Another View on Win8 – Echos of Ted & Myself

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Windows 8 Consumer Preview

Cheers,
Drew

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With a little time and customization, it’s very easy to make WIn 8 CP work the way you want it to work. I have been working in Win 8 CP almost exclusively since it was released. This OS is very slick. The Desktop, IMHO, is ready to go, at least for the average person. On the other hand, it appears most of the work still to be done will be on the Metro UI, which many of us will not be spending the majority of our time in anyway. As the new devices, especially touch screen tablets, become more prevalent, perhaps the Metro UI will take on a more prominent role, but I would suspect not so much in my life, but who knows what might happen.

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I must admit that initially I was turned off with Windows 8 DP – to the extent that I took it right off and said to my friends “I’ll wait for the beta”. With use and the help of this forum, I now find myself enjoying Windows 8 CP to the extent that I have been booting up into it more than Windows 7. You might say that I have done a “180”. Thanks again to all for sharing.

Rich

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Ride on, Rich. We are hearing a lot of similar (180) stories as yours. Suspect there will be lots more, too.

Drew

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WELL, I’m not ready to make it my MAIN OS, and probably never will, but at least with some help from this forum, I’m finding ways to open the secret panels, trap doors and hidden passages.
I suspect that MS has hired some Chinese programmers, because Win-8 is certainly a Chinese Block Puzzle. Eh?

Who would have ever thought, that you could just type RUN at the metro screen, even though there is no box to type it in, and then hit Enter and you’d be instantly taken to the Desktop with the RUN box opened, just like in XP? Gee! That’s so cool!
But why hide something so basic to the operation of windows.??? I would have given it prominence, somewhere!

Shutdown was a real pain in the pants, till I installed my Quick Shutdown shortcut in the Task Bar on the Desktop screen.
Now, it’s just one click to shut down Win-8. Currently, taking about ten seconds to power off!

Moving right along…………

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Hey DrWho if you are on the Desktop and type Win Key + X the Power Users Menu also has a run and search function right from the Desktop. Run open a box you will be very familiar with, Search opens the Metro search. And yes, typing anything anywhere in the Metro screen will search for corresponding words, files or folders I would assume.

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I guess I don’t see all the angst with Windows 8 shutdown. Just hit the PC or Laptop power button for an orderly shutdown.

Jerry

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Not really the ideal way to shut down, Jerry.

Drew

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Why??? It gives you an orderly shut down as long as you don’t hold the power button down for over 3 seconds. Restart is a different issue.

Jerry

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A brief press of the power button is perfectly acceptable since at least WinXp SP2, and using hardware that interfaces with Windows Power Management. Windows accepts it as a shut down command the same as clicking the shutdown button.

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Mistook what you were saying/meaning, @ 1st.

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Ted, while I have your attention, can you tell me what these are ?

There is just the one adapter here, the middle one. They might be W-8 servants.

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I haven’t a clue. They must be something in your PC. Here are mine. The only common adapter, which I suspect is a Windows thing is the MS Kernel Debug Network Adapter. The others are actually on my PC.

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The Via Rhine III is a chipset Ethernet adapter on your motherboard. You apparently have this one as well as a PCI adapter you added. See:
http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/networking/rhine/vt6106sl/

You might want to disable one but they probably both will work.

Jerry

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Ted and Jerry, good morning.
Thanks for your reply. I will investigate this extra 10/100. I do not remember seeing two RJ-45 ports, my added card and the VIA Rhine. Later ! JP.

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Hello, Jerry. Will you confirm that the VIA Rhine is the added card and that the SiS 900 is the built-on Motherboard Ethernet device ??? A curious mind would like to know. Things I did : I disabled the SiS 900 in Control Panel and the RJ45 is onto the added card and I am connected, this reply would confirm the fact. Am I answering my own question here ?

You wrote : The Via Rhine III is a chipset Ethernet adapter on your motherboard. You apparently have this one as well as a PCI adapter you added.

Is this not reversed ? Jean.

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Go into your Bios. Find the Integrated peripherals section. If there’s an entry for a Lan or ethernet adapter, disable it and see what shows up in device Manager the next time you boot.

The only other thing I can think of is that the SIS 900 uses the Rhine chipset but I’ve never seen an add on card have two adapters show up in Device Manager.

I assume you have a desktop. What is the manufacturer and Model number or if a custom build, the model number of the motherboard?

Jerry

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Jerry, thanks for worrying about my machine. I wish I could give you some data on it but it is homebreed and has no similitude to a standard one. It is inside an old Asus P4 but that is about all I can say. Do not loose any sleep over this. Jean.

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Drew’s linked review, which started this fascinating thread, appalled me.

Windows is an operating system, for heavens sake. It isn’t what I “use”, its what appears to get in the way of me using the things I want to get to. Of course that’s a “user perception”, and I know full well that its the operating system which facilitates all the things I want to do, its just that I don’t want to have a relationship with it, or to have to learn its vagaries all over again.

