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Windows 8 Beta

#21
Eric Perry said:
I find myself going back to XP frequently. I have a copy of TinyXP that is my go-to OS when reformatting. 7 came close, but I still prefer XP.
Click to expand...
Yeah, different people want an OS to work in different ways. I think Win7 is probably the best choice for a regular general use PC these days. But on my studio machine, I have an absolutely minimal install of XP - bare bones in terms of processes loading at startup (no AV, no screensaver, no update reminders, no power management et cetera et cetera). It has a pretty quick CPU for what I'm asking it to do, a fast HDD, a decent Firewire connection and plenty of RAM. The machine never goes online and I never really have to interface with the OS. It just runs all my music stuff for me (Sibelius, Reaper, Jamstix, ASIO drivers for the interface, loads and loads of VST FX and VSTis) very reliably and really fast. No need for any change here, the machine is about six years old, but it could stay exactly as it is for another six years or so yet and still do what I need it to do.
 
#22
SoonerMatt said:
After being on the Windows 7 test team (OU IT was one of the groups responsible for testing Win 7 Enterprise) and participating in way too many Google tests I'm gonna sit this one out. Besides, my HDD is too small to dual boot efficiently....

Also, you XP guys have about 2 more years of support:

xp-support-lifecycle.png
Click to expand...

Guess then I'll just have to live without the support.
 
#24
I'm running the consumer preview right now. It took a while to grow on me, but I like it. I like the apps, but I only really use the Mail and Weather ones. The other ones I haven't really played with. But I think in the long run, I'm going to stick with 7 and see what the 9th OS has to offer since I have a pretty good feeling this will be another ME and Vista.
 
#25
What the heck?? We just reaplaced our entire computer system at work and in the process changed from XP to Win7. I don't see how anyone can like Win7, maybe some of you guys can explain a couple things.

I'm a CAD/CAM guy and my typical setup with a single monitor was to have about 4-10 windows open at any given time and about 20 quick launch buttons for the various programs and file folders I accessed often. With the quick launch buttons I could open my normal go-to stuff within seconds no matter what I had already going on. When I needed to search for something (all the time) I would open the appropriate folder, right click, search, type it in and it would come up as expected.

My current setup, with two really nice big monitors that I didn't ask for has a few things pinned to the taskbar but it sucks because Mastercam, the program that I use constantly, and often with two or three instances, will only open a single instance from the taskbar. Additional clicks on that button just maximize and minimize that instance. So to start another one I have to go to desktop, start another Mastercam and then maximize all my other crap again. I seem to be able to keep only a "library" on my taskbar rather than a quick launch for "drawings"; "material certs"; "NC Files" etc etc, so to get the files I need, I have to again hit the desktop button so I can see the shortcuts I put on my desktop for the folders I use but even that sucks because when I open the folder the tree on the left shows the whole computer system instead of the area I'm looking at. So if I want a nearby folder I have to re-navigate the entire folder system rather than just clicking the one I want that would have been visible at that point in XP. Not only that, the #$%& thing likes to jump sometimes when I'm about to click on whatever it was that took me 15 seconds to find. Apparently Win7 also takes 15 seconds to find what it's after and then moves my crap when I try to click it. Then there's the searching. No more search window. That's cool, I can get along with that, but it sure would be nice if the new search actually worked. I have found that if I use the asterisk appropriately it helps a lot but still I'll go looking for stuff that I KNOW is there and Win7 ignores it in the search. It will find other stuff though that doesn't contain the text I put in the search box. What's up with that? So the thing I want doesn't show up but I have to look through a bunch of junk to be sure it's really not there. So I end up navigating to the thing I was looking for and of course it's there as expected. The problem with that is some of the stuff I use might be correctly saved in one of a few different folders so I may have to look in two or three places to find it. The XP search was beautiful for that without having to use the asterisk.

Any suggestions for getting Win7 to work with me instead of against me? I'd really like to hear some ideas because so far I am HATING Windows 7.
 
#27
Wademeister63 said:
What the heck?? We just reaplaced our entire computer system at work and in the process changed from XP to Win7. I don't see how anyone can like Win7, maybe some of you guys can explain a couple things.

