My main Win 7 workstation has been really acting flaky lately.  Microsoft
has just release Windows 8 RTM, so I was wondering if anyone had tested it
out yet?

I realize there are plenty of opinions on the whole Metro interface, but
I'm just wondering if it's stable and if Softimage will run under it.

I need to take a weekend and reformat this machine & start over anyway.

Thanks,

Paul

I haven't tried Windows 8, yet, but I do have Windows 7 64 bit Pro. My
machine was acting flaky,
also, so I reformatted the drive and re-installed Windows and all my APPS.
It took me
an entire day, with all the Windows updates, and drivers, but it was worth
it. Much more
stable, now.

I had heard that Windows 8 was geared heavily for touch screens, so I
haven't even considered it.
I can't see me getting a 32" touch screen, and I would need
a chiropractor after reaching across
my desk to the screen all day.

On Fri, Aug 17, 2012 at 12:18 PM, Paul Griswold <

Best Regards,
*  Stephen P. Davidson**
       **(954) 552-7956
*    sdavid...@3Danimationmagic.com

<http://www.3danimationmagic.com>

I've tested W8RP on my old HP laptop, and so far almost all apps did run
just fine.

The Metro/Modern startscreen and the sliding panels/hotcorners need some
getting used to.
But it seems to be quite a bit faster with a lot of things than W7,
booting espc.
Memory management seems to be up a notch as well.

I didn't have much problems regarding stability. There were some
stability issues reported with certain i7 mobo's during the latest W8RP,
but that seems to be solved with the more recent drivers.

And yes, it's a lot more touch centric than all previous versions of
Windows, but that doesn't mean it's not workable with a mouse or tablet.

Rob
\/-------------\/----------------\/

On 17-8-2012 18:47, Stephen Davidson wrote:

Check out the Wacom Intuos 5 Touch tablets, should work great with Win8, I
use it with Win7 and OSX.
I too don't intend to grab at my monitor all day but with the Wacom it's
quite natural.
My only gripe is, that it doesn't act like a tablet with "absolute"
coordinates (where you touch is where your pointer is) but like a mouse or
laptop touch pad.
That also makes multitouch less useful, but I still am very happy with it,
after my old one broke.

Cheers,

Tom

On 17 August 2012 19:21, Rob Wuijster <r...@casema.nl> wrote:

it seems to be shame that they create OS that works a bit faster/better
than win7 and then focus mainly on touch stuff and leave most pro
workstation work on dry.
was is that hard to leave option to work as normal desktop workstation and
not touchcrap?
after all all versions ha  old win classic look, why not keep it for
people that are looking for function an not fancy look.

For the record you can click on "Desktop" and get the standard Windows
desktop you know and love.

It does show the Metro UI by default at first though.

On Fri, Aug 17, 2012 at 3:42 PM, Mirko Jankovic <

I tried out the release preview on my laptop and windows 8 is crap. The only reason this exists is so Microsoft can leverage their desktop OS to get people you use their extremely unpopular Phone OS. They have literally removed everything that made windows 7 so popular (start menu, quick searches, etc.). Now you are forced to move your mouse all over the screen to the “hot corners” or “hot edges” to get to all the features you used to easily get to with the start menu. You load to the Phone OS screen and the desktop is now an “app” that you run your “legacy apps” in (IOW, where the real programs run). All the new phone apps load full screen and can not be windowed. That means that all the little helper programs to run in small windows will now load FULL SCREEN. They have basically put a GUI on DOS and added in task swapping. None of the new apps can run in the background as far as I have been able to tell, so they all basically go into hibernation (to save battery life... as if my PC runs on batteries.....) when you switch apps, so multitasking is dead unless you are running “Legacy apps” on the Legacy desktop (which they say they will be removing).  They want you to buy all these touch enabled tablet things for your PC, so your PC can be as useful as your laptop when you don’t have a mouse. Unlike all the other Windows releases, you can not go back to the older interface style. It has all been physically remove from the OS leaving you with only one choice (even though it was all there in the initial developers preview).

