Win 8 Detailed features comparison.

[ViRGE]

Those are probably the least offensive restrictions given that RT should only be on mobile devices. How many people will have their tablet plugged directly into their cable modem and try to tether their laptop or phone to it?

Think of the bigger picture. Have you ever used an iPad to share an LTE connection? It's really convenient, that's for sure.

 

[hhhd1]

Wireless Adhoc Networking: not possible for RT
Internet connection sharing: not possible for RT

So you can not share your internet connection with your other devices ..

Those are probably the least offensive restrictions given that RT should only be on mobile devices. How many people will have their tablet plugged directly into their cable modem and try to tether their laptop or phone to it?

Currently I use this feature in android.

On the tablet, connect to the internet using 3G, and create a 'wifi hotspot'
On the laptop, connect to the tablet using wifi, ..

To allow me to get internet on laptop on the move.


If windows 8 is not designed to ever have any form of connectivity to cellular networks like 3G, then I can understand this.

 

[Nothinman]

But how close is that to the bottom-left corner of the screen?

It's not a problem that it's impossible to do, but that the old way worked well. It is a point and click interface that is both accessed and used by the mouse. Accessing by the keyboard has been an awkward way to do it since they started including the assisted suicide Windows key. A good example is that you have to move above programs in the recent list to actually move to the right-hand column, unless you have memorized the tab order (which places the recent/all programs menu last, despite being closest to the text box which defaults to having focus!), and never accidentally hit shutdown. It could be made reasonably easy to safely and intuitively navigate it by the keyboard, but no, they're just going to remove it.

I use my keyboard a lot more than my mouse, the only time I literally click on the start menu is when I'm stuck in a non-fullscreen RDP session that's not capturing keyboard shortcuts.

 

[Nothinman]

Think of the bigger picture. Have you ever used an iPad to share an LTE connection? It's really convenient, that's for sure.

No, I will never own an Apple device. I have of course tethered to my phone wired and wirelessly.

Given that feature is available in every other OS and a selling point for carriers to charge for larger data plans I'm sure there will be 3rd party apps that allow it. And I'm sure there will be 3rd party unofficial apps as well, provided the platform doesn't tank right off the bat.

 

[ViRGE]

No, I will never own an Apple device. I have of course tethered to my phone wired and wirelessly.

Given that feature is available in every other OS and a selling point for carriers to charge for larger data plans I'm sure there will be 3rd party apps that allow it. And I'm sure there will be 3rd party unofficial apps as well, provided the platform doesn't tank right off the bat.

3rd party apps wouldn't be able to legitimately offer it on WinRT. Metro apps are sandboxed.

 

[ViRGE]

When my keyboard dies, and its spare dies, and then its spare dies, I'll get a Windows key. Pretty small chance, that. And, why have a keyboard shortcut as the only way to bring up a primarily mouse-navigated menu?

I appreciate your crotchetiness, but the Windows key has been a standard key on PC keyboards for over 15 years now. It's the 4th modifier key, right up there with CMD on Macs. At some point you're just using non-standard equipment, which becomes your own doing.

 

[Mem]

mem, i tried this and it will not work for me. i am on 8 pro X64, is yours x64 also?

Yep mine is 64 bit version,did you try running/installing program as admin?..latest version is 3.6.1.

 

[Mem]

in the windows 7 theme, can you make the icons on the left smaller so that it can have allot more icons ?

Update to your question,I can confirm there is an option for small icons(check box) which does work(I tried it).

 

[Nothinman]

3rd party apps wouldn't be able to legitimately offer it on WinRT. Metro apps are sandboxed.

Because there will never be an equivalent of rooting and escaping the Metro sandbox or running the tether app within the desktop?

 

[hhhd1]

Update to your question,I can confirm there is an option for small icons(check box) which does work(I tried it).

Thank you.

 

[ViRGE]

Because there will never be an equivalent of rooting and escaping the Metro sandbox or running the tether app within the desktop?

In all seriousness I wouldn't count on it. Microsoft is very good at DRM; just look at the Xbox 360, it's 7 years old and it's still virtually impenetrable.

Plus rooting should not be necessary to resolve deficiencies in the OS itself, even if rooting is fun.

 

[Ancalagon44]

What happened to the good old days of Win7, where each version higher in the hierarchy contained a superset of the features of all versions below it. Now we are back to the Vista days.

Is anyone reminded of that riddle about the 5 houses, each painted a different colour, that each contain a different foreign national who likes a different drink, different brand of cigar, and keeps a different pet?

 

[Rubycon]

They also removed the nice feature to require the user to press CTR-ALT-DEL to sign on. So much for security. They like that feature where I work.

When joined into a domain it should be there. GPOs should also work like here the last user logged in is also cleared at sign off, etc.

Well at least there are hacks to make Win8 make sense so to speak.

The DPC latency issue looks like a big problem for us in AV production, however. Hopefully there is a fix for it, not that there is anything wrong with Win7 and OS X 10.8 currently.

 

[ViRGE]

The DPC latency issue looks like a big problem for us in AV production, however. Hopefully there is a fix for it, not that there is anything wrong with Win7 and OS X 10.8 currently.

