Niclo's Take on Win8 64 bit PRO

[Niclo Iste]

Hey everyone, I'm evaluating Win8 64 bit Pro as we speak and here are my preliminary opinions.
Originally I've tested the OS only in a work environment and it did not feel adequate to the needs of a business. So now I am testing this for a home environment. Clearly the OS is designed for entertainment purposes. Even in the onset it is noticeable that there is a bit more optimization for speed. The browser natively installed is a lot more efficient than on Win7. Software installs are tempermental at the moment. After installing the NVidia drivers software I would have an issue with the system hanging on the login screen. The new GUI is annoying for starters but as I can see there are some perks to it with the constant use of the OS due to the more popular apps being splashed into the main interface.
I did my own type of bench test of the speed of the OS with loading of SWTOR a MMO that would drag down this machine on Win7. It ran noticeably faster the very same machine with Win8.

I so far find it to be useful for entertainment purposes but still need time to see if the OS is really going to play out well for anything else.

I'd like to see if anyone else agrees or disagrees with my initial thoughts.

[Guts3d]

To me, speed wasn't a factor as I was busy looking for this or that and cursing Microsoft the whole time. I hated the Metro interface, and if you don't have a touch screen it seems a waste. I guess it is time for an old fart like me to learn new tricks, I just wish they made sense.

[Ferrit]

I first installed the Enterprise version which was a major fail. Because of the above reasons and mainly because of no Media Center.
I cannot understand to this day why the flagship OS doesn't have Media Center installed. I mean even in a business situation the use of Media center should warrant it.
Anyway I am using Pro 64 bit now. None of it is slow but then i have 16 gigs of ram and a 128 gig SSD. The metro interface on a non touch system truly sucks. I have installed a Start Button app installed to give me back what I need. Whether they like it or not,we want that start menu period.
I had zero issues with drivers off the get go. Win 8 is completely compatible with ati and amd so no hang at start up. This system is both my work computer and gamer computer. It seems to fit those roles nicely on the win 8 pro.
Just my 2 cents.
Good thing I got it with my Action Pack subscription cause I sure wouldn't go out and buy it.
I have spoken to a customer who staples talked into installing it. Heh he cant find anything and
is severely pissed about it. I just advised him to go and chat it up with that pimply faced 19 year
old that told em to do it. That should be a interesting conversation

[Steve R Jones]

Get your free Windows 8 Media Center Pack Product Key
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/w.../feature-packs

Offer ends on Jan 31st.

[slgrieb]

I guess I'm going to disagree with the majority of remarks here. I ran the Developers Preview on a production machine for a couple of weeks and had relatively few problems with it. I gave the Betas a miss, but was an early adopter of Win8 Pro.

I certainly haven't had significant problems installing software on Win8. When I ran the upgrade I had only a couple of programs flagged for compatibility issues, and they were just minor software. After the install, I found that Acronis required an update to True Image 2013 to work correctly, and my copy of VMware Player was wonky, but I didn't have many other surprises.

I've since done two builds with Win8, and most of the software I've installed that's Win7 compatible works just fine in Win8. TrendMicro Titanium 2010 doesn't like Win8, but that wasn't much of a surprise.

I still remain surprised at how many experienced users gripe about the interface. I spend almost all of my time in Desktop, and only deal with the Win8 interface when I'm launching a program that isn't pinned to my Taskbar. Just like the fastest way to launch an app in Win7 was often to hit the Windows key and type a few letters of the apps name, that's still true in Win8.

Yeah, MS did make some significant changes to the UI (even in Desktop) with Win8, and some are confusing. With Win8, MS has cut out some of the multiple ways to perform a task, but that's simplified the interface and made it more logically consistent, I think. At the same time, MS has kept most of the traditional Windows keyboard shortcuts. Sorry, I think changes to the interface are generally exaggerated; but there is a learning curve. Given how much faster Win8 runs, I can live with that. My last Win8 build was Windows 8 64 (home) and with a WD Caviar Black 1 TB drive, an A10-5800k AM2 processor and 8 GB of Kingston HyperX memory. It goes from the splash screen to the Start Screen in 2 seconds. Not shabby.

If I had to pick a weakness in Win8, it would certainly be video drivers. I don't game a bunch, so my HD 7770 is fine. But compared to Win7, my Win8 installation seems to have more glitches. Games like the Witcher 2, Diablo III, and so on seem to run about the same, but I have more performance problems with Silverlight and the Flash Player.

[Niclo Iste]

Well SL, I don't believe I hate the OS. It has its new release growing pains though. The GUI is awkward at first glance, however all interfaces are when you are unfamiliar with them. I do think it's worth while to get experience with it and that's why it's now on my gaming rig. The metro interface has its uses but I need to learn how to manipulate it better for my own needs. I am wondering how we manually choose to go to safe mode, as f8 was not getting me the options for it.

[Ferrit]

Booting Windows 8 In Safe Mode When PC Is Not Starting

This one is a little tricky, because it takes trial and error (and patience) to launch the Windows 8 ‘recovery mode’ when start up sequence is on going. What you need to do is, past the BIOS splash screen, hold down the Shift key and repeatedly hit the F8 key. Doing so should get you to the recovery mode, but it might take a few tries before you achieve that.

Once the Recovery screen is displayed, click the See advanced repair options button. In the next screen, hit the Troubleshoot button.

[Niclo Iste]

Well it looks like drivers are an issue despite the argument that they aren't.

I keep getting an alert that the drivers are not up to date, so I download the latest nvidia drivers. When I go to install them it states that they are already up to date. However if I look at the driver version I'm several versions behind the downloaded drivers.

