Impressions of Windows 8 RTM

[CaedenV]

So... I did the terrible deed and moved my wife over to win8 on her machine, and I was really suprised by her reaction.

When I first showed her the beta of win8 on my netbook (last December) she hated it, but when I loaded it on her computer this evening she instantly started using it like a pro once I showed her around a bit. She loves metro, and prefers it to the desktop! I mean... I'm a fan of win8 and all, but I use desktop pretty much whenever possible.

Interestingly, the big sell was Tripeaks in the solitare suite (woot! I loved that game back in the win 3.1 days!). On her first game she beat my high score and rubbed it in my face (I blame the pregnancy hormones on that one, she is not normally so competitive lol). So if any of you have lady-friends that you are going to force to move up... show them tri-peaks and 'let' them beat you

Oh, almost forgot,
Her rig is a C2Q OC'd to 3.4GHz, 4GB ram, 9800GT graphics (my old game card), 120GB Vertex3 system drive, and 500GB data drive. Only problem was that it would not allow for an 'upgrade' and I had to reformat the system drive. Thankfully (kinda), her old SSD failed recently, so she didn't have all her programs up and running yet, so it was just a matter of installing chrome and office to get her up and running.

... my new parts arrive Monday, and I will move my rig over then can't wait to see how it flies on raid0 SSDs

 

[Pinhedd]

Ya, not a huge fan of media center, and I never understood why MS got so hyped up about it, and then turned it to nearly abandonware just a few months later. It was a neat idea (replacing TV and such)... just poor support from content providers.

Personally I like XBMC when I have a dedicated media PC, but otherwise use WMP or VLC for most playback. I don't like the new metro 'video' and 'music' players (mostly because they seem to more interested in selling me content than playing what I want)... but they are much improved over their previous versions.

I can understand why Microsoft abandoned it. It's hard to sell a program when there are more convenient free alternatives available. Most consumers only want a media player that can play all of their pirated MKVs with as little fuss as possible. The licencing terms for the patents and relative maturity of the media industry make this easy for the community to support because it's not constantly evolving. There's really no need to spend money paying programmers to create a fancy product when someone else is fully capable of just wrapping FFMPEG into a pretty package on the side. Audio and video standards don't really lose support and they don't change over time, the same free filters that worked in 2008 still work today and have builtin support for codecs that went out of fashion in the mid 1990s.

Microsoft is thus faced with an interesting question. How do you compete with free? The best way to do this is add-value, but this is almost entirely fluff and no one will notice if it's missing. Then there's also the inherent problems with the DLNA protocols which make it irritating to use. A lot of users simply hook up an external receiver over HDMI and play media that way or use a HTPC/Media Player which can read the files off a network share.

 

[nukemaster]

I only use Media Center for TV recording and watching(Sure beat the crap out of snapsteam's offering of the time because it started almost instantly even on older hardware). Some times I will toss a DVD in as well. For everything else its VLC

I was more thinking of the Music/Video/TV/Netflix/Hulu Plus idea right in metro. It would generally make things very easy to use.

EDIT.

Ohh yeah built in USB3 is also a nice touch.

 

[The_Prophecy]

EDIT.

Ohh yeah built in USB3 is also a nice touch.

One problem I noticed (at least on my Asus P9X79 Pro), was that while Microsoft did include native USB 3.0 support, it was limited to USB 2.0 speeds for some reason. When my install was u and running, I attempted to copy some ISO files from my Patriot Magnum drive (sustained reads at 210 megabytes per second), but found that the transfer speed wasn't getting above 33MBps, exactly the upper limit when factoring in overhead of USB 2.0. The fact that it picks up the controller is nice, but wouldn't it also make sense to have it running at full speed?

In any case, installing the driver from the Asus website for Windows 7 worked fine and the USB 3.0 ports now function at full speed.

