I've been using Windows 8 on my HTPC for the last 2 months. Using the Release Preview. Recently, I also installed the RP onto my home server, blowing away Windows Server 2008. I also plan to put it on my main PC as soon as my pre-order ships.

On the HTPC:
Metro looks a lot nicer on 42" of TV than the Windows 7 Desktop does. Hands down, I'm very pleased with it. Navigation works well with remote+keyboard. My only desire is for more apps that have full remote control versus mouse driven apps. I think that will come with time.

On the Server:
I have a dozen drives built in Storage Spaces using the following drives: 3TB, 2TB, 2TB, 1.5TB, and 1TB. Most drives are non-redundant (movies, TV shows, etc) while some are smaller and mirrored (music, documents, backups etc). The system is reliable and error free, and I know I can move the physical drives to a new PC or a new copy of windows 8 and they will keep their content.


If you actually read through the thread in question, you'll find that it was accurately addressed. The guy tried to make a 3-way mirror with a 2TB drive, a 1TB drive, and a 320GB drive, and was surprised to find that he had only 320GB available to him.

In addition, boot up is very fast, the interface is snappy, file copies are drastically improved and the task manager is improved. I've removed non-useful icons from the start page, and replaced them with stuff a server will use - computer management, shortcuts to folders, uTorrent links, etc. Also, I fully expect that excellent server apps will come to Metro soon, which will make server management even easier in the future.

On the PC
Its not that much of a change to press the Windows key and see a whole page instead of a menu. You can still type to search, and the results are immediate and presented as icons - easy to see and pick. You can navigate with mouse, or arrows. You can switch from searching apps to searching settings by pressing win+W. You can disable charms and use keyboard shortcuts instead. Look at this: http://blogs.technet.com/b/kennymaita/archive/2012/09/29/windows-8-shortcuts.aspx

Oh, and a tip: You can put a desktop link on the start page. You can also put a shutdown link, reboot, sleep, whatever - see http://www.howtogeek.com/74331/how-to-create-your-own-windows-8-shortcuts-for-shutdown-perhaps. Personally, I never shut my PC down.

In my mind, an app store is a requirement for a modern OS. Windows 8 having a store is not 'ripping off Apple', it's simply the correct thing to do. I'm fully confident that there will be many apps available, as developers can produce one app for 3 platforms:PC, phone, and tablet.

Give it some time and try it for more than 30 minutes. How long did you have to play with Ubuntu before you were comfortable with it? Or OSX? Or Windows 7? Or Windows 3.1?

Thanks Mark, that is a very useful perspective especially from the HTPC angle and its ability to work correctly with a remote control (I assume using standard up/down/left/right arrow keys rather than a mini joystick).


Andy

But in the end its down to choice and how you personally find it easiest to work, but sadly M$ is taking those choices away from its customers.
The average user probably wont know they don't have to sign up for a M$ online account just to use there device, or how to add and remove shortcuts.

As far as i can see Windows 8 adds nothing but takes a hole lot away, The sort options for example can only be sorted by name and date what happened to sorting by file type or size?

Windows 8 seems very much like an advertising billboard, advertising M$ products and trying to lock people into only using M$ or M$ approved products, they got into trouble for this before by not giving users the choice of what internet browser they can use, And i'm surprised they are attempting the same thing again.

Microsoft should take note of the many complaints here about the fewer individual choices Windows 8 allows.

It looks like a trend--less autonomy for the computer user, more control and monitoring by external third parties ranging from commercial enterprises to governments.

Having an "App Store" is one thing. Making it a lock-in, exclusive dictatorship is another. Until the final product is out, it's hard to be absolutely sure what will happen, but the signs are there, and the predecessors of the model are not encouraging to say the least - except perhaps from the accounting department's perspective.

Everyone thinking Win8 is okay because you can ignore Metro for the most part should be aware that this won't be the case with Win9.

Buying 8 tells MS they're getting away with it. It also tells App Developers to just go ahead an develop one Metro interface for everything. If you don't like Metro you shouldn't ignore, you should boycott Win8 and send the message that on the desktop, we like the desktop.

