Windows 8 DPV

[Nick R]

Howdy yall. With my newfound spare time, I decided to kill some time with some projects. My primary project was/is resurrecting an old computer we had in the basement, and testing out the Dev build of windows 8. Well, here I am. First, specs on the computer.

Gateway GT5426E Tower
ECS Elitegroup MCP61P Motherboard (nvidia nforce 430 chipset)
Powercolor Radeon 4670
AMD Athlon64 X2 +5200 (Windsor, 2.6Ghz)
2GB Kingston DDR2-800
Western Digital Scorpio 160GB SATA. (Yes, I needed a HDD so I pulled the 160GB 2.5" out of my mom's old acer laptop).

I have it running next to my regular tower, with a seperate monitor and keyboard. I installed the 64 bit version of Windows 8 on it.

You know what? I'm impressed. Windows 8 so far seem extremely lightweight and fast. The Athlon64 X2 processor is so outclassed by even my laptop processor that it's ridiculous. Coupled with only 2GB of RAM, and a 2.5" 5400RPM HDD, and you'd think it would be slow. Well, it isn't. It's fast. Blazing fast even. It boots extremely quickly, even with MSSE and O installed, and loading at boot. So far every Windows 7 driver works perfectly, and I have not had a single issue of any kind.

Idle, it pulls about .7GB of RAM, which isn't really bad at all considering. I haven't tried any games, and I probably won't. There isn't much point, because the 4670, while not a terrible card, is ludicrously slow compared to the dual 5770s in my main. Anyway, I just wanted to comment on it. Even with the relatively outdated hardware, it is still extremely fast. Almost as fast as my desktop is in everyday tasks. I did run a few SiSandra benchmarks, and I had to laugh at how slow this processor is. (I mean seriously, it's dual-core, 2.6Ghz instead of 3.8, and K8 architecture with no L3 cache).

It is immensely faster than it ever was with Windows vista on the same hardware. The metro UI for the start menu is going to take some getting used to. The only real niggle I've found is there is no easy way to exit out of the Windows 8 "apps". I have to resort to alt-tabbing out, and closing them from Task manager. (The new task manager is excellent as well, by the way. I like that it shows disk usage as well as CPU)

I'll keep you posted as I use it more.

 

[itguy08]

I also have tried it. In a VM but have tried it. About all I can say is it is responsive and faster than Win 7 in the same VM in the same machine.

The UI is horrible. Metro was ***** on Windows Phone and is ***** on Win 8. The paradigm makes no sense and is just nasty.

Switching between Metro and Desktop apps is annoying and something that needs more thought. It's not seamless and you end up with 2 sets of settings, 2 sets of apps and no continuity. It's just a nasty implementation that either needs refinement or needs to be killed.

If this is the best MS can come up with, it's really bad. I know it's a developer preview and all but they should have not released this usability mess outside of Redmond.

 

[Colt45ws]

Originally Posted By: itguy08
I also have tried it. In a VM but have tried it. About all I can say is it is responsive and faster than Win 7 in the same VM in the same machine.

The UI is horrible. Metro was ***** on Windows Phone and is ***** on Win 8. The paradigm makes no sense and is just nasty.

Switching between Metro and Desktop apps is annoying and something that needs more thought. It's not seamless and you end up with 2 sets of settings, 2 sets of apps and no continuity. It's just a nasty implementation that either needs refinement or needs to be killed.

If this is the best MS can come up with, it's really bad. I know it's a developer preview and all but they should have not released this usability mess outside of Redmond.

+1, I have done the VM thing with 8 as well. Metro = Barf.
They are betting on tablets taking off, which is what Metro is intended for. That is why 8 is also the first winders to support ARM.
I didnt notice a new task manager; Ill have to fire it and take a look.

 

[Hokiefyd]

Nick, your hardware is similar to our desktop at home, which is a Dell Dimension E521 with the AMD Athlon X2 3800+ 2.0 GHz, though I have 4 GB of DDR2 RAM in it. To be sure, Windows 7 runs much better on it than Vista did, and I think it's even faster than XP MCE ever was.

I think Microsoft has finally gotten the clue here that building increasingly bloated OSes, almost forcing users to upgrade hardware to stay current with their software, isn't necessarily the best way to go. I LIKE that I can install the latest version of Windows on my 2005 Dell. I LIKE that it looks like I'll be able to keep doing that with Windows 8.

 

[Bottom_Feeder]

While I understand the business sense in making the Windows 8 interface a one-size-fits-all deal, having it be the default (and be unable to turn it off) on a standard PC setup is ridiculous. 'But the old Windows desktop everyone knows and loves is right underneath!' is not really true since the Start menu has been neutered and all the familiar places like My Computer and the Control Panel are moved or just plain gone. Now I get to click on big, pretty, colorful buttons. Oh, goody.

I still don't like the Windows 7 Start menu but it's ten times better than Windows 8!