buzzy | More Windows 8

Since I posted that long entry about Windows 8 (DW/LJ), I figured I'd expand on it to avoid having a day where I don't type very much. The stuff I talk about in this entry is mostly based on the Windows 8 Consumer Preview and Windows Server 8 Beta Compatibility Cookbook, available here. (Note that they update this, and its name and content may change. This stuff I'm writing about is how it displayed as of April 29, 2012, when I downloaded it.)

I mentioned that Backup and Restore has been removed. It's actually been deprecated, and it's still in the operating system somewhere, but they expect everyone to use File History, which does less and only does it to a smaller set of files. Microsoft says that it's rarely used*. I guess I was one of the rare people who used it.
I mentioned that Previous Versions has been removed. Microsoft said this feature was rarely used*, though I used it occasionally, whenever I screwed up somehow and needed a copy of a file from a time between my last backup and now. (Again, I was one of those rare people.) The API for that still exists, but the only way to create and access Previous Versions is to code a brand new implementation.
The Desktop Window Manager is now always on. In Windows Vista and 7, it's what makes the fancy window animations. Before, it was a service that you could disable, and then your windows would look kinda grey-black. It's used as part of the separation of Metro apps and regular desktop programs. It will, however turn off if you don't have a good enough graphics card, but considering that even the crappy integrated Intel cards work, you have to have a very crappy card for it not to work. If your video card doesn't support 32-bit color, it also won't work. (Just try setting your colors to something lower than 32-bit on Windows 7 and watch what happens to your pretty Aero effects.) If your card does support 32-bit color, your display will be set to that and you won't be able to change it to anything else. If a program needs fewer colors, it will be tricked into thinking it is running with fewer colors while rest of the system continues to run at 32-bit color. Previously, you'd get fancy Aero effects only if your computer did well enough on the Windows Experience Index/WinSAT/whatever you want to call it. Now it doesn't matter, and the Windows Experience Index/WinSAT doesn't even run an Aero test. Because of this 32-bit color thing, when you connect to the computer using Remote Desktop, the fancy window effects will always appear in Remote Desktop, regardless of what version the client is running, and the connection will always have 32-bit color, regardless of what the client selects. I think I should try to run DOSBox on there so that it
Some older DirectX 9 video cards will have to use a generic driver. Unlike Windows 7 and Vista, the generic driver actually provides support for Aero and its fancy effects. Unfortunately, it doesn't allow multiple monitors, won't allow the computer to sleep, and you might only get one screen resolution. On the other hand, the software-based graphics card (what this generic driver boils down to) is faster than the Intel GMA500.
I mentioned that the new Task Manager shows startup programs. (Consequently, this was removed from msconfig.exe.) I also mentioned that it shows a vague level of what impact the program's startup has on your startup time. Well, here's the explanation to make it a little less vague: Low impact means the program uses less than 300 ms of CPU time and less than 300 KB of disk I/O. Medium impact means the program uses 300-1000 ms of CPU time or 300 KB-3 MB of disk I/O. High impact means the program uses more than one second of CPU time or more than 3 MB of disk I/O. These all refer to the programs at startup, so it probably measures how much CPU and disk I/O a program uses over a period of a few seconds. The document I linked above mentions several reasons developers make programs start up with Windows and they recommend that developers knock it off. Their reasoning is different from my reasoning for not running startup programs. In my case, I don't want the startup to be any slower than its best. In Microsoft's case, they have different reasons. The programs that they don't want running at startup: updaters (e.g., Apple Software Update, Google Update, Adobe ARM), access to hardware-related info that already exists in Windows (e.g., Intel's GPU system tray icon, the Alps/Synaptic touch pad icons, the IDT sound control panel), device notifiers (e.g., Broadcom, Belkin, and Intel wireless network utilities, to name a few), pre-launchers (e.g., Adobe Acrobat Speed Launcher, etc.), and adware.
There's now USB 3.0 support. My computer isn't fancy enough to have USB 3.0 in it, and I have no USB 3.0 peripherals, so that doesn't really matter to me. It would be handy to have that for an external hard drive, or at least an eSATA connector, which would work fine on Windows 7.

* I'm guessing that the way they figured out what was rarely used was the data gathered from the Customer Experience Program. That's one of the first things I shut off, and I figure the only people who leave it on are the kinds of people who don't read things like EULAs or Privacy Policies...and those are probably the same kind of people who don't run backups.