Windows 8 Release Preview

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Mr_Zombie said:
:(

I'm not against customization (I love my set of wallpapers!), but I'm just speaking about Metro. It works best when it looks simple and minimalistic. Throwing lots of patterns and colors at it just makes it look clumsy.
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Not to mention iconic.

If Microsoft wants to start eating into Apple, they really need to present something bold, uniform, and elegant. Plain Metro is that. But a lot of those designs are just plain messy.
 
Fuck. Today I wanted to finally upgrade the old Windows XP laptop to Windows 8. I burned the image to a DVD because they had removed the web installer.

-> "Your PC's CPU isn't compatible with Windows 8"

Despite having a way higher clock rate than the required 1 GHz, the 1.7 Ghz Pentium M laptop does not support a couple of additional requirements (probably doesn't apply to all Pentium Ms, but also depends on mainboard/bios).

Looks like I'll have to try Windows 7. Would have liked the added performance through Windows 8.






Mr_Zombie said:
:(

I'm not against customization (I love my set of wallpapers!), but I'm just speaking about Metro. It works best when it looks simple and minimalistic. Throwing lots of patterns and colors at it just makes it look clumsy.
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We haven't really seen the start screen with all those options. Might be less busy then you think.

I don't mind the patterns in the RP. They aren't really distracting and you get that additional parallax effect when scrolling.
 
Mr_Zombie said:
:(

I'm not against customization (I love my set of wallpapers!), but I'm just speaking about Metro. It works best when it looks simple and minimalistic. Throwing lots of patterns and colors at it just makes it look clumsy.
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I think the Windows 8 Start screen, with four rows maximum, looks fantastic. But I do like colourful.

I hate the Windows Phone Start screen. A massive blemish on an otherwise nice OS. Its not iconic. Its ugly and lazy in its design.

In a perfect world, on both phone and tablet OS, we'd be able to customize the background to be whatever, and chose tile colors on a tile-by-tile basis. Then we could both have what we want, and no one is left out.

There are four different types of Metro UIs: Zune style, Xbox style, Windows 8 style and Windows Phone style. All are different in key ways. The Windows 8 was isn't going quite so far in that "Bold, modern" look as the Zune player or Phone did. Personally I prefer Zune, then Windows 8. But since Microsoft can't seem to chose one, they might as let us pick too.
 
So after a while of messing around I'm still not sold on the desktop/metro "frankenstein"-ness of 8. Is there a reason they couldn't of just retooled the desktop to use the live tiles? The more I think about it the more I would have liked a more unified UI combining the goods of both.
 
brotkasten said:
To use your own words.
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Windows phone 7's homescreen is way too basic and lifeless - despite the live tiles. The Windows 8 start screen feels like it is full of live (When live tiles are on). Its by no means perfect, but its better. It also has more customization options, which are nice.

Again, in a perfect world, I could have my Windows 8 my way, and you could do it your less good way. =P Customization options is ALWAYS better.

Windows 8's start screen looks like they spent time on the home screen. Windows Phone 7's home screen is too simple for its own good.
 
Tuck said:
Windows phone 7's homescreen is way too basic and lifeless - despite the live tiles. The Windows 8 start screen feels like it is full of live (When live tiles are on). Its by no means perfect, but its better. It also has more customization options, which are nice.

Again, in a perfect world, I could have my Windows 8 my way, and you could do it your less good way. =P Customization options is ALWAYS better.

Windows 8's start screen looks like they spent time on the home screen. Windows Phone 7's home screen is too simple for its own good.
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while I disagree with you in regard to Windows Phone I do agree that customize option is the best way. This is one of the complain from people who likes to tinker with UI. They need to give more options in tiles and background customization so if you want the simple elegant metro of WP7 you could or if you prefer psychedelic rainbow for your Start screen you could do that also. Though I think default should be simple and clean...the current one on RC is a bit messy.
 
