Windows 8 and Surface

Now it's out, what do all of you think about the two?
Personally I'm pretty disappointed with W8 because I feel that computers are for one kind of work or experience, and tablets for a completely different one, and trying to mix the two together doesn't make sense to me. Particularly the way it's been done here, it's time intensive to do tasks that take half a second on Windows 7 and the lack of consistency in the UI and functionality between the desktops has a learning curve.

As for Surface I was rather pleasantly surprised, but I would have accepted this tablet if it was placed against only the original iPad, and not the myriad tablets we have today. A good portion of the specs give off an air of something you would have gotten had it been available a few years ago, but not today. First of all the form factor and design clearly hasn't been thought through. Compared to most other tablets that put a big emphasis on that, the Surface looks oversize and thick, angular, and with odd bits. The stand bugs me and one of the first things I noticed was the screws under it. The keyboard cover seems like an interesting idea but it also really blurs the line between a tablet and a laptop, and so it sounds a lot like http://i.techrepublic.com.com/blogs/ballmer_500x387.jpg. Other than that it feels acceptable and I suppose it is more heavy duty in some sense than most of the competition at the moment. Either way I don't see it getting much of a grip on the market.


What about all of you?

 

Let me preface this with "I have the AMD Bulldozer CPU, OC'd to 5Ghz."

Windows 7 doesn't take full advantage of the bulldozer line. Windows 8 however...

I haven't noticed any change in gaming performance. I'm still running all games on max settings and hitting 40-75fps on them all. Crysis being the only exception, with at some points dropping down to 35 under severe load. Gaming wise, no noticeable difference between Windows 7 and Windows 8, which is a good thing, as Windows 8 is still in its infancy.

Video editing software I noticed a SUBSTANTIAL difference between the OS's. Adobe premiere video edits with windows 7 would take 25 minutes to render a long edit. In windows 8, that time was shaved down to 20.

Calculation algorithms, another massive boost. What would take 8 hours to do in Windows 7, is down to 6.5 hours in Windows 8. The math architecture of the operating systems is the same (it's all done at the hardware level), so I have to chalk this up to Windows 8 optimizing the CPU.

Overall, Windows 8 is a lot harder to understand and work with than Windows 7. The charms menu and the giant start-menu desktop is retarded in my opinion. With that being said, once you get used to it it is actually a very nice, very stable operating system.

Also, for cheating purposes, I'm not much of a cheater and don't run many bots, but just for you:

On windows 7 I could run 16 (no shit) bots with minimal lag. On windows 8, that number is up to 18. At 16 and 18 the java becomes unstable, so a stable amount of bots I'm guessing would be 10 bots on Windows 7 and 12 or 13 on Windows 8.

Edit: When I say bots, I mean botting clients. I only have two RS accounts. None of the clients were running anything except the Jagex menu on low settings.

As far as surface and the like goes, it really opens the door to more natural UI. The next logical step for microsoft is to port in the kinect for hand gesture tracking and motion, and use the hand as a mouse. Windows 8 seems to really provide the skeleton and framework for just that. And with the tablet, phone, and PC becoming similar devices, we'll see a lot of cross platform computing from cell phone to desktop and back to cell phone without any hassle or headache. It's a bold step in the right direction and one that Apple is yet to really take. Apple can keep making it's money through lawsuits and reinventing the wheel, but Microsoft just invented the Jumpjet.

 

I believe it has a strong potential to gain some serious market. However they still have to work on a few things about the software on the rt version of surface before it gets any serious traction.
Few things they need/should change IMO to be a competing platform:
-allow other browsers access to the restricted API's instead of them just trying to force Internet Explorer on you.
-get rid of the desktop view. its confusing and you cant even use it so whats the point.
-overall faster load times for apps.

These are the only things i can think of that im not liking about the surface primarily not having an option of web browser. If there was an option or even the possibility of there being an option i would have ordered one already. I hope they allow access to developers to those API's because firefox+adblock+ghostery+donottrack= INTERNET BROWSING GOLD on a mobile device such as this.

 

There will be tablets with the full Windows 8 Pro installed running with a intel i-series CPU. Such as the Surface Pro, Acer Iconia W700 and some others. Also quite a lot Intel Atom tablets coming out, I might buy one of those myself. Performance / battery wise it is a nice combination and can run the full windows version. I'm not sure how the graphics will be though but I'll see that in some reviews later.

 

Their tablets are like traditional tablet computers it seems, which seems like a good move since modern tablets are just gimmicks.