The Glade 4.0

Microsoft has release a Consumer Preview edition of Windows 8. Been checking it out at work today. It's a little...weird. I like it, and could see it working very well with a tablet or some other touch screen device. I'm just not sure how well it will work in a mouse/keyboard desktop environment. Still getting used to it. Anyway, check it out if you get a chance.

Get it here

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"I Live, I Love, I Slay, and I Am Content."
- Conan the Barbarian

I'm interested in trying it out, but I don't want to deal with reinstalling any of my computers.

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Run it in a VM

Been running it for a while on my MBP in dual boot. Runs great, looks great. Can't wait for full functionality on some kind of touch panel.

I decided to reinstall my HTPC today with Windows 8. Spent a couple of hours downloading the Win8 installer and running it. The install was pretty straightforward and problem free. However, when I rebooted to start into Windows 8, I suddenly found a gamebreaking problem. I couldn't remember the password for 'htpcuser'. Oops. I spent about an hour trying different passwords, and trying to get a DVD drive attached to the box so I could reinstall. I finally remembered the password, so now I'm in. Yay!

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I fiddled around with the developer preview back in.. January? at work. It's a little funky and has definitely gotten its tablet UI in my keyboard & mouse peanutbutter, but didn't immediately seem grossly offensive as a piece of technology. I'm a little curious as to whether I need to be concerned with how coding programs for Windows 8 will shift given its memory management, tile widget, and task-switching practices, but only time will tell on that one, right?

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Will there be a version for people that use real computers?

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Holy shitsnacks!

Yes. It's called Windows 7.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I have a Mac Mini hooked up to a Samsung TV that I use as an HTPC. Installed Win 8 consumer preview under VirtualBox on it, and I've toyed around with it a little bit. It seemingly doesn't want to display in any resolutions other than ones in 4:3 (1024x768, 800x600, etc). Not a dealbreaker or anything, but it's definitely a little annoying having to deal with sidebars. I'll probably just go ahead and boot camp it to get a better feel for the OS.

Has anyone tried to play around with it with a Kinect sensor?

Edit: found this at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/kinectfo ... s/faq.aspx

Then they're all touchscreens, sorta. I like that for an HTPC. The Apple Magic Trackpad is pretty decent for not really having a solid surface on the couch for peripherals, but waving your hands around would beat that.

Windows 7 is still a great operating system. If Windows 8 is a big failure, Microsoft will still do fine in the desktop realm.

Yeah, windows 7 is likely to have some legs for a while no matter what happens to win 8. Even if win 8 is a blazing success out of the box (I can't believe I typed that with a strait face), It doesn't appear to be significant enough to the desktop realm to really press people who use regular old every day desktops.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

I'm quite happy with Windows 7. I can't honestly think of any significant problem I've had with it since I started using it.

The UI itself isn't perfect, but it's pretty damned good.

The one thing that would get me to upgrade is some dramatic performance improvement, or possibly hardware compatibility issues (i.e. not being able to get a printer driver, or something along those lines.)

I can think of a huge problem with Windows 7...

NTFS is still a shitty, shitty, shitty file system.

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This is truth.

Also, in spite of their valiant effort to make the Windows boot chain less...full of ***, it is still extremely brittle and fragile in general.

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

Installed the Consumer Preview over the weekend and totally agree with Kaffis:


Not really liking the omission of the start menu from the desktop environment, but so far that's my only big complaint.

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Go back to zero, take a pill, and get well ~ Lemmy Kilmister

What are you looking to do with a start menu that you can't already do? If only to launch apps, you can do that easier than ever in W8 (since you don't have to hit 'start' before typing).

The Start menus is somewhat different from a list of your installed applications.

It's a list of your installed applications with the option of hierarchical organization.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I just want to know why we're excited about 20 year old UI features.

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Hierarchical organization isn't very useful when you can hit a single letter and have the system filter it for you.

Edit - besides, the hierarchy is the same as start menus have ever been... Alphabetical.

Negative, actually. Windows XP implemented user defined menu locations for the Start Menu. Windows 7 actually has a better start menu implementation and state recall system than XP.

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The hierarchy I was referring to was the ability to create folders to group things according to my tastes.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

You can group and label things in the Windows 8 start screen.

i was a bit concerned about the lack of a start button as well, but then I started paying attention to my current usage habits, and I almost never navigate to anything off of the start menu any more.

Commonly used stuff is launched from the taskbar shortcut (or desktop tile in Win 8). If I need to find something buried in the control panel or some other menu, I just open the run bar and start typing whatever I'm looking for. I can always find what I'm looking for that way, including calendar entries, documents (titles or content), even emails (subj, author, body).

The menu is an outdated concept for me.

CTRL+T > Enter
<command> > Enter
Results

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I'm all about <Command/Windows Key> + <Enter>

Not sure what <CTRL-T> + <Enter> is though. When I press CTRL-T it opens a new tab in Chrome.. which is easier to do with a mouse :p