Windows 8 Consumer Preview - who has installed the latest Windows OS

I can't find another thread on this so here goes :

Has anyone else installed the Windows 8 Consumer Preview OS and if you have what do you think about it?

I was going to do a rebuild on an old PC (Q6600) that was running Vista so I thought what the heck, try Windows 8 for a few months and avoid having to pay for another Windows 7 licence.

I must say that it installed quickly and the Metro GUI seems very responsive but I can't help feel that it is first and foremost designed for a touch sensitive tablet PC with the needs of desktop and laptop users being an afterthought.

The Metro UI that looks great on the "small" screen of my lads Nokia 800 phone just seems totally lost on a 24/27 in monitor and the bundled Metro Apps will only launch full-screen (again great for a tablet) and fail to make good use of the capabilities of a proper PC.

Most "normal" progams cause the OS to drop out of Metro mode and run in the "desktop app" which is basically a clone of Win 7 but without the "Start" button in the bottom LHS.

Anyone else taken the plunge? Are MS moving away from the business / power user market as tablets become the norm for web browsing, email and social media use?

Microsoft is not moving away from anything but rather gearing up to jump on the Cloud bandwagon.

windows 8 is still a bit buggy.. I think its pretty good however, that OS is geared for a touch screen as you have noticed.

isoMorphic wrote in post #14065246
Microsoft is not moving away from anything but rather gearing up to jump on the Cloud bandwagon.

I hope not but fear you are right.

I cannot see anything beneficial to me in adopting "cloud" based computing.

Nightstalker wrote in post #14062770
Anyone else taken the plunge? Are MS moving away from the business / power user market as tablets become the norm for web browsing, email and social media use?

Frankly, I think they've totally lost any direction they once had. The hardware market is (and has been) changing to small form factor portable intelligent devices. While it was once the standard, the desktop/laptop PC is fast losing ground to tablets, smartphones and ultrabooks.

In the past, it has been traditional to talk of the computer market and market share in terms of PCs, but that is changing along with the technology. If you look at the technologies in use today, you see a broader range of form-factors. There are more smart devices in the mix, ranging from MP3 players like the iTouch, through smartphones to tablets to devices like XBox and other game consoles, portable devices like the Macbook Air and ultrabooks with SSDs, to full size laptops and PCs, all the way up to servers, all using sophisticated operating systems.

Microsoft has ignored this trend for quite a while, or else their efforts have been unproductive. Actually, if you think about it, Microsoft has always been a reactive company; even their first product, MS-DOS, was acquired to meet IBM's need for an OS on the PC and was not produced internally by Microsoft - or Bill Gates.

Windows wasn't actually a windowed program until Windows 2000. All the Windows versions before that (3, 95, 98, etc) were simply a wIndowed GUI running on top of MS-DOS. Now, after other companies like Google, Apple, Motorola, and Samsung have created an entirely new market and direction, Microsoft is belatedly showing another "substitute" product - A tablet environment that takes over your desktop PC.

I don't see that environment being useful to me, nor do I really want to wait around to see if Microsoft gets its act together. I think they should have gotten rid of Ballmer years ago - I have never seen any evidence that the man has any vision whatsoever, and I don't see that Microsoft, as it is headed today, will produce Operating system software compelling and effective enough to find a place on my computers.

Nightstalker wrote in post #14066734
I cannot see anything beneficial to me in adopting "cloud" based computing.

Oh but when you no longer need petabytes of ram and rather use rendering farms to crank out a little CGI for a day or two. That or you no longer need to buy thousand dollar software to write future software of your own. Just think if you could rent any software and or costly plugins you rarely use on demand like movies. There is so much potential for cloud that has yet to be offered by anyone yet as most only think of it has a storage container. No longer will the average computer user need a bulky energy sucking tower PC under the desk. Hospitals and many large companies are already running everything in cloud systems.

The future will be strictly browser based interfaces (Google planned this with Chrome many years ago) built on devices that connect to grid systems. We will still have hardcore users that want powerful computers at home but they will be for enthusiasts, developers and collectors only. Most people these days don't want a bulky 16 inch laptop in their lap or to be tied to a desk most of the day. What they do want is a portable keyboard with finger tracking connected to a screen that is mobile in every sense of the word.

Already WiFi is all around us in fact every 2 mile radius there are cell towers hidden within the landscape. The future is Grid or Cloud as it's currently known and with the money being pumped into the 4G networks that will power the future grid along with systems like Google Cloud and Microsoft Skydrive there is no way around it. When developers can develop for grid and every type of device can interface seamlessly you will love having big brother watch everything you do from video editing to writing letters to grandma in your grid based text editor. If you don't like it then you will have to join the group of people who live underground and write their own software to operate off the grid.

The Matrix is almost here so do remember the cake is a lie!

Sounds like you've been reading John Twelve Hawks novels.

"Renting" of software and "100% cloud" storage is the thing that I really don't want to see for various reasons, not least the fact that I value privacy and don't want the ongoing cost of "renting" software.

