Windows 8 Consumer Preview Feedback Thread

[gizbug]

I doubt most of you are runnign this as your main OS. So are people dual booting? Or running this in VMC?

 

[rockyct]

I'm looking at the rundown of stuff on www.winsupersite.com. I need to get my computer to dual boot or something because I really want to try it out.

 

[Grooveriding]

It's horrible.

 

[Dominato3r]

Alright I'm getting around to installing it..
In the Developer preview we were able to choose a partition during install, I don't see that feature anywhere. Is it still there?

 

[BD2003]

Here's an example of what I'm talking about. You know what would be an incredible use of touch on a desktop? If you could literally reach out and start moving and resizing windows around, all at the same time, instead of having to target them individually and hunting for corners and titlebars. Just as blatantly natural as you're imagining it. Have two overlapping windows? Touch both and swing them apart. Imagine being able to literally squeeze an app down to one of their "live tiles", and having that coexist with your desktop and apps, instead of all tiles or nothing.

Touch could augment the experience where it makes sense, but it doesn't need to be an all or nothing replacement. And theyre pushing fullscreen apps...this is crazy!!

 

[Spicedaddy]

Just finished installing the 32-bit version in VMware Workstation 8, had to change the network adapter type in the .vmx file to Intel E1000 as the default driver wouldn't install.

Everything's working fine now, seems faster than the Dev Preview.

 

[LtMikePowelll]

So confuse on the new UI, so back to Win 7-64bit for me.

 

[gizbug]

So VMWARE is the way to go with installing this, not DUAL boot?

 

[Demo24]

So VMWARE is the way to go with installing this, not DUAL boot?

You could do either, but vmware is probably a faster and easier solution. Just know that you need to tell vmware player it's an 'other' operating system. In my experience today trying to tell it that it was win7 would cause it to hang.

--


I could probably deal with the metro ui, these damn hidden menus with NO indications as to their existence is my biggest beef. That and the stupid hidden start button that you click off screen...WAT?

 

[ViRGE]

You could do either, but vmware is probably a faster and easier solution. Just know that you need to tell vmware player it's an 'other' operating system. In my experience today trying to tell it that it was win7 would cause it to hang.

VMWare has a Windows 8 option that works. It won't let you install the VMWare Tools, but you can manually mount the ISO for that.

 

[Infraction Jack]

Anyone know how to get into safe mode? I need to install the virtual box d3d extensions.

 

[StinkyPinky]

Awesome. Managed to totally trash my install by updating a driver. Holy shit, that hasn't happened to me since Windows 98. Just refuses to boot and even a refresh wont fix it.

It's like they tried to cram a tablet OS on top of a desktop OS.

 

[boochi]

How do you disable the metro interface in the preview version. The "RPEnabled" registry entry is not there and if created does not work.

 

[hdfxst]

RPEnabled is there but changing it to 0 does nothing.metro ui tweaker doesn't work either so i guess we're stuck with the metro interface

 

[gmaster456]

I doubt most of you are runnign this as your main OS. So are people dual booting? Or running this in VMC?

I'm running it in virtual box. with 3d and 2d acceleration, 3 gigs of ram and 2 cores allocated to it, it runs pretty smooth.

 

[boochi]

RPEnabled is there but changing it to 0 does nothing.metro ui tweaker doesn't work either so i guess we're stuck with the metro interface

Are you using the preview version released today or another beta? RPEnabled is not in my registry under " HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer "

I only have the following
(Default)
CleanShutdown
EnableAutoTray
ExplorerStartupTraceRecorded
LastClockSize
PackageInstallationVersion
ShellState
StateChangeVersion

 

[gmaster456]

Windows server 8 has an different interpretation of metro that I actually don't mind, although, its still quite a bit different from server 2008 r2. These are some screen shots from Server 8 I have running in Virtual box
Dashboard


Local Server


Explorer


Powershell




the metro start screen is still there

But unlike in windows 8, it's NOT the default interface, and interactions with it are not quite as jarring as it is with windows 8.

 

[gmaster456]

Different areas of the OS have different logos too. Wonder if this will change

 

[Dominato3r]

The keyboard and mouse work A LOT better now

 

[lxskllr]

Installing now. I had to uninstall virtualbox-ose and install the proprietary version from Oracle. I'm already irritated...

