Windows Windows 8 Marmite thread... Because you either love it or hate it.

[loftie]

Running consumer preview on Virtualbox, it runs ok. Not sure what i think about it though. Sometimes i like it, other times i dont

Edit: am i being stupid or is there noway to get back to the metro screen if you're in an app, except either closing the app, windows key, or hovering on the right to get the menu to hit start?

[Zoon]

I installed it on VMware Player today. Its quite snappy in terms of performance tbh, even in a VM on 2 vCPUs (i7-2760qm ohhh yes) and 2gb ram (got 6gb, but only allocated the VM 2g). That's a positive.

I looked at it with two hats on.

The first hat was as a business user. This is the Consumer Preview, so its probably not fair to judge it until I actually see the business edition. But as a business user, I hated it.

It will depend how the Metro interface morphs when in 'business mode' - it could work quite smartly by having app tiles, a Lync tile, an Outlook Calendar tile which gives your upcoming tasks and/or today's meetings, unread emails, the other office apps, maybe a Sharepoint web-parts tile which can open document repositories and stuff like that. Perhaps if its all creatable programmatically via a domain policy it'd work nicely too.

The second hat was as a home user. Meh. Its different, but its not horrible. As a home user all I'm worried about is launching: Steam, Firefox and Windows Explorer occasionally to play music or pictures.

If I bought something that had it on I wouldn't throw a hissy fit, but I wouldn't go and buy the upgrade version at all.

When the business version comes out on MSDN or whatever I'll give that a spin and see how it changes things.

[GoodBytes]

Originally Posted by loftie

Edit: am i being stupid or is there noway to get back to the metro screen if you're in an app, except either closing the app, windows key, or hovering on the right to get the menu to hit start?

I don't get your question. Those are plenty of ways.

[loftie]

I think i was just expecting a minimize option on screen, not to have to use a keyboard button or wait for the side menu to appear

[GoodBytes]

Originally Posted by loftie

I think i was just expecting a minimize option on screen, not to have to use a keyboard button or wait for the side menu to appear

Take mouse, move it to the bottom most right corner, and click.
The metro app is now minimized (suspended on the back).

[impar]

Greetings!

[GoodBytes]

Originally Posted by impar

Greetings!

Lies. I have an extra hour of battery life on my laptop over WIn7 64-bit.
And my laptop is 4 years old. Core 2 Duo P8400, 4GB of RAM, Nvidia Quadro NVS 160M, 1440x900

But I am on idle.

[GoodBytes]

Picture!

[loftie]

Originally Posted by GoodBytes

Take mouse, move it to the bottom most right corner, and click.
The metro app is now minimized (suspended on the back).

Doesn't work for me.... however bottom left, eureka! Ty for the help, it was me being stupid.

[Gaming_freak_10]

Originally Posted by GoodBytes

Picture!
snip

how the heck did you get 2 batteries, GB? lol

[GoodBytes]

Originally Posted by loftie

Doesn't work for me.... however bottom left, eureka! Ty for the help, it was me being stupid.

Sorry, I am the idiot.. I meant left.

[GoodBytes]

Originally Posted by Gaming_freak_10

how the heck did you get 2 batteries, GB? lol

lol. Yea crazy laptop.

My laptop is the Dell Latitude E6400 14inch 16:10 aspect ratio. 4 years ago, it was considered thin system (other systems where much thicker, with the large optical drive that they had.. this system uses the newer thin ones. It was about MacBook Pro 13inch height)



It came complete, with smart location of port (the big ones on the back), LED monitor to save power (this was fairly new back then), non-glossy screen, wireless N, solid block metal hinges, magnesium alloy construct body. And is FULLY user accessible (a few screws you can pull the motherboard out! To access the inside: it's 1 screw slide out panel design. Feels like opening a desktop computer). Top things off, it also came with the OS disk, and junk free. Oh yes! you read that correctly. Plus, it came with eSATA, and DisplayPort connectivity. Quiet operation, and isn't burning hot at the bottom. In fact the fan rarely spin. I must be playing a game or playing Flash video for like an hour to have it kick-in.

This laptop support 2 batteries.
The first battery, is the traditional one:

(9-cell 90Whr version pictured above)

The second battery is a small 12-cell 14V battery plate that you add at the bottom, making the laptop a hint thinner than any other laptop (at the time). It connects via the dock port of the laptop which is at the bottom. I don't have it, because my laptop already provides plenty of hours for my needs... Heck I recently tested playing Portal 2 on it for 4-5 hours on the plane ).


The 2 batteries together, gets you about 18-22 hours of battery life (based on reviews), depending on the specs you pick.

Honestly, I think this was THE BEST system that Dell has ever done. And it came (you can't go lower), with a 3 year warranty and 3 year next business day on site service (so Dell comes to you). No other laptop today, or back then, offer something this big as warranty, including Lenovo. If they offer something this crazy, you know it won't break on you, and it hasn't so far, and still looks like new.

