The great Windows 8 debate

[Ray8]

Hey Night Hawk, come on tell us your real name, is it Tim Cook? Like I said before a 3 year old child seems to be able to manage it with ease yet some people can't. In my opinion it's easier than Windows 7.

Keep looking for those articles Night Hawk, there's plenty of MS haters

What is it with the insults? People are making valid observations, comments and criticisms and the best that can be made in return are insults?

Have a look at what I use, nothing but Microsoft (other than some dabbling with Linux) and have done so for the last 30+ years, so I'm effectively wedded to Microsoft (happily so). I totally support the Windows OS, but do not support some of the implementations of Windows 8.

The Windows OS is but a platform/support system for what I use day to day, if that platform/support system affects my daily performance in a negative way, then I have a right to be critical. It is my personal opinion, but it appears to be reflective of what a great many others feel as well. For those who are unable to take such criticism, it reflects great insecurity or simply blind acceptance of what's thrown on your plate.

 

[Brink]

   Warning

Ok gang, let's keep this friendly shall we.

 

[BillWindows]

Actually the people who seem to be getting insulted the most on this forum are the people who like Windows 8, poor old Coke always seems to be in trouble.

 

[Night Hawk]

   Warning

Ok gang, let's keep this friendly shall we.

In 100% agreement! This is a debate topic not a place for personal attacks!

 

[BillWindows]

Yeah its my fault, I feel like a Blackberry user on an Apple forum. Its tough liking Windows 8 you'd think you'd find a haven on a Windows website, but its even worse.

Ill come back when theres at least some kind of positive talk, I just cant stand all this negativity. I might go and check out Macrumours.

 

[Ray8]

Yeah its my fault, I feel like a Blackberry user on an Apple forum. Its tough liking Windows 8 you'd think you'd find a haven on a Windows website, but its even worse.

Ill come back when theres at least some kind of positive talk, I just cant stand all this negativity. I might go and check out Macrumours.

Good idea. Come back, or not, when Microsoft calls Mea Culpa.

 

[Lee]

Mr. Brink,

You might want to move this to the "Chillout Room." Just a suggestion. . .

 

[R0bR]

Doesn't really matter now does it? all with Windows 8 sales MUCH lower than Vista was at this point in time now and surface sales are pretty much taking it in the a$$. Microsoft is receiving a real big message right now and that is, don't put lipstick on a pig and tell me it's beautiful. People are not stupid and know what they want.

And yet Windows 8 was the only Microsoft OS to gain shares on Steams network and it's close to passing Vista.

Steam Users Ditch Windows 7, Vista, XP for Windows 8, OS X, Ubuntu

 

[Chrono]

All I'm seeing is that people dislike change. Many people didn't like moving to Windows 95. What? Who needs a GUI? LOL! DOS is so much faster. What were they thinking with that stupid start menu?

"What? XP sucks! It's a total RAM HOG!"
"What? Vista sucks! It's a total ram hog!"

Same stuff, different day.

 

[Night Hawk]

That's because you are logged in on Steam's servers and 8 is the new kid on the block. The latest will always be the "rave" regardless of whether or not you can live with it! I couldn't live with XP like others could because of the perpetual BSODs it was good for! Vista brought in improvements in crash control as well as those other repair options lacking in XP.

But was still missing a few things until 7 came along and worked out 100% at least on the 32bit side while I still run the 64bit taking a hit there. The largest hit however was minor to keep running with the 64bit Windows as planned well before 7 reached beta even! Gee that would be one old written for XP game title I think that would not go on the 32bit Vista but went right on the 32bit 7 plus 7 bringing back Fat support for things like exFat on external HDs, digital cameras, camcorders, phones with memory cards, etc. as technologies were coming in.

Gettting well past the Modern or Metro with Start Menu 7 and onto Classic Shell Win 8 ran into too many other items of concern and simply wasn't going to work out here like 7 did! It's still going to come down which will work out best for each person's own situation. Some will others won't!

I should add to the previous mentions of 8 not being very "dual boot friendly" over the last few months when looking back at a Dec. article explaining why the dual boot here likely ended in mishap. More fun with Windows 8 UEFI, Secure Boot, Fedora and Ubuntu | ZDNet

 

[masterkongen]

I don't care about boottime anyway? I only close the lid and make it hibernate open it later on. After a shutdown Make it boot and making a cup of coffe or visiting the toilet`?

 

[Night Hawk]

I don't either since I generally load quite a bit onto Windows to start with while 8 didn't really seem that much maybe a few seconds faster then 7 with everything on 7! I still shutdown completely most of time if not simply leaving it running to grab a few hours of shut eye.

The problem however with the new layer of security at the boot level is what makes 8 a not so dual boot friendly OS as you would normally see with a 7/Vista, 7/XP, or 7/other OS type setup. Once this information was out it explained the problem with errors on both drives here causing both the 8 RP and 7 to freeze up solid when simply going to click on the W.Explorer icon pinned or any browser not just IE I had installed on 8 or 7. The Disk Check tool then saw both back running again.

While some prefer using the designated F key to bring up the boot device menu when each drive sees a stand alone install such as here the idea of having the option of adding a boot entry into 8 for 7 stalled. The somewhat expected incompatibility issues would be seen from time to time but for the idea of maintaining a dual boot of both with 8 as the second OS things started piling up against it.

