Windows 8 advice.

[CC4]

I jumped on the 14.99€ deal... if you have a mobile computer with a touch display and no keyboard, you might actually like it.

But if you have a real computer on which you want to make music and do serious work, STAY CLEAR OF WIN8 for heaven's sake!

...you're scaring me.

have you tried a start menu replacement software to overcome some of the limitations of Windows 8?

i've been using classic shell ever since i upgraded to Windows 7. i'm curious to know how well it runs on Windows 8:

Classic Shell
http://www.classicshell.net/

it might bring back some of that functionality you're missing from earlier versions on Windows (plus you can skin it).

[VariKusBrainZ]

I jumped on the 14.99€ deal... if you have a mobile computer with a touch display and no keyboard, you might actually like it.

But if you have a real computer on which you want to make music and do serious work, STAY CLEAR OF WIN8 for heaven's sake!

And don't even THINK about getting it if you're intending to use it inside a virtual machine on OSX.

I really tried to like this, and I guess for tablet computers it might make sense.
But for a desktop computer or even a virtual machine it's just all wrong. You're constantly pushing the mouse in some corner and swiping and waiting, these ugly full-screen "HEY I'M AN APPLICATION AND I'M STARTING HEY HEY LOOK AT MY ANNOYING COLOR" startup screens for every program, it now takes 5 work steps to shut the computer down instead of two...

At EVERY startup you first have to click once to hide the "startup standby" screen they added before the login screen, and after logging in you land inside the Metro GUI, forcedly. No chance to immediately see the desktop.
There's a workaround (putting Explorer into Autostart) but that always (guess what) opens the Explorer. Autostarting the Explorer minimized will just hide it behind the Metro GUI again.

Basically, this Metro thing is a menu that lists up all your installed programs and apps and used files, and you scroll it horizontally (left to right) ... with a vertical (up and down) mouse wheel. Make sense? Right.

Back in 7, there was a Start Button, over which you could access all your installed programs and apps and used files. That's gone and not coming back. There was a launch area, from which you could launch your fav programs with ONE click.

So tell me, for what would one need a thing like the Metro GUI? It's just the same thing as the Start menu and the Quick Launch bar ... just that it's cluttered and has widgets chewing on the system performance.

What's more, they've done their very best in splitting up features that made sense before. Where you could reach the "shutdown" button and then select to sign off, lock the computer, shut it down, re-start it ... now, you have to swipe the mouse into a corner, wait for the slide-in menu, click on the cog wheel, wait for the next slide-in menu, and then click the shutdown button. Well, at least for shutting down.
OR, if you just want to sign off, lock the machine or switch user, you have to go into the Metro GUI (swipe mouse into a corner, wait for the slide-in menu, click the Menu button) and then go to your username in the top right corner to select one of these options.

What utter idiot thought that up?!

But wait, there's more!

You can change the color of the windows' window frames ... but not the color of the text. So if you like dark window frames ... there goes your title text.

You know how quickly viewing a file works on a Mac? (I think from SnoLeo upward)
Highlight the file and press SPACE.
Done? Press SPACE again.
That's it.
No need for "default programs" and installing "viewer" apps.

You know how you view a photo on a mobile phone?
Tap the photo, and it will probably open in some full-screen application. Tap the screen again to bring up some buttons that let you go back to the browser, open the image in editing mode, step through to the next photo, something like that.
Makes sense, right?

Well, Win 8 doesn't roll that way.
You double-click a photo, it just opens the image full-screen (after displaying a full-screen "HEY I'M THE IMAGE PREVIEW APP AND I'M STARTING LOOK AT ME WHILE I START" screen) ... and that's it.
You can't even ESC or ALT+F4 your way out of it, because ESC brings you to the sort-of full-screen menu of the Photo viewer app, for "browsing" images from within the app, and ALT+F4 brings you back to the darn Metro GUI again... even if you launched the file from an Explorer window on the Desktop.