[slgrieb]

If I had to pick a weakness in Win8, it would certainly be video drivers. I don't game a bunch, so my HD 7770 is fine. But compared to Win7, my Win8 installation seems to have more glitches. Games like the Witcher 2, Diablo III, and so on seem to run about the same, but I have more performance problems with Silverlight and the Flash Player.

Interesting comments about your issues with nVidia drivers. I'm mostly using AMD video systems in most of my builds. Since most of the computers I assemble go to businesses, the majority of them have AMD video on the board, or more and more use Trinity APU's. My only two new Win8 builds were both with Trinity APUs. Curiously enough, I think the Trinity drivers seem to work more smoothly with Win8 than my 7770 or the HD 4870 in one of my kiddo's computers.

Of course, you also have to wonder if this is the result of doing an upgrade from Win7 as opposed to a clean installation. Since my next 3 or 4 builds look to be Win7 machines (problems with proprietary software), I'm not likely to get too much direct experience anytime soon.

[Ferrit]

By the sounds of the problem Niclo I think you should be looking at Nvidia as the culprit.
I am not and will not recommend Windows 8 to people unless they are buying a new
touch screen system. Just had another person call and say his business adviser had
advised them to upgrade to windows 8 immediately before the price goes up.
Ya that makes sense a 6 year old Toshiba laptop with vista and 1 gig of ram.
Go ahead and just load it right over the top. LOL

[slgrieb]

By the sounds of the problem Niclo I think you should be looking at Nvidia as the culprit.
I am not and will not recommend Windows 8 to people unless they are buying a new
touch screen system. Just had another person call and say his business adviser had
advised them to upgrade to windows 8 immediately before the price goes up.
Ya that makes sense a 6 year old Toshiba laptop with vista and 1 gig of ram.
Go ahead and just load it right over the top. LOL

I'm also not a big fan of OS upgrades, and for anyone who has Win7, there certainly isn't any urgent reason to upgrade to 8 unless you're in the biz and need to learn to support it, or just like new and shiny things. And, vendors are always slow getting up to speed on drivers for a new OS. I think we all expect that, since I can't think of any drivers that would be harder to write and optimize than video drivers. AMD's current Catalyst drivers for my 7770 certainly outperform the native MS drivers, but they are still a little wonky. But, the OS is new, and will certainly improve.

Personally, I don't have any serious issues running Win8 on a desktop that isn't touch enabled. After all, I think most Win8 users are going to run apps that don't benefit from a touch screen. Even folks buying new computers are still going to running a lot of the same old same old.

Edit: You know, I've seen a lot of situations when I've done a build for a customer who wanted a choice of operating systems, and that usually meant they wanted to stay with the old and familiar. No, I don't want XP, I read it sucks; give me Windows 98. I have to say that sticking with the old on a new build has almost always proved to be a mistake.

[Niclo Iste]

Interesting comments about your issues with nVidia drivers. I'm mostly using AMD video systems in most of my builds. Since most of the computers I assemble go to businesses, the majority of them have AMD video on the board, or more and more use Trinity APU's. My only two new Win8 builds were both with Trinity APUs. Curiously enough, I think the Trinity drivers seem to work more smoothly with Win8 than my 7770 or the HD 4870 in one of my kiddo's computers.

Of course, you also have to wonder if this is the result of doing an upgrade from Win7 as opposed to a clean installation. Since my next 3 or 4 builds look to be Win7 machines (problems with proprietary software), I'm not likely to get too much direct experience anytime soon.

This is a fresh install. I never ever do upgrades, that's just asking for trouble. The only upgrade process that MIGHT work out is a fresh previous OS install, then the upgrade disk, and then install what you want. The issue with the drivers is really a minimal one, I just disabled the alert for now. Honestly I see no issues so far gaming wise and visually with the system anyway.

[slgrieb]

I'll agree that in general, I don't like to do upgrades (and I'd rather do a fresh installation than restore a backup) but when I decided to go ahead with Win8, I really wanted to see how the upgrade would work out. I can't really complain, though it's a little annoying to see the new Win8 builds I've done with standard HDDs boot faster than my SSD, still, I'm very pleased with the outcome. And free time was something of an issue.

Here and there I've read a couple of complaints about Flash performance in the current version of Chrome (which is mostly what I'm running these days), so this is a possible problem with performance as well, but I certainly haven't made any effort to do an A/B with Firefox. Personally, though, it wouldn't break my heart to see both Firefox and Chrome back off a bit from their 6 week new release schedule.

[Niclo Iste]

I don't think I've seen any flash issues, but I don't like chrome. It's not that it's bad, I just don't like it. I haven't had any inspiration to install any additional browsers and am just working fine and efficiently with IE on the system. I did install LibreOffice since I'm not interested in buying MS Office. I use the software so infrequently there is no reason to buy it. I haven't gotten to the point where I have tried any legacy software but I am curious to see if I can run any of my old emulators and ancient games on the system.

I also haven't gotten around to installing any security software or messing with auditing the OS files. Perhaps when I install 8 on the GF's laptop I will do all of that so I can see how the system is affected.

[slgrieb]

NOD32 5 ran fine, and 6 on Win8 is very, very sporty. For that matter, it's noticeably quicker on XP and 7. I've seen a bit of a performance bump with MBAM 1.7 on 8, but it wasn't mind blowing.

I'm yet to sit down and do anything with either HyperV, or troubleshooting VMWare Player. I've got installation files from GOG.com on my system for Duke Nukem 3D, Myst, Riven, and other odds and ends, but haven't field tested any of them. Maybe this weekend, if things don't go to Hell.

Next week, I start building replacement computers for my favorite credit union, so as soon as one is up and running OK, it's on to the next. 3 old XP machines to do, plus replacing server. Biggest hassle is getting all the data center software up and running. So, I don't anticipate much free time.