I'm a CAD/CAM guy and my typical setup with a single monitor was to have about 4-10 windows open at any given time and about 20 quick launch buttons for the various programs and file folders I accessed often. With the quick launch buttons I could open my normal go-to stuff within seconds no matter what I had already going on. When I needed to search for something (all the time) I would open the appropriate folder, right click, search, type it in and it would come up as expected.

My current setup, with two really nice big monitors that I didn't ask for has a few things pinned to the taskbar but it sucks because Mastercam, the program that I use constantly, and often with two or three instances, will only open a single instance from the taskbar. Additional clicks on that button just maximize and minimize that instance. So to start another one I have to go to desktop, start another Mastercam and then maximize all my other crap again. I seem to be able to keep only a "library" on my taskbar rather than a quick launch for "drawings"; "material certs"; "NC Files" etc etc, so to get the files I need, I have to again hit the desktop button so I can see the shortcuts I put on my desktop for the folders I use but even that sucks because when I open the folder the tree on the left shows the whole computer system instead of the area I'm looking at. So if I want a nearby folder I have to re-navigate the entire folder system rather than just clicking the one I want that would have been visible at that point in XP. Not only that, the #$%& thing likes to jump sometimes when I'm about to click on whatever it was that took me 15 seconds to find. Apparently Win7 also takes 15 seconds to find what it's after and then moves my crap when I try to click it. Then there's the searching. No more search window. That's cool, I can get along with that, but it sure would be nice if the new search actually worked. I have found that if I use the asterisk appropriately it helps a lot but still I'll go looking for stuff that I KNOW is there and Win7 ignores it in the search. It will find other stuff though that doesn't contain the text I put in the search box. What's up with that? So the thing I want doesn't show up but I have to look through a bunch of junk to be sure it's really not there. So I end up navigating to the thing I was looking for and of course it's there as expected. The problem with that is some of the stuff I use might be correctly saved in one of a few different folders so I may have to look in two or three places to find it. The XP search was beautiful for that without having to use the asterisk.

Any suggestions for getting Win7 to work with me instead of against me? I'd really like to hear some ideas because so far I am HATING Windows 7.
Click to expand...
I use Win7 as a CAD station almost every day. I have found the search to work better in Win7 than XP, but it still can't touch my Mac that I have at home. As for opening different drawings, as L-A said, Mastercam will manage your work spaces. Open Mastercam, than open a drawing. Go into your menu bar and click open, it should open another drawing within Mastercam. Than look at the bottom taskbar and you should see the Mastercam symbol and it should look like there are cascading windows behind it, click on it and it will bring up a mini view of all the drawings that you have open.

Win7 is better, you just have to get used to it because it is a lot different from XP. I honestly can't believe that there are companies that still use XP, especially designers. Most current design software will not run on anything less than 64bit Win7. I use Autodesk Civil3D and it needs that to run, plus about 8gig of ram and a quad core.

lowsound
 
#28
iamlowsound said:
I honestly can't believe that there are companies that still use XP......
Click to expand...

Same here, until I took this new job. We are XP SP3 with no solid plan to upgrade despite the looming 2014 end of life for XP SP3 support. It doesn't help we are also running an ancient version of Novell that does not support Windows 7. We even use Office XP, but some people have 2003.

I like to think of myself as an early adopter and technology leader, but I took a step back about 10 years when I came to work where I am now.

-Mike
 
#29
Wademeister63 said:
What the heck?? We just reaplaced our entire computer system at work and in the process changed from XP to Win7. I don't see how anyone can like Win7, maybe some of you guys can explain a couple things.

I'm a CAD/CAM guy and my typical setup with a single monitor was to have about 4-10 windows open at any given time and about 20 quick launch buttons for the various programs and file folders I accessed often. With the quick launch buttons I could open my normal go-to stuff within seconds no matter what I had already going on. When I needed to search for something (all the time) I would open the appropriate folder, right click, search, type it in and it would come up as expected.

