Windows 8 Preview run through...

[Venom51]

I figure everyone will not want to kill a machine or modify an existing install to run the Win8 Dev Preview. I've installed to a VHD and will be posting some info and impressions over the next couple days.

The install...it's very similar to Win7 as you would expect. The following are what you are presented with at the first interaction. Excuse the photos. shot them with my phone.

Naming your hardware


Wireless setup


Settings










Deciding to login with a Windows Live ID or a Local Account.












Of course we've all seen the Metro Start page.


and the regular Windows desktop.


Nothing terribly outstanding so far. The first quirk to using it on a notebook is the Start Menu. It does not pop up until you hit the very edge of the screen with the mouse. If you just rollover the start icon and click it will drop you back onto the Metro Start page. hitting the Windows key cycles between the two.

Oddly Microsoft has already pushed out some updates to the preview build.


Clicking on Control Panel on the Metro desktop takes you to the new control panel layout. More Settings takkes you to the traditional Win7 Control Panel. You have to go to the old control panel to access the add/remove programs application.


You can see that in the preview build the only media components included is media player.

[STC]

This is great info Venom, TYVM

I'm personally having trouble with the Metro UI, but I'm sure it will grow on me, maybe...

Looking forward to more as it comes.

[Venom51]

I can tell you from playing with it today they have some work to do. SOmething as simple as rebooting the machine that used to involve 2 clicks noe requires 3. So far most of it seems to be a step in the wrong direction to me for the sake of unifying the interface across devices. However this is a preview so maybe they'll clean it up a bit more.

I am however somewhat intrigued by the Network Projection feature. I wonder it we are going to see some remote display connectivity come out of that or maybe that's not what they mean by Network Projection.

[mark1234]

There are a lot of usability issues with the current Win8 Metro interface, particularly when not using touch. (I assume touch works fine, it does on my WP7) But this is only meant as a Developer Preview, so they have plenty of time to change things, and they need to. Things like being able to tab between fields with a keyboard, not hiding the restart options, restoring the Start Menu, etc etc etc.