Sneak preview of Windows 8!

[Guts3d]

Link.

[slgrieb]

I knew there was a reason for these spare hard drives sitting around! Thanks!

[BOB IROC]

I knew there was a reason for these spare hard drives sitting around! Thanks!

Exactly what I was thinking. I dowloaded the ISO last yesterday and was contemplating installing it on a spare drive on my secondary laptop.

[slgrieb]

I've been playing with Win8 a little over the last couple of days, and so far, my feelings are mixed. Overall, I'm tremendously impressed with the performance, especially in such an early release, but I'm less than enchanted with the Metro interface, and even the Desktop is clunky and crippled compared to Win7.

Still, I have to say it was the fastest Windows installation I've ever seen, and memory usage is very low. Again, I'm impressed with the overall speed and I think that the release version is likely to fix some of my gripes with the interface.

[Guts3d]

Good points! I am loading it on to my Getac B300 today, it has a touchscreen and I want to get the whole experience.

[slgrieb]

Good points! I am loading it on to my Getac B300 today, it has a touchscreen and I want to get the whole experience.

Yeah, the interface literally screams touch. Of course, all the apps I installed (Firefox, etc.) all run from the desktop and not Metro, so I've mostly been insulated from it. Have to say that getting used to the idea that the Start button doesn't really start much of anything still confuses me. I click it out of habit to launch a program or whatever, and I just get switched between Desktop and Metro.

About the only thing that hasn't worked pretty smoothly is installing my Dell 300cn printer; Win8 would never detect it at all, so I had to install it manually by pointing to its IP address and then waiting forever for Windows Update to download the the current batch of printer drives.

Interestingly, Win8 includes Microsoft Security Essentials, but it is called Windows Defender. I think for most of us, the name has really bad connotations, but I guess it won't matter to the civilians.

[CeeBee]

Installed it on a test virtual machine.
I hate the interface. Hate, hate, hate...
I hope there will be a way to have the classical interface... maybe there is but I didn't spend enough time.

[BOB IROC]

Installed it on a test virtual machine.
I hate the interface. Hate, hate, hate...
I hope there will be a way to have the classical interface... maybe there is but I didn't spend enough time.

It really sucks if you use it on a machine with no touch capability. I thought that too until I was able to see a friend of mine that installed it on their slate.

Also I think there is a regedit you can do to enable the classic interface like what you see in Windows 7 permanently but since this is a preview for those looking to see how the touch works and to develop touch and metro friendly applications I see no point complaining about it now. I to hope they make it so if your computer is not touch capable (or even if it is) that it can have more functionality in the classic interface.