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  • hornetfig - Friday, June 1, 2012 - link

    hmm, I'm not so sure about the Aero Glass thing. All the non-chrome theming has been updated and reflects what was announced in the blog post. All they were doing was, seemingly, for the window chrome was putting the DWM in non-transparent mode (which was always a checkbox option in Vista/7). The comments on the blog post went bezerk at the loss of chrome transparency. So they might just keep it for machines on AC power - it doesn't really cost anything to do so.
  • MrSpadge - Friday, June 1, 2012 - link

    I get the feeling they're trying to make the desktop ugly in order to push metro.
  • EnzoFX - Friday, June 1, 2012 - link

    Aero is ugly. It's simply gives the desktop a clunky feel. Not only do you have things showing through the glass, adding to the cluttery feeling, but glass in itself to me is the idea of something heavy. I've never liked it, so so glad they're getting rid of it.

    Do people not see the trend of transparency going out? IMO it was out before Win7, but Win usually was behind the times in terms of design.
  • ssj4Gogeta - Friday, June 1, 2012 - link

    I never thought it was clunky or heavy. It's all hardware-accelerated. If my GPU can handle games, it can handle a bit of transparency just fine. Why not use that power? Now I'm not saying that's the best way you can make the UI better using the GPU. What I'm saying is dismissing Aero because it uses transparency doesn't make sense to me.
  • B3an - Friday, June 1, 2012 - link

    I dont think he was saying it was heavy on the GPU.

    The transparency is cheesy in 2012 though, plus it gave a cluttered feel as already mentioned. And i hate how when you maximise a window in Vista/7 it still has transparency along the top bar - i dont want to see the crap behind it! Other things of Aero were bad too... all the gradients, shiney effects, glows and all the other cheese. The new updated desktop UI looks MUCH better and cleaner, something thats from 2012.

    I think MS might even update the icons in the RTM. I really hope so, most of them are still from Vista and look out of place/dated.
  • Tarrax - Saturday, June 2, 2012 - link

    It's not cheesy(?) at all, it's modern. The transparency and other effects look fine too. The new W8 UI is simply lazy and will look like a step backwards, not to mention just plain ugly. Looks very 90s, not 2012 at all.

    Of course, just like the previous poster, this is all just an opinion. ;)
  • B3an - Sunday, June 3, 2012 - link

    It's not opinion at all. Each era has it's specific design look. From looking at things we can often tell what decade it was made in.

    I work in graphic design and have for 13 years, and things have been heading towards the Win 8 Metro look for a long time.

    Even if you look at site designs like AnandTech, look at the buttons and layout of this latest design. Flatter, cleaner and square with more emphasis on colour and typography. Or look at sites that are new or have recently been updated like The Verge and Arstechnica. Both look far more Metro-ish. Theres thousands of examples i can give though. Even Amazon or Ebay have been slowly moving to this look over the years. The same with console UI designs, Smart TV interfaces and everything else. Android 4.0 has also started moving in this direction.

    Almost all designs have gradually been moving away from shiny graphics/icons, gradients, glows, emboss effects and other cheesy stuff. The Aero look in Vista/7 and the interface for both OSX/iOS ARE undeniably dated. OSX has atleast just started to move in this direction though (button corners have recently been made more square and things have been flattened very slightly).

    WP7 and now Win 8 have literally skipped ahead of almost everything else out there and gone straight to a modern design, it's a bold move by Microsoft and they're leading everyone else. In a few years just watch how Android and OSX/iOS start looking more similar, it's already happening.
  • Arbee - Friday, June 1, 2012 - link

    "Glassy" theming has been on it's way out for a few years now. Apple, who started that bandwagon, started toning it down a lot in Snow Leopard and Lion is flat looking to the extent that it's almost like using System 7 again (which isn't a bad thing). MS has been following a similar trajectory: Vista overdosed on the bling, Win7 toned it down a lot, and now it looks like Win8 will have a flat look.
  • B3an - Friday, June 1, 2012 - link

    MS were the first to really push the flat/modern look with WP7.

    OSX still has tons of gradients, overly shiny buttons and large shadows. Hardly flat looking! Compare some screen shots of Mountain Lion to Win 8. Big difference, OSX is still all about eyecandy and bling. Win 8 looks clean and modern, while OSX doesn't look all that different from 10 years ago.