 

[Pinhedd]

One problem I noticed (at least on my Asus P9X79 Pro), was that while Microsoft did include native USB 3.0 support, it was limited to USB 2.0 speeds for some reason. When my install was u and running, I attempted to copy some ISO files from my Patriot Magnum drive (sustained reads at 210 megabytes per second), but found that the transfer speed wasn't getting above 33MBps, exactly the upper limit when factoring in overhead of USB 2.0. The fact that it picks up the controller is nice, but wouldn't it also make sense to have it running at full speed?

In any case, installing the driver from the Asus website for Windows 7 worked fine and the USB 3.0 ports now function at full speed.

The native USB drivers have a similar goal as the native HD Audio drivers, native VGA drivers, native AHCI drivers, native Ethernet drivers, etc... they're designed to establish default device behaviour so that the device can be used until the point that the manufacturer's driver can be installed. Sure they can be used indefinitely in the default way but manufacturer specific components require manufacturer drivers. This is pretty typical of WDF driver development as it means that manufacturers only have to override relevant parts of the driver rather than write the whole thing from scratch.

I'm a little surprised that it only ran at 2.0 speeds though. Perhaps switching to 3.0 speed is non-standard

 

[The_Prophecy]

The native USB drivers have a similar goal as the native HD Audio drivers, native VGA drivers, native AHCI drivers, native Ethernet drivers, etc... they're designed to establish default device behaviour so that the device can be used until the point that the manufacturer's driver can be installed. Sure they can be used indefinitely in the default way but manufacturer specific components require manufacturer drivers. This is pretty typical of WDF driver development as it means that manufacturers only have to override relevant parts of the driver rather than write the whole thing from scratch.

I'm a little surprised that it only ran at 2.0 speeds though. Perhaps switching to 3.0 speed is non-standard

While your logic is certainly sound, I can't shake one seemingly obvious exception from the Audio, Video, AHCI and Ethernet examples you provided:

Why do (at least I believe they are) native Windows drivers for Gigabit LAN adapters immediately provide Gigabit ethernet speeds on new Windows installs? Looking at this purely from a speed perspective, would this line of thinking not suggest that native drivers program the LAN adapter to run at 100Mbit, and getting the Gigabit speed the adapter is capable of require a download from the manufacturers website?

I know this is almost never the case in reality, but thought I would point it out.

 

[Pinhedd]

While your logic is certainly sound, I can't shake one seemingly obvious exception from the Audio, Video, AHCI and Ethernet examples you provided:

Why do (at least I believe they are) native Windows drivers for Gigabit LAN adapters immediately provide Gigabit ethernet speeds on new Windows installs? Looking at this purely from a speed perspective, would this line of thinking not suggest that native drivers program the LAN adapter to run at 100Mbit, and getting the Gigabit speed the adapter is capable of require a download from the manufacturers website?

I know this is almost never the case in reality, but thought I would point it out.

That's a very good question. I don't have a definitive answer for you but I'll take a stab at what might explain it.

1000BASE-T has been standardized since at least 1999 and uses the exact same physical layer as 100BASE-T. The standard is very specific as to how 100/1000 devices operate so there's only a handful of ways that an 802.3 compliant PHY can differentiate itself from other PHYs. Ideally they will all observe either identical behaviour or predictable behaviour which allows for a common mature Ethernet driver to be used for many of them. Were the 1000BASE-T PHY behaviour somewhat more divergent I suspect that the default drivers would in fact only support 100BASE-T. There's also the matter that Ethernet devices do not have any authority or control over any devices that they are connected to.

There was also 7 years between the time 1000BASE-T was adopted and the time it got native support in the OS (with Vista I believe). There are still a number of motherboards and add-in cards that do not have their PHYs natively supported by Windows and some where the Windows drivers are problematic (such as the Intel Pro 1000 PM/PL on Windows Vista). USB 3.0 was only adopted a few years ago and didn't see widespread implementation until 2010.

