Windows 8 Features Slick Search from Start Screen

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I am far from a Linux fanboy. I just got into it 3 weeks ago adn already have my company (i am independant consultant) email server up and running all at the cost of nothing using the same open standards across the industry.

Regardless, MS IS THEIR OWN WORST ENEMY . If more people knew that Win7 was actually just a lite Vista, they probably wouldn't be too happy. Win XP was MS's crown jewel and it will continue to be for probably another 10 years. It's business's that drive the industry not home consumers, which end up being forced beta testers (look at Win Vista for a classic example).

I think MS needs to focus on the kernel opimization more than the actually GUI. The NT KERNEL (which was acutally purchased from IBM's OS/2 Warp kernel and updated from there on after) is fat, slow and can't figure out what direction to go half the time. It may have the largest user base but it's only a matter of time before someone else creates the next easiest thing (chrome possibly?)
 
[citation][nom]amk-aka-Phantom[/nom]Another Linux fanboy. Linux is either a tool for serious server computing or a toy for enthusiasts. Consumer computing and gaming is all on Windows. Windows is a much better OS for 90% of the consumers and I see why. Linux will NOT take over. And it does NOT have more support than Win2kX... unless you mean Win2000/Me. Most of Linux's "support" comes down to an advice to change distribution or reinstall the OS, while in Windows 95% of the errors are user-caused AND fixable. Especially on Windows 7. If Win8 fails, MS will simply do the same thing as with Vista - use it as a beta and roll out a real thing after a while. Win7 turned out GREAT with this approach and I actually love the idea of an average customer being exploited as a beta tester. I was one of them and I paid for my lack of knowledge at the time with my money and time. Everybody deserves the same.[/citation]

It seems you are missing the point. The discussion is about the changing ui paradigm, not win v lin v osx. My point, and it appears Antilycus', is that this new quicker access to search functionality is not new. It's been used before on other desktops. The calc example is a bad one if you use it often, which many users do you pin it, but take for example firewall settings, which generally aren't used that often. I hit my Super Key type 'fir' and the first result is Firefox the second result is Firewall, at which point I can either hit the down arrow or click the icon. That's much faster than click Start click Control Panel wait for it to open, then click Firewall. It may not be to everyones liking, but it's quick and effective. I like that windows has click once start typing for search, but it's not the new advancement the article seems to be claiming.
 
I've tested win 8 and found it seriously lacking in several aspects:
1- The unbelievably ugly and un-ergonomic design of the Metro UI; most people will want to get rid of it quickly; not only for it's design but also because it's made simple jobs like clicking an icon on a desktop easier, but the normal OS operations difficult, to nearly impossible!
Say for instance, you want to change your power scheme, or update the OS manually, you will need to do several clicks before you can finally get to update it manually.
Not to even mention it took several minutes for me to find how to turn off the OS (without touching the power button).

2- It is about as fast as Windows XP, is efficient, boots a little faster, but consumes LOTS more battery! It also has tons of annoying background activity! The stuff you DON'T WANT because it's reducing performance!

3- Currently it does not have display drivers of the most simple Intel GMA chipsets found in laptops with integrated graphics cards! I had to download a Windows 7 driver, and run it in compatibility mode, and even then it has some quirks and blits and jitters here and there!

4- Being idle it uses 3-8% of CPU constantly, with a browser and a notepad opened it uses 1.16GB of RAM constantly

5- Disabling the shitty metro UI disables a lot of vital functions of the OS, including finding wireless signals!

6- If you hated the Windows Vista's start bar, and hated 7's start bar, you will hate 8's start bar even more, because it doesn't have any! It takes you to disable metro UI to get a shitty start bar, that's not very useful!
Everything is based on the computer finding files for you, but nearly 90% of the time I don't want the computer to search anything; I want to be the one browsing through the directory structure of the start bar that I KNOW where my program is!
There are times you don't know if a program has been uninstalled, or still resides on your HD, and you don't want WIndows to waste several minutes of your time searching for something it can't find anyway!
In these cases Win 8 is a total fiasco, a disaster, a flop!!!

Although it's in a beta phase, I believe unless MS focusses on reducing automatic 'unintelligent' background activity, and focusses on reducing Win8's footprint by at least 50%, windows 8 will be a big FAIL!

Nothing more than an overglorified Windows 7!

Posting something like 'slick search' is for me like posting: "Now MS has even worse crap for you!"
 
Ah you people do realize windows 8 is a pre-release development software? It's at least a year away from RTM, so complaining about bugs at this point is kinda silly.

Oh and if you're still using windows XP, you just need to shut the hell up completely.
 


So, you're claiming they'll get rind of Metro in a year? 'Cause that's what we want.
 
Looks like Microsoft has copied GPL based desktop environment, with other words, nothing new here.
 
[citation][nom]amk-aka-Phantom[/nom]So, you're claiming they'll get rind of Metro in a year? 'Cause that's what we want.[/citation]
Click to expand...

NO... METRO UI is here to stay, I'm saying complaining about bugs in a pre-beta release is silly a year from RTM
 
Hello Microsoft...!

now you want me to 'google' or 'bing' my own files and applications...? good search is powerful feature but I can't help but wonder about your focus...

Win7 has some good sides but it serioulsy lack in some aspects.

