In-Depth with the Windows 8 Consumer Preview
by Andrew Cunningham, Ryan Smith, Kristian Vättö & Jarred Walton on March 9, 2012 10:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Microsoft
- Operating Systems
- Windows
- Windows 8
Windows has changed a lot since Windows 95 ushered in the modern era of the desktop operating system almost two decades ago—the underlying technology that makes Windows what it is has completely changed since those early days to keep pace with new technologies and usage models. Despite all of those changes, though, the fundamental look and feel of Windows 7 remains remarkably similar to its hoary old predecessor.
Windows 95 and Windows 7: We're not so different, you and I
All of that's changing—the Windows 8 Consumer Preview is here, and it brings with it the biggest fundamental change to the default Windows UI since 1995. Metro is an interface designed for the modern, touch-enabled era, and when Windows 8 (and its cousin, Windows on ARM) is released, it will signify Microsoft's long-awaited entry into the tablet market that the iPad created and subsequently dominated.
The difference between Microsoft's strategy and Apple's strategy is that Microsoft is not keeping its operating systems separate—iOS and OS X are slowly blending together, but they remain discrete OSes designed for different input devices. Windows 8 and Metro, on the other hand, are one and the same: the operating system running on your desktop and the one running on your tablet are going to be the same code.
Metro tends to overshadow Windows 8 by the sheer force of its newness. Although it's one of the biggest changes to the new OS, it's certainly not the only one. Windows 8 includes a slew of other new and updated programs, utilities, services, and architectural improvements to make the operating system more useful and efficient than its predecessor—we'll be looking at the most important of those changes as well.
Will all of these new features come together to make Windows 8 a worthy upgrade to the successful Windows 7? Will the Metro interface work as well with a keyboard and mouse as it does on a tablet? For answers to those questions and more, just keep reading.
Hardware Used for this Review
For the purposes of this review, I’ve installed and run Windows 8 on a wide variety of hardware. I’ve done most of the review on a pair of machines, which I’ll spec out here:
|
Dell Latitude E6410 |
Dell Latitude D620 |
|
| CPU | 2.53 GHz Intel Core i5 M540 | 2.00 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo |
| GPU | 512MB NVIDIA Quadro NVS 3100M | Intel GMA 950 |
| RAM | 8GB DDR3 | 2GB DDR2 |
| Hard drive | 128GB Kingston V100 SSD | 7200RPM laptop HDD |
| OS | Windows 8 x64 | Windows 8 x86 |
I also installed and used Windows 8 on the following computers for at least a few hours each:
|
Netbook |
Late 2006 20" iMac |
Mid-2007 20" iMac | HP Compaq C770US | Late 2010 11" MacBook Air | Custom-built Mini ITX desktop | |
| CPU | 1.6 GHz Intel Atom N270 | 2.16 GHz Core 2 Duo | 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo | 1.86GHz Intel Pentium Dual-Core | 1.6 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo | 3.10 GHz Intel Core i3-2105 |
| GPU | Intel GMA 950 | 128MB ATI Radeon X1600 | 256MB ATI Radeon 2600 Pro | Intel GMA X3100 | NVIDIA GeForce 320M | Intel HD Graphics 3000 |
| RAM | 1GB DDR2 | 2GB DDR2 | 4GB DDR2 | 2GB DDR2 | 4GB DDR3 | 8GB DDR3 |
| Hard drive | 5400RPM laptop HDD | 7200RPM desktop HDD | 7200RPM desktop HDD | 16GB Samsung SSD | 128GB Samsung SSD | 64GB Crucial M4 SSD |
| OS | Windows 8 x86 | Windows 8 x86 | Windows 8 x86 | Windows 8 x64 | Windows 8 x64 | Windows 8 x64 |
This broad list of hardware, most of it at least a couple of years old, should be representative of most machines that people will actually be thinking about upgrading to Windows 8—there will be people out there installing this on old Pentium IIs, I'm sure, but those who are already know that they're edge cases, and are outside the scope of this review.
Update: Hey AMD fans! A lot of you noticed that there weren't any AMD CPUs included in my test suite. This was not intentional on my part, but rather a byproduct of the fact that I have no AMD test systems on hand at present. For the purposes of this review, these specifications are provided to you only to give you an idea of how Windows 8 performs on hardware of different vintages and speeds, not to make a statement about the relative superiority of one or another CPU manufacturer. For the final, RTM version of Windows 8, we'll make an effort to include some AMD-based systems in our lineup, with especial attention paid to whether Windows 8 improves performance numbers for Bulldozer chips.
