Introducing Windows 8 Consumer Preview

[C0RR0SIVE]

Fact: I had a customer come in today asking about Win8CP, mostly questions concerining Metro. They will be moving to Ubuntu, or Apple if they can't fully disable Metro to allow for traditional desktop use.

Fact: Microsoft might still have a good OS in the end.

Fact: Microsoft needs to stop trying to shove a ****ing tablet interface down customers throats, otherwise they will loose market share quickly.

Fact: One entire school system will be moving to a different OS over the next two years to get away from Microsoft as they are still on XP and hoped Win8 would be the "XP" of this era, not another Win2000.

I will support Win8, but only because I have customers that WILL use it, but, now that Win8 is also a tablet OS, I will have to probably pick up a few tablets and experiment with them... Boy this is gonna be an interesting decade for operating systems and techs wanting to rip their brains out.

 

[Joe C]

I got an older dual core Dell box....I reckon I should put it on that and give it a test drive eh? Personally I do not see any interest but as a tech I know I have to look into it. I going to go download now....

 

[Joe C]

They stole the off button!!
I can't see where to shut it down


Edit: found it.
Ctrl/Alt/Del brings to to where you can shut it down.
reminds me of windows 98

 

[Lexluethar]

If it's touch swipe your finger from right to left to get the power options.

 

[Joe C]

nope....it's on a desktop with a standard lcd monitor. No touch

 

[iFargle]

I'd love to try it out.. but fail at getting it to work in VMWare Both x64 and x86. Meh, I'll dual boot my MBP and stick it on there!

 

[Sheepykins]

i've seen some screens, looked heavily influenced by mobile platforms.
anyone else think that making the interface too simple just takes the fun out of things?

 

[Joe C]

Looks to be a failed attempt to be a wanna be ipad

 

[Trotter]

I installed it in VirtualBox this morning. It's different, but irritates me so far. If I need to get to most anything non-superficial I have to pull up the Start screen (and end up clicking IE most of the flipping time), right click, and go to All Apps. I figured out how to turn off most of UAC but am really miffed that they crippled the hidden admin account that I normally would use.

ARGH! I just had it not allow me to open up a CMD prompt because I have turned the admin account off and have UAC turned all the way down! Seriously, MS, what the frak are you thinking? Everyone in the world is NOT a blasted idiot who wants/needs their hand held. I am sure there is a way to set this up so that I can use it and not want to delete the virtual machine but I haven't found it yet.

I'd love to try it out.. but fail at getting it to work in VMWare Both x64 and x86. Meh, I'll dual boot my MBP and stick it on there!

You have to turn on virtualization in the BIOS, mate. I had the same problem out of the gate.

EDIT: I deleted the virtual machine. Apparently I screwed the pooch by turning off the hidden admin account after I had dialed UAC all the way down. Win8 would not allow me to access MSCONFIG to re-enable UAC as it would not let me enter the admin password (which was blank for Christ's sake!!!), but only had "No" as an option.

Maybe I am set in my ways, but if an OS, any OS, makes me have to approve each and every action I take than I will not use it. I circumvented this by using the hidden admin account in Vista and Win7 but the Win8 Preview took that away by making the admin account local only. If/when I find a way to set this up the way i want it I may give it another shot, but not until then.

 

[Oreo]

Trotter, that sounds more like a flaw with the consumer preview version than an actual design decision. I havn't had to use Metro in about 5 days now, i've not came off the desktop once. Right clicking down where start used to be has everything I need 99% of the time. In fact getting to stuff like Device Manager and drive management is quicker than ever I find.

I like it. I love the new explorer, it seems fast, games run great, and then there is the app store which has a few fun games when i'm bored. I also like the Metro styling (Not so much the Metro start menu). When you learn a few little hidden things it becomes great. My only major complaint at the moment is that stupid black bar to change windows comes down when you fling your mouse to the top left.. right where the back button is in a browser. You don't have to miss the back button much for that thing to come up, i've done it numerous times now and it's pretty annoying.