Windows 8

[Bozo]

Anybody here try the Windows 8 preview?
How do you shut it down? When I click on the 'Start' button, I get the Fischer-Price pre-school desktop.
I've been looking and clicking all sorts of things, but no way to shutdown Windows 8.

Thanks

 

[sdbardwick]

Haven't installed my copy yet, but this might help.

 

[Bozo]

I found it's easier to do a ctrl-alt-del and then click on the power button icon.

So far, Windows 8 sucks donkey d**ks.

 

[Mercutio]

It's... different. I've got it running on a crappy HP Pavilion C2D notebook and it runs acceptably well. I don't think I like Metro UI.

 

[Bozo]

I can't see using the Metro GUI on a desktop pc. There needs to be a way to kill it. Can you imagine all the IT calls in a large corp?

 

[Mercutio]

You can kill it. There are registry hacks and stuff to do it. I've left it running because one of the things I wanted to do with Windows 8 was walk around and frighten my co-workers.

 

[Mercutio]

Here. This will do it.

I have to think that the shipping version of Windows 8 will either give us better options for this stuff or else the final UI will be infinitely better somehow.

 

[Bozo]

Thanks!
I found the Registry hack a few minutes ago too.
Now to find a way to go directly to the login screen on startup.

 

[Will Rickards]

I think corps will skip 8.
I mean quite a few are still on XP and will upgrade to 7.
So they'll probably skip 8 and go to 9.

 

[Handruin]

Anybody here try the Windows 8 preview?
How do you shut it down? When I click on the 'Start' button, I get the Fischer-Price pre-school desktop.
I've been looking and clicking all sorts of things, but no way to shutdown Windows 8.

Thanks

I had the very same first experience while trying to shut it down. I found that if you log out first, there will be a power icon to shut down the OS. Also, I found that rather than clicking on the start menu icon (which brings you to the metro interface) keep your mouse hovered over it and in there you can find another way to log out and shut down.

For anyone who doesn't want to consume a piece of hardware to run the developer build, you can use the trial version of VMware workstation 8, or another popular option is VirtualBox.

So far I'm not liking the experience of the metro interface from a desktop perspective, but I do like the grand vision of one single unified OS that can run among phones, tablets, and also a desktop. I just think they need more optimizing for the desktop experience.

 

[Sol]

Isn't there a button on the front of the computer to shut it down?

 

[Bozo]

I found doing a 'ctrl-alt-del' and then selecting the power button is much faster.
Besides, anyone who has ever used any Windows should be familiar with 'ctrl-alt-del'. :-D

 

[Bozo]

The trial-ware version of VMWare Workstation also includes the free VMWare Player V4. That's what I am using for Window 8.

 

[Mercutio]

I figured I'd stick it on something similar to my classroom machines, that I can take around and show to people. MetroUI is terrible and people need to see it.

 

[Chewy509]

I just showed my wife Win8 with Metro, and she threatened physical violence against me if I even dared to install it on her laptop...

Having played with it for about an hour, there are a few very poor human interface decisions being made... even to the point of how to close an application (one of the included metro ones) without resorting to Task Manager to kill it... (and ALT-F4 still works). Maybe it's there for touch enabled platforms, but on the desktop, it's something else.

IMHO, Metro makes GNOME 3 look good!

 

[Handruin]

I just showed my wife Win8 with Metro, and she threatened physical violence against me if I even dared to install it on her laptop...

Having played with it for about an hour, there are a few very poor human interface decisions being made... even to the point of how to close an application (one of the included metro ones) without resorting to Task Manager to kill it... (and ALT-F4 still works). Maybe it's there for touch enabled platforms, but on the desktop, it's something else.

IMHO, Metro makes GNOME 3 look good!

I think the trick is any time you want to "exit" an application that was open via the metro interface, you need to us the windows key on your keyboard. If you go in using the mentality that Microsoft built this with the window's key in mind, it flows a little better. My interpretation of this design choice is that the windows key would be identical to a "home" button on either a phone or tablet device. The end-user would not spend time worrying about closing the application and move on the whatever else he/she is doing. You and I only want to kill the process because we're trained that way with years of use on a conventional desktop. Mobile phone and tablet users are less concerned with this style of operation and just switch back and forth between running processes.

 

[Chewy509]

I understand the paradigm being used by not having a 'close' button, eg same as mobile phones, however what's the policy on Windows killing applications?

My concern is when Windows get's it wrong? Will it kill your main business app, that you had minimised for 30mins, just because you were at lunch and using IE, and you have a run-away instance of Flash within IE (or any other similar plugin)?

It's certainly feels like control is taken away from the user, and the OS determines what is best for the user. It's about putting the computer in control of the user and not the user in control of the computer.

I also wonder how well Metro will be received within the corporate environment? The IT dept will obviously disable Metro to give back the 'classic' UI for users (to ease migration), but a user at home gets a Win8 desktop and uses Metro and has no idea how to get back to a 'classic' desktop paradigm... It's going to lead to user confusion...