Windows 8 is pure rubbish with a clunky,  sickening, eye wrenching phone interface plugged on top of it and it has made me do something none of the other OS makers have ever been able to do..... I have now seriously considered moving to another OS/Platform. This thing is even more dumbed down than OSX and that is something that I didn’t think was possible.  I really tried to get used to windows 8, but I just feel handicapped on that OS.  If they don’t do some serious backpedaling in the future I will be moving to something else. I predict that Linux and mac “sales” will increase dramatically over the next few years.

From: Paul Griswold
Sent: Friday, August 17, 2012 9:18 AM
To: Softimage Mailing list
Subject: OT: Windows 8 - anyone?

My main Win 7 workstation has been really acting flaky lately.  Microsoft has just release Windows 8 RTM, so I was wondering if anyone had tested it out yet?

I realize there are plenty of opinions on the whole Metro interface, but I'm just wondering if it's stable and if Softimage will run under it.

I need to take a weekend and reformat this machine & start over anyway.

Thanks,

Paul

Microsoft stated Windows 7 mode would be retained, but you would have to activate it from the control panel.

Matt

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Sam Bowling
Sent: Friday, August 17, 2012 7:33 PM
To: softim...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: OT: Windows 8 - anyone?

I tried out the release preview on my laptop and windows 8 is crap. The only reason this exists is so Microsoft can leverage their desktop OS to get people you use their extremely unpopular Phone OS. They have literally removed everything that made windows 7 so popular (start menu, quick searches, etc.). Now you are forced to move your mouse all over the screen to the “hot corners” or “hot edges” to get to all the features you used to easily get to with the start menu. You load to the Phone OS screen and the desktop is now an “app” that you run your “legacy apps” in (IOW, where the real programs run). All the new phone apps load full screen and can not be windowed. That means that all the little helper programs to run in small windows will now load FULL SCREEN. They have basically put a GUI on DOS and added in task swapping. None of the new apps can run in the background as far as I have been able to tell, so they all basically go into hibernation (to save battery life... as if my PC runs on batteries.....) when you switch apps, so multitasking is dead unless you are running “Legacy apps” on the Legacy desktop (which they say they will be removing).  They want you to buy all these touch enabled tablet things for your PC, so your PC can be as useful as your laptop when you don’t have a mouse. Unlike all the other Windows releases, you can not go back to the older interface style. It has all been physically remove from the OS leaving you with only one choice (even though it was all there in the initial developers preview).

Windows 8 is pure rubbish with a clunky,  sickening, eye wrenching phone interface plugged on top of it and it has made me do something none of the other OS makers have ever been able to do..... I have now seriously considered moving to another OS/Platform. This thing is even more dumbed down than OSX and that is something that I didn’t think was possible.  I really tried to get used to windows 8, but I just feel handicapped on that OS.  If they don’t do some serious backpedaling in the future I will be moving to something else. I predict that Linux and mac “sales” will increase dramatically over the next few years.

From: Paul Griswold<mailto:pgrisw...@fusiondigitalproductions.com>
Sent: Friday, August 17, 2012 9:18 AM
To: Softimage Mailing list<mailto:softim...@listproc.autodesk.com>
Subject: OT: Windows 8 - anyone?

My main Win 7 workstation has been really acting flaky lately.  Microsoft has just release Windows 8 RTM, so I was wondering if anyone had tested it out yet?

I realize there are plenty of opinions on the whole Metro interface, but I'm just wondering if it's stable and if Softimage will run under it.

I need to take a weekend and reformat this machine & start over anyway.

Thanks,

Paul

Interesting because no one seems to have been able to find it yet. I haven’t tried the actual RTM version.

From: Matt Lind
Sent: Friday, August 17, 2012 7:39 PM
To: softim...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: RE: OT: Windows 8 - anyone?

Microsoft stated Windows 7 mode would be retained, but you would have to activate it from the control panel.

Matt

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Sam Bowling
Sent: Friday, August 17, 2012 7:33 PM
To: softim...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: OT: Windows 8 - anyone?