Anyway, while you're stuck inside that full-screen app, good luck trying out the various corners to swipe the mouse in...

All these new "features", like having no Start button but loads of slide-in menus, the stupid apps and full-screen startup screens and all the messy sytem managing... they're forced on you. You can't do jack about it. They're there, deal with it.

The install media weighs 2.8x GB, the basic installation is about 10GB, after all the updates I ran the other night I now have 12GB of the 30GB virtual drive left. Remember: fresh installation, no applications on there yet.

This brand-new operating system has a built-in feature that calls itself ... I dunno, in German it's "Auffrischen", that should translate to something like "Refresh" or "Recondition" in an English Win8 ... what this feature does is resetting just about everything, rebuilding the system to mend broken system files or bring back things one might have deleted by accident.

Doesn't it strike you as mildly ironic that a brand new operating system already knows it's going to f*ck itself up, and therefore offers a "soft reinstall" function? It's not even hidden away, it's right there in the ... whatever it is, sort-of a parallel System Preferences panel. Just to screw you up completely, so you never know where you need to go to change something - System Preferences, this other menu, or maybe the third variant that's near the shutdown button.
Good luck remembering what setting is hidden where...

Anyway, after all the updates - I couldn't open the Windows Store application anymore.
It would just freeze and lock up the computer for a minute or two, then die and throw me back onto the Metro menu. Again: fresh system, nothing installed yet.

So I thought some of the updates might have broken the system, or maybe that I installed Reaper and copied JKnobMan into the Program Files directory screwed something up. (Those were the only two things I installed myself!)
But no need for despair - enter the almighty hero, the Reconditioning.

I clicked on it, it said something about just refreshing the system, not deleting any user files, user settings and other user-related stuff. I was fine with that, let it run through and what it did was just that - it removed my user files, it removed my settings (colors, wallpaper, etc.) and it deleted the programs I had installed. Lying piece of sh*t!

Performance-wise it seems okay. The system is responsive, the boot-up time is impressively fast (SATA3 SSD here) ... but the built-in apps are tiiiiiiriiiiinglyyyy slllllloooooow... I mean, on a 2.5GHz i5 with SATA3 SSD and 8GB fast RAM ... does an image preview (not even editing!) app really need to display a startup screen for something close to 10 seconds before you see the actual image?

Seriously ... it seems that someone at Microsoft thought that Win7 was too successful and revived the Vista and ME team, let them watch an instructional video about tablet computers and let them go to work.


EDIT:
...and does this whole rectangular-2D-without-any-depth "tile" scheme work for you?
I think it looks like some kid was doodling around in paint, not like a sophisticated interfacing environment.
I spent the last 4.5 years designing GUIs for tablet PCs, so I know a thing or two about this.

Simplicity is an advantage, because it doesn't distract you with unnecessary things. I agree.
But Microsoft have just driven it too far, everything is toooooo simple, so that a normal person's mind can't comprehend it. And they also managed to make the whole aspect of simplicity completely useless, because the f*cking tiles re-arrange themselves automatically, I guess by going after the position of the stars or tides or something like that. So you never know where a "tile" to launch a program is going to be the next time you want it.

Just like with women: it that's the f*cked up way it's going to be, at least make it look good.

For a tablet PC -- try it first. It might work. But for a desktop system to do some real work on ...

I DEARLY REGRET spending 14.99€ on that piece of crap.

With the beer price of 2.50€ to 3€ in pubs here in Berlin, I could've had a joyful evening out. Granted, my head would've hurt the next morning just like it did after a night with Win8 ... but at least I'd gotten my money's worth.

YMMV
and if so - congratulations.

Wow.

I installed it on my 6 year old lenovo (2.8 dual core, 2Gb ram), works like a charm.
Only had to install the graphic driver.
Even works with my old Multiface cardbus
I dont have any of your problems.

It boots straight to the Start screen so its just Winkey+D to get to the desktop. I have a registry change to disable the start screen but havent entered it yet.