Maybe Microsoft will adopt the paradigm of separating the UI from the OS, where the UI is merely a user-replaceable shell (which it is, but it's hard to replace in Windows at the moment, opposite to the UNIX world where choice of the UI is a given). Thinking back to Win3.1, it was dead easy to replace the default UI (by editing the win.ini file and changing the shell variable), could they go back to that - offer a selection at login (which is what Solaris does, what Linux does, etc) to get Metro, "Classic" or some 3rd party add-on. We could even see KDE or GNOME become a 1st class citizen on Windows!!!

The strange thing is, it'll be very hard to offer the same UI effectively across multiple platforms. Even Intel with Meego offer different UIs for each platform despite being a single platform underneath. (They offer 3 UIs, desktop/netbook, tablet and embedded. All have similar looks and feels, but with tweaks to suite the environment which they will run).

 

[MaxBurn]

Has anyone tried it on a device with a touch screen yet? From my understanding metro is all about the touch screen interface and standard desktop is there but suppressed in this alpha build, the focus is on metro/touch for the moment. I would think using a mouse/keyboard with it you would lose the whole intent.

In general I agree, this is a transitional OS from 7 to whatever the unified PC/tablet platform is. It won't be on phones though.

Unfortunately I am very disappointed in MSFT with this, there is no reason to pull legacy stuff further forward. No one wants PC apps on a tablet with the silly small text and touch targets. Now that they are opening up and considered other architectures this is the ideal time to go in a new direction. I don't get how they are going to support ARM and x86, or more importantly how are the developers going to support it? Write in java or other high level languages to get a universal app? That won't run well on a low powered device. Something new is needed here.

 

[Chewy509]

I don't get how they are going to support ARM and x86, or more importantly how are the developers going to support it? Write in java or other high level languages to get a universal app? That won't run well on a low powered device. Something new is needed here.

That was the whole purpose of the CIL and CLR with .NET.

(Apps written against .NET are compiled to bytecode like Java, and the CIL compiler compiles it to native code at runtime - hence why for most .NET apps you get a severe lag when starting them for the first time).

Any app written with C# and .NET should run unmodified on Windows Mobile 6.x (when .NET is installed), Windows Phone 7 and Windows itself. So they have the technology to migrate between architectures easily, they just don't want to draw a line in the sand and kill off all legacy Windows based applications. (There was a rumour a while ago that Win7 or Win8 would only allow users to install/use .NET apps only).

 

[Handruin]

I understand the paradigm being used by not having a 'close' button, eg same as mobile phones, however what's the policy on Windows killing applications?

My concern is when Windows get's it wrong? Will it kill your main business app, that you had minimised for 30mins, just because you were at lunch and using IE, and you have a run-away instance of Flash within IE (or any other similar plugin)?

It's certainly feels like control is taken away from the user, and the OS determines what is best for the user. It's about putting the computer in control of the user and not the user in control of the computer.

I also wonder how well Metro will be received within the corporate environment? The IT dept will obviously disable Metro to give back the 'classic' UI for users (to ease migration), but a user at home gets a Win8 desktop and uses Metro and has no idea how to get back to a 'classic' desktop paradigm... It's going to lead to user confusion...

Maybe Microsoft will adopt the paradigm of separating the UI from the OS, where the UI is merely a user-replaceable shell (which it is, but it's hard to replace in Windows at the moment, opposite to the UNIX world where choice of the UI is a given). Thinking back to Win3.1, it was dead easy to replace the default UI (by editing the win.ini file and changing the shell variable), could they go back to that - offer a selection at login (which is what Solaris does, what Linux does, etc) to get Metro, "Classic" or some 3rd party add-on. We could even see KDE or GNOME become a 1st class citizen on Windows!!!

The strange thing is, it'll be very hard to offer the same UI effectively across multiple platforms. Even Intel with Meego offer different UIs for each platform despite being a single platform underneath. (They offer 3 UIs, desktop/netbook, tablet and embedded. All have similar looks and feels, but with tweaks to suite the environment which they will run).

Once I have some more time after some more home renovations settle down, I intend to try making a metro-based app to see how it interacts. This may help answer some of the good questions/concerns you have regarding the day in a life of a metro app. My basic impression is that they function like a web-based rendering (HTML5). The data that is supplied into an app is retrieved from a feed (RSS/atom feed for example). The app can be created in a variety of languages, but it will all boil down to their own engine accessing feed data from an external (or possibly local) source. I'm not yet given the impression that a metro app will run independent binaries (like photoshop, Steam, Firefox, etc), so that removes some of the concern of lingering applications running when you exit their view. I think of them as tiny instances of internet explorer displaying data from an internet feed.

I'm not arguing for or against their design. I still feel it has a place for mobile and small form computers, but for a desktop experience it would drive me nuts. The emphasis on the metro interface really does put the classic desktop into shadows which will confuse users as you've already said.

Now on the business side, I can see the initial rejection for this new interface. It happens any time there is a new Windows product, so why not this one also? However, I can also see some value in this interface for a better corporate experience. I think it would be great to have a metro app that's hooked into my IT for system alerts, etc. Having one of these apps to give me updates on my VMWare farm might be nice. I think there could be many other uses to engage a corporate user into the experience, but realistically I don't see this being adopted easily (if at all) except in the most radical of start-up companies living the fun dream.