My current setup, with two really nice big monitors that I didn't ask for has a few things pinned to the taskbar but it sucks because Mastercam, the program that I use constantly, and often with two or three instances, will only open a single instance from the taskbar. Additional clicks on that button just maximize and minimize that instance. So to start another one I have to go to desktop, start another Mastercam and then maximize all my other crap again. I seem to be able to keep only a "library" on my taskbar rather than a quick launch for "drawings"; "material certs"; "NC Files" etc etc, so to get the files I need, I have to again hit the desktop button so I can see the shortcuts I put on my desktop for the folders I use but even that sucks because when I open the folder the tree on the left shows the whole computer system instead of the area I'm looking at. So if I want a nearby folder I have to re-navigate the entire folder system rather than just clicking the one I want that would have been visible at that point in XP. Not only that, the #$%& thing likes to jump sometimes when I'm about to click on whatever it was that took me 15 seconds to find. Apparently Win7 also takes 15 seconds to find what it's after and then moves my crap when I try to click it. Then there's the searching. No more search window. That's cool, I can get along with that, but it sure would be nice if the new search actually worked. I have found that if I use the asterisk appropriately it helps a lot but still I'll go looking for stuff that I KNOW is there and Win7 ignores it in the search. It will find other stuff though that doesn't contain the text I put in the search box. What's up with that? So the thing I want doesn't show up but I have to look through a bunch of junk to be sure it's really not there. So I end up navigating to the thing I was looking for and of course it's there as expected. The problem with that is some of the stuff I use might be correctly saved in one of a few different folders so I may have to look in two or three places to find it. The XP search was beautiful for that without having to use the asterisk.

Any suggestions for getting Win7 to work with me instead of against me? I'd really like to hear some ideas because so far I am HATING Windows 7.
Click to expand...

Right click on the icon in the task bar, and select the program again, and you can open a new window.

Also, as far as the search thing, if you know where something is, why not just browse to it? You can have multiple windows explorer windows open at once.
 
#30
sloasdaylight said:
Right click on the icon in the task bar, and select the program again, and you can open a new window.

Also, as far as the search thing, if you know where something is, why not just browse to it? You can have multiple windows explorer windows open at once.
Click to expand...

Not saying it's as organized as it should be, but we have a lot of opportunity for a particular drawing to exist in one of several folders. I'll also frequently need to access a CAD, PDF and possibly NC file for a single part all at the same time which would require looking in more than one location no matter how well organized the system may be.

Mastercam is unable to open more than one drawing per instance but that sure might be cool if it could. If it could do that I might be able to copy a machining operation from one part to another without having to export and import it.

But the good news is one of the guys I work with found this on google [Invalid or Expired Link Removed] and we all set up the quick launch bar. The quick launch buttons work just like the old ones so I don't need all that stuff pinned to the taskbar. Funny nobody here mentioned that and none of my 3 IT guys had any idea that Win7 could do that. Being able to right click the taskbar icon to open a new instance is very good to know too. I thought I had tried something like that but must have missed it somehow. No matter since I got my quick launch toolbar back. Maybe I'll eventually come to like Win7. But Win8? No way! It's the devil I tell ya! ;)
 
#31
A couple of years ago I toyed with buying Windows 7 after viewing YouTube videos of it being installed on as little as a Pentium II 266 with < 1 GB of RAM. I figured Win 7 should run well on my 3.20 GHz P4 with 3 GB of RAM whose M/B had been updated to the final version of its BIOS.

But when I ran Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor under Win XP Pro SP3 it claimed that my Socket 478-era Asus P4P800-E Deluxe's ICH5R SATA ports and its Promise FastTrac 378TX2plus RAID controller weren't supported... :eyebrow:

I then found this thread which claimed that Invalid Link Removed could be used to get the Promise RAID controller working under Windows 7.

The Win 2003 Promise ATA driver works under Windows 8 Consumer Preview which is now booting from a SATA II drive attached to the Fast Track (set to IDE mode in the P4P's BIOS).

