Hi guys,

Do you use Windows 8 Consumer Preview as your main Operating System? What do you think about doing multi tasking (human part, not the CPU part) on the Metro interface, and especially the new start menu, wich I found really annoying personally, atleast for a PC.

For example, if you chat with your friend using a Metro App, and want to send him a picture from your Desktop, you simply can't drag and drop it, instead you must hit the "Browser" button, then navigate to the path where the picture is, and then send it. In the desktop mode it's so much easy to simply drag and drop it, and many other small impediments, wich in my opinion slows down the work with the PC.

The drag-and-drop is not something native to desktop applications - it's something the application must explicitly support.

In Metro, this concept is replaced by Sharing contracts, and sharing contracts actually give developers much more flexibility and interoperability in exchanging that data between applications.

I personally think the new start menu is just fine on a desktop, no worse than Windows 7's solution, which is where MS want to be really. Because it's that much better on everything else, and the increased functionality and future-proofing Windows 8 offers will attract PC upgrades.

I use it as my main OS... I have to say, I'm actually pretty impressed with it.

There are a few flaws though:
- Closing metro apps
How the bloody hell does that work? I just ALT-F4 them.
- Longer startup time
It takes longer than Windows 7 to start up for me, which is a bit of a disappointment...
- Couldn't find the hibernate function
Even doing a "shutdown -h" shuts it down now -_-

And a few other minor things, but overall, yeah. Awesome.

Alt+F4 is one of the accepted ways to do it. You can also grab the top of the Metro Window and drag to the bottom.

It's notably quicker for me. I booted yesterday on my desktop, and it didn't even have enough time to load the spinner on the boot screen.

Dunno if there's a way to do the traditional hibernate, but "shut down" is no longer shutdown. It's a special hibernation mode that logs you off and hibernates the kernel state - reducing the time taken to hibernate since it's no longer dumping the entire RAM to HDD, but saving time on startup because it doesn't have to load everything up again.

Maybe it's just my hardware letting me down then...

I quite like it, and yes it's my main OS.

One common complaint I hear is "WHAAA THEY TOOK AWAY THE START MENU!"

I don't understand their logic.

How I use the start menu in Windows 7: Push start button. Type in application name. Press enter to launch.
How I use the start menu in Windows 8: Push start button. Type in application name. Hesitate slightly because of the smooth animation, then push enter to launch.

How other people use the start menu in Windows 7: Mouse over to the bottom-left side of the screen. Watch the orb glow. Click. Mouse up to application you've pinned on the start menu, and click it.
How other people use the start menu in Windows 8: Mouse over to the bottom-left side of the screen. Watch a preview come up. Click. Mouse up to the application you've pinned on the start screen and click it.

Only downside is you have to move your mouse farther. Upside is:
1. Live tiles
2. Larger targets to hit in a hurry


I rage inwardly every time I hear people lamenting the loss of the start menu. It also tells me that they have never used Windows 8.

I use CP as my main Os but to fully support my (old) hardware I had to install Win7 and then upgrade it! This because doing a clean install of CP resulted in no driver for my video card! After doing this I noticed too a very fast boot time (compared to Win7), and no major issues.
As for minor issues I have some metro apps in german while my system's language is english.. and don't know why...

Use Double Driver to backup your graphics driver, refresh the PC from the boot menu, install the driver if it reverted back to original.

This what I wanted to do, so I installed a fresh copy of 7, did backup of my drivers and then as 7 was already installed I gave a try to the update and it worked well so I kept it..

With the exception of the business world (and maybe even not so) the absence of the start menu really would not affect most people. As power users we rely on the menus due to installing software, setting changes, messing around, etc. For most home users, which is a large target segment, they use very few apps. Setting up the main screen with those maybe ten apps that are used 99% of the time is all a home user needs. Not to mention, most of them are integrated into the default setup. For the most part, the only item that a home user is REALLY going to need is iTunes.

