Windows 8 - Whos installed?

[Nimrod]

With Windows 8 finally being out, and some great upgrade deals (see the homepage for how to get Windows 8 Pro for 15 dollars!), whos actually gone ahead and installed it?

I installed it on my Bootcamp install just for a general playaround. Doesnt really work well on a 27inch screen without touch. But I can imagine it on a touch screen PC/Laptop would be pretty uber.

 

[seanpr92]

With Windows 8 finally being out, and some great upgrade deals (see the homepage for how to get Windows 8 Pro for 15 dollars!), whos actually gone ahead and installed it?

I installed it on my Bootcamp install just for a general playaround. Doesnt really work well on a 27inch screen without touch. But I can imagine it on a touch screen PC/Laptop would be pretty uber.

got rtm installed since august apps are really coming along and xbox support i activated myn via a kms

 

[InsaneNutter]

I installed it back in August as a dual boot with Windows 7, and used it for around a month as my main OS. Its not as bad as some people have been making out, however its no where near as revolutionary, or functional either.

Its pretty awesome the Windows kernel will run on Desktops, Tablets, Mobile Phones and possibly the next Xbox if roumers are to be believed, i think that is the biggest achievement here.

From a desktop users point of view i think we have been totally ignored with Windows 8. For using on a desktop i personally find it more of an annoyance, the Metro interface is useless on such a large screen without touch. Even with touch i personally would rather use a mouse and keyboard on my PC.

Why do i want to hover the mouse in the corner of the screen for the "chimes" bar to appear? for a touch interface yes it works fine. However with the mouse and keyboard its just an inconvenience.

I find the few Metro apps out at the moment to be so limited, even the official apps are not really up to much... however the biggest problem is the Metro interface and the desktop are two totally separate things, there's no interaction between Metro apps and the desktop. Maybe that will change in the future, however as it stands i question how long someone would use a Windows 8 tablet for with the limited Metro apps that exist today.

I think Windows 8 could still be the start of something good however, Vista had to break a lot of things which would benefit Windows users in the future. I think we are seeing the same thing here with Windows 8. Microsoft need to be in the tablet market now, not in 2-3 years time. If it wasn't for that i honestly don't think we would have Windows 8 right now.

All my complaints aside i will be pushing for us to upgrade to Windows 8 at work however, as the company has a limited budget to spend on I.T. resources the £24.99 upgrade to Windows 8 cant be ignored, especially as all the computers here except mine are on Windows XP. I would imagine a lot of other businesses running Windows XP maybe thinking the same, as despite my concerns with Metro you are still getting the latest Windows OS at a fraction of the cost you would normally. Not something to be knocked if your coming from the 11 year old Windows XP.

I guess with the above essay you could say Windows 8 is a love / hate thing

 

[Nimrod]

I know quite a few people who are picking up Windows 8 just because its the cheapest legal way to get Windows. £24.99 (or $15 with the upgrade trick on the frontpage) is dirt cheap to get Windows 8 Professional. Many people I know use dodgy Windows 7's so for them they can go legal and then just install Start8 to return the Windows 7 style start menu.

 

[Neoteam1]

I have the full version. I installed it on the pc using a 24" TV and it works really well. Have no problems with it at all.

 

[Nimrod]

Sadly my experience of Windows RT (Windows 8 on ARM) on the new Surface however isnt great

I got it out of the box and spent 4 hours getting the thing up to date in the following stages:

Have to Manually force Windows update in Metro settings to get the RTM Rollup Updates
Reboot
Then wait an hour for the Store to pick up the built in Apps need updating
Wait another hour for that because the Store is slow to update them
Then find that the Metro Windows Update only does Critical Updates, and you have to go to Desktop on a touch Screen and navigate control panel to Windows Update to do Important and Recommended just to get the Office 2013 Final (and might I add on a Touch Screen without a Keyboard and Mouse this is bloody hard to do and a TERRIBLE experience for a home user who's not confident around Windows)

For a home user whos bought it as an iPad clone thats a terrible experience. It should just come out of the box and automatically apply all App Updates and Windows Updates on first boot without human interaction.

