Quick Impressions of Windows 8 Pro RTM

[MorganX]

Background

Initial Windows 8 & Modern UI hater.

Installation System

i7 2600, 32GB DDR3, HyperX 120GB SSD, AMD 6670

Install Media

16GB microSD, Windows 8 Pro RTM SA

Install

Complete install to desktop (w/Microsoft Account Active) - 7 minutes - Impressive

Performance

Silky smooth and FAST. So fast, switching to Modern UI is non-issue. Really.

Everything is faster. Everything.

Drivers

Had to install only EPSON Printer driver for WF-7510 (basic ESC/P driver there, wirelessly, but worthless only 2 paper sizes)

Motorola Bluetooth adapter and device installation smoother than ever.

USB 3.0 support finally, hopefully also in Win 7 SP2

ACPI

Sleeps to perfection, finally no need to turn off PC

Modern UI

Nothing meaningful available yet except a few games

Biggest pleasantry

Xbox for Windows core games. Yes, Minesweeper has never been so much fun. Can't wait to break the monotony with PInball FX2 padding my pitiful Xbox Live Gamerscore. The Xbox for Windows Live tiles is actually pretty neat displaying last achievement, next achievement, etc. Xbox on your desktop.

I really wish they would remake the original Geometry Wars for Xbox for Windows and that Telltale's the Walking Dead was Xbox for Windows. I'd work and play all day. MS really scored here. But if they want Xbox for Windows to grow, they're gonna have to make multiplayer free. Looking forward to more Xbox for Windows games. Should be great on tablets.

Applications

Photoshop CS5 screams as it always did. Time to move on to CS6 and it's new x64 engine with all this RAM and the performance of Win 8. Haven't really tested much else. After Office 2013 preview on the CP, I'm not even going to install 2010. Can't go back.

What's Missing

Windows Media Center - Given how many complain about this and the apparent low usage numbers, clearly a lot of people used MCE without buying the appropriate license. It's sorely missed but should be available as an add-on.

Biggest Fails

Backup & Restore. What the hell was MS thinking with File History. You can't be serious. Total fail here. Yes, Windows 7 file recovery is available, but you can't throw people back to Windows 7 apps that have not been modernized, then refuse to let them boot to desktop or have their start menu. This situation is a fail and embarrassment IMO.

Devices on Charm Bar. Why? If you don't have second screen, this does nothing yet is up front on the Charm Bar. Someone explain this decision to me? Why not put actual PC Settings Devices there, makes much more sense to me anyway.

Search blows. Having to select a category to get your result rather than having them all show up unified, is horrendous. This is the ONLY thing I do miss from the Start Menu.

Kinda time consuming getting to Devices and Printers. This shoulda been the devices on the Charm Bar I'm tellin' ya!

Summary

It's a winner. MS has made all the bits available to SA customers for this reason. To win hearts and minds and push adoption. They've definitely won my heart with the speed, performance, and rock solid stability (not counting any compatibility issues with older software that are sure to pop up). But still not sure about mind. There will be a huge cost in the workplace. The type of users that will be retrained to use the start page will never be provided a company smartphone or tablet and it's just going to be hard to put 8 out there and incur the cost and headaches with 7 just maturing and getting fully deployed. Hopefully MS will respect this and release a good Win 7 SP2 and we'll think about it by the time Windows 8 SP1 rolls around.

For everyone else though, there's no reason not to upgrade. You won't really miss the Start button all that much, and unless your PC is a clunker, transitioning to the Modern UI from the Desktop environment is a non-issue. Quite pleasing actually.

Modern UI Apps are something I'm looking forward to, right now the games are the best thing. With Outlook.com, I'm not even bothering with the poor Mail app. That's for basic tablet use only IMO.

That's it, gotta go play.

[alisalem]

My thoughts exactly. :) I don't mind Metro or having no Aero. The performance gain is always appreciated. I'll be definitely installing it.

[bandit_liberty_rumble]

Devices on Charm Bar. Why? If you don't have second screen, this does nothing yet is up front on the Charm Bar. Someone explain this decision to me?

It's used for printing in Metro apps. Don't ask me why.

[Evolution]

How does it compare against the release preview?

[MorganX]

It's used for printing in Metro apps. Don't ask me why.

Thanks for the heads up. I just loaded the dreaded Modern Mail App and Modern IE (desktop IE10 is so good I don't use the Modern IE) and you're right. All I could do was LMAO. Yeah, I'm personally going to leave that as a fail.

