Windows 8

Downloaded it the moment it was available and installed it.

So far it has been a mixed bag.  The upgrade installation path from Windows 7 failed.  I had to start from scratch and perform a clean installation.  That in itself was inevitable as I found that the VPN software I need to use does not work in Windows 8 anyway... so I ended up installing Windows 7 in a virtual machine and getting it set up to share disks with my W8 system.

So far Windows 8 is showing that it is absolutely a BETA version of the operating system.  It seems a lot rougher around the edges than Windows 7 did when it came out (I have been running W7 since it was publically available).

There are device issues, my networking seems rather unstable and inconsistent.  IE 10 (which I am using to post this entry) while fast in some situations, seems doggedly slow in others.  It also keeps complaining that something is trying to take it over, it is apparently quite paranoid.  It works relatively well until all of a sudden it interrupts whatever you are doing to warn you that BING is no longer your search engine du jour.  When it pulls up the settings panel it turns out that not only is Bing still your search engine, it's the only one listed.  So I don't know what that is all about.

The UI itself is pleasant.  It will take some time to get used to the new full screen start panel, and for the side pop up windows used to manipulate the interface.  Explorer is nice.  I like the changes Microsoft has made to file copying, the window manager, and the menus having been replaced by the ribbon.  They are all pluses.

Power management.  Ugh.  I build my own machines and Windows has always had one issue or another with them... in this case my machine went to sleep never to wake.  I had to reset, when that caused W8 to boot into an unusable state, I performed a hard shutdown, powered off and powered on again.  After that she came up fine.

Still, something to watch.

I went and turned off all power saving options.  Hopefully that will solve my problem[s] for now.

Since I am now running my work machine in VirtualBox, my Windows 8 installation can be a bit lighter.  I am able to share any and all files so I can continue to edit natively, I just have to perform all networked tasks within the VM.  So compiling, code management and running the server itself will all take place in the VM.

So, while there are some serious bugs left to be ironed out, I can't say enough about how the general desktop interface has been improved, made more useful, more powerful.  I have to admit that I wish there was a way to bring back the start orb, and there IS a registry fix, which I tried, and which then broke my explorer so I had to revert the fix.  I think Microsoft is expending too much effort in the new UI to allow the orb to replace it.