Windows 8 Consumer Preview - Day 7

So, I took the plunge and decided to see how the web update method of a laptop went.

This laptop has been running Windows 7 x64 for a while now and is cluttered with junk (its not my everyday machine).

The specs are:

• Toshiba P300
•  Dual Core Centrino 
• 4gb RAM
• Dual 720Gb HDD

The upgrade was smoothless with only requiring me to install Avast AntiVirus and Raxco Perfect Disk. After uninstalling these two products and rebooting, the OS continued to install.

There was one glitch where after going 100% through the update it just hung on a black screen on 100% HDD activity. I did the power-cycle and it rebooted and setup the user profile without any issues.

I have used this laptop exclusivly over the last 2 days doing things like watching movies, playing music and will confess it feels like it runs faster and with less disk activity than what Windows 7 was doing. This hardware was designed for Windows Vista (and only just in my opinion!).

I find myself missing the start menu less and less as the metro start enables me to get to the required application in less time. I can see Microsoft's vision for what it is, and look forward to the first bug fixes (if not a Win8 SP1) to get this into version 2.0.

To quote U2 for those complaining about the lack of a start orb/button - Your stuck in a moment, you can't get out off.....

Windows 8 Consumer Preview - Day 1

Well, I have installed my basic software:

• Office 2010
• SP1 won't install at this stage for some reason.....
• Palemoon browser (think Firefox - Windows optimised)
• Nero 11 burning
• VLC for media
• Desktop Fusion
• Lightroom 3
• Avast Internet Security
• AnyDVD HD
• Virtual CloneDrive
• TortoiseSVN
• Visual Studio 11 Beta
• Resharper 7 Early Preview (for VS11)

Overall, this release is much more coherant than the developer preview. I am slowly getting over the missing orb as the new start screen supports typing for the program you wish to run.

Next up will be Photoshop CS 5 and all my plugins and I should have everything that I use daily to continue my daily run of this release.

 There are some UI issues with some programs having artifacts in the chrome and some of my internal SATA drives being detected as removable and just disappearing!

These are minor issues at this stage and I am happy to progress forward with this release

Windows 8 Consumer Preview - Day 0

I have now installed the consumer preview using a VHD as my drive and booting on the bare metal.

My first problem is I never realised how much I used the start button until now!

I am just setting up .NET 3.5/2.0 and installing Visual Studio 2011 Beta as well.

This is going to be my primary OS over the next couple of weeks to give this OS a fair chance rather than just ranting about how I hate the new metro interface.