Hardware Windows 8: Performance Benchmarks

It's neither a step forward or a step backward - I think win8 is suited to those with touchscreens and alike, it's not for me though.

I was given to understand that this OS was going to boost the AMD bulldozer/piledriver architecture somewhat, so I look forward to seeing the comparisons of this APU in a win7 Vs 8 shoot-out.

 

Right, spent my first full day with Windows 8 and I find the new interface amazing! Yes, it's a learning curve but I got used to the new features more quickly than I thought I would. It's fast, fluid and having everything right in front of you is great! I'm only having to use the desktop for troubleshooting. The live tiles are great, and for me, it'll be a wonderful OS once more things start appearing in the Windows store.

It's well worth the £25, that's a bargain for an OS!

 

Greetings!

Makes sense.
Since Start Menu was not being used a lot, lets make a new Start, make it fullscreen and offer no way to skip it and no alternative.
There, now telemetrics say everybody is using the new Start Screen. Its a success!

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You can get rid of metro ui.

Seriously people, this thread is full of misconceptions.

You can disable metro.

You shouldn't have to rely on 3rd party apps? Well time to get rid of steam and wait for microsoft to release a competitor. Tell me, how is IE working for you?

Oh look it's an application that lets you seamlessly switch between the standard start bar and metro.

http://mbossg.deviantart.com/art/Start-Menu-Selector-windows-8-259057773

But it's 3rd party so I don't expect you to like it.

They do the best they can but it's insane to expect them to deliver exactly what YOU want.

On another note, why do you even care. Just don't use the damn OS. Are you being forced to use it or something?

 

I got it for free with university and tbh I rather like it. The performance difference isn't even worth considering when most of the people here have a high end pc anyway.

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2

 

As opposed to taking it out and putting nothing in there? Well then why take it out if you arent going to do anything with it?

Im glad there are so many trying it and actually finding out its ok. Its easy for people to tag on the coat tails of those loud people with big ideas but alot harder to actually go and try something for yourself and form your own ideas.

 

Not all change is good, let's not forget. A touch screen UI that is also forced ( essentially, eventually ) on desktop users is not a good thing, especially when viewed from an aesthetic stance; I don't have to switch to the desktop view to see my lovely wallpapers for example.

It's quite clear that there are lots of great improvements in W8, and a MS OS for the exploding tablet market made sense too, but they should not have tried to save money by combining the two as desktops and tablets require rather different approaches to interfacing and general use.

How, please?

 

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=how+to+disable+metro+in+windows+8

edit: though the not being able to see lovely wallpapers thing is something that could be worked on There are times I want my computer to look like pictures, as opposed to a computer, and a generic background is the best way I usually achieve this

 

The biggest problem for me is that windows 7 is everything I need an OS to be. I literally don't need anything else from my OS. There is absolutely no reason for me to purchase windows 8, even before we talk about the unnecessary learning curve associated with switching.

 

Does anybody know if the the license allows you to install previous versions of windows like you could with XP, in case you decide you prefer 7?

 

Well thanks to a little bit of information I managed to get the Windows 8 upgrade offer for £14.99 even though I don't have a qualifying pc lol.

I thought what the hell might as well give it a try and apart from the lack of the start menu, which can easily be fixed and has been by the installing of a certain app, I am actually liking it.

Takes very little time to boot, and shut down compared to windows 7 on my ssd.

The one thing I do find annoying is the fact that you need a Microsoft account when installing and setting up the pc but, that can be gotten around as well.

To be honest I have not noticed a drop in perfomance compared to windows 7, but I also have not used my pc so much this weekend as I have had to many parties to go to.

I think it will get better but, I am going to try it for a month and see how it goes.

 

I thought I'd try out windows 8 over the weekend, to see how I felt, and now I'm back on windows 7 again...

There were certainly things I liked about the new OS. The new task manager is great, and from what I've heard the file copying is greatly improved (I use teracopy so didn't try it). I also liked the ability to group tiles in metro into fairly useful categories, which does help if you can't remember what something is called. The upgrade process was also fairly painless.

What I didn't like...everything just seemed so counter-intuitive.

