Why I use Windows 8(owened.co.nz)
owened.co.nz
Why I use Windows 8
http://owened.co.nz/why-i-switched-to-windows-8
10 comments
Windows 8 boots faster because Windows 8 lies to you when you "Shutdown." Windows 8 actually hibernates instead of shutting down for real; and you can get the same effect by enabling hibernation on Windows 7
Incorrect. This is provenly false. Windows 8 boots faster from a cold boot than Windows 7. It really does. The memory footprint is much smaller. The runtime environment is much more optimized and snappy.
You can tell Microsoft has cut out lots of cruft and optimized critical code-paths, especially with regard to boot.
Hibernation which you refer to is a different feature, and provides you with the same session and programs and state as you had running before, just like a normal sleep would do on a laptop, except it will survive a flat battery. It does so by persisting your entire RAM to disk for reloading on boot. This is completely different from booting which would give you a new, empty session.
So if you end up with an empty session, it's provenly not hibernating, it's booting. And boot is much, much faster.
On all system's I've had, hibarnation, designed to save time, has only caused increased latency for shutdown/sleeping/hibernation, and similar increase in boot times since not only Windows needs to load, but all that persisted state must be restored as well.
On machines with more than 4GBs of RAM this leads to horrible performance and I've permanently disabled the option for the OS to use this due to the performance issues involved.
On Windows 8 I've kept the defaults and things are just flying.
Incorrect. This is provenly false. Windows 8 boots faster from a cold boot than Windows 7. It really does. The memory footprint is much smaller. The runtime environment is much more optimized and snappy.
You can tell Microsoft has cut out lots of cruft and optimized critical code-paths, especially with regard to boot.
Hibernation which you refer to is a different feature, and provides you with the same session and programs and state as you had running before, just like a normal sleep would do on a laptop, except it will survive a flat battery. It does so by persisting your entire RAM to disk for reloading on boot. This is completely different from booting which would give you a new, empty session.
So if you end up with an empty session, it's provenly not hibernating, it's booting. And boot is much, much faster.
On all system's I've had, hibarnation, designed to save time, has only caused increased latency for shutdown/sleeping/hibernation, and similar increase in boot times since not only Windows needs to load, but all that persisted state must be restored as well.
On machines with more than 4GBs of RAM this leads to horrible performance and I've permanently disabled the option for the OS to use this due to the performance issues involved.
On Windows 8 I've kept the defaults and things are just flying.
Respectfully, you have no idea how Windows 8's fast startup mode works. You also don't seem to know that Fast Startup is the default (so when you hit "shutdown" it actually hibernates most of the system's state).
Essentially in Windows 8 (out of the box) if you hit "Shutdown" then it logs the user out and then "hibernates" the kernel, the registry, services, drivers, and all other "system" level processes.
The computer is then ordered to power off (just like hibernate). When you turn the machine back on, a notice appears on the screen which reads "Resuming from Hibernation" and it loads the Hibernation file into active memory.
Fast Startup is essentially Hibernation without a logged in user.
Windows 8's boot times with Fast Startup enabled is very competitive to Windows 7's boot times using Hibernation (instead of "Shutdown"). It is also very comparable too as Windows 8 doesn't truly shutdown in the traditional sense.
If you boot Windows 8 without Fast Startup enabled then the boot times are very similar to Windows 7's boot times.
As I said, Windows 8 lies to you. It isn't faster, it is just pushing Hibernation in a new deceptive way in order to appear faster.
Essentially in Windows 8 (out of the box) if you hit "Shutdown" then it logs the user out and then "hibernates" the kernel, the registry, services, drivers, and all other "system" level processes.
The computer is then ordered to power off (just like hibernate). When you turn the machine back on, a notice appears on the screen which reads "Resuming from Hibernation" and it loads the Hibernation file into active memory.
Fast Startup is essentially Hibernation without a logged in user.
Windows 8's boot times with Fast Startup enabled is very competitive to Windows 7's boot times using Hibernation (instead of "Shutdown"). It is also very comparable too as Windows 8 doesn't truly shutdown in the traditional sense.
If you boot Windows 8 without Fast Startup enabled then the boot times are very similar to Windows 7's boot times.
