Windows 8 - The Bear and Badger

davyK

Browsing using surface for first time (8.1) nice so far.

hunk

GurtTractor wrote:

hunk wrote:

And I'm stuck at 25% for the past 2 hrs..... Don't fancy quitting the installer now. Don't fancy reinstalling win7 as that was a real pain in arse to get up and running. I am screwed.

It can take a very long time to install or upgrade, perhaps it takes longer depending on how full your previous install is. Also i think it downloads updates during install, which if you have slow internet will take some time. Windows installers aren't usually very good at communicating this.

It took me a good few hours just to upgrade from 10130 to 10240.

The win7 installer was shit because it didn't recognize some of the key hardware components during installation. Windows update didn't recognize some of the hardware incl. the wifi/Lan adapter.
After the lengthy install procedure (>30hrs) I was left with a broken Windows husk missing key drivers. I downloaded them manually from the Asus site and installed them myself one by one.
Also did an sfc scan and chkdsk to check system integrity afterwards and managed to repair the OS.

I hope win10 won't be the same. It's fucking annoying to wait for the win installer to finish, if it ever finishes. After that I don't fancy repairing the installation. Again......

GurtTractor

Mine installed without many issues, and I have somewhat outdated hardware. Guess Windows has to grab drivers from 3rd parties which can throw spanners in the works..

hunk

I have an N series Asus notebook from 2011/2012. Why the drivers aren't submitted to windows update is beyond me. The win7 installation felt like a throwback to the pre-XP era stone age.

isanbard

It appears I am not in the first wave and can't be arsed to force it.

Most folks seem to suggest it's pretty seamless and Edge is fast. Win8.1 has always been fine for me mind so I'm not bothered either way alls in..

acemuzzy

So is my nvidia sli gforce experience still gonna fuck me over?

isanbard

You just need the latest Nvidia driver (that they haven't yet put on their website yet oddly..) you can get it here.
Seems to be the fix that's going about and it's suggested that SLI is affected.. more. Nvidia cards may have issues generally.

acemuzzy

Hmm. Well my icon still says "notify me when ready", so I don't have a choice to make yet anyway thankfully!

hunk

Windows 10 update canceled for now and rolled back to 7.
Think I'll wait it out for now as I've read rumors of nVidia Optimus not working 100% in Win10.

hunk

For those who wish to download Win10 iso's, you can download them from MS for free here.
Just download the tool, open it and select the iso you want.
I think it's only for a limited time though so get them while you can.
You can (clean) install Win10 from disc/usb and activate with your Win7/8.1 keys if I am not mistaken..

edit
Wait, that last bit is wrong....
MS wrote:

If you upgraded to Windows 10 on this PC by taking advantage of the free upgrade offer and successfully activated Windows 10 on this PC in the past, you won't have a Windows 10 product key, and you can skip the product key page by selecting the Skip button. Your PC will activate online automatically so long as the same edition of Windows 10 was successfully activated on this PC by using the free Windows 10 upgrade offer.

Kow

Laughably, it seems MS want people to pay a monthly subscription for solitaire on Windows 10, to get the ad free version anyway.

hunk

Ads?
What ads?

Also, the win10 iso dl is ssssllloooooooooowwwwww.........

AJ

That'll happen if you try to download something at the same time as a shit load of other people.

isanbard

You can still pay Solitaire for free, the pay thing just removes an ad and gives you more coins for some daily thing they have now. Internet has sort of blown that out of proportion really but they seem to have pushed an element of Solitaire towards the Candy Crush market?

Seems the phased roll-out could be based on system specs. Tested.com suggested that MS are well aware of your system's bits and bobs and will give the upgrade notification when there are a full suite of drivers available. I've got an Nvidia card and have yet to receive the notification, I'm gonna just wait it out and see if it goes smooth when MS decide to ping me.

acemuzzy

Ah ok, makes sense

Kow

Paying for an ad free game is fine, paying a monthly sub for solitaire is bizarre.

[Deleted User]

davyK wrote:

Browsing using surface for first time (8.1) nice so far.

Nice. Which surface do you have?

And how's the writing? Like, is it good enough to be viable for daily class note-taking? Or just, good for a stylus?

Roujin

Its good enough for replacing your notepad completely.

Use mine at work all the time in meetings to take minutes and also you can hook it to the project to to draw pikchures for the thickies.

WorKid

There seems to be zero reasons to try a new Windows, relearn stuff, and have things potentially not work.

I'll stick with 7 thanks.