Win8 is an a$$hole move by MS. They're using the OS monopoly, esp. for pre-installed PCs, to familiarize everyone with their mobile UI, so next time they are in the store for a tablet or phone, they'll choose what they know.

My GF has the Lumia 800 and Windows Phone is the worst of the three mobile OSes. All the metro tiles look the same and there are just two rows of them, so once you have a few dozen tiles on the start screen, you're scrolling like mad.
And the whole interface without lines and buttons and other standard UI metaphors, that relies almost entirely on typography to distinguish between elements has a cluttered, unmanaged feel to it.

This can't be the future of the desktop. It just can't!

It isn't.


But... (yes, there's always a but)


It is the future of the desktop by Microsoft.





Time to hoard some Windows 7 copies.

Well unless they bow to market pressure and its a total flop, but somehow i think people are still going buy into the hole windows 8 deal.
And hoarding only works for so long, look at XP are M$ still rolling out security fixes for it idk?

I tried the public preview of Win 8, I hated it.

I think the Metro interface is Microsoft trying to be cool. Microsoft's problem is that they aren't cool, and they never will be. I'm reasonably confident that the silly interface for desktop use will go away in Win 9, not least because businesses aren't likely to be very amused by all the retraining of staff they'd have to do, and I think a lot will stick with Win 7, like they've stuck with XP.

To be fair to Microsoft (unfashionable, I know) whilst they do have a track record of silly ideas, history suggests that they eventually they do stop stabbing themselves in the testicles and relent and give the user something closer to what they really want.

As for the app store - I think this will fizzle too. It cuts across several decades of the way PC applications have been distributed. I don't think it'll work as a portal/channel for devs to use even if it's free and open, and I certainly don't think it'll work if Microsoft try to go all walled-garden. For the record I don't think the app store on Mac OS X will be very successful either - laptops and desktops are different from phones and tablets.

Windows 7 will be supported until 2020. Long enough for them to gain some sense and release a version of Windows without this Metro nonsense.



End of consumer support:

Windows XP - 4/8/2014
Windows Vista - 4/11/2017
Windows 7 - 1/14/2020

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/microsof ... vista/4529

A lot of games companies in particular are worried about that, especially as Microsoft's app store has content restrictions that (in theory) would prohibit many of the most popular titles.

Personally I'm a heavy user of multitasking and multiple windows, so even without the app store's issues I definitely wouldn't want to be restricted to Metro's full-screen apps and sidebars.

Haven't really looked into win8, but i suspect the general response is somewhat less enthusiastic than this.

1. Remove the smiling guy
2. Replace all those people with hipsters and tabletphiles™ (I call dibs).
3. Add a few dumbfounded people and some 'kill it with fire' faces.


There.

Have you ever noticed Microsoft doing something "strategical" without bullying the rest of the market? And as far as i can see, AppStore makes a nice margin on Apples revenue.

And by allowing AppStore-only Software, you also easily control the money-threatening open source stuff.

So, you don't want to hear any dissenting opinions?

I've been running the Consumer Preview since it was released back in what, May? Around then. Anyway, lest you think I'm a Microsoftie, I had been running Ubuntu before that, but was driven away by that godawful "Unity" interface, which is an inferior attempt to do the same thing MS is. I ordered a copy of Win8 Pro on release day for a few reasons:

I've gotten used to being able to watch Netflix on my laptop.

I've started using a bike trainer program that runs on Windows.

My laptop came with Vista, which was instantly replaced with Linux, and the drive with the restoration image has since been wiped and repurposed.

I use Win7 at work, so I have extensive experience with that as well.

Frankly, I don't get what all the moaning about the Metro side is about. Don't want to run full-screen Metro apps? Great, run it in the desktop. Full multi-tasking and all. Do people really think that's going away? You can do exactly what you used to. Another poster further down complained about it being hard to start Notepad because it's not right there in the destroyed Start Menu... then details exactly how to use the Start Screen to bring it up quickly (Windows key, N key, down, Enter).