Win8 starts really fast and uses just 500Mb, of ram with no tweaking.
It loads far fewer services than older Win OSs.
All my programs have installed, authorised and run fine.

I find it no different to Win7 to be honest, well other than being better

[budweiser]

^^^ i'm glad about it, as i bought w8 a few days ago...

[VariKusBrainZ]

I jumped on the 14.99€ deal... if you have a mobile computer with a touch display and no keyboard, you might actually like it.

But if you have a real computer on which you want to make music and do serious work, STAY CLEAR OF WIN8 for heaven's sake!

And don't even THINK about getting it if you're intending to use it inside a virtual machine on OSX.

I really tried to like this, and I guess for tablet computers it might make sense.
But for a desktop computer or even a virtual machine it's just all wrong. You're constantly pushing the mouse in some corner and swiping and waiting, these ugly full-screen "HEY I'M AN APPLICATION AND I'M STARTING HEY HEY LOOK AT MY ANNOYING COLOR" startup screens for every program, it now takes 5 work steps to shut the computer down instead of two...

At EVERY startup you first have to click once to hide the "startup standby" screen they added before the login screen, and after logging in you land inside the Metro GUI, forcedly. No chance to immediately see the desktop.
There's a workaround (putting Explorer into Autostart) but that always (guess what) opens the Explorer. Autostarting the Explorer minimized will just hide it behind the Metro GUI again.

Basically, this Metro thing is a menu that lists up all your installed programs and apps and used files, and you scroll it horizontally (left to right) ... with a vertical (up and down) mouse wheel. Make sense? Right.

Back in 7, there was a Start Button, over which you could access all your installed programs and apps and used files. That's gone and not coming back. There was a launch area, from which you could launch your fav programs with ONE click.

So tell me, for what would one need a thing like the Metro GUI? It's just the same thing as the Start menu and the Quick Launch bar ... just that it's cluttered and has widgets chewing on the system performance.

What's more, they've done their very best in splitting up features that made sense before. Where you could reach the "shutdown" button and then select to sign off, lock the computer, shut it down, re-start it ... now, you have to swipe the mouse into a corner, wait for the slide-in menu, click on the cog wheel, wait for the next slide-in menu, and then click the shutdown button. Well, at least for shutting down.
OR, if you just want to sign off, lock the machine or switch user, you have to go into the Metro GUI (swipe mouse into a corner, wait for the slide-in menu, click the Menu button) and then go to your username in the top right corner to select one of these options.

What utter idiot thought that up?!

But wait, there's more!

You can change the color of the windows' window frames ... but not the color of the text. So if you like dark window frames ... there goes your title text.

You know how quickly viewing a file works on a Mac? (I think from SnoLeo upward)
Highlight the file and press SPACE.
Done? Press SPACE again.
That's it.
No need for "default programs" and installing "viewer" apps.

You know how you view a photo on a mobile phone?
Tap the photo, and it will probably open in some full-screen application. Tap the screen again to bring up some buttons that let you go back to the browser, open the image in editing mode, step through to the next photo, something like that.
Makes sense, right?

Well, Win 8 doesn't roll that way.
You double-click a photo, it just opens the image full-screen (after displaying a full-screen "HEY I'M THE IMAGE PREVIEW APP AND I'M STARTING LOOK AT ME WHILE I START" screen) ... and that's it.
You can't even ESC or ALT+F4 your way out of it, because ESC brings you to the sort-of full-screen menu of the Photo viewer app, for "browsing" images from within the app, and ALT+F4 brings you back to the darn Metro GUI again... even if you launched the file from an Explorer window on the Desktop.

Anyway, while you're stuck inside that full-screen app, good luck trying out the various corners to swipe the mouse in...

All these new "features", like having no Start button but loads of slide-in menus, the stupid apps and full-screen startup screens and all the messy sytem managing... they're forced on you. You can't do jack about it. They're there, deal with it.