I tried out the release preview on my laptop and windows 8 is crap. The only reason this exists is so Microsoft can leverage their desktop OS to get people you use their extremely unpopular Phone OS. They have literally removed everything that made windows 7 so popular (start menu, quick searches, etc.). Now you are forced to move your mouse all over the screen to the “hot corners” or “hot edges” to get to all the features you used to easily get to with the start menu. You load to the Phone OS screen and the desktop is now an “app” that you run your “legacy apps” in (IOW, where the real programs run). All the new phone apps load full screen and can not be windowed. That means that all the little helper programs to run in small windows will now load FULL SCREEN. They have basically put a GUI on DOS and added in task swapping. None of the new apps can run in the background as far as I have been able to tell, so they all basically go into hibernation (to save battery life... as if my PC runs on batteries.....) when you switch apps, so multitasking is dead unless you are running “Legacy apps” on the Legacy desktop (which they say they will be removing).  They want you to buy all these touch enabled tablet things for your PC, so your PC can be as useful as your laptop when you don’t have a mouse. Unlike all the other Windows releases, you can not go back to the older interface style. It has all been physically remove from the OS leaving you with only one choice (even though it was all there in the initial developers preview).

Windows 8 is pure rubbish with a clunky,  sickening, eye wrenching phone interface plugged on top of it and it has made me do something none of the other OS makers have ever been able to do..... I have now seriously considered moving to another OS/Platform. This thing is even more dumbed down than OSX and that is something that I didn’t think was possible.  I really tried to get used to windows 8, but I just feel handicapped on that OS.  If they don’t do some serious backpedaling in the future I will be moving to something else. I predict that Linux and mac “sales” will increase dramatically over the next few years.

From: Paul Griswold

Sent: Friday, August 17, 2012 9:18 AM

To: Softimage Mailing list

Subject: OT: Windows 8 - anyone?

My main Win 7 workstation has been really acting flaky lately.  Microsoft has just release Windows 8 RTM, so I was wondering if anyone had tested it out yet?

I realize there are plenty of opinions on the whole Metro interface, but I'm just wondering if it's stable and if Softimage will run under it.

I need to take a weekend and reformat this machine & start over anyway.

Thanks,

Paul

this makes me think about Apple rumour to let go the dev on the mac pros...

Seem's everybody is going nuts on the mobile thing. And all professional
market get's ignored!!

i wont be able to do Arnold render regions on my f-ing iphone!!!!!
wtf is going on with these guys!?

sly

--

*Sylvain Lebeau // SHED**
*V-P/Visual effects supervisor
1410, RUE STANLEY, 11E �TAGE MONTR�AL (QU�BEC) H3A 1P8
T 514 849-1555 F 514 849-5025WWW.SHEDMTL.COM
<http://www.shedmtl.com/><http://WWW.SHEDMTL.COM <http://www.shedmtl.com/>>

It's not any better in the Linux Camp. Everyone is moving towards tablet
use. But what boggles me is that... how can the developers themselves stand
it?

On a side note.

I've been using Linux for a long time now, but got fed up with crappy wacom
drivers and the crippled paint applications. So... I've installed Windows7
on my workstation at home. And so far I'm really impressed with the speed
and the response from the system. Softimage works a lot smoother on
Windows7 than on CentOS 6.3.

Anyhow, going to take a shower now since I feel quite dirty.

And I think Windows 8 will be as Vista, a "side-note". They are already
talking about Windows9.

regards
stefan

postbox-contact.jpg 1K Download

". So... I've installed Windows7 on my workstation at home. And so far I'm
really impressed with the speed and the response from the system. Softimage
works a lot smoother on Windows7 than on CentOS 6.3."

hmm, it's not april.... did hell just freeze over? actually the day alan
jones writes something like that will be the day hell truly freezes over..

on a serious note, for every single windows release that's about to come
out since win2k I've heard the same exact thing "this will be terrible, I'm
staying with win xxxx forever" yet those same people somehow upgraded
throughout the years and found themselves quite happy...

On Sat, Aug 18, 2012 at 6:55 PM, Stefan Andersson <sander...@gmail.com>wrote:

postbox-contact.jpg 1K Download

Not sure what you mean, but the desktop is still there with the same
keyboard/mouse support as W7.
But with some Metro/Modern UI additions, like the app bar to the left
and the settings bar on the right that are accessed with the mouse.

Sure, the start menu/button have been replaces by the new Metro/Modern
UI, although there's still a handy rightclick menu where the visibal
start button was.
With a lot of handy shortcuts to common 'poweruser' tasks.
But I don't see much difference in the way I would use W8 or W7. W8 does
have some interesting new ways of working and handling apps.