In case you haven't seen it, it looks like there's already a fix. Disabling the dynamic ticks seems to do the trick.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2250925&page=3

 

[Nothinman]

In all seriousness I wouldn't count on it. Microsoft is very good at DRM; just look at the Xbox 360, it's 7 years old and it's still virtually impenetrable.

Plus rooting should not be necessary to resolve deficiencies in the OS itself, even if rooting is fun.

There have been Xbox mods since their release, I remember a friend of mine getting one specifically so that we could play games directly off the internal hard disk. I don't know about lately though as I don't own one and haven't seen him in quite some time.

The primary point of rooting is to get around artificial restrictions in the OS which is what this would be. Hell, one of the big reasons people jailbreak iOS is to do things like lock screen widgets which should be part of the base OS at this point.

 

[ViRGE]

There have been Xbox mods since their release, I remember a friend of mine getting one specifically so that we could play games directly off the internal hard disk. I don't know about lately though as I don't own one and haven't seen him in quite some time.

I suppose I should have been more specific. It's possible in certain situations to fake out disc authenticity checks, but it's not possible to execute arbitrary code. There's one specific BIOS/hardware combination that can be reprogrammed via JTAG, but it's virtually worthless.

 

[Nothinman]

I suppose I should have been more specific. It's possible in certain situations to fake out disc authenticity checks, but it's not possible to execute arbitrary code. There's one specific BIOS/hardware combination that can be reprogrammed via JTAG, but it's virtually worthless.

I still don't think the analogy applies since WinRT is specifically designed to run 3rd party code. Sure it's more restrictive than normal Windows, but not nearly as much as a console system.

 

[Cerb]

I use my keyboard a lot more than my mouse, the only time I literally click on the start menu is when I'm stuck in a non-fullscreen RDP session that's not capturing keyboard shortcuts.

TBH, that's hard to imagine on Windows. The taskbar, start menu, explorer, etc. don't lend themselves to much use of the keyboard, except for using the search box for 'run'. Tab order, and if the left/right keys will do anything where you have focus, has always been awkward/unintuitive in the OS' own interfaces.

I appreciate your crotchetiness, but the Windows key has been a standard key on PC keyboards for over 15 years now. It's the 4th modifier key, right up there with CMD on Macs. At some point you're just using non-standard equipment, which becomes your own doing.

Lexmark/IBM should have made worse quality keyboards . More importantly, though, they've made it more difficult to use a UI feature that has been working quite well, correctly, for that same 15+ year period, for no good reason.

 

[Nothinman]

TBH, that's hard to imagine on Windows. The taskbar, start menu, explorer, etc. don't lend themselves to much use of the keyboard, except for using the search box for 'run'. Tab order, and if the left/right keys will do anything where you have focus, has always been awkward/unintuitive in the OS' own interfaces.

I suppose I should have said start button instead of start menu, I usually hit my win key and then click on a pinned icon or type something that isn't pinned. And I have most of my normal stuff pinned to the task bar so I don't use the start menu for my base work apps.

It's possible to do it all with the keyboard, but MS has made it a lot more difficult than it used to be. Tab order doesn't always make sense, combinations of hyperlinks and normal Win32 widgets confuses things now, etc.

 

[Rubycon]

In case you haven't seen it, it looks like there's already a fix. Disabling the dynamic ticks seems to do the trick.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2250925&page=3

Is it possible to get sub 100uS like 7?
If I turn off HPET (SR2) the average is 6uS!

I have not run win8 outside of a VM yet so that does not count.

I like the idea of having a later OS but I don't want to feel like my nose is getting bitten off either!

 

[Cerb]

6uS? On a desktop x86 OS? I think I'm going to try turning HPET off n my desktop, now. It's annoying enough for me to find a Forceware that won't have 2k+uS spikes, and that still leaves me with a typical range of 500-800uS.

 

[CSMR]

Sometimes I swear MS is just screwing with us. That looks like a reasonable list, right until you get to the point where Enterprise (the granddaddy of Windows) can't have MCE added, or that Pro doesn't come with Windows-To-Go, or that Core can't back up to a network share.

Win8 Enterprise is not suited for HTPC use, completely no point in Enterprise features if you are making an HTPC.

OTOH, an ARM machine could make a great efficient HTPC, so it's a shame Media Center cannot be added to WinRT.

 

[JackMDS]

II like the idea of having a later OS but I don't want to feel like my nose is getting bitten off either!

You are right. :thumbsup:

Same here, my clinical research machines are going to stay for a while on Win 7 until the dust settles in and it clear what will benefit from Win 8 and what might be impeded.

One has to take into consolidation that to be an Early adopter, One need to be patient and ready to "stomach" for a while work in progress.

As an Enthusiasts I have few of my playing computer running Win 8 for a while, an I like it.

The sad thing is that since Vista many Early adopters seem to be "Drama Kings" that looking to fuel their psychological needs. - - :sneaky:.

 

[Rubycon]

6uS? On a desktop x86 OS? I think I'm going to try turning HPET off n my desktop, now. It's annoying enough for me to find a Forceware that won't have 2k+uS spikes, and that still leaves me with a typical range of 500-800uS.

Yes not desktop hardware, Intel/Intel hardware.