I'm currently using it as my main OS. I am pretty impressed, it definitely loads faster than Win7 for me. And I can install drivers without having to reboot. I have noticed a couple issues here and there though... Sometimes when I go to shut down, it goes into an endless shutdown loop, and I have to manually shut it down using the button on my PC. When I boot up, the BIOS options aren't shown, unless I had previously shut down manually. And, having no start button is rather annoying, I don't like having to hover in the corner of my screen and waiting to be able to click.

Other than those few things I have noticed, I actually really like it so far.

Because it's pretty much going in to a minimal hibernation state.

You don't have to wait for the popup to click for the start menu - as long as your cursor is at the bottom-left pixel, you can just click and it'll open. Sure, it's a 1px target, but being a corner, it's easy enough to get the hang of it.

I never said that, only that the transition between the desktop and the Metro Start it's so annoying... -,- I simply hate it.

I think somone will developp a start menu that can be installed as a sort of plugin in the future

Hibernate is now in the power settings with options to show it on the lock/start screen. I too find it faster to boot (and even faster, with less RAM usage than Thin PC!)
I find it hard to accept the amount of rage over the start menu. You have lost nothing. It takes no longer, and often fewer clicks and faster searches, to do the same thing. I share the belief that a lot of it comes from people who just haven't bothered to actually find out for themselves how to use it.

1. The power loop shouldn't happen with any version of Windows when the Hibernation code is executed - that sounds more like a problem that Windows 8 has with your particular hardware configuration, and not a problem with Windows 8 itself (hopefully, new drivers will be released for your system that will be more compatible than the default ones included with Windows).

2. The Start Menu was never really removed, it was just renamed to the Charm Bar, and over time updated to become a bar at the right hand side of the screen, rather than a menu (although the earlier Windows 8 builds, such as the Developer Preview builds, are a notable exception to this, since it was still displayed as a strict menu in those builds).

3. The Start button is still present in the Consumer Preview builds of Windows 8, it's just hidden from the screen, although hovering over the lowest left hand corner of the screen brings up a thumbnail of the Start screen, and clicking it still leads you to the Start screen itself, so it was never removed as such.

I will say this, however, that it's hard to believe that Windows 8 has finally come this far, since I remember back in April (not even a year ago) when we finally started receiving Windows 8 builds here, and it was just struggeling to have much advantage over Windows 7, to the point where Build 7850 was even denounced as a fake. Windows 8 without Metro is like a computer industry without such major companies as IBM/Lenovo, Intel, Microsoft, and Apple.

I hit a 11 second cold start boot up and was amazed that it actually did it.
I normally average 15-25 seconds on a boot though.

To hibernate you just have to go to "Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Power Options > System Settings" click on "change settings that are currently unavailable" and on the bottom you'll see Hibernate. Enable It and you're good to go.

Window animation toggles have been around since XP: Computer->system properties->advanced system settings->Advanced->(performance) settings-> enable\disable whatever visual effects you want.

Yes i am using it as a main OS "for now" I game on it to.

I am using it as my main OS, and I'm very impressed. Few bugs, surprisingly, pretty usable. I like the Metro Start interface as well. However:

I'll kick myself it's in an obvious place, but where's the button to shut down the computer (or "minimally hibernate" the computer, as it technically is now) without having to manually log out first? If it's there at all?


"shutdown /h" on an elevated command prompt (haven't tried on non-elevated so idk what happens then) works fine for me.

Mouse over to the right side of the screen and press Settings, then Power.

I use it as my main OS. I must say, coming from a very, very picky guy, I am very impressed and I might buy this one, which will be the first Microsoft OS I buy that isn't pre-installed. It is very stable, and very fast, plus, the Metro UI is kind of nice in my opinion. I have no problems with it and I am currently installing it on other computers in the house. Very impressed.

The only issue I have with it really is the inability of the OS to display the Start Screen on a seperate monitor (which I would swear was possible on WDP but I'm probably wrong), while keeping the normal desktop on another. It actually seems kind of ridiculous that they haven't allowed this as a screen full of live tile apps on one screen and the normal desktop on another would be a brilliant way to maximise use of both - as well as letting netbooks and other systems that don't allow Metro apps a nicer way to do so.
(Temporary workaround? Use the Windows Simulator on the second screen. It's not quite the same though...)