Just a quick post, after we finished a day of training here at XTA. Having bought a very nice HP touchscreen monitor last year to use at Plasa, it suddenly seemed appropriate to give it a proper job. We have distributors coming, Microsoft release Windows 8, and I have a training/exhibition computer running Win7 just begging to be upgraded.
So for the princely sum of £25, I upgrade the machine to Windows 8. This is not the quickest process ever, but that’s fine – the upgrade assistant confirms the vast majority of things on the PC will survive the process (to be honest, being an exhibition PC, there’s not a lot on it, and also being Win7, I should hope there would be minimal trashing…).
So after several reboots, we’re up and running…well almost.
For no apparent reason, Windows 8 does not allow me to set the monitor resolution to the native settings for the display (this worked in Win7) so I am stuck with either a stretched but small option, or a correctly proportioned but massive anti-aliased choice. I opt for the massive option, based on the fact that I intend to poke at the monitor with my fingers and the bigger the better.
The next issue is the fact that actually finding where programs now live and accessing them is actually hampered by the lovely swipey start screen. This is made more frustrating by the oddity that when you start something that is very much a built-in “app” like Internet Explorer, a very normal Windows desktop appears briefly, before the program opens. So just how do I access this standard desktop?
As it turns out, you flip between the Start screen and a desktop (albeit one MINUS a start button – quite irritating) with the Windows key on the keyboard. Fine if you still HAVE a keyboard attached. I have yet to work out how you achieve this if you just have a touchscreen (and no mouse) but I am sure someone can comment below and help with that!
In any case, it is teething trouble – I am so wanting Windows8 to be as good as my Win7 phone (the beautiful Nokia Lumia 800) that I am willing to get shot of my android tablet (ruined earlier this year by an ICS upgrade and now becoming ever more frustrating to use – Acer A100 – great 7″ tab, pre-upgrade, now often close dropping into bin.)
A Surface beckons me with its smooth swipey fingers…but tey’re just too silly expensive right now.
Anyway, the basis for this “quick” post was just to let everyone know that with no driver upgrades or reinstallation, both AudioCore and iCore worked fine. Whilst I had a suitable setup in place, I made a couple of quick videos just to show you – if you can get past the stunning jumper I had one that day!
AudioCore first...
and iCore…
