fyi wacom users, the annoying pen "improvements" of windows 8 can not currently be disabled, see here http://forum.wacom.eu/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=9594
apparently registry changes that helped win 7 are currently not available for win 8
might change in the final build however.
The Wacom drivers and annoying splash/flicks animations are biggest thing for me and whether I will move onto Windows 8. Still need further definitive confirmation on this.
I still have issues with it appearing when I start 3ds max on Windows 7 despite trying all the fixes I've found all over the net. Not sure if I've tried the 2008 drivers though...Will give that a go.
Thanks for the details Lamont ! Totally fits with what I was expecting.
To me it boils down to one thing really : since I won't get it for free and won't be forced to install it, the price of the OS + the man hour cost of having to wait for the install (basically wasting an evening of potential work...) adds up to too much for what is essentially the same thing as 7. So yeah - not needed for me
I've done the same as Lamont, it's just a quick launch button for my most common apps, screw all guff.
Some things are faster but overall it's the same thing with a different start menu.
Took ages to shut the damn thing off though... O_o
Pro tip: Windows key + I
what lamont said. I upgraded too. Some stuff feels snappier. All software works. It takes a bit tweaking to make everything work the way you want it. The whole metro thing still feels cumbersome when using a mouse but it's easy to avoid. I only use the metro start screen, which can be customized to look quite ok and not AOL-ish.
For the discount price it's an okay buy. I wouldn't buy win8 for the full price though.
I'm not sure what the appeal is to switching, and I think that's the issue MS fails to understand. If I have to go through a lot of work to make the UI usable, why bother? I have a good running OS, with Win7.
So the big appeal to Win8 is that my PC will boot faster, and maybe open my apps a second or 2 faster? Once my PC is booted, those benefits become minor. Sure, I'd love my PC to boot faster, but not in exchange for a terribly thought out UI.
Again, I DO like the metro concept, and I do think there is a demographic that it appeals to (aside from tablets). For someone like my mom, who barely knows how the PC works as it is, having big, easy to find buttons, to browse the net, or her email, the metro UI is great. But I think MS underestimated the number of power users out there, and REALLY failed at making it intuitive.
I'm curious to see if Win8 has the same result as Vista, where OEMs have to start offering a Win7/Win8 option when they order new PCs. They had to offer XP as an option, when Vista came out, because people disliked Vista so much, that they weren't buying new PCs. Not to compare Win8 to Vista from an OS perspective, because Vista was just junk.
A lot of Vista's perceived problems were abysmal drivers and computers shipping with pitiful amounts of RAM. If you just install 7 on machines that ran Vista badly, it runs almost as poorly. Sticking in at least a gig of dedicated RAM makes most of those machines usable. Most around that time came with 512Mb or 1024Mb with a quarter of it being sucked away by an integrated GPU. It was trendy to stick a silly powerful CPU in an otherwise useless machine at the time because it was easy to market. (most consumers assume they don't need a good graphics card and get confused between RAM and HDD space; advertise a laptop with 8Gb of RAM and they ask why they'd sell a computer with so little space.)
A lot of Vista's perceived problems were abysmal drivers and computers shipping with pitiful amounts of RAM. If you just install 7 on machines that ran Vista badly, it runs almost as poorly.
I COMPLETELY disagree. I had an old laptop, that shipped with XP, and when I bought it, it was extremely powerful for the time. I installed Vista, and yes, to your point, it was lacking driver support (fucking HP). It was a little sluggish initially, but wasn't anything I couldn't deal with. Over time (around 3 months), it started getting REALLY slow, and horrible.
I eventually switched to Ubuntu, because of that crap, and it ran beautifully (aside from 3d acceleration bugginess).
When Win7 came out, I had a free copy from school, so I gave it a shot, and it ran better than XP had originally. My laptop felt polished and good again. No hardware upgrades were performed. I only recently retired that laptop last year (sort of), and that was because it was no longer capable of handling all the tasks I was needing for my development work.