As I said, Windows 8 lies to you. It isn't faster, it is just pushing Hibernation in a new deceptive way in order to appear faster.
"This is provenly false"
Citation needed.
Citation needed.
OP claims that a Windows 8 uses a feature which without exception causes 1. extra IO workload, 2. reduced performance and which 3. persists entire sessions to 1. reduce IO workload, 2. increase performance while at the same time 3. session is not persisted.
I point out how this argument makes no sense.
I don't think I'm the one you should target with "citation needed".
I point out how this argument makes no sense.
I don't think I'm the one you should target with "citation needed".
Hibernation over shutdowns massively improves the shutdown and startup times of my work PC.
Primarily because I have SQL Server on it for development - the services have a extremely long shutdown and startup time, which doesn't need to happen for hibernation.
Primarily because I have SQL Server on it for development - the services have a extremely long shutdown and startup time, which doesn't need to happen for hibernation.
Interesting. I rarely bother to keep MSSQL loaded because it starts so quickly...
As for shutdown, while it depends on how you're using it immediately beforehand, I've never seen it take more than a few seconds on a development box.
PS C:\> (Measure-Command { Start-Service MSSQLSERVER }).TotalMilliseconds
1127.5208
As for shutdown, while it depends on how you're using it immediately beforehand, I've never seen it take more than a few seconds on a development box.
I do the same thing because of Visual Studio and MSSQL - on Windows XP...
Now here’s the key difference for Windows 8: as in Windows 7, we close the user sessions, but instead of closing the kernel session, we hibernate it. Compared to a full hibernate, which includes a lot of memory pages in use by apps, session 0 hibernation data is much smaller, which takes substantially less time to write to disk. If you’re not familiar with hibernation, we’re effectively saving the system state and memory contents to a file on disk (hiberfil.sys) and then reading that back in on resume and restoring contents back to memory. Using this technique with boot gives us a significant advantage for boot times, since reading the hiberfile in and reinitializing drivers is much faster on most systems (30-70% faster on most systems we’ve tested).
Source: Microsoft, "Delivering fast boot times in Windows 8", Building Windows 8 blog, September 9, 2011 [1]
[1] http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/09/08/delivering-fas...
Source: Microsoft, "Delivering fast boot times in Windows 8", Building Windows 8 blog, September 9, 2011 [1]
[1] http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/09/08/delivering-fas...
That's certainly interesting, and thanks for proving parts of my argument wrong. I do appreciate being corrected. However OP made the following claim:
Windows 8 lies to you when you "Shutdown." Windows 8 actually hibernates instead of shutting down for real; and you can get the same effect by enabling hibernation on Windows 7
Note the part that where he claims that you can get the same speedup on Windows 7 by enabling hibernation. This is provenly false and anyone who has tried it would know.
Windows 8 lies to you when you "Shutdown." Windows 8 actually hibernates instead of shutting down for real; and you can get the same effect by enabling hibernation on Windows 7
Note the part that where he claims that you can get the same speedup on Windows 7 by enabling hibernation. This is provenly false and anyone who has tried it would know.
You are correct that "enabling hibernation" should have no effect on Windows 7 startup or shutdown performance, though I have no idea how quickly Windows 7 can enter and wake from hibernation with no user sessions open. While this would be easy enough to test, I also don't care: Windows Server 2008 R2 cold boots to a usable desktop in twelve seconds on my machine, which should be fast enough for anyone.
If you hibernate in Windows 7, and then boot, it takes approximately the same period of time as "booting" in Windows 8 (with "Fast Startup" enabled).
I have tried it. I do know. In fact if you measure it "to desktop" then Windows 7 full hibernation beats Windows 8's fast startup, because Windows 7 caches user programs in additional to Microsoft's side (i.e. registry, services, kernel, etc).
I have tried it. I do know. In fact if you measure it "to desktop" then Windows 7 full hibernation beats Windows 8's fast startup, because Windows 7 caches user programs in additional to Microsoft's side (i.e. registry, services, kernel, etc).
Interesting. Now allocate 20GB of non-paged pool and try again.
That's a fairly obscure scenario. Plus, if that allocation was within a service or driver then both Windows 7 hibernation and Windows 8 Fast Startup would have to page it to the Hibernation file.
