Will Windows 8 go the way of Windows ME and Windows Vista?

AlexNguyen

Some people did queue until midnight to get Windows 8 last night: Twitter / webusermagazine: Look - proof that people really ...

bdub

ptilsen wrote: »

Windows 7 systems now can boot in five seconds on SSDs, if you don't count the BIOS nonsense against them. I expect there will be or are Windows 8 computers with EFI that boot in about that. And any system with an SSD will perform generally quite well in all other tasks. Boot time doesn't exist in a vacuum. It is going to be a reasonable indicator of a mixture of both sustained performance and random I/O.

I agree, once you go SSD you never go back. Pretty much everything disk related is considerably faster, I am actually considering getting a second for a raid 0 now that the prices have come down so much.

And yes with both raid controllers plus UEFI my system takes a total of 13 seconds to cold boot into windows. This makes the most difference when you building/overclocking.

I am interested to see some game benchmarks on Win8 vs Win7. Probably wont be a huge difference but there might be some surprises there.

WafflesAndRootbeer

demonfurbie wrote: »

i say microsoft should have made the under the hood changes and left the gui alone (maybe just disable aero) and slowly tweaked the metro interface included it with a service pack and let people activate it if they wanted

They would have had Windows 7 ME if they had gone that route. Not saying that it's a bad idea, it really is the way they should have gone to make things better, but the big problem with ME was that it really was nothing more than Windows 98/95 improved and that kept sales of the OS down, which is not something Microsoft wants to deal with again because people would not go for it at all as an upgrade if they didn't offer something very different that didn't give them the idea that Microsoft could have simply issued an SP for free to bring 7 in line with 8.

ptilsen

I don't know anyone who has extensively used both Windows 98 SE and Windows ME that thinks the latter was an improvement over the former. The two or three useful features it might have added were easily ruined by the serious performance and stability regression it resulted in.

tpatt100

bdub wrote: »

I agree, once you go SSD you never go back. Pretty much everything disk related is considerably faster, I am actually considering getting a second for a raid 0 now that the prices have come down so much.

And yes with both raid controllers plus UEFI my system takes a total of 13 seconds to cold boot into windows. This makes the most difference when you building/overclocking.

I am interested to see some game benchmarks on Win8 vs Win7. Probably wont be a huge difference but there might be some surprises there.

Yeah I only use SSD drives now and my sata drives are for file storage, changed the Windows 7 libraries over to the slower drive for my gaming PC. OS and games are on the SSD. Before I used to hate rebooting if a patch required one not that it took that long but it did sort of slow me down if I wanted to hurry up and start a game up or something. Now? Bam reboot and back up.

Even my VMware box has a local SSD drive and I put one in my Macbook Pro. I hope with the Apple "Fusion" file level/cache/whatever it is drives become popular enough with the new iMacs that volume purchases by Apple might have an effect in market prices and I can get one of those. Would rather have one drive with extra storage.

Claymoore

I pre-ordered a copy for the wife and it arrived today. I will be wiping and reloading her laptop with Windows 8 this weekend if I have the time. She works part-time from home as a search engine analyst and her work takes her to some of the darker corners of the internet. Even as protected as her laptop is and as careful as she tries to be, crap gets through and I am tired of cleaning it off. I will set her up with a Win7 VM in Client Hyper-V so she can revert to a snapshot when something new infects her. She tried and didn't like working using XP Mode in Win7 so hopefully Client Hyper-V is a better experience.

The Refresh function of Windows 8 is interesting and we may have to fall back on that if she still isn't happy working in a VM. She is also kind of lazy about running her scheduled backups (that I set up and provided a USB drive). She wants to keep using a backup since she already has more data than the free Skydrive account provides. I'm sure I'll end up building out another Windows 8 box with a Storage Space shared and File History implemented to keep her personal information continually backed up.

She'll be off and running safer and more secure with Windows 8 while everyone else is sitting around whining about the new Start Menu.

ptilsen

Claymoore, I haven't tried Win8 with Hyper-V yet, but I have to highly recommend VirtualBox. When using it with 3D and 2D acceleration and decently fast hardware, it is almost completely seamless for Windows 7 with web browsing in the VM console. You can even watch videos.

Another decent option for her might be RemoteFX, but it requires Server 2008 R2 or 2012 Hyper-V. Win8's Hyper-V won't do it.

AlexNguyen

@Claymoore: Check Deep Freeze: Deep Freeze | Faronics
I don't use it personnally, but many schools use it here.

Claymoore

The long term solution is for her to leave the house and get a real job with a real paycheck, but that won't happen for a couple of years until she is ready to send our next kid off to day care. If I sound bitter, it's because I'm making the student loan payments on her MBA. Student loan debt - the anti-dowry!