I'm trying really hard to love Windows 8, but Microsoft are making so many stupid mistakes. It also appears for Business Users you can't set a Group Policy which disables the Metro interface either. So it seems they have messed up:

The Tablet Experience by forcing you to use a Desktop on a Touch Screen to get updates.
The Home PC Experience by having two separate interfaces of Desktop and Metro which can't interact with each other
The Business experience by forcing Metro and the Windows Store when many companies who only have a few applications they want employees to use cannot disable Metro + Apps.

Lets hope they pick up the ball quickly and start pushing some major updates to Windows 8 in time for Service Pack 1 because the OS feels very incomplete atm

 

[Slaz]

I got one of those promotion codes ready if for some reason I'd upgrade before Feb 2013, but I don't count on it.

My experience with Windows 8 is somewhat mixed. It's nice for developers to have a new layer (Metro) to work with as it's apps are supported on the ARM version too. ARM based hardware is growing and will grow further, that's for sure. But I already have an Android phone & tablet and my PC is running fine on Windows 7. I can do everything I want to do with my devices, so Windows 8 really has nothing to give me!

 

[Rick]

I have this version installed on a separate hard drive and it doesn't do so well with drivers.For some reason i lose sound after i sleep the pc, this topic here shows that many people can't fix this. I haven't purchased windows 8 yet due to driver problems.

edit:
I recently installed some windows updates on windows 8. I can login and can only see a cursor with a black screen, how disappointing for a new operating system. Safe mode is impossible to get to without a windows 8 dvd.

 

[RedComputer]

I Do not plan to upgrade Windows 8. But if buy new PC, it sure will run Windows 8.
Actually my main computer is running Linux for some reasons.

 

[BonezOz]

I've been running Windows 8 pro for about 2 months now, and I'm quite pleased. It takes a bit to get used to, but once I did, no issues. I'm running a triple screen set up, and I like the fact that if I use the mouse on any of the screens to open the start menu it opens on that screen, not the "primary" screen. All my applications run fine, the only issue I have is with older games I purchased through Steam, they don't always work and even trying different compatibility modes doesn't help. The other issue is Media Center doesn't come out of the box for the pro version and you have to purchase an additional "Features" pack from MS for AU$69.99, which is a little rich. MS did have a limited offer for Media Center for free, and said I should receive my key within 72 hours, but a week later and nothing, plus everytime I try and request a key now I get a "cannot be processed" message.

Overall, I give Windows 8 a 9 out of 10, it's slightly better than Windows 7 in many aspects, such as Hyper-V can be be installed, which is better than Virtual PC and cheaper than VMware Workstation.

 

[Spooks]

I installed Windows 8 yesterday, 10 minutes later Windows 7 was installing , I don't like the user experience of 8, much prefer 7.

 

[InsaneNutter]

Did you try the 8.1 beta?

That has options to remove the annoying chimes bar and hot corners from the desktop, you can also right click the start button and have easy access to many of the system settings, along with a shutdown / restart button.

The start screen can use the same background as your desktop too, so you dont feel like your been warped out the desktop as much. Granted i still think its too big on a 24" screen, however the 8.1 update has added some nice updates.

 

[Spooks]

Did you try the 8.1 beta?

That has options to remove the annoying chimes bar and hot corners from the desktop, you can also right click the start button and have easy access to many of the system settings, along with a shutdown / restart button.

The start screen can use the same background as your desktop too, so you dont feel like your been warped out the desktop as much. Granted i still think its too big on a 24" screen, however the 8.1 update has added some nice updates.

Ill have to have a look into that thanks, I think this time round Ill try it in a virtual machine first.

 

[InsaneNutter]

Virtual Machines are the way to go, that's how i tested out Windows 8.1. I recently built myself a server which is dedicated to running various virtual machines using VMWare ESXI.

Alternatively you can dual boot, i'm not a fan of replacing my primary os with a beta. I did however do that with Windows 7 as the beta was just rock solid, and such a nice improvement on Vista.