Windows 8

[mubs]

There are strong rumors that a "fixed" version, 8.5, will be released before mid 2013. SO they may hold off on extending the discount period.

 

[fb]

My mother has been using Win 8 for a week or so now. She thinks it's OK, the full screen start menu and the lost start button doesn't bother her, and I told her to press Alt+F4 when she wants to shut down.

I also removed all Metro apps from the start screen, so she's probably not even aware of their existence. I wish someone had done that for me... Perhaps that's the fix in 8.5?

 

[Clocker]

So what's the verdict among you enthusiasts? Are you choosing to run Win8 (maybe with Start8) are just sticking to Win7? I have a new i5 build I will be starting and can't decide what to do.

 

[ddrueding]

When Vista was out I went through the hassle of formatting and installing XP on every machine. That was a pain. With 7 I was able to just give the users the machine as-is. With 8 I'll be putting the first one into production with Start8 tomorrow; I've already purchased 25-user license to get started.

 

[Bozo]

So what's the verdict among you enthusiasts? Are you choosing to run Win8 (maybe with Start8) are just sticking to Win7? I have a new i5 build I will be starting and can't decide what to do.

Sticking with Windows 7

 

[CougTek]

I'm running Windows 8 on two of my computers and Windows 7 on the other. I also have an oldie on Windows XP and a mini-ITX system running Lubuntu (Linux distro). My main computer is on Windows 8, so I can become more familiar with it. I've installed Windows 8 on four customers' systems and I haven't received any complain so far.

I systematically install Classic Shell on every Windows 8 machine I build though. Otherwise, I'm pretty sure my phone would be ringing all the time for wrong reasons.

 

[LunarMist]

Meh. Perhaps consumers or mom and popcorn businesses can use the Shell, but I don't see multi billion dollar companies wanting that hassle.

 

[mubs]

After being sorely tempted, I think I'll stick with Win-7 for now.

When Win 8.5 comes out, who knows.

 

[MaxBurn]

Seems they are using the same system to send out the media center promotion key as they do with technet. Took NINE days to get the media center key. Ironically, it arrived about six hours after I removed win 8 from the computer.

 

[Tannin]

Clocker, I only have 5 machines these days. One runs OS/2 (I might retire that one soon, it doesn't have a lot of accounting work to do these days, which is all it does); one is running Windows 8 successfully - not with Start8, I'm using Classic Shell, but still experimenting. All the others run XP. I have never liked Windows 7, largely because the interface sucks. Even Vista was better. With Win 8, I've pretty much got rid of the whole interface, so it's going fine. I'm more-or-less expecting to switch my Thinkpad over to Win8 soonish, but the other two units will stay with XP for a long time yet.

 

[fb]

One thing that's pretty useless is the Store. I can sort the apps in different ways, but not Alphabetical and I can't write and search like in the start screen...

I'm sure Steve Ballmer did this for my own good, but I don't appreciate his kindness very much at the moment.

 

[Clocker]

I decided to save my Win8 disk for future use. Reinstalled my OEM Win7 DVD on my new hardware and it activated online no problem.

Bitfenix Prodigy
i5-3570
Scythe Ninja (modified mounting bracket to work with the 1155 socket)
Asus P8Z77-I Deluxe Mini-ITX
8GB RAM
256GB Crucial M4 SSD
1TB Samsung SATA

I'm holding off on a graphics card until I get in the mood & have time for gaming again....which might be never.

 

[fb]

Grand Prix Legends from 1998 (with the normal patches needed to run under XP) runs fine in Windows 8 64-bit.

 

[timwhit]

I'm testing out a beast of a laptop for work (Dell Precision M4700 32GB RAM 512GB SSD I7-3820QM) with Windows 8 on it. I'm not terribly impressed by Windows 8. After I got Classic Start Menu installed it's a little better. There's just a lot of little stuff that's different, and not in a good way either.

The laptop is quite heavy, but it's hard to pass up something with these kinds of specs.

 

[Santilli]

Tannin:
Transferring data is something I do a bit of. What kind of numbers do you get speed wise, using Windows 8 vs. 7?
Inquiring minds would like to know...

 

[Tannin]

I don't do numbers, Greg. Life is too short. If it's not different enough to spot with the naked eye, I don't much care about it.

In any case, I have never used Windows 7 or Vista (apart from fixing customer machines, of course), so I have nothing to compare with. But data transfer speeds for largish blocks are not relevant most of the time. If it's large enough to take (say) two minutes, it doesn't really matter if it takes three 'cause you are going to go away and do something else while it happens anyway. Sure, you'd take the two minutes if it was on offer, but it's not something you'd tear any hair out over.

In contrast, there is a HUGE difference between two seconds and three seconds - that's noticeable and annoying lag there, and the difference between (say) wait three seconds to get the properties of a large folder to see it's small enough to fit on your backup disc (Win 8) and wait 30 or 60 seconds for the same thing with XP or Win 7 - that's massive. And that's the sort of difference I'm seeing.

Despite the unbelievably awful user interface, I have come to like Win 8 and will use it for at least one more machine.

Oh, back to your question, I couldn't say about large data transfers. Are they faster than Win 7? I guess so, at least a little, but Dave or Merc or Doug would be more likely to have tested this. I have not. One other point to make, Win 8 seems to have overcome the dreadful Win 7 file copy bug (mostly seen when you drag and drop folders), which is not before time.

 

[Tannin]

I'm testing out a beast of a laptop for work with Windows 8 on it. The laptop is quite heavy

You need Windows Light!