After fighting a particularly nasty piece of malware this summer that didn't show up in any signature files for a week, I was ready to build out a full VDI infrastructure as part of a lab here at home. However, I travel too much to make much use of a home lab and she doesn't make enough to justify the expense.

sratakhin

Claymoore,

If you are still interested in building a VDI Lab, take a look at VDI-in-a-Box. It's pretty easy to set up if you already have a hypervisor.
P.S. A much easier approach would be to use a VM and RDP.

varelg

Since claymoore mentioned malware- is using Windows a must?

jmritenour

AlexNguyen wrote: »

@Claymoore: Check Deep Freeze: Deep Freeze | Faronics
I don't use it personnally, but many schools use it here.

Ahhh, Deep Freeze. I remember it well from my time at a K12. It was a decent program for what it was. Management of it was kind of a pain on a large scale, but over all, it served it's intended purpose well.

tbgree00

RobertKaucher wrote: »

3 to 4 years has been the cycle since before the days of 3.11. Windows 7 released on 22 July 2009. Windows 8 will be hitting general availability just a little earlier than is typical of a major OS release and it's obvious that the reason for this is so that MS does not fall behind in the tablet market.

Windows 8 is clearly building on the stability of Windows 7 and with the new architecture of WinRT it's pretty clear MS is trying to move to a software white-listing system for their consumer market and pushing enterprise line-of-business development to the HTML5/JavaScript scene. You cannot make that kind of move without a serious and direct break with the past. This is needed if we really want to see a serious increase in security and stability in the Windows OS over Windows 7.

I have no idea why technical people are whining about the loss of the start menu. I have a 20 some inch monitor with a taskbar that is only half used and has all (12) of my primary applications pinned. I use keyboard short cuts out the wazoo and hardly ever even open the start menu any more. For me it's almost always been Windows Key + R and the task bar. Initially I was annoyed with the loss of the start menu but once I really thought about it, I realized I hardly ever use it.

You and me both. I never hit start menu if I can help it.

I have been running Windows 8 RTM for a couple weeks as my main OS and I really like it. It is a lot faster on the same hardware. I just wish the office apps could optionally open as a tablet style app instead of just sending me to the desktop.

ptilsen

I don't understand technical people who use shortcuts. All I use is the start search. Forget Windows + R. I mean, I'll use the taskbar for few things, and I don't both to clean up my desktop so I might use it, but search in Windows 7 is so good that the start search handles 90% of my opening things.

SteveLord

Windows 7 vs 8 gaming performance benchmarks here at Toms.

Windows 8 Versus Windows 7: Game Performance, Benchmarked : Does Windows 8 Let You Play Just Like Windows 7?

Generally no increased or decreased performance difference.

jmritenour

ptilsen wrote: »

I don't understand technical people who use shortcuts. All I use is the start search. Forget Windows + R. I mean, I'll use the taskbar for few things, and I don't both to clean up my desktop so I might use it, but search in Windows 7 is so good that the start search handles 90% of my opening things.

Yeah, I use that functionality a lot, but I do use the jump menus off start menu quite a bit. Considering I RDP & SSH into dozens of systems on any given day, it's nice to be able to get to all of them directly from the start menu via a link on my RDP or SSH pinned icons.

AlexNguyen

[VIDEO] Here's the first person to buy Microsoft Surface: http://mashable.com/2012/10/26/first-surface-customer/

AlexNguyen

[VIDEO] Put Google Search (replacing Bing) and Chrome (replacing IE) on your Windows 8 Metro Start page: Get Your Google Back - YouTube

it_consultant

Went to the MS store today and almost walked out with a MS Surface, even though I am waiting for the "Pro" version. Yes, it is that good.

Iristheangel

I went into the Microsoft store in Glendale. There was a huge line and they were forcing people to watch a demonstration before allowing them to play with tablet. I tried to just go for one of the samples and bypass the line/demonstration but the staff wouldn't let me. I would have probably walked out with one if they would have just let me play with it or directly purchase it. I really want the pro but with the 30 day return policy, I figured I could just play with it for a couple weeks

tpatt100

I am probably going to give it a try again on my desktop. I had it on my laptop which I think using the trackpad to move around was a primary reason I was getting annoyed trying to move around TUIFKAM

Iristheangel

I installed Windows 8 on my desktop 2 days ago and I bought the Surface yesterday. Prior to now, I've used Windows 8 in VMs so I knew it was faster than Windows 7 marginally but I have to say I was really shocked by how fast my computer booted up and the responsiveness of it on my desktop. I'm not ready to say the interface is 100% better than Windows 7 but that's because I'm working with something brand new and there's a learning curve as opposed to the prior Windows upgrades which I saw as building upon the same basic things (Start menu, Task bar, Desktop, etc). A lot of these core things are still there - Task bar, Desktop, etc - but they aren't the center of your Windows experience anymore and, strangely, that's ok.

