As each day goes by, Windows 7 is looking better and better...
My list of gripes with Windows 8, and now Windows 8.1, are getting longer as time goes on:
* Of course, there's my problem with the Mute button not having any effect, first in Windows 8, and then eventually again after upgrading to Windows 8.1. I've never had anything like this problem in Windows 7, or any other version of Windows (including the much-maligned Vista).
* Windows 8.1 does not play well with proxies, requiring an Enable Loopback Utility set up for each new Metro app that is installed. It initially took me weeks (admittedly during W8 Release Candidate testing) to figure out this kludgy solution. I would expect that I'm not the only one that uses proxies and wants to run the occasional "Metro" app. How is that Microsoft did not address this in Windows 8, never mind Windows 8.1?
* I only run a few "Metro" apps in Windows 8.1 and they are frequently misbehaving. I have a Words by Post game (Scrabble variant) that periodically hangs up or only displays some of the letters on the board and my rack. So, not only did Microsoft "break" the Windows desktop, but they tacked on something that works about as well as Windows 2.13.
* I get frequent "Not Responding" messages in the title bars of my Windows desktop apps, including Google Chrome, Evernote and File Explorer. When this happens, the PC is lost in the ether. It almost always clears itself up, but that means waiting around for a minute, sometimes more, for the problem to clear.
I have had these problems in both Windows 8 and 8.1, but never in previous Windows versions.
* It seems that SkyDrive is erratic, if not actually broken. When I first installed Windows 8, it took me a couple of days of futzing around to get syncing working properly. And now that same problem returned over the weekend.
Yesterday afternoon, I restructured the folders in my SkyDrive Picture folder, via the File Explorer on the Win 8.1 desktop, to add separate folders for each my mobile devices (Android phone, Nexus 7 tablets, etc). When I checked for these new folders via my phone and my tablets, there was no sign of them, with the old directory structure remaining in place.
Worse, when I checked SkyDrive via the Metro app, it told me that the files and folders displayed (which was my new Picture folder structure) was my CLOUD storage, when in fact, if I checked my cloud storage through another PC or one of my mobile devices, the old structure was actually in place. SkyDrive Metro does NOT display cloud files, it displays local files.
After several hours messing around trying to get this to work, I give up. Then I wake up this morning, and now the changes have been finally updated to the cloud (just 12 hours after setting them up). Man, the convenience here is awesome, Microsoft.
I'm told that SkyDrive is "more deeply integrated" into Windows 8.1. I would think that this implies that SkyDrive and Windows 8.1 work together more seamlessly, but that would be wrong. Compounding the problem, one of the "benefits" of this enhanced integration is that there are NO CONTROLS for monitoring or troubleshooting SkyDrive problems. There's not even a Notification Area icon available to let me know if SkyDrive is active and/or what it's actually doing at any moment in time. This is an improvement? I think not.
My feelings about Microsoft Windows are actually familiar to me. I went through the same thing with an old version of Outlook (maybe 2003), that was so slow and glitchy that it drove me into the arms of Gmail more than 5 years ago. And I went through similar drip-drip-drip torture with Firefox about a year ago, though I think at least some of those problems may have been unique to FF and W8. Nonetheless, Chrome is now my browser of choice.
There's only so much BS to be tolerated before it comes time to move on. I think that time is very near.
I have to say that I am a very happy Android user, in large part because of the fact that the system is so open and malleable, particularly when using apps and tools such as Tasker and "AutoApps" such as AutoShare, AutoLaunch, and AutoRemote. When I bought my first Android phone roughly 2 years ago, I really wanted to give Windows Phone 7 a shot, but the phone choices at my carrier were abysmal (and really haven't improved much since then).
All of this repeated failure is opening the door to consideration of a new OS entirely. Falling back to Windows 7 (or at least setting it up for Dual Boot) is a no-brainer, but it probably makes sense to consider Linux while I'm at it.
Sorry for the rant -- but things are only getting worse, and it's sometimes difficult to suffer in silence.