 

[mubs]

In contrast, there is a HUGE difference between two seconds and three seconds - that's noticeable and annoying lag there, and the difference between (say) wait three seconds to get the properties of a large folder to see it's small enough to fit on your backup disc (Win 8) and wait 30 or 60 seconds for the same thing with XP or Win 7 - that's massive. And that's the sort of difference I'm seeing.

Does indexing have anything to do with this? Is it turned by default in Win 8? (I don't know if it is in Win 7)

 

[CougTek]

Ars Technica review of Windows 8 Start button applications.

Needless to say, I don't share the author's view of Classic Shell. He sound like a snobish film critic. It might be informative to some of you anyway.

 

[Bozo]

Ars Technica review of Windows 8 Start button applications.

Needless to say, I don't share the author's view of Classic Shell. He sound like a snobish film critic. It might be informative to some of you anyway.

Agreed. Aparently he couldn't find the setup menus for Classic Shell.

 

[Tannin]

Ars Technica review of Windows 8 Start button applications.

Needless to say, I don't share the author's view of Classic Shell. He sound like a snobish film critic.

And he hasn't actually been to see the movie,. just glanced at the trailer. What a tool. Re really does get it comprehensively wrong, not just once but over and over again. FAIL.

 

[Tannin]

so good I had to post it twice

 

[Tannin]

Does indexing have anything to do with this? Is it turned by default in Win 8? (I don't know if it is in Win 7)

You are asking me? I've never used Windows 7, sorry, no idea. But obviously there is some effective caching and indexing going on with Win 8, no other way to make it so fast.

 

[mubs]

I guess that's true of Win 7 too. My XP system died, and I built a new one. Same HDDs. Boot, program opening time, all lightning fast compared to XP. True, the XP install was 6 years old, but that alone can't account for so much difference. The partitions were and are regularly defragged. Maybe they improved the secret sauce soe more in Win 8. When you used XP, did you have indexing on?

 

[mubs]

Weird. The forum is removing blank lines and concatenating text. I edited the above post three times, trying to get the last sentence in a new paragraph. What gives?

 

[Tannin]

When you used XP, did you have indexing on?

No idea. What is "indexing" in this context?

But I have certainly built and worked on a good number of Win 7 systems in the workshop, Mubs, and there was nothing particularly notable about the performance of any of them. Much the same a XP or a well-tweaked Vista machine (yes, you can get Vista to go OK, you just need the service packs and some care and attention ... why you would want to, that's another question). Win 8 is clearly and unambiguously more responsive.

The only indexing I remember from XP (or Win 7 for that matter) is the search indexing which is controlled as a property of NTFS (and FAT? can't remember) hard drive partitions. It's a good idea to turn that off, and it slows the system significantly after a while, and I've never been convinced that there is a lot of benefit so far as search times go anyway. Besides, who searches from the start bar these days? Most people with a technical bent will have third-party search tools instead.

So that indexing is something that is on by default in XP systems, but I generally turn it off on my own machines. But this isn't what we are talking about here.

 

[mubs]

Thanks Tannin.

 

[Mercutio]

Does anyone know a quick way to conditionally exclude library folders from Metro's live preview?

Let's just say it might be handy to know before I go hooking my personal notebook up to a projector.

 

[ddrueding]

Does anyone know a quick way to conditionally exclude library folders from Metro's live preview?

Let's just say it might be handy to know before I go hooking my personal notebook up to a projector.

I had that same thought last week. It really should be a folder-level option, like permissions.

 

[Mercutio]

I went ahead and created another account, just for taking screen shots and using with a projector. It's not worth the chance that I'd get in trouble.

 

[LunarMist]

I went ahead and created another account, just for taking screen shots and using with a projector. It's not worth the chance that I'd get in trouble.

What trouble? Does a projector need some security approvals nowadays?

 

[Striker]

I'm guessing so when he starts it up hooked up to the projector one of the options isn't hot girl on girl big breasts or something or other.

 

[P5-133XL]

I think he is talking about non-workspace approved material placed in libraries that are labeled appropriately for all to see when using a projector.

 

[Mercutio]

That might in fact have something to do with it.

Until recently, all my "personal" photos were just pictures of my cats or rack setups at customer sites or something. Now I actually have personal photos that I'd prefer not to show up in the live tile or thumbnails. I'm surprised there isn't an option to control it, but there does not seem to be.

 

[LunarMist]

That is awful. What happens if you have 300,000 files? Does it try to display them all? It might take hours.

 

[Mercutio]

It indexes all of them. I actually set up a crapload of different image libraries as part of my normal profile config and I *want* them to be in those libraries. Apparently the stock answer to this question is just to move private stuff out of your libraries, but that's lame since it completely destroys the value of having the libraries in the first place. Yes, I'm perfectly capable of doing that, but who is the dumbass who didn't think anybody would want that option?

... which is why I just made a separate user account and put a bunch of completely boring and innocuous stuff in it.

 

[LunarMist]

You need some 3rd party apps, then.

 

[ddrueding]

I'd be thrilled if you found a more eloquent solution Merc.

 

[P5-133XL]

Windows 8 has Hyper-V, just like Server 2008 and Server 2012.

I just tried to add hyper-v in Win8. It seems that my q6600 does not have a required capability to run Hyper-v. Not pleased.

 

[P5-133XL]

Media center is still free it seems. Just in case I do upgrade I went and applied for this key. Why that takes 72 hours to actually get it is odd. Page doesn't appear to care what you are currently using, I applied for the key on my mac.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/feature-packs

Microsoft will not send the key if you are running Chrome. I had to run Internet explorer for it to work.