How does it compare against the release preview?

Release preview was rock solid for me. Right now I'd have to say RTM is noticeably faster. That could be the final AMD drivers as well. However, unlike previous Windows RTMs, speed improvements were not lost.

[Growled Member]

Wow, those guys meant business, didn't they?

[contextfree]

Devices is meant to mean "connect / send to a device" not "set up devices" (which goes under Settings), it was called the Connect charm at one point (which I kind of think was a better name). Along with projecting to a second screen and printing it includes stuff like near-field communications (tap and send) and "play to" ... it's kind of like the Share charm but for communicating with devices instead of apps. I agree it's somewhat obscure.

[Dot Matrix]

I agree about Outlook and Mail. Why the Hell doesn't the Mail app in Windows 8 look like Outlook, when SkyDrive matches it's web partner? Hell, People app matches too.

[andrewbares]

I agree about Outlook and Mail. Why the Hell doesn't the Mail app in Windows 8 look like Outlook, when SkyDrive matches it's web partner? Hell, People app matches too.

The Mail app does look pretty similar to Outlook..

[PGHammer]

My thoughts exactly. :) I don't mind Metro or having no Aero. The performance gain is always appreciated. I'll be definitely installing it.

Thank you - I've been telling folks that the performance increase (over 7) is decidedly noticeable, and I have far LESS powerful hardware than the OP.

Gaming (WinRT) - The single largest bright spot in WinRT as far as new items are concerned; the fact that Microsoft Accounts can be Gamertags (supported from the beginning - mine always was, for example) means that cross-platform play is not merely possible, but plausible. (Like you, I want to see *all* those XBLA games - not just Geometry Wars, but games like Bejeweled LIVE - make the cross-platform trip, as Pinball FX2 already has.) There's another opportunity for WinRT *app* developers, if they have a clue; take some of those same apps and rewrite them for the XBOX Marketplace and the Dashboard. That should help fix the upscaling issues with most WinRT apps; great in a tile, but absolutely blow full-screen. (The developers are thinking "tablet/slate/notebook" display - not desktop, let alone bigger.)

Gaming (Win32) - This is an area that upgrades from previous versions of Windows have the most issues, as changes in the underpinnings exacerbate already quite *tetchy* games that can seemingly break if you sneeze hard. The single issue I had in the Previews (DX11 support in Crysis 2) is gone in the RTM. Nary a single other gaming issue.

Applications (WinRT) - The reason Outlook and Mail look nothing alike is that Mail was finished before Outlook - if Mail took design queues from anything, it was Windows Live Mail (Win32). Also, Mail is not meant to be an Outlook alternative, or even competition for Outlook; Mail in Windows (like the old Inbox in Windows 9x) is a very basic e-mail applet until you can get hold of something more suitable. (Mail in OS X is the same thing - basic e-mail, and nothing more; the advantage Mail on OS X has is that it supports POP3.) The 1.0 WinRT apps remind me of the 1.0 apps in Win32 (which makes sense looked at that way).

Applications (Win32) - a good part of the angst among developers is based here; not only are applications competing against each other fiercer than ever, there are WinRT apps to compete against as well (even WinRT apps from a different developer team in *your* company) - example, Amazon as a Modern UI version of the Kindle e-reader. Still, existing Win32 applications run without a quibble (Office 2010 for example).

[bandit_liberty_rumble]

Mail in Windows (like the old Inbox in Windows 9x) is a very basic e-mail applet until you can get hold of something more suitable. (Mail in OS X is the same thing - basic e-mail, and nothing more; the advantage Mail on OS X has is that it supports POP3.)

The two aren't even comparable. If anything, Metro Mail is like the Mail.app in iOS. I could probably get on board with that comparison.

[guru]

Wow, those guys meant business, didn't they?

if you are talking performance , yes. completely. from boot to IE 10. everything is visibly fast. and i i havent even installed any drivers.. running on default ms ones at the moment.

sadly, the ux team made up for that awesomeness

[Arceles]

Quoting myself

Windows 8 is bad and Microsoft should fell bad about it. That pretty much sums it up.

-They could actually do metro right and they didn't (just looking at all the white explorer... hurts my eyes, literally)

-I was forced to put the taskbar above, because if it was down the horrible "start" square appeared and didn't let me chose the explorer pinned shortcut.