With Windows 8, Microsoft has two claims about hardware: first, that Windows 8 would run on any hardware that runs Windows 7, and second, that programs and drivers that worked under Windows 7 would largely continue to work in Windows 8. Overall, my experience on both counts was positive (excepting near-constant Flash crashes), but you can read more about my Windows 8 hardware recommendations later on in the review.
The last thing I want to do before starting this review is give credit where credit is due—many readers have said in the comments that they would like multi-author reviews to include some information about what author wrote what opinions, and I agree. For your reference:
- Brian Klug provided editing services.
- Ryan Smith wrote about DirectX 11 and WDDM 1.2
- Kristian Vatto wrote about the Mail, Calendar, and Photos apps.
- Jarred Walton provided battery life statistics and analysis.
- Andrew Cunningham wrote about everything else. You can contact him with questions or comments at andrewc@anandtech.com or using his Twitter handle, @Thomsirveaux
Now, let's begin at the very beginning: Windows Setup.
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Sabresiberian - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
This is the most complete analysis of Windows 8 I've seen so far. Thanks guys!;)
smilingcrow - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
My thoughts exactly. I have a Dell Latitude XT3 in my box room which arrived last week and a copy of this preview on DVD arrived in the post today but until I read this review I didn’t feel a strong enough urge to install it due to the other reviews I’d read.Mid review I took it out of the box to install Win8 but unfortunately it uses a slimmer format HDD than I have spare so I will need to postpone; the XT3 is a convertible so having a touch screen made it the obvious choice. Maybe it will work via eSATA!
This review underlines why Anandtech is my first choice reviews site; thanks people.
p05esto - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
I am so dissapointed by this review, I actual wonder if Microsoft paid to have this review put in place. It seems like a big advertisement to me. There's NO way a power user or enthusiast can work fast and efficient with dozens of applications and open windows in Win8... it's just not possible. I am NOT going to go to some stupid search box to find and launch Photoshop and other programs, are you freaking kidding me, who uses the search box to open a program? That is just retarded.I refuse to even get into it any more. Win8 in my opinion after using it is total junk. It's a cumbersome interface that is 5 times as many clicks to do every little thing. That start screen has no use to me at all, the last thing I care about is the weather, twitter, facebook, rss feeds and all that other time-wasting crap. I'm a professional developer, get rid of that junk in my way of Visual Studio!!
karocage - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
Seriously?"There's NO way a power user or enthusiast can work fast and efficient with dozens of applications and open windows in Win8... it's just not possible."
I take it you haven't found the "desktop" tile yet. Click that and then go to the same exact desktop you always had. Alt-tab still works. The taskbar still works. I really don't know what you're complaining about.
"I am NOT going to go to some stupid search box to find and launch Photoshop and other programs, are you freaking kidding me, who uses the search box to open a program?"
Well, plenty of people do use the search box. It's quite fast. Or they use the taskbar. Or they use desktop shortcuts. Or they click items pinned to the start menu (which is different from clicking items pinned to the start screen how?). Again, you appear to just be complaining because you want to, not because there's any rational basis for it.
And, frankly, a ton of the complaints seem to be in this vein. The problem's apparently people's inability to think straight just because MS changed the size and layout of the start menu. Let go of your rage over a single full screen menu and see the things like the new task manager, the new right click menu where the start button used to be, the enhanced multimonitor support and all the other improvements Andrew outlined here.
Braden99 - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
"but there’s still no way to use a different wallpaper for each desktop, something that OS X has supported forever"Actually you can in Windows 8. Go into Personalize>Click Desktop Background>Then you can right click pictures, and say set as monitor 1, or 2
smilingcrow - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
I hope Win8 removes all the OS bugs (not driver or application bugs) that have annoyed me in Win7. I have used NT since 3.51 and bypassed Win 95/98/ME/XP (pre SP2) and Win7 has given me more hassle at the base OS level than all other versions combined. If I didn’t like its strengths so much I would be majorly pissed by its shortcomings. Fingers crossed for Win8.InsaneScientist - Saturday, March 10, 2012 - link
Your comment would carry a little more weight (and people might be able to point out something that you've missed) if you would actually detail what you're complaining about...bigboxes - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
I thought Windows 7 was going to be the last x86 OS from Microsoft. I see that you used Windows 8 x86 on the Dell Latitude D620. With all the changes being made why isn't the elimination of x86 one of them?Andrew.a.cunningham - Saturday, March 10, 2012 - link
MS wants to maintain compatibility with all systems that could run Windows 7, which means one more generation of 32-bit Windows. This seems like it could be the last one, but we won't know until we start hearing about Windows 9.Braden999 - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
"but there’s still no way to use a different wallpaper for each desktop, something that OS X has supported forever"Actually you can in Windows 8. Go into Personalize>Click Desktop Background>Then you can right click pictures, and say set as monitor 1, or 2