Windows 8 Consumer Preview

[Redeemed]

Originally Posted by ViN86

In my experience with open source counterparts, there is no substitute for Microsoft Office. Other apps typically mess up the file format, have slower features, or not as many.

I tried quoting you but nothing showed up, tried several times. Finally refreshed the page and saw you ninjy-edited your post.

I'd imagine MS has far better technical support for business than OpenOffice or LibreOffice. Another plus for them.

As to 8, as it stands I've no intention of upgrading. Granted it hasn't gone retail yet so things could change. If I can disable Metro altogether and just use the traditional start menu + taskbar and desktop I'll consider it. I know MS has made improvements to the OS's backend, making it use less resources and in general just more efficient. I'd love to take advantage of that but not if I'm force to use Metro or a clumbsy KB+M GUI. Windows 7 GUI is great, so even if that's what I'd be using, just with the improved backend and efficiency of 8 I'd be happy.

I'm not ashamed to admit that it doesn't take a whole lot to impress me. Just don't want anything to do with Metro.

All that being said, I'm still certain that Metro will be optional. Maybe a little more forced on the user in the "Home Premium" version, but in the "Professional" and "Ultimate" versions of Windows 8 I'm certain that Metro will be completely optional and not forced on you. MS wants to sell this across the board. They don't want to corner themselves into the smart phone and tablet markets. They want developers to adopt 8, they want businesses to have 8 running on their workstations, and even though it's far more of niche market they want power users to run 8. Metro will never work in those usage scenerios so I'm certain for the "higher end" versions of 8 (Pro and Ultimate) we'll have the option to fully disable Metro if we like.

[ATOJAR]

How would i boot into safe mode with VirtualBox? Im trying to enable Enable 3D acceleration but this can only be enabled in safe mode! ... Pressing F8 does nothing it seems!

[Drolfrawd]

Originally Posted by ATOJAR

How would i boot into safe mode with VirtualBox? Im trying to enable Enable 3D acceleration but this can only be enabled in safe mode! ... Pressing F8 does nothing it seems!

In normal mode.

bring up a run box and type msconfig . then ok
click on the "boot" tab and selsct safe mode.

reboot

[mojoman0]

the parts of windows 8 i want are the smartphone style apps. I want to be able to play scrabble on my ipod touch and pick up the same game when i sit down on my desktop, or read news in the pulse reader app. There currently isnt that type of app fluidity from mobile to desktop right now, save facebook apps.

Desktop is only 1 click or 1 button away but it really needs its own taskbar search which I havent discovered yet

[Bman212121]

Originally Posted by ATOJAR

Well upon reading what you lot have said i think im gonna give W8 a miss ... Well until i hear more positive feedback.

If you want positive feedback you probably won't find it on this forum...

There is a decent podcast done by Paul Thurrott, Leo Laporte, and Mary Joe Foley called Windows Weekly. They did some coverage of it and there were a few little tips on how to make it even more usable.

http://twit.tv/show/windows-weekly/250

One of the neat features that you can do is quickly bring up a context menu with shortcuts to power user applications. If you move the mouse to the lower left corner and right click it, a menu will appear with some of the control panel settings, as well as launching a command prompt. Another cool thing was that simply hitting the windows key swapped back and forth between the start screen and your application. This would make it a whole lot faster to launch your common programs since you don't have to navigate the start menu to get to it. If you're a user of desktop icons this would be very much like you hitting the show desktop button, then locating the icon on your desktop and clicking that. Even if you're used to pinning icons to your taskbar this would be one addtional key press to get to the menu, but chances are your mouse it already just about on the tile you want since they are centered on the screen. you could also hit the arrow keys a couple of times and enter to launch the app. The other benefit is that live tiles are basically like widgets which can display info about a program without even opening it up. On my phone if I want to know what my next event is on my calendar it shows up right on the icon to launch my calendar. So on the desktop this would be like previewing outlook without even needing to open it.

I do agree that a central search function could be useful to speed up certain tasks. It's very likely that one will be added because it's one of the features that is also present on WP7. I could see using a combo like windows + S to bring up the dialog, much like Windows + R brings up the run command. I vaguely recall seeing a magnifying glass on the Charms bar, so it might be present there. If you move the mouse to the top right corner and slide it down the side of the screen, you can access the charms menu.

