Windows 8 Release Preview

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Igo said:
Has anyone else had any issues with the new Nvidia drivers? Windows attempts to load but after a few restarts goes into repair mode on both 302.82 and 304.79beta. I can boot into safe bode from there which allows me to uninstall the new drivers, and then I think Windows automatically rolls back to 301.42.
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Yep. Not that issue specifically, but I've had flickering when watching flash videos. At one point my screen went black and I had to restart the computer. Upon a later flash crash a windows pop-up informed me that the video card drivers had failed. I couldn't tell if my video drivers, flash or the video card itself was the issue but it definitely seems to be driver related.
 
yn-neko hates a cat said:
Interesting point but, again, I feel like it's a really negative and reductive way of looking at the reality. Saving on resources means you can do more with what you already have. Who wouldn't want a laptop that last 10 hours instead of 5 hours? Who wouldn't want a game that has higher FPS on the same video card? Those of us who noticed our performance index go up with the first service pack of windows 7 I'm sure were presently surprised.

It's not really about what you’re losing with a lighter OS but rather what you gain. Windows 8 because it was designed to be efficient with mobile devices runs all that much better on existing hardware. The design sensibilities of Metro in the RT layer set some goals that ultimately made the traditional desktop experience better from a hardware perspective (more class driver, smaller footprint, utilization of more cores and lower power hardware) down to some of the software benefits I've already listed before. Now any application designed to run on a desktop will still be able to do so with higher efficiency. It's really hard to see the down side to that unless you want to remain adamant about RT existence itself is hindering your ability to enjoy the desktop as you always have.
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Well said.

Yep. Not that issue specifically, but I've had flickering when watching flash videos. At one point my screen went black and I had to restart the computer. Upon a later flash crash a windows pop-up informed me that the video card drivers had failed. I couldn't tell if my video drivers, flash or the video card itself was the issue but it definitely seems to be driver related.
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I had the same issue with the Consumer Preview, haven't seen it in the Release Preview though. You can disable hardware acceleration for Flash, which fixed it for me.
 
dLMN8R said:
So we're pretending now like the Desktop doesn't exist?
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No, I'm just saying it's a lousy rationalisation of Metro on the desktop.

yn-neko hates a cat said:
Interesting point but, again, I feel like it's a really negative and reductive way of looking at the reality. Saving on resources means you can do more with what you already have. Who wouldn't want a laptop that last 10 hours instead of 5 hours? Who wouldn't want a game that has higher FPS on the same video card? Those of us who noticed our performance index go up with the first service pack of windows 7 I'm sure were presently surprised.

It's not really about what you’re losing with a lighter OS but rather what you gain. Windows 8 because it was designed to be efficient with mobile devices runs all that much better on existing hardware. The design sensibilities of Metro in the RT layer set some goals that ultimately made the traditional desktop experience better from a hardware perspective (more class driver, smaller footprint, utilization of more cores and lower power hardware) down to some of the software benefits I've already listed before. Now any application designed to run on a desktop will still be able to do so with higher efficiency. It's really hard to see the down side to that unless you want to remain adamant about RT existence itself is hindering your ability to enjoy the desktop as you always have.
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If all you're doing is lightweight, simplistic stuff, then why even buy a desktop?

It's like using a car when all you need to do is walk to the corner store to buy a carton of milk.
 
lunarworks said:
If all you're doing is lightweight, simplistic stuff, then why even buy a desktop?

It's like using a car when all you need to do is walk to the corner store to buy a carton of milk.
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Saying Windows 8 is a lighter OS than Windows 7 doesn't mean it's a light-weight OS in the sense that it can only do simple work. It means it frees more resources to applications who need to do heavier stuff.
 
lunarworks said:
If all you're doing is lightweight, simplistic stuff, then why even buy a desktop?

It's like using a car when all you need to do is walk to the corner store to buy a carton of milk.
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I'm glad that a new OS is lighter and more efficient than the previous version and will cause my laptop to have better performance and battery life when doing the same tasks. I'm sorry that the improvements are worthless for your powerful rig, but it's nice that this is the case when we often see higher hardware requirements and sluggish performance on subsequent versions of OSX, iOS and android.

Edit: I think you just misunderstood his post, reading yours again.
 
rozay said:
I'm glad that a new OS is lighter and more efficient than the previous version and will cause my laptop to have better performance and battery life when doing the same tasks. I'm sorry that the improvements are worthless for your powerful rig, but it's nice that this is the case when we often see higher hardware requirements and sluggish performance on subsequent versions of OSX, iOS and android.

Edit: I think you just misunderstood his post, reading yours again.
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Don't add Android to that list. The Nexus series has been good with keeping/improving performance.
 