I know it only took quarter of a century for you to come up with first reasonably stable, usable and sort of secure OS, so congratulation! But try to listen for a change and you will have much happier user base. Crayons, teletubby landscapes, transparencies etc. may appeal to 4 or 5-year olds, but kids don't carry wallets. So if you listen, try to come up with things that count to ME:
- boot time is still too slow (sorry).
- bunch of applications still not working in Win7. Virtualization solves some of the problems but not all. OS that is not able to run applications from previous generation is bad idea, this is why I still need XP as second OS.
- GUI is way too MickeyMousey (heck, I'll take Win2k GUI over WinXP or Win7 any time, it does not look like something from Comedy Channel and does not take much resoures, good riddance fat icons and ribbon tool-bars, hello icons that STAY where I leave them - no shuffle in the Start Menu, no shuffle in the Task Bar, no shuffle in the Notification area.)

you want something to please ME? fix things, like ones that are used all the time:
- maybe you should make those ribbon toolbars 5x as fat so that computer manufacturers finally have to come up with decent resolution for all displays (1366x768 sucks and i hate supporting those).
- clean and good Windows explorer. this is gateway to OS. with no decent file browser, you don't have OS.
- stop making more and more of special folders like My Computer, My Documents, My Pictures, My Neighbours Wife Purse, Favourites, Favourites II, Rambo IV, etc. Get rid of the whole thing and just use regular file and folder names. (ever heard of keep it simple...?)
- decent Multiboot that does not require 3rd party tools and bunch of hacks
- services with real names instead of ten instances of something generic like "rundll.exe" etc.
- 'kill task' that does just that : Kills within millisecond and works first time, every time, no question asked.
- enter power down or sleep in a blink of an eye, not wait for minute or so. Try to save things that are to be saved whenever harddrive is idle. don't wait for me to say 'sleep now' because when i say 'now', i really mean it...
- stop telling me where my files are supposed to be, how about letting me decide? and if i am to use folder that you assign to my user account, then make darn sure that only files and folder in there are created by ME (place all the hidden folders, identities etc some place else like %Winnt%\Users\ or similar; my folder can is not mine if OS is messing with it!).
- how about some consistency of user interface? I don't mind that you create (or even install) different ones. After all there are many users with different needs. But for the love of God, let me select my 'Spartan2000' (i mean win2k) with one click instead of hacking for two hours just to make pc usable.
- when you install something and PC wants to reboot, PLEASE add option "don't ask again, I'm kinda busy at the moment but i will reboot eventually".
- Stop harrasing me with threathening red icons like "your updates are disabled" because if I have computers that are not on a network, (and doing specific job,) I am just fine with no updates.
- do something about printer spooler. canceling print job is a nightmare.



 
@ProDigit10

not sure how you installed your win8, but i installed 64bit fresh and there are barely 6 processes running in the background, Intel GMA are a POS when it comes to drivers, for the drivers to work correctly you need to use the OEM specific driver

again not sure why your battery performance would fare any worst then win7, i found it to be on par with win7 (which was far better than win XP), same goes for CPU and RAM, idle it sits around the 300MB mark with close to zilch CPU activity

i found win8 to boot significantly faster than 7 (easily faster than XP)

win + D key will get you to the desktop, there's the standard wireless activity monitor in the taskbar, disabling metro wont make that go away (same with power scheme), Win + I key will get you the setting bar with the wireless connectivity metro style

if you are indeed organized pin the damn path to your explorer quicklist then your just a Win + D and a right mouse click away

now saying all that i do have win8 running on a sandybridge laptop with 8GB of Ram and an nVidia gfx

if your DP of win8 did not run equally as good if not better than win7 than i think there is something awry with your win8 setup, the only thing that sux about it is after coming out of a hibernate/sleep i lose my multi-media key functionality (a simple reboot wont bring them back, it requires actually letting the machine sit off for a good 10 mins, it may have something with the new kernel hibernate function, but thats what you get when playing around with a DP)
 
Or I can hit Start>Calc>Enter = Calculator. ZOMG I did that without even having to go to a different screen! Damnit, what is this magic??? Oh wait, it's called W7...

Srsly over at MS they are thinking "how the can we change something that is already good and make it look like mac/linux, but take even longer to get what you need."
 
My experience with the beta version:

Don't works. Useless, and dangerous.

I did search of files whose location I forgotten, and it failed to find any.

It could lead to think that those files don't exist.
 
[citation][nom]campb292[/nom]While I am at it - stop with all the gimmicks and mac-like menus. Windows has an 85-90% market share. Rewrite the kernel, upgrade ntfs to a new file system, stop write throttling, end 32 bit, stop turning on automatic updates after I just turned it off... improve. Stop turning the round wheel into a box; Round just works better.[/citation]
A - Metro is the first step to killing off the old WIndows API
B - Not seeing mac-like menus. Its a slick interface design.
 
Wait... Can't you already hit the windows key and type stuff in the search box in windows 7? I'm not entirely fond of having a great big overlay pop up whenever I want to find something...

Here's a thought- When you ctrl-f in a browser, the only thing that pops up is a tiny search box. What if the winkey-f popped up a similiar 'small' box that only looked through your files without having to eat up your ENTIRE desk space. Just a thought.
 
I find the win 8 search not as good as the win 7 search.
for example , type in "BACKUP" , in win 7, it will show the "backup & restore" in the start bar, while in win 8, it will say " no app found" and you need to click the setting in the right hand side to see the new win 8 bakup option.

1 extra click in windows 8
 
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