Living with the Windows 8 Release Preview: Part 4
Has it already been a week since the last installment of my Living with Windows 8 series? I ended up reverting some of the changes I made to my setup in Part 3, particularly the primary display. The Windows 8 Release Preview’s current implementation of multi-monitor support still needs work, but making my secondary screen the primary display proved to be too annoying. Part of this, of course, can be attributed to the fact that I’ve gotten back into PC gaming. I quickly grew tired of having the game start up on the smaller screen, requiring me to configure my graphics settings practically every time I launched the game. I still might switch primary displays if I’m going to spend a lot of time gaming on Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3, but for now I’m just going to deal with things the way they are.
Last week, I also noted that the new MetroTwit preview app has replaced the desktop client for me. While I continue to spend most of my time in the preview Metro-style apps – even if they are somewhat limited at this point in the development process – I quickly began to miss the desktop version’s streaming updates and last read indicator. The app is also kind of glitchy (as is to be expected in a pre-release app). As a result, I’ve switched back over to the desktop version of MetroTwit for the time being.
The Windows Store has also been acting a bit odd as of late. For the last few days, the app’s live tile has displayed a “1” as if there’s an update available. The same goes for the Store itself, which has an “Update (1)” alert in the upper-right corner. Unfortunately, when you actually attempt to check for updates, there aren’t any available. It’s possible that Microsoft is testing the service’s update alerts, since I’ve seen this issue on multiple computers and accounts.
The rest of my Windows 8 Release Preview experience this week, however, has been excellent. The going rumor is that anyone running the Windows 8 Release Preview will be upgrade directly to the final version for $40, just like everyone on Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP. That being said, I’ll probably end up wiping my computer and starting fresh. I might be getting ahead of myself, however, since the release of the final version of Windows 8 is still a few months down the line.