For the geek of course there are countless workarounds despite the extra steps it takes to perform every day tasks. That is once the Start screen is out of the way by grabbing a shortcut for Classic Shell that is and dragging that into the Startup folder so CS automatically starts up with Windows. Even without that the RP at times wouldn't see the Start screen when first starting it up on VM which will soon be gone however.

 

[Ray8]

I run a dual boot on my desktop and had the same on my tablet (until I deleted Windows 8) and I never have/had any issues when booting, either one always starts/started fine. I certainly haven't noticed any start-up speed improvements with Windows 8, nor did I really expect any, as I have a lot of programs that start up in the background, which takes time to load. But that's not a problem, as when I start the PC I just go make a coffee, come back to log in and by the time the coffee's brewed, the system is running.

 

[edee]

I just feel like Windows 8 is lacking or missing something. Being a big customization geek, I like to customize my system, this was real easy with 7. Now with 8 instead of making it easier, Microsoft and their infinite wisdom has gone and made it harder to replace .dll's and such for customization purposes.

I really do not like the feel of my desktop with 8 on it, like I said before, when I am in explorer I feel as though I am using Windows 98 and it REALLY irks me.
I think what I am going to do is downgrade my desktop back to Windows 7 and install the upgrade of 8 on my laptop that I use for work, this way when I start hearing ooh's and ahh's from those at work that are still using XP I can tell them stick with it because 8 is really no great shakes.

 

[Night Hawk]

I can't blame you for wanting to dump 8 off of the desktop and go back to 7 there any! In fact I keep hearing from people who upgraded from 7 to 8 and then want 7 back on for similar reasons.

Now as far as the dual boot problems that came up that was when seeing the 8 RP installed on a second OS drive and tried out the PC refresh option while leaving the 7 host drive plugged in. That automatically detected and added 7 as a boot option where I then set the 8 drive as default and proceeded to boot into each until both versions crashed! The Disk Check tool revealed and fixed a large number of errors on both drives showing the RP certainly was not dual boot friendly and found to be more buggy then the CP!

I would expect that MS likely fixed the bugs that were present in the RP while I didn't try out the PC Refresh while the CP was on. I was looking to see if there was or wasn't any way to repair an existing 8 install over seeing a complete fresh install of Windows such as seen with the previous versions having the ability to perform an upgrade repair install option. XP did have the R for installation repair you could use once or twice without a full clean copy for the old version there while 8 seems to lack any completely!

 

[Joan Archer]

Well I'm one that doesn't miss the Start button, OK I'm still playing around with it and haven't got everything installed yet that I have in Windows 7, but I'm quite enjoying the experience.

I'm spending more time using my Windows 8 machine than I am using the Windows 7 one. I've changed things, like my desktop and the way the Start screen looks, I've altered the login so I don't have to bother with my password everytime I start up. I'm finding quite a few things that are quicker to do than they were in 7.

All in all I like the new OS, alright it's different but how boring it would be if nothing changed at least it keeps us, well me anyway, alive and active instead of stagnating.

 

[azasadny]

I'm forcing myself to learn new, more efficient ways of doing things. So far, Classic Shell/Win8 seems to work well for me. I can understand that it isn't for everyone, so there's Win7 to use if you don't care for Win8. I think Win7 is rock-solid reliable, so rushing to Win8 isn't really necessary for most people. My neighbor just moved from WinXP (old PC) to Win7 on his new PC and he loves it.

 

[Lee]

Well I'm one that doesn't miss the Start button, OK I'm still playing around with it and haven't got everything installed yet that I have in Windows 7, but I'm quite enjoying the experience.

I'm spending more time using my Windows 8 machine than I am using the Windows 7 one. I've changed things, like my desktop and the way the Start screen looks, I've altered the login so I don't have to bother with my password everytime I start up. I'm finding quite a few things that are quicker to do than they were in 7.

All in all I like the new OS, alright it's different but how boring it would be if nothing changed at least it keeps us, well me anyway, alive and active instead of stagnating.

Could not agree more. Even though I have win 7 in a VM (always up and running on my third monitor) there are few times that I go to it. Also now that I have the games from win 7 there really is no reason to be on seven. But, like others I do find it hard to let go.

 

[Night Hawk]

The thing I was finding is that once Classic Shell and all quick launch type additional toolbars were all set to go it simply wasn't going to work out for various programs I would still be running. But that brings up the newer version compatibility issues that have been a common factor since the early Windows days!

The stripping out of the Media Center was no loss here since I don't even use one tuner card's form of MC that came with. Neither works for composite type input. When they stiffled WMP however that was the downside for vcd projects and why spend again on the same software and not be able to use it?

The "Modern" or "Metro" whatever Start screen was the largest pain in... along with how they hid the Control Panel and split things up with a limited hidden popup right click menu. These were the constant annoyances despite whatever improvements were seen at the core level and why it wasn't going to work out for a good second OS here.

That brings us to the formula of if it is going to work out for you then you put up with the "oddities of RT"! If it isn't then stay with a good predecessor namely 7!

 

[Max Peck]

   Warning

Ok gang, let's keep this friendly shall we.

In 100% agreement! This is a debate topic not a place for personal attacks!

Yeah, let's not start acting like the folks on ZDNet. The discussions there usually degenerate pretty quickly.

-Max