You can do this already of course and here is an example from Adobe :

CS5 Master Collection
Yearly Rental - $1,548
Monthly Rental - $199 ($2,388 for the year)
Purchase - $2,599

So if you opt to rent monthly you have paid for the product in 13 months and then you keep paying - alternately if you pay the annual rental, by the time you have paid your second rental you have actually committed to spend MORE than it woud have cost to buy the software in the first place.

This is not a good deal to me.

Maybe it's not a good deal to you but it wont be a bad deal for everyone. Consider if you used the software every day of the week to make money then $2600 is probably well worth it. I never have and never will need Flash, Dreamweaver or anything other then Photoshop or possibly two other Adobe titles in my lifetime. So in my case renting only what is needed on a month by month basis might be a much better deal.

Also consider for software developers it cuts down on support and cross development that may make the software more affordable to everyone. Imagine if Photoshop was $99 a year almost everyone would jump on that. Some would still complain about lack of ownership and others may still not be able to afford it. But overall it would save developers money which may be passed on to consumers who buy the software. Right now Adobe charges a premium to rent because they have to absorb the initial cost of building the cloud and porting everything over. As time goes on the prices will go down as storage and processing costs become less and less.

If you don't want to be in the cloud and due to privacy concerns then you should probably not connect to the internet. Your privacy went away years ago when AT&T and Verizon began sucking back up all the independant Bell networks they technically owned anyway. These days every packet you send or receive is recorded and in many parts of the world you are being watched by cameras everywhere you travel outside your home.

Actually we are seeing is a sudo thin client architecture from back in the day as more and more things move to the "cloud". Pretty soon all the processing will be done at the cloud and the "thin clients", our PC's will just need to display the results.

on the topic of security, You are probably just as safe on the cloud than what your already do on the internet. Hell you are probably safer. I used to work at Microsoft and I know how things are run even at the core level at the datacenter. The techs who man the datacenter cant even physically grab any data directly from the servers even if they tried.

It feels like the result of a transporter accident involving Vista, the iPad and fifty MBA interns. Whatever it is, it won't live long.

Microsoft has forgotten why they exist.

It was not that long ago the only mobile platform we developed for was Windows CE. Now, it isn't even on the list.

The right thing to do is to sell off Microsoft in chunks. Or, cut every group not involved in a cash cow, then put it all in a pasture.

I like the idea of cloud for various reasons and i've always been a privacy nut.

However Windows 8 is going to flop for one reason and that is not cloud, mobility, or lack of software ownership. It's going to suck due to the lack of being able to disable the pile of dung Microsoft refers to as "Clear Type". I would love to run IE8 or some of the other new browsers but they blur my text to help those with poor vision which gives me headaches.

I keep meaning to install the consumer preview.

Without using it, but having read a lot and watched some videos I think Microsoft might be the only one trying to push a better tablet interface out. Google and Apple still mostly think that the "inflate a phone" strategy is appropriate for the tablet experience. I happen to disagree.

Desktop UI wise I don't know, some of what I've read and seen confuses me. I don't want touch on my desktop, thanks. Reaching up and smudging my monitors does not appeal to me. The Win 7 UI is actually quite good, quite efficient and gets the job done. Win 8 does have some improvements in areas (file copy among others) but the UI I'm a little hesitant on until I try it.

I guess I'm optimistic about the Win 8 tablet experience and hesitant-until-I-try about the non-touch desktop UI.

I can tell you that Apple has won the F500 high ground with tablets. Unless they just screw-up, there will be no real competitor, including Windoze.

I can also tell you that my biggest F500 clients just started moving from XP/Pro SP2 to Win7. So, Win8 is DOA.

I think now, it is only a matter of time before Microsoft goes away. Sure, it may take 10-15 years, but they lost their mojo just as Apple nailed the business model.

S.Horton wrote in post #14102745
I can tell you that Apple has won the F500 high ground with tablets. Unless they just screw-up, there will be no real competitor, including Windoze.

I can also tell you that my biggest F500 clients just started moving from XP/Pro SP2 to Win7. So, Win8 is DOA.

I think now, it is only a matter of time before Microsoft goes away. Sure, it may take 10-15 years, but they lost their mojo just as Apple nailed the business model.

There is a huge competitor for iOS out there already, its called Android and its been out selling iOS for sometime, both on tablets and on phones.
It's also showing up on TV's and Fridges and there is talk if it being on Cameras before christmas.

The larger the organisation, the longer it takes them to change. A lot of enterprise level software was written for XP and has only just been properly patched to worked on Windows 7. Many of the add ones for SAP for example only became compatible in the last 6 months.
IT managers have also become weary of change, it takes time and costs money to move from one OS to another, so the longer than make XP work the better.
Give it 4-5 years and they will all be migrating to Windows 8 when Windows 9 is already consumer mainstream.

Remember Microsoft only discovered that the consumer market existed less than 10 years ago and their core business is still dealing business to business.
The whole idea of building something for consumers to use is very new to them, Windows Vista was their first real attempt at software, while the Zune was their first attempt at hardware. Both failed, but were excellent learning experiences.
Since then they have done very well out of the X-Box and Windows 7 is proving to work extremely well in the home and office environment.

No dispute on your facts. I just know what I'm told by customers.