Greyface said:
Don't add Android to that list. The Nexus series has been good with keeping/improving performance.
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I'm speaking from a position of ignorance but you're saying newer versions of Android run better on a Nexus than the version of Android that was installed at release of the device? That's been hard to pull off on an OS. Microsoft is one of the only companies to do it with from Vista to Windows 7 and then again from Windows 7 to Windows 8.They've managed to do so in the strangest most masterful ways by spending time to really work out the under-the-hood stuff while trying to not break a majority of the applications runing in the previous version of windows. Things like the move to .NET, adding CLR, optimization of older libraries to use existing tech like new instructions and solid state storage, re-working the kernal and the HAL, etc... It's all really good work that they plan out accross versions. I remember the days where they started doing things with HDCs in Win32 and how windows rendered into device context and all the extra attributes you could add to a Window and now you come back out on the other end today and gone are the concepts of color key's to blast out fast videos to a Window and here were rendering is no longer about computing crazy XORs for drawing regions but each window has its full rendering surface unobstructed by the others. It should be slower and worse but because MS knows how to depricate a featureset while adding new ones, they generally are able to introduce the right kind of optimizations along the way. There are of course hickups but they've had a good success rate in my opinion.
 
Mr_Zombie said:
Will final apps (both free and paid) be available for those who will stay at RP?
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No, I'm pretty sure MS has already stopped pushing updates through to the RP already. I think apps on the RTM build are new builds, and of course the store on RTM is open to all submissions now, and I assume they will ramp up to their regular app publishing and update schedule as we move closer to October.
 
I think there were still underlying app platform changes between RP and RTM, so it's extremely doubtful that the final GA versions of the apps would work on RP or be released for RP.
 
yn-neko hates a cat said:
I'm speaking from a position of ignorance but you're saying newer versions of Android run better on a Nexus than the version of Android that was installed at release of the device? That's been hard to pull off on an OS.
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Jelly Bean (4.1.x) is far smoother (and in many cases also faster) than Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0.x) on a Galaxy Nexus, yes. The performance improvements are very noticeable.
 
RoadHazard said:
Jelly Bean (4.1.x) is far smoother (and in many cases also faster) than Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0.x) on a Galaxy Nexus, yes. The performance improvements are very noticeable.
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I have to agree with this. If an android platform feels slower than it should it's most likely the fault of the OEM
 
Greyface said:
Don't add Android to that list. The Nexus series has been good with keeping/improving performance.
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I would know, I'm a nexus one owner :P

And you guys are right, the point updates for nexus devices like 2.2, 2.3 and 4.1 have improved performance. I suppose my beef is more that to get to the level of performance today manufacturers just kept throwing processor after processor until google finally bothered to implement hardware rendering in 4.0. Performance in general is a lot more consistent now. ICS and above do use a lot more RAM than previous versions though.
 
So, there's a thing bothering me a little with live tiles... Very oftenly when I see an update of something that interests me i click on the tile hoping the app will show the content it was showing on the title, but the app end up either restoring the state of where it was when i last used it, or just start from the beginning. That way i have to search for the update that i was interested, and sometimes it was so buried already that i had to do a search to find it...

How is that handled on WP? Can you use the live title as a form of notification and make the app show that information once started? Have they give any hint on how that will work on the final release? Is it even possible for the app to now what was being shown at the tile when it was launched so it can show that information?
 
I had a sneak preview of the "casual" reaction to this OS.

I was just using my computer to open a movie for my mother, and I pulled up the Metro screen. She suddenly said "what is that?" and got all curious. She thought it was wonderful and easy to understand. And very pretty. She has never reacted like that to any OS. She has never cared to form an opinion about any other OS.

Anecdotal as all hell, but I thought it was an interesting counterpoint to the voice of many power users who seem frustrated/annoyed with the addition of Metro.
 
BocoDragon said:
I had a sneak preview of the "casual" reaction to this OS.

I was just using my computer to open a movie for my mother, and I pulled up the Metro screen. She suddenly said "what is that?" and got all curious. She thought it was wonderful and easy to understand. And very pretty. She has never reacted like that to any OS. She has never cared to form an opinion about any other OS.

Anecdotal as all hell, but I thought it was an interesting counterpoint to the voice of many power users who seem frustrated/annoyed with the addition of Metro.
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with the addition of windows 8


yeah i see this will work well
 
BocoDragon said:
I had a sneak preview of the "casual" reaction to this OS.

I was just using my computer to open a movie for my mother, and I pulled up the Metro screen. She suddenly said "what is that?" and got all curious. She thought it was wonderful and easy to understand. And very pretty. She has never reacted like that to any OS. She has never cared to form an opinion about any other OS.

