Windows 8: Blazing Fast and Low resource usage usage

Yup, thanks to netbooks and now tablets MS stopped the trend of making each new version of windows a bigger resource hog. Nice trend for sure.

I've been running Win8 on my work rig for a while...when the beta was out I was one of those "WTF IS THIS **** M$ SUX" guys; but after forcing myself to use it for a while....it's not a pain to just have to hit 'Desktop' after login. I'm also making sure I don't use any 'Start Button' apps to make sure I get used to Win8-as-is. After being with it for a while....the good is I don't view it any worse than 7. The bad is (aside from nice **** like Drive Pool) it's not that much better than 7. Seeing as I have it, I don't mind to keep using it. If I had to go back to 7 though, I wouldn't mind that much either. It's not the end of the world is all I'm saying. - That said, I'm about to rebuild this rig with a UEFI MoBo & Ivy Bridge and SSD (it's sad when your HTPC is better equipped than your battle-station :P ); so I'm eager to see how much my boot time decreases.

I love the speed of Windows 8 also - I do use it with 'Pokki' so I can still have a Start button, though.

Without a doubt, the under-the-hood improvements in 8 are very, very good indeed, general speed and lower RAM usage being the two most often quoted. Shame they saddled it with that PoS 'Modern' interface though on the desktop, and nearly as bad is that new 'flat' lifeless, bland desktop look'n'feel. If only MS would have given people the choice to use the PC in 'classic mode' as an alternative (yes, I know you can get many different Start Button replacements), and left 'full' Aero Glass in as an optional theme, it would have been a killer O/S.

Honestly, I don't remember even Vista getting anywhere near this much hate as 8 is. That's not good at all for MS.

If I had the following list before I began with W8, I would have thanked someone

• If you actually read the installation screens, you can install without an e-mail account and use just a local username/password
• Microsoft's DTV-DVD decoder is no longer available to 3rd party apps
• Ultra-fast boot is only available if W8 was installed to a GPT formatted disk
• W8 will not successfully install to a GPT formatted disk if your installation device (CD-Rom / USB) was in "legacy" mode
• Your UEFI bios allows you to select a boot priority - CD/USB should be chosen as UEFI:USB or UEFI:CD instead of the USB or CD options

Edited by Dark_Slayer - 3/13/13 at 9:18am

I use classic shell, its pretty cool in that you can have both the start bar and start screen functional at the same time. I'm happy with 8 so long as programs don't launch into metro, but its easy to avoid programs that do. Start screen and desktop programs are perfectly acceptable.
Edited by jeffkro - 3/13/13 at 7:41am

Do you have a source on this? I thought most people are still running the old school MBR. Last I read some SSD firmwares (including the Samsung 830 I run) had trouble with GPT and over provisioning.
Edited by SlantNGo - 3/13/13 at 8:02am

Sorry, I'm trying to bring organization to a bunch of chaotic here-say, but I might have overstepped by including "fast"

My source for Ultra-fast is my motherboard. It actually has a pop-up note when you select "Ultra Fast" under boot options that says, "Ultra Fast will only boot from GPT disks"

It may be possible to achieve "Fast Boot" by installing to MBR through UEFI. I have installed OpenELEC and ubuntu server precise to GPT with no issues on a vertex 2, agility 3, and vertex 3. I intended to go ahead and install W8 with GPT rather than MBR, but kept receiving the error. I was in a last minute time crunch to get the free WMC addon, so I never got around to solving things back then

Why do you guys reboot so often? I haven't rebooted my HTPC in months.

I'm sure most of the speed improvements and lower RAM usage are due to the stripped down graphics, you know all the eye candy that made Win 7 pleasant to use but did come at a small cost performance-wise. Personally I'd rather wait an extra 5 seconds from a cold boot and keep my eye candy. Looking at Win 8 just makes me depressed.

But on a related topic, is resume time any faster on Win 8? I wouldn't think so, but I thought I'd ask.

