News - Microsoft Windows 8 Consumer Preview download available

[HEXUS]

It's finally here, give it a try. Meanwhile Microsoft delivers press conference.

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[miniyazz]

Looks like my phone internet's gonna be getting a hammering

Currently d/ling at 405KB/s - a mere 3.5x faster than my Wifi could handle. Lol, again.

[Spud1]

Got it installed last night..some big improvements (2 taskbars now when you have 2 monitors! no more ultramon..) but some major issues from my pov - all of these "edge buttons" where you just move your mouse to a corner of the screen to trigger something (eg the start menu) are just awful. Apple tried it with OSX and it was a terrible feature that no one ever used, but at least you had alternatives..microsoft seem to have forced it on us with no option to remove/disable.

It took me 10 minutes to work out how to shut the thing down..not intuitive at all for a mouse user.

I can see this being a great system/UI on a tablet, but us desktop users have been forgotten about at the moment..the new "start menu" is simply awful and confusing when you are not using a touch screen..I don't know it just seems that all everyday tasks have become more complicated at the moment.

Still it's a preview/beta version and lots can change - plus i've not had much time to tinker yet so I am sure that like with all other versions of windows, we will be able to disable these gimmicky features that don't work very well.

[TheBuZZard]

I installed it last night since Im upgrading my PC at the weekend anyway (so if I hate it then doesnt matter for 2 days). I agree the UI seems terrible for a desktop PC, touch screen Im sure it works but cant see me rushing to upgrade, Ill stick with 7 on my new build PC.

[miniyazz]

Not a big fan of Metro here either. I'm sure it's great for using your PC one app at a time but if you want to do any proper multitasking you need to do it in the desktop, which is horribly unintuitive now they got rid of the Start Menu. Overall, not a fan.. yet.

[alpha channel]

Installed it this morning at college (being a part time lecturer in, proper, IT has some perks) and... well... no, nope ain't going to happen. No way in hell will I put this on a PC (not even if some poor deluded fool comes along with a wad of cash and pleads for it to be installed). Can't stand the bloody thing, that metro interface sucks like a rotten tooth (at least on a desktop).

I'm techie enough to get to grips with most things but this...

I can't see it being adopted by many, certainly not businesses (time costs money and trying to use this on a desktop is going to suck huge amounts of this). All those people that've become used to what has become the well known desktop interface are simply going to get frustrated by this, hell I have after an hours worth of play (I can just see it now, thousands of people across the country screaming at their monitors in frustration as they try and do the simplest of things, never mind more demanding multitasking).

[brasco]

Been playing around with it all day, love it tbh! Maybe I'm an odd one out but I really love metro, I use a tablet (wacom not shiny shiny one) so maybe that helped to make it feel right. Liked the new taskmanager a lot and the file transfer features, tbh should have been in 7.

cheers
brasc

[hairyonion]

Installed it on virtual box...

Quite suprised the 32bit version took up 7.7gig, i can only compare that to win7 64bit and i thnk you start off with over 15gig. memory was 700 which seems ok i guess.

the boot up in virtual box is very fast (not sure if that's due to VB or not)

Really going to miss the ability to search from the start menu

the metro thing is going to require a huge amount of upkeep and organisation the start menu i just search.

The metro adds un-install buttons for apps, it's simply retarded, maybe it should be 1 unistall group button or something else.

Windows explorer seems about the same.

windows back button does nothing in the metro start.

I dont seem to be able to ... forget it its just pants

[Hicks12]

you can search from metro without even pressing a button... simply start typing, thats much better than previous version really cuts out one less key to be used ALL the time

[aidanjt]

you can search from metro without even pressing a button... simply start typing, thats much better than previous version really cuts out one less key to be used ALL the time

Metro is basically the old Windows 7 start menu, but full screen. You still need to press the start menu to bring it up and start searching. Only if you're searching for anything other than apps (like files or settings), you have to manually click on that grouping, which is more effort than win7 start search.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The current implementation of the Metro UI seems to be better suited for linear thinkers who do one thing at a time,rather than those who do multiple things at the same time.

[chuckskull]

[aidanjt]

The current implementation of the Metro UI seems to be better suited for linear thinkers who do one thing at a time,rather than those who do multiple things at the same time.

++

Which basically makes it useless for anything productive.