As for USB 3.0 there are still a litany of compatibility and performance issues which haven't been resolved by the manufacturers. I expect that Microsoft decided that it was against their best interest to natively support something in a fashion that wasn't guaranteed to work universally. It would be better to have USB 2.0 work reliably across all devices than to have USB 3.0 fail on some devices with no reliable fallback to USB 2.0 speeds. In the future I suspect that USB 3.0 speeds will be supported natively.

 

[nukemaster]

Well, My drive is not as fast as yours, but the native drivers are working . They must have some detection issues with all the USB3 controllers kicking around.

I do agree with the above poster about comparability. USB3.0 is very lacking in that department. Some cables work with some devices and not others. ports are just slightly different. disconnecting devices widely reported

Hell I have a 20-pin usb 3.0 to female port adapter for my case(front ports) and it disconnects all the time, yet my flash drive and BD-reader work just fine on it(directly to the adapter). Ordered a full kit with 20 pin usb3 for my case and one ports disconnects constantly and the other will if you even touch the plug.

The ports on my board are rock solid and even if I move the plug nothing bad happens.

 

[MidnightDistort]

After trying out Windows 8 with Oracle Virtual Box, i'm still disappointed. Mostly the fact not just because there is no Start menu, it's almost like a downgrade from Windows systems. I had to right click to the personalize screen just to find 'My Computer' and the Windows folder. Granted i didn't mess with it much and it got annoying when i was trying to close the apps on the Metro UI, instead i could only go back to the Metro screen.

Now, im wondering if this is going to be like in the final version or whether we'll have the option to customize a little more, but IMO Microsoft seems to think that rolling out a new OS every couple of years is good which is fine. There's just too much that has changed with Win8 to really want to switch over. Not to mention even though i know where the shut off function is on the Metro you have to have to have the mouse (or even touch it) in the right spot or it won't show up. At least this is what i have noticed.

Honestly though i wouldn't spend the money to upgrade & i wouldn't if it was for free. Microsoft would actually have to pay me to use Windows 8. But it's not like Windows 7 will disappear anytime soon.

 

[CaedenV]

OK, so my 2nd SSD came in last night, and I moved the main system over.

Specs:
Mobo: ASRock extreme3gen3
CPU: 2600 (non-K) @ 4.3GHz (turbo and BLCK overclock)
RAM: 16GB 1333
GPU: GTX570
System Drive: Agiligy3 240GB x2 in RAID0
Project Drive: 1TB Seagate 7200rpm x2 in RAID1
Document Drive: 500GB Seagate
CD/DVD drive: Lite-ON BluRau plaer and DVD Burner
Important software: Win8 64bit, Office suite, Adobe Creative Suite CS1 and Premere Pro CS5.5, various games

As to be expected, everything runs pretty fluidly on the system as it has plenty of horsepower, so I will mostly be mentioning differences between this system and the others.

Ram use: idle it uses a whopping 2.5GB! talk about pre-loading software and having things sit in the background! On top of that task manager now shows the stuff that is cached in ram (win7 you had to go into resource monitor). Win7 only ever preloaded ~4-5GB of files, while win8 preloads some 8GB of information in the background. I have the Ram, so it may as well get used, but this is some very agressive ram usage, I am amazed that it can manage so much stuff in the background while still feeling so responsive.

Audio: I am using the xFi MB2 suite on top of the onboard audio chipset, and outputting via optical to a pretty nice amp (not as powerful as I would like, but very clean output). Everything works fine, and no major changes over win7. I feel like there is a little more clarity, but I think it is just in my head and I have no tools to really test this. My one annoyance is that every time I installed or updated an audio driver win8 always wants to default to the HDMI output to my monitor's craptastic speakers, it is not a huge issue to change it back, and I know that win7 defaulted to this as well during the initial install, but win7 at least remembered my preference and I only had to change it back once where win8 I ahve to change it back with every driver change. Again, not a huge issue, just a minor setup annoyance

USB3: USB3 worked out of the box with win8. Sadly my USB3 flash drive is out for RMA so I was not able to bench the interface before installing the mobo driver, but it seemed to work fine with my USB2 devices

Drivers: In fact, win8 picked up all my hardware right away, but there was an obvious performance difference between the default driver and the manufacture drivers for just about everything.