What exactly do you think they changed? Nothing in Windows itself beyond a few UI tweaks and some minor retunings to make the caching less aggressive that were done in the later service packs for Vista.
For what it's worth it runs great on my grandfather's single core + 1Gb desktop, and once a RAM upgrade was done, my stepmother's single core desktop. That was totally unusable with 256Mb, 10 minutes to open My Computer if anything else was open. Can't believe any self respecting OEM would ship a machine like that.
The reason for releasing a new version of Windows was marketing and branding. They had to shift the Vista stigma, even if it meant reinforcing it.
As I said, I like the Metro interface, but they destroyed any kind of improvement, by making it difficult to find things, and removing too much. If they're going to release a new OS, so close to your last OS, it needs to impress. Very few people are impressed so far. Not enough to justify a new OS.
What I would like to see, they would never do. Integrate Office. At least at a basic level. Even just an app/interface for office live, that doesn't feel like I'm on a website. How about integrating a video editor, that are actually good/useful. I'm sure I could think of more, to actually entice me, that doesn't require including new apps.
Again, to be clear, I think it was a step in the right direction, and I know why MS made the OS like this, because of the popularity of tablets, and touchscreen monitors. And I would be fine with it, if they weren't trying to suggest everyone should have this, but I don't think it's right for keyboard/mouse users.
Can anyone confirm for me, have they made it possible to customize the background of metro?
eh, i'm still on XP64 at home. all my (3d/cg) software seems to work fine without restrictions. and compared to windows 7 at work - no wacom issues either whatsoever. what's the draw to upgrade - games?
From Vista onward, security, better driver model (crash recovery; XP will go down in flames if the graphics driver fails for instance) Aero enforces vsync OS-wide (no tearing, no crazy high framerates burning up your CPU and GPU for no gain - capped at refresh rate) and offloads desktop composition to the GPU instead of blitting on CPU, less slowdown over time due to aggressive caching.
James mentioned many of the true gains to moving up. Honestly, I'm stunned you seem happy with XP64. There were hardly any drivers created, and I had nothing but horrible 'why did I install this' experiences. To add to what James said, Vista, and forward, started adding 64bit, that was actually supported.
Just wanted to mention it took just a few minuted to figure out how to customize the "formerly know as Metro" start menu. However I din't know the Windows+I key combo. I fell back to the old standby of alt=f4 and it brings up the restart/shutdown/ standby menu. Just in case you just want to shut down from the desktop itself.
James mentioned many of the true gains to moving up. Honestly, I'm stunned you seem happy with XP64. There were hardly any drivers created, and I had nothing but horrible 'why did I install this' experiences. To add to what James said, Vista, and forward, started adding 64bit, that was actually supported.
Also, I've had no issue with my WACOM in Win7.
hm, i'm on rather recent and standard consumer hardware (i7, asus board, geforce 5xx) - did not notice any driver or performance problems. 64 bit support - not sure what the issue is? i seem to be able to use my 12 gigs of RAM just fine, depending on the applications. i'm very conservative with software installs however - but that's a lesson learned a long time before xp came out.
honestly all i noticed when i got win 7 at work was that you had to disable pretty much all the fancy bells and whistles to get all apps to cooperate and the whole thing halfway useable (windows explorer is still pants though). wacom still flaky, i regularly fix that but windows updates seem to take care of it reliably.
my work machine has a tiny bit faster i7 CPU and seems otherwise comparable to the home one - other than boot times being faster i've not noticed any improvements really. else i would have long upgraded. nothing would suck more than to go home daily to the inferior thing.
i do however get the security/up-to-date angle - in my case it's just that i'm not using my XP box to surf the web, it's a 3d workhorse and mostly kept off the web. my mac is more convenient for all things online and decently up-to-date.
xp 64bit came out in 2003 and had built in SP1, two years after xp released around august 2001.
Hardly late in its cycle if you look at its lifespan.
I started using it around the end of 2003 and had no issues with it apart from sound support from Creative, but that is to be expected as they are always late with drivers and deliver them in a very poor state to start with.
