Windows 8

[smilodon]

I'm going to have a go with W8 I think. I'll image my W7 onto an external drive and upgrade to W8. If it turns out to  a disaster I can just drop back to W7. I've read a few articles about W8 on multi monitors and it seems that Metro confines itself to a single screen and the 'desktop' will appear on the others. Combined with the new features on Display Fusion Pro and I don't think the new hybrid interface will be too much of a problem.

The truth is that the actual OS seems to be an improvement on W7. Fort £25 it seems an obvious move to make. The only thing holding me back and I imagine holding a lot of users back is the new Metro stuff and the inclusion of a lot of default Microsoft Apps like Marketplace, Bing Map,s Outlook Mail etc etc. So I'll give it a go and see how well I can de-Microsoft the new OS. Plus I do worry that I live in Google World more than might be good for me, so spreading the love around amongst several providers might not be a bad idea.

[Tutonic]

Thanks for being my guinea pig Smilo.

I too am firmly entrenched in Google's world now, so I'd be very interested to hear how you get on with W8.

Sent from my Galaxy S3 LTE.

[Snokio]

New feature/option found: 'span' option is now available for those who want a single picture spread across 2 screens (maybe more?), can be found when under personalisation when selecting a wallpaper, look under picture position options

[smilodon]

Well I dived in made the upgrade yesterday. This morning I'm back on W7 again!

Windows 8 seems to be a story of three parts. First there's an upgraded OS. In that respect W8 is perfectly fine if an unexciting upgrade. There are some nice improvements and tweaks to the system that make it a little better than W7. Task manager and windows explorer have some nice new features and generally the OS looks a little more slick and modern. For £30 it's probably worth the upgrade although it seems on the surface to be more of a big service patch than a new OS. Oh and it is £30 in the UK as Microsoft add VAT half way through the purchase process. I though retail sales had to show VAT included in the advertised price but maybe Microsoft didn't know that :eyebrow:

Then there's the marketplace/app store thing. While it's still perfectly possible to install applications in the normal way there's now an online store that allows for the installation of Metro Apps. It's a bit like the Apple App Store, the Chrome store, or Androids Google Play Store. So it's pretty obvious why Microsoft have added theirs. There's not much to choose from and most Apps are either simply links to a Metro styled web interface for a companies web site i.e. Wikipedia, Netflix or simple games like Cut the Rope or Angry Birds. There's nothing wrong with the Store other than it seems there's no search box to look for a specific App and the choice is fairly limited.

So far there's no reason not to upgrade. But now we come to the Metro interface thing. On a Tablet it looks reasonably decent and I imagine it works pretty well also. IMHO it's no where near as attractive as Android or IOS on a tablet screen but that's just me. There's certainly nothing much wrong with it. But on a PC it's a different matter. The Metro screen itself is fine. It's completely customisable in that you can add or remove any and all the tiles you want. You can sign in with a Microsoft Live ID and you'll get tiles for mail, contacts, calendar etc. You can allow tiles to fetch information and be aware of you general locations. This gives useful weather info, news, sports results etc. Or you can sign in with an old traditional user account and keep things private without the live tiles and you won't get access to Mail, Contacts, the Store etc. It's possible to turn the Metro screen into a simple list of installed apps and to add the most used to the taskbar as per W7. You can also span the taskbar over multiple monitors which is nice.

It's simple enough to Google up your W8 install as well. Mail, calendar and people can all access Googles services and display emails and appointments in the relevant tiles. Or you can simple add a big tile for Chrome and jump straight into the browser and access Google in that way. So my fear of being assimilated into the Microsoft Borg doesn't seem to be an issue. I'm using three monitors and there is an issue about finding the new screen elements by moving the mouse to the screen edge as I have a habit of just moving the mouse off into the next screen. But I'm already beginning to learn just where to shove the mouse to get the screen element I want to appear. Also in a nice retro way I can use the windows key to access various elements of the W8 screen.

Finally I've already installed a Multi Monitor app in W7 that with a few button clicks has brought back a proper taskbar to all three screens and has added a traditional start button with a very close version of the normal W7 start menu to my left and right screens. My centre screen retains the new metro hotspot in the bottom left corner. So I already have a reasonably decent working desktop and can choose between Metro and traditional as I like. Metro only ever appears on one screen at a time and so I've always got access to a desktop and the apps that are showing on the other two screens. So while I'm not getting the W8 experience as Microsoft intended it works well enough.

However the whole experience is no better than a traditional W7 OS. In fact W8 is a bit more confusing, a bit more complex and always a little harder to find what you want quickly, in that respect it's a backwards step. And it amazes me that it's something Microsoft didn't think about. A simple choice between start button and Metro screen would have been perfect. Using a mouse-over on a screen hotspot seems to be a compromise and not an improvement on actually clicking on a screen icon. The real Achilles heal for W8 is it's implementation of a hybrid tablet - PC interface. It doesn't really work and I get the distinct feeling that if someone else other than Microsoft i.e. a really innovative dynamic company had been commissioned to solve the tablet/desktop problem we'd have a really decent solution that would make upgrading to W8 an no brainer for everyone. Under the Metro UI mishmash there's actually a pretty decent update to the OS.