The Power Adapter is also really small, 90W. Not Mac Book Pro small, but much smaller than other 90W PSU's of other manufacture, or the new, much much much crappier one that Dell gives now.

Windows 8 marks my first battery as second. That is a bug (I only have the 9-cell one, not the plate)

Honestly, I find it truly disgusting that today, OEM simply give up. They cut on quality like no tomorrow, they put lower and lower screen resolution, crappier and crappier TN panels (while tablets, costs far less, uses IPS panels, and much much much much higher resolutions for their size.. heck even 1920x1200 on a small table (ASUS Transformer Prime TF700T).
If this system breaks, I'll truly miss it, especially that it ran Vista 64-bit like a champ.

Best 1600$ Canadian ever spent (300$ less than a Mac Book Pro 13inch, and more powerful, and only 1 year warranty, and no Windows).

All this system needs as an upgrade is faster HDD (I only have a 5400RPM one). CPU, memory, GPU is still plenty (ok well GPU lacking. Intel offering today on desktop (not laptops) is faster, but I rarely play games on it, but it does handle Windows interface very well, 1080p video as well, which is plenty (I play games on my desktop). Oh this GPU and because the laptop has excellent cooling, I can overclock my GPU like no tomorrow, I can easily almost double the clocks (except memory, due to lack of any heatsink on them :/ ).

[RichCreedy]

anyone in the uk been able to use the metro mail app with exchange?

[Zoon]

Originally Posted by GoodBytes

lol. Yea crazy laptop.

My laptop is the Dell Latitude E6400 14inch 16:10 aspect ratio. 4 years ago, it was considered thin system (other systems where much thicker, with the large optical drive that they had.. this system uses the newer thin ones. It was about MacBook Pro 13inch height)


(snip - goodbytes making it pretty clear that this is an awesome laptop)

Yeah I had an E6500 for a year and a half before taking a swap to an E5500 which was hanging around because the E5500 has a serial port (comms engineer = that's handy).

I then managed to swap to an E6420 with a i7-2760qm (quad core+ht 2.40ghz)

We've got some E6510 and E6410 hanging around too - absolutely brilliant laptops, all of them.

All you gotta do to escape the crapware is to ring the SME sales line (I'm sure Goodbytes knows this) and they don't even pre-install antivirus or office, just plain Windows.

The first thing I did was remove the Intel ProSet Wireless and install the driver-only package and since then I've been exceedingly happy

[wuyanxu]

so with Metro screen being the new start menu, installed apps would dump useless icons onto it.

unlike mobile OS such as Android or iOS, each app on the home screen is installed by the user. those are background apps installed by K-lite codec pack. does Microsoft expect users to manage bucket loads of background asset apps?

[impar]

Greetings!

Being horrible as it is now, the sane solution would have been if K-lite created a folder in Start Screen where it would dump all of those shortcuts.

It seems folders can be pinned:
http://www.bytewiki.com/how-to-add-o...-start-screen/
Have to try it yet.

[RichCreedy]

Originally Posted by wuyanxu

so with Metro screen being the new start menu, installed apps would dump useless icons onto it.

unlike mobile OS such as Android or iOS, each app on the home screen is installed by the user. those are background apps installed by K-lite codec pack. does Microsoft expect users to manage bucket loads of background asset apps?

you can unpin the tiles if you wanted, then you can just start typing to find what you are looking for.

don't know if anyone has discovered it yet, but screenshots are much easier to get win+PrtSc automatically saves a png file in your pictures folder

[Krazeh]

Originally Posted by wuyanxu

so with Metro screen being the new start menu, installed apps would dump useless icons onto it.

unlike mobile OS such as Android or iOS, each app on the home screen is installed by the user. those are background apps installed by K-lite codec pack. does Microsoft expect users to manage bucket loads of background asset apps?

Just right-click on the ones you don't want and select 'unpin from start', simples.

[Coltch]

Starting to get used to it now (still hate the start screen) and decided to see how it worked on my other half's Netbook (Acer Aspire One) - can't launch apps from the start screen because the screen res is too low - she is happy though as it's 'nicer to look at' than Win 7 Starter.

It is running fine on my Netbook (Sony Vaio) - better than win 7 starter - but I still wont put it on my main machine.

[Krazeh]

Just found out you can essentially disable the Metro version of IE without needing to install and set another browser as default. If you open IE and goto Internet Options > Program the first option lets you choose how IE should open links. If you change that from 'Automatic' to 'Always in Internet Explorer on the desktop' and check the box for 'Open Internet Explorer tiles on the desktop' you should always end up in the desktop version of IE when you click a link or pinned tile (including the default pinned IE tile).