Windows 8 Dev Preview is Out

[muntoo]

IE10 is blowing my mind with spellcheck

No way! I can't believe IE finally supports that! What's next - extremely basic extension support?

and even more HTML5 compatablility

Well, at least it's making progress, even if it's a hell lot slower than its competitors.

On a side note, at least they've sped up boot time to Chromebook standards. (Could it be faster than Ubuntu...?)

[sidneys1]

On a side note, at least they've sped up boot time to Chromebook standards. (Could it be faster than Ubuntu...?)

Definitely faster than Ubuntu, at least on my system. Quite impressive for a system far more mature than Ubuntu and ChromeOS.

[spillerrec]

Win8 looks interesting but I just noticed this now. In the progress of downloading it.

The new file system Protogon sounds really interesting to me. If it really allows some sort of smart file relations instead of the outdated folder hierarchy system I'm a happy man. I have for a long time wished for some more advanced organization features, to the point of considering of making my own file system on top of the old. (I made a mock-up which allows tagging in PHP5+MySQL for my CS exam project in high school, I can share if any is interested.) The reason I have not done it already is because of my lack of the GUI programming experience (back then) and time it would require.
Well, I hope Microsoft is making something I can use so I don't have to do it myself. My time is sadly limited...

On a more related note, I have since last month used Ubuntu on my school laptop to try out some alternatives to Windows. So far I have been disappointed. (I'm judging on how effectively I can work with it.) While there is usually great flexibility compared to Windows, I just can't get some things like the taskbar and file browser work good enough. Some stuff do work better in Ubuntu, but it is just not important enough.
Well, Ubuntu 11.10 should be out soon so I can try Gnome3, but Microsoft have really started improving lately so it looks like Win8 will be interesting too.


EDIT:
Tried it out in VirtualBox, which was a bit laggy. As expected, lots of bugs, some were more apparent because of the lag though. I couldn't get the Metro apps to work either.
In general I think it looks pretty nice. The new task manager appears to be nice and have a couple nice additions. Start-up applications and resource statistics are like pretty nice additions.

The new start menu is nice as well. I liked the way Ubuntu Unity opened a search screen for the Windows key, as it is fast, so nice to see this addition in win8. However it is done much better here than Unity in my opinion. Gnome3 will also does something similar to this AFAIK so I have to try that too.
I didn't try, but if you can drop add custom launchers instead of apps there too (which you undoubtedly can) it would be a nice way to provide fast access to those. I have to try that another time.

Windows Explorer's new ribbon band actually isn't as bad as I thought. Nice minor features like paste as shortcut, copy as path, open folder in terminal window and so on, which previously required you to shift right click.
I also noticed that it had customized tabs for special formats, it adds a image manipulation tab for .bmp files at least. Not much in there but it should be possible to extend those yourself. I hope there will be some proper documentation on how to make these extensions. It is better than a right click menu imo since it is better grouped and have more space to show the items.

[spillerrec]

I'm upgrading to Windows 8 now as I just got reactivated on Dreamspark Premium and the release version is on there (and most importantly, for free).
Anyone had more experiences with Win8 since a year ago?

[inxt-generation]

I've been using it since the release of RP, and upgraded to the RTM eval recently. IMHO, it's the best OS ever. I haven't had any problems with LEGO stuff in it, RobotC, NXT-G, BricxCC, LDraw suite, etc all work great. And, best of all, my PC is usable literally in seconds when I hibernate it. The days of waiting for windows to boot are gone. From a cold boot, it's about 1-minute from powerup to use.

No bad experiences at all. Well done, Microsoft.

[mightor]

I use Windows 8 RTM and am very happy with it. Everything just works and I really like the new start menu.

- Xander

[sidneys1]

Yup, same as spiller: running Win 8 Pro x64 through Dreamspark Premium. Excellent OS. No problems (other than unsigned driver issues, which have been a problem in x64 windows since Vista) and loving the new start screen. Windows Store apps are elegant, and although they are very feature bare they start fast and allow really quick access to the information you want. Took me five minutes to set up the Mail account with two Gmails and a Yahoo, but have since switched over to a unifying Outlook.com account to simplify things. I also use the Tweetro, Wikipedia, Messaging, OneNote MX (best app out yet, and amazingly usable), IE10 (Metro and Desktop. Amazing performance I have to say. Kudos IE team!) and (less often) the Store, Calendar and News apps. Excellent job MS!

Since the Developer Preview I've been running nothing but Win8, and the transitions between versions have been almost painless. One small scare led me to transfer all of my personal files to the cloud (via SkyDrive) and I have to say it was the best move I ever made. The SkyDrive Windows Store App (versus the desktop client) is now a 'Share Charm' target, meaning not only can I save to the cloud, but I can save a 'shared' version with any email address, negating the usual 'middle-man' of having to save the file locally then go to the SkyDrive site and manually choose to share it.

The sharing and Devices charm I also use a lot, surprisingly. It's amazingly simple (read, four clicks) to send a cute cat picture to a friend, and even less if you email that person often (their contact gets 'pinned' to the share charm), or I can post that link/picture directly to twitter or Facebook through the People app and Tweetro. The devices app houses my printer, and the new printing pane is amazingly simple and usable. All excellent job, Microsoft!

From a developer standpoint this new OS is amazing, as Windows Store apps are extremely easy to code for. I've been using my standard C#/.NET coding, but I hear it's just as easy to use JavaScript/HTML or C++. Again, excellent job on Microsoft's part. By opening up apps to HTML they've essentially made Win8 a very accessible OS to developers.

Summary:
So far I'd give the OS a 5/5, but the implementation a 4.5/5 because even Microsoft's own Windows Store apps are so rudimentary that they're almost (but not quite) useless.

Have a nice day,
~Sidneys1

[nxtboyiii]

Windows 8 sucks.

[mightor]

Windows 8 sucks.

Is this based on actual experience?

- Xander

[inxt-generation]

Windows 8 sucks.

Is this based on actual experience?

- Xander

Here it comes...