Also, Vista after the first service pack was pretty nice overall.
I had no issues with Vista after Nvidia finally stopped making crap drivers, and I took my creative card out of the case.
By that point my computer stopped slowing down to a crawl at random intervals, having graphic driver errors or generally just doing a BSOD every now and then (which were 99% due to Nvidias crap driver).
In almost all actual world benchmarks (not fabricated benchmarks by software specifically just to benchmark but actual day to day software), Windows 8 is usually lagging behind 5-15% in speed from what I have seen so far.
In some cases it will get a major boost over win 7, but i have not seen one that is actually applicable to me and what I use my computer for.
I will wait for the first service pack for them to fine tune it before I even consider installing it.
As it stands now, performance, ease of use wise and general control over the OS and its basic functions with out artificial aid, OSX would be what I would install if I could on my PC.
Hell if I had the funds right now I would buy me an 27" imac just to use as a day to day work machine and park my custom made powerhouse PC in a corner as a glorified gaming console.
64-bit XP was added very late in the XP lifecycle, and a lot of vendors don't provide drivers for it or support them properly.
To which "fancy bells and whistles" are you referring?
i think you have made some valid points form a general users perspective but that's not the point of view that corporations or studios have for there workstations. in 2011 windowsXP64 finally dropped to 50% of the total windows install base. that means that right now in 2012 probably 45% of the total windows install base is still winXP64. all major device manufacturers obviously support winXP64 with there drivers as do all of the major software vendors including Autodesk, Pixologic etc. to claim the contrary is just silly. i would guess that winXP64 has the widest driver and software support of any operating system in history at this point.
the 50% of Corporations and studios that have upgraded to win7 in the past few years are essentially going to be using win7 for the next 5-6 years. that is the general time frame for major acquisition and upgrades that include new systems, os software and build out. the other 50% is in the process of upgrading to win7, not win8. win7 is a stable platform for business and will be that way for the next 5-6 years. the install base of win7 is largely corporate workstations and desktop/laptop systems. a very small percentage of those systems ever get upgraded to a new os. there is no benefit and a large cost involved. software and driver support for win7 will be about the same as it was for XP64 about 5-6 years out.
my next fun computer will be a google chromium or android device. i don't see windows as a viable option for entertainment computers at this point. also the windows 8 store and widows-rt surface tablet clusterfuck are a huge stab in the back to independent developers such as Valve/Steam and others who use windows as a neutral distribution platform. and system oems like dell, lenovo etc, who design and sell hardware pc products. microsofts total market share is sinking fast and they have decided to cannibalize anyone who makes profits in the pc space to make up for there projected losses in the future. they are shooting themselves in the head imo. whether they end up dead or just brain dead is still an open question.
win 8 is growing on me. Still haven't found anything that doesn't work. I even got my 11 year old scanner to work. I installed it yesterday on my macbook. I like that there's less tweaking involved, stuff like MS security essentials is built in, it's designed to work with SSDs and it doesn't come with a lot of default junk like MS movie maker.
I don't really care about boot time though - I restart my system once a week - I just put it to hibernate and I can leave all my apps open. Although it does boot a tiny bit faster.
Unless there's some serious flaw somewhere I'd rate it a better update than Win 7 was, just because it's less bloaty and snappier. If you get a new PC go for Win 8.
p.s. the Windows store is really well hidden. I turned off metro and then I never saw it again lol. It's certainly not "in-your-face" like Apple's app store is, unless you own a Win8 tablet tho. At least you can update your OS without having to go via that blasted app store.
there is a reason why Autodesk and others support XP64 and win7 but not vista. vista was another 'wild experiment' by microsoft that did not fit into the corporate upgrade cycle. win8 is about the same. the reason why it is so cheap is that they don't expect any of there large customers to buy it. they have settled on win7. its designed for preloaded small devices and laptops. for workstations win7 is the best option and will end up with the best support from software vendors. if you want a tablet win8 will come preloaded. but there are better options now in that space over windows. if your buying a oem windows install you will notice that win7 is still being sold along side win8 and that will continue for a few years. you can still buy oem licences of winXP64 if you want to also .