As far as the Surface is concerned, I'm in love. No, really, I'm eloping with this thing right now. See ya! Jking. I bought this to try it out and still plan on returning it within the generous 30 day return period since I'm holding out for the Pro, but I'll admit, I'll be heartbroken to part with it. Getting used to the interface with a touchscreen took most of last night but once I got the hang of it, I started doing my WGU work on it while having a TED talk playing on the split screen. LOVED it. If the Pro wasn't coming out in 3 months, I would be keeping this right now. My GF - who owns a Macbook Pro, iPhone, and iPad 3 - stole it away from me for a few hours last night and after playing with it, mumbled about how she was going to "regift" her iPad 3 to her mom for Hanukkah and buy herself a Surface. I had to convince her to wait patiently with me for the Pro. Her exact words were "OMG! I can do actual work on this thing!"
I very much plan on making a video of my testing the Surface tonight. Does anyone have any preference on what they would like to see the Surface do?

WiseWun

@Iristheangel, multitasking/fav apps would be nice. I upgraded my family PC to Windows 8 and everyone loves it. Enabled RDP so that I can log in from work and do some labs. I love the new OS, it has a clean interface, very fast, and integration with Windows Live ID. I have noticed the App Store freezes after I download a few apps, back buttons don't work so I'm constantly hitting ATL+F4.

Other then that, I think Windows 8 is a hit, something original although MS is being sued by a company called SurfCast which it claims developed the idea behind "Live Tiles", can someone say patent trolls! Does anyone know how many apps are installed (sadly, the family PC is shutdown, can't remotely log in!) It was close to 10k launch day and I heard its going by 500 apps a day, impressive.

kurosaki00

XP was horrible at launch
actually, it was horrible till the 2nd service pack got out

Vista was very well fixed after some time but it was more about the already dmg it took to its name
so it was better to release win7 than try to repair Vista's name.

windows ME sucked

I wont be buying windows 8 probably
I went from xp to win7 (in my home), I have like 2 oem copies of win7, so Ill stick to those for a couple of years more

wd40

//Rant

I just found out that my 4 years old Core2Quad processor can not run Hyper V ..

it really annoyed me, now I really have to upgrade ..

according to my calculations a core i7 3770k + decent motherboard + 16 GB RAM will cost around 900$

So I either upgrade or I can use vmware for free

what should I do?

ptilsen

Core 2 Quad is pretty dated. Even AMD has faster offerings. Grab an i5 or skimp on the motherboard. Even though the i5 is the same number of cores, it's close to twice the raw power of a C2Q.

I've decided to wait for Haswell, personally. We should have the full lineup and solid board choices in six months. Thunderbolt, USB 3.0, EFI will be more standard and cheaper then, so getting a truly modern board won't have the cost it does today, even with the new architecture.

If you can't wait that long, just get an i5 and/or a cheap board now.

tpatt100

Somebody mentioned this to me:

Surface disk space | Surface storage | Available disk space on Microsoft Surface

16gb available out of 32gb? Wow, it has an SD card which helps but 16gb used seems pretty big

spiderjericho

I ran into an issue with Virtualbox and VMware Workstation yesterday. If you have Hyper-V role installed then those programs are sort of blind to the underlying hardware. I kept trying to install 7 Pro 64 and it kept saying I didn't have VT-X D or a 64-bit processor. And Workstation 9 wouldn't install, citing a conflict with Hyper-V.

Also, the new Office Suite is a bit different, especially Visio. And there seems to be a big push for online connectivity and having access to your docs anywhere, across every machine, which is cool. I just don't like my OS maker all up in my butt crack.

wd40

ptilsen wrote: »

Core 2 Quad is pretty dated. Even AMD has faster offerings. Grab an i5 or skimp on the motherboard. Even though the i5 is the same number of cores, it's close to twice the raw power of a C2Q.

I've decided to wait for Haswell, personally. We should have the full lineup and solid board choices in six months. Thunderbolt, USB 3.0, EFI will be more standard and cheaper then, so getting a truly modern board won't have the cost it does today, even with the new architecture.

If you can't wait that long, just get an i5 and/or a cheap board now.

I want a core i7 + a good motherboard so that I don’t have to upgrade for 4 - 6 years, buying a core i5 and having to upgrade in two years is not a good financial decision ..

ptilsen

Then you should really wait for Haswell. I wouldn't buy a few months before a new generation if I wanted the system to last for four years.