W8 Consumer Preview - First Impressions

[Synthaxx]

Earlier today, i got hold of the Windows 8 Consumer Preview available on the Microsoft site.

First things first, the preparation phase is extremely straightforward. It simply checks your hardware and software, and then provides a compatibility report. Surprisingly, only Avast and COMODO Firewall were completely incompatible. The tool then downloads the required files. It was around 2.2GB download for me, which isn't bad at all. You're then presented with the option of creating an ISO file, typically used for DVD installation, or using a USB Flash Drive as the installation media. I opted for the USB option being i have an 8GB drive laying around waiting for such a use. I eagerly waited for it to finish setting up the USB drive. The overall process was very quick, and the only part that took a significant amount of time was the download, which of course varies depending on your connection speed.

The installation proved to be a hassle at first. If you're using an EFI based system such as the majority of those with Sandybridge-based boards (Cougar Point to be technical), you MUST use a GPT partition. There's no option of installing to MBR, not one that i could find anyway. After clearing out my tertiary array (both drives connected to the secondary on-board Marvell controller ports), i went about the installation again. This time, i had no issues with the install. It took around 10 minutes to install it completely, and it's significantly faster than Windows 7 if that means anything.

Now we've got the boring stuff out of the way, let's get to the points on usage.

First of all, you're initially presented with the Metro interface. It's quite sleek, and i'll admit it has potential. However, it's not for me, not just yet, i much prefer my desktop style. Since i have dual-monitors, i simply pressed the desktop on the second screen and immediately got away from Metro. The first thing i noticed was the lack of a Start button, which i already knew about. However, what i wasn't prepared for was how much of a hinderance losing it would be.

Having used Windows 95 during my early years, Windows 2000 throughout my school years (with XP at home), Windows Vista as a test platform during college, and Windows 7 to date, i've always had the option of finding what i need. Whether it was going through folder layers in "My Computer" in 95, or straight up searching from the start menu in 7, the Start Menu has always been a pivot in my daily usage. I use it as a go-to failsafe when i need to get from A to B in my system. I pin my main productivity and creativity applications to my start menu at the top, and pin my social applications to the taskbar at the left (Outlook, Ventrilo, and Firefox are presently there). I instantly know that i can get extremely quick access to my toolset without having to fumble about looking through a boatload of panels or menus. When i wanted to shutdown, reboot, or even simply sleep the system, i was 2 clicks away from it... 2 clicks in the same area of the screen.

As of Windows 8, that's gone. However, it's all on Metro now, but NOT in an easily-noticable method. I had to search Google for several minutes to find out how to shutdown, and restart the system. It's one-click in the bottom left to open Metro, then one click in the top right on your user image, and then wait 15 seconds, followed by a click in the bottom right to choose to shutdown or restart. This does not make things simpler for me. It's more clicks, and a mass of time in the middle while you wait for it to finish doing "whatever it's doing". Because of the lack of a start menu, there was no way for me to pin the "Computer" icon to my desktop. Instead, you get a "Windows Explorer" icon pinned to your taskbar, which opens in the most inconvenient place; Libraries. I'm one of those people who rather than organise files where Microsoft wants me to, i put there where i want to. They're my files, it's important i organise them how i feel comfortable. Of course, you can navigate away from "Libraries" with the explorer bar on the left side, but it's extra clicks that i just don't need.

Furthermore, i've always been a fan of Aero, but not enough of a fan to use it over the classic Windows theme. It's light on usage, easy on the eyes, and compact. All 3 of these are equally important to me when considering usability for day-to-day. As of Windows 8, there's no more classic theme on the non-server products, it's all Aero. There's an Aero-glass theme we're used to, and the Aero-basic theme, which looks like Aero-glass, but without the simple appeal that it's rendition in Windows 7 had. There's absolutely no sign of Windows Classic theme. More to the point, there's no more "Desktop Windows Management" service, so i couldn't even opt to disable Aero in the way i'd usually force it.

Now, it's not all bad. Drivers are MUCH easier to install now. I installed my trusted NVIDIA 285.62 drivers onto Windows 8. At the end, there was no message about needing to restart (good idea considering they made it a task in itself to find the restart button). Performance was similar from a 2 minute test in WoW, but i wouldn't consider this conclusive enough to say whether it's changed at all.

