Windows 8 Consumer Preview is out!

30% download done thanks to failtel's speed bump
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Use the installer instead of the ISO if you want to ugprade from Windows 7 or 8 DP. That drastically reduces the file size, something like ~2GB. For a fresh install of course ISO is a must.
 
Downloaded in 20 mins windows 8 x64 ISO. The UI is good but as anticipated start button/menu is gone.

No my computer but windows explorer still there in the new metro UI. Also facing strange freezing problem after every few minutes
 
http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/Windows8ConsumerPreviewDrivers.aspx

For those who run AMD Radeon hardware.
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Applicable Products for Driver Version 8.93.7 RC10:[font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]

This article applies to the following configuration(s):[/font][font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]

Hardware[/font]
  • AMD Radeon HD 6000 Series
  • AMD Radeon HD 5000 Series
  • AMD Radeon HD 7000M Series
  • AMD Radeon HD 6000M Series
  • AMD Mobility Radeon HD 5000 Series
  • AMD A-Series APU
  • AMD C-Series APU
  • AMD E-Series APU
  • AMD FirePro Series
  • AMD FIrePro 3D Series
[font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]

Operating Systems [/font]
  • Windows 8 32-bit Edition
  • Windows 8 64-bit Edition
Click to expand...

vivacious_tg said:
Downloaded in 20 mins windows 8 x64 ISO. The UI is good but as anticipated start button/menu is gone.

No my computer but windows explorer still there in the new metro UI. Also facing strange freezing problem after every few minutes
Click to expand...

20 mins?
<
Are having a 24 Mbps connection :sweet:
 
Hi,

I Installed it and frankly its a piece of S***t !! I hated the Developer preview and thought they&amp;#39;d work things out but knowing M$ I shouldn&amp;#39;t have !!

The Metro UI may work the best for tablets and the likes but certainly not for the Desktops,whats wrong with the M$
<
,They screwed the Start button and the whole damn user friendly interface has been replaced with what they call Metro UI
<
,I had to struggle to even shutdown the pc,no direct shutdown button,have hover the mouse towards righthand side to get settibngs and then shutdown,Whoa all that for just a shutdown.

Overall all the things I loved in Win7 has been blown to smithereens and aborted like a premature baby !!

Damn you M$ !! I don't want to go on as it will surely lead to...........................

Who's with me ??

Regards.
 
SoundsGreat said:
Hi,

I Installed it and frankly its a piece of S***t !! I hated the Developer preview and thought they&amp;#39;d work things out but knowing M$ I shouldn&amp;#39;t have !!

The Metro UI may work the best for tablets and the likes but certainly not for the Desktops,whats wrong with the M$
<
,They screwed the Start button and the whole damn user friendly interface has been replaced with what they call Metro UI
<
,I had to struggle to even shutdown the pc,no direct shutdown button,have hover the mouse towards righthand side to get settibngs and then shutdown,Whoa all that for just a shutdown.

Overall all the things I loved in Win7 has been blown to smithereens and aborted like a premature baby !!

Damn you M$ !! I don't want to go on as it will surely lead to...........................

Who's with me ??

Regards.
Click to expand...

well, we'll have to see. i havent yet tried the windows and i am not sure if i am gonna like the tablet like interface.. lets see.. but hows the overall performance of the system with this thing??? i mean the UI and everything looks like its gonna eat up 20 to 30 percent of my cpu all the time just to animate all those transitions and everything..
 
SoundsGreat said:
Hi,

I Installed it and frankly its a piece of S***t !! I hated the Developer preview and thought they&amp;#39;d work things out but knowing M$ I shouldn&amp;#39;t have !!

The Metro UI may work the best for tablets and the likes but certainly not for the Desktops,whats wrong with the M$
<
,They screwed the Start button and the whole damn user friendly interface has been replaced with what they call Metro UI
<
,I had to struggle to even shutdown the pc,no direct shutdown button,have hover the mouse towards righthand side to get settibngs and then shutdown,Whoa all that for just a shutdown.

Overall all the things I loved in Win7 has been blown to smithereens and aborted like a premature baby !!

