Windows 8 and Nothing Else

Windows 8 will ship with a new features called Secure Boot.

Ars Technica writes "Windows 8 computers that ship with UEFI secure booting enabled could make the task of replacing Windows with Linux or dual-booting the two operating systems more difficult. In order to get a “Designed for Windows 8” logo, PCs must ship with secure boot enabled, preventing the booting of operating systems that aren’t signed by a trusted Certificate Authority."

So it's 8 and nothing else. If you want to run an alternative OS or dual-boot, then make sure Windows 8 isn't one of them.

WinRT - New Ways to Infect Your Machine

You may think the title of this post is a little weird, but with Windows 8, Microsoft has announced a new platform for building applications or what they call "apps", called Windows RunTime or WinRT for short. Last year, they were telling all the MS developers to use WPF and Silverlight, this year it's something different.

I don't know ... being a developer, that would piss me off no end. Particularly, when a developer on the Windows Weekly Podcast mentioned his WPF app would have to have "large chunks" of the code rewritten for WinRT.


Now to the title of this post ... Web apps traditionally run in a browser; they're sandboxed from the rest of your operating system. Javascript is a language that can't access your file system, which is a good thing given all the vulnerabilities, cross-site scripting, code injection that has been done with it over the years.

WinRT now gives Javascript access to hard drives and the file system, display, speakers, printers, scanners, etc. and given Microsoft's track record ... that just scares the bejeezus out of me.

How to Shutdown Windows 8

Now I know this may sound silly, but it'll stump you too. So, when you've been playing around with Windows 8 and now you want to shutdown the machine, you'd think you'd find the Shutdown command on the new Start Menu.

No such luck ... they've just made it so you have to do a few steps, rather than just one. Typical Microsoft.

1. Click the Start Button


2. Click on the User Icon on the Start Menu


3. Choose Logoff
   


4. You are then presented with a picture with time and one random icon in the bottom left
   


5. You'd think you'd press that, but oh no, you have to left click hold and then pull up like a touch interface *ugh*


6. Then click on the Power like icon in the bottom right


7. Then select shutdown
   
   

All that just to shutdown your machine ...

Weather App US-centric

One of the WIndows 8 Tiles is a weather widget, which has been praised for being beautiful and having moving, rolling videos in the background, whilst showing you the weather. Just one problem -- it's in Fahrenheit only. You can't change it to Celsius. Even though, when I setup Windows 8, I told it my location and timezone.


So, effectively, this widget is useless.

Green Screen of Death

Sure Windows 8 is a developer preview ... I get it; so, you're bound to have issues, lock ups, crashes, etc. But when it crashes, no longer do you get a blue screen of death - in this case, I got the green screen of death. Other users have reported they've been seeing "gumby-like" BSOD screens, but nothing like that yet for me.


Still I thought this was kinda funny.

WIndows 8 Developer Preview

Today, at the Microsoft BUILD conference, Microsoft released the developer preview of the next version of Windows, codenamed Windows 8. The reason it's a codename is, because Microsoft are thinking about dropping the name of WIndows. I doubt that'll happen, they have too much brand recognition with that name, so much so they called their phone, WIndows Phone.

The most startling development in Windows 8 is the use of the WIndows Phone Metro UI tiles on the desktop. Basically, they've turned the Start Menu into a full screen page with living tiles. These tiles don't close either. They're running when the Metro UI is at the front, but when you close it, these apps get suspended. Much like a phone or OS X Lion.


Also, Microsoft use the term "apps" to describe these tile-based applications and use the term "applications" to mean desktop ones. Way to pollute terms, but then again, Microsoft have a history of doing stupid stuff like this such as .NET Server.

The new Start Menu is just another nod from Microsoft that they have no clue how to organize your applications and this is their current take on how to do it. Microsoft basically gave up on the Start Menu with Vista, by adding a search bar, so you don't have to find those pesky programs, just search for them. I use a third party tool on Windows called Launchy and it does a better job and more suited to quick operations, ie. the OS doesn't get in the way of what you're doing.

Think about it, you just want to launch an application, so you hit the Start Button to reveal the fullscreen Metro UI, which is now fetching weather data, etc for the various tiles. I just wanted to launch an application, but you've now also fired off a bunch of web based apps that are going to chew through unnecessary bandwidth. It's a developer preview, I get it, so I'll try not to be too harsh.

Anyway, the Developer Preview is free for anyone to download, so head over to Microsoft and see what all the fuss is.