laptop with a trackpad and gestures, but on a desktop I just can't see it being very user friendly.

I really wish my MacBook Pro's trackpad would allow gestures on Windows 8 - that would be so cool!

[Evolution]

Not sure this is a new feature or not, but if you right click in the bottom left corner you get a list of options such as device manager, run command prompt with admin rights, etc. However the one thing that is getting on my nerves is the rebooting when you choose a different OS on the boot manager.

[Blackhood]

Can't even boot up the installer on my desktop... it's stuck on the betta fish screen (the throbber doesn't appear either).

Installing fine on my netbook though, I'm not sure how it'll handle it... never meant to install it here in the first place, but it seems that I've no choice :p

Same thing happened to me on my main computer desktop. It took 20-30 mins to get past that screen then started to go through the setup process and got "dpc watchdog violation".

Turned out it was the marvell controller on my asus board doing it. I use that for my main hard drive (6gb/s). Disabled it and it took about 10 mins to install.

So looks like I will have to move my hard drive to the regular sata ports to be able to dual boot with 7.

[thefonz]

is it true Ms 'Splosion Man is included? I downloaded it this morning and will stick it onto my old Asus Netbook to give it a whirl...

[blaaha66]

Not sure this is a new feature or not, but if you right click in the bottom left corner you get a list of options such as device manager, run command prompt with admin rights, etc. However the one thing that is getting on my nerves is the rebooting when you choose a different OS on the boot manager.

make win7 default os so it wont use win8 boot manager

[chrisj1968]

how in the world do I run applications since the old school start button is gone? my first impression is that this is a mess.

I'm not keen at all with this Windows8. How do I access my games? I feel like i'm in a car without a steering wheel.... :cry:

[thefonz]

hit the big windows button on your keyboard?

:woot:

[stevember]

Feels horrible with multi-monitors.

I keep running IE instead start menu, KB shortcuts hard for me because I'm paralysed.

Loving file dialogs in desktop, but really needs start menu as option.

Really needs option of modes touch tablet or desktop, not fragmented put finger in metro, mouse out, in, out, in, out shake it all about...

[ManMountain]

how in the world do I run applications since the old school start button is gone? my first impression is that this is a mess.

I'm not keen at all with this Windows8. How do I access my games? I feel like i'm in a car without a steering wheel.... :cry:

Stating the obvious I guess, but you just pin the application to the main Metro UI. For games you could just have a folder filled with your game icons pinned to Metro.

[micro]

My experience with this release has been a disaster as far as desktop use goes. I have dual monitors. The metro apps are completely useless I have 4147200 pixels of real estate and with the metro apps i am wasting so much of this space. Also major inconsistency between desktop and metro start. I am closing apps by pulling down, swiping from the side etc and then i end up in the desktop for a program and suddenly closing an app no longer works the way it was working. Feels thrown together. I will be optimistic that microsoft will polish this up for desktop users by rtm. However if it is released functioning anything similar to what i just used today, I wont be upgrading.

[stevember]

I can imagine my parents trying use this LOL took my 5 minutes to find restart.

[Stoffel]

I'm only at 51%, can't wait to install it tomorrow afternoon.

For the people having issues figuring things out Paul Thurrott wrote some nice articles on Win8 CP explaining how a lot of the new mouse and KB shortcuts work

[Rigby]

hit the big windows button on your keyboard?

:woot:

Not my keyboard. They didn't have Windows keys in 1987. :p

[brink668]

Don't like the Metro Desktop for a Non Touch Screen Interface for reasons Im sure already explained. Start Button/Hidden Start Menu location is really not a good fit for Non Touch Screens. Looking forward to see better Server 2012 material this really isn't that stunning at the present time. Wish I knew what 100,000 changes were made and why.

I will not be recommending this OS in its current form. Hope you dedicated feedback givers really tell Microsoft this isn't the way to go, I see a lot of people moving on. If, you change to much and try to be like Apple well if they have to relearn all new stuff again, believe you me they will choose do they want to relearn a Microsoft product OS or try something different as they will most likely feel that the same learning curve will be for both. I think all this is going to do is, make a lot of home users jump ship. I see it in my town and with my clients this isn't doing any good for them. Except for dedicated touch screen interfaces.

[micro]

Im pretty sure new lines were accounted for in that 100,000 changes.

[BajiRav]

4.0.1. The latest version.

I can't get the boot camp installer to run (tried all compatibility tricks). I have snow leopard so it must be pulling in boot camp 3.3, right? Is there a way I can download boot camp 4.0 from apple in snow leopard?