Loading and responsiveness: Sadly the time to load the RAID controller during POST negates any possible load time gains by the RAID0 as I was already getting a 10sec boot time before (after POST), and now I am getting 6-7sec boot time (after a 4sec longer POST) so the total load time is a wash if not slightly slower now. Before I was getting 160MB/s (uncompressed) and ~280MB/s (compressed) on a single drive. With RAID0 I am averaging ~250MB/s uncompressed and ~375MB/s compressed with the occasional dip down to 120MB/s and jump up to 550MB/s. Program loads were already near-instant pre-RAID0, so there is not a whole lot of practical difference there either. However, there are 2 areas where there is a huge difference:
1) In Skyrim and other games the loads are nearly instant (just time to put up the splash screen and then take it away), easily less than 1/2 the time from before RAID0, and with 480GB of space I have room to install all my programs and games with room to spare. Other large programs like Premiere load a little quicker, but as they have some initialization time that is not tied to the HDD performance it is not quite 1/2 the load time.
2) With the extra space I have enough room to use the SSD for holding video editing source material, which means that now when editing my HDDs idle (making my rig very nearly silent), and the short seek time lets me edit many more streams at once without the system so much as blinking (from the RAID1 HDDs it would hickup if I had too many streams, or switched through too many sources too quickly). It also means that my CPU gets pushed to 100% much easier, where before it mostly sat at ~60-80% utilization when editing because the HDDs simply could not read quickly enough.
Sadly this has little to with with win8, and much more to do with SSDs in raid0, which I think would be useless for most users, but for media work I have to say it is pretty awesome and unlocks a lot of potential.

Graphics: I love the new Metro interface, but there is one very annoying thing I have found with it; In the games app there is an avatar of my xBox character, and when it moves there is some extremely obvious frame studdering or dropping issues going on, almost like a ghosting behavior. Obviously this is an issue with their programming as I am not noticing any such issues in anything else, hopefully this is fixed down the line and not a limitation of the languages used in the metro design. Otherwise, everything runs just fine on my netbook, so on a real rig it all runs flawlessly.

Well, that is my first imrpession. No issues using keys and mouse on the rig like there were back with CP and RP versions, but I think it would be better with a touch-screen or leap motion interface. I get a little annoyed that the lack of drop-down menues when right-clicking things in metro and having to move all the way down to the pop-up menu at the bottom of the screen, but after the initial setup I am finding that I do not need to use it often so I don't see this being a long-term issue.


I am going to steal one of my 27" monitors from work for a few days to see how multi-monitor support is (I hear there are some great new features on that end). I am also going to poke arround the domain and business oriented features and see if anything has improved or changed from win7, and I will post back if I find anythng interesting on those ends.

In the end I am definitely going to upgrade. I have grown accustomed to the new UI and feel oddly limited going back to win7. Plus I want to upgrade from 16GB of 1333 to 32GB of 1600+ which was simply not fiscally sensible when I built the machine, but now something I am very interested in doing as I do more video work (and it is much more affordable to do now). Home edition caps out at 16GB of Ram, so I would have to pay $65 for anytime upgrade, or $40 for the win8 upgrade so that makes the decision very easy for me. On top of that I want to play more with pro-style networking which is not easily done with home edition.

 

[CaedenV]

It's interesting to me that the pole has 11 negative votes, 11 neutral votes, and 10 positive votes (my own vote was identically black which really makes for 11 positive votes). When I made the pole I really expected to see more of a love-it or hate-it dichotomy, and it is really interesting to see things so evenly spread.

 

[sscultima]

i have found that with Win8 so far with people like or hating, it has been very wide spread unlike with past OS'. i find that people who are really in to computers that try it, are in the middle about the OS how it has its good and bad, I do lean more towards liking it more than hating anything about it, since i have had no issue with it.

i do find that more people who just use it for gaming or basic use hate it due to the change with the start screen. and new layout and stuff removed or changed.

