Windows 8

[htismaqe]

Here's something interesting.

All of you guys that are saying it's faster than Win 7 are running Intel-based platforms, mostly I7, with quite a bit of RAM. Are you running 64 or 32-bit?

I only had a copy of 32-bit Windows 7 Enterprise to test with so I was running 32-bit Windows 8 consumer preview on an AMD Athlon dualcore platform with only 4GB of RAM.

Windows 7 was definitely faster by a small margin.

[HC_Chief]

Originally Posted by htismaqe

Here's something interesting.

All of you guys that are saying it's faster than Win 7 are running Intel-based platforms, mostly I7, with quite a bit of RAM. Are you running 64 or 32-bit?

I only had a copy of 32-bit Windows 7 Enterprise to test with so I was running 32-bit Windows 8 consumer preview on an AMD Athlon dualcore platform with only 4GB of RAM.

Windows 7 was definitely faster by a small margin.

64-bit OS EntEd
32-bit Office 2010 & 2013 Pro

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by HC_Chief

64-bit OS EntEd
32-bit Office 2010 & 2013 Pro

Hmm...kind of what I expected. I wonder if the increase in speed you guys are seeing is just the evolution of the OS, aka it's newer so it's better optimized for higher-end hardware and more RAM.

[HC_Chief]

Originally Posted by htismaqe

Hmm...kind of what I expected. I wonder if the increase in speed you guys are seeing is just the evolution of the OS, aka it's newer so it's better optimized for higher-end hardware and more RAM.

Probably; also helps that the interface is greatly simplified so fewer resources needed for the GUI.

I LOVE the desktop search functionality. Much better than a start menu (or any menu, for that matter). It is so nice to be able to start typing and it lists your apps.

The Desktop drives me nuts. I do not like having a Start screen and a Desktop. I don't get why it was done that way; especially since you cannot "skin" your OS to one or the other, exclusively. At least is is easy to switch: hit Windows key or click/swipe in left corner.

[Fish]

Originally Posted by htismaqe

Hmm...kind of what I expected. I wonder if the increase in speed you guys are seeing is just the evolution of the OS, aka it's newer so it's better optimized for higher-end hardware and more RAM.

Win8 uses a different boot method than Win7. It's a sort of hybrid boot that incorporates a lot of hibernation behavior instead of the traditional cold boot. The kernel isn't completely closed at shutdown like in previous Windows versions, it's actually in a hibernation state.

Now here’s the key difference for Windows 8: as in Windows 7, we close the user sessions, but instead of closing the kernel session, we hibernate it. Compared to a full hibernate, which includes a lot of memory pages in use by apps, session 0 hibernation data is much smaller, which takes substantially less time to write to disk. If you’re not familiar with hibernation, we’re effectively saving the system state and memory contents to a file on disk (hiberfil.sys) and then reading that back in on resume and restoring contents back to memory. Using this technique with boot gives us a significant advantage for boot times, since reading the hiberfile in and reinitializing drivers is much faster on most systems (30-70% faster on most systems we’ve tested).

It’s faster because resuming the hibernated system session is comparatively less work than doing a full system initialization, but it’s also faster because we added a new multi-phase resume capability, which is able to use all of the cores in a multi-core system in parallel, to split the work of reading from the hiberfile and decompressing the contents. For those of you who prefer hibernating, this also results in faster resumes from hibernate as well.

More: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2...windows-8.aspx

Win8 also uses EUFI instead of BIOS on EUFI capable mobos. If you have a EUFI supported mobo, that alone will reduce boot time by quite a bit.

EUFI: http://gcn.com/articles/2012/10/31/s...ello-uefi.aspx

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by KC Fish

Win8 uses a different boot method than Win7. It's a sort of hybrid boot that incorporates a lot of hibernation behavior instead of the traditional cold boot. The kernel isn't completely closed at shutdown like in previous Windows versions, it's actually in a hibernation state.

That seems to imply that booting up, in particular, should be much faster on Windows 8.

That's the opposite of my experience actually.

