Windows 8

First, I have a minor maintenance release coming later today. This just fixes a few small cosmetic issues in the GUI, as well as a few other little tweaks and fixes.

Second, Process Lasso has been fully tested with Windows 8 (preview release). It works fine. Of course, Process Lasso's functions are as needed as ever, nothing has changed - nor has anything Process Lasso offers now integrated into the OS.

The Windows 8 OS itself is... different ... designed for touch input while maintaining mouse and keyboard support. If you haven't seen it, it's quite the change. The OS itself is difficult (for me) to navigate with a mouse. However, the Windows 7 style interface is mostly still around, though many OS components have been changed to accommodate touch input.

The Metro UI isn't something you can show with screenshots. The lock screen has to be 'slid' like a phone or tablet. Notifications and some panes are large, mono-color windows with big text. The mouse acts more like a 'finger' would in many areas, dragging things around. Then of course there are the tiles, which take some getting used to.

For those who are curious, here is a glimpse of what the Windows 8 Task Scheduler looks like. If the only changes were UI revamps like this, Windows 8 would be great, hands down. However, marrying touch and traditional input is still far from perfect, so I can't give the whole endeavor a thumbs up yet. It will be nice for Microsoft to have a unified OS that is touch friendly, but the marriage of the two input methods seems far from perfect in this early preview -- in my humble opinion. It will likely improve before final release.

This is the first major change to the Windows Task Scheduler in years. Of course, the Resource Monitor was introduced in Vista, but the Task Scheduler remained largely the same. Here, it is completely rewritten - intended for readability and usability on tablets and other touch screens. Notice how the listview headers are large and clickable. The text is also in multiple font sizes for easier visibility (more so seen on the other pages). It sure does use a lot more RAM though, as shown here -- more than 4x that of Process Lasso's GUI! The memory utilization shown here is the private working set.