 

[MidnightDistort]

Well i hate it, imo i voted on 'Give me back my start menu!' because i can't use the OS effectively. Everything is hidden and with previous Win OS's i know where everything is. The metro design makes it feel like im back in Win 3.1 all over again.

In any OS i want to be able to have functionality and know where things are. With Vista i was even in the middle of the road with it, i didn't find it terrible.. it was a resource hog & often times it was slow for me until i upgraded to Win7.

If Microsoft really pays attention to why people still use XP i'm casting my vote by sticking with XP/7.

 

[RetiredChief]

Just read the pricing.
Quote
anyone purchasing a Windows 7 machine between June 2nd, 2012 and January 31st, 2013 to upgrade to Windows 8 for just $15. For those that aren't purchasing a new computer, Microsoft last month announced that anyone running Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7 at launch you qualify for a $39.99 download of Windows 8 Pro. If you prefer an actual physical copy, you can pick Windows 8 Pro up in store for $69.99
END QUOTE. Then goes to around 199 for Pro.

Also caught, looks like the end of being able to do a "Clean" install using the upgrade version as you must enter the key during the install process. This is OK if you have the "qualifing" Upgrade OS installed. But, although I would OWN the Previous OS, I still prefer the Clean Install. Then there is the hassle of, should Your HD die and you buy a new drive- or switch from a HDD -> SSD, RELOADING the old OS to reload your Upgrade version. This may be somewhat alievated if Win 8 retained the image OS found in Win 7.

One of the reasons I prefer the clean Install is to retain the OLD OS for a few monthes after loading a new OS (ie daul boot).

The $40 is not to bad to obtain a copy of Win 8. But $200 bucks - sorry charlie, Il stick with Win 7.

 

[CaedenV]

@Chief
the $200 is for the retail version of Pro, just as win7pro, Vista pro/business, XP pro, and win2K have all cost for the retail box. If you are building a new PC and purchasing an OEM copy (tied to the box instead of being tied to you) then there will still be an OEM copy to buy for something in the $120-150 range, just as there is today, and a home OEM in the $90-120 range.

All that said, I agree with you; No OS is worth $200 (especially if it is just going to be replaced in 3-5 years!), and as much as I like a lot of the changes in win8, I would not be willing to pay ~$140 for a new OEM copy to upgrade me from win7.... but for $40... I think that is a very acceptable price to upgrade to win8 Home, moving up to Pro is an even bigger plus.
I really think Mac has the right idea; Charge a ton of money up front to get in the door with the OC (system cost in their case), but then once you are in then charge a minimum for the new OS, but come out with one every year or two. Over the years it evens out, but once you are in the upgrade costs are much easier to swallow.

Or even better as MS is moving to so many cloud services; Give the newest OSs away for free (well... limited copies of course) to those who have some sort of skydrive/office365/xboxlive subscription. I am not huge on subscription based services, but throwing in a $200 OS that can be put on 4-5 home PCs every 3-5 years would be a pretty good selling point.

 

[CrAcKeZ]

I've tested the developers preview, the consumers preview and the RTM version

one thing to say "WOW!!!!!!!" <-- in a bad way, its like the failure of Windows ME and Windows Vista but not due to performance but due to complicated stuff. Why trying a whole new way ...just to look exactly as the tablet way? Its like when Ubuntu moved to Unity ..it just suck - period.

P.S. Give people a change ...or as you give the consumer preview ...se what the actual buyers want M$ ..and don't mess arround (Just my humble opinion)

 

[RetiredChief]

@CaedenV
Quote
I would not be willing to pay ~$140 for a new OEM copy to upgrade me from win7.... but for $40... I think that is a very acceptable price to upgrade
End quote:

Yes I will probably buy the Upgrade version for 40 bucks For at least one computer just to have a working knowledge of it.. But have one BIG reservations - and that is the"work around" to do a clean install. Seems they dropped this ability. When ever I install a "Brand New" OS, I always do it as a daul boot option for at least 3 Monthes so that the Always present intitial Bugs can be worked out. The lack of this feature also means that the Orginal OS must be re-installed prior to a re-install of the new OS - UGH- as Many like to re-install the OS on a SSD periodically. For this there is the work-a-round which is to Image th OS + Program drive and use this image for the re-install. I'm quessing that win 8 did keep the ability to Image the OS drive/partition.