It seems one is in the 'I like it' or 'I hate it' camp, there's no real
in the middle for now.
Me personally am very interested to see if whole the Metro/Modern UI
apps thing takes off. Having the same app on your phone, tablet and
desktop with 'Skydrive saved' settings sounds good in theory.
It's to see if MS can pull this of much more cleanly as previous large
projects.

Rob
\/-------------\/----------------\/

On 17-8-2012 21:42, Mirko Jankovic wrote:

Sam is right on the money.  I heard an interview with Paul Thurrott and he
said according to the Windows team, Windows 8 is much like the first
version of OS-X.  It's not Windows 7 with some bolt-on UI elements, it is a
new OS that has a "Classic" mode to maintain compatibility with non-Metro
apps.

There are no more windows in Windows except in Desktop mode.  Even a
file requester is full-screen.  I do wonder how pro developers are going to
deal with it - because MS says the desktop mode will be phased out
eventually, just like Apple got rid of Classic mode.

The tablet craze is here to stay.  It's all about chasing dollars & there
are a lot more dollars in the general public then there is in selling only
to any one particular market segment.  Just look at Apple's current stock
price & their cash on hand and you can understand what they're all
thinking.

I did see there's a Windows 8 Enterprise version that's being release too.
 Is that more pro-friendly?

-Paul

When I think of operating systems today I think of the "death scene" in Toy
Story 3. Perhaps we should just hold hands and face the facts. Maybe there
will be a giant claw out there that can save us all...

/Stefan

I don't think there will be any pro-friendly OS's out there in a few
years time.
Like people already said, everybody is jumping on the mobile train, and
the 'pro's' get the leftovers on the desktop.

As more and more apps move to the web and cloud (Office 2012 e.g.),
we'll slowly start too see a shift. At some point the desktop as we
know, use and love will be dead, not just on Windows.

And to answer your W8 Enterprise question, it's the same with some
additions for security, domain login and such.

Rob
\/-------------\/----------------\/

On 18-8-2012 13:40, Paul Griswold wrote:

It seems like the market might be ripe for some enterprising new company to
come along and develop some specialized pro-level hardware & software.  Of
course it would be Silicon based hardware, specialize in Graphics and would
need to be Incorporated...  ah, but that's a crazy idea!

It's not possible to turn it back to win7, but it's my understanding that
it's only the Start menu you'd miss when you run the desktop?

It's on the ARM that the desktop might go away, but on intel i'm pretty
sure it's here to stay.
On Aug 17, 2012 10:50 PM, "Sam Bowling" <sbowl...@cox.net> wrote:

Mobile is so overrated. Does anyone actually get anything done on a
mobile device?

On 8/18/2012 7:51 AM, Rob Wuijster wrote:

Depends on what you mean by getting things done.  With my iPhone & iPad +
Growl and Boxcar I can have Deadline send me a message when renders finish.
 I do a lot of general-purpose office work while sitting on the sofa with
my kids in the evening on my iPad.  I'm not doing modeling, etc., but it's
nice to be able to know I can go hiking with my kids and still be able to
follow up with a client via email.

I know there was a video recently posted from SIGGRAPH where Thiago was
talking about his new project being able to render from an iPad in Chrome.
 So you never know where things are headed.

-Paul

On Sat, Aug 18, 2012 at 2:44 PM, David Gallagher <

Wasn't I supposed to be all gloomy about newfangled stuff ;-)

Well, I currently work on audio related things and just read an interesting
article about Windows 8 and some benchmarks:
http://blog.cakewalk.com/windows-8-a-benchmark-for-music-production-a...

I can't see any reason for doom and gloom to be honest. Looks more like a
continuation of Vista->Win7 to me.
I worked from early on with Vista 64 and found it much better than its
reputation - and much better as XP in fact.
Win 7 improved it a lot in interaction speed, memory needed, multicore use
etc. Much smoother experience.
Now from what I read Win 8 goes on with that.

I agree with the sentiment that there is space for a real pro OS, but this
space exists for a long time now. I wasn't surprised with OSX going the way
of the app, was quite a lot more surprised when Windows did it and just
couldn't believe some of the Linux things I saw...
Should somebody finally resurrect BeOS? ;-)

But then again: What most people do with computers can probably be done on
a tablet or laptop.
I can actually see us head back to Silicon Graphics days, with real high
end pro machines becoming something special again.
In a way this is natural if you think about it: why should everybody and
his mom working on basically the same machines as you?