Anecdotal as all hell, but I thought it was an interesting counterpoint to the voice of many power users who seem frustrated/annoyed with the addition of Metro.
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*insert post about fisher price squares or interface for 10 year olds*
 
BocoDragon said:
I had a sneak preview of the "casual" reaction to this OS.

I was just using my computer to open a movie for my mother, and I pulled up the Metro screen. She suddenly said "what is that?" and got all curious. She thought it was wonderful and easy to understand. And very pretty. She has never reacted like that to any OS. She has never cared to form an opinion about any other OS.

Anecdotal as all hell, but I thought it was an interesting counterpoint to the voice of many power users who seem frustrated/annoyed with the addition of Metro.
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I showed it to my girlfriend, who does little else with her laptop other than browse the web and organize photos, and she had a hostile reaction to it.

So there's that.
 
I haven't really shown it to my wife yet. I don't think she will like it initially because she hates change on things such as computers, phones, etc.
 
lunarworks said:
I showed it to my girlfriend, who does little else with her laptop other than browse the web and organize photos, and she had a hostile reaction to it.

So there's that.
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I find it convenient that people who form a negative opinion of an OS have close family/friends that share that negative opinion. Especially when the main reasons why you claim that Metro isn't good doesn't even apply to the layman user.
 
lunarworks said:
I showed it to my girlfriend, who does little else with her laptop other than browse the web and organize photos, and she had a hostile reaction to it.

So there's that.
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I'm sure your attitude towards it was totally neutral when you showed it to her.

To give more anecdotal evidence there have been plenty of things I've tried to introduce to my girlfriend that she was resistant to because it was different and hated it and then eventually saw that it was better in the end. For example, getting her to switch from IE to Chrome a couple of years ago.
 
StudioTan said:
I'm sure your attitude towards it was totally neutral when you showed it to her.
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My thought exactly. People EVERYWHERE dislike change. Universally.

BUT, I do wonder how that opinion would change if someone (who themselves was open-minded about the OS) sat down with them and showed them the OS for a good half hour and let them use it for a day or so.
 
Monumental said:
My thought exactly. People EVERYWHERE dislike change. Universally.

BUT, I do wonder how that opinion would change if someone (who themselves was open-minded about the OS) sat down with them and showed them the OS for a good half hour and let them use it for a day or so.
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I already said this but my mom and sister seem to like it as much as Windows 7 after i showed them what's new in the OS. They probably still think it's Windows 7 and i just changed the skin or something.
 
Monumental said:
I find it convenient that people who form a negative opinion of an OS have close family/friends that share that negative opinion. Especially when the main reasons why you claim that Metro isn't good doesn't even apply to the layman user.
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Isn't it amazing that people with a positive opinion of the OS just happen to have close family/friends that share a positive opinion too?

I'm waiting for someone who loves it to say "I showed it to my mom and she punched a hole in my laptop's screen." Of course, that won't happen.
 
lunarworks said:
Isn't it amazing that people with a positive opinion of the OS just happen to have close family/friends that share a positive opinion too?

I'm waiting for someone who loves it to say "I showed it to my mom and she punched a hole in my laptop's screen." Of course, that won't happen.
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Hey I wasn't even soliciting an opinion about Windows 8 and I got an enthusiastic opinion from her. I didn't lead the witness.

It proves nothing statistically, but anecdotally I have now seen first hand that this approach is actually endearing to at least one person for whom 20-30 years of previous OSs were an irrelevance/annoyance. That is all.
 
lunarworks said:
Isn't it amazing that people with a positive opinion of the OS just happen to have close family/friends that share a positive opinion too?

I'm waiting for someone who loves it to say "I showed it to my mom and she punched a hole in my laptop's screen." Of course, that won't happen.
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Every single person I've showed it to has moaned about learning new stuff and asked WHY the changes were happening. Like I said, people universally dislike change.

But, after a few minutes of showing them how simple it is and how everything they want to do is still readily available to them, they understand it. Usually takes about 20 minutes or so.

What I do find is that everyone thinks Metro is really pretty. And I don't mean the start screen, I mean the overall design of apps and the "BIG" view. This comes from the fact that the apps are fullscreen. Everyone seems to love the fullscreen apps.

When I explain that people are going to be buying a lot more tablets and hybrids and how everything they use will all be the same. Use touch if you want, or use the mouse if you want. They get it.

That's the difference. Of course everyone will moan about change. But if you're ready to shit on the OS then I doubt you'd actually give a open-minded brief tutorial about the OS to the layman person.
 
I'd love to do it!

Windows 8 [ot] No offense, Microsoft, but your half-assed under-parenting was a lot more fun than your half-assed over-parenting.
 
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