Windows 8 Release Preview Discussion

By Roger H.
in The Fast Ring (Insider Previews)

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Thingol

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Posted

Im running it besides Windows 7 in my laptop and ts pretty cool I guess, I liking the super fast performance,the mail, news, photos apps and I'll be checking out the app store later during the weekend. But I'm not so fond of the music app and not much customization for the start screen. Other things I don't like is that I cant snap apps to the side because my laptop screen is 1280x800 :'( and how the desktop is just like sitting there I hope most developers move over to metro I'd love to have Adobe suite, iTunes, and all the other crap I have on Win7. Also there is no Media Center how the hell am I going to watch and record tv on my entertainment pc :'( so I might not upgrade that one for now.

https://www.neowin.net/news/add-media-center-to-the-windows-8-release-preview

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+KibosJ Subscriber²

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How to get Pro SKU out of ISO? Which Product Key to use?

Not sure if the installer asks for a product key, haven't installed it yet, but this COULD be the Pro Key.

GCNRF-BHBCM-W9YWM-VWQP6-TJBWR

Can't be 100% sure, give it a go.

This is in the "product.ini" file on the root of the ISO.

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thomaskc

Posted
Posted

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

I hope you found out already, sorry for not reading all the posts after this but if you haven't Nvidia have released a new Win8 release preview driver.

http://forums.laptopvideo2go.com/topic/29521-toshiba-mobile-geforce-30271-windows-8-preview-released/

Grand Master

George P Global Moderator

Posted
  • Global Moderator
Posted

For anyone who, for some reason, doesn't like the new metro stype task switcher I'd just like to point out that the traditional Alt+tab switcher still works and works well. Also, for those who didn't know you can just right click running apps in the new task switcher and select close from there, if the new pulldown gesture isn't for you, though I found it pretty easy to get used to imo.

Grand Master

Quillz

Posted
Posted

Just got the Release Preview up and running. I really like the new bits of UI, such as the mouse cursors. And I really hope Aero Glass is retained, rather than deleted entirely. Because it looks really nice in this build of Win8. (I'm hoping they just refrain from making Glass the default.)

Grand Master

Vice

Posted
Posted

In my previous post in this topic I spoke about how much space was wasted on my display. I thought I'd take a few screenshots to illustrate my point. Included here is the Start Screen, Video Application, Internet Explorer and a news article from inside the Stocks Application.

Click an image to view it full size or view the whole album here: http://imgur.com/a/KOO9o#0

VMYn7m.pngr5xMbm.jpg

LcS6gm.png9c0O2m.png

The last image especially with the news story using literally 20% of the screen is just ridiculous to me. It's such a waste of space and considering that I have another two 30" screens which I cropped out of these images that do not have Metro visible on them it really makes this whole idea that Metro is the future a big joke on desktop and notebook users. Right now most people who are buying a new display are buying 1920x1080 or higher resolution displays. Metro is clearly designed for 1024x768 and 1366x768 displays. Common tablet resolutions.

Another thing I want to bring up is lets say I was reading this news story and then my friend IM's me using a desktop IM client, I click on his window on my other monitor and all of a sudden Metro goes away including that story. No longer visible. So after I'm done replying to him I have to then bring metro back up to view that story where as if it was just a Desktop app I could simply move my eyes back to the story without needing to click on the window or do anything physical. I do wonder why something that makes people less productive is being heralded as the next big thing.

Anyway just my thoughts and opinions on the Release Preview.

  • .Neo, TheLegendOfMart and Damian
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Grand Master

Detection

Posted
Posted

how?? When I installed it I could only choose "English (United States)" I am talking about having the interface in UK English, not just keyboard or currency and that stuff!

That's just the installer, choosing UK from the second dropdown puts the OS into UK system wide

Grand Master

Quillz

Posted
Posted

There's still lots of legacy dialog boxes, though. Particularly nasty is that Win9x-era Mouse dialog box, including a very pixelated "battleship gray" mouse icon. (I also see none of the other cursor options have been updated, it'd be nice to have the Windows Black cursor scheme updated to match the Aero default.) And the screen saver dialog box is also using a Win9x-era monitor icon.

I hope these are things that are finally taken care of come RTM. The UI is getting quite a bit of focus in Win8 and I hope they don't forget about these old parts of the OS.

Grand Master

George P Global Moderator

Posted
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It's up to the dev to support a resolution higher than 1080p on their apps, those same shots on my 22" screen don't look anything close to that Vice posted. Regardless, any desktop app that doesn't have a UI packed full of god knows what will also waste space when put into full screen like that on such a high res setting. You're also arguing for the minority since most people don't have screens that big or work at a resolution that high.

Still, as far as MS knows, they know that if you have a 30" screen you'll be using the desktop 99% of the time anyways. So just fill it with open windows like you always have been.

