Well Shut My Mouth!

I really almost hate to say it ... but, y'all know me as someone who speaks my mind. Here goes ... it almost hurts to say it. It's kind of like sitting on the throne trying to ... well, you know ... ugh ... here goes:

Win8 is OK

I've been testing and playing with the thing for a year. Never could bring myself to like it. Even bought myself a new Dell Laptop with the purpose of avoiding the thing altogether. The trouble was ... they gave me a coupon to get it for $14.99.

Today I had one of those days where you just don't have anything better to do. I figured, what the heck ... I won't miss $15 and a day of tinkering. I wonder what the really released version of the thing might look like? Probably the same as the RC a month ago. So I ante'd up the $15 and downloaded it. Made an image backup of the system fully intending to restore it back to Win7 at the end of the day. No danger of loss. I wanted to see if the upgrade of my complex development box could be accomplished without losing a ton of stuff and I had a few people asking me about Win8, so I wanted to give it a fair evaluation.

Long story short: the upgrade went very well. Only a handful of utilities that I didn't need had to be removed. The install took an hour or so (considering the complexity of my system). Once running I discovered that the desktop had everything exactly the way I left it. Metro sits quietly in the background: I don't have to even bother with it if I don't want to. Even the slightly flattened desktop (sans Aero) is OK. (I thought I'd miss Aero but I really don't).

Haven't run everything just yet but the important things seem to run fine. Office 2003 is no problem. Visual Studio 2008 ... runs fine. Desktop seemed kind of sluggish at first but once it settled down everything seems in order, maybe slightly snappier. Start-up of the system is about the same as Win7 is, at the desktop level. My desktop loads a lot of things so it takes a bit of time to settle down. No different than 7. The main boot is fairly fast, but only into Metro. If your desktop is complex it will take the same time to initialize as it did under Win7. Sleep mode works about the same, too. Don't buy the idea that Win8 is an "instant on" system. Not if you're using much in the desktop it isn't. However, it's no worse than Win7 was.

The key thing for me here was that the system is pretty much the same as it was with minor enhancements. During my testing I felt that the Metro would be too intrusive. Maybe it took throwing my full setup at it to realize that it's not. The desktop doesn't have the gadgets which I kind of liked but that's not a big deal. As for the Start Button ... it really ain't hard to find the corner or tap the Windows button on the keyboard. I think we've all made too big a deal about that. I can continue my desktop development with no concern that things will break. A big relief as far as I'm concerned.

Should you upgrade from Win7? Honestly ... I don't know yet. It's certainly not a need if you're mainly a desktop user. If you want something of Metro but are concerned that something you're using will break (as I was concerned) ... it's probably going to be OK. I'm actually pretty impressed that my entire development system converted as cleanly as it did. Even my Dell Dock was preserved (in which I have a TON of things loaded). I won't need Metro very much, not to launch desktop apps anyway.

As for the Metro apps ... they seem OK. I'll play with them a bit. I don't think this will motivate me to replace my iPad and iPhone with anything Microsoft but at-least it still synchronizes with those things fine so I haven't lost anything and have gained years in terms of support life. (As if 2020 was any too soon for Win7).

I guess the bottom line here is that for desktop power-users like myself, the upgrade is safe. I can continue to do what I already do but if I somehow feel motivated to explore the Metro it's there. It's kind of a relief to know that it's this compatible with what I was already using. So far so good.

-Max

That's been my feeling too. Though I had intended to stay with Window 8 because I knew that I'd get used to it, unless it was worse than I remembered

I just want to note that i've been using 7stacks to create applications folders. These have actually done all of my needs for accessing non-metro apps:

i only have the three so far, but I can add more as I see fit.

Great to hear!

As a PC Gamer. Windows 8 is good. It runs games fine, like Windows 7 does.

The only thing I don't like is Metro. It just doesn't feel Desktop friendly. I won't use it ever. Kind of don't like that I can't disable it. :/

Other than that. Windows 8 is good. As to if you should upgrade? I don't know. You can get it for $15. It's not worse than Windows 7 since you can ignore Metro like I do with third part software.