The task manager design is MUCH better now. There's no more green and black line graphs for CPU usage. Instead, there's white and grey'ish graphs that do look quite stunning, despite being visually simple. You also have information on your CPU in the same window, although it would appear they've not yet fixed Sandybridge clock speed support, and my 2600K still shows as 3.4Ghz max speed (despite being overclocked to 4.3Ghz). As evidenced from the usage panel, Windows 8 uses around 1.6GB at default settings with nothing installed or running besides what ships with the OS on a fresh startup.

Additionally, the WEI score limit is now 9.9. I did test it out and got 9.0 on RAM, 8.2 on CPU, and 7.8 on GPU, but that was before i had the NVIDIA drivers installed. Disks got 5.9 but this is absolutely because my main disk for W8 wasn't my SSD RAID0 but instead my 2-disk HDD RAID on the derpage that is the Marvell Controller.

Overall, losing the Start Button and Menu along with the Classic theme are too much for me to consider using Windows 8. Their server products reportedly have a classic theme. If they want me to upgrade, they'll need to bring in support for these 2 things.

For someone who uses their desktop for most of the day and every day for gaming, design and/or socialising, Windows 7 represents the pinnacle of Operating Systems. Moving to Windows 8 will absolutely confuse and disorientate you. It's a foreign system, designed for a different market, and it's shut out the traditional PC users by losing 2 of it's main staples. One of those is choice, but the other has been daily usage for many people.

[Zoneseek]

Disabling metro needs to be easier then a registry mod, nobody wants a tablet UI on their desktop. This has been said again and again and again over the past year with the developer preview and MS is basically saying NOPE. I fear metro is going to be the cause of windows continuing to wave up and down between good and bad releases for home users:

win 95 - bad
win 98 - good!
win me - bad
win xp - good!
vista - bad
7 - good
8 - bad? we'll see how easy it is to strip metro out of the box. don't have high hopes, though.

[haxartus]

It's a tablet OS. Maybe I could buy a tablet with it. But for PCs, it's simply too inconvenient. Not that I can't install some 3rd party software and create my own start menu, but it's stupid. Looks like Windows 7 will be the new XP and we will use it at least until 2016.

[Milkshake86]

Disabling metro needs to be easier then a registry mod, nobody wants a tablet UI on their desktop. This has been said again and again and again over the past year with the developer preview and MS is basically saying NOPE. I fear metro is going to be the cause of windows continuing to wave up and down between good and bad releases for home users:

win 95 - bad
win 98 - good!
win me - bad
win xp - good!
vista - bad
7 - good
8 - bad? we'll see how easy it is to strip metro out of the box. don't have high hopes, though.

First your forgetting microsoft will make a billion even if it is terrible. Second windows 8 was built from the ground up to be a MOBILE OS, it will have desktop features and capabilities but it is a glorified and more powerful tablet os. Third it will be featured on the new Xbox in 2013 god willing, rumors of Sony possibly using it on the new playstation but i wouldnt cosign that yet, as well as multiple tablets smart phones and so on.

[haxartus]

On the good side, we didn't need a new PC OS anyway. Windows 7 is perfect for the moment.

[Alcomo]

This has probably been answered before now, but what is the resource use like? I thought I read it uses far less than 7. If so, from your opinion, at this point would 8 be considered a better OS for netbooks and low end laptops that chug with windows 7?

[Synthaxx]

This has probably been answered before now, but what is the resource use like? I thought I read it uses far less than 7. If so, from your opinion, at this point would 8 be considered a better OS for netbooks and low end laptops that chug with windows 7?

1.6GB memory at default was what i read. CPU usage seemed to be the usual low we're used to. Applications in the background are "suspended" unless specifically designed to have background procedures. I can't comment on how it'd perform on low spec systems, but at a guess i'd say it'd be better.

[vesseblah]

Will be installing it on a four year old laptop with 2GB RAM and SSD tomorrow-ish, and use the registry hack to disable Metro. Will report back how it turned out.

[DarkXale]

Now, it's not all bad. Drivers are MUCH easier to install now. I installed my trusted NVIDIA 285.62 drivers onto Windows 8. At the end, there was no message about needing to restart

Wait - people still restart for driver installs?

[vesseblah]

Wait - people still restart for driver installs?

Hasn't been necessary for nvidia driver updates in a while, but for putting drivers on clean OS yes.

