How Windows 8 is performing in home/home office operation

w2jo

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Just My opinion.. Windows in the Win8 version is not suited for home use any longer. It is overly complex, and, even for experienced Windows users, it is counter intuitive in many areas. I think Windows 8 has taken complexity “one bridge too far” for ordinary users. This comment by me, a MSEE who has been programming computers ever since punch card days and who has been thru computer software from assembly language, C, Unix, and all versions of Microsoft OS systems from DOS onward. Below are listed some UNRESOLVED frustrations from my first months with Win8.

1) Cannot get Pandora Radio (running on Chrome Browser) to connect to HP bluetooth headphones. Win 8 says the headphones are linked, but no audio passes. Volume is up on headphones and on laptop. Bluetooth Earphones link and play music from Pandora fine on iPad and Win 7 equipped computers.
2) Pandora radio runs fine on Chrome, but not on Mozilla ver 19.0. On Mozilla, Pandora never loads. There is no error message.
3) IE10 seems to drop a box asking if I want to “allow this page to use scripts” on about every new page. I finally got disgusted and turned IE10 OFF. Interestingly, turning IE 10 to OFF involved many minutes of “computing” plus a reboot!! On an iPad, I can get rid of an APP by pressing the icon, getting the quivering icon with the X in a corner, touch the X and gone it is.. Why should IE10 be handled differently from other browsers?
4) It is not at all obvious how to SEARCH the STORE for an app. I finally went on the Internet and watched a video on how to use the store and that showed me how to do it. OBVIOUSNESS is a good characteristic in an OS.
5) The rectangular Win 8 APP icons are MUCH too big and cannot be sized except from much to big to even bigger. This makes my Win 8 desktop take up three pages when it COULD take up just one page. This is not too bad on our large touch screen computer, but on my laptop with a mouse this factor slows down operations too much.
6) The “Touch Screen Features” on a desktop WITHOUT a touchscreen is actually a big hindrance to productivity. Seemingly, there are maybe twice as many mouse operations to get things done on Windows 8 as compared with Windows 7. Even on the HP TouchSmart (with a touch screen), there is more effort to “do things” as compared with Windows 7. I compare this with my iPad where I feel like the iPad desktop is considerably more efficient and easy to use compared with Windows 7 and VASTLY easier to use as compared with our Windows 8 TouchSmart touchscreen computer' desktop screens.
7) To increase my efficiency at doing ordinary computer work with Win8, I installed the “Windows 7 Classic Shell Desktop” app on both Win8 equipped computers. Going from my “new” Win 7 desktop shell to the Win 8 desktop is a small chore. It should be possible to go from one Win8 page to any other by fabricating an icon to command the change in a single touch or mouse click. How to do this SHOULD be easy, but so far, the method escapes me.
8) Things often do not work intuitively. For example, if I right click on the IE10 icon on the Win8 desktop, one of the options is UNINSTALL. When I push this, I go to the Program Uninstall page and bounce right back. This implies that the action was accomplished but it is not. Instead, a very involved procedure is necessary to uninstall IE10.
9) Similarly, going to SETTINGS and then moving the mouse to the upper right corner and picking SEARCH and inputting BLUETOOTH SETUP fails to take you to the right place. I could go on and on.
10) Tell a new Win8 user to go and find and start Windows Update and he has a serious chore on his hands. I finally found it, but none of the Win8 SEARCH features took me there.
11) When I asked the Bluetooth Troubleshooter why Bluetooth audio did not work when the music was playing from my laptop speakers, it reported “all was working properly”. Clueless Troubleshooters are worse than no good.
12) On our TouchSmart HP computer, the “smoothness” of the touch screen functionality is compromised as compared with the HP/Win7 touchscreen driver functionality. For example, with Win8, It usually takes me two or three swipes to bring out the command icons. Using Win7, one swipe always executed your command.
13) I cannot find any option to CALIBRATE the touchscreen on my HP TouchSmart to my finger under Win8. It would be nice if each individual user could perform and store such a calibration with his username.
14) As far as I can tell, there is no way to get suggestions/problems to Microsoft Win8 Management. For the iPad, I can phone and get a rep and/or email problems and at least get a human response. Hopefully there is such a mechanism for Win8 and many people are sending in these comments.
15) Pressing F12 over and over during boot does not bring the computer up into the “which drive to boot from” as in past Windows versions. There is already enough new stuff to learn without making UNNECESSARY changes to commonly useful commands. Gratuitous changes like this are extremely aggravating and undesirable in ANY new software version.
16) Oops! I just found out that there is apparently NO WAY to cause a computer to boot up using the CDROM drive except to go into the bios and change the boot order. Whose decision was THAT? Why did I need to know how to do this? One of my friends just bought a new laptop with Win8 and was so frustrated with it after a week that he went out and bought a copy of Win7. But then, he was not able to figure out how to get the Win8 OS to boot into the Win7 installer CD. Changing the boot order in bios got him going. He is happy again. This is NOT a good sign for Win8. This man is also an engineer with many years of Windows User experience.
17) In the Windows APP store, there is no indication of PRICE of the APPs on the very first icon/description of the app. With the MS store, you have to dig deeper and almost buy an app before you can find out the price. I do not think this technique is going to generate sales OR confidence in the store.
18) I set up my wife’s user name “anne” with her password on “live.com” Little did I know how big a mistake that was! Now, I want to change her ACCOUNT NAME in live.com from anne@something.com and “live.com” will not allow this!!!! Why this limitation??!!
19) I set up my wife’s computer with her as administrator. Windows 8 will NOT allow her to access drives on our other computers running Windows 7 unless I use the “homegroups” technique. Win8 OS finds the desired remote computer on the LAN just fine. Why cannot I simply allow her to use MY username and PW in the access protection pop up window? Win7 was bad enough! My wife wanted me to change back to Win7 soon after I upgraded her to Win8. The only thing that has kept her hanging on with Win8 is the “Windows 7 Classic Shell Desktop” free add-on that I downloaded from the Internet. She too has been operating Windows based computers ever since they came out with Windows 95!
20) Our HP TouchSmart 420t does not “power down” or dim the display as set up in the Power Options. The computer stays up continuously and the display does not dim despite display dim set to 15 minutes and “shut down” set for 60 minutes. My HP laptop power options work properly.
21) I tried to pass out three copies of Win8 upgrade at an engineering firm I consult for. Only one taker. The other engineers said they would wait for “blue” which they think is the code name for Win9. I did say that a condition was that they had to install it and demo it to me within a week. That was a deal breaker.

I am hopeful that these are just “early anomalies” in Windows 8 and that future revisions will clean up the program and, at least, make it as usable as Windows 7. Some say that much of what I speak of above are just “learning problems”. However, I have had no such “learning problems” when moving from one major version of MAC operating system to another. I <did> have "some" similar problems moving from XP to Vista! :) IMHO, any NEW OS should attempt to be at least as easy to use as its predecessor. Windows 8 fails that test.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8
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