Since Outlook.com looks like the Mail app, hopefully that means conversation view makes its way into the Mail app very soon. I find it completely unusable without it.
 
dLMN8R said:
Since Outlook.com looks like the Mail app, hopefully that means conversation view makes its way into the Mail app very soon. I find it completely unusable without it.
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Seeing how well outlook.com works, you don't really need the mail app at all :)
 
jagowar said:
I have to imagine the app and outlook.com were developed together.... they also need to add the categories feature to the mail app as well.
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Actually I think, in the Reddit AMA they said they would implement all the outlook.com features in the mail app.
 
Tuck said:
I hate the Windows Phone Start screen. A massive blemish on an otherwise nice OS. Its not iconic. Its ugly and lazy in its design.
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Hahahaha, whut?

Tuck said:
Windows phone 7's homescreen is way too basic and lifeless - despite the live tiles. The Windows 8 start screen feels like it is full of live (When live tiles are on). Its by no means perfect, but its better. It also has more customization options, which are nice.

Again, in a perfect world, I could have my Windows 8 my way, and you could do it your less good way. =P Customization options is ALWAYS better.

Windows 8's start screen looks like they spent time on the home screen. Windows Phone 7's home screen is too simple for its own good.
Click to expand...

When I got my WP7, during the first few months I would spend some time every so often just scrolling through the start screen because it was just so lively and fluid and great to look at. It's my favorite piece of design work in the last decade.

I don't want to say there shouldn't be customization, but saying WP7 is "lazy" is just plain wrong.
 
Tuck said:
Windows phone 7's homescreen is way too basic and lifeless - despite the live tiles.
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Disagree with this entirely. It's bursting with life, especially in comparison to other mobile OS's I've used (I use iOS daily and many of my friends have Android devices). I have my avatar popping up, a slideshow of my pictures, my friends faces and status updates spinning around. It's the same reason I prefer Xbox Live over PSN -- PSN might be more ad free, very clean and easy to navigate but it feels lifeless and clinical to me. It doesn't feel like a community. Windows Phone best represents it's user and their community of friends than any device I've used. Lifeless is the last word I'd use to describe it.

Having said that, I don't think Windows 8 needs to similarly stick to a single colour. It makes sense on a small screen, I think it'd look bland and boring on a big screen. It's easier to get Windows 8 looking messy, and it could do with more customisation, but if you set it out well it can look just as nice IMO.
 
Lenovo ThinkPad tablet leaked.

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http://techin5.com/2012/08/lenovo-windows-8-thinkpad-tablet-2-specs-leaked/
 
Damon Bennet said:
Intel Cloveview? wut
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It's supposed to be a slim and light tablet to compete with ARM machines. Tacking the ThinkPad name on it seems to be a bad move, but so was the first ThinkPad tablet with Android, imo. The only good thing about it was the Wacom pen, and the new got one too.
 
brotkasten said:
It's supposed to be a slim and light tablet to compete with ARM machines. Tacking the ThinkPad name on it seems to be a bad move, but so was the first ThinkPad tablet with Android, imo. The only good thing about it was the Wacom pen, and the new got one too.
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It's not wacom, it's ntrig. The keyboard is really really nice considering how thing it is.
 
bloodydrake said:
ya its Clover Trail...wonder if thats a misprint or its fake
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Definitely not fake. The Verge got some slides too.

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I'd rather have a transformer-style keyboard, though. But for 499 I'd buy this over the Surface with Windows RT.

Divvy said:
It's not wacom, it's ntrig. The keyboard is really really nice considering how thing it is.
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Thanks, I didn't know Lenovo would bring the ThinkPad brand that far down.
 
Divvy said:
I had the original thinkpad tablet which was ntrig, and the new stylus looks basically the same. I could be wrong though, the tip does look a tiny big smaller, but that just might be the angle.
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Bummer. Oh well, I'm at least impressed to see an intel tablet at the same weight, battery life and thickness as the new iPad.
 
brotkasten said:
I'd rather have a transformer-style keyboard, though. But for 499 I'd buy this over the Surface with Windows RT.
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Ya I don't see any reason to get Windows RT over something like this either at this point.