[conceit2]

Installed it an hour ago as a virtual machine on my win7. I mainly miss the start button.

Regarding shutting down, the fastest way so far (imo) is hold your mouse bottom right untill 'settings' appears, click settings>power>shut down.

Is it me or does the app store crash when you open it? -- edit: nevermind, it was me!

[DarkXale]

Hasn't been necessary for nvidia driver updates in a while, but for putting drivers on clean OS yes.

Very few things should require a driver restart - AHCI drivers possibly the only ones from the top of my head.

The only drivers I've restarted for the last 4-5 years are AHCI drivers. Some have prompted - but is in reality completely unnecessary. Many do it just to get their software to auto-start, but it'll work great by just doing it yourself.

[bromatoes]

screenshots?

[Mr Gnomage]

On the good side, we didn't need a new PC OS anyway. Windows 7 is perfect for the moment.

Pretty much this. I only recently (2 months ago) upgraded from XP to Win7, and that's because I got a new laptop, and I love Win7. There's nothing wrong with it, and really nothing I want changed. It's the way I want it. No reason for me to spend any money, time or hassle to upgrade to a new OS. I'll use Win8 when they force it on every system, and things stop supporting Win7.

I'm a firm believer in the "If it isn't broken, don't fix it" way of thinking.

If Win8 does something wildly different and revolutionary that I don't think I can live without, I'll totally spend $100-$200 on it, but anything short of an instant miracle app, I can't imagine I'll be upgrading any time soon.

[Cyanotical]

hmm, im trying not to have a knee jerk reaction, but so far i dont like it, the developer preview was awesome, accept for the metro start menu, now they have semi fixed metro, but made everything else worse

its a shame because after the dev preview i was looking forward to the beta, but now i am disappointed, most of us navigate windows by some chain of shortcuts we have learned over the years, many of these have been removed, as well as most of the customization features, i really dont like having to use regedit to change the border padding

i would love to see this on a tablet though, thats where i think metro will shine, but its really terrible for desktops, the metroish style on windows Server 8 is perfect, they should put that on the desktop version of 8, otherwise i will probably keep my copy of 7 ult

seriously, metro is bad, to the point of making me consider buying some stock in MS, just so i can go to a shareholder meeting and call Steve Ballmer an idiot for pushing forward with it

[Erous]

My issue with Win 8 right now is it's accessibility to key information that techno geeks need. My Computer / Device Manager / Command Prompt, etc. It'll take some getting used to. What I do see it doing is being a truly integrated platform if you're using a Windows Phone and an XBOX. The possibilities are endless.

[Deng]

I fear metro is going to be the cause of windows continuing to wave up and down between good and bad releases for home users:

win 95 - bad
win 98 - good!
win me - bad
win xp - good!
vista - bad
7 - good
8 - bad? we'll see how easy it is to strip metro out of the box. don't have high hopes, though.

You forgot about the Windows 2000 (not to mention the NT4) which was very good and that XP was considered bad, stupid and a big resource hog until around SP2 (when the code matured and the hardware catched up).

[vesseblah]

Will be installing it on a four year old laptop with 2GB RAM and SSD tomorrow-ish, and use the registry hack to disable Metro. Will report back how it turned out.

Installs in less than 10 minutes with all hardware working, and runs slightly faster than XP. But since there's no registry hack to get rid of Metro, I don't see myself using it.

[Zoneseek]

You forgot about the Windows 2000 (not to mention the NT4) which was very good and that XP was considered bad, stupid and a big resource hog until around SP2 (when the code matured and the hardware catched up).

No I didn't. Windows 2000 was never meant to be a home user OS, it was meant to be a workstation OS that played nicer with windows server products. Not to say that many of us didn't use Windows 2000 for our home OS, but ME was ultimately supposed to be the home user operating system for the "family PC"

In the post you quoted I specified home users. Windows ME was released in 2000 and was targeted at home PC users.

[vesseblah]

No I didn't. Windows 2000 was never meant to be a home user OS, it was meant to be a workstation OS that played nicer with windows server products. Not to say that many of us didn't use Windows 2000 for our home OS, but ME was ultimately supposed to be the home user operating system for the "family PC"

Even though it wasn't really meant for it, W2K was the best OS for gamers between W98SE and WinXP SP2 for quite long time.