 

[hdfxst]

Are you using the preview version released today or another beta? RPEnabled is not in my registry under " HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer "

I only have the following
(Default)
CleanShutdown
EnableAutoTray
ExplorerStartupTraceRecorded
LastClockSize
PackageInstallationVersion
ShellState
StateChangeVersion

I didn't do a clean install,i just upgraded from the developer preview to the consumer preview.this is what i have in my explorer folder.
Default
Cleanshutdown
ExplorerstartupTraceRecorded
LastClockSize
PackageInstallationVersion
RPEnable
ShellState
StateChangeVersion

 

[DS9VOY]

You know, I was a business minor in college. Don't have a BBA or MBA like the people at Microsoft pushing this. Just a simple social science major.

But I did learn one thing in my business classes.... A serious business mistake called "escalation of commitment" that all business majors should be familiar with. It is commonly cited in regards to the Challenger disaster.

Basically, it occurs when it is obvious that a planned undertaking is going to be a failure, but rather than cutting your losses and running, you continue to push the project forward ignoring all warning signs. Eventually, it culminates in a disaster of epic proportions for your organization.

I suspect that this "consumer preview" was released to as a feeble attempt to win people over to Windows 8. Never before has Microsoft found it necessary to release a "consumer preview" of this scale before.

The problem is, Microsoft is in too deep. No one wants to pull the plug on this disaster and take responsibility for it. Doing so would mean taking a loss on countless millions of dollars spent on development and not mention years of development. The next version of Windows would have to be started from scratch, and it could be 3 more years until we see a new version of Windows. They are simply in too deep. Microsoft will continue to escalate their commitment to this train wreck until it falls off a cliff.

Mark my words - this will go down in computing/business history as one of the worst mistakes ever made. Business and computer science students will be reading about this for thirty years.

I forced myself to use this "consumer preview" on my desktop all day. I will say it now - it is nearly unusable. No, not because of bugs. In fact, I was pleased with the stability. It is simply not a viable UI for a desktop computer. It does not help me do more, it does not help me work faster.... It has impeded me all day. And yes, I know how to use it.

And as far as corporate environments go..... I can't even begin to imagine this being even remotely considered in such an environment.

So, it looks like for me it will be a couple more years until I get a viable Windows upgrade considering Microsoft will have to ultimately scrap this whole OS. This, combined with Apple locking down their OS more and more with each new release, means I am out of these corporate operating systems. Looks like I better start looking in to Linux distributions.

On the upside, this Microsoft/Apple shenanigans could finally be what puts Linux in the mainstream.

 

[lxskllr]

I forced myself to use this "consumer preview" on my desktop all day. I will say it now - it is nearly unusable. No, not because of bugs. In fact, I was pleased with the stability. It is simply not a viable UI for a desktop computer. It does not help me do more, it does not help me work faster.... It has impeded me all day. And yes, I know how to use it.

And as far as corporate environments go..... I can't even begin to imagine this being even remotely considered in such an environment.

So, it looks like for me it will be a couple more years until I get a viable Windows upgrade considering Microsoft will have to ultimately scrap this whole OS. This, combined with Apple locking down their OS more and more with each new release, means I am out of these corporate operating systems. Looks like I better start looking in to Linux distributions.

On the upside, this Microsoft/Apple shenanigans could finally be what puts Linux in the mainstream.

I just started using it, but I have to agree. The gui is lovely, but a PITA to get around. I'm mousing all over the place to get stuff done, and the popup elements are tedious to use. Maybe it'll get easier as I use it more, but I'm not counting on it...

 

[DS9VOY]

BTW - If anyone from Microsoft HR stumbles on this.... Please, hire this guy: http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/24/2822891/windows-desktop-ui-concept (proposed alternate Windows UI)

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

I suspect that this "consumer preview" was released to as a feeble attempt to win people over to Windows 8. Never before has Microsoft found it necessary to release a "consumer preview" of this scale before.

Windows 7 was widely released as a public beta. iirc, so was Vista. This is really nothing new for MS. They do it to shake out bugs and gain feedback.

The problem is, Microsoft is in too deep. No one wants to pull the plug on this disaster and take responsibility for it. Doing so would mean taking a loss on countless millions of dollars spent on development and not mention years of development. The next version of Windows would have to be started from scratch, and it could be 3 more years until we see a new version of Windows. They are simply in too deep. Microsoft will continue to escalate their commitment to this train wreck until it falls off a cliff.

Interesting take on it. We'll find out soon enough if that's true. When MS switched over to the ribbon format in Office that received a lot of pushback as well and quite a few vociferously claimed it was a huge mistake changing the UI so drastically. In retrospect it seems MS made the right decision.