Win 8 Rc.. Day To Day.. Opinions..

[LivinLOS]

Its rebuild time, and I have just scored a new SSD to speed up the desktop machine for a rebuild with both the springs ubuntu and a windows partition.

As the RC of win8 has dropped, and as I often use the RC's full time in advance of the RTMs I was going to drop that on, but early buzz seems to be the same old one good release one bad pattern that MS has followed for a while.

Anyone real world full time running the Win8 RC and what do you think ?? Ready for prime time or stick to win7 and test it out with a virtual machine ??

[bendejo]

Just my hunch, I think Win8 will sort of be like Vista (eg, not really ready for the world) and the following version will hopefully be in better shape. By this reasoning it would mean Win7 will be the preferred one for another 2 years. We'll see.

[NanLaew]

^ I have to agree. A buddy of mine who isn't really computer savvy is looking for a replacement for his XP clunker and says he is waiting for Win8 machines. I told him to go ahead and get Win7 machine now as I reckon that Win8 will be what Vista was to XP and before that, Me to 98. Come to think of it XP was a bit of a clusterf*ck until SP2 came out.

[hml367]

I have been running Windows 8 Consumer Preview for about a month now. I think it is good. Unless something goes terribly wrong, which doesn't seem the case to me, I will change my Windows 7 machine to Windows 8 when it is released.

Windows 8 on my computer is so much faster than my 64 bit Windows 7. Cold start on Windows 8 64 bit is less than 15 seconds. That is not from hibernate or sleep, it is from a shutdown and then start.

MSPain

[LivinLOS]

I have been running Windows 8 Consumer Preview for about a month now. I think it is good. Unless something goes terribly wrong, which doesn't seem the case to me, I will change my Windows 7 machine to Windows 8 when it is released.

Windows 8 on my computer is so much faster than my 64 bit Windows 7. Cold start on Windows 8 64 bit is less than 15 seconds. That is not from hibernate or sleep, it is from a shutdown and then start.

MSPain

What negatives are you finding..

Primary my concerns would be app compatibility and stability.. Things like relearning OS or adjusting to a new way of working are not a concern, more why I tend to jump on RC's.

[hml367]

I would not say "negatives". This seems to me to actually work differently than past versions of Windows.

Some things that are not what I would consider perfected yet are:

Windows Update is set to Automatic (my selection) and I cannot update manually. The updates come, I just am not able to manually update when I want. Most other people do not seem to have this problem. I had a thought it could have to do with my location and/or isp. As I said, the updates come automatically, so I don't consider this a negative at this stage of development.

I had to change some settings to make an empty disk drive show. It would show when a disk was inserted, but not when it was empty. There is a specific setting in Win 8 to address this - I changed the setting and it shows all the time, which is what I changed the settings for. Some people made changes to the registry and it apparently made their drives show. I didn't see any reason to change the registry since a setting did the trick for me. Again, I don't consider this negative for this stage of Win 8.

A local network (homegroup, workgroup, etc.) had to have some settings changed to allow my Windows 7 computer to access the Windows 8 computer. The Windows 8 computer could access the Windows 7 computer from the beginning. Setting that address the particular situation worked... not a negative in my opinion.

I have installed most of the program I use on my Windows 7 computer and they all work. I have not installed Adobe Premiere Elements yet. However, I am confident it will work also. No problems with any of the other programs.

I have seen some posts on the Windows 8 forum that some 64bit programs had issues in Windows 8. As I say, I have not had problems with any of the programs I have installed, although most would be 32 bit programs anyway.

Flashplayer, Windows Defender, Quicktime, Microsoft Office, Java,. to name a few off the top of my head work in Windows 8 and Internet Explorer 10.

Internet Explorer 10 is in two versions in Windows 8. One version works as a Metro App and does not have the flexibility of the desktop version. I don't use the Metro version so other than the flexibility I will not comment further. IE also installs as a 64-bit browser by default if you have the 64bit version of Windows installed. You may be able to get the 32 bit version, I'm not sure. I use the 64 bit version of IE 9 on my Windows 7 computer anyway, so I am not interested in the 32 bit version except for some local web sites that will not work well with the 64 bit version. That is a web page programming issue, not an os issue in my cases. Specifically, AIS/GSM will not download my billing statement in a 64 bit browser.

As I said, I like Windows 8. I am certain I will buy the retail versions for all my computers.

The one issue I do not like with migration towards Windows 8 is with Windows Phone..... The version 7 will not synchronize directly with a desktop computer. I have not been able to get a copy of Windows Phone 8 to see if it may bring desktop sync back.

I have a faulty memory, so if I missed anything or misrepresented anything, I apologize in advance. I will be happy to answer any questions that are not directed at bad mouthing Microsoft or its products.

MSPain

Edited April 13, 2012 by hml367

[LivinLOS]

Thanks for that.. For some reason I am not getting email alerts I should get so didnt see it until now.