Hi Everyone,
For the past few months i have heard a lot of heated arguments and reviews on Microsoft’s latest Operating system Windows 8. Here is what i think…..
I installed Windows 8 on my laptop as soon as Consumer Preview was released last year and found it less interesting. Lot of bugs and crashes, 2 days i moved back to Windows 7.
So when MS released Windows 8 RTM wasn’t interested much, even though i downloaded the ISO files it took me over a month to install it finally. Once installed i completely forgotten my primary boot partition(Windows 7).
What has changed from consumer preview to RTM? MS was at its best, lot of minor tweaks bug fixes and performance improvement, really made the difference.
Loving the performance improvement, awesome boot times, Type to search, app environment and IE 10; inclusion of Hyper-v almost gave me goosebumps (people used older Microsoft solutions in desktop environment will understand this).
- Windows 8 is slick and seamless almost every corner, Microsoft had put really hard inputs to make the OS as much leaner as possible, and thus achieving the jaw dropping boot times and huge performance boost.
- Universal Search, although the implementation is not the best it is way more improved and categorical results allow more refined results.
- Look at the Memory footprint, it is much lesser compared to windows 7 even with start screen with all the app loaded. My laptop running SharePoint 2010 Dev environment with SQL enterprise and VS 2012; yet i have not seen my RAM sucked up to 100%.
- WOW Finally, IE10 is the most advanced and the best IE ever released, it is quick, taunting Chrome and Firefox to do a catch up .. also huge move to finally address the open standards issues, better HTML5 rendering.
- New Windows Explorer had taken a lot of make over and improvements which allow better copy\paste, ability to pause the copy\paste in middle and ability to show multiple file transfer in a single window, ribbon’s revealing most hidden features of windows 7 to its base consumers.
- At enterprise level Reset and Refresh features helps resetting the system with out instillation or format or even refreshing the PC settings without any data lose. Happy IT help desk team.
- Love or Hate the Dock to side ,having the ability to actually dock the chats or skype is really a nice add-on.
Despite all the above there are issues like mouse support, missing start button are present in Windows 8, does that affect you badly?
I would say no, as i spend 99% of time in desktop mode it really start screen doesn’t matter, i really liked the way APPs are arranged in the start screen.
it is easier to find, may be i feel little frustrated when i watch a move and need to open another app, new screen would kill the fun.
Removal of Start menu is also subjective, i like the implementation as my Mom can find the apps easier than going to start menu and finding it, and apps like messaging and mail helps her to be in touch with me easier rather going to browser then logging then sending a chat
Despite the little cons i love windows 8, i find it really a great change to the future where touch screens will be a part of our life.
Big thanks to MS to think out of the box and succeeding in producing an absolute wonderful OS which allow us to think beyond present.
As always Happy Hunting 🙂
sharepoint sniper 