p.s. the Windows store is really well hidden. I turned off metro and then I never saw it again lol. It's certainly not "in-your-face" like Apple's app store is, unless you own a Win8 tablet tho. At least you can update your OS without having to go via that blasted app store.
unfortunately that is a temporary situation. winRT has NO desktop mode. and you can not install any software that is not delivered through the windows store... obviously they can not do that right now on there desktop systems but that is there intent and i suspect everyone is in for a shocker when win9 has limited install options and your 'desktop' is integrated into the metro-ui and there is no alternative. this is much more serious then just a gui redesign. there trying to cannibalize a market that has been in place for the past 20 years. and there going to fail. just like they have failed in every other market they have tried to enter. the only reason they have maintained there position is because they offered a stable neutral platform. there going to really screw up a lot of peoples business models and possibly lose there position in the workstation and desktop market.
unfortunately that is a temporary situation. winRT has NO desktop mode. and you can not install any software that is not delivered through the windows store... obviously they can not do that right now on there desktop systems but that is there intent and i suspect everyone is in for a shocker when win9 has limited install options and your 'desktop' is integrated into the metro-ui and there is no alternative. this is much more serious then just a gui redesign. there trying to cannibalize a market that has been in place for the past 20 years. and there going to fail. just like they have failed in every other market they have tried to enter. the only reason they have maintained there position is because they offered a stable neutral platform. there going to really screw up a lot of peoples business models and possibly lose there position in the workstation and desktop market.
so your crystal ball told you this about win9 and the only way to stop this is to not use Win8 or what solution do you propose?
Don't you think MS has clever people, just like you, who came up with the same conclusion that letting people install software from 3rd party sources is a good thing? Just like an app-store isn't by-default a bad idea? It can be turned into one, but it doesn't have to. It can actually be a quite useful tool for trusted software that doesn't come with tons of spy-ware and ad-ware like so many Windows programs.
Chill. It's not all an evil conspiracy to get you.
i think workstation customers are in another Vista hovering position. the same thing that happened after everyone switched to winXP64. Vista came out and was completely irrelevant to workstations. winXP hardware went through its life cycle. microsoft was forced to coughed up another os that was acceptable to business as a replacement for winXP. win7 is the new winXP for corporations and studios for the next few years and that is the sweet spot for Workstations. if you upgraded a workstation to vista you were not paying attention same thing with win8.
as for smart people at microsoft and conspiracy theories... as you noted in your post winRT is reality no conspiracy needed i'm afraid. i wish it was a conspiracy theory. the smart people at microsoft and apple know that the store is the new monopoly position for content. whoever owns the store owns the content monopoly. the os is dead as a revenue stream because all the new content devices run on free and open source operating systems. they can't compete with free. its the smart people at microsoft you need to worry about because there the ones that want to turn there neutral platform into a content monopoly much like apple using the leverage they still have. microsoft is not out to 'get' you there out to make money and dominate the market with a monoply position just like apple, google, amazon and the rest want to do. if that means they have to put Valve out of business and anyone else who has a competing marketplace or software on there platform then they will. that is the smart thing to do.
you will not get Steam on windowsRT or any other code that microsoft does not want you to have. for what ever reason they see fit. the winRT metro framework on win8 is designed to be the defacto api for all windows applications. desktop apps are legacy and to be fazed out. they want a seamless content platform across all there devices just like apple does. unfortunately for them i think there about 5 years to late with this. they have already lost the new content device markets to apple and google. most of the corporate workstation market will probably move to linux in the next few hardware cycles. the hardware oem's are pushing it and I doubt windows9 will be 'acceptable' for them.
what happens to pc studio workstations is a ??? ill wait it out on win7 in step with the larger workstation market and see if microsoft coughs up a win7 replacement in a few years. if not there will be some clear workstation alternative.
i updated over my old system and apart from the display driver(manually updated from nvidia) everything works fine and got moved over.