Damn you M$ !! I don't want to go on as it will surely lead to...........................

Who's with me ??

Regards.
Click to expand...

The fact that Windows 7 got an extended lease of support might be the reason that 8 may not be for every one.

rite said:
Worse than Developer preview. Reverted back to Win 7 SP1 Ultimate due to lack of drivers for my 7970.
Click to expand...

You should be getting driver support soon. Refer to the AMD GPU link which I posted.
 
For those who hate the Metro UI

Open Registry Editor (regedit)

Search for [font=Arial, Tahoma, sans-serif]
"RPenabled" in registry it should be under "HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer and change its value from "1" to "0"​
[/font]

[font=Arial, Tahoma, sans-serif]
Reboot & that should give you the default Windows 7 like Start Menu.​
[/font]
 
I have been using the DP for a while, and a few hours with CP and it fixes almost all of my niggles and nitpicks. Metro is utterly brilliant. Everything is so simple, precise, streamlined and it does the impossible - makes computing fun. Metro and content based UI are the way of the future, there's no doubt about it. I am a heavy multi-tasker and Metro made me realize that more than half of my apps/websites are open just to check for updates. With Metro you only open an app when you must interact - all updates are on the live tile. When populated, the Metro Start screen has the potential for an incredible amount of informaiton all on one page. Anyone else take an hour in the morning to check up on your favourite websites, downloads, forums, apps, news, social networks etc, one by one? Guess what - you get all those updates instantly on the Start screen. Brilliant! You only open the app if you must add something. Whilst I used to have 8-10 apps/websites open at one time, with Metro I could literally just do with 1 or 2. The other apps are "suspended", don't use up any resources, update the live tiles constantly, and open up instantly when called for. And the app sharing contracts... Well, there's a whole new dimension and I am sure journalists will spend thousands of words getting through it, so I will stop here.

It is a paradigm shift to computing and it changes everything - so it does take a while to get used to for anyone used to traditional windows based UIs. Moreover, it is far too early to fully embrace Metro - most of our everday apps aren't supported by it and we are simply force to move to Desktop. Personally, I don't like the classic desktop anymore. I only leave Metro because my apps only work in desktop.

The desktop itself is an enhanced Windows 7. Nothing majorly new, but lots of little things here or there. Storage Spaces is great, the task manager, reader, explorer, all improved. For those who don't like Metro, fair enough, just think of it is as a full screen start menu. It works exactly the same way as the old start menu. Left click and it will give all the important shortcuts. Start typing and it will search/run. Of course, this is just a preview, and I am sure they can enhance it even further for RC. The mouse functions are still incomplete, but I am loving the new keyboard shortcuts. They will also probably bring a "Disable metro" option back for those who want to resist change and want the old start menu back. Else just use the registry fix.

Overall, for me, this is the end of Windows 7 or any other OS. This is the first time I am moving my workstations to a beta OS, though I have considered it many times, and it is because Win 8 provides a big leap forward to computing and personal productivity. I was hard on Microsoft on Windows 7 for the lack of innovation, but bravo, this is visionary stuff.
 
Installed it over my windows 7 on Dell Inspiron using the installer from the official site. The download took almost 2.5 hrs(might be the peak time, everyone was downloading) and installation took another 2 hrs.

The installer did a system check first and gave me a list of all the preinstalled applications that wouldnt work with Windows 8. Out of 34 odd applications I had, only 3 were shown as incompatible, they were Adobe AIR, winamp and Dell WebCam Assistant. The first two needed to have the latest version installed.

Other than that it also notified me about de-authorizing the PC on ITunes, as it would have got counted as a new PC on Windows 8. That was pretty neat.
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After the installation was done, all the applications worked perfectly, my desktop and personalization settings from windows 7 were also retained.

There definitely is a learning curve to get used to the new interface and even the desktop mode takes a little while to get used to it, but I must say spending a couple of hours with it, it became pretty natural and intuitive.

The OS would definitely rock the touchscreen devices world, for the regular desktop users, it might be a rough patch to begin with. I hope MS improves things for desktop users in the final build.

Overall, its a impressive daring leap that Microsoft has taken, kudos to them.
 
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