Windows 8 Test

posted on August 23rd, 2012, 5:27 pm

Just for the fun of it, I installed the Windows 8 pro version in my machine and installed FleetOps 3.2.3, then the 3.2.6. path and the multimedia pack and I should say everything went better than I expected, in fact I believe the perfomance is a little better, and that was with the default Windows 8 drivers.

No issues at all not even the grpahics drivers or DirectX, so if someone was worry about Windows 8 and FleetOps there you have it, don't worry!. Of course this was with my machine, you have to try yours .

Now about the desktop on Windows 8, that's another issue and we better not talk about it.

If someone have made the same experiment please share your results.

posted on August 23rd, 2012, 5:29 pm

thanks for testing this

posted on August 23rd, 2012, 6:52 pm

didnt even know there was a windows 8 :s

posted on August 23rd, 2012, 7:05 pm

It's nice that we have some early results in for compatibility testing.

posted on August 23rd, 2012, 10:06 pm

didnt even know there was a windows 8 :s

I think there's a free beta or something.

posted on August 24th, 2012, 3:02 am

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/wind ... se-preview

The Windows 8 release preview site.

It looks like, for the most part, it's a decent revision.

Other than the tile-based interface. That's pants.

No really, it's horrible.

And there doesn't seem to be a way to go back to a normal Start menu.

posted on August 24th, 2012, 11:37 am

Other than the tile-based interface. That's pants.

No really, it's horrible.

And there doesn't seem to be a way to go back to a normal Start menu.

agreed, the interface-formerly-known-as-metro (lets just call it metro) is great for tablets/phones, but is far from optimal on computers without touchscreens, and microsoft has been watching too much scifi if they think everyone is gonna go out and buy things that only have touchscreen in the next 3 years.

desktops may be less dominant in the home (business still love them), but desktops make no sense with touchscreen yet.

what i'd like is a way to permanently disable metro on the x86/64 version of windows. because the revisions they've made to the desktop mode appear acceptable.

also i absolutely hate microsoft's policy of locking down the ARM version so that only their software can run outside of metro. that's copying Apple's abhorrent stance on openness. microsoft shouldn't copy apple's disgusting style.

posted on August 24th, 2012, 2:49 pm

agreed, the interface-formerly-known-as-metro (lets just call it metro) is great for tablets/phones, but is far from optimal on computers without touchscreens, and microsoft has been watching too much scifi if they think everyone is gonna go out and buy things that only have touchscreen in the next 3 years.

What's really insane is if you go to Newegg or something and look at the price difference between your average flat screen and a touch screen. It's about 200USD!

Continuing the Metro rant, you have to have a resolution of 1366x768 to have two apps displayed at the same time (which admittedly probably isn't a problem for anybody) but even then you can't run more than two apps on screen at a time unless you go back to the fallback desktop mode.

also i absolutely hate microsoft's policy of locking down the ARM version so that only their software can run outside of metro. that's copying Apple's abhorrent stance on openness. microsoft shouldn't copy apple's disgusting style.

I have to completely agree here. The Linux distros have already worked out keys for the x86/64 version, but there is no work around so far for anything with ARM.

On top of all this, Windows 8 takes up 20 gigs of hard drive space. I'm pretty sure that Ubuntu, which has just as many features and no Metro, takes up less than half of that.

posted on August 24th, 2012, 3:23 pm

luckily my screen is exactly that minimum, 1366x768.

i like ubuntu, it's proof of how well made and polished linux can be, it's easy for novice users as well. i dual boot it on my laptop, but i can't use any linux as my main OS because I'm tied to Microsoft Office and games which depend too much on windows.

one thing i think ubuntu has perfect which annoys me about windows is that it has the taskbar/dock on the left of the screen, windows can have the taskbar moved there, but it looks terrible and is hard to use; it's clear that M$ only really consider the bottom as the place for the taskbar, which is moronic as nearly all screens are much wider than they are tall. the sides is the place to put things. i'm considering a third party dock tool, which really is a sad indictment of M$'s ineptitude.

posted on August 24th, 2012, 4:12 pm

What's really sad is that the Metro concept has a lot of potential. For instance, I would personally love a file manager that represented files and folders with Metro-style tiles instead of the standard method of having an icon with text near it. It's much cleaner and professional looking with the two unified into a single object. That approach of applying Metro to things that already exist with just a few changes for touch controls would probably have resulted in a very clean UI that was easily usable with anything. The only real problem I can think of is that the Start menu would probably have to be redesigned to accommodate touch screens. Not that it shouldn't be redesigned anyway.

posted on August 25th, 2012, 2:48 am

I've got Vista 64 on my main home box (built it before Windows 7 came out, and used Vista because of better driver support), and put the task bar on the left of one of my monitors. Seems to work out fine.

I've played with a number of Linux distros over the years, but the three I come back to regularly are Ubuntu, Fedora, and CentOS. In fact I just put Centos 6.3 on a box at work for one of the profs; it's going to be used for some serious GPU processing.

posted on August 25th, 2012, 4:30 am

I'm with you. I'm not a fan of moving touch friendly interfaces to non touch machines. But who knows, maybe Microsoft will actually readd the traditional start menu sometime down the line. One can always hope.

Anyways, it's good to know that FO works with Windows 8 (at least on some computers)!

posted on August 25th, 2012, 7:39 am

Wow, FO on Windows 8 ? That's something. For me, Windows 8 is something in the future, far-far away. I try Windows 7, it work very nice, only I need some stable softwares. Some programs not work. Anyway, you can try to install the Windows XP Mode for Windows 7: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtua ... nload.aspx which allows to programs to work in XP mode.

posted on August 28th, 2012, 7:48 pm

I've also tested Fleet Ops, on Windows 8 Release Preview, and it all works smooth as butter. Windows 8 really is a huge improvement over 7, though I'm not liking any of the metro apps so far, but that's okay since it's not like you're forced to use them. Hopefully they will get better as the release date nears.

posted on August 28th, 2012, 9:51 pm

FYI, they're already done with development. Win 8 is RTM now so they're stamping the disks and sending them to OEMs. As for Metro, while it's not exactly logical for non-touch PCs, I don't hate it. Quite honestly though, given how much people love their smart phone apps, I think in the long run people will like Metro once they get over the shock factor.