I want a transformer style keyboard as well. I got a feeling Ill end up with an Asus tablet spec'd out like this simply cuz of the keyboard
 
It does look like an awesome tablet though despite the lack of wacom. 10 hours battery life on x86? That in of itself is pretty damn amazing considering it's the same weight as an ipad.
 
That ThinkPad tablet is the first one that looks properly elegant and professional.

What I've hated with all Android tablets so far is how horrible their design has been.
 
Azih said:
I can see Windows RT being exactly for people who don't need more computing than an iPad provides.
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But why tho..if this does everything RT does plus has x86 for same price..whats the point of RT other then to say it runs on ARM.

Its not like you have to run x86 apps if you don't want to..but if its basically free..why wouldn't you want it. Especially since we don't know how long it will take for the Windows metro app store to really be fully fleshed out with apps that cover all bases.
 
brotkasten said:
2 GB of non-upgradeable RAM seems to be a bit low for a full Windows machine in 2012.
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True, but the only thing I use that might be affected by that would be Lightroom and even then I think the CPU and GPU would be bottlenecks as well. I know nothing about CloverTrail, how good is it?

bloodydrake said:
But why tho..if this does everything RT does plus has x86 for same price..whats the point of RT other then to say it runs on ARM.

Its not like you have to run x86 apps if you don't want to..but if its basically free..why wouldn't you want it. Especially since we don't know how long it will take for the Windows metro app store to really be fully fleshed out with apps that cover all bases.
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Price could be a big differentiator though. I know nothing about the cost differences required by the different architectures though.
 
bloodydrake said:
But why tho..if this does everything RT does plus has x86 for same price..whats the point of RT other then to say it runs on ARM.

Its not like you have to run x86 apps if you don't want to..but if its basically free..why wouldn't you want it. Especially since we don't know how long it will take for the Windows metro app store to really be fully fleshed out with apps that cover all bases.
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We need to see that the real world battery life is consistent.... quoted figures are one thing but real world can be very different.

Also do we know if the new atom's can be passively cooled? Not needing air vents is a big deal in some outside conditions (and a mobile device in general).
 
Complex Shadow said:
oh god the ipad. it does nothing!
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jagowar said:
We need to see that the real world battery life is consistent.... quoted figures are one thing but real world can be very different.

Also do we know if the new atom's can be passively cooled? Not needing air vents is a big deal in some outside conditions (and a mobile device in general).
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The next generation Atom can be passively cooled. I think it was Asus who showed a working prototype at Computex and it didn't have vents.
 
Do previous Windows releases (i.e. Windows 7 in this case) get significantly cheaper immediately/soon after the next version comes out? I don't wanna buy W8 but I like 7.
 
Full picture of the ThinkPad Tablet 2

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Must be an old picture, because it still has the old Windows flag and old Windows Store tile. The device, whoever, is definitely real, as it just passed the FCC.

Windows 8 RTM default desktop theme:

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http://bbs.pcbeta.com/viewthread-1084382-1-1.html

They probably went with blue as default border color, because otherwise the interface would be too white. I personally would prefer the look of the inactive windows as default look.

Kilrogg said:
Do previous Windows releases (i.e. Windows 7 in this case) get significantly cheaper immediately/soon after the next version comes out? I don't wanna buy W8 but I like 7.
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No.
 
JaggedSac said:
True, but the only thing I use that might be affected by that would be Lightroom and even then I think the CPU and GPU would be bottlenecks as well. I know nothing about CloverTrail, how good is it?
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so you don't use web browsers?

2GB of ram in Windows will be laughed at by Chrome/Firefox. :-(
 
Kilrogg said:
Do previous Windows releases (i.e. Windows 7 in this case) get significantly cheaper immediately/soon after the next version comes out? I don't wanna buy W8 but I like 7.
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I think in this case MS seems desperate to get as many people on Win 8 as possible, so sadly no. I mean it's 40 bucks for almost everyone to get win 8 pro. That's crazy aggressive.
 
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