Windows 8 Release Preview Discussion

[coth]

Hmm, can't install it on both VMware and VirtualBox. Getting 0x0000005D error. That, afair, means incompatible CPU. 64 bit Russian ISO, Intel 2500K, 64 bit Win7, 8GB RAM. Virtualization is on.

CP was working fine on both. Mac OS X 10.7 works fine on VMware as well...

[deleted_acc]

runs smooth on my laptop. Only issue I have is the scroll up and down bar on the right of my touchpad doesn't scroll. Tapping the pad does click though so that's a plus.

find out the manufacturer of your touchpad and download a (presumably w7) driver from it... i've got a synaptic stuff in my dell and had the same issue with scrolling but driver install solved it completely

[Argi]

Are you trying to be difficult for the sake of being difficult? It doesn't really matter what Metro app I open, they all don't really utilize the space my screen has to offer.

You could've picked a better example than the settings app, is what I mean. I can imagine Mail might be a bit jarring with all that white, too.

Yeah I know about that, but the second app only takes up like 1/6 of the screen. It won't allow me give each app about 50% of the screen.

Valid point there. I'd like to able to at least resize them to my liking.

[psyko_x]

Did you read the "And by that I don't mean increasing everything in size so it fills for the sake of filling" part of my post? I can see everything just fine at regular DPI settings. I want to be able to fill all the wasted space with other content as what would be achieved by opening multiple windows on the desktop.

Fair enough. I definitely agree the OS is a little to focused on appealing to tablet users and not traditional desktop/laptop users

[.Neo]

I can imagine Mail might be a bit jarring with all that white, too.

There you go.

Valid point there. I'd like to able to at least resize them to my liking.

So basically I'm only allowed to have two apps open at the same size, one of which taking up only 1/6 of the screen. That's just amazing? I definitely understand why Microsoft would implement this on smaller screens, but on larger ones it's just a waste.

[Roger H. Veteran]

Playing some jams from my laptop to my WDTV Live SMP :) PlayTo seems to finally work right now (AirPlay/WiFi Direct) :)

[Vice]

it looks really silly on my setup with everything inside metro being full screen. It's pretty obvious that the apps are designed for tablets and such. On my 30" 2560x1600 screen (of which I have three on my desktop) it just doesn't look right there is wasted space everywhere, below app content, to the side. I just don't get why they have included Metro on non-tablet devices and not included a way to deactivate it. Even if all the apps I use had Metro versions I'd be a lot less productive, I mean first of all it doesn't even cover all my screens, only the centre one and again the unused space even on one screen is jarring and irritating. Is Microsoft trying to kill multitasking? I just don't get it.

[Lucas]

Is anyone experiencing high cpu usage with Skype constantly? Like even if idle it's using about 30% of my CPU (i5 2500K @ 4.5GHz)

[xendrome]

it looks really silly on my setup with everything inside metro being full screen. It's pretty obvious that the apps are designed for tablets and such. On my 30" 2560x1600 screen (of which I have three on my desktop) it just doesn't look right there is wasted space everywhere, below app content, to the side. I just don't get why they have included Metro on non-tablet devices and not included a way to deactivate it. Even if all the apps I use had Metro versions I'd be a lot less productive, I mean first of all it doesn't even cover all my screens, only the centre one and again the unused space even on one screen is jarring and irritating. Is Microsoft trying to kill multitasking? I just don't get it.

Same boat man, same boat.. 30 inch Dell LCD and a 24 inch next to it... I don't need apps running full screen at 2560x1600. I really don't know what is going through their heads...

[xbamaris]

Anyone else having problems with non-metro Internet Explorer? It seems to just hang all the time and only rarely brings up pages. The Metro one works fine.

Is anyone experiencing high cpu usage with Skype constantly? Like even if idle it's using about 30% of my CPU (i5 2500K @ 4.5GHz)

Also yes, I am. Though, Skype alone is using 14% of my CPU% Constantly, I'm on a Core i7 920.

[Dot Matrix]

Ugh. All these mis-matched and bright colors on the Start Screen are killing the OoBE.

[phunkymunky]

i'm still downloading it, so can't wait to test it.

has anyone tested out Windows Media Center at all? Is it more of the same?

[Gaffney]

I can see why some people don't like this, it's a big change and it will take time for everyone to adjust. I'm struggling to cope with the basics more than any other version of windows but this certainly has potential on tablets, Netbooks and desktops.