Well, I mostly only reboot to see how long it takes to reboot
Why are you sure of that? Are you speaking from the perspective of using integrated graphics and shared system RAM? Do you know how much RAM is allocated to integrated graphics by default?
Aero only looks good if you are interacting with windows. I like to automate as many things as possible so that I rarely ever have to interact with windows. I despise using a mouse outside of my office. Keyboard/mouse on my htpc/server is a complete personal failure (or something I've not got around to automating). I use W8 as a server/htpc, and I prefer to keep all of my interaction within XBMC. I don't consider W7 w/ aero disabled equal to W8. Plus I bought 8 pro for $40 (never could get it to work for $25)

Just an expression. So let me rephrase, I deduce that less animation, less drawing, simpler geometry, less color = less resources, fewer CPU cycles. I'm sure... ahem ... I deduce that Win 8 is also optimized to load less stuff upon boot and save some things for later. I'm cool with that part, it's a genuine improvement. I'm not cool with anything else in Win 8, at all, and I am not alone (LINK). I didn't mean to bash Win 8, really, but I just can't help it. Please excuse the distraction. May the discussion of boot time awesomeness continue...

Originally Posted by mdavej View Post

Personally I'd rather wait an extra 5 seconds from a cold boot and keep my eye candy. Looking at Win 8 just makes me depressed

I agree. I installed it on my htpc, and did not have a great out of the box experience with that os. It's a navigational nightmare. Reinstalled 7. When I was shopping for an ultrabook for my wife, I was lucky to find an hp at costco that had 7 64 bit.
Would you consider Windows 8 if the Start button was restored?‏

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57573370-75/four-months-in-windows-8-needs-help/?tag=nl.e497&s_cid=e497&ttag=e497

Four months in, Windows 8 needs help
Microsoft needs to fix Windows 8 to make it easier for the average consumer to use, says IDC.

I wish it were that simple. I've used it with a couple of start menu replacements. It certainly makes it more tolerable. I tried to adapt, I really did. But the problem is the missing start button is only the tip of the iceberg. I'm not married to the start menu. Give me something better and I'll take it. Hidden charms and vast screens full of tiny words and icons, all driven by text searches and cryptic win key combinations is not better. Every other aspect of the GUI is an ugly, incoherent, unintelligible mess. Nothing about it is logical, intuitive or easy.

Sure, if I had to, I would hold my nose and adapt. But as long as I don't have to, I'm avoiding it like the plague. I'm hoping when Blue comes out, all of this unpleasantness will be behind us. Microsoft is pretty good about fixing things after the fact.

How does that work? Can madvr wake a PC that's completely off? Isn't shutting it down every time you use it a hassle?

Wow, I guess I'm in the minority, but I like Windows 8. Start screen works well with the remote, and resource usage is very low. Storage Spaces is in use on the file server. Metro Netflix gives me DD 5.1 and 1080p video (when available).

All this with the same system requirements as Windows 7. I say MS did a great job.

I will admit that the Metro UI is 100x better on a touch device. My wife's Asus tablet is super easy to use.

^ and you should use hibernation. Faster than a cold boot and zero power use.

Hibernation (aka sleep to disk rather than RAM) is disabled by default when Windows is installed to a SSD

In the Kill-A-Watt thread I posted some info I found curious. It was reading 0 during sleep and 2.4 after shutdown. After shutting down, I actually had to switch the power off with the button on the back of my PSU to get it to 0. I've always used sleep since Vista. The only time my computers are "off" is after a rolling blackout or something isn't "sleeping" properly and I hadn't gotten around to fixing it yet

I like my Win8 installs as well, but I roll with a Start button replacement. It has worked really well for me on my HTPC and doesn't have some of the little HDMI handshake type glitches that my Win7 had.

As far as reboots... I reboot within two days after installing a patch that requires a reboot (which is automatic within two days). I guess that's about once or twice a month.

I'm still missing something. How do you guys get your HTPC to wake from a full shutdown or hibernation in order to record or host an extender session or whatever? I'd like for my PC to be completely off when not in use to save more energy, but then the DVR doesn't work, my remote doesn't work and WOL doesn't work. Sounds like you guys have a way around all of that?