Metro, however, can be perfect for doing some browsing and chatting while watching TV on the couch. Or watching Netflix a little quicker than leaving a dedicated tab for it on a browser. Hopefully, my bike trainer program will create an app that can be side-snapped in Metro and show me just that and Netflix while riding, which is less than ideal given the window shapes on the normal desktop.

I hardly ever use the Start Menu in Win7 at work. I have 14 apps pinned to the taskbar, and that handles just about everything I do more than once a month. At home, on Win8? Same thing. One click to launch commonly-used programs instead of, at minimum, two clicks with the Start Menu (and more once you use up the "frequent" slots in the Start Menu).

The Start Screen, on the other hand, is helpful. Get up in the morning, grab the laptop, press Windows key. See the weather, news headlines, sports scores (perhaps one click away), email, and calendar. Why is that bad, compared to what the Start Menu brought, which was a stack of static icons to launch programs, which is, again, inferior to taskbar pinning anyway?

The one thing I do understand is the concern over the App Store. However, we have Apple to thank for that, and don't believe for one instant that they are any more interested in openness than Microsoft. Currently, Apple is by far the major risk for locking down the desktop, and my hope is that playing them off against Microsoft will prevent the entire industry from being locked down by one company in a decade. It sounds funny, after railing against the MS monopoly for so long, but Apply is the scary leader now, and Linux is not a serious threat, unfortunately. That, and Apple's locked-down interface doesn't allow side-by-side multitasking at all, and just has static icons that launch programs, which is less useful than the live tiles.

Since when does not wanting to deal with zealots and fanatics who will never concede anything or shills who only want to troll and insult everyone = not wanting to listen to (logic and sound) proponents?


There are people you cannot reason with, I do not want to deal with those people. Does that make me an unreasonable person now? Whatever.



Like I said, Windows 8 is fine, Metro is not.

Win8 and Metro pose a big problem to business users: You have to retrain your stuff to get used to the "new" way of computing.

Can you imagine like GM/Dell/whatever-multi-national-player willing to spend the budget to get all of their stuff a "welcome to metro and howto use it in our business"-training? Especially shortly after they ate a raelly big IT budget to migrate to Win7 just this or last year?

I honestly can't.

Your post carried a strong implication that anyone who didn't join the Win8 bashwagon was a shill or troll. Was that your intent?

I also note you neglected to actually respond to the meat of my post. That, actually, does make you kind of unreasonable in my opinion. And you're awfully negative about the inclusion of a part of the OS you don't actually have to deal with.

Im fine with win7 till win9 is released, no way ill be upgrading my PCs to win8, i hate the metro setup.

I'll probably move my WHSv1 to it, once its steady, more for starting to migrate to 3tb+ hdds, but ill wait probably until SP1 is released.

Update: Microsoft doesn't think too highly of Windows 8 either. Source: http://gizmodo.com/financial-times-microsoft-pulls-windows-8-u-turn-493265011.

Remains to be seen if the changes are cosmetic or if they're going under the hood.

im betting windows new update will be not much more than classic shell masked as a "Service Pack".

I think the main problem people have with 8 is that it doesn't bring any advantages over 7 unless your using a touch interface, some would argue that unless your using touch it actually has some disadvantages.

I bought one of the $40 buck upgrade offers from MS and let me tell you. If I had to do it again. I wouldn't be bothered. Win8 is a cluster puck of the worst failure I've seem from MS in a long time. It even beats WinMe and Vista combined and that's some major suckage.

Another issue that comes up is the price MS wants for it. Too high in my book and the folks that I normally advise on OS options, I've been telling them to stay away from Win8 for many reasons. That was the only reason I purchased a copy as I figure I'll have to support it soon enough.

It's also why I switched back to Linux - Total disgust at MS trying to ram a Tablet/Phone UI down our throats. If Win8 detected a keyboard and dropped into a familiar desktop that works well with the mouse (Win9 anyone?) they'd have something. Some of the features they introduced like the new task manager actually makes sense (provides usable info). Don't have a problem with the start screen (usable in place of the start menu and in Win7, I had stuff pinned to the taskbar anyway - rarely opened the start menu).