From Speccy v1.16.317:

Summary

Operating System
MS Windows 8 32-bit

CPU
Intel Pentium 4
Prescott 90nm Technology

RAM
3.00 GB Dual-Channel DDR @ 199MHz (3-3-3-8)

Motherboard
ASUSTeK Computer Inc. P4P800-E (CPU 1) 53 °C

Graphics
SyncMaster (1024x768@85Hz)
256MB GeForce 6200 (EVGA) 43 °C

Hard Drives
488GB Western Digital WDC WD5000AAKB-00YSA0 ATA Device (PATA) 34 °C
977GB Seagate ST1000DM003-9YN162 ATA Device (SATA) 33 °C
977GB Seagate ST1000DM003-9YN162 ATA Device (SATA) 34 °C
488GB Western Digital WDC WD50 00AAKS-00TMA SCSI Disk Device (SCSI) 37 °C <-- SATA drive connected to the Promise RAID.

Optical Drives
HL-DT-ST DVD-RAM GH22LP20 ATA Device

Audio
Realtek AC'97 Audio

The rest of the Asus P4P800-E Deluxe's hardware appears to be fully supported right down to Asus' audio software sporting a 10 band EQ, sound effects, and 2ch - 8ch speaker outs.

Caveat: The BIOS settings must be sensible (RTM)--no overclocking and the ACPI & other modern functions (which can be disabled to run DOS :eek:) must be engaged.

Windows 8 runs faster than Win XP Pro ever did, its eye candy works well in spite of being delivered via a Windows XP-era EVGA GeForce 6200 256MB (DirectX 9, Open GL 2.0), and the only OS installation glitch occurred when an nVidia-authored driver failed to download via Windows Update.

After installing Firefox 11.0 I downloaded the desired software from nVidia's site (which offers 32 bit & 64 bit drivers for Windows 8 Consumer Preview) and experienced a screen blackout during installation which required waiting for HD activity to cease followed by a soft shut down & reboot after which all was well. Beta releases... :rolleyes:

The underscore here is that for casual computing Windows 8 will run well on a nearly 8 year old motherboard with good specs.

Methinks MS has another hit on their hands. :)

(BTW. Moving the cursor to the lower RH corner of the screen will cause a side bar containing Start Menu functions to pop up.)

--

EDIT:

I wanted to test Windows 8's sleep function on my machine (which has never worked properly under Ubuntu). When I woke the PC up its on-board ethernet was no longer connected to the Internet so I rebooted Windows and the connection was restored.

Next, I rebooted into Ubuntu 11.10 and toodled about for a while then later rebooted into Windows 8 and was surprised to see that Firefox was already launched with all the web pages I had open when the sleep function was tested earlier on.

I then invoked Windows 8's sidebar with the intention of checking the network connection when the desktop froze requiring a hard shut down. :spit:

When I tried to reboot into Windows I was confronted with an error message which claimed that the bootloader was missing or corrupted and that one should boot into the install disc to repair it. But since the Windows 8 Consumer Preview install DVD doesn't include drivers for either of the Promise FastTrac 378TX2plus RAID controller's two operating modes...

Lesson learned?

Only install an OS onto a hard drive connected to a controller it supports sans supplemental drivers or slipstream said drivers into a custom OS install disc beforehand.

FTR every version of Ubuntu I've installed on the P4P800-E Deluxe so far (ver. 9.10 - 11.10) has recognised all of that motherboard's hardware in full and will run on striped or mirrored RAID arrays if one wishes. This is due to Asus offering a range of motherboards which support a variety of operating systems.
 
#33
iamlowsound said:
Windows 7 is the best operating system that Microsoft has ever made, I see no reason for them to move away from it yet. Especially since many companies haven't even moved to it yet.

lowsound
Click to expand...

One of my friends has the beta on his laptop. My friend told me that it is suppose to focus less of the load running on the processor for visuals and put more on the GPU for all the graphic-based stuff. Just like Win 7 utilizes multi-core processors better than Vista, it's something that flies under the radar but makes a difference in the longrun if it's true.
 
#34
I've been doing it since it got out.
There are interesting upgrades, especially to the task manager that rocks.
The phone style start menu is very annoying and useless on a regular computer.
Since it's a beta there are issues with non standard material, typically audio interfaces. My Audiobox won't install.
I wouldn't get mad if I had to use it all the time but for now I prefer 7.
 

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