"Interesting" was my main point; the non-paged pool comment was mostly kidding. Interesting in that it could indicate a "de-hibernation" process that's nothing like the "inverse of hibernation" one might naively think it should be: while hibernation must write 100% of allocated physical RAM to disk, "de-hibernation" need only restore non-paged pool plus whatever else is necessary to reinitialize the virtual memory subsystem (including whatever drivers are necessary to support it, of course). This done, the balance of the hibernation file could effectively be treated as a page file.
Sure, Microsoft fans never need to cite anything. Being Microsoft is enough. Oh btw, all that nice features already exist in other OSs since a very long time ago. Oh and also: can we finally stretch the Windows console horizontally?
You can already increase the width of the console, you just need to use Properties menu.
> So if you end up with an empty session, it's provenly not hibernating, it's booting.
Not necessarily. You can hibernate the machine after the user is logged off and restart from that point.
Not necessarily. You can hibernate the machine after the user is logged off and restart from that point.
Regarding your biggest complaint, they did not remove "tons" of desktop software. In fact, all of the software that you mention all exists in Windows 8.
If you want to use Windows Photo Viewer or Windows Media player, just right click whatever you are trying to view, and set your default program.
If you want to use Windows Photo Viewer or Windows Media player, just right click whatever you are trying to view, and set your default program.
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Photo viewer and Media Player are there. When you first open a picture or a video, Windows asks what app to use - Metro or desktop one. It can be changed later in Program Defaults.
You are correct, sir, but if you press "restart" you forgo the "fast boot" hybrid and you do a cold boot. This is talked about in the article I reference on MSDN.
P.S - Picture viewer, Media Player, etc are still there, just not default. It's a pain.
P.S - Picture viewer, Media Player, etc are still there, just not default. It's a pain.
I wonder if Windows 8 will include some behavior research by default, to see if people actually use Metro or not, and if too many ignore it, maybe change course with Windows 9.
Seems like he's apologising for using Windows 8, and that we don't really care.
He's pretty much spot on.
My encounters with Windows 8 so far have lead to literally zero interaction with Metro other than for searching for stuff and starting programs for the first time which it's quite good at.
Win+X is my start menu.
My encounters with Windows 8 so far have lead to literally zero interaction with Metro other than for searching for stuff and starting programs for the first time which it's quite good at.
Win+X is my start menu.
This is super nice. Thanks!
With all of these options, I have to wonder why they wouldn't include a link to Network Connections.
It's the one thing that I seem to always need to change, but something that is always like 8 clicks to get to it.
With all of these options, I have to wonder why they wouldn't include a link to Network Connections.
It's the one thing that I seem to always need to change, but something that is always like 8 clicks to get to it.
Just hit start -> type connections.
No luck :(
http://i.imgur.com/6EWJO.png
EDIT: Ok, I see that I have to also click settings. Thanks!
http://i.imgur.com/6EWJO.png
EDIT: Ok, I see that I have to also click settings. Thanks!
You can also hit the arrow key down to get to Settings.
I'm good with Win+R -> ncpa.cpl
And this is by far my biggest complaint. They've poured all this effort into something that people are actively trying to avoid. I had so much hope for the store...
I didn't even know about Win+X (I knew you could right click the "start" tile, but this pretty awesome. Thank you :)
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I've had those combined file operations on nautilus for quite some time, the pause button is nice though
Yes, good points, and good for Microsoft. But a sleeping Mac wakes up in about 2 seconds. And OSX had the copy dialog nailed down before. Not sure about multi-monitor support. I really wish Microsoft would make a real competitor to OSX in terms of perceived quality.
My Lenovo T61 does the same and has done since I bought it a long time ago.
There is perceived quality and actual quality. OSX has perceived quality, but little actual quality. You'll experience that if you have to deal with projectors, other monitors and hotdesking regularly - it's utterly frustrating. Windows - seriously just plug it in and it works.
When you see a Windows "workstation class" machine (Dell Precision) with an uptime of over a year on a trading desk with 6x 1600x1200 monitors off the back of two Matrox cards, you'll understand what I mean. They just don't go wrong.