-The incredible 3 steps to shut down the computer, had once again to accustom myself to use the "alt+f4" technique...

-The horrible, once again, two corners that activate the charms bar, they don't allow me to put a real launcher like xlanchpad, had to move that one to the upper left corner and it's far less intrusive that the "start" square.

-Full screen PDF reader, really? Send it to hell my dear Acrobat.

-Full screen Email client, made a mistake and had to restore program defaults, because everytime I wanted to click an email on a website my whole screen was covered by this really bad "Mail" client.

-Had to pin "My Computer" to the sites listed on the explorer pinned shortcut, now at least is "right click-> My computer" instead of "start menu -> my computer"

-Still unable to run K10STAT automatically at startup because of the admin rights, no matter if I put compatibility options of "Run as Administrator", got it pinned to the "Start" screen, at least the moment I click on it I got into the desktop.

-I miss my transparencies, guess they were removed because a lot of Intel Integrated Graphics had severe slowdowns when dragging a window, something that I haven't seen with every integrated graphics solution by both AMD and NVidia since like 8 years.

-Why... and really why... they didn't let the user to chose between the start menu and the start screen? just because they wanted one person to try the metro apps? they're good if you need small games for children or persons more casuals than the current FIFA players, still, nothing good as a full blown win32 app.

-The only good metro apps are actually the "notes", "rechner" and some others, very specific apps for very specific functions, very small too, they decided to reemplace the whole sidebar with this, in a sense, this is an improvement... but I don't see myself using one of these for real, serious work, an example would be my Eclipse IDE, that I have to have it coupled with KiTTy (SSH terminal) and Putty (RS232 Terminal), both for remotelly debugging my Raspberry Pi programming. In total I have 3 damned programs on the screen, not ONE.

-I actually like Visual Studio 2012, the interface got improved a lot but surely I won't be using it for coding WinRT Apps.

-The faster startup behavior, as explained by the very OS is because "It saves certain files for faster boot up" which means we are kind of hibernating, is not a proper shutdown, because as once again this os remarks "Restart is not affected by this" which means that restart actually does boot up the machine from 0. Once again, I fell the restart performance almost the same than Win7, except for the fact that Win8 is a little light now and therefore a little faster, but not that much on restarts.

-The dual boot menu is... really bad, My whole machine starts just before the GUI just to tell me which OS I want to choose, and when I do it restarts it again to actually boot up the desired OS, this is bad and MS should feel bad about it, there are some tricks like reemplacing the Win7 bootloader instead of the Win8 one.

-The vector designs of the start screen are actually bad and MS should fell bad about it, there is nothing "Modern" in most of them, they look like a lot of plain desings slapped one after another and give the impression of being messed up, the Vista moving lines where by far more "Modern" than this.

-The share option is dumb in the charms bar, only shows to which public this charms bar is given to, they should have put a damned search files option into that bar and would be perfect, NOT a shortcut to search, but an actuall input box where you can type and the results would appear inmediatelly.

-They should have choosen gradiens and not plain colors, like the tiles, the user screen when the machine boots up reminds mi a lot of my Win3.11 or Win95 desktops (and that's quite not bad though but so much for going for "Modern")

-Icons are missing a lof of consistency, but then again, the whole OS does.

-Continuing to use this crap, just to show how bad it is and for keeping away those that say "You only used it a day hurrrrrl!"

-P.D. Max Payne 3 Still doesn't work on Windows 8, Rockstar programmed it bad and should fell bad about it., apparently there is a patch for it but I haven't got time to try

[jagowar]

Devices is meant to mean "connect / send to a device" not "set up devices" (which goes under Settings), it was called the Connect charm at one point (which I kind of think was a better name). Along with projecting to a second screen and printing it includes stuff like near-field communications (tap and send) and "play to" ... it's kind of like the Share charm but for communicating with devices instead of apps. I agree it's somewhat obscure.

Play to content to a dlna tv/device or xbox (with the fall update) is going to be really big imo. You can send any html5 video in ie, your video and music from the apps, pictures from the photos app and most video content in the apps straight to my xbox. It's airplay but universal.

[bandit_liberty_rumble]

Play to content to a dlna tv/device or xbox (with the fall update) is going to be really big imo. You can send any html5 video in ie, your video and music from the apps, pictures from the photos app and most video content in the apps straight to my xbox. It's airplay but universal.