So, if you got $15 that you have laying around, buy it. Next year it will be like what? $100+, so I say get it.

You can stick with Windows 7, but c'mon it's $15!!! Eventually you'll have to upgrade OS.

Yeah I finally caved in and one thing that has blown me away is it opens Office 2010 excel in about half a second flat. On W7 it takes 12 seconds to open. And I use it a lot. WinLiveMail and Nero also opened in record time. Miss Free Cell though.

Mustang said:

Yeah I finally caved in and one thing that has blown me away is it opens Office 2010 excel in about half a second flat. On W7 it takes 12 seconds to open. And I use it a lot. WinLiveMail and Nero also opened in record time. Miss Free Cell though.

Click to expand...

Download Microsoft Solitare collection from the app store

Welcome to the light, we have cookies

Mustang said:

Yeah I finally caved in and one thing that has blown me away is it opens Office 2010 excel in about half a second flat. On W7 it takes 12 seconds to open. And I use it a lot. WinLiveMail and Nero also opened in record time. Miss Free Cell though.

Click to expand...

Are you sure that office isn't getting preloaded in the background at boot time and was disabled in 7? I am not seeing any type of performance benefit like this.

pparks1 said:

Mustang said:

Yeah I finally caved in and one thing that has blown me away is it opens Office 2010 excel in about half a second flat. On W7 it takes 12 seconds to open. And I use it a lot. WinLiveMail and Nero also opened in record time. Miss Free Cell though.

Click to expand...

Are you sure that office isn't getting preloaded in the background at boot time and was disabled in 7? I am not seeing any type of performance benefit like this.

Click to expand...

Good point. I never thought of that. Running msconfig, the selective start up option is pre-set and it tells you to use Task Manager to see what's included in selective start. Office 10 is not shown there, unless it is hidden in another place? However, going from 12 seconds to almost instant is too good to be true unless it is preloaded.

I'll try running Office 10 included in W7 selective start and see how fast it opens.

Update: I can't seem to find an option to preload Office in W7. However, on reflection, the way it opens so quick in W8 is the same time in W7 when you have already run one of the module prgrams, say Excel, then shut it and reopened, where the memory of the opened file is temporarily retained. I think you're right. It must be preloaded in some way.

Mustang said:

Yeah I finally caved in and one thing that has blown me away is it opens Office 2010 excel in about half a second flat. On W7 it takes 12 seconds to open. And I use it a lot. WinLiveMail and Nero also opened in record time. Miss Free Cell though.

Click to expand...

Microsoft Solitaire Collection contains FreeCell, as well as the original (called Klondike in the new one), Spider, and a few others. Even has really cool themes and stuff. The only stock card game they failed to bring over was Hearts. There's a Hearts game by someone else on the store, but it's too easy (IMO) and it doesn't let you rename the 'other players' like the Windows one used to. I'm hoping MS will port Hearts over properly with the same boons as the Solitaire games, but I doubt they will.

Purble Place is gone, but I guess that only matters to people who have very young kids. Pinball is gone, but there's a really cool replacement called Pinball FX2 on the store. Minesweeper's also a thing and it's been given a facelift as well. Mahjong has been ported over, and received the same "theme" treatment as the Solitaire collection. So yeah, MOST of the games that came with Windows are still around in some form, you just gotta download and install them from the store.

Mustang said:

pparks1 said:

Mustang said:

Yeah I finally caved in and one thing that has blown me away is it opens Office 2010 excel in about half a second flat. On W7 it takes 12 seconds to open. And I use it a lot. WinLiveMail and Nero also opened in record time. Miss Free Cell though.

Click to expand...

Are you sure that office isn't getting preloaded in the background at boot time and was disabled in 7? I am not seeing any type of performance benefit like this.

Click to expand...

Good point. I never thought of that. Running msconfig, the selective start up option is pre-set and it tells you to use Task Manager to see what's included in selective start. Office 10 is not shown there, unless it is hidden in another place? However, going from 12 seconds to almost instant is too good to be true unless it is preloaded.