The install media weighs 2.8x GB, the basic installation is about 10GB, after all the updates I ran the other night I now have 12GB of the 30GB virtual drive left. Remember: fresh installation, no applications on there yet.

This brand-new operating system has a built-in feature that calls itself ... I dunno, in German it's "Auffrischen", that should translate to something like "Refresh" or "Recondition" in an English Win8 ... what this feature does is resetting just about everything, rebuilding the system to mend broken system files or bring back things one might have deleted by accident.

Doesn't it strike you as mildly ironic that a brand new operating system already knows it's going to f*ck itself up, and therefore offers a "soft reinstall" function? It's not even hidden away, it's right there in the ... whatever it is, sort-of a parallel System Preferences panel. Just to screw you up completely, so you never know where you need to go to change something - System Preferences, this other menu, or maybe the third variant that's near the shutdown button.
Good luck remembering what setting is hidden where...

Anyway, after all the updates - I couldn't open the Windows Store application anymore.
It would just freeze and lock up the computer for a minute or two, then die and throw me back onto the Metro menu. Again: fresh system, nothing installed yet.

So I thought some of the updates might have broken the system, or maybe that I installed Reaper and copied JKnobMan into the Program Files directory screwed something up. (Those were the only two things I installed myself!)
But no need for despair - enter the almighty hero, the Reconditioning.

I clicked on it, it said something about just refreshing the system, not deleting any user files, user settings and other user-related stuff. I was fine with that, let it run through and what it did was just that - it removed my user files, it removed my settings (colors, wallpaper, etc.) and it deleted the programs I had installed. Lying piece of sh*t!

Performance-wise it seems okay. The system is responsive, the boot-up time is impressively fast (SATA3 SSD here) ... but the built-in apps are tiiiiiiriiiiinglyyyy slllllloooooow... I mean, on a 2.5GHz i5 with SATA3 SSD and 8GB fast RAM ... does an image preview (not even editing!) app really need to display a startup screen for something close to 10 seconds before you see the actual image?

Seriously ... it seems that someone at Microsoft thought that Win7 was too successful and revived the Vista and ME team, let them watch an instructional video about tablet computers and let them go to work.


EDIT:
...and does this whole rectangular-2D-without-any-depth "tile" scheme work for you?
I think it looks like some kid was doodling around in paint, not like a sophisticated interfacing environment.
I spent the last 4.5 years designing GUIs for tablet PCs, so I know a thing or two about this.

Simplicity is an advantage, because it doesn't distract you with unnecessary things. I agree.
But Microsoft have just driven it too far, everything is toooooo simple, so that a normal person's mind can't comprehend it. And they also managed to make the whole aspect of simplicity completely useless, because the f*cking tiles re-arrange themselves automatically, I guess by going after the position of the stars or tides or something like that. So you never know where a "tile" to launch a program is going to be the next time you want it.

Just like with women: it that's the f*cked up way it's going to be, at least make it look good.

For a tablet PC -- try it first. It might work. But for a desktop system to do some real work on ...

I DEARLY REGRET spending 14.99€ on that piece of crap.

With the beer price of 2.50€ to 3€ in pubs here in Berlin, I could've had a joyful evening out. Granted, my head would've hurt the next morning just like it did after a night with Win8 ... but at least I'd gotten my money's worth.

YMMV
and if so - congratulations.

quote]

My total install size was about 5 Gigs.
But I guess Im a 'power user', Ive since disabled loads of shit, not that it appears to have made much difference other than sped up the start time even more and shaved my used ram down to 400Mb.
Ive disabled the charms bar as that really was a pain in the arse popping up evertime I did a right to left swipe on the mousepad!

I agree with your work flow quibbles and that this OS is half aimed at touch users but after a few days Im now used to this OS and can do everything I used to but then Ive always used hotkeys rather than dig through menues.
Alt+F4 gets me to the shutdown options, Winkey+'wotever' gets me everywhere else.