Firstly I don't mind change, in the past I've regularly switched between linux distros just to 'try a new flavour'. When change is implemented well and with good rationale behind it then I'm all for it. Obviously I didn't give the new os much of a chance either, spending maybe a day at most in it before the 'I've made a huge mistake' reaction. However at the moment I don't have time to learn my way around a new system, plus to a certain extent I feel if something has been thoughtfully designed you shouldn't have to 'learn' it, it should be intuitive.

The counter-intuitive stuff... Having to open settings to shut down the pc (this is actually the first time I've had to google how to shut down a computer). Scrolling down on the mouse to go right in metro. The all programs (or is it 'all apps' now, I forget?) just looks like a complete mess, very hard to find anything. Moving my mouse to the bottom left of the screen to open chrome (pinned to taskbar) and hitting the 'start' button. Plus metro itself, having to open a full screen interface just to launch a program can be quite disorientating. I also found myself going through a maze of different settings options to find what I wanted, and right clicking apps in metro doesn't bring up a context menu, just some options about pinning. When searching for something in metro I have to specify if it's an app, a setting or a file (I think those were the choices), if there's 0 results in 2 of them and 1 result in the other why can't it work that out for itself? There's probably more but at this point i'm just ranting. (oh also my logitech drivers weren't working properly for my g500, but that's logitech's fault, still might be worth checking driver compatibility before upgrading)

Maybe I would have got used to this in time, and sure a 3rd party start menu could solve some problems but there's no chance they'll be installing it (the 3rd party app) in the workplace/office environments. Frankly I'm a little worried if this is the future of the desktop os. Ultimately these changes make no sense to me (at least for a home computer, they do make some sense for tablets), and those that do could arguably have been included in a service pack for Win 7. I might try it in again when it's a little more polished, possibly with a service pack behind it, but for now I can't see windows 8 as anything else than an abomination.

 

I don't understand how you read this part of my post, and not the rest of it that linked you to a simple little app that allows you to seamlessly switch between metro and the normal windows desktop enviroment.

 

After debating to take the plunge or not I've decided to stick with 7, must be the first time ever I've not succumbed to curiosity but the way I looked at it in the end was after reading many people say it will get better with updates and service packs to fix certain aspects of it, made me look back at early reviews of W7 and how it was hailed as everything Vista failed to be and should have been. Which led me to the conclusion that the only way Vista was ever fixed was when it was replaced with a newer OS.

I totally understand how some love it, it's down to your personal needs and interests but I just don't think it's for me, I run a dual boot system with one os dedicated to audio production, having a portal trying to sell me stuff bolted to the front of that just wouldn't suit it, It actually looks like the front of an Argos catalogue to me with all the tiles so pass for me.

 

I've tried skimming over the thread to make sure this hasn't been covered but it's hard to filter useful information out of all the vitriol so I apologize if it's been brought up:

Why were no DX11 games tested? I normally try not to be too critical but this is a performance review of Windows 8, not XP. Two games is already a fairly brief gaming review (understandable since this is meant to be comprehensive) but within that small selection it'd be great to have had some more diversity.

 

Nice to see you at least gave it a good long testing though! A whole weekend

OOI to the person above who got it for £15 whilst not qualifying, how did you do this? I bought win7 just recently and was hoping id be able to get the £15 deal but dont seem to be able to

 

I have heard with the upgrade offer if you specify brand as 'other' then there might be some way to get it without meeting the actual criteria. To be honest though I don't see much difference between that and pirating it, the £25 upgrade deal is pretty good anyway, even if you end up disliking it as I did.

I did originally intend to test if for longer than a weekend (intended to use it until win 9) but I really just couldn't stand it for some reason. I'm tempted to use the license on my netbook, which I don't have to rely on for day to day work. I think the swipe gestures on a touch pad might make metro feel a little more intuitive, plus the screen is so small I rarely use more than one program at a time anyway. Maybe if I get used to it on there then I'll slowly acclimatize and switch on my main desktop. I want to like metro, I like the aesthetics of it and I can some of the reasoning behind it, I just don't think it's been implemented particularly well.

 

Of course not, but having the option to boot into metro or not, would probably suit everyone. There's no disadvantage to adding that after all. It's as they are so proud of it they force you to use it. Never mind, everyone seems to miss my point.

 

Greetings!

Using a Microsoft sponsored option? No.
So the point still stands.

 

I'm going for a lay down