News - Microsoft readying another Windows 8 preview

[ypsylon]

Great, an excuse to re-install again in a months time then

Solution is very simple. Cheap 2.5" laptop HDD (like Caviar Blue 250 GB) plug it into RAID backplane/eSata external case or something along that line. Install beta OS, tinker for a bit. Remove testing HDD, plug main HDD in.

Installing beta OS on main hard drive is simply bonkers.

[Spud1]

Installing beta OS on main hard drive is simply bonkers.

My inital comment there was not sarcasm..it's true, this gives me another excuse

Installing a Beta as a main OS is indeed, bonkers. Not the same for the consumer preview's onwards though - heck even the dev preview which was much more "beta" was still very stable.

As someone who re-installs regularly and keeps his OS SSD pretty clean, it's no big deal..keeps your system perfoming well too

[Tpyo]

W8 is (not will be, already is) another WinMe. I don't get it why people are so obsessed with Vista. I think that Vista (with Aero turned off of course) was best OS from MS for a very long time. I find it much better, much more stable than W7. Never had a single crash/BSOD. With W7 and same configuration I have periodical problems. Unfortunately there is no life left in Vista because MS killed support for it (or soon will). W8 with Classic Shell, Total Commander installed and voila. Problem of bloody Metro solved.

Vista now may be perfectly usable. Vista when it first came out had a whole world of issues with sound, peripherals etc. I really did regret getting on release but after 6 months it was almost fully functional.

[benzodiazepine]

There's nothing wrong with Metro Per se - they just haven't made it work with the existing taskbar/application windows environment. Look at Gnome 3, Unity; they both did something new all over the UI. Microsoft have just replaced the start menu with tiles. They've only done half the job.

[crossy]

Metro is great... on a tablet. But if I can't use it as a proper desktop OS on my desktop PC then I won't be bothering to upgrade over W7. I doubt many business users will, either.

Total agree - that said the W8 Dev Preview that I tried on a manky old Acer laptop was quite impressively quick on that poor-grade hardware. So I'm thinking the obvious - that proper "modern" hardware would really make it sing.

Agreed, I use search frequently.

I'll happily buy a beer (or seven) for whomever slapped the Windows7 search into the start menu. Heck I was so impressed that I ended up putting GnomeDo on my Linux PC's. That said, GnomeDo's learning feature is something I'd like to see in Windows - I'm too impatient sometimes to wait for Windows7 to search.

Installing beta OS on main hard drive is simply bonkers.

Erm, try VirtualBox - it's free and you can install as many OS's as your hardware (and brain power) will allow. No need for extra hardware, unless you're short of disk space of course.

Remind me, what are all the "Oh I don't want metro" people wanting from a new version of windows? There hasn't really been anything interesting in desktop OS's for ages imsho.

What this Metro-naysayer wants is a UI that isn't harder to use than the one before. Mentioned already is the way that shutting down is a more effort intensive task, and I'm sure that there's plenty of other examples. That said, maybe I'm an old fart when it comes to UI's, because I loathe the Office 2007+ interface and Unity with a passion too (although this "HUD" thing that's heading our way from Canonical looks interesting)

Think I'll be giving this latest preview a spin too - if for no other reason than to be able to decide whether Windows8 Pro is worth a punt or not.

[dfour]

I think I might have to have a look at this next release before parting with my hard earned cash for it even if its pre-released at a cheap price.

I have no plans to buy anything touch screen for my pc o a tablet so I am interested how it will work for a mouse and keyboard.

[watercooled]

Agree completely, the touchscreen interface remains IMO horrendously unintuitive and inefficient when used with that obscure input method known as keyboard and mouse...