The Windows 8 challenge

You all already know my first impression of Windows 8: I miss the start menu MRU list and really wish that the start screen wasn't full screen. But, first impressions can be deceiving, so therefore I have now installed the Windows 8 Consumer Preview as my primary OS on my desktop (after making a system image of my Windows 7 install so I can easily revert).

Here's the challenge I'm taking: I will stick with Windows 8 as my primary OS for at least two weeks (14 days), in day to day usage, to see if it grows on me. There are only two things that can get me to revert sooner: something I need for work doesn't work, or Mass Effect 3 (to be delivered to me later this week) doesn't work or runs too slow.

So far, I have installed Windows 8, MSSE, and Office. I stand by my claim that the fact that all icons the Office installer creates just get dumped in the last start screen tile group and have to be manually removed or organized is very bad.

There's also some issues with networking. It defaulted to a private network, with sharing enabled (although nothing was apparently shared) and a home group automatically created. It did this when I installed it in a VM too, but I thought that was because the VM has a private IP address. But here I'm connected directly to the Internet, with a public IP address, so this default configuration is frankly dangerous!

What's more, finding out how to change it is too hard. In previous Windows versions, the words "Private network" in the network and sharing center were a link, and if you clicked that you could change to public. But they're not a link anymore, and the only way to change it now is to go to "Network" on the charms bar, right click the connection, and choose "Turn sharing on or off". It took me a good half our of failed Bing searches before I happened on this by accident.

The language settings are weird, as I said before. It seems the only way I can get English to "take" as the default is to override the defaults under the advanced language settings. Just relying on the order of the language list doesn't appear to work. Bing also has a tendency to display in a combination of English, Dutch and Japanese. I appear to have gotten it to stick to English, but we'll see if that stays that way.

At first, it appeared the default HDMI audio drivers didn't let me use my surround speakers (no audio heard from anything except left/right). The official Via drivers refused to install but could be convinced with compatibility mode. However, they produced very distorted sound. But, after removing those drivers, surround now somehow works.

I do really like the built-in ISO image mounting. Saves some time having to install a third-party tool for that.

Setting syncing appears to work, as this install automagically got the same background image, language settings, etc. as the VM install I had created before.

I'll use this thread to keep you apprised of my findings.

Great idea, Sven.  Looking forward to your posts here.

Herbie

Well, the ME3 demo at least appears to run fine (except they closed the multiplayer demo; I won't get the full game until later this week due to international shipping times, so what do they expect me to do in the mean time? Actual work or something? ), so I guess the full game will too.

Windows Update ran a number of driver software installers to install IntelliPoint, IntelliType, and some others. As a result, I again got about a dozen random icons that I'll never ever use on the start screen which I had to manually delete. This aspect of it really pisses me off.

Moving the mouse to the bottom-right corner in desktop mode shows the charms menu briefly, and then it disappears when show desktop activates with Aero Peek. That wasn't thought through very well...

@Sven Groot: I thought Microsoft Security Essentials is now Windows Defender in Windows 8, probably a bug there, where it should not install.

When I ran it, it said Windows Defender.

I like this. This doesn't apply to you (because I know for a fact that you don't do stuff like this) but I often come across 'power users' who declare that they hate some new aspect of Windows and immediately disable it, never giving it an actual chance. Stuff like the new Start menu in Windows XP, for instance. I like this approach of giving it a reasonable amount of time to get used to it and a chance to let it grow on you, and seeing what happens.

Personally, the one thing that still throws me off is that I sometimes want to move my mouse cursor over the little thumbnails that appear when you move it to a corner - which then causes the thumbnails to disappear. Apart from that I'm mainly frustrated by inconsistensies (moving the scroll wheel up and down lets you scroll horizontally in the start screen but not in any of the apps) and annoying Live ID stuff. For instance, the Live ID I used to sign in to Windows is a different one than the one I use for Messenger. If I go to the people app I can add other accounts for it to pull contacts from, like a hotmail account. That's great, because now all my Messenger contacts get added to the People app. But if I then want to use the Message app to send those contacts a message, I can't, because it'll only let me send messages to people on the Live ID that I used to log in.

3 minutes ago, vesuvius wrote

@Sven Groot: I thought Microsoft Security Essentials is now Windows Defender in Windows 8, probably a bug there, where it should not install.