Im really chuffed with Win8 and cant wait to get a little 10 inch multitouch

Vista, now theres an OS that sucks n00b balls

[jasperhb]

I jumped on the 14.99€ deal... if you have a mobile computer with a touch display and no keyboard, you might actually like it.

But if you have a real computer on which you want to make music and do serious work, STAY CLEAR OF WIN8 for heaven's sake!

And don't even THINK about getting it if you're intending to use it inside a virtual machine on OSX.

I really tried to like this, and I guess for tablet computers it might make sense.
But for a desktop computer or even a virtual machine it's just all wrong. You're constantly pushing the mouse in some corner and swiping and waiting, these ugly full-screen "HEY I'M AN APPLICATION AND I'M STARTING HEY HEY LOOK AT MY ANNOYING COLOR" startup screens for every program, it now takes 5 work steps to shut the computer down instead of two...

At EVERY startup you first have to click once to hide the "startup standby" screen they added before the login screen, and after logging in you land inside the Metro GUI, forcedly. No chance to immediately see the desktop.
There's a workaround (putting Explorer into Autostart) but that always (guess what) opens the Explorer. Autostarting the Explorer minimized will just hide it behind the Metro GUI again.

Basically, this Metro thing is a menu that lists up all your installed programs and apps and used files, and you scroll it horizontally (left to right) ... with a vertical (up and down) mouse wheel. Make sense? Right.

Back in 7, there was a Start Button, over which you could access all your installed programs and apps and used files. That's gone and not coming back. There was a launch area, from which you could launch your fav programs with ONE click.

So tell me, for what would one need a thing like the Metro GUI? It's just the same thing as the Start menu and the Quick Launch bar ... just that it's cluttered and has widgets chewing on the system performance.

What's more, they've done their very best in splitting up features that made sense before. Where you could reach the "shutdown" button and then select to sign off, lock the computer, shut it down, re-start it ... now, you have to swipe the mouse into a corner, wait for the slide-in menu, click on the cog wheel, wait for the next slide-in menu, and then click the shutdown button. Well, at least for shutting down.
OR, if you just want to sign off, lock the machine or switch user, you have to go into the Metro GUI (swipe mouse into a corner, wait for the slide-in menu, click the Menu button) and then go to your username in the top right corner to select one of these options.

What utter idiot thought that up?!

But wait, there's more!

You can change the color of the windows' window frames ... but not the color of the text. So if you like dark window frames ... there goes your title text.

You know how quickly viewing a file works on a Mac? (I think from SnoLeo upward)
Highlight the file and press SPACE.
Done? Press SPACE again.
That's it.
No need for "default programs" and installing "viewer" apps.

You know how you view a photo on a mobile phone?
Tap the photo, and it will probably open in some full-screen application. Tap the screen again to bring up some buttons that let you go back to the browser, open the image in editing mode, step through to the next photo, something like that.
Makes sense, right?

Well, Win 8 doesn't roll that way.
You double-click a photo, it just opens the image full-screen (after displaying a full-screen "HEY I'M THE IMAGE PREVIEW APP AND I'M STARTING LOOK AT ME WHILE I START" screen) ... and that's it.
You can't even ESC or ALT+F4 your way out of it, because ESC brings you to the sort-of full-screen menu of the Photo viewer app, for "browsing" images from within the app, and ALT+F4 brings you back to the darn Metro GUI again... even if you launched the file from an Explorer window on the Desktop.

Anyway, while you're stuck inside that full-screen app, good luck trying out the various corners to swipe the mouse in...

All these new "features", like having no Start button but loads of slide-in menus, the stupid apps and full-screen startup screens and all the messy sytem managing... they're forced on you. You can't do jack about it. They're there, deal with it.

The install media weighs 2.8x GB, the basic installation is about 10GB, after all the updates I ran the other night I now have 12GB of the 30GB virtual drive left. Remember: fresh installation, no applications on there yet.

