Jonathon Jones's Blog - Posts Tagged "techie"
Microsoft Windows 8 Pre-Release Trial Run
Windows 8 trial test report.
I pretty much skipped Windows Vista and even 7 since I really felt I had no need for them, but decided that this year I would upgrade my operating system, so decided to give this pre-trial release a go.
So far, I've got to say that it's pretty good. Load-up and shut-down times are faster, refreshing and pulling up Web pages is faster, and the amount of options one can choose to customize are endless.
I do miss my normal "Start" bar where I could choose programs, but there's alternate ways of getting to things now. New in 8 (Might be in 7, not sure) is its use of Apps for certain things, similar to that of cel phone apps. It gives you sort of an ala carte system of what to choose, take away, add to, blah blah blah.
It also has much better network capability. Windows XP always had an issue locating my network printer without tons of help from me on where to find it, but this found it and the IP address of it instantly as soon as I turned it on.
Since this is in a trial stage, there's still some bugs. Security is rather tight and therefore I had to give myself special permissions just to be able to do just about anything on the C root drive even though I supposedly had administrative privileges initially, but even then those weren't enough. They're going to need to fix that before the primary release since not many people know how to fix something like that.
I'm also experiencing difficulty with my Webcam Pro 9000 from Logitech. Through the basic driver it's only showing images in BW for some reason, and Windows 8 isn't compatible with the older Logitech software, but I'm sure once Win8 is in a final release state Logitech will fix that. I hope.
The sound also seems, well, different. More crisp, like the drivers they're using are somehow conveying the digital harmonics much better.
Another neat thing is its compatibility mode, if needed, which is a lot more beefed up than the Windows XP version. Hopefully Microsoft will include that and recovery option just in the standard release version and you won't have to buy a Pro version or anything to get those features.
I never had it, but that's what ticked me off about Windows 7. To get everything and all the perks, you had to literally pay 100 dollars or more "beyond" the basic version.
Also, I'm not sure what the release version will contain, but this one requires you to log into a place in order to put your servers and such for mail, as opposed to using some kind of "in person" program like Outlook. Hopefully they'll include either Outlook or Outlook Express, since I hate having to log in to something just to check my mail. I'd rather it always be on stand-by ready to do in a flash.
Finally, I'm not sure what the release will have, if anything, but this one has Windows Defender, which is a basic Microsoft anti-virus program.
Probably not as good as a lot of them, such as AVG Free, but since this is just a beta release I didn't want to disable that and install AVG free for fear that AVG would think a lot of things were viruses that actually weren't since it's not designed yet for Windows 8 background applications and such.
Well, that's my report!
I pretty much skipped Windows Vista and even 7 since I really felt I had no need for them, but decided that this year I would upgrade my operating system, so decided to give this pre-trial release a go.
So far, I've got to say that it's pretty good. Load-up and shut-down times are faster, refreshing and pulling up Web pages is faster, and the amount of options one can choose to customize are endless.
I do miss my normal "Start" bar where I could choose programs, but there's alternate ways of getting to things now. New in 8 (Might be in 7, not sure) is its use of Apps for certain things, similar to that of cel phone apps. It gives you sort of an ala carte system of what to choose, take away, add to, blah blah blah.
It also has much better network capability. Windows XP always had an issue locating my network printer without tons of help from me on where to find it, but this found it and the IP address of it instantly as soon as I turned it on.
Since this is in a trial stage, there's still some bugs. Security is rather tight and therefore I had to give myself special permissions just to be able to do just about anything on the C root drive even though I supposedly had administrative privileges initially, but even then those weren't enough. They're going to need to fix that before the primary release since not many people know how to fix something like that.
I'm also experiencing difficulty with my Webcam Pro 9000 from Logitech. Through the basic driver it's only showing images in BW for some reason, and Windows 8 isn't compatible with the older Logitech software, but I'm sure once Win8 is in a final release state Logitech will fix that. I hope.
The sound also seems, well, different. More crisp, like the drivers they're using are somehow conveying the digital harmonics much better.
Another neat thing is its compatibility mode, if needed, which is a lot more beefed up than the Windows XP version. Hopefully Microsoft will include that and recovery option just in the standard release version and you won't have to buy a Pro version or anything to get those features.
I never had it, but that's what ticked me off about Windows 7. To get everything and all the perks, you had to literally pay 100 dollars or more "beyond" the basic version.
Also, I'm not sure what the release version will contain, but this one requires you to log into a place in order to put your servers and such for mail, as opposed to using some kind of "in person" program like Outlook. Hopefully they'll include either Outlook or Outlook Express, since I hate having to log in to something just to check my mail. I'd rather it always be on stand-by ready to do in a flash.
Finally, I'm not sure what the release will have, if anything, but this one has Windows Defender, which is a basic Microsoft anti-virus program.
Probably not as good as a lot of them, such as AVG Free, but since this is just a beta release I didn't want to disable that and install AVG free for fear that AVG would think a lot of things were viruses that actually weren't since it's not designed yet for Windows 8 background applications and such.
Well, that's my report!