it's a hybrid system. a little weird in the beginning, but if you want your win7 stuff working this was propably their best solution.
everything works like in win7, if you're in desktop mode(just press win+d and you're done). no problems here, so no need to worry.
the new windows 8 ui looks good to me. as soon as more software is written purely for win8, this will be a nice system with good handling. the desktop stays valid for legacy software...
as with everything new, you have to use it the way it is designed and it will make sense. if you don't want to adapt, stay with win7.(makes no sense to make maya a 3dmax clone either )
I'm not a huge Win8 advocate. I've spent a good deal of time working in it (on another computer), and liked the general handling of the desktop mode (the mode that us artists will use 99.9% of the time). But there is something that I believe is being overlooked. The new UI is meant to be a "Start Button" replacement. Those who use their compys for doing work and don't want a desktop "tablet" will only use the new UI as much as you use your start bar.
Not sure if this question has been answered, but you cannot change the BG of the tile interface. There are themes and color changes, but not image support. This is one of the biggest thing I dislike about it. However, how long do you spend looking at your open start bar, honestly? And to be perfectly honest, Windows isn't known for having everything the power user needs out of box. It's 3rd party software that opens up real customization and tweaks us control freaks desire. I dont think it'll be any different with Win8. Once devs start using it and finding issues, there will be those that fix those issues.
The Wacom drivers and annoying splash/flicks animations are biggest thing for me and whether I will move onto Windows 8. Still need further definitive confirmation on this. .
There's a win8 certified driver on wacom.com downloads list, but looks like they're mostly focused on touch command improvements at this point; the pen flicks shenanigans are still there.
On my Windows 8 install, I do not have the flicks or pen input stuff (the keyboard nonsense or the little icon). I did not do anything special. Running Win8 Pro.
Adjusts the number of rows on the start screen so you have to scroll less. You can also use the mouse wheel to scroll through the programs in the start screen. Those two things really make me like the start screen much more than the old start menu.
Also, you can make groups and name them on the Start screen.
Not sure if this question has been answered, but you cannot change the BG of the tile interface.
I upgraded to windows 8 for $40, installed classic shell (regular start menu with an option to disable "hot corners", I never see the metro interface) and now I have windows 7 only better. It feels faster, looks cleaner and everything seems to be working. For that price I recommend it.
There are many solutions to the wacom "ripples" (google "disable wacom ripples"), I did it just last week. I had the same problem in windows 7 though.
Will have to look when I get home. But never touched it. Torchlight and 3DS Max worked right off without changing anything.
oh, ok
there's this reply from a wacom rep in the other thread: http://forum.wacom.eu/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=11329#p44035
Please note that some of the effects (penflicks and ripple effects) come from Microsoft and should be controlled by Windows control panels´. (We can disable such effects for tablet aware programs only.)
but I can't be sure (looks like their development and support teams are a bit disconnected)
It actually reminds me of those videos for the iPhone 5, where people giving iPhone 4's and their perception was that it was SO much faster, because they were told it was new. I don't see people posting numbers, to prove a performance increase, only perceived improvements.
Replies
The Wacom drivers and annoying splash/flicks animations are biggest thing for me and whether I will move onto Windows 8. Still need further definitive confirmation on this.
I still have issues with it appearing when I start 3ds max on Windows 7 despite trying all the fixes I've found all over the net. Not sure if I've tried the 2008 drivers though...Will give that a go.
To me it boils down to one thing really : since I won't get it for free and won't be forced to install it, the price of the OS + the man hour cost of having to wait for the install (basically wasting an evening of potential work...) adds up to too much for what is essentially the same thing as 7. So yeah - not needed for me
Less stuff to worry about = happier !
Some things are faster but overall it's the same thing with a different start menu.
Took ages to shut the damn thing off though... O_o
Pro tip: Windows key + I
For the discount price it's an okay buy. I wouldn't buy win8 for the full price though.
So the big appeal to Win8 is that my PC will boot faster, and maybe open my apps a second or 2 faster? Once my PC is booted, those benefits become minor. Sure, I'd love my PC to boot faster, but not in exchange for a terribly thought out UI.