 If Microsoft employed me for a day I would do the following:

Add a choice for PC (mouse and keyboard users) to

1. Have a Metro Screen as default (the current implementation)
2. Have a start button with traditional start menu and a screen hotspot/keyboard shortcut to bring up the Metro screen on demand
3. Have a start button that when clicked brought up the Metro screen

I'm sticking with W8 for now but it's still not quite as slick as W7 was and I've used 3rd party addons to make it more like W7, so in that respect it's got to be considered a fail for Microsoft. There's a lot of dumb ideas in W8 that could make the OS a complete failure for many people, especially non technically minded ones. Microsoft are the people who created the legends that are the Kin mobile phone, Games for Windows Live, and  Windows vista. So they are past mastered at creating rubbish. W8 isn't rubbish, it's just a very odd route to take on the PC and probably the wrong one. New non techy users will really struggle to find their apps and stuff and I imagine PC manufacturers are really not looking forward to having to install this on their new PC's by default. I see W7 remaining an option on new hardware for as long as OEM's can force Microsoft to allow it.

If there's such a healthy trade in replacement start buttons for new W8 users something not right. At least Start8 are making money and will have a happy Xmas I guess.

For £30 and the time needed to create a system restore disc it's probably just about worth a punt. But try the 3rd party addons (Display Fusion is a must if you have multiple monitors), read up on the various short cuts and W8 techniques and give it at least a few days. If you're a big user of Microsoft stuff like Mail, Xbox gaming, Bing etc. it probably has a lot more to offer.

In the great scheme of things it comes in just under XP and above 98SE.

[Penfold]

Well I've ordered it and will give it a go. Only cost me £14.99 so what the heck. Smilo, When it shows you the VAT, I think that's the Vat element in the price not additional (which is a legal requirement I believe). Certainly I wasn't charged more than it said in the beginning.

I got sent a code and it reduced the price from £24.99 to £14.99 so not sure why you got stung for so much.

Just got to decide where to install it. Home, office or laptop to have a play.  :g:

[smilodon]

Oops yep £24.99 is the price. It's seems to be an odd invoice layout that tricked me.

Unit Price        Â£24.99
Total Price      Â£24.99
Vat                Â£3.99
Total             £24.99

Go figure?

I'd suggest you put it on a non critical desktop PC (home PC?). I also took an image of my W7 install so I can revert back if W8 doesn't pan out for me. Might be an idea and the built in W7 back up tool is pretty solid.

[smilodon]

Well I've had a good old play around with W8 today but am going back to W7 for the time being. The Windows Update process was a complete nightmare today with failed update after failed update. Some web searching shows that a couple of the recent critical updates released by MS are not installing on a lot of PC's. Plus I've been having a quite a few graphic driver failures.

I've been advised to always do a clean install of a new OS and it seems W8 is no exception. Right now I don't have the time to go through a complete reinstall of all my stuff, so I'll have to wait to next week and go for a fresh W8 then.

The UI gets a lot easier to use over time but I still think it's a bit of a backward step from W7. Microsoft have dropped the ball with this one and should really have come up with a better idea for mouse and keyboard.

[Penfold]

Can't you use a dual boot or does that not work?

[kregoron]

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2012070/how-to-dual-boot-windows-8-and-windows-7.html

It was originally for windows 8 preview, but should still work fine

[ArithonUK]

Sorted my ClearType font issue. Reinstalled ATI 12.10 drivers then after a reboot, reset my monitor using "Auto" and presto! readable screen.

Multi-boot into Windows 7 and OS/X Lion as well as Windows 8.

Sticking with 8 for the moment. i.e. no show stoppers.

[TeaLeaf]

Am sticking with W7 and avoiding all the trouble and strife in this thread.   Driver issues a plenty reported with W8 atm, no need to join that yet imo.

[Blunt]

I think the maxim "wait until SP1" still stands.

[kregoron]

Am sticking with W7 and avoiding all the trouble and strife in this thread.   Driver issues a plenty reported with W8 atm, no need to join that yet imo.

I have yet to find a piece of kit without a driver..  and ive now got it running on 5 different systems with dif. hardware.

[TeaLeaf]

I have yet to find a piece of kit without a driver..  

cf a fully working driver.

Key difference and the reason why so many driver crashes have been reported under early W8 adoption - and as has also been reported in this thread.   I'm sure it will improve, but a driver existing and it working are two different things.

[kregoron]

cf a fully working driver.

Key difference and the reason why so many driver crashes have been reported under early W8 adoption - and as has also been reported in this thread.   I'm sure it will improve, but a driver existing and it working are two different things.

I actually meant a fully working driver.

The problem is that many people just do win7 -> Win8 upgrade... which is and has never been a good thing, you end up with a ton of redundant inf files tied into the registry, which causes errors.
Always have and always will.

That said, i might have been incredibly lucky with mine.