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Friday, October 26, 2012

My Thoughts on Windows 8...so far

I have been toying around with the Windows 8 Release Preview (32-bit) for a little bit, during slow times at work, on an older PC that I have.

The PC has an Intel Pentium D 2.8Ghz CPU with 2GB of RAM.  I have it setup as a dual-boot between Windows 8 and Vista that came on it.  I have installed Classic Shell on it, to get the Start Menu back and to minimize the use of the metro interface, which I am not a fan of at all.

Performance-wise, the computer runs quite smoothly with Windows 8 (especially compared to Vista) and Adobe Flash Player only seems to have crippling effects on the CPU for the first bit of a YouTube video.

Here is the video that I tested with on 720p setting:

The video started at 100% CPU usage (using simple CPU Utliization Gadget) and stablized at 50 - 60% throughout the remainder of the video, which is better than it does on some Windows Vista and Windows 7 videos, where the CPU usage varies and creeps back to 100% causing severe lag.  Once the video finished and the system went back to a mostly idle state, the processor was only running at 3%.

I was able to successfully install Google Chrome, Super Anti-Spyware, Microsoft Office Pro 2010 and Visio 2010 with no issues.

I was also able to connect to the PC from a Windows 7 machine using TeamViewer.

Before setting up Classic Shell to get the traditional Windows Start Menu back, I was not fond of Windows 8, but now see it as a usable Operating System to compare to Windows Vista/7.  Without Classic Shell, I saw it as more of an OS for a mobile or touch screen device.

I will continue messing around with things on the Release Preview for as long as Microsoft will allow it and will update this blog with anything I find that is great, annoying, or helpful.


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