Anyone going or know someone who is? Starts tomorrow @9am PDT in Anaheim, CA


I look for a lot of info coming out, the blog that VP Steven Sinofsky has been posting (referred to in other threads recently) has been showing off some nice stuff - the latest was a ~8 second boot time of a Win8 PC using a SSD and UEFI instead of standard BIOS:


http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/09/08/delivering-fast-boot-times-in-windows-8.aspx


Who knew that checking the box on bootup initially which asks about if you want to send data to MS to help make the product better would actually be parsed and used to this level?

 

-----signature-----

Lots of new info and data out - I hope you are watching the stream of the keynote, or already watched it. Hard to believe not a single post on this with the sheer volume of info and changes shown, I guess no one really cares?

 

-----signature-----

I'm happy with Win7. So I guess you can say I don't really care at this point. Once it's released, or at least has gone gold, I might care a little.

 

-----signature-----

Well I suppose if anyone gets too bored, they can install the Developers Preview build (from MS, not a hacked/torrent version) and try it out tonight - http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/09/ 13/welcome-to-windows-8-the-developer-preview.aspx

 

-----signature-----

I am very happy with Win 7 64 Pro. With that said what are some features that I must have that will compel me to rush out and get Windows 8?


Will Win 8 be 64 bit?


Will Win 8 have the same features that I enjoy with Win 7 or is it a total revamp?

 

-----signature-----

Everything I've read over the last few months just looks like iOS to me which, while great on a tablet, I have no interest in for a desktop.

I know theres the ability to use the "normal" Win UI ... but reports are slim. Once I read more about it, maybe then I'll be interested.

For now, zero interest. Win7 is great.

 

-----signature-----

It's up now. I'm downloading a copy.

I was busy earlier and couldn't really watch or follow the keynote. I'm watching it now, about 2/3rds into it now.

I am extremely excited about what I'm seeing. Will post more when I'm finished watching.

* Metro is cool.
I'm really impressed with the new Metro UI. It looks like an awesome interface for tablets. And also looks like something that will work really well on desktops with a keyboard and mouse. And the Metro UI is completely hardware accelerated and looked very smooth on tablets.

The Windows 8 Aero or Classic UI is all still there. You can toggle back and forth by just pressing the Windows key. And it swaps between UIs instantly.

* Multiple monitor support amazing!
Wallpapers will span across all the monitors. Task bar shows up on all monitors. You can have your applications icons in the task bar show up on all the monitors or only on the monitor the application is actually running on.

* Windows 8 starts very fast.
If you have a UEFI supported computer, Windows 8 starts extremely quick. And it has a connected idle lower power state that uses very little power and you can resume from instantly.

* App development
I'm not a programmer, I mess around with web development, but I don't do anything like C programming or such. But it looks like they have some really impressive tools for people with just web programming level knowledge to create some really nice applications. Windows 8 has so much built into it that developers don't have to do themselves. And applications can share data with other applications without even needing to be aware of their existence, Windows 8 handles it. Makes me think I could actually make my own applications and upload them to the Windows 8 Store. And the Windows 8 store does have a certification process to ensure what is listed there is safe.

* Windows 8 cloud integration
With your Windows Live account you have a Skydrive. Applications will be able to store settings in that Skydrive, Windows will store settings in that cloud as well. So you can roam between computers and have many of your settings and information follow you. This is really neat. And I'm not sure, but I think you can remote desktop between Live connected computers across firewalls without having to use some personal VPN application like Himachi (not 100% sure), but they definitely showed they were able to access the drives of multiple Windows 8 computers across multiple firewalls that were authenticated with the same Live account. This is great for me as I use my home computer while at work and vice versa and depend on Himachi now to tunnel through the firewalls.

* Windows Defender
Windows Defender is now a full anti virus and anti malware suite. Not sure if that's just Essentials or if it includes even more. But guessing at least Essentials is include. And of course you can use other AV if you wish. I like Essentials so glad to see Defender seems to be including that now.

* Windows 8 uses even less memory.
They showed off a netbook with Windows 7 SP1 using about 440MB of the 1GB RAM installed. Windows 8 Dev Preview was using 280MB on the same netbook. And that's pretty good considering it's still at an early stage, that'll probably get better.


I'm definitely forgetting some other really cool stuff. Was about a 2 and a half hour keynote. Lot of really nice things shown off. Definitely worth a watch, was well done.


This has me really considering not getting the Android 4.0 phone and tablet I was going to get this fall. Windows 8 with the Metro UI on a tablet looks great. Being able to run the same OS on my tablet, home, and work computers, and have everything syncing up together so well, along with a Windows Phone 7.5 has me drooling.

Windows 8 is going to eventually be installed on hundreds of millions of computers around the work. Windows 7 just hit 450 million. So with this huge numbers I don't think I'm going out on a limb to imagine that Windows 8 Store is just going to be flooded with great apps in time and surpass Apple and Android.

Oh that reminds me...

* Windows 8 ARM
Windows 8 runs on ARM but I get the impression you can't use your x86 applications on that. And any Metro style apps made with native languages like C won't run there either. Apps will have to be in either Java, HTML, Silverlight, and he was naming some other language I think began with an X I wasn't familiar with. So the Windows 8 tablets running ARM processors are not going to have access... at least that is how I understood it... to a lot of native Windows x86 applications and even some Windows Metro style apps if they were developed in certain languages.

So you probably won't be playing World of Warcraft on a Tegra 3 processor with Windows 8. But I'm sure most of the apps suited for tablets will probably be done in languages that ARM will support. So may not be that big of a deal.


I downloaded my Dev Preview. Going to load this this up on a laptop tomorrow.

Lokkie - not much information has been released until today, so it's hard to make an informed opinion until now.


Ravy -

Cloud Integration, RE: remote access. Yes, you will be able to log into other PC's and connect to other drives using LiveID or HomeGroup association for authentication. The encryption and tunneling through NAT, Firewall, etc - is all built in natively. Some of this works now in Win7, it's just never really been advertised much (from Start type in 'Link Live ID' and explore that)


ARM - The idea behind a lot of what Win8 is, is that you develop your apps using HTML5, Silverlight, or JavaScript. These 3 all have x86 (32 and 64 bit) and ARM versions so anything written with these will work seamlessly across all platforms. The bad is that there will not be any translation, so unless something is rewritten specifically for ARM or one of the previously mentioned 3 languages to allow it to run on ARM, that is not currently looking like it will be supported.

 

-----signature-----