Nov 142011
Windows 8 System Builder OEM DVD 64-Bit
- Start Up Quickly
- Customize your Metro-Interface Start Screen with personalized Live Tiles
- Stay safe with Windows Defender
- Encrypt your data with Bitlocker
Windows 8 System Builder is for pre-installation on a new personal computer or installation on a computer that is not currently running Windows 7, Vista, or XP. This product is not an upgrade and does not provide solutions to help you keep personal settings or files as the product is installed. Windows 8 System Builder DVD 64-Bit can be installed on personal computers with a 64 bit capable processor. The new Windows 8 start screen is your personalized home for items you use the most and ca
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New Tech and New Look, for Hardware New and Old,
The “System Builder” discs of Windows 8 are named this way because they are a full install and not an upgrade. The assumption is that you are building your own machine and looking to put Windows 8 on a from-scratch install, but this is still a multi-boot friendly OS and if your intention instead is to install a full copy of Windows 8 without upgrading your current system, well, that works too: you can put this on old hardware so long as your machine meets the system requirements. There has been some confusion at the lack of an ‘OEM’ SKU for Windows, so I suspect that until we hear otherwise, this is our ‘OEM’ substitute for those of us who like to tinker with hardware.
If you’re considering Windows 8, there are benefits many small and large. The patchwork way in which the OS seems to meld old into new can be confusing, and it’s clear the UI pays lip service to mice while eagerly awaiting your first touch-screen or touch-pad purchase. But to give credit where credit is due, there are benefits under the surface to go with the drawbacks you see before your eyes. Putting Windows 8 Pro on a new system is a good hedge against longevity, but will require experienced Windows 7 (and below) users to be patient with the newer parts of the UI.
This version of Windows 8 is different from Windows 8 Pro in that it does not allow you to use Remote Desktop or BitLocker hard drive encryption, nor can you join the machine to an Active Directory Domain. There are several native Windows 8 apps included with all versions of Windows 8: News, Stocks, Weather, Pictures, E-mail, Music, Xbox integration (to your XBox account, to view your stats or stream content to/from your PC), and Facebook. There is also support for Windows SkyDrive and a Windows Live account, to the point that your PC’s user account can be fully integrated with your Windows Live account if that is what you wish. While Windows Media Center is listed as requiring a separate license, right now Microsoft is offering that license for free on the Windows 8 website (Amazon won’t let me put external links here or I would).
The biggest change in Windows 8 is that the Start Menu that we have had since Windows 95 is no longer a menu. It is a full-screen splash of square tiles instead of icons, which vary in width from one to two tiles wide. Some of this makes sense in that some of today’s programs are more like the Windows Desktop Gadgets we’ve seen in Vista and 7: they sit idle, stream information and need to be big enough to be readable. Although this is the biggest visual change, if you’ve used Windows Media Center, Office 2010, or an XBox 360, you’ve already been interacting with similar interfaces. This sort of UI has been slowly making its way into Microsoft’s products for a while now.
That said, the transition from the familiar Start Menu to the full-screen splash takes some getting used to. It may take some arranging to get the tiles laid out conveniently, but Microsoft makes this easy to do. The rest of the Windows 8 OS spends its time hopping between the old and the new look. The desktop looks exactly like it did in Windows 7 and Vista, except there’s no Start Button: you’re expected to press the Windows key or move your mouse to the bottom corner of the screen to launch the tile dashboard. The desktop looks exactly as it did in 7, only without the Start Button. All programs can be launched directly off the tile screen, and while Windows 8 apps run one at a time in a full-screen view, older programs run from within the Desktop and can be resized. We have a version of Internet Explorer 10 accessible from the desktop that looks just like IE 9 did in Windows 7, then we have a version of Internet Explorer 10 in the tile screen that looks entirely different. Windows 8 applications don’t really “close” any more: when you leave an application, it just disappears from view, like a smartphone OS would do. Some parts of the Control Panel have the tile look and feel and the options cascade left-to-right like the Home screen in Office 2010. Other parts of the Control Panel look exactly like they did in Windows 7 and before.
Windows 8 may appear to be a patchwork of old and new, but there’s more going on under the covers. In earlier versions of Windows, the number of programs running in the background could get unwieldy and slow things down. There was a shift to rely more on Services, which are listeners that sit idle waiting to launch programs only when needed. Windows 7 started to get bogged down with a lot of running Services though, and so Microsoft have stripped several services out of Windows 8, which means Windows 8 runs more efficiently than Windows 7. Any machine that can run 7 can run 8 (and I remember installing 7 on some pretty old hardware!).
Where older versions of Windows would have to re-launch a program every time it is opened, in Windows 8 anything not being used by you is set aside…
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|Far from what we should expect from Windows,
Not much can be said about Windows 8 that isn’t easily summed up by ‘just wrong’. The entire workflow of the operating system is thrown off and what little performance increase you get from the watered down visuals, is quickly made up for in the extra work you need to do to get anything accomplished.
Start off with the start menu being removed and replaced with a start screen. This by itself wouldn’t have been bad, just different. However the start screen is not just a new start menu. It’s a whole second personality for your computer. It operates completely differently and nothing that you do on either the desktop or the new (formally) metro interface, is connected. It makes the entire experience incredibly disjointed and leaves the operating system with an identity crisis.
Of course they did made improvements in the desktop portion of the operating system as well, but the inability to disable the “metro” interface is truly a deal breaker. Not to mention the operating system is stylistically a one trick pony. Not everyone wants an incredibly flat interface for everything. Some of us really liked the Aero theme in Windows Vista/7 and not even having an option to use it anymore is incredibly disappointing. Microsoft needs to stop forcing people into what they don’t want.
In short. Stick with Windows 7. You’ll thank yourself later.
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|Windows 8 is an absolute mess…,
As a life-long Microsoft user, I sadly but firmly believe that this is the worst thing that Microsoft has ever produced. They seem to have forgotten that Windows software for a computer, not a tablet. This is definitely for something with a touch screen. Their biggest fault was trying to give the rather enormous and ridiculous Start Menu something almost identical to the Xbox 360 interface, except this is no good. 75% of the devices you will probably never touch. This is just sloppy. What infuriates me is when I am trying to do something and I move the mouse to the side a little too fast, it brings up my last viewed/downloaded document. To go back to what you were doing you just simply press Escape right? Uh, no. You have to push the button with the picture of the windows symbol which will take you to the Start menu, and then select “Desktop” in the menu. “Okay, that’s fixed and over wi– oh no I’ve done it again!” This is a simply infuriating software to live with on a daily basis. I would highly recommend buying Windows 7 or XP (Definitely XP if it’s for work) when you buy a new computer. Living with this everyday practically impossible.
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