Windows 8 Preview – Part 1

This will be a short post, but it will be the beginning of a longer discussion about the pros and cons of Windows 8 Preview.

I finally got Windows 8 installed. I installed in on my Vista PC (Compaq). I had to upgrade the memory to 2 gig and I installed a spare 20 gig IDE harddrive (PC’s main drive is a SATA drive, which I disabled) so I could do a clean install on to a drive I didn’t mind messing up.  I think the IDE drive is a lot slower than the SATA drive which came with the computer, which may explain the poor response I got from it.

Windows 8 installed fine without any problems. The install time was reasonable.

That was the last thing that went well though. Windows 8 didn’t recognize my monitor and it likely didn’t have a decent video driver. My screen is 1680 x 1050. Windows set it up for 800 x 600 pixels. I was able to change it using control panel, but it wouldn’t let me go beyond 1280 x 768. My computer has a built in Intel GMA 950 video chip set, which is generic enough , so you would think Windows 8 would have decent drivers for it, but it didn’t. OpenGL was very slow too.

So how would I rate Windows 8 ?

Out of a rating from 0 to 10 (10 is great), I would probably give it a 4.

Now I didn’t read the documentation (PDF) you can download yet. I wanted to see how easy it was to pick things up (which is how most people do it). Simply put, I don’t like Metro very much. It ruins the desktop experience I am used to. While I found Windows 7 a little hard to get used to at first, I at least was able to figure things out. Not so with Windows 8. I couldn’t even figure out how to close any Metro apps I ran. I had to do the old CTRL-ALT-DELETE and then display the task manager and use it to shut down the apps. I tried pressing every F# key combination I could think of and nothing worked. I even couldn’t figure out how to shut down Windows at first. I finally had to CTRL-ALT-DELETE and the got a screen with a shut down button. I clicked it and it didn’t work the first time (it did something. but not sure what). The second time it worked.

The normal START menu is simply gone.  I don’t know if there is a WordPad anymore or a Media Player. There are no menus so I can’t find anything. Everything is done using Metro. Click START and you get Metro. While Metro may be nice for touch it is not intuitive when using the mouse. Also switching back and forth between Metro and the Desktop (which is an app on Metro) can really cause you some irritation. It does some kind of neat effect when it does this, which is nice the first few times you do it, but after awhile gets on your nerves.

Now I did run a test program which tests a number of EZGUI features and most ran well on Windows 8 (thats good). The Windows API appears to be intact. I did find some things though  ran poorly (they worked, just poorly). For example the EZGUI drag and drop engine repaints drag rectangles terribly now. It works great on Windows 95 to Windows 7, but for some reason the repaint is jerky and not clean. EZGUI draws the drag rectangles using a BitBlt engine (not XORing to the screen) and it still appears poor. I don’t know if Windows 8 has some kind of timing mechanism for repainting the desktop, like Windows 7 does, but if it does it may be the problem. Redrawing was jerky.

I also noticed that when I dragged around windows which were nonrectangular (use a complex region) that the movement was also terribly jerky. Windows 7 does fine with this type of window, but Windows 8 does not. It works, but just poorly.

If you would like to download the test program (demos some features of EZGUI) and test it on Windows 8 (if you have the Preview build) you can download it here:

http://cwsof.com/download/testwin8.zip

(Just create a folder and unzip the file into it)

The desktop has been relegated to just another Metro application and I think this is a big mistake. Sure it may be fine for tablet PC’s, but not for desktops. Now for starters, they need to get rid of the START button. It does not mean start, it means “Switch me from Metro to the Desktop or back again”. The word “Switch” would make more sense than Start. Windows 8 is simply not intuitive. There is no other way to say it.

Now I have to figure out if I can install a Windows 7 video driver in Windows 8, so I can get a native video driver for my computer. My computer has a Celeron D 360 CPU, which is not a powerhouse, so I get a real feel for how Windows 8 stacks up. Now Windows Vista (which is what this computer normally uses on the harddrive I disabled), ran better even with only 512 meg ram. Now that I upgraded to 2 gig ram, Vista runs great compared to Windows 8.

Because I have to dig deep into Windows 8 so I can test my EZGUI software on it (and improve EZGUI specifically for Windows 8), I will post more details in the days to come. But for day one with Windows 8, it gets a failing grade. I am not impressed (yet). I am actually more disappointed. Now this does not mean Microsoft won’t get it right before it is all over with, but for now I am not a happy developer. Now I may learn of some errors of my own which may make Windows 8 look worse than it is, but for now I need to see more before I can give it a passing grade.

UPDATE:

Windows 8 now gets a better review (rating). I falsely assumed Windows 8 would come with some decent video drivers, but I was wrong ! I decided to go to Intels web site and download Windows 7 drivers for the Intel GMA 950 video chip set (my PC’s Graphic chip set) and what a difference. While the installation appeared to fail (the screen went black and I had to reboot), it actually worked. When I rebooted I now have full screen resolution (1980 x 1050) and what a difference.

The problems with my EZGUI demo test program are not gone. The drag and drop engine now draws drag rectangles properly. The problem before was the video was not the same as the monitors resolution so you can lose dividual pixels when displaying thin lines. Now it works properly. The MCI now plays properly and the OpenGL speed if quite good. The problem with the non-rectangular windows (using regions) is now also gone.

While I am still confused about how to shut down Windows 8 (appears you have to use CTRL-ALT-DELETE to get a window with a shutdown icon), beyond that things are looking up.

So now my rating for Windows 8 Preview (from 0 to 10) is now a 7 (maybe an 8).

 

 

 

Stay tuned for part 2 …