Even after going into the user controls and removing the mandatory login, etc., the off-to-usable time on Windows 7 is about 10% less.

[RippedmyFlesh]

[quote=KC Fish;9077512]Win8 uses a different boot method than Win7. It's a sort of hybrid boot that incorporates a lot of hibernation behavior instead of the traditional cold boot. The kernel isn't completely closed at shutdown like in previous Windows versions, it's actually in a hibernation state.



Does disconnecting power(pull battery and power cord) get you to the point that someone could F8 at start up ?
I am thinking of a machine that has issues like malware.

[kcxiv]

Finally installed windows 8 and my computer is like not 2-4 years old, its been a while since i upgraded and windows 8 is running faster then windows 7 so far. I only have 4 gigs of ram and so far apps are popping up very very fast. Its pretty impressive so far.

Anyways, i dont mind switching since its so damned easy to do. Also, i did a clean install.

[SAUTO]

Fish unrelated but you are the man on this...

My little one wants an I pad. Momma has the four, grandma has the three. She uses both but she is young and I'm thinking about the two with 16 gig. Is that enough for a young girl. Probably would put games on it she doesn't download movies or anything like that at this point
Posted via Mobile Device

[Fish]

Originally Posted by JASONSAUTO

Fish unrelated but you are the man on this...

My little one wants an I pad. Momma has the four, grandma has the three. She uses both but she is young and I'm thinking about the two with 16 gig. Is that enough for a young girl. Probably would put games on it she doesn't download movies or anything like that at this point
Posted via Mobile Device

Absolutely. Unless you're planning on storing a bunch of movies or music on it, go for the 16GB for sure. The biggest games available for iPad are around 500-700MB. But most are much much smaller. My girl is 7, and she uses my iPad a great deal. Especially on road trips and such. Took her about 30 seconds to figure out navigation and apps. I have the 32GB model. That allows me to store about a dozen kids movies and a couple seasons of Phineas and Ferb and Scooby Doo, about 100 games, education apps, and interactive books, and I still have 7GB of free space on it.

Honestly, I think the iPad2 is still the best model. I'm a bigger fan of it than the new one.

[SAUTO]

Originally Posted by KC Fish

Absolutely. Unless you're planning on storing a bunch of movies or music on it, go for the 16GB for sure. The biggest games available for iPad are around 500-700MB. But most are much much smaller. My girl is 7, and she uses my iPad a great deal. Especially on road trips and such. Took her about 30 seconds to figure out navigation and apps. I have the 32GB model. That allows me to store about a dozen kids movies and a couple seasons of Phineas and Ferb and Scooby Doo, about 100 games, education apps, and interactive books, and I still have 7GB of free space on it.

Honestly, I think the iPad2 is still the best model. I'm a bigger fan of it than the new one.

Mine is 7 also. She does all kinds of stuff on moms and grandmas. Thanks a ton, man. That's what I'm going with.
Posted via Mobile Device

[SAUTO]

Plus moms four is a 32. If we need some extra space.she doesn't use anywhere near that much at this point.
Posted via Mobile Device

[GloryDayz]

Since everything was headed the Win8 way, I did the $15 upgrade to the son's computer. Had some issues, but those were some quality hours spent with people in India.... ALPS Touchpad Utility wouldn't come out, and Win8 wouldn't load until it did! Camera didn't work until Dell Software was removed. And after a mere 4 months, Dell doesn't bother to tell you the Trend Micro won't work. At least that upgrade was free.

Over all, it is what it is. It is faster. It's a new interface, but hey, so was the first time I tried a Mac. It's not that hard.

I do hate how everything is tied to a Microsoft account. Seems very Mac-like! I'll figure ways around that too!

As for the Metro Start screen, Meh, it's fine. For those saying it causes cancer, haters are gonna hate!

It was worth $15 buck. And I'm sure a high school kid will love it.

[Hammock Parties]

Sounds horrible. My computer is fast enough.

[ArrowheadHawk]

Upgraded my laptop today. So far I like it. Seems to run faster. I have to get used to a few new things though. I also installed Office 2013 at the same time which is pretty cool also.