Windows 8 Release Preview

Microsoft released the Windows 8 Release Preview yesterday, May 31st 2012, ahead of the planned "first week of June".

The release preview brings improvements to the consumer preview such as making Windows 8 more stable, tweaks to the new Start Screen, and alongside this developers can now download Visual Studio 2012 and begin developing apps for Windows 8.

I have installed the release preview on my laptop, which came with Windows 7, since I don't want to put it on my desktop PC just yet - I probably will then end up going back to Windows 7 being the nutter I am. This release is a lot more stable and is "ready for home users". This is the release candidate, or preview as Microsoft call it (keeping preview in the name. eg. Developer Preview, Consumer Preview).

The start screen is a bit overwhelming at first, however, it is getting better and earning it's place for me. It's smooth, looks decent, and some of the apps are brilliant and immersive (grab them free while you can!) Microsoft are slowly stripping away the ability to use hacks to bring back the traditional start menu, however, the only complain I have about it is that I dislike the start screen coming up when I'm multitasking.

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The new Internet Explorer 10 Release Preview that comes with Windows 8 improves upon the impressive Internet Explorer 9 which Microsoft released over a year ago. It also includes a tablet version of the browser. It's fast, smooth, immersive, and now includes a stripped version of Flash (originally flash wasn't going to work in the metro version of IE, only the desktop version). However, my only complaint is that I dislike browsing in full screen when I've got things such as Steam or Skype open.

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Windows 8 is incredibly fast in shutting down and starting up. My laptop took around 30 seconds on the boot screen with Windows 7, and on Windows 8 it's only there for a few seconds - you are logged in and ready to go in seconds, which is something I love about Windows 8 - which I absolutely hated when the developer preview came out.

I think the introduction of the start screen is going to be a similar reaction to how people reacted when the program manager because the start menu. It is nice, and it works better than you would think with the traditional keyboard and mouse - and opens a whole new world to developers with the new Metro apps and the Windows Store.

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I don't believe Windows 8 will be a fail, however Microsoft will have to teach people how to use the new start screen and get back to it, since the removal of the start button (you can now use the "charms bar" or hover in the bottom left of the screen and click to go back to the start screen - however this is not clear for new users to Windows 8 (Check out Chris Pirillo's video on YouTube "My Dad uses Windows 8 for the first time").

Try out the release preview, you'll be surprised and you may really like it!

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows-8/release-preview

I tried it out on a work computer. We were all very lost without the start menu. One of my coworkers opened it up to take notes, but couldn't find notepad! haha

I tried the Developer Preview and then the Consumer Preview both which were fast but very flawed.

Will download this and load it up on my laptop and see what its like!

I tried it for a little bit on an old laptop yesterday and here are a few thoughts (haven't tested fully yet):

Its quick. A lot quicker than Win7 even on my 5 year old laptop. It installed in under 20 minutes and boots within 20 seconds (not on first run though). Also shuts down pretty quickly too.

The new aero interface (window borer etc) is pretty sexy. I much enjoy the old Linux like feel of a square border rather than a curved one that everyone seems to go for now. Having no start orb actually starts to make sense once you begin to use it and windows 8 could actually make the desktop on a computer redundant if they can get all developers on side.

This leads me to metro. I hated it when I first tried it. The idea seemed silly to me, more for tablets than a desktop pc. having tested it on windows 8, I think I may have been wrong. Its smooth, makes sense - all yours apps are in one place. If they can get all developers on side (such as Google Chrome) and have all apps and games ported to Metro it will make the desktop redundant. Its smooth and easily to use.

The commands however for doing different things (such as side-by-side apps and closing apps) needs to be mre user friendly. I had to do at least 5 minutes of googling before I could work out side-by-side apps. A random throw at "Alt+F5" and I also managed to close and app, not just minimize it and leave it running in the background.

The good thing though about Win8 is even if you do leave lots of metro apps open (maybe by mistake) then as your CPU needs the resources the operating system will close down metro apps based on how much resources they are taking up.

Windows has never been good at managing RAM, but windows 8 is a big step closer.

All in all, I rather like it.

The GUI and colour scheme are very vogue for 2004. It reminds me of those Windows smartphones...I wonder if it's anywhere near as god awful to use?

I think they need to stop flipping their biscuits over this whole Apple craze and calm down on the creative front. It's taking their product to new complicated places instead of just solving a realistic design problem (how to make an intuitive interface that is easy to interact with).

Pix.