The wife seems keen to ditch 8 which to be fair is sensible.

Roujin

Got home from work and win10 was ready to go for my Surface, installation process took about 30 minutes, seems like it had downloaded everything in the background already.

So far so good, seems to be a big improvement over 8.1, if for no other reason than the desktop and touch environments have been merged together. Also Edge seems waaaaaay faster than IE, as quick as Chrome imho, so good job ripping them off MS lel.

Will report back if anything catches fire or if Cortana goes full skynet on me.

AJ

WorKid wrote:

There seems to be zero reasons to try a new Windows

Games are meant to run faster, do you not game on your PC?

Kow

Still no update for me.

hunk

Try running Windows update manually from the system settings menu.
Chances are wu will see the win10 update.

WorKid

AJ wrote:

WorKid wrote:

There seems to be zero reasons to try a new Windows

Games are meant to run faster, do you not game on your PC?

Is there really a tangible performance difference? And are there no compatability problems?

GurtTractor

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-07-29-the-gamers-guide-to-the-windows-10-launch-4013

Xbox One owners get a second screen for now, then, but what about the benefits for PC gamers? As well as better support for 4K resolution gaming, perhaps the most compelling reason to upgrade your gaming PC to the next edition of Windows - beyond the free cost of doing so, of course - relates to the release of DirectX 12, the latest version of Microsoft's collection of mulitmedia APIs upon which so much of PC gaming depends.

Most significantly, the next iteration of DirectX promises to deliver some rather eye-popping improvements to efficiency across the board, and regardless of your preferred hardware manufacturer. In very simplistic terms, CPU loads go down and GPU frame-rate outputs go up when games take advantage of DX12, which provides significant performance gains.

Owners of both AMD and Nvidia graphics hardware could see appreciable boosts with DX12, but in the shorter term at least, it's the API's improved support of multi-core CPUs that will probably make the most difference - which will better suit the architecture of AMD's CPUs, while the more streamlined performance should also see a marked improvement for AMD graphics hardware coupled with less capable processors. DX12 adoption won't happen overnight, but the free availability of Windows 10 can only accelerate adoption of DX12 as standard.

I've also heard that the audio stack (whatever that is) is improved on 10, basically should mean lower latency I think. Good for music producers.

AJ

WorKid wrote:

AJ wrote:

WorKid wrote:

There seems to be zero reasons to try a new Windows

Games are meant to run faster, do you not game on your PC?

Is there really a tangible performance difference? And are there no compatability problems?

Up to 50% increase in frame-rate, independently verified, I'm told. And I've no idea, but that doesn't change the fact things run better.

WorKid

I've heard 0.5% better or worse.

50% sounds rather miraculous.

I'll wait it out and see what's what in a month or so.

mrsmr2

Some games are improved, I suspect the majority aren't.

And then it will allow DX12 in the future and that is only available in Win10.

Overall, it does sound better than Win7 for gaming.

Still, not updating mine until there is sufficient feedback from the PC community.

djchump

It very much depends on the game.
E.g. the 50% figure is coming from Star Swarm, which started as an Oxide/Stardock/basically some MS guys tech demo to specifically show the advantages of Mantle and having a non-shit GPU driver that was actually multi-threaded.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8962/the-directx-12-performance-preview-amd-nvidia-star-swarm/5

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2015-why-directx-12-is-a-gamechanger

So, yeah, if the game relies on thousands and thousands of drawcalls, and is CPU bottlenecked by the driver not being able to handle all of these, then it performs *much* better by being properly multithreaded - but for most games, if you've got a beast of a CPU you won't notice any improvement at all (as the game wasn't bottlenecked on the CPU), the people who will notice improvements will be the ones with mid and low tier CPUs.

See past benchmarks of Mantle vs DX10/DX11 for multithread vs single thread driver impact - e.g:
http://www.hardwarepal.com/dragon-age-inquisition-benchmark-mantle-vs-directx/

isanbard

Got an email form MS today to state that I'm waiting to get ~~OSX~~ errr.... MS10. I knew this and had pre-bookesd a loong time ago.
Almost thought about going the Media Creation tool route or doing the Download from their sites manually before this came up again,

"You’ll receive your notification to upgrade once we can confirm that your device is
ready to upgrade. We look at the specific compatibility for your device and overall
demand for Windows 10 when
deciding if a device is ready to upgrade."

I'm in no rush for anything in particular so screw it they can send me a notification when they want to; 6 days, 6 months.. whenever.

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