I'm not guessing that was directed at me, but I found that for my system a simple "shutdown" was actually using more power than sleep. One of those "green" power strips that cut all power based on the "control" plug would accomplish the 0.0W setting, but for my system sleep was reading less than 0.1W. I'll test it again soon for sanity, but my previous results were LINK

Also, there a couple of ways of turning things on from S5, but I've never thought them worth the investment. I always use S3 except on my W8 server which is always on (and usually doing something for me)

It's not really Windows 8 people hate, it's Metro. Under the hood there are some very good improvements, but nothing on this earth would induce me into using Metro. It's an ugly, awkward to use, counter-intuitive mess because putting it simply, it is designed as something to work well on phones and tablets and to be just about tolerable on a desktop.

You just have to realise Microsoft's dilemma: the consumer is increasingly moving towards using toys because most consumers are not power users. They spend most of their time surfing, playing around with pictures, music or movies and that sort of stuff. Outside of business hardly anyone is a power user - if they were they would find a tablet woefully inadequate.

So Microsoft is increasingly seeing their traditional core base, where everyone used a desktop type (even a portable one, ie a laptop) shrinking in favour of one where they have virtually no existance rapidly expanding.

They wanted to move into this new area but at the same time can't abandon their core because desktops are still very important, espescially in businsses. So their solution was Windows 8, which unfortunately ende dup being a jack-of-all-trades but master of none. It's never going to challenge iOS or Android because it;s far too late and Apple and Google have the market completely stitched up between them, but at the same time it it managed to piss off an area where it is still very strong because it foisted a touch and small screen friendly front end on users that have large non-touch screens and many of which have little interest in things like constantly updating Twitter or weather tiles beyond finding out how to turn the damn things off.

If Microsoft had included a full Windows 7 style front end as well as Metro and allowed people to choose, this could all have been avoided. But that would have saddled them with just what they wanted to avoid, ie having to support two front ends, one for desktops and one for mobile devices.

I think that very few people would have selected Metro on a desktop if they could have kept all of the other Windows 8 improvements but kept the Windows 7 operating style.

Just my take on it anyway.

Running Win8 on my desktop now and I love it, what I don't love is "Modern UI" as it's called now, and that's why I'm using "Startisback" (http://startisback.com/) and it works wonders, I never have to see modern ui ever, if I don't choose it myself.

I tried a beta and the RC of Win8 and hated it, but then I read about all the improvements that has indeed been made under the hood and now it's like Windows 7 running on steroids!

Will probably install on my HTPC in the future as well.

I had someone call me from MS Usability.

After I finished telling him how counter-intuitive and counter-productive Windows 8 is, he mentioned that a "few" people had said that and asked me to write my opinions in reply to his email he was going to send at the end of the call.

Can't really figure out how to eloquently say the people at Microsoft are digging their own grave with this MetroModernUI...

If you use non-constructive words they will ignore you. Don't say things like "digging their own grave" because we all know it is not true - even if everyone on the planet hated Win8 it would not be the end of Microsoft. Stick to being factual, pretend you are Spock and say it like he would.

Actually.. I think MS is digging their own grave. They are so far behind and putting MetroUI in Windows 8 was going even further back.

I'm sticking with Win7 64+ custom WindowsBlinds skin which takes advantages of 3D Aero glass effects.  IMO, looks better than any stock OS that's out.  I dont have any performance issues whatsoever; especially, with my 256GB SSD + Nvidia Kepler GPU.  I only reboot for critical updates.   As for mobile platform (smartphone, tablet), I use Android Jellybean.

I guess I'm in a minority of those who stopped using the start menu back when W7 brought Win+1-9 shortcuts to the taskbar

I actually "Don't Create Start Menu Entries" when possible

Everything I access is either through a front-end or taskbar shortcut key combination. Doesn't affect me much at all. I really don't like using a mouse at all for navigation since it limits you to either a desk or an annoying wireless mouse/trackpad of some sort