On win 8. This is probably the first OS that is faster than the previous version right at launch. For example: Win 7 was slower than XP at launch. But improvements fixed that and that is no longer the case. Part of this was do to the added Bloat of adding the DRM Crap - still a sore point with me as I do NOT boot leg Blue-ray. One of the reasons this ticked me off is that it "forced" Upgrading of some perfectly good hardware such as Monitors and GPUs - Granted since the launch of Win 7 I would have upgraded these anyway, The Diff being "my choice" Not forced to.

M$ primarily makes there $$$$ on the sale of NEW systems with the NEW OS (And now to include tablets) and the Sale to the corporate world. New system not impaced as thes sales will be the same as past releases. The Corporate world is a dif story. My impression reading financial reports is that this release will be similar to Vista and ME - The only diff is that Vista and ME were NEVER upgraded to. Win 8 MAY see a slow migration to Win 8 based on longevity (time till win 9 is rolled out).

Would be interesting to see the diff between Win 8 Vs Win 7 poll and a poll (same point in time, just prior to release) for Win 7 Vs XP/Vista.
I did Like win 7 prerelease (Excluding by complant) compared to XP/Vista. Current results has 58% for choice 1 & 2 and Only 31% for the last two choices. If memory serves me right the "favorability" rating for windows 7 was much Higher at the same point in time, just prior to launch.

 

[Guest]

Windows 8 has a lot going for it! I have RTM on my Laptop, (C2D 4GB Ram HD3670 60Gb SSD) and it runs lovely and quick!

BUT, I hate Metro Interface with a passion! I know exactly how to use it, I have bee using it for months, and i still absolutely hate the way it works from start to finish. I also dislike the Look, and find almost no use for any of the "Apps" as they are all pretty crap anyway!

No chance this will go on my main PC, unless!

1) Give me back Start Button!
2) Give me back Aero!
3) Allow me to disable Metro UI!

Then I may upgrade! Windows 7 does everything I need on a desktop to be honest anyway!

I will wait a little longer before getting a tablet to see the first round of Win8 tablets, but to be honest, I will probably get a New iPad.

After setting up dozens of different tablets for customers, None come close to the iPad (3). And this from someone who generally dislikes apple!

Nope Win 8 is not for me!

 

[MidnightDistort]

One great thing about Windows 8 it could bring in some consumers to check out desktops. I keep hearing how 'Microsoft is trying to get everyone on tablets, blah blah blah' but it could interest some into gaming with the tablet interface. I honestly don't know why the interface is so great with apps and all this but theres some people out there who might enjoy seeing a touch screen on a desktop PC. Granted portability is nice, but desktops usually have a higher lifespan then laptops/netbooks/tablets with more upgrades & it won't wear out as fast.

I just hope that Microsoft will listen and realize that there are consumers who can't live without the start menu and the functionalities.

 

[bodean]

Put Stardock's STAR8 on, it's free, and stop bitching about no start button. Enough said. Windows 8 isn't that bad.

 

[omnimodis78]

I've been using the RTM (Pro x64) version for a few hours, and I have to say that I have this sinking feeling that it's one compromise after another. Been using keyboard shortcuts mostly (shouldn't be thus in 2012), and in reading help files in W8 it keeps referring to swiping this and swiping that - so clearly I am handicapped by the mouse/keyboard. On the other hand, it is fast, feels way more responsive than W7, and the system monitoring tools are fantastic!

 

[nukemaster]

You have inserted a CD tap here to tell windows what to do