The redesigned Windows 8 Task Manager is just one example of how Microsoft is rebuilding its operating system as a more user friendly experience. Some people are concerned Microsoft's going too far with the Metro UI and theeradication of the Start Menu. The Task Manager, at least, won't be an oversimplification--Microsoft's latest Building Windows 8 blog shows off an improved Performance tab for tracking the workload of logical processors.

If you're running an Intel processor with Hyperthreading, you'll be able to see how all of those logical processors are being put to work. But that's the bare minimum of what the Task Manager can show off--Microsoft's changes target servers and crazy computer rigs running 64, 256 or the maximum 640 logical processors Windows supports.

The Windows 7 Task Manager's Performance tab gets the job done on dual- or quad-core systems. It's not great--it just displays small graphs for each processor core that can be expanded with a double click. When you start adding logical processors, though, everything breaks down. Microsoft's example of 160 logical processors shows that you can't glean anything from Windows 7's breakdown:

The Windows 8 Task Manager switches to the heat map view Microsoft already showed off for program memory, CPU, network and disk usage.

More active logical processors show up in a darker color, and hovering over each icon reveals the processor ID. From there you can set processor affinity for certain programs if you really want to micromanage your system. That's not a new feature in Windows 8--you can set CPU affinity in earlier versions of the OS--but Windows 8 makes it much easier to see how processors are being allocated by default.

http://www.tested.com/news/windows-8-simplifies-cpu-load-monitoring-with-heat-maps/3097/

A welcome change as multicore CPUs become ever more common

Windows 8 just looks amazing.

They still have a hard time killing off Windows XP. Now, they'd have to kill off Windows 7, too.

Buying a new PC when Windows 8 comes out.

I just recently installed XP on my second computer :) I think I will skip Win8 though.

I will as well... it's not all that better than 7 anyway... plus... 7 is awesome.

7 is also perfect.

How do you know? half the features probably haven't been announced, plus the much better multicore CPU support, better task manager and the significantly shorter boot time has me interested. Tho I won't get it until atleast the first service pack.

7 is plenty fast for me... and on my Phenom II 965, takes half a minute to boot to desktop after post... mind you, it's not on an SSD. I can't afford one.

It's a case of advancement that most people won't need anytime soon. The only CPUs that will perhaps benefit from it are the Bulldozers. And even then, they are plenty fast still. Remember, we are only now entering an age where dual-cores are commonplace.

Windows 8 can boot in under 10 secconds on the same system that Windows 7 takes over 40.

There is also another massive improvement I forgot about.

Copying, moving, renaming, and deleting are far and away the most heavily used features within Windows Explorer, representing 50% of total command usage (based on Windows 7 telemetry data). For Windows 8, we want to make sure that using these core file management commands, which we collectively refer to as “copy jobs,” is a great experience.

We know from telemetry data (which is based on hundreds of millions of individuals opting in to provide anonymous data about product usage), that although 50% of these jobs take less than 10 seconds to complete, many people are also doing much larger jobs, 20% of which take more than 2 minutes to complete. Prior versions of Windows Explorer can handle these kinds of jobs, but Explorer isn’t optimized for high-volume jobs or for executing multiple copy jobs concurrently.

Usability studies confirm what most of us know—there are some pretty cluttered and confusing parts of the Windows 7 copy experience. This is particularly true when people need to deal with files and folders that have the same file names, in what we call file name collisions. Lastly, our telemetry shows that 5.61% of copy jobs fail to complete for a variety of different reasons ranging from network interruptions to people just canceling the operation.

We clearly have an opportunity to make some improvements in the experience of high-volume copying, in dealing with file name collisions, and in assuring the successful completion of copy jobs.

Many of you reading this blog post come at this from a slightly different perspective. Like me, you might already have a third-party copy management tool that already addresses these high-volume scenarios. Our telemetry data shows that the most popular of these add-ons (such as TeraCopy, FastCopy, and Copy Handler) are running on fewer than .45% of Windows 7 PCs. While that might be a large absolute number given the size of the Windows 7 customer base, it still tells us that most people do not have a great tool for high-volume copy jobs.

We aren’t aiming to match the feature sets of these add-ons. We expect that there will be a vibrant market for third-party add-ons for a long time. Our focus is on improving the experience of the person who is doing high-volume copying with Explorer today, who would like more control, more insight into what’s going on while copying, and a cleaner, more streamlined experience.

In Windows 8, we have three main goals for our improvements to the copy experience:

• One place to manage all copy jobs: Create one unified experience for managing and monitoring ongoing copy operations.
• Clear and concise: Remove distractions and give people the key information they need.
• User in control: Put people in control of their copy operations.

Based on these goals, we made four major improvements to the copy experience. Here is a short video demo of these improvements—but keep reading for a more detailed tour.

 
If you don't see a video here or can't play it, download it here: High quality MP4 | Low quality MP4

First, we’ve consolidated the copy experience. You can now review and control all the Explorer copy jobs currently executing in one combined UI. Windows 8 presents all pending copy jobs in this single dialog, saving you from having to navigate through multiple floating dialogs looking for the one you need.

Next, we’ve added the ability to pause, resume, and stop each copy operation currently underway. This gives you control over which copy jobs will complete first. You can also click any of the source or destination folders while the copy operation is taking place and open up those folders.

To support this new ability to prioritize and decide, we’ve added a detailed view with a real-time throughput graph. Now each copy job shows the speed of data transfer, the transfer rate trend, and how much data in left to transfer. While this is not designed for benchmarking, in many cases it can provide a quick and easy way to assess what is going on for a particular job.

Here you can see three copy jobs underway:

And here you can see how the speed of file transfer increases substantially when two of the copy jobs are paused:

We’re anticipating that many of you are going to want to know what we’ve done to improve the accuracy of the estimated time remaining for a copy to complete. (This has been the source of some pretty funny jokes over the years).

Estimating the time remaining to complete a copy is nearly impossible to do with any precision because there are many unpredictable and uncontrollable variables involved – for instance, how much network bandwidth will be available for the length of the copy job? Will your anti-virus software spin up and start scanning files? Will another application need to access the hard drive? Will the user start another copy job?

Rather than invest a lot of time coming up with a low confidence estimate that would be only slightly improved over the current one, we focused on presenting the information we were confident about in a useful and compelling way. This makes the most reliable information we have available to you so you can make more informed decisions.

Our last major set of improvements simplify and clean up the experience for resolving file name collisions, which we also refer to as “conflict resolution.” At this point we can admit that the current experience can be rather confusing. People don’t know which files are which, and they find it challenging to find the information they need to make a decision.

Windows 7 Conflict Resolution dialog

Our new design is much more clear, concise, and efficient, providing a much more visible and actionable approach to conflict resolution. All the files from the source are on the left. All the files in the target location with file name collisions are on the right. The screen layout is easy to understand and shows you the critical information for all the collisions, front and center in one dialog.

 
The new Windows 8 Conflict Resolution dialog

If you need to know even more about the conflicting files, you can hover over the thumbnail image to see the file path or  double-click it to open it from here.

Finally, in addition to these big improvements, we’ve also done a thorough scrub and removed many of the confirmation dialogs that you’ve told us are annoying or feel redundant (i.e. “are you sure you want to move this file to the recycle bin?” or “are you sure you want to merge these folders?”) to create a quieter, less distracting experience.

All of this adds up to building a significantly improved copy experience, one that is unified, concise, and clear, and which puts you in control of your experience.

--Alex Simons

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/08/23/improving-our-file-management-basics-copy-move-rename-and-delete.aspx