That sounds awesome. Hopefully people will figure out how to do it. Personally, I would never have guessed to look in the "Devices charm" for this functionality?

[koolguy]

Having a configuration like this

Installation System

i7 2600, 32GB DDR3, HyperX 120GB SSD, AMD 6670

No wonder everything is fast for you, isn't it?

But it's really good to know MS did improve in performance.

[Nothing Here]

Max Payne 3 actually worked for me. I don't play it, but I have it. Loaded fine and then I quit. No idea how it plays even under Win7.

[MorganX]

Having a configuration like this

No wonder everything is fast for you, isn't it?

But it's really good to know MS did improve in performance.

Yeah, lol. But it is faster than 7 on same hardware. That's 2nd Gen i7 BTW. 3rd Gen Ivy Bridge probably faster. But the SSD and Video Probably do more for Windows.

Max Payne 3 actually worked for me. I don't play it, but I have it. Loaded fine and then I quit. No idea how it plays even under Win7.

Do you have to load Steam to play that game? I really want to give it a go...

[Nothing Here]

Well, I bought it on Steam so yeah.

[MorganX]

Quoting myself

I agree with a lot of your nit picks. But honestly, some of them are obscure remote things that are only going to bother you. With every upgrade there are some compat issues. MS over the years has done more to minimize this than any other company. I do feel your pain though. I want optimized x64 apps and have been waiting years. Office 2013 looks real good and Adobe has finally masters x64 programming.

It isn't officially released so can't really complain about lack of Windows 8 or Modern Apps. For gamers though, sit tight, I think Windows 8 is going to be an awesome gaming platform, whether it's Modern Games or x64 (x32) games.

It's not perfect, what OS is? But it's good, pretty dang good. For me, the nuisances are not nearly enough to overcome the pluses.

If MS can push IE9/10 support, the web will actually be beautiful.

[BajiRav]

Play to content to a dlna tv/device or xbox (with the fall update) is going to be really big imo. You can send any html5 video in ie, your video and music from the apps, pictures from the photos app and most video content in the apps straight to my xbox. It's airplay but universal.

It kind of works and would be cool if they didn't completely (*surprise surprise*) ****ed up the UI.

- The PlayTo "UI" in Music and Video is completely different.

- You access it from devices in Music/Photos whereas Video app additionally has a PlayTo icon on the command bar (somewhat discoverable).

- I haven't figured out any UI for Music/Video that shows what's currently playing on the Xbox (sort of now playing where I can add more stuff).

- Photos lets you access Now Playing but it's not clear how I can add more photos to the queue.

- If I start playing music on Xbox, I can't play a different track on my PC.

- CPU usage is insane (Core i5 2500K Sandy Bridge with 8GB RAM)

- Video playback didn't work (standard MP4, AVCHD) but I think it's beta nature of the Xbox update + possibly these apps.

- There is no way to send HTML5 playback to Xbox 360 right now. IE10 doesn't support it.

[Brandon H Supervisor]

finally got access to Windows 8 on my DreamSpark last night and got it installed on one of my laptops

so far i'm rather impressed (even got the catalyst control center working with my ATI radeon 4200 by installing the 11.10 drivers in windows 7 compatibility mode :p) - completely stable so far doing that too :) - i need the catalyst to work because I have to keep the lid up on that laptop or it will overheat and I don't want that display turned on

I use it strictly as a media PC (netflix, anime websites, dvd/blueray player) so having slightly older driver doesn't bother me

[MorganX]

Quick follow up - Only issues have been spontaneous quits of some Metro apps and some Store quits. Looks like the store/purchase/update ecosystem may need some patchin'

[vcfan]

I went to use one of my laptops,and it still had windows 7 on it. man,windows 7 feels old compared to windows 8.

[Preppy Veteran]

The horrible, once again, two corners that activate the charms bar, they don't allow me to put a real launcher like xlanchpad, had to move that one to the upper left corner and it's far less intrusive that the "start" square

How does it get in the way? The Charms side lets you click/touch through to any underlying UI. If the 'hint' Charms coming up at all get in your way, you can turn those off:

===

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ImmersiveShell\EdgeUI]

"DisableCharmsHint"=dword:00000000

===

and the bar will only show up if you do the Charms gesture.

Clearly that setting is for power users only, but if you're saying the right-edge (charms) corner activations are problematic for you, that should solve most all concerns with that edge. But you may be referring to the left-edge corners which don't have the above poweruser tweak.