[psyko_x]

Who at MS decided the restarting a PC is a "Setting"?? What option am I setting here? It took me like 5 minutes to figure out how to reboot my machine :-/

[Gaffney]

Is anyone experiencing high cpu usage with Skype constantly? Like even if idle it's using about 30% of my CPU (i5 2500K @ 4.5GHz)

15% for Skype here constantly i7 860 @ 3.06ghz

[zhangm Supervisor]

Who at MS decided the restarting a PC is a "Setting"?? What option am I setting here? It took me like 5 minutes to figure out how to reboot my machine :-/

Windows 7:

Winkey + "shutdown -r -t 0", Enter.

Windows 8:

Winkey + "shutdown -r -t 0", Enter.

[Vice]

Who at MS decided the restarting a PC is a "Setting"?? What option am I setting here? It took me like 5 minutes to figure out how to reboot my machine :-/

Now I feel silly, I just ripped my computer from the wall like the hulk when I wanted to turn it off.

Jokes aside, I spent way too long looking for the Shutdown button inside Metro the first time I tried it. I probably spent about 5 minutes same as you. This OS is not intuitive to current PC users but with everyone already owning a Windows PC I wonder which market MIcrosoft could captivate with this musical chair game they've created? India? North Korea?

[br0adband]

I'll try to make it as easy as possible: How do I achieve the below with Metro apps? And before you go on saying "You don't browse the internet while watching a movie in Windows Media Player", you can pretend the latter is something like Word and Windows Explorer something like Excel.

You can't because Metro (afaik at this point in time) only allows for two apps to be snapped onscreen, not three or more.

Basically people with extremely high resolution monitors aren't going to be using Metro much simply 'cause of that aspect. Fire stuff up in Desktop mode/etc and be done with the windows like Windows should be.

Currently running the Release Preview (x86) on a ThinkPad T60 with 3GB and a Core Duo T2300, it's pretty damned snappy and responsive. Had some severe lag when it first hit the Desktop and also when I fired up the News and Weather and Finance apps in Metro but, probably just updates and downloading the most current info. Hit Windows Update and grabbed what was already there (several drivers, some patches, etc).

Running nice and smooth right now even though I'm hampered at 1280x800 resolution and a GMA950 GPU, but it works quite well indeed.

On a more modern machine with some power behind it this thing must scream, especially on an SATA III SSD. ;)

[MorganX]

Question: When installing, if it give you the option to install without copying programs and files... is this like the old custom install? Will it just copy my documents into C:\Windows.old like previous versions?

That doesn't work, does it. Doesn't write the boot sector on the USB drive.

Google Microsoft DVD Download Tool for Windows 7. Easy Fo'sheezy. Select ISO, Select USB, it'll do the rest. Boot from USB and install.

[somethingelse]

My god its fast! And I didn't even have to download the graphics driver this time :D

All if the existing metro apps are better, faster, and the music app doesn't make me want to shoot my computer! Some animations inside apps flicker, but I can just about live with that. I quite like the new aero theme, its surprisingly neat, aero lite is still a bit tacky though.

The whole OS seems faster than the cp (although I think my install had windows rot). The faster animations also make everything seem faster. And metro IE has Flash! Which works very well. I wonder if they'll put Silverlight in as well? They should.

apart from the split personality, i enjoy using it, although there don't seem to be any groundbreaking changes, but they have paid attention to a lot of the details.

[Timan Veteran]

Why do metro apps take forever to open? The splash screen non-sense. Photoshop can open faster than the settings app.

[Franz Passler]

mail app don't work for me!! :(

[rfirth]

Google Microsoft DVD Download Tool for Windows 7. Easy Fo'sheezy. Select ISO, Select USB, it'll do the rest. Boot from USB and install.

I know about that. Somebody said that there was a way to just copy and paste in the files and it would work. Didn't know about that.

So, Windows 8 installed great on one machine. On the other - not so much. The install hangs pretty quickly after it reboots. I just get stuck on a black screen for a very long time. So I forced a reboot, it detected that it failed and rolled back my Windows install. So I tried again... happens again.

At least it's working on one of my machines.

[Gaffney]

I've not been able to figure out how to launch IE in metro mode.

[xbamaris]

Idk if its just me, but playing BF3 makes everything look weird... its like... it looks like I'm playing at a low HZ monitor or something, settings are fine and FPS are 60 FPS due to V-Sync, but it just looks bizarre. And I'm having issues with every time I'm close to an explosion the drivers or GPU's like, half die for 2 seconds then come back.

On EVGA GTS 450's in SLI with the latest WHQL drivers (301.42)

Hopefully NVIDIA will release drivers for this.

EDIT: Fixed it, Oddly enough all I did was just change the Full Screen monitor back and forth from my other monitor and it cleared it up.

EDIT: Another Game I play looks the same as BF3 did, makes me wanna go cross-eyed. Must be something new with display drivers in W8