Readers with ideas write to Windows Secrets

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LETTERS Readers with ideas write to Windows Secrets Notable Microsoft user-interface features of historic and recent varieties prompted Windows Secrets articles — and reader responses. In addition, a reader offers suggestions on how to manage resource hoggery.

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The full text of this column is posted at windowssecrets.com/letters/readers-with-ideas-write-to-windows-secrets// (opens in a new window/tab).

Columnists typically cannot reply to comments here, but do incorporate the best tips into future columns.[/td]

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I just have to comment on Larry Rosenberg’s claim Win 8 isn’t “ready for prime time.” First, no one is (or should be) saying that it is ready. This is a preview release. A beta if you will. But beyond that, Mr. Rosenberg is basing his opinion on an installation on an Asus P4S533-X motherboard outfitted with IDE drives. How old is this motherboard? Old enough that it’s based on the SiS 645 chipset, is designed for “the latest” Pentium IV processors and the memory slots are DDR and SDR (that’s right…SDR) compatible. In other words, this is totally obsolete hardware and Mr. Rosenberg thinks Win 8 ought to be able to support it.

Bottom line is that I totally do not agree with Mr. Rosenberg on any evaluation that is based on this particular hardware. The lack of a proper LAN driver in Win 8 for obsolete hardware is not a proper benchmark for anything at all.

Yes, the preview (beta) release isn’t ready for prime time. But that’s because it’s a beta and not because there isn’t out of the box support for obsolete legacy hardware.

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I took an older computer–it was dual booting XP and Server 2008.
It had a decent nVidia card–512mb of ram, and 6GB ram on the ASUS motherboard, running a dual core AMD cpu.
I created a CD from the Win8 iso file.
I did a clean install. It detected my other OS’s, and created a multi-boot environment. Less than 20 mins later, I was booted in Win 8.
All drivers were found.
I used an old XP64 driver for my Canon iP5000 and the network print server.
Everything just worked.
Reboots are now 10-15secs. from the multi-boot selection menu.
A bit of a learning curve for the new UI, but its really easy to learn in a few hours–make sure you read or watch a tutorial a few times.

Running Win8 in a virtual machine will give you a greatly reduced feel for the OS. It needs fast video and keyboard response, only available from real hardware.

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I took an older computer–it was dual booting XP and Server 2008.
It had a decent nVidia card–512mb of ram, and 6GB ram on the ASUS motherboard, running a dual core AMD cpu.
I created a CD from the Win8 iso file.
I did a clean install. It detected my other OS’s, and created a multi-boot environment. Less than 20 mins later, I was booted in Win 8.
All drivers were found.
I used an old XP64 driver for my Canon iP5000 and the network print server.
Everything just worked.
Reboots are now 10-15secs. from the multi-boot selection menu.
A bit of a learning curve for the new UI, but its really easy to learn in a few hours–make sure you read or watch a tutorial a few times.

Running Win8 in a virtual machine will give you a greatly reduced feel for the OS. It needs fast video and keyboard response, only available from real hardware.

How does running a Virtual Machine give you slower video and keyboard response times?

-- rc primak

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I’ve followed your instructions for creating a virtual version of Windows 8 twice to make sure I’d done it exactly as you suggest.

At the point where you say:

Click the Win8 item in VirtualBox Manager to launch your newly created — but empty — VPC.

a single click does nothing. Double clicking starts the machine but does not open the First Run Wizard and after halts the machine because of no OS. There is nothing in the pulldowns that say anything about the wizard.

Any suggestions?

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I just have to comment onLarry Rosenberg’s claim Win 8 isn’t “ready for prime time.” First, no one is (or should be) saying that it is ready. This is a preview release. A beta if you will. But beyond that, Mr. Rosenberg is basing his opinion on an installation on an Asus P4S533-X motherboard outfitted with IDE drives. How old is this motherboard? Old enough that it’s based on the SiS 645 chipset, is designed for “the latest” Pentium IV processors and the memory slots are DDR and SDR (that’s right…SDR) compatible. In other words, this is totally obsolete hardware and Mr. Rosenberg thinks Win 8 ought to be able to support it.

Bottom line is that I totally do not agree with Mr. Rosenberg on any evaluation that is based on this particular hardware. The lack of a proper LAN driver in Win 8 for obsolete hardware is not a proper benchmark for anything at all.

Yes, the preview (beta) release isn’t ready for prime time. But that’s because it’s a beta and not because there isn’t out of the box support for obsolete legacy hardware.

Actually, legacy hardware and software support is one of the strongest features in Windows 8. If the writer had looked instead of sitting on his hands, he would have found Windows 7 Legacy Drivers which could be downloaded and placed on the Windows 8 desktop. In most cases, this is a good location for a Device Manager “Update Driver/ Have Disk” (or “Search Local Computer”) driver installation. This worked on my Windows 7 WHQL compliant NVidia graphics driver. Legacy hardware going back at least as far as this configuration is supported in Windows 8. But you do have to work at it.

-- rc primak

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