Tuesday, March 6, 2012

And some more on Windows 8

Yeah, having trouble coming up with good titles.  :)

Today I installed a new app from Stardock / Brad Wardell that sort of replaces the start orb.  Basically what it does is crams the metro start pane into a small pane that opens where the start menu always did.  It works pretty well, a couple of bugs but this was just written and just published so I expect a number of updates in a short span of time.  It DOES also offer the ability to view the full screen version that is standard with Windows 8 with the click of a settings flag.  Very nice!

Some things I haven't mentioned about Windows 8 that deserve mentioning.  Or really one thing:  SPEED.  Windows 8 is fast.  Seriously.  I know people are probably thinking "yeah right, compared to what?".  EVERYTHING about Windows 8 is faster.  Start up times, shut down times, application start times, web browsing, explorer file listing, etc.  When I say everything I mean everything.  They've done some serious optimizing.

There was a comparison done somewhere, ARS or maybe Tom's Hardware and Windows 8 had the shortest start up time over all the competitors (linux, Mac OS) by a significant amount.  That in itself should give you an idea of how they've changed up this version of their venerable OS.

Even my crammed, shared USB external disk seems to load faster.

There will be more to come.  I'll try to think up more clever titles.

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