 

[Handruin]

Has anyone tried it on a device with a touch screen yet? From my understanding metro is all about the touch screen interface and standard desktop is there but suppressed in this alpha build, the focus is on metro/touch for the moment. I would think using a mouse/keyboard with it you would lose the whole intent.

In general I agree, this is a transitional OS from 7 to whatever the unified PC/tablet platform is. It won't be on phones though.

Unfortunately I am very disappointed in MSFT with this, there is no reason to pull legacy stuff further forward. No one wants PC apps on a tablet with the silly small text and touch targets. Now that they are opening up and considered other architectures this is the ideal time to go in a new direction. I don't get how they are going to support ARM and x86, or more importantly how are the developers going to support it? Write in java or other high level languages to get a universal app? That won't run well on a low powered device. Something new is needed here.

It may be on phones unless I'm not understanding what you're saying?

Like Chewy mentioned, MSFT already has accounted for the higher level language development. They've spent considerable amounts of time refining the .NET framework over the past 9-ish years.

Source:
"Your choice of programming languages You can create your app in the languages you're most comfortable with: JavaScript with HTML5 and CSS3, or C++/C#/VB with XAML. To learn more about Windows Runtime and your language options, see The Windows Runtime."

 

[MaxBurn]

It may be on phones unless I'm not understanding what you're saying?

Interesting, first I have heard of that. So I guess the windows phone 7 os was a bridge or a "lite" os in the long run?

 

[Bozo]

I hope there is an enterprise edition without all the metro crap.
We have not made the transition to Windows 7 yet because of things like Scheduled Task, Networking, and problems with proprietary software.

 

[ddrueding]

I think the proprietary software is the main hinge point. I'm doing my best to get our company off proprietary stuff and onto the web. Of course, once I succeed, I will be going to Linux and not Windows 8

 

[Bozo]

Our proprietary software was wrote in-house for our equipment.
Some of it was wrote for Win2k and moved to XP. But it chokes on Windows 7. Windows 8 looks worse.

Maybe its time for Linux.

 

[ddrueding]

I've gotten all our vendors to commit to a timetable for a fully functional web-interface client that does not require .NET. I wish I had also specified no Flash, but HTML5 wasn't out yet.

Some have betas or proof of concepts out now, one is in the "5 years out" camp and we may need to dump them. All the specialized vertical software makers know this is the way to go, I just had to light a small fire to get them moving.

 

[Bozo]

Windows 8 boot menu

 

[Howell]

So one of the external auditors came back from //build with one of the MS tablets. Quad core, 16GB memory, battery lasts 2 HOURS! The hardware looks finished just sitting there.

 

[ddrueding]

Currently selling for $3500 on EBay

 

[Bozo]

This sucks

 

[LunarMist]

Surely retail mainboards will not be limited to one OS? Maybe that hardware limitation would be for Dells, HPs, Lendovos, etc.

 

[Bozo]

Maybe. But I can see Microsoft trying to enforce it on all motherboards...cloaked as a 'security' fix.

 

[LunarMist]

In that case it will be hacked right away.

 

[Chewy509]

Actually I don't see this being enforced too hard... Big corpoare buy 10Ks of boxes from OEM and want to install their own Win7 image... and they can't do that. Big corporate changes OEMs...

As I said, not going to be enforced too hard. (At most, just go into the BIOS, and disable it).

 

[Mercutio]

This sucks

Honestly, I don't think it will. I suspect that the sorts of overzealous OEMs that dislike people messing around in the BIOS (e.g. Acer) on consumer hardware will be the only ones who actually lock anything.

Commercial systems and white boxes will probably have a jumper or something to enable or disable the installation of unsigned systems. Apparently that's how current Chromebooks work.

 

[CougTek]

I haven't read anything written in this thread so far. Am I the only one utterly not interested in Windows 8? Windows 7 works ok most of the time and doesn't have hardware limitations the way Windows XP does. Why the urge to change?

Microsoft does 2 billion in profit per quarter thanks to Windows sales. Windows 8 is more of an opportunity to screw things up (Vista's way) than to increase profits.

 

[Mercutio]

You have to look ahead or eventually something will eat you up because you didn't see it coming.

 

[CougTek]

From now on, I'm interested in Windows 8.

 

[Chewy509]

It's a side effect of Microsoft wanting to unify the OS across all platforms - Netbook, Tablet, Desktop, and possibly phone.

Most netbooks and tablets max out at 1GB RAM as configured for purchase. (And you can't upgrade RAM in a commodity tablet, and netbooks (by MSs pushing) can't have more than 2GB).

It's certainly a good thing, don't get me wrong. (What would be interesting is they can get it done to <100MB, as I've gotten on my Netbook with Arch Linux).

 

[LunarMist]

From now on, I'm interested in Windows 8.

Hmm. I'd hope to have 64GB by the time Windows 8 is necessary.