Windows 8 - first impressions

First impressions… it is fast. I installed it on my lenovo t410 (i5 w/ 8gb ram) and it really is about 50% faster than Windows 7 running on that same box. I just finished installing ubuntu 12.10 on the same box and here’s a comparison of boot times :

ubuntu 12.10

21s to login 35s to desktop

Win7 enterprise

42s to login 1”25s to desktop.

Win8 pro

29s to login 43s to desktop

Touch

Even though it is clear that this was designed for “touch” I found the mouse interactions to be pretty intuitive. Even the somewhat jarring switch to classic desktop isn’t as bad as I had anticipated.