There is perceived quality and actual quality. OSX has perceived quality, but little actual quality. You'll experience that if you have to deal with projectors, other monitors and hotdesking regularly - it's utterly frustrating. Windows - seriously just plug it in and it works.
When you see a Windows "workstation class" machine (Dell Precision) with an uptime of over a year on a trading desk with 6x 1600x1200 monitors off the back of two Matrox cards, you'll understand what I mean. They just don't go wrong.
I've never had troubles with multi-monitor setups on a macbook, I've been using OS X since 10.4. I've pluged it to multiple proyectors, screens, TVs... It always recognized everything and the image was shown instantly.
Same happens with an Apple workstation (Mac Pro, even if it's been VERY neglected lately).
Same happens with an Apple workstation (Mac Pro, even if it's been VERY neglected lately).
Weird, every time I've used projectors and monitors with a Mac I've never had any problems, but had significant issues getting a multi-monitor setup to work. Granted, this was way back in the XP SP2 days so maybe the situation is improved.
It did suck a bit on XP. Vista pretty much fixed it all to be honest. It's pretty much perfect in Windows 7.
"Windows - seriously just plug it in and it works." - biggest marketing lie ever. Do you seriously believe this?
Yes entirely. This is not marketing - this is experience.
If you pick decent host machines and decent hardware (read WHQL + decent brand) to plug in then you're sorted.
Buy some shitty B-grade clone crap and you will suffer.
If you pick decent host machines and decent hardware (read WHQL + decent brand) to plug in then you're sorted.
Buy some shitty B-grade clone crap and you will suffer.
Well, I assume a sleeping Windows machine wakes faster than it takes to boot from scratch too. You don't have to shut Windows down completely every time you're finished with it.
Oh and when is tab file browsing coming? Windows 10? Dude these features are available in other OSs since long time ago. I still don't see why I would go back to use Windows (be it 8 or any version) at all. There's no coming back, Microsoft is outdated.
I don't think tabbed file browsing is necessary, but you're right, Microsoft is waaaay behind.
I wonder if he's thought of using Classic Shell to get rid of the metro interface: http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/
I've used 8 for about a month now, and I don't miss the start menu at all.
It's just a lot of un-necessary clutter. If you want to start a program, if click start and type the first letters of the application.. done.
If you want to dig through a giant list of apps, that option is still available, but it's much nicer that it's not the default.
I think the things like the Classic Shell will help the elderly and those resistant to change, but for any power users, the new interface is an improvement.
As far as metro, I never use it either, so I don't see it as an issue.
It's just a lot of un-necessary clutter. If you want to start a program, if click start and type the first letters of the application.. done.
If you want to dig through a giant list of apps, that option is still available, but it's much nicer that it's not the default.
I think the things like the Classic Shell will help the elderly and those resistant to change, but for any power users, the new interface is an improvement.
As far as metro, I never use it either, so I don't see it as an issue.
Hi! I wrote this, and I've not heard of that before now... I'll check it out. It looks useful to me :)
What antivirus software you're using?)
I am not OP but i use win 8 for my primary OS too and i don't use any AV. IIRC, win8 had some built-in virus protection. Also my usage is primarily pro and don't use thumb drives etc on my workstation. Also my internet habits and chrome protect me from internet side of things.
windows 8 has microsoft security essentials already installed (they call it windows defender)
Hi! I use the built in Windows Defender since it does AV now. I don't see the point in slapping on another layer of protection since I don't tend to visit dodgy sites anyway.
I'm also very surprised it took 20 second to boot in Windows 7 with an SSD. I have an SSD (an M4 specifically, on a SATA-3 connection) and Windows 7 never took 20 seconds to boot (with a UEFI "bios"). Closer to 10~12 seconds I would say.
I've been running 8 now for weeks and my biggest complaints are, firstly that they removed tons of "desktop" software (e.g. Picture Viewer, Media Player, the Games, et al) and secondly that they removed DVD playback (and even if you purchase it, it still only works in Media Centre).
Metro is something you can ignore. I will say that most Metro apps like the built-in Mail app are just horribly bad. So bad in fact that they're beyond use in some cases. Hopefully third parties can do useful things with Metro, because right now it doesn't have many use-cases.