Windows 8: Your questions answered
I've been hit by a lot of Windows 8 related questions over the past few hours. I'll do my best to answer a few of them in this post.
Feel free to ask your own question in the TalkBack, on Twitter, or hit me up via the contact form.
OK, let's get going.
Q #1 - Is there an option to allow you to boot direct to the traditional Windows Desktop and bypass the Metro UI stuff?
A - Nope, there's no 'official' toggle that I can find anywhere. It can be done via a registry hack, and there's an unofficial third-party app for disabling the Metro UI (which just seems to implement the registry hack), but nothing official.
Q #2 - How integrated is the antivirus solution? What does it look like?
A - It's all part of Windows Defender. There's an entry in Action Center in Control panel:
And there's the Windows Defender application:
Q #3 - Can you get to the old-school-style Start Menu?
A - Not by any official means other than by digging through hidden folders in the file system. If you disable the Metro UI (see answer to Q #1 above) then it reappears.
Q #4 - What happens when you install an old-school-style application?
A - A link to the application appears as a new tile in the Metro UI.
Q #5 - Can you organize tiles?
A - Only by dragging them about. There does not seem to be any way to logically group them otherwise.
Q #6 - Other than launching an app, what can you do from the Metro UI tile screen?
A - You can:
- Drag them about
- Right-clicking on an app from the Microsoft Store brings up the option to unpin, uninstall and, in some cases, resize the tile (only two settings, larger and smaller)
- If you right-click on an application tile, you get the option to unpin and an advanced option which brings up a set of options
Next -->
Q #7 - Is it buggy?
A - Hell yeah!
Q #8 - Is the Windows Registry still there?
A - Since I've already mentioned Registry hacks, you can guess the answer to this!
Q #9 - If the Start menu is gone, what does the Start button do?
A - Two things:
- Taking you pointer to the lower-left hand of the screen brings up this:
- Clicking on Start toggles between the classic desktop and the Metro UI tiles screen
Q #10 - Can I virtualize Windows 8 yet?
A - I've only been able to get it to run in VirtualBox so far.
Here’s how!
Note: Your PC must support hardware virtualization for this to work.
- Download and install VirtualBox (I’m using this because it’s free so you don’t have to shell out on virtualization software … don’t say I never give you anything!).
- Download the Windows 8 ISO from here. So far I’ve only tested this with the 32-bit ISO.
- Create a new VirtualBox virtual machine. Call it whatever you want but select Windows 7as the OS type.
- In the Motherboard tab under System, check Enable IO APIC.
- In the Processor tab under System, check Enable PAE/NX.
- In the Acceleration tab under System, check Enable VT-x/AMD-V and Enable Nested Paging.
- In the Video tab under Display, check Enable 2D acceleration.
- Remember to mount the Windows 8 .ISO file you downloaded and you’re good to go!
Q #11 - Is Windows 8 faster or slower than Windows 7?
A - Pointless question at this stage given how early a build this is ... it's not even a beta. However, Windows 8 is certainly lighter on system resources.
Q #12 - What happens to the Metro UI when you run an old-school application?
A - You click on the app, then there's a transition to the classic desktop, and then the app runs. Right now this feels clumsy and unfinished.
Q #13 - Is Windows Activation still present?
A - There's no key needed for the Windows 8 developer build, but it's still there.
If you have any more questions, feel free to get in touch with me.
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