Why I use Windows 8
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I'm also very surprised it took 20 second to boot in Windows 7 with an SSD. I have an SSD (an M4 specifically, on a SATA-3 connection) and Windows 7 never took 20 seconds to boot (with a UEFI "bios"). Closer to 10~12 seconds I would say.
I've been running 8 now for weeks and my biggest complaints are, firstly that they removed tons of "desktop" software (e.g. Picture Viewer, Media Player, the Games, et al) and secondly that they removed DVD playback (and even if you purchase it, it still only works in Media Centre).
Metro is something you can ignore. I will say that most Metro apps like the built-in Mail app are just horribly bad. So bad in fact that they're beyond use in some cases. Hopefully third parties can do useful things with Metro, because right now it doesn't have many use-cases.
If you want to use Windows Photo Viewer or Windows Media player, just right click whatever you are trying to view, and set your default program.
Incorrect. This is provenly false. Windows 8 boots faster from a cold boot than Windows 7. It really does. The memory footprint is much smaller. The runtime environment is much more optimized and snappy.
You can tell Microsoft has cut out lots of cruft and optimized critical code-paths, especially with regard to boot.
Hibernation which you refer to is a different feature, and provides you with the same session and programs and state as you had running before, just like a normal sleep would do on a laptop, except it will survive a flat battery. It does so by persisting your entire RAM to disk for reloading on boot. This is completely different from booting which would give you a new, empty session.
So if you end up with an empty session, it's provenly not hibernating, it's booting. And boot is much, much faster.
On all system's I've had, hibarnation, designed to save time, has only caused increased latency for shutdown/sleeping/hibernation, and similar increase in boot times since not only Windows needs to load, but all that persisted state must be restored as well.
On machines with more than 4GBs of RAM this leads to horrible performance and I've permanently disabled the option for the OS to use this due to the performance issues involved.
On Windows 8 I've kept the defaults and things are just flying.
Citation needed.
I point out how this argument makes no sense.
I don't think I'm the one you should target with "citation needed".
Source: Microsoft, "Delivering fast boot times in Windows 8", Building Windows 8 blog, September 9, 2011 [1]
[1] http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/09/08/delivering-fas...
Windows 8 lies to you when you "Shutdown." Windows 8 actually hibernates instead of shutting down for real; and you can get the same effect by enabling hibernation on Windows 7
Note the part that where he claims that you can get the same speedup on Windows 7 by enabling hibernation. This is provenly false and anyone who has tried it would know.
I have tried it. I do know. In fact if you measure it "to desktop" then Windows 7 full hibernation beats Windows 8's fast startup, because Windows 7 caches user programs in additional to Microsoft's side (i.e. registry, services, kernel, etc).
Primarily because I have SQL Server on it for development - the services have a extremely long shutdown and startup time, which doesn't need to happen for hibernation.
PS C:\> (Measure-Command { Start-Service MSSQLSERVER }).TotalMilliseconds
1127.5208
As for shutdown, while it depends on how you're using it immediately beforehand, I've never seen it take more than a few seconds on a development box.
Not necessarily. You can hibernate the machine after the user is logged off and restart from that point.
Essentially in Windows 8 (out of the box) if you hit "Shutdown" then it logs the user out and then "hibernates" the kernel, the registry, services, drivers, and all other "system" level processes.
The computer is then ordered to power off (just like hibernate). When you turn the machine back on, a notice appears on the screen which reads "Resuming from Hibernation" and it loads the Hibernation file into active memory.
Fast Startup is essentially Hibernation without a logged in user.
Windows 8's boot times with Fast Startup enabled is very competitive to Windows 7's boot times using Hibernation (instead of "Shutdown"). It is also very comparable too as Windows 8 doesn't truly shutdown in the traditional sense.
If you boot Windows 8 without Fast Startup enabled then the boot times are very similar to Windows 7's boot times.
As I said, Windows 8 lies to you. It isn't faster, it is just pushing Hibernation in a new deceptive way in order to appear faster.
P.S - Picture viewer, Media Player, etc are still there, just not default. It's a pain.
My encounters with Windows 8 so far have lead to literally zero interaction with Metro other than for searching for stuff and starting programs for the first time which it's quite good at.
Win+X is my start menu.
With all of these options, I have to wonder why they wouldn't include a link to Network Connections.
It's the one thing that I seem to always need to change, but something that is always like 8 clicks to get to it.
EDIT: Ok, I see that I have to also click settings. Thanks!
There is perceived quality and actual quality. OSX has perceived quality, but little actual quality. You'll experience that if you have to deal with projectors, other monitors and hotdesking regularly - it's utterly frustrating. Windows - seriously just plug it in and it works.
When you see a Windows "workstation class" machine (Dell Precision) with an uptime of over a year on a trading desk with 6x 1600x1200 monitors off the back of two Matrox cards, you'll understand what I mean. They just don't go wrong.
Same happens with an Apple workstation (Mac Pro, even if it's been VERY neglected lately).
If you pick decent host machines and decent hardware (read WHQL + decent brand) to plug in then you're sorted.
Buy some shitty B-grade clone crap and you will suffer.
So how do they apply updates?
It's just a lot of un-necessary clutter. If you want to start a program, if click start and type the first letters of the application.. done.
If you want to dig through a giant list of apps, that option is still available, but it's much nicer that it's not the default.
I think the things like the Classic Shell will help the elderly and those resistant to change, but for any power users, the new interface is an improvement.
As far as metro, I never use it either, so I don't see it as an issue.