I'm looking forward to give this a shot because it will make a lot of sense after using WP7. If you take 10 - 15 minutes to pin all of your recently used items to the screen it should be pretty simple to get where you need to go. Once people can make metro apps for it you'll have plenty of quick shortcuts directly to the things you need. On Windows 7 for example even if you have the network icon in your tray or one the desktop you still need to perform more clicks to get to your network adapters than XP. On WP7 I can click on a live tile and have the options right there to enable or disable my adapters. What I think would be really sweet is if someone took the "God Mode" control panel from Windows 7 and make a metro app for it, so you could just 1 click into a big list of all of the settings.

One other really neat feature that will hopefully become integrated was the file management. If you watch that podcast they show how you can use Skydrive as a virtual storage device. This would make it far easier to work on documents that you have in the cloud. You can open it directly from there, and save it back without having to download, modify, and upload the new file. They showed integration with several photos sites but I could definitely see other places like dropbox being able to use this feature as well.


Hopefully some of that info will help you figure out how to make Windows 8 more productive. I'm sure it will be a bit awkward at first but basically it's like using a bunch of oversized desktop icons. Hopefully there will be a way to scale them, but honestly you aren't going to want too many rows otherwise you'll get lost in all of the tiles.

Originally Posted by mojoman0

Desktop is only 1 click or 1 button away but it really needs its own taskbar search which I havent discovered yet

Try Windows + Q, that should bring up the search pane.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/25102...shortcuts.html

There is also Windows + W for Setting search, and Windows + F if you just want to search through files. Have to see if maybe Windows + Q is a web search or if it also does all of the above...

The Windows + PgUp and PgDown sounds kind of intriguing... I wonder if it also maintains placement and size or not. I could see using 2 1080p screens with split view mode on each monitor. Then you could juggle many programs back and forth between the screens as needed.

[Zelda_fan]

Originally Posted by ViN86

In my experience with open source counterparts, there is no substitute for Microsoft Office. Other apps typically mess up the file format, have slower features, or not as many.

Actually, I've switched over to Google Docs. I like it a lot better than MS Office.

[nekrosoft13]

Originally Posted by ViN86

thats what i said to few people

i installed 8 consumer preview POS on my laptop, couldn't find the damn shutdown button.

this is the most retarted OS ever made, this will go down in history as the OS that will start the downfall of microsoft.

not a single company will switch to this.

[ATOJAR]

Originally Posted by Drolfrawd

In normal mode.

bring up a run box and type msconfig . then ok
click on the "boot" tab and selsct safe mode.

reboot

Yeah the thing is when i reboot into safe mode with virtualbox and select devices(at the bottom in full screen mode)to try to Enable 3D acceleration then i actually click the devices button nothing happens .... Its fine in normal mode not nothing at all in safe mode!

[Cylphid]

Happened across this, thought you folks might be interested.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windo...atCenter/Home#

I wouldn't imagine there will be many compatibility issues, but it's a good reference list to check against if you have issues.

[Drolfrawd]

Originally Posted by ATOJAR

Yeah the thing is when i reboot into safe mode with virtualbox and select devices(at the bottom in full screen mode)to try to Enable 3D acceleration then i actually click the devices button nothing happens .... Its fine in normal mode not nothing at all in safe mode!

Just a thought, but do you have the virtual box "addons" installed?
Maybe they are needed.

Not sure as I haven't used it in a while

[Melfranks]

The only issue I really have with Win8 is the app menu in Metro is kind of a mess, and there is no longer a start button menu as an alternative.
Other that that access to pretty much everything else is simple to get to, just put the cursor in the lower left corner of the screen and right-click.
I also installed Windows Live Mail, which works fine for all my email accounts.
Switching between Metro and "Win7" is as simple as clicking on the lower left or upper left corner of the screen.
Every application and game I have tried so far has worked perfectly.
This version is a huge step up over the last Win8 beta I tried.
The keyboard shortcuts also help like WIN+I and WIN+W.
Honestly I don't see any reason to go back to my Win7 partition for now, everything just works.

[mojoman0]

this could be the turning point when everyone jumps ship to iOS