Dear Microsoft

Since Windows 8 Developer Preview has been released a few days ago. I will write a little something about my first Hands on Windows 8.

Windows 7 is not too old yet and Microsoft is about to drop the next operating system in about a year or something. I’ve been working on Windows 7 for the last year and have to admit, I’m quite happy with it. I did not really check on the informations on Windows 8 that were leaked / released before and i was not even watching any screenshots of earlier versions of Windows 8.

Yesterday I tried to install Windwos 8 on a ESX Server but I failed.

This morning I grabbed an old PC to install Windows 8. The machine is not the fastest but I guess for a first look it’s ok.

The setup looks exactly as we know it from windows 7. After selecting the disc to install it to, the setup starts and copys all the files.

After a reboot setup will check all your devices and get them ready to use.

Another reboot and the system will first start up.

The first thing completly new is the creation of some new users and making the basic system settings. At fist you’ll have to enter a name for your computer.

Then you are asked if you want to share your printers with other users in your network. If you select the first option you will be able to share printers with others in your location. This will be used in a company or home network. If you are in a public place, you may want to choose the secont option.

In the next screen you can enable or disable windows updates and some other settings for the upcoming Microsoft Online Store or whatever they will call it.

If you want to make Windows and apps better you should totaly select some of the following options.

Some more settings for you to choose. The Error reporting cannot be disabled in the Developer Preview but I guess in the final version it must be possible.

Something new comes on your screen. You could use your Live ID to logon to your computer and if you don’t want that you could select the second option. But you can see the second option is not really easy to bee seen so you will most likely logon with your Live ID. This will setup some stuff like your profile picture from Live and will add your name to your computer account. You can still create other users later if you like. So we go with the Live ID here.

After that your account will be created. It takes just a few minutes.

After about 30 Minutes your computer will have completed the setup process.

The computer will then login automatically the first time.

The whole setup process will take around 30 minutes which is quite fast. My computer was a pretty slow one with just 512MB of memory and an old Pentium 4 processor. So if you’re running a actual computer you might be finished in like no time.

Your System is now ready to use. But wait what the hell is this.

Microsoft decided to add some Tablet or Mobile feeling to his latest operating system. Windows 8 feels like Windows Phone 7 at first. To me this is quite annoying because it makes no sense.

All the Stuff you knew was there for the last 15 years or something is gone. Nothing really looks like you knew it before. Let’s take the start menu.

Where do I logoff? Where do I make a restart, which is quite important as we are working with a Microsoft operating system. To logoff your user you’ll have to klick on your user Icon in the top right corner. Why did they change it? Was it not good enough where it has been for the last 15 years?

Still asking myself where can i restart my computer? There must be a hidden button somewhere behind all this fancy stuff. THERE IS NOOOOT. To logoff you’ll have to klick on the Start Button and then select Settings. A menu will slide into your screen from the right side. There you will find a Poer button which you can click. you’ll then have to click restart or shutdown in the menu. but there is a faster way to do a shutdown. More on that a bit later.

OK let’s see if there is some kind of desktop where I can work somehow. Let’s try Win + d to get to the desktop. Nice they didn’t change this. At least something I don’t have to learn again. And look this is almost like we knew it from windows 7. Let’s click on the start menu to see if they changed it here too. Damn back where I was before. Lets klick on that desktop link there.

I’m back to the desktop. Let’s see the explorer then. Looks like it has become some part of Office program. Funny Ribbons and stuff.

If you go to computer you will have a real use of these Ribbons. You can click to see the properties of a folder directly and you can switch to Control Panel directly. You can also see your system properties in one click. Which is nice. You can map nework drives in one click. you could have done that in Windows 7 but there was no fancy Icon besides it.

The Ribbons become to make sense somehow. For example if you want to see the the properties of you harddrive or folder you just click on the folder and select the properties Ribbon. This saves you one rightclick.

You wouldn’t expect too much if you click on the Open Control Panel Rebbon. Actually there is nothing happening. It just opens. But it’s nice anyway to have it as a Ribbon.

The same with the System properties. Nice to have but not actually neccessary.

One pretty good thing though is that Microsoft added some Tabs to explorer. For example if you wanted to defrag a disk, you had to go to a path somewhere in the start menu. In windows 8 we have the possibility to do that directly from Explorer. If you selected your harddrive in Explorer, the Drive Tab will appear. You can then select to defrag, format or cleanup your harddisk.

So there is one question. Where is the command prompt? Actually they have made it into Explorer as well. if you select File you can run a command prompt. They even added a Run as Administrator entry. Nice isn’t it?

The first really good thing I noticed about Windwos 8 is the new designed Task Manager. They have discovered that it would be nice if you use some colors to see which processes are using the most ressources. I really like this one.

That was enough for the moment. I saw Windows 8. looks interesting but was it really neccessary to chanche all the good things of earlier versions? I mean what was wrong about the start menu? Or why did you copy Apples Launchpad? Do we really need this in Windows? Does Windows need these things? And why did you bring Windows Phone 7 to the computer? Because it sucks and you need another flop as we had it with Windows Vista? These are some questions that I was asking myself in the last few hours. I know that I can change Windows 8 to look like Windows 7. I know that this is not the final. I know that there may be some changes. I’m totally fine with it but I don’t like where this is going. There is going to be a lot of new crap that no operating system really needs in Windows 8. So let’s see how the final is going to be.

That’s it from my side
peace out
eXe

I almost forgot. The easiest way to shutdown Windows 8 is still the same as in all versions before:
Win + r
shutdown -s -f -t 0
Enter