This brand-new operating system has a built-in feature that calls itself ... I dunno, in German it's "Auffrischen", that should translate to something like "Refresh" or "Recondition" in an English Win8 ... what this feature does is resetting just about everything, rebuilding the system to mend broken system files or bring back things one might have deleted by accident.

Doesn't it strike you as mildly ironic that a brand new operating system already knows it's going to f*ck itself up, and therefore offers a "soft reinstall" function? It's not even hidden away, it's right there in the ... whatever it is, sort-of a parallel System Preferences panel. Just to screw you up completely, so you never know where you need to go to change something - System Preferences, this other menu, or maybe the third variant that's near the shutdown button.
Good luck remembering what setting is hidden where...

Anyway, after all the updates - I couldn't open the Windows Store application anymore.
It would just freeze and lock up the computer for a minute or two, then die and throw me back onto the Metro menu. Again: fresh system, nothing installed yet.

So I thought some of the updates might have broken the system, or maybe that I installed Reaper and copied JKnobMan into the Program Files directory screwed something up. (Those were the only two things I installed myself!)
But no need for despair - enter the almighty hero, the Reconditioning.

I clicked on it, it said something about just refreshing the system, not deleting any user files, user settings and other user-related stuff. I was fine with that, let it run through and what it did was just that - it removed my user files, it removed my settings (colors, wallpaper, etc.) and it deleted the programs I had installed. Lying piece of sh*t!

Performance-wise it seems okay. The system is responsive, the boot-up time is impressively fast (SATA3 SSD here) ... but the built-in apps are tiiiiiiriiiiinglyyyy slllllloooooow... I mean, on a 2.5GHz i5 with SATA3 SSD and 8GB fast RAM ... does an image preview (not even editing!) app really need to display a startup screen for something close to 10 seconds before you see the actual image?

Seriously ... it seems that someone at Microsoft thought that Win7 was too successful and revived the Vista and ME team, let them watch an instructional video about tablet computers and let them go to work.


EDIT:
...and does this whole rectangular-2D-without-any-depth "tile" scheme work for you?
I think it looks like some kid was doodling around in paint, not like a sophisticated interfacing environment.
I spent the last 4.5 years designing GUIs for tablet PCs, so I know a thing or two about this.

Simplicity is an advantage, because it doesn't distract you with unnecessary things. I agree.
But Microsoft have just driven it too far, everything is toooooo simple, so that a normal person's mind can't comprehend it. And they also managed to make the whole aspect of simplicity completely useless, because the f*cking tiles re-arrange themselves automatically, I guess by going after the position of the stars or tides or something like that. So you never know where a "tile" to launch a program is going to be the next time you want it.

Just like with women: it that's the f*cked up way it's going to be, at least make it look good.

For a tablet PC -- try it first. It might work. But for a desktop system to do some real work on ...

I DEARLY REGRET spending 14.99€ on that piece of crap.

With the beer price of 2.50€ to 3€ in pubs here in Berlin, I could've had a joyful evening out. Granted, my head would've hurt the next morning just like it did after a night with Win8 ... but at least I'd gotten my money's worth.

YMMV
and if so - congratulations.

Seriously? The amount of time you've spend writting up this detailed post you could probably have spend time getting aqainted with Windows 8 and for starters learning the few short-cut-keys instead

http://download.microsoft.com/download/ ... 949C8-967D -4823-97C1-A0FE7E068A71/2934_WSG_Win8_ShortcutKeys_QuickRefe renceGuide_External.docx

... learning just a few short-cuts (start with Win-I) made all the different for me and I'm now undoubtly more productive on Windows 8 than I ever was on Windows 7.

I made the shift last summer and after a week or so I was all ajusted to the new and I'm not looking back. My PC system Windows 8 i faster, from booting up, logging in and running my DAW etc. What's more; it seems that I can run more stuff simultanously as the core part of the OS have improved too.

[Danno]

I've been using Win8 for a few weeks now and I mostly love it. Maybe partially because its on a new fast machine.
I had/have a few things to sort out, but its pretty luxerious compared to WinXP.