Grand Master

George P Global Moderator

Posted
  • Global Moderator
Posted

There's still lots of legacy dialog boxes, though. Particularly nasty is that Win9x-era Mouse dialog box, including a very pixelated "battleship gray" mouse icon. (I also see none of the other cursor options have been updated, it'd be nice to have the Windows Black cursor scheme updated to match the Aero default.) And the screen saver dialog box is also using a Win9x-era monitor icon.

I hope these are things that are finally taken care of come RTM. The UI is getting quite a bit of focus in Win8 and I hope they don't forget about these old parts of the OS.

They said they'll update more after the RP so we'll see small UI changes right up till RTM it seems. I also agree that it's time they cut down or replaced those legacy dialog boxes. They started to do it in Win7 with basic control panel settings being inside the main control panel window but they haven't built on that yet with Win8.

Grand Master

Detection

Posted
Posted

In my previous post in this topic I spoke about how much space was wasted on my display. I thought I'd take a few screenshots to illustrate my point. Included here is the Start Screen, Video Application, Internet Explorer and a news article from inside the Stocks Application.

Click an image to view it full size or view the whole album here: http://imgur.com/a/KOO9o#0

VMYn7m.pngr5xMbm.jpg

LcS6gm.png9c0O2m.png

The last image especially with the news story using literally 20% of the screen is just ridiculous to me. It's such a waste of space and considering that I have another two 30" screens which I cropped out of these images that do not have Metro visible on them it really makes this whole idea that Metro is the future a big joke on desktop and notebook users. Right now most people who are buying a new display are buying 1920x1080 or higher resolution displays. Metro is clearly designed for 1024x768 and 1366x768 displays. Common tablet resolutions.

Another thing I want to bring up is lets say I was reading this news story and then my friend IM's me using a desktop IM client, I click on his window on my other monitor and all of a sudden Metro goes away including that story. No longer visible. So after I'm done replying to him I have to then bring metro back up to view that story where as if it was just a Desktop app I could simply move my eyes back to the story without needing to click on the window or do anything physical. I do wonder why something that makes people less productive is being heralded as the next big thing.

Anyway just my thoughts and opinions on the Release Preview.

Something doesn't seem right, especially if the lower left Bing screen is IE10 Metro, surely it should have scaled up

I can understand things like the start screen looking small, although I would have hoped the tiles would have made more rows to compensate the higher rez

Grand Master

Vice

Posted
Posted

It's up to the dev to support a resolution higher than 1080p on their apps, those same shots on my 22" screen don't look anything close to that Vice posted. Regardless, any desktop app that doesn't have a UI packed full of god knows what will also waste space when put into full screen like that on such a high res setting. You're also arguing for the minority since most people don't have screens that big or work at a resolution that high.

Still, as far as MS knows, they know that if you have a 30" screen you'll be using the desktop 99% of the time anyways. So just fill it with open windows like you always have been.

Funny Windows has always catered to everyone before. I guess all the high end users, the people with the most money to spend and actually the ones who buy their operating system will not be buying Windows this time around and stick with Windows 7. I see no point buying an OS if its main feature isn't designed for my system.

Also I disagree with you that it uses your 1080p monitor well. Open a news article in stocks and post a screenshot to prove me wrong.

Grand Master

.Neo

Posted
Posted

In my previous post in this topic I spoke about how much space was wasted on my display.

It's the exact same story here. Microsoft concerned I might as well throw my 27-inch screen in the garbage container and switch back to a 13-inch one. Metro on such a big screen also gives me the sense of being locked in.

Grand Master

George P Global Moderator

Posted
  • Global Moderator
Posted

Something doesn't seem right, especially if the lower left Bing screen is IE10 Metro, surely it should have scaled up

I can understand things like the start screen looking small, although I would have hoped the tiles would have made more rows to compensate the higher rez

Looks nothing like that for me at 1920x1080, so who knows. Regardless of the scaling issue, he'd hate it anyways :p

Grand Master

Quillz

Posted
Posted

They said they'll update more after the RP so we'll see small UI changes right up till RTM it seems. I also agree that it's time they cut down or replaced those legacy dialog boxes. They started to do it in Win7 with basic control panel settings being inside the main control panel window but they haven't built on that yet with Win8.

That's my main issue with Windows: consistency. The Win7 Control Panel is a perfect example. Some options are modal, keeping in line with the current Windows design trends, while others continue to have legacy pop-up dialog boxes. It's not so much that the older method is bad, it's just that it's inconsistent. You'd think that one program would at the very least have consistent behavior, and yet it doesn't.

It's the one thing Apple does so much better than Microsoft. For the most part, you can be assured that things on Mac OS X will look and feel a certain way and function a certain way. But with Windows, you never quite know. Will it be a modal window? Will it be a pop-up? This is the kind of UI consistency I would love to see fixed in Win8, though at this stage it will probably happen (if at all) in the next major release.

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