I’ve reported on my experiences with Windows 8 before, most recently here.
Yesterday, I installed the RTM version that will be shipping in October. There were a couple of glitches, but all in all, it was pretty easy.
I had a public version of the Preview version of the program running on my test machine. I was not offered the choice between the 32-bit (x86) and the 64-bit (x64) version of the OS; I just took what Microsoft gave me. I downloaded the x64 version of the RTM product for Microsoft Technet and attempted to install it. Pretty soon I saw this:
I checked the Computer Properties, and I was running the x86 version:
I guess Microsoft won’t let you install the 64-bit version over the 32-bit version. I can understand having that restriction if you’re doing an upgrade, but not for a clean installation. Oh well, it’s just a test. I downloaded the 32-bit version and transferred it to the desktop, in the process getting to see Win 8’s nice new file operations progress window:
I ran the installer. After a short time, I saw this:
Apparently, you can’t do an upgrade from Win 8 Preview to Win 8 RTM. I wonder if it would have offered me an upgrade if I’d tried to install it over Win 7.
The rest of the installation went smoothly and fairly rapidly. The computer was still part of the domain, so I just logged on. Then I installed the Office 2013 Preview that I’d downloaded from Technet. That went fine, too.
I’ve been running the OS for two days now, and there has only been one glitch: a failed recovery from Sleep mode that resulted in a restart.
A few general comments:
- Boot times are really fast – about 8 seconds from the end of the POST to the click-to-logon screen on a four year old Lenovo X300 with a solid-state disk.
- Shutdown is almost instantaneous.
- I thought there’d be more Metro apps as part of the OS by now. I guess Microsoft wants you to go to the store.
- With the small number of Metro aps available, the Metro start screen is a bit of a Potemkin village. Clicking on many tiles gets you back to the desktop.
- If you’re running Outlook, there’s no reason to use the Calendar, Mail, and People Metro apps, so the most often used Metro apps become extraneous. Outlook 2013 remains a desktop app.
- I’m not sure if it was always this way, but sliding the mouse to the lower left corner and clicking brings up the start screen. A thumbnail will appear, but don’t move the mouse to click on its center or you’ll be back where you started; just click on the lower left corner. You can think of it as a start button that’s invisible.
- I think I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s worth repeating. Although there’s no search box on the start screen, you can just start typing and the OS will start searching.
The transition from Win 7 to Win 8 on the desktop will be made easier if you think of Win 8 as Win 7 with a pretty start menu:
By the way, to illustrate how thin the Metro layer is over the desktop in Win 8, I was unable to use the snipping tool to make the above image; when I clicked on it on the start screen, it took me to the desktop. The Print Screen key worked, though.
The jury’s still out on whether this Metro thing is a good idea for the desktop, and I remain skeptical, but it’s too soon to tell because there aren’t any Metro apps aimed at desktop users yet. I think the biggest conceptual problem is that Metro apps run full-screen, and that’s usually not what you want with a big monitor.
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