    It's ironic that its now MS that are making Apple UI look dated. Apple are even worse than Aero was in some regards, as they try and emulate real world surfaces like metal and wood in their UI. Everyone else has been dropping this over many years. Infact 10 years i was designing UI's with the effects OSX still uses!
  • Pantsu - Friday, June 1, 2012 - link

    I think it's good that they're trying to create at least some sort of confluence between Metro and desktop, and Aero glass isn't anything like Metro. One of my concerns with W8 is that jumping between the desktop and Metro is too jarring.
  • dczyz - Friday, June 1, 2012 - link

    Just did a new install on my hp notebook, and the amd drivers still doesnt support switchable graphics.

    The new Win 8 runs only on the Intel drivers, the AMD grahics card continues to give error 10.
  • zaccun - Friday, June 1, 2012 - link

    Optimus is working on my Thinkpad W520 at least, with the latest Win8 drivers from Intel and nvidia, with a quadro 2000m.
  • elbutchos - Friday, June 1, 2012 - link

    I was really looking forward to see this OS running on my old and faithful DELL Latitude C400.
    Well no cookie. On first restart it hangs and that's all.

    I'm quite disappointed. Even on my Core I5 laptop it didn't seem as fast and responsive as Win 7 and furthermore it's a battery guzzler if you know what I mean.
  • ViRGE - Friday, June 1, 2012 - link

    If it works with Win7 then you should take the time to report the issue to MS. They're shooting for 100% compatibility on Win8, and should be genuinely interested in your report.
  • B3an - Saturday, June 2, 2012 - link

    You seem to have some kind of problem... or are you using virtualization software? It will always be slower in that.

    For pretty much everyone else Win 8 is faster than 7, and uses less RAM. It also runs better on older hardware, as good as XP infact! I've got it running on a laptop with just 512MB and it runs just as snappy as XP did. But with 7 on the same laptop it's almost unusable. After Vista each version of Windows has gotten faster and lighter.
  • augiem - Friday, June 1, 2012 - link

    seems to be to serve as a portal to Microsoft's online services. Just look at how many of the first icons you see are MS cloud services -- Mail, Calendar, Store, People, Photos, Maps, SkyDrive, Messanging, Music, Weather, Xbox Live, Travel, Finance... EVERYTHING but Desktop, IE, and Camera are linked to their cloud offerings. This OS is intended to be a stop-gap between desktop computing and the (sad) future of fully cloud-based system like Chrome OS. You even have to log in with a microsoft ID during install and on startup. All I can say is #1) Yuck and #2) Wow, if this were 1999 Microsoft would be crucified and drawn and quartered. The EU would demand they give you a spinning wheel of options for every service during install. But now that Google and Apple have been doing it for a while, I guess Microsoft is allowed to as well.

    As for Metro in general, all I can say is Microsoft, I'm seriously disappointed in you and am utterly dumbfounded you crashed and burned this fast after Gates' departure. I predict heads will roll at the company when Windows 8 outdoes Vista as the most hated OS ever made by the company and they see ZERO corporate or enthusiast upgrades and a giant swath of downgrades to Windows 7.

    For crying out loud, the namesake of the OS -- WINDOWS -- don't even exist in Metro anymore! This OS should be renamed ScrollBar.
  • ssiu - Friday, June 1, 2012 - link

    With previous "free" Windows upgrade offers (to Windows Vista, windows 7), each OEM has different policy, and most charge a $10 to $20 "shipping and handling fee" (one or two OEMs may have been totally free). So a $15 upgrade to a Pro version is not bad at all.

    Also, you can install the upgrade to any machine (with valid XP / Vista 7 license), not only to the new Windows 7 machine you bought after June 1.

    (But you have to pay extra for Windows Media Center / DVD playback.)
  • alexs42 - Friday, June 1, 2012 - link