In my current KDE 4.10 that's similar to Win7, I've pretty much duplicated my Win7 configuration - commonly used apps pinned to the start menu with the frequently used stuff on the taskbar plus the few I absolutely need that autostart. About the only thing I don't have is the Aero Inteface but you know what? I don't need that eye candy anyway as my apps tend to be set in split screen mode (1080 display). Web browser on one side, email and other apps on the other. For Word and such, I have Libre Office and Kate open the same way. Otherwise I'm working in full screen mode (DigiKam - camera download tool/image browser/editor).

Providing different strokes for different folks would indeed have been a dynamite idea, but they decided They Know Best. And here we are.

My favorite quote on Windows 8 came from Tim Cook, chief executive of Apple
Even though he said this before launch, i think he was spot on.
While technically possible to combine phone+tablet/touch GUI with a desktop/mouse+keyboard GUI, its not pleasing to use.

Ha, totally forgot I posted in this thread. I guess I'll have to write an update...

I've finally built a new PC, and installed Windows 8 on it. I've been using it for a couple of weeks, and I'm not going back to Win7. Yes, it took me more time to set up my Win8 installation the way I like it, but in the end, save for a few small annoyances it's every bit as good or better than Win7.

The two main things I had to do was install "Classic Shell" to get start menu back, and change default file associations to desktop apps instead of metro. That's it. That's all it takes to silence most of the Win8 critics. My PC boots straight into desktop, and I shut it down from Classic Shell start menu, I never see metro unless I want to, which is almost never.

There are a few gripes I have with Win8, for example some settings such as changing account photo can only be changed from Metro interface - pretty much the only reason I go into Metro interface. Or the inability to fine tune the windows look such as toolbars and titlebars. Another one is "hot corners" and Charms bar in particular. I have two monitors with secondary monitor on the right, so every once in a while when I move my mouse to my right monitor Win8 pauses my mouse cursor over charms bar until it pops into view. Yes, these are annoying, especially the charms bar, but not a deal breaker.

Overall I'm pretty pleased with Win8. After the tweaks it looks and works pretty much like Win7 but it's better. I was wrong about start menu though in my original post. I did miss it and had to install Classic Shell to bring it back. Going to metro screen is too jarring and annoying every time I need to launch a new program that is not pinned to the toolbar or has a shortcut on my desktop. Plus the structured "Programs" menu is too invaluable to get rid off. I like seeing what I just installed on my machine. If Microsoft ever decides to kill third party Start Menues for good, then I'll have a problem with Windows 8, until then, there is no reason to hold on to Win7.

If only Microsoft weren't continously working to force users into the Metro interface. More system settings are being relocated there and the 8.1 update will, as far as they say today, require going into Windows Store rather than simply getting it through Windows Update like any previous Service Packs. For no other reason than to give that otherwise underperforming Marketplace some traction. It doesn't matter that more will simply choose not to bother, and fragmentation between systems will increase.

If I were running Windows 8 as my main OS I would ordinarily be using tweaks that had prevented me from even getting into Windows Store. I'll be curious to find out whatever tweaks wont' be working again after 8.1.

I find the need for a M$ email acct to use the app store competently maddening. (because of this i dont use their appstore, and cant even update the old ones)

I hope 8.1 comes as a normal tuesday update, I already have over a half dozen email accounts, and I REALLY dont want another.

I have to ask in what way is it better than Win7 ?
If you are going to install a start menu replacement and boot straight to desktop why not just use Win7.
All i ever see are reasons not to use Win8, things like the flat colorless GUI elements, the jarring switching back and forth from Metro to desktop, having to tweak or install third party programs to get it to act more like Win7.

one positive that I find with 8 is that metro is a decent living room PC/HTPC interface. much easier to navigate when sitting on the couch than any other version of windows. I still prefer 7 on my office PC and laptop tho-