There’s an interesting parallel with IE and Chrome – I just thought I’d give Chrome a spin out of passing interest and found to my surprise that it gets in the way of browsing far less than IE does, and much more of the screen real estate is devoted to browsing rather than to the browser. My experience to date with W8 is that it is getting seriously in the way of everything I actually want to do. I get as little out of having a relationship with Windows as I think I would out of having a relationship with my wife’s clothes, if you see what I mean. I have no doubt my ability to use W8 will get better as I get more familiar, but why should I bother learning (re-learning) any of this stuff and will the net (productivity gain vs training load) be worth it ?

This list of “nice new features”, culled from the linked article, left me completely cold – you should try presenting this to my wife as a reason to invest quite a lot of money in a new computer system . . .

In reality Windows 8 contains quite a lot of nice features for desktop users such as: Improved Windows Explorer with new ribbon, exposing many handy options, with far fewer clicks, including new context sensitive options. Explorer also gains a consolidated copy queue, detailed transfer graphs, pausing of file transfers, and better file collision dialogue window. Task Manager has a new interface, File History, USB Key Booting, Refresh, Reset, Improved recovery environment, Cloud services, new login screen with live info, Zip, ISO, Virtual-HDD, USB 3.0 & Mobile broadband class drivers, Anti-virus integration, and other new security features. Multi-monitor has improved with option for taskbar and wallpaper per monitor (but yes, new issues in regards to apps on multi-monitors). The boot improvements, general responsiveness and less RAM usage also apply to desktop. Metro apps are also far more useful than desktop Gadgets (Widgets in Apple lingo), and provide live information, and snapped views in desktop mode.

My skills, and hers, need to be concentrated in the applications we use and whilst I applaud genuine improvements under the hood, surely that’s where they should stay ? A significant part of the appeal of Macs is that that is what Apple have done, ditto Chrome (just to continue that theme – I am not a cheerleader for it, its just an example).

Maybe someone can translate all the mumbo-jumbo above into what it means for a user instead of a techie, but hunt as I might I cannot find that information for W8 “out there”.

Could it be that most of the comment and analysis is coming from a a class of people who are actually users of the operating system itself ? We used to call them “operators”, and they usually had pale skins from spending all their time in a an air-conditioned computer room with no natural light 🙂

Users are far more prone to stay put in the face of “upgrades” and it will be interesting to see if I am in any way typical – I don’t claim to be, but have a small and growing suspicion that I might be !

Meantime I shall happily leave XP to run all the invisible things for me, which it does in a stable and predictable fashion . . . and it supports new stuff like Chrome without needing an “upgrade” (quotes because over and again the “up” is misleading and “re” is usually more apt). When my hardware expires I expect I’ll move to W7, which will be cheap, and well-supported by 3rd parties and forums like these by then. It may well outlive me.

I didn’t used to be like this. I don’t think my feeling like standing still on the OS is a product of getting older and less flexible – for instance I am enjoying learning to write exquisite and innovative (IMHO !) VBA to execute tedious tasks for me. Its a product of experience which tells me that acquiring and learning things like better photo-processing and storing software is what takes me where my life ambitions want to go, not worrying about consolidated copy queues.

Forgive me if I am out of tune with this forum.

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I agree with you completely Martin, XP easily outdistances everything I’ve ever used in letting me get the jobs done efficiently and yet staying out of my way as much as possible…but I process data by the tens of gigabytes a week. Work work work, oh, and I’m a mad gamer online as well.

At the same time I realize that if one hands another enthusiast a shiny red metal bauble; they’re going to play with it, and tell others of their experience. Its an approach from a completely different direction to using a computer, but Microsoft has afforded them the opportunity and they’re taking advantage of that since they are those types of enthusiasts.

It can easily seem like THAT is the world of computing to read these posts, and it certainly is much more interesting to read than one that says I processed 63 gigs of data today with XP overseeing and no errors occured. That’s a dirty old ball with leaves stuck to it! : )

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Although I didn’t care for the DP version of Windows 8 at all, I’m now enjoying Win 8 CP. Didn’t think that I would at first, but after a couple of days of usage, and some tutorials provided by Drew, I got to liking it.

So much, that for everything besides making transactions, Win 8 CP is my default OS. After all, one can’t learn it, if not running it. It was the same with Windows 7.

Windows 8 will probably be a decent OS when it’s a finished product, but it’ll remain to be seen just how many desktop users will adapt to it. After all, for most users, Windows 7 is fantastic & will be supported until 2020. SP2 for the OS hasn’t been released as of yet, & I have no idea when it’ll be.

But there were many low-spec desktops & notebooks that were produced when Windows 7 was introduced. Many of these computers are running at high CPU usage. Well, so far, Windows 8 CP is taking care of that issue. My desktop that normally ran at no lower than 70% of CPU usage (w/Win 7 Pro x64) has been cut in less than half. As a result, my fan isn’t screaming all of the time, meaning less heat & wear & tear on my PC. Which by chance will be replaced when Windows 9 goes retail, but that’s 3 & a half years away.

So far, my experience with Win 8 has been a good one. Hope that it remains that way.

Cat

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