I personally plan to do a full fresh install as soon as Win8 is available -
finally on a SSD.
Should be snappy.
And keep the Win7 Partition as a fallback.

Cheers,

Tom

http://www.screendream.de

Minor correction: It doesn't render on the iPad, it receives a streaming
progressive render in realtime and the client is just a GUI to it. ;)

On Sat, Aug 18, 2012 at 3:02 PM, Paul Griswold <

You realize that there are still a ton of people that are still running windows XP, right? You also seem to be forgetting Vista (which I actually liked, but most other people didn’t).

From: Andreas Bystrom
Sent: Saturday, August 18, 2012 1:05 AM
To: softim...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: OT: Windows 8 - anyone?

". So... I've installed Windows7 on my workstation at home. And so far I'm really impressed with the speed and the response from the system. Softimage works a lot smoother on Windows7 than on CentOS 6.3."

hmm, it's not april.... did hell just freeze over? actually the day alan jones writes something like that will be the day hell truly freezes over..

on a serious note, for every single windows release that's about to come out since win2k I've heard the same exact thing "this will be terrible, I'm staying with win xxxx forever" yet those same people somehow upgraded throughout the years and found themselves quite happy...

  On a side note.

  I've been using Linux for a long time now, but got fed up with crappy wacom drivers and the crippled paint applications. So... I've installed Windows7 on my workstation at home. And so far I'm really impressed with the speed and the response from the system. Softimage works a lot smoother on Windows7 than on CentOS 6.3.

  Anyhow, going to take a shower now since I feel quite dirty.

  And I think Windows 8 will be as Vista, a "side-note". They are already talking about Windows9.

  regards
  stefan

  On Fri, Aug 17, 2012 at 8:01 PM, Sylvain Lebeau <s...@shedmtl.com> wrote:

    this makes me think about Apple rumour to let go the dev on the mac pros...

    Seem's everybody is going nuts on the mobile thing. And all professional market get's ignored!!

    i wont be able to do Arnold render regions on my f-ing iphone!!!!!
    wtf is going on with these guys!?

    sly

    --

    Sylvain Lebeau // SHED
    V-P/Visual effects supervisor
    1410, RUE STANLEY, 11E ÉTAGE MONTRÉAL (QUÉBEC) H3A 1P8
    T 514 849-1555 F 514 849-5025 WWW.SHEDMTL.COM <http://WWW.SHEDMTL.COM>

      Paul Griswold
      Friday, August 17, 2012 12:18 PM
      My main Win 7 workstation has been really acting flaky lately.  Microsoft has just release Windows 8 RTM, so I was wondering if anyone had tested it out yet?

      I realize there are plenty of opinions on the whole Metro interface, but I'm just wondering if it's stable and if Softimage will run under it.

      I need to take a weekend and reformat this machine & start over anyway.

      Thanks,

      Paul

  --
  stefan andersson - digital janitor - http://sanders3d.wordpress.com

--
Andreas Byström
Lighting TD - Weta Digital

postbox-contact.jpg 1K Download

The late 2012 MacPros are, umhh, not impressive but apple mgmnt has promised
something really great for next year...

I wonder how much this is a result of Jobs gone (r.i.p.) and Intel not
feeling
any pressure to make Xeons competitive in terms of price against
performance?

The 2008 MacPro s beat Dell/HP/Lenovo both in terms of price and style and
opened
a big chunk of market to the MacPro by making them run really nice with
windows.

...

Maybe we don t need content creation artists using dedicated hardware
anymore?

There s enough cloud apps to instantly create nice images and rights-managed
stuff
billed by the click to get rid of pesky artists blocking the retina already?

And there s always india, china and millions of young, idealistic interns to
pull from?

...

I would also like to have a solid, clutter free workstation without any
license/transfer hassle
I can use productively for content creation using stable and reliably tools
plus betas where
it makes sense.

But maybe I m old-fashioned and should just wave off (using a gesture
involving my middle finger?)

Cheers,

tim

On 18.08.2012 05:01, Sylvain Lebeau wrote: