Windows 8 Release Preview Discussion

[PGHammer]

Really liking it so far, and this is coming from someone who didn't care much for the CP at all. Metro is easy to get used to, and even if you don't like it, you don't HAVE to use it.

And I've been telling folks that for *how long*?

I've been making plain that, by and large, I *don't* run WinRT apps - and why. However, just because an 0.5 API has issues, the rest of Windows 8 (going back all the way to the Developer Preview, in fact) has been both fast and stable (more with each new public release, and even the DP beat 7+SP1 in terms of performance with common applications).

[Gaffney]

People with big screens have you forgotten how windows works?

Control Panel > Display > Scale it up!

If you have a 30" and you have never increased the DPI then you will either have bad eyesight in the future or your face is attached to the screen. 1600x900 is great for me at 100% but once you reach 1080P even on windows 7 you should increase the DPI so text isn't tiny. In windows 8 it also scales Metro elements.

100% is designed to a max of roughly 1600x900 which is probably 90% of the users.

[azspeedbullet]

did anyone notice any kind of performance improvements from the cp to to rp?

[PGHammer]

Sorry, but I don't see much point in upgrading to Windows 7 if you end up spending most of your time on the desktop. It wasn't what I was getting at either: An average person who uses Mail and Word/Excel on a daily basis will see him/herself constantly switching between two completely different interfaces. It's really that simple.

How is that?

I run Word and *Outlook* on a daily basis, and without leaving the desktop. How? I use the keyboard - not the mouse.

Since Office 2003, Office creates NO desktop shortcuts (not even for Outlook, which was the only shortcut created with Office 97/2000), and I have often been doing something *else* with the mouse (using it in another program, more likely than not), so I put the Run box to work - "winword" for Word, "msexcel" for Excel, "outlook" for Outlook, "powerpnt" for PowerPoint, etc.

Alternatively, you can create desktop shortcuts (or even pin the Office applications to the Taskbar, ala 7).

[Chasethebase Veteran]

Merged threads.

[PGHammer]

did anyone notice any kind of performance improvements from the cp to to rp?

All SORTS of performance improvements - and the CP was far from slow.

[psreloaded]

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?

North Korea!!? ...may be...

India!!... well... its definitely not captivating me... :p

[.Neo]

People with big screens have you forgotten how windows works?

Control Panel > Display > Scale it up!

If you have a 30" and you have never increased the DPI then you will either have bad eyesight in the future or your face is attached to the screen. 1600x900 is great for me at 100% but once you reach 1080P even on windows 7 you should increase the DPI so text isn't tiny. In windows 8 it also scales Metro elements.

100% is designed to a max of roughly 1600x900 which is probably 90% of the users.

BS. Everything is perfectly visible at normal DPI settings on my 27-inch screen, which carries a native resolution of 2560 x 1440, when using either OS X Lion or Windows 7. Scaling up the interface means everything gets disproportionally big and voids the reason I got this screen in the first place: to fit a lot of content (video editing, desktop publishing etc.).

[mduren2445]

used the upgrade assistant...wiped out everything ugh...so much for an 'upgrade' would not let me save files or anything

[trenzterra]

Does anyone know if the topleftmost hotspot still interferes with the ribbon interface? E.g. take Microsoft Paint and maximise the window, while having a Metro app at the background. When you try to click on the Paint icon on the titlebar, does the Restore, Move, Minimise, Maximise etc thing pop up or does it just switch you to your Metro app? I found this rather appalling in the CP and hope it has been fixed...

[Vice]

People with big screens have you forgotten how windows works?

Control Panel > Display > Scale it up!

If you have a 30" and you have never increased the DPI then you will either have bad eyesight in the future or your face is attached to the screen. 1600x900 is great for me at 100% but once you reach 1080P even on windows 7 you should increase the DPI so text isn't tiny. In windows 8 it also scales Metro elements.

100% is designed to a max of roughly 1600x900 which is probably 90% of the users.

My 30" display has a resolution of 2560x1600 which is a DPI of 100. The same as a 17" 1280x1024 or a 20" 1680x1600 or a 24" 1920x1200 or a 27" 2560x1400 display.

My display is no different to all yours, it's just bigger. My Apps are not larger than yours, I just have more space to put more apps on at once, at the same pixel density and the same physical representation in real life. There is no need for me to scale anything up as a result. If my display had a DPI above 110 then we would be discussing scaling and resolution independence.

So once again, text on my screen is the same size as it is on your screen, I just have more room to fit more text at the same size as your text on my screen at once.

[Eric Veteran]

Doesn't look like the stocks app to me. Also you picked the longest article there was and it still didn't fill the screen :/

Well you proved my point at least.

What do you want it to do? Make up more of the article to fill the page?

[Eric Veteran]

Where is the remote desktop metro app?

It's still there, just not pinned by default and not orange anymore... Just type "remote" on the start screen. :)

[mduren2445]

update...was able to dig a lot out of the windows.old folder but a pain in the &$&*$&*%$* If they don't get the upgrade assistant fixed so it moves files and settings forward that are compatible when you upgrade by the rtm, the average joe who does not know better will be ^*&^*&^ when they try an upgrade

[Eric Veteran]

update...was able to dig a lot out of the windows.old folder but a pain in the &$&*$&*%$* If they don't get the upgrade assistant fixed so it moves files and settings forward that are compatible when you upgrade by the rtm, the average joe who does not know better will be ^*&^*&^ when they try an upgrade

Mine upgraded in-place just fine.

[Vice]

What do you want it to do? Make up more of the article to fill the page?

It would be nice if when you read an article instead of taking you to a new page the square you click simply expands to the articles size. Alternatively the article could be surrounded by similar articles or previous articles on the same event. It could even show more information about stuff in the story such as small bios on the people and companies involved, their stock prices and recent information on the companies financial situation. There is too much room there for it to just be wasted like it is.

[Eric Veteran]

It would be nice if when you read an article instead of taking you to a new page the square you click simply expands to the articles size. Alternatively the article could be surrounded by similar articles or previous articles on the same event. It could even show more information about stuff in the story such as small bios on the people and companies involved, their stock prices and recent information on the companies financial situation. There is too much room there for it to just be wasted like it is.

I would submit feedback on the apps that are doing this, then. I know they're produced by MS but they're obviously incomplete still and I'm sure they'd value the feedback. I've already sent some choice words in about the Live Essentials replacements.

[Knife Party]

been playing around with metro and stuff for last hour, so far i'm trying to figure out what i've been waiting for? OMFG, this is what I get? Shoddy coloured tiles all over the place, a constant inconvenience to launch simple apps, metro looks like garbage. where are their GUI interface designers???? it feels like i'm enjoying the changes to aero, explorer and that side of the interface, I'm constantly looking for my start menu, or atleast something easy to launch my specific app, don't want to cross over into metro just for that.....

So far the majority of changes are shallow on the Aero side of things, Metro well, poor old Metro is just.... wth? I wastes so much space, its got almost no design principles in place, its just giant inflated pictures with blobs of coloured tiles and giant text all over the place, its faaar from consistant, some apps took longer to launch, aka use a long loading screen on my SSD, which normal heavy apps don't even do in W7 for me...so wth? what's with the extra loading, what? the blobs of colour and extreme text take that long to load?

also, what's the point of still giving us Gadgets? yes gadgets, i have giant tiles now in metro that do stupidly simple things, like weather and mail, that also wants to take up all of my screen by defualt....huh??? I'm sorry but if Windows 8 metro turns out like this, byebye w8 purchase. God dammit, does MS even think for a miniscule of a second, how well things are turning out.... i mean months of work on simple tile apps which look retarded, other that ....what really significant, or essential am i getting????

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

MS and metro...

Looks like they're trying to turn Windows 8 into an Xbox 360.

They could've put the Metro interface in for those that wanted to use it, and left the rest of us to what we've been using for 10+ years (removing the start button is such a dickish move, so simple to leave it in), but no, forcing Metro down the throat is the way to go.

[Vice]

MS and metro...

Looks like they're trying to turn Windows 8 into an Xbox 360.

They could've put the Metro interface in for those that wanted to use it, and left the rest of us to what we've been using for 10+ years (removing the start button is such a dickish move, so simple to leave it in), but no, forcing Metro down the throat is the way to go.

If they did that barely anyone would use it and developers would have no reason to build WinRT apps which would result in the tablet not being any competition for the iPad. This is just Microsoft abusing their monopoly to shoehorn their way in to a new market and it is like you said a dick move.

The way it is now you are forced to use it if you use Windows 8, every time you boot up, any time you want to open an App that isn't already pinned. This is all part of their devious plan.

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

If they did that barely anyone would use it and developers would have no reason to build WinRT apps which would result in the tablet not being any competition for the iPad. This is just Microsoft abusing their monopoly to shoehorn their way in to a new market and it is like you said a dick move.

The way it is now you are forced to use it if you use Windows 8, every time you boot up, any time you want to open an App that isn't already pinned. This is all part of their devious plan.

If that would truly be the case (that barely anyone would use it), then their research/marketing department hasn't done a good job. If MS truly believe in Metro/Apps on a desktop PC they should not be 'afraid' to offer the options desktop owners currently operate efficiently with (leaving a start button in is no sweat, Windows 8 is built off of Windows 7, it's all already there). If Metro is that great and well researched then we should all want to use it right, MS? :rolleyes:

[.Neo]

What do you want it to do? Make up more of the article to fill the page?

I want to ability to have more than just one app fully open when using Metro instead of having everything full-screen while it clearly isn't needed. Not everyone has a sub-17-inch screen or suffers from poor eyesight.

[Vice]

If that would truly be the case (that barely anyone would use it), then their research/marketing department hasn't done a good job. If MS believe truly believe in Metro/Apps on a desktop PC they should not be 'afraid' to offer the options desktop owners currently operate efficiently with.

I truly believe this is all about the tablet. That they are leveraging their huge market share on Notebooks and Desktops to drive adoption of WinRT by consumers which will in turn incentivise developers to make WinRT apps which will result in the Windows 8 tablets having lots of apps to compete with iOS and the iPad.

[margrave]

Installed it into a virtual machine, I can see improvements.

Metro aside, it's a good OS. I just cannot find any functioning method of customizing a default user profile. Nothing of the past works! The sysprep method will only copy the local administrator settings and that will not work for my work environment. Everything is great expect this one, rather large, oversight of a feature.

As for metro, I don't understand the logic MS is using here. You have 3 major product lines, two of which, Windows and Xbox, sell incredibly well. So you take the third, which isn't selling so well, and make the other 2 look just like it. I must be missing something.

That's my 2 cents...

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

I truly believe this is all about the tablet. That they are leveraging their huge market share on Notebooks and Desktops to drive adoption of WinRT by consumers which will in turn incentivise developers to make WinRT apps which will result in the Windows 8 tablets having lots of apps to compete with iOS and the iPad.

Yeah, 100%.

Desktop PCs are not 'mobile' platforms though MS.... Using them as a trojan horse is a bold move, one which I hope fails (it truly would force me to reconsider the long term choice in desktop OS - I'll happily stay with Windows 7, but if Windows 9 goes even more App/Mobile orientated....)

You get away with blasting the 360 with Metro as it's a closed games console and has a huge following that want to continue using their system. I'm not so sure it's going to be as rosy on the Windows front.

It kind of feels like MS are trying to make the desktop environment a more closed and regulated environment?