Again, I DO like the metro concept, and I do think there is a demographic that it appeals to (aside from tablets). For someone like my mom, who barely knows how the PC works as it is, having big, easy to find buttons, to browse the net, or her email, the metro UI is great. But I think MS underestimated the number of power users out there, and REALLY failed at making it intuitive.
I'm curious to see if Win8 has the same result as Vista, where OEMs have to start offering a Win7/Win8 option when they order new PCs. They had to offer XP as an option, when Vista came out, because people disliked Vista so much, that they weren't buying new PCs. Not to compare Win8 to Vista from an OS perspective, because Vista was just junk.
I COMPLETELY disagree. I had an old laptop, that shipped with XP, and when I bought it, it was extremely powerful for the time. I installed Vista, and yes, to your point, it was lacking driver support (fucking HP). It was a little sluggish initially, but wasn't anything I couldn't deal with. Over time (around 3 months), it started getting REALLY slow, and horrible.
I eventually switched to Ubuntu, because of that crap, and it ran beautifully (aside from 3d acceleration bugginess).
When Win7 came out, I had a free copy from school, so I gave it a shot, and it ran better than XP had originally. My laptop felt polished and good again. No hardware upgrades were performed. I only recently retired that laptop last year (sort of), and that was because it was no longer capable of handling all the tasks I was needing for my development work.
For what it's worth it runs great on my grandfather's single core + 1Gb desktop, and once a RAM upgrade was done, my stepmother's single core desktop. That was totally unusable with 256Mb, 10 minutes to open My Computer if anything else was open. Can't believe any self respecting OEM would ship a machine like that.
The reason for releasing a new version of Windows was marketing and branding. They had to shift the Vista stigma, even if it meant reinforcing it.
What I would like to see, they would never do. Integrate Office. At least at a basic level. Even just an app/interface for office live, that doesn't feel like I'm on a website. How about integrating a video editor, that are actually good/useful. I'm sure I could think of more, to actually entice me, that doesn't require including new apps.
Again, to be clear, I think it was a step in the right direction, and I know why MS made the OS like this, because of the popularity of tablets, and touchscreen monitors. And I would be fine with it, if they weren't trying to suggest everyone should have this, but I don't think it's right for keyboard/mouse users.
Can anyone confirm for me, have they made it possible to customize the background of metro?
Also, I've had no issue with my WACOM in Win7.
hm, i'm on rather recent and standard consumer hardware (i7, asus board, geforce 5xx) - did not notice any driver or performance problems. 64 bit support - not sure what the issue is? i seem to be able to use my 12 gigs of RAM just fine, depending on the applications. i'm very conservative with software installs however - but that's a lesson learned a long time before xp came out.
honestly all i noticed when i got win 7 at work was that you had to disable pretty much all the fancy bells and whistles to get all apps to cooperate and the whole thing halfway useable (windows explorer is still pants though). wacom still flaky, i regularly fix that but windows updates seem to take care of it reliably.
my work machine has a tiny bit faster i7 CPU and seems otherwise comparable to the home one - other than boot times being faster i've not noticed any improvements really. else i would have long upgraded. nothing would suck more than to go home daily to the inferior thing.
i do however get the security/up-to-date angle - in my case it's just that i'm not using my XP box to surf the web, it's a 3d workhorse and mostly kept off the web. my mac is more convenient for all things online and decently up-to-date.
To which "fancy bells and whistles" are you referring?
Hardly late in its cycle if you look at its lifespan.
I started using it around the end of 2003 and had no issues with it apart from sound support from Creative, but that is to be expected as they are always late with drivers and deliver them in a very poor state to start with.
Also, Vista after the first service pack was pretty nice overall.
I had no issues with Vista after Nvidia finally stopped making crap drivers, and I took my creative card out of the case.
By that point my computer stopped slowing down to a crawl at random intervals, having graphic driver errors or generally just doing a BSOD every now and then (which were 99% due to Nvidias crap driver).