    I like the idea that they are getting rid of aero in the interest of harmonizing the look (little bit by little bit) of Win 8 Metro and desktop. Also, here are my general thoughts on CP, have not tried RP.
    I've installed the consumer preview on all of my machines (Sony vaio eb laptop i5-520M, an atom-based asus netbook that was a gift from the hospital I work at, and my home desktop that is i5-750 based). The reason I did so was that win 8 was literally magical in converting the netbook (the intial install) from an essentially unusable machine to something that actually performed impressively despite the extremely limited hardware (after a brief registry hack to enable resolution scaling). It's quite interesting reading these forums where everybody seems so down on windows 8, going around screaming Vista, Vista, Aarghhh, when it's actually quite wonderful to use it on a daily basis. Even though I spend most of my time in the desktop mode, I do not miss the start button AT ALL. I suppose that is because I never actually used it, since I have nicely grouped folders and program start icons all on my desktop, where i just click on them. I must admit that from a usability standpoint, the idea that I have to go digging through the win7 start menu (where icons are never in the freaking same spot!!! and click on all programs and then search for programs) is just absolutely horrifying. I mean seriously, who in their right mind thinks that is something great? I do not mean to be a flamer from that perspective, but I have not really used the start button in at least 5-6 years.
    While metro is very different from the desktop, it just seems like such a breath of fresh air, and the future of how i wish to interact with a computer. I've been a computer user (somewhat power-ish, aka, minimal programming, mostly using office, statistics programs and such) since DOS 3.3 and my first 286 with an EGA graphics card, and I have to say, that metro, and especially the promise of touch, Kinect and natural-language processing enabled operating system (over the next few years), finally brings to computing what I always desired - a true human-interactive machine along the lines of what I used to adore watching sci-fi as a kid (Star Trek and all that). Everybody seems to suggest that it's jarring, but i feel that would be the case if it caused slowdowns and stuff, instead it just seems like a peek into the future and while I don't use the Metro apps yet on a daily basis, I think they are just beautiful, and can't wait to see what comes once more serious apps come out.

    In the end, having converted both mine (and my wife's) computers to win 8, I can't really imagine going back, it just works so much more smoothly. My main complaints are : ribbon in office (which is not win8-specific, but MS is doubling down on it, and I kinda hate it), and the fact that once the full version comes out, MS will not let you upgrade a Preview version directly to full version (that's just awful, I'll take me at least 6-12 hours to bring all my stuff back and organize it again). As a physician I just don't have the time to do that sort of stuff - anything that takes more than an hour of my time for just fiddling pisses me off royally - I could spend that time w/ my kid or doing something productive.
    ---
    Now before everybody jumps on my case let me say this: I realize I'm an idiot in installing the preview version on my main machines, but I just could not leave it on the netbook alone, while my SSD-upgraded Vaio (m4 512 baby :)) chugs along on a 3yr old platform. It just looked too good on low powered machines to resist not upgrading the others......
  • B3an - Saturday, June 2, 2012 - link

    I agree with everything you've said.

    I certainly am a "power user" (hate that word) i use things like Photoshop, high-end 3D modelling + rendering software (Maya, 3DS Max) and do video editing too (After Effects). I have a desktop with 32GB RAM, multiple SSD's in RAID, CrossFire, plus two 30" monitors... BUT... i think Win 8 is just better. Metro replaces the Start Menu and i can find stuff quicker with Metro. I use Search a lot and on a 30" monitor i get 150 results displayed to me, as Metro scales with screen res and will display more things based on your resolution. The Start Menu only ever display 20 items in it's list. Yeah you can resize it, but you have to do it manually by digging in to the settings.

    In the RP almost every problem i had in the Consumer Preview is fixed as well, like the multi-monitor issues with the hot corners. Not only this but it's one of the fastest OS's around. On any system i try it on, it will use less RAM than 7, feels snappier, boots faster, and launches apps quicker. And maybe i'm just imagining this one but games even seem smoother...

    I think all the people bashing 8 are just the usual lot that cant accept change. Some even think the desktop being dumbed down just because the useless Start Menu is gone (even though Metro does far more and often faster), when infact the desktop is more capable than ever and has great new features like Storage Spaces. The desktop probably has more improvements than 7 did over Vista.
  • rezlab - Sunday, June 3, 2012 - link

    Did you have to re-install everything when you went to RP? I am reluctant to do so because of the amount of time and tweaking that went into setting up CP.
  • Gungel - Saturday, June 2, 2012 - link

    Just installed the newest Catalyst drivers for Windows 8 RP and the drivers for my HD4250 is not included anymore. I know AMD is going to stop including them in future driver updates, but I thought that is still a few month out.
  • Ryan Smith - Saturday, June 2, 2012 - link

    AMD's Win8 RP drivers are only for WDDM 1.2 devices (DX11 cards). For DX10 cards you need to either use the built-in drivers or forcibly install the Windows 7 drivers.
  • rezlab - Sunday, June 3, 2012 - link

    This is even worse than going from the DP to CP, where it would at least migrate settings and user info. This upgrade isn't any better than doing a fresh install. And before everyone jumps in about relying on beta software, I am not, but I have spent quite a bit of time setting up my system to work with Windows 8 and feel that Microsoft should have taken the time to allow it.

    Anyway, if you know of a way to migrate without losing applications, settings, and user data, please let me know. I have heard the cversion.ini hack works, but you lose running metro apps (or worse?).

    Thanks

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