In-Depth with the Windows 8 Consumer Preview

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• Braden99 - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link

  I work with applications like Maya, Photoshop etc. and find my productivity has not been effected at all in Windows 8. Most of the complaints about Windows 8 are grossly exaggerated, by users who cannot easily adapt to change. MS needed to do something big to insure relevance into the future, prepare for new hybrid devices, and entice a new generation of users, and for the most part every feature of the old start screen is still present. The desktop still exists, and explorer has more features than ever. Those "power" users would have probably been using the keyboard to activate and search through start menu, and now they still can, with same number of key presses (yes a context switch, but only for a second, or as quick as you can type and press enter).
  
  That said I'm hoping for a lot of tweaks that improve the features and direction MS are already going in - That's what I'm focusing on my attention on.

• ananduser - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link

  Fair review, impressed by Win8, don't care about GUI sensibilities, I never criticized any OS for subjective GUI peculiarities.
  
  Battery issues might also stem from lack of custom drivers that are the norm in laptop land. Anyway I might be wrong seeing as they should work in W8. Maybe they do but don't use W8's touted power saving features.
  
  Why always bring the subject of OSX price vs Win's price ? OSX is an upgrade, it has a requirement that you detain the previous version. Win is sold as a stand alone product(upgrade options exist as well). Now, ever thought about "you get what you pay for"(mac fans always love this phrase) ? W8 will bring out of the box built in hypervisor, storage spaces and incredibly huge hardware support(among many others). Also you can virtualize W8 in any VM. OSX lacks all that and has less hardware support, in fact has hardware restrictions. Bottom line Windows costs more because IT IS WORTH MORE.
  
  PS: Did you really need 2 imacs and a mba to test W8; one Apple PC wasn't enough ?

• Braden99 - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link

  "but there’s still no way to use a different wallpaper for each desktop, something that OS X has supported forever"
  Actually you can in Windows 8. Go into Personalize>Click Desktop Background>Then you can right click pictures, and say set as monitor 1, or 2

• Braden99 - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link

  "but there’s still no way to use a different wallpaper for each desktop, something that OS X has supported forever"
  Actually you can in Windows 8. Go into Personalize>Click Desktop Background>Then you can right click pictures, and say set as monitor 1, or 2

• superPC - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link

  I see that most of you complains about the new start screen. well my father asked me to installed windows 8 on his laptop and he's much happier than he ever was with that laptop (it use to be a vista machine). it loads up in less than 40 seconds (not using SSD old core 2 duo machine with just 1 GB of RAM), shuts down in less than 30. it's super responsive and just plain fast (eventhough i've already installed all of his regular software suite). and he loves the new metro browser and apps. full screen apps looked lovely he said. he even likes metro because "it's more informative and searchable than the old start menus". honestly, windows is not aim at people like us the power user, it's aim at the rest of them: casual users. and if my dad, a 25 year veteran casual user of windows can live with metro than most of us obviously can too.

• p05esto - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link

  That's great that it's dumbed down, but my question is WHY are you here on anaddtech? This is a site for real computer users who don't want it dumbed down.
  
  MS needs to allow advanced users to turn all the Metro crap off and use the OS just for launching their development apps. We don't want ANY of the crap found on the start screen or the hidden corners or whatever. I don't understand why MS is removing all customizability, it's been getting worse ever since Vista. Even in Office, why force the stupid ribbon, why not let power users use regular menus? I don't get why they force everybody to follow the same strict path. How hard can it be to allow people to bypass the metro start screen and put back the start menu with all their apps?
  
  Oh, and bring back the option to organize apps in the start menu into folders so I don't have to look through 50 apps to see all my graphic editing programs or video programs (I liked putting them into broad folders of apps). Win7 eliminated that possibility. And bring back the SMALL and condensed task menu of apps. In Win7/8 they use these large icons with too much space on the sides...why? I found a registry hack to make them smaller and compact, but why make the large and cumbersome task bar area thre default? It befuddles me.

• smilingcrow - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link

  p05esto: “My question is WHY are you here on anaddtech? This is a site for real computer users who don't want it dumbed down.
  Oh, and bring back the option to organize apps in the start menu into folders so I don't have to look through 50 apps to see all my graphic editing programs or video programs (I liked putting them into broad folders of apps). Win7 eliminated that possibility.”
  
  Win7 does allow you to organize your apps into folders on the start menu (after you click on All Programs) but it is not as simple as with previous versions. As you are a ‘real computer user’ I will allow you to find that info for yourself; which will be easy now that you know that it is possible which is the hardest info to get.

• bigboxes - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link

  Right-click task bar -> Properties -> Task bar tab -> check "Use small icons"

• freedom4556 - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link

  Most of the improvements your dad talked about could be attributable to simply clean re-installing an old Vista install and then running updates. The switch to seven would likely have had a similar effect on performance.

• Sabresiberian - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link

  An operating system, particularly one as ubiquitous as Windows, should appeal to ALL users, not just the lowest common denominator.
  
  There is a difference between making things easier to use for the non-technical person and dumbing down, and sometimes Microsoft loses sight of that.
  
  Reading this article, I don't think Win 8 is necessarily "dumbed down" in it's interface, but I'm not entirely convinced. I do know, I'm not going to live with an OS that requires me to interface with it through big squares on a solid-color background.
  
  I have a lot of trouble understanding why I would want to buy an "app" to begin with, since many of them seem to be nothing more than bookmarks. I seem to have been able to do without them for all the time I've used computers to now, I don't see why using a smart phone or tablet requires them, or even makes those devices better. I don't understand why we can't just have icons like the previous versions of Windows that we can touch to activate, if we want to activate them by touch and have the hardware capability.
  
  This article has allayed some of my fears, and there is clearly enough reason to update from Vista to Win 8 on my next build, providing I can get rid of the yugly (yugly: you'-glee, as in "so ugly it's beyond ugly, it's yugly") interface. My second computer uses Win 7, and I'll have to be very impressed with Win 8 to switch from it when I rebuild a second computer.
  
  Most people in the world that interface with computers are not technically inclined; many of them aren't all that capable in any case. It's good for these things to be easy enough to use that most everyone can use them, just please, please don't penalize ME in the process.
  
  It will take a lot for me to give up DirectX, but I would do it, if it becomes necessary.
  
  ;)