In almost all actual world benchmarks (not fabricated benchmarks by software specifically just to benchmark but actual day to day software), Windows 8 is usually lagging behind 5-15% in speed from what I have seen so far.
In some cases it will get a major boost over win 7, but i have not seen one that is actually applicable to me and what I use my computer for.
I will wait for the first service pack for them to fine tune it before I even consider installing it.
As it stands now, performance, ease of use wise and general control over the OS and its basic functions with out artificial aid, OSX would be what I would install if I could on my PC.
Hell if I had the funds right now I would buy me an 27" imac just to use as a day to day work machine and park my custom made powerhouse PC in a corner as a glorified gaming console.
i think you have made some valid points form a general users perspective but that's not the point of view that corporations or studios have for there workstations. in 2011 windowsXP64 finally dropped to 50% of the total windows install base. that means that right now in 2012 probably 45% of the total windows install base is still winXP64. all major device manufacturers obviously support winXP64 with there drivers as do all of the major software vendors including Autodesk, Pixologic etc. to claim the contrary is just silly. i would guess that winXP64 has the widest driver and software support of any operating system in history at this point.
the 50% of Corporations and studios that have upgraded to win7 in the past few years are essentially going to be using win7 for the next 5-6 years. that is the general time frame for major acquisition and upgrades that include new systems, os software and build out. the other 50% is in the process of upgrading to win7, not win8. win7 is a stable platform for business and will be that way for the next 5-6 years. the install base of win7 is largely corporate workstations and desktop/laptop systems. a very small percentage of those systems ever get upgraded to a new os. there is no benefit and a large cost involved. software and driver support for win7 will be about the same as it was for XP64 about 5-6 years out.
my next fun computer will be a google chromium or android device. i don't see windows as a viable option for entertainment computers at this point. also the windows 8 store and widows-rt surface tablet clusterfuck are a huge stab in the back to independent developers such as Valve/Steam and others who use windows as a neutral distribution platform. and system oems like dell, lenovo etc, who design and sell hardware pc products. microsofts total market share is sinking fast and they have decided to cannibalize anyone who makes profits in the pc space to make up for there projected losses in the future. they are shooting themselves in the head imo. whether they end up dead or just brain dead is still an open question.
I don't really care about boot time though - I restart my system once a week - I just put it to hibernate and I can leave all my apps open. Although it does boot a tiny bit faster.
Unless there's some serious flaw somewhere I'd rate it a better update than Win 7 was, just because it's less bloaty and snappier. If you get a new PC go for Win 8.
p.s. the Windows store is really well hidden. I turned off metro and then I never saw it again lol. It's certainly not "in-your-face" like Apple's app store is, unless you own a Win8 tablet tho. At least you can update your OS without having to go via that blasted app store.
unfortunately that is a temporary situation. winRT has NO desktop mode. and you can not install any software that is not delivered through the windows store... obviously they can not do that right now on there desktop systems but that is there intent and i suspect everyone is in for a shocker when win9 has limited install options and your 'desktop' is integrated into the metro-ui and there is no alternative. this is much more serious then just a gui redesign. there trying to cannibalize a market that has been in place for the past 20 years. and there going to fail. just like they have failed in every other market they have tried to enter. the only reason they have maintained there position is because they offered a stable neutral platform. there going to really screw up a lot of peoples business models and possibly lose there position in the workstation and desktop market.
so your crystal ball told you this about win9 and the only way to stop this is to not use Win8 or what solution do you propose?
Don't you think MS has clever people, just like you, who came up with the same conclusion that letting people install software from 3rd party sources is a good thing? Just like an app-store isn't by-default a bad idea? It can be turned into one, but it doesn't have to. It can actually be a quite useful tool for trusted software that doesn't come with tons of spy-ware and ad-ware like so many Windows programs.
