In Depth: Windows 8 Consumer Preview: what's new?

Windows 8 Consumer Preview: what's new?

So now we can all get a flavour of Windows 8 with the new Windows 8 Consumer Preview. We've taken an in-depth look at the new OS in our Hands on: Windows 8 review here and interviewed Microsoft about its new Windows.

But what's changed? Well, pretty much everything. Last September's Developer Preview was a simple demonstration for, yep, you've guessed it, developers, to show them how Windows 8 Metro apps would work.

While we could glean a lot from that version, it was nowhere near feature-complete. It wasn't even significantly near.

This new Consumer Preview version brings a whole raft of product changes and improvements. Microsoft said today that it has made over 100,000 code modifications since the earlier build. Of the new version, Microsoft says that "with the added features, it represents a more complete view of the capabilities of Windows 8."

"With Windows 8, we reimagined the different ways people interact with their PC and how to make everything feel like a natural extension of the device, whether using a Windows 8 tablet, laptop or all-in-one," said Steven Sinofsky, head of Microsoft's Windows division.

As with the earlier preview, the new beta build still doesn't have a version for ARM processors – it's x86 for Intel and AMD-based systems only.

However, Microsoft did demo the OS working on ARM hardware at the Consumer Preview launch during Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

ARM vs x86

As Mary Branscombe explains in our Hands on: Windows 8 review, it's therefore hard to get a complete grip on what the ARM experience will be like.

As Sinofsky said previously, there will be no third-party apps on the Windows on ARM (WOA) desktop, though there will be third-party Metro apps.

WOA will also have baked-in versions of the key Microsoft Office apps – this Consumer Preview version doesn't and Windows for the x86 platform won't.

Microsoft says that "Windows 8 has progressed across every dimension" from what we've seen before.

The user experience for touch plus keyboard and mouse is now complete, says the software giant. The Consumer Preview is compatible with mouse and keyboard as well as touch.

The new Window Store is now open (also in a pre-release beta version) with the Windows 8 Consumer Preview and, as we reported earlier, all apps are now free. The store has a variety of new Metro style apps from both third-party developers and Microsoft. The store will offer recommendations

The Consumer Preview also gives you the ability to take your apps and settings with you across multiple PCs.

The Consumer Preview offers the ability to sign on with a Microsoft Account (the new name for your Windows Live ID or Microsoft Passport). That basically means you can store all your stuff in the cloud – you can keep your settings in sync across devices, use cloud storage plus use Windows Live services like Hotmail and Calendar (the Windows Live name appears to be doomed).

Of course, your stuff is also available on Windows Phone as well as your Windows PCs.

The OS also features another preview version of the new Internet Explorer - Internet Explorer 10 Platform Preview 5. The browser has been reworked so it performs across all Windows 8 devices. The interface can be edge-to-edge in Metro and it's all nicely hardware accelerated.

Windows 8 system requirements

Windows 8 Consumer Preview works on any Windows 7 PC. Here are the basic requirements:

• Processor: 1GHz or faster
• RAM: 1GB (32-bit) or 2GB (64-bit)
• Hard disk space: 16GB (32-bit) or 20GB (64-bit)
• Graphics card: Microsoft DirectX 9 graphics device or higher

Additional requirements to use certain features:

• To use touch, you need a tablet or a monitor that supports multitouch.
• To access the Windows Store and to download and run apps, you need an active Internet connection and a screen resolution of at least 1024 x 768.
• To snap apps, you need a screen resolution of at least 1366 x 768.

We'd recommend you don't install it on your main PC or, if you have no other option, you create a new partition to install it on so you don't ruin your current Windows installation.

The Windows 8 Consumer Preview is available worldwide for download in English, French, German, Japanese and Chinese (simplified)

Download it at http://preview.windows.com and check out our Hands on: Windows 8 review.

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Windows 8 Consumer Preview: The Four Corners

During Microsoft's Windows 8 Consumer Preview Event at MWC today, Microsoft demonstrated some of the new features in the CP release out today. While the Metro UI obviously lends itself to use on a touch enabled tablet, Microsoft was clear to point out that it works just as well with a keyboard and mouse. Bezel gestures and regular multitouch gestures on the screen make sense on a tablet, but how do you get access to the multitasking UI, charms bar or other Windows 8 features if you have a traditional (non-touch) notebook? Through hot corners of course.

The traditional Start Menu is gone and has been replaced by a hot corner. Move your mouse to the lower left screen corner and you'll get a tiny popup that you can use to launch the Start Screen. The lower right corner lets you zoom in/out of the start screen, while the upper left corner lets you quickly switch between apps (just click to switch to your last app, or click and drag to reveal the task switcher). Finally, the upper right corner is used to reveal the Windows 8 charms bar.

Gallery: Windows 8 Consumer Preview: The Four Corners

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Windows 8 Consumer Preview: A Quick Look at Battery Life

With each new operating system in recent history, Microsoft has promised better battery life. We tested this back in the early days of Windows 7 and found that while Vista was generally a step back relative to XP, Windows 7 fixed much of what was wrong and even managed to beat XP in several tests. With the Windows 8 Consumer Preview now available, we thought we’d run a quick test on a laptop to see if things have changed much. Let’s just get this out of the way, shall we?