I'll try running Office 10 included in W7 selective start and see how fast it opens.

Click to expand...

I noticed the speed too.
Checked all in msconfig and CCleaner and didn't see any office entries.

Dave76 said:

Welcome to the light, we have cookies

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Fresh out of the oven like Mom used to make. Were those happy days or what?!!

To parallel John Lennon -> All we are saying -> Is give 8 a chance.

Thanks to all for your honest evaluation!

Thanks for the input guys re solitaire. Unfortunately with the hacked Orb start menu which I use all the time, 'Metro' is switched off, so unless apps can be saved and used in desktop it wouldn't work for me.

There are only three games that rely purely on user skill and not where you're playing against programmed random responses. And they are: Freecell, Chess and Reversi. I've noticed in games like Backgammon, even when you're playing another live player, the computer will often generate a repeat throw of the dice for an 18:1 shot, three times in a row - the proability of that happening being 1 in 5,832. Other times it will put your marble in goal, and leave you there for 7 or 8 throws of dice, with two dice in each throw, when you have a 3:1 chance of getting out in your favor. Or there will be two numbers that will stop you getting out, and you throw those same two numbers, or a double of one of them, three or even four times in a row. Any statistician would die laughing, and the sp bookies would go broke with long shots like that coming in.

pparks1 said:

Mustang said:

Yeah I finally caved in and one thing that has blown me away is it opens Office 2010 excel in about half a second flat. On W7 it takes 12 seconds to open. And I use it a lot. WinLiveMail and Nero also opened in record time. Miss Free Cell though.

Click to expand...

Are you sure that office isn't getting preloaded in the background at boot time and was disabled in 7? I am not seeing any type of performance benefit like this.

Click to expand...

Office has never been loaded at boot time. This is one of those myths that never seems to go away.

There was something called OSA, or Office Startup Assistant. What this did was pre-initialize OLE automation, and a couple of fonts used by office. This did improve startup performance, but it is nowhere close to "preloading office". OLE automation is (or at least was) used by a lot of apps, so OSA helped them as well.

OSA hasn't been in Office since.. at least Office XP.. might have even been office 97 was the last version.

get office 2013 its got alot of new features that are pretty nice

Mystere said:

Office has never been loaded at boot time. This is one of those myths that never seems to go away.

Click to expand...

Well, on my Windows 7 box at work running Office 2010, when I run msconfig and check Startup, I see an try labeled Microsoft Office 2010. In looking at the actual program file entries, I see it's just a sharepoint sync and a documents sync. But I could see that confusing a lot of people to think that components are loaded.

Something must be happening in the backside though. I cannot believe that Office used to take 12 seconds to load on Windows 7 and is now 1/2 a second on Windows 8. That's a 24x improvement.

Snipzors said:

get office 2013 its got alot of new features that are pretty nice

Click to expand...

Yeah, but it's more money to spend. Especially if you have a Business or Professional version of Office for Outlook. And it's also not available yet outside of MSDN or Technet or Preview.

This is one area I find fascinating. People are really conservative with their OS. I can change and adapt in this area pretty easily. While in politics people can jump ship and jump on a bandwagon in blink of an eye.

i think maybe the load issue has to do with the cache properties of win 8 vs win 7, as well i noticed win 8 allocated 10GB?? for virtual memory according to taskman

It could also be that my current load of W7 has become quite bloated. Although this is after runnig various cleaning programs, including registry, temp file, etc, etc.

Will reload bare bones Acronis image of OS on W7 and load only office and see how that opens up after boot.

Normally when I boot up I just hit the start button and go away and make a coffee and come back and it's up and running. Last time I measured time from pusing start button to desktop being fully functional, it took about 28 seconds. I just remeasured it and it's now up to 87 seconds, so seems it's time for a fresh install. Something's gumming up the works.

My son is a qualified computer techo, and licenced MS installer, having worked a full year in a national government run Computer Department to train techos with hands on experience with real time problems, not theoreticals. He told me the senior training officer was an ex Microsoft senior techo, and his favorite statement was: "Too hard to trouble shoot ... easier to reload!"