Chill. It's not all an evil conspiracy to get you.
as for smart people at microsoft and conspiracy theories... as you noted in your post winRT is reality no conspiracy needed i'm afraid. i wish it was a conspiracy theory. the smart people at microsoft and apple know that the store is the new monopoly position for content. whoever owns the store owns the content monopoly. the os is dead as a revenue stream because all the new content devices run on free and open source operating systems. they can't compete with free. its the smart people at microsoft you need to worry about because there the ones that want to turn there neutral platform into a content monopoly much like apple using the leverage they still have. microsoft is not out to 'get' you there out to make money and dominate the market with a monoply position just like apple, google, amazon and the rest want to do. if that means they have to put Valve out of business and anyone else who has a competing marketplace or software on there platform then they will. that is the smart thing to do.
you will not get Steam on windowsRT or any other code that microsoft does not want you to have. for what ever reason they see fit. the winRT metro framework on win8 is designed to be the defacto api for all windows applications. desktop apps are legacy and to be fazed out. they want a seamless content platform across all there devices just like apple does. unfortunately for them i think there about 5 years to late with this. they have already lost the new content device markets to apple and google. most of the corporate workstation market will probably move to linux in the next few hardware cycles. the hardware oem's are pushing it and I doubt windows9 will be 'acceptable' for them.
what happens to pc studio workstations is a ??? ill wait it out on win7 in step with the larger workstation market and see if microsoft coughs up a win7 replacement in a few years. if not there will be some clear workstation alternative.
first impressions:
i updated over my old system and apart from the display driver(manually updated from nvidia) everything works fine and got moved over.
it's a hybrid system. a little weird in the beginning, but if you want your win7 stuff working this was propably their best solution.
everything works like in win7, if you're in desktop mode(just press win+d and you're done). no problems here, so no need to worry.
the new windows 8 ui looks good to me. as soon as more software is written purely for win8, this will be a nice system with good handling. the desktop stays valid for legacy software...
as with everything new, you have to use it the way it is designed and it will make sense. if you don't want to adapt, stay with win7.(makes no sense to make maya a 3dmax clone either
Its only $5.
http://www.stardock.com/products/start8/
Or there's http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/ for free.
Not sure if this question has been answered, but you cannot change the BG of the tile interface. There are themes and color changes, but not image support. This is one of the biggest thing I dislike about it. However, how long do you spend looking at your open start bar, honestly? And to be perfectly honest, Windows isn't known for having everything the power user needs out of box. It's 3rd party software that opens up real customization and tweaks us control freaks desire. I dont think it'll be any different with Win8. Once devs start using it and finding issues, there will be those that fix those issues.
There's a win8 certified driver on wacom.com downloads list, but looks like they're mostly focused on touch command improvements at this point; the pen flicks shenanigans are still there.
Adjusts the number of rows on the start screen so you have to scroll less. You can also use the mouse wheel to scroll through the programs in the start screen. Those two things really make me like the start screen much more than the old start menu.
Also, you can make groups and name them on the Start screen.
this may or may not work: http://vhanla.deviantart.com/#/d5hz8b6
There are many solutions to the wacom "ripples" (google "disable wacom ripples"), I did it just last week. I had the same problem in windows 7 though.
I have Win 8 Pro with no ripples etc. from install.
My Wacom is on Pen mode ...Lucked out I guess.
oh, ok
there's this reply from a wacom rep in the other thread:
http://forum.wacom.eu/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=11329#p44035
Please note that some of the effects (penflicks and ripple effects) come from Microsoft and should be controlled by Windows control panels´. (We can disable such effects for tablet aware programs only.)
but I can't be sure (looks like their development and support teams are a bit disconnected)
thanks for the input!
I'm not sure if I should get win8 as a 2nd os, the pointer ripple thing would be a dealbreaker in my case.
I give you this (see attachment).
Also
I'm calling shenanigans! Everything I have seen has shown the performance is the mostly the same.
I believe they're now farming some of the work involved in populating window client areas to the GPU. Previously, window content was completely CPU-generated for buttons/etc. and you could spin up a lot of CPU cycles by stretching a button over the whole screen and mousing over it. (fade animation is really heavy on CPU)