Windows 8 RTM First Impressions

[CJREX]

Been using a quad-core RTM machine for about a day and have a few first impressions...

System: Athlon II X4 930, 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD, embedded graphics, 32 bit Win 8 RTM

Setup is very fast for a Windows machine, on the order of a Linux distro at ~20 minutes.

The Good:

Fast. Very fast. Impressively snappy response that appears to be faster than Win 7.

Ummmmm... it's fast.

The Bad:

Not so much bad as different. The interface will take a LOT of getting used to by the average user. Just shutting it down requires multiple steps in an unintuitive series.

Right-click and the Windows key are your new best friends.

Right-click on the desktop will give access to the Apps tab which you can then use to access a more familiar menu structure. Right-click on a tile brings up the same Apps menu as well as options for the tile.

The Windows key cycles between the current open application and the Metro desktop. Alt+Tab still scrolls though running applications. You can also move the mouse cursor to the top left and then down to open a "Charms" drawer displaying open applications. Move it to the top or bottom right to open the Settings Charms drawer. Aero is gone. Probably one reason why it's so much faster.

Overall:

I need to play with it a bit more but it's promising. I used the Beta for a while and it was definitely not ready for prime time. This is much better but it's still going to be a steep learning curve for the typical windows user.

[CJREX]

Final thoughts:

Lightning fast boot up. Cold start to desktop in <30 seconds. Very snappy response in most programs.

The interface is very wonky. I don't think it's going to be well received. I've been using it for almost 2 weeks and it hasn't grown on me at all.

Compatibility: So so. Office and business type applications seem OK. Every game I tried crashed and burned. This is still not final release though so that may be a non issue.

So in a nutshell, I won't be paying the $39 upgrade fee.

While it is an upgrade from XP (if it will run decently enough on XP grade hardware), I don't think many Win7 users will feel it was an upgrade at all.

Has anyone else tried it?

If so, what did you think?