Okay, that’s a pretty poor showing, but what’s really going on here? We’re using the same Sandy Bridge laptop that we tested back when SNB first launched, a Compal unit with an i7-2820QM processor. So the hardware hasn’t changed, but battery life is much worse right now—and that last part is important: right now. We did a few tests of battery life with the Windows 7 preview and it didn’t look that great, but drivers and optimizations weren’t finalized, and Windows 8 CP is definitely in that same category. But there’s more to the story than just Windows 8.

As part of the Windows 8 CP experience, we’re also given the privilege of running the Internet Explorer 10 Consumer Preview (IE10CP). As we’ve noted in the past, the choice of browser can certainly have an impact on battery life, and that likely goes double when we’re looking at beta software for the OS and browser. I also performed an in-place upgrade from Windows 7, so it’s possible that could negatively impact battery life as well.

I've only had a chance to run the battery drain test once so far, so consider the above results very preliminary. I'm going to test it again, as well as going back and retesting with Windows 7 (and IE9) to see if there's any other changes. While I continue to look into battery life over the next few days to see if perhaps I missed something, for now it doesn’t look like Win8 CP is going to do anyone any favors in that area.

And just as an aside, I know that Windows 8 isn’t final by any stretch of the imagination, but while the UI seems like it would work great on a tablet I’m ready to go on record as saying it sucks for traditional desktop and laptop users. Without a touch interface, Metro feels weird at best and downright awful at worst. What’s more, getting a touchscreen for a desktop or laptop isn’t actually something I’m clamoring for. Does using a 24” or 30” touchscreen on my desktop sound enjoyable? Not at all, and a 15” laptop touchscreen wouldn’t be much better. Maybe it would help me build up a bit of arm strength, but that’s about the only upside. Add on fingerprints—a personal pet peeve that smartphones and tablets still suffer from—and I’m more than happy to stick with the “boring” old Start Menu. That’s just my initial impression of course; anyone else have similar—or different—feelings after playing around with the Win8 CP?

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AMD's Graphics Core Next Preview: AMD's New GPU, Architected For Compute

AMD's Graphics Core Next Preview: AMD's New GPU, Architected For Compute

We’ve just returned from sunny Bellevue, Washington, where AMD held their first Fusion Developer Summit (AFDS). As with other technical conferences of this nature such as NVIDIA’s GTC and Intel’s IDF, AFDS is a chance for AMD to reach out to developers to prepare them for future products and to receive feedback in turn. While AMD can make powerful hardware it’s ultimately the software that runs on it that drives sales, so it’s important for them to reach out to developers to ensure that such software is being made.

While AFDS serves many purposes, the final purpose – and what is going to be most interesting to most outside observers – was to prepare developers for what’s coming down the pipe. AMD has big plans for the future and it’s important to get developers involved as soon as is reasonably possible so that they’re ready to use AMD’s future technologies when they launch. Over the next few days we’ll talk about a couple of different things AMD is working on, and today we’ll start with the first and most exciting project: AMD Graphics Core Next, AMD's next generation GPU architecture.

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OCZ Vertex 3 Pro Preview: The First SF-2500 SSD

For the past six months I've been working on research and testing for the next major AnandTech SSD article. I figured I had enough time to line up its release with the first samples of the next-generation of high end SSDs. After all, it seems like everyone was taking longer than expected to bring out their next-generation controllers. I should've known better.

At CES this year we had functional next-generation SSDs based on Marvell and SandForce controllers. The latter was actually performing pretty close to expectations from final hardware. Although I was told that drives wouldn't be shipping until mid-Q2, it was clear that preview hardware was imminent. It was the timing that I couldn't predict.

A week ago, two days before I hopped on a flight to Barcelona for MWC, a package arrived at my door. OCZ had sent me a preproduction version of their first SF-2500 based SSD: the Vertex 3 Pro. The sample was so early that it didn't even have a housing, all I got was a PCB and a note:

Read on for our full, in-depth preview of OCZ's Vertex 3 Pro.

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OCZ Vertex 3 Preview: Faster and Cheaper than the Vertex 3 Pro

Last week OCZ pulled the trigger and introduced the world’s first SF-2000 based SSD: the Vertex 3 Pro. Not only was it the world’s first drive to use SandForce’s 2nd generation SSD controller, the Vertex 3 Pro was also the first SATA drive we’ve tested to be able to break 500MB/s on both reads and writes. Granted that’s with highly compressible data but the figures are impressive nonetheless. What wasn’t impressive however was the price. The Vertex 3 Pro is an enterprise class drive, complete with features that aren’t exactly in high demand on a desktop. As a result the V3P commands a premium - the drive starts at $525 for a 100GB capacity.

Just as we saw last round however, if there’s a Vertex 3 Pro, there’s bound to be a more reasonably priced non-Pro version without some of the enterprisey features. Indeed there is. Contained within this nondescript housing is the first beta of OCZ’s Vertex 3 based on a SandForce SF-2200 series controller. The price point? Less than half of that of the V3P:

Pricing Comparison 128GB256GB512GBOCZ Vertex 3 Pro$525 (100GB)$775 (200GB)$1350 (400GB)OCZ Vertex 3$249.99$499.99N/A

At an estimated $250 for a 120GB drive the Vertex 3 is more expensive than today’s Vertex 2, but not by too much nor do I expect that price premium to last for long. The Vertex 2 is on its way out and will ultimately be replaced by the V3. And SSD prices will continue to fall.

Read on for our full preview of the Vertex 3.

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