When I ran it is said Windows Defender.

Windows Defender was also in Vista and Win7. It offers basic spyware protection, but it's not as comprehensive as MSSE. MSSE is a superset of Windows Defender.

It's impossible for me to recognize applications in the thumbnail list that appears on the left side of the screen. This list needs to add icon overlays the same way alt-tab does. It appears Flip 3D is entirely gone (Winkey-tab activates the list on the left): I never used it, but I know at least one person who loved it so they won't be happy.

Btw, I will use the Feedback Tool to submit reports on each of the issues I mention in this thread.

Maps can't find anything (search never returns any results), and Weather just says "This app is not supported in your market". The international community is as important as ever to MS, it seems.

40 minutes ago, Sven Groot wrote

*snip*

Windows Defender was also in Vista and Win7. It offers basic spyware protection, but it's not as comprehensive as MSSE. MSSE is a superset of Windows Defender.

They've rolled MSSE into defender for Win8, the link below matches what's on my machine

http://news.softpedia.com/newsImage/Windows-8-Consumer-Preview-Windows-Defender-MSE-10.png/

Okay, in that case it's kind of stupid that they let you install MSSE.

This is the result of installing the K-Lite codec pack:

I don't need any of those icons on my start screen. Why hasn't anyone at MS realized what a problem this is?

After my initial knee jerk reaction to the desktop I also decided to suck it and see and made it my only install on my home desktop and laptop last Friday.

So far as well as other than things already listed in this thread, things I found:

Hit targets are too small when there is not a hard edge to stop the mouse (multi-mon)  Works much better on single screen (i.e. laptop but still a pain with the track pad)

Short-cut keys, Know them, learn them, love them.

I find myself quite often clicking the IE short-cut when I really want the start menu, force of habit, round icon, left side of taskbar.

I find myself moving off the start menu hit target to click the huge start screen icon that appears, which promptly vanishes!

It's fast, especially on older hardware.  I rebuilt an old Pentium-D with it and it flies (removing the 9800GT and using the built in Intel card does cause it to have issues though)

After a few days, I'm finding I hardly ever go to the start screen, I've got to the point where pretty much everything I use is pinned to the task bar, and so far the list of apps isn't very inspiring and I don't find myself going back very often.

The back button (mouse) doesn't work the way I'd expect in the start screen.

Lack of plug-ins in Metro-IE is a big issue.  I tried using win8 machine plugged into my TV, the start screen looks great at that size, but for nearly all streaming sites (iPlayer etc) I ended up back at the desktop, which kind of spoils the effect.  Needs Kinect integration on the start screen!

When you have multi-mon clicking on the desktop background on a secondary monitor should hide the start-screen ALWAYS, not take you to the last used metro app.

So far I'm not hating it, not loving, mainly indifferent at the moment.

33 minutes ago, Sven Groot wrote

Okay, in that case it's kind of stupid that they let you install MSSE.

[/quote]

Agreed, the upgrade from 7 to 8 does delete it (I'm told), I kind of hoping they just haven't got all the App-Compat blacklists in place yet.

I seem to have hit a showstopper. I can't reliably upload data, it loses the connection after a bit. This is causing havoc with my ability to SSH into the system, and I can't seem to upload anything to YouTube either. The network drivers included with Win8 are already newer than the newest I can find online.

@Sven Groot: I'm having a lot of trouble with Remote Desktop (non-metro) crashing, and sometimes when the PC comes out of sleep, the network does not come back; I have to disable/enable the connection for it to recover (Broadcom NetXtreme 57xx Gigabit Controller, MS driver)

13 minutes ago, blowdart wrote

*snip*

Yea, I had this when switching to WP7 (because, as we all know, changing Live ID countries is impossible). I eventually bit the bullet and transferred everyone from the old ID to the new ID

 

I sort of half expected this, because using more than one Live ID simultaneously has never really been possible for some reason, so I thought it was surprising that you could add more hotmail accounts to the People app (since a hotmail account and a Live ID are, you know, basically the same thing). Of course, then actually using those contacts in the Messaging app proved impossible, but hey. I reported this using the feedback tool, but my hopes of it being fixed on release are unfortunately not high.