Digital Photography on Windows 8 (Developer Preview)

Hello everyone! Here's something that might interest a few of you.

Microsoft recently announced that the Windows 8 Developer Preview is now available as a free download. If you have at least 20GB of free HDD space to play around with, we can then use VirtualBox to try this baby out.

What I was hoping was for some of the members here (myself included) to try out this new version of Windows which looks to be very promising. I know this is a Developer Preview, but that didn't prevent users from having a go at it. I know I did with Win7RC!

The main programs to test this out with, will be of course, the usual suspects: Photoshop, Lightroom, Elements, etc.

If you decide to go for it, tell use how it goes! Cheers!

I've downloaded it, and will be installing it on a VM as you say. I'll report back in due course.

My main problem is that the dev tools only appear to be in the 64 bit download, and for various annoying reasons, my host OS is 32 bit.

This rather limits me to a VMWare VM, which will be slow.

No thanks.

My days of testing Beta and pre-Beta software are over. I'll wait for Windows 8 with SP1 to be available.

Good luck with it though.

I was one of those who beta-tested Netscape 4.5/6.
Netscape? Who?

Geoff

I'm not sure this will be of much benefit until the graphics software has been updated to take full advantage of the software.

I'm going to wait and see what photo editing will be like on a Windows 8 tablet with a stylus.

Does this mean that “Windows 7” has run its course already.

I am on “XP” Media Version , and was thinking of may be replacing my computer, in the near future, as it is running very slow and the media part no longer works ?. (Never really understood the “media part).

But if there is a new operating system due out, should I wait.

Take care.

I think replacing XP in itself is in due order, the amount of security holes that XP has is reason enough to move to at least Windows 7.

I would not be surprised if at this very moment each and every WinXP installation connected to the internet is now part of a botnet helping out hacker kiddies with their DDoS attacks (LulZsec and Anonymous). All they need is a computer to send several server requests to a site, multiply that by a few million and you got a cyberweapon.

Windows 8 will be officially released 3Q/4Q of 2012 so quite some time to go.

The biggest feature so far that I've seen is the new Metro interface. They're also saying that this can run on a netbook configuration (1GB RAM, Atom CPU, Integrated Graphics), but "can run" does not mean "usable" in my experience.

My best recommendation for XP users is, if you can afford to get Win7+RAM upgrade. Should be cheaper than buying a new computer. Then again, computers are so cheap nowadays, and most come with Win7 Home Premium already. If all you use on a computer are your web browser and office productivity apps (Office), then it's a no brainer: use Linux Mint or Ubuntu.

I am thinking of installing Ubuntu as a second OS on my PC. I did just that for a while, but needed to use lightroom - but that was before I heard of Darktable.

Sadly I still need to retain Windows for running Autocad and Photoshop/Indesign for work reasons.

Windows 7 Home Premium or Professional should be your preferred upgrade path, and if your PC is 5 or more years old and has 32 bit architecture, don't bother upgrading it, get a new 64 bit PC instead. Intel iCore 3, 5, or 7 CPU preferred with plenty of RAM, probably 8Gb minimum.

You can run most 32 bit software on a 64 bit platform (hardware and O/S), but you can't run 64 bit stuff on a 32 bit machine.

Windows 7 Professional will enable the use of older PC software, which might not work correctly on Win7, usingthe free Windows XP vurtual machine that can be downloaded from Microsoft.

When you have your new PC running as you want it, replace the HDD in the old machine and re-install it from scratch. Put the old HDD back into the old PC and copy everything from it into an archive folder on the new HDD or the new PC.

Follow my recommendation and you'll save yourself a serious amount of frustration.

I would hope that any PC that can be bought today running Windows 7, will be able to run Windows 8 when it's eventually released (my guess is it'll be when mum's and dad's are buying new kit for their little darlings return to school around September 2013).

BEWARE:

Microsoft's past history has shown that only every other release of their Windows OS has proved to be stable/usable.

Windows 3.0, NT 3.x, Windows 95, Windows ME, and Windows Vista were less than perfect.

Windows 3.11 for Workgroups, NT4, Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows 7 were/are reasonably robust.

If Windows 8 exhibits this historical tendancy, I'll wait for Windows 9 with service pack 1.

Wow, that is an eye opener. So far, it's running good for me, albeit a bit slow considering the limitations of the virtual machine I have it running off from.

But with that historical timeline, and the fact that they are going to be doing a first with this OS (that is to set the desktop to background status and the default is the Metro interface) then it may fail.

There maybe a shed of hope though. Windows 7 was a success because they did one thing well that they didn't do on previous versions of Windows, and that was to release a Developer Build, all the way to the Release Candidate. It was very usable, and I even replaced my Vista installation with it.

This Developer Build for Windows 8 is following the same path of Windows 7, release it to eager developers/fans, and get the feedback of the people. So far Metro is a mixed bag. On a tablet, it's sweet! On a desktop, it varies.

One thing's for sure, using a tablet with Photoshop (without breaking the bank for a Cintiq) is going to be groundbreaking! Let's see what iOS will have up it sleeve to counter this!

If it does, it will be the biggest corporate cock-up they've made to date.

They really can't afford to get Windows 8 wrong if they want to maintain their OS dominance as the tablet revolution continues.

The 'alternate release Ok' theory, although very well-known, isn't really the whole story.

Windows 7 was much more of a rebranding exercise than anything else - it was more of a service pack for Vista than a whole new OS. It's great now, though.

Peter.

Many thanks for information/advice.
If and when I upgrade, it will be a new PC together with a new operating system installed, as I do not have the necessary knowledge to do it myself.

Also I have no idea if it is a 32 bit ?.
All I do know is, that I was short changed on my present PC, it was supposed to be a dual core Intel processor, but when I had to ring the “Dell” service centre for advice once, and gave the serial number, I was advised it did not have a duel core processor. I forget the type of processor they said it has.


Take care.

Most if not all new computers are 64-bit, but any 32-bit software loads up easily enough in the appropriate 32-bit section, x86 I think is the nomenclature.

Even Photoshop 7, now getting fairly old, installs without glitches.

I stuck it on my touch screen laptop (full build using a spare disk). So far, none too impressed. The touch is pretty good but I use my computer for developing applications, not just for surfing!

I can't see myself rushing to put this on my machine. And I get all the MS software I want for free!

I haven't seen much from MS about what is happening underneath. So far it seems to be Windows 7 with a touch screen interface. It's not what I'm looking for.