Since I got a cheap license for 15 USD via the Microsoft upgrade, I figured what the heck, let meh give it teh benefit of teh doubt Installation went fast and smooth I love the reboot speed which nearly went down by half for meh on my SSD down from 30 seconds to 15 seconds thanks to its speedy shut down process and speedy startup. That's it! That's about the only good thing I can say about Windows 8 I really tried to get used to it guys and to move on with Technology but it just ain't happening. and it's not the Start Menu that bothers meh as I bought a utility for 5 bucks from Stardock that bring teh start menu back and is actually quiet good Here are teh quirks which made me go nuts: - I don't like the fact that the local user account is your roaming Live ID account - Try launching any video file, and watch how annoying the default built in play is launching the file in full screen and I couldn't even find the freakin' volume up/down and the on screen text of the player always comes in the way when you are fast forwarding between diff. parts of the movie. Plain rubbish! What's worse, is even when I set MPC-HC as my default player for all file types, Windows would still launch it built in player unless I right clicked on the video, then selected open with MPC-HC - I absolutely hate the Skype that comes with Windows 8! Has anyone used this? It's a joke, so annoying and difficult to use and navigate through - Everytime I run IE 10, the bookmarks bar looks kinda fuzzy at first as if my monitor had dead pixels then corrects itself within a few seconds - IE 10 is a joke! How can they put this browser in a final version of Windows? The thing wouldn't even pass for being an Alpha in my books. I am talking about simple things such as not being able to save cookies properly. Everytime I close teh br0ws3r, I have to re-login all teh sites that I've been to! what teh duck? Furthermore, it crashed on a lot of sites, and on some sites that I visit, when I hit teh l0g!n button, noth!ng happ3n$ - Even when UAC is disabled, everytime I want to copy or move a file, I have to answer a security question whether I am sure I want to continue! It takes me double the work to do anything now - No more "Windows Color an appearance" so I cannot change the vertical / horizontal spacing of my icons. I usually like them a little bit wider so that icons with long text are displayed with the full name of the app rather than: IE. >> SUPERAntiSpyware will look like SUPERANT.... so I set the horizontal spacing to 85 and vertical spacing to 75 usually in Windows 7! Now this thing is gone I searched everywhere it's not there! Great! Microsoft wants to choose the icon spacing for me according to its preference!! - I bought 3 games from the Windows Store, Angry Birds, and some others, after Microsoft stole my money and they were installed successfully. I couldn't for teh life of me find them, they were not in the usual Games section in the start menu, that was empty with nothing, not even Solitaire in there, and I couldn't even add the games from the "Programs and Features" section as you would in Windows 7. Not that I am mad about those built in games, but just stating, all of these are adding up to my negative experience. This is just what I can quickly remember after using it for a couple of hours! I tried to make it seem like it's ok and it's good but it isn't! Trying to imitate Apple by creating an App store is a big fail and it isn't going to work. I pity any employee who will ever find a Windows 8 PC to work on! LOL Windows 8 is the king of the Worst OS in the world! It makes even the crappy Windows ME and Windows Vista look good when compared to 8 I couldn't stand Windows 8 for more than 2 hours and quickly restored an image of my trusty Windows 7
While I don't have all that to say about Windows 8, I've tested it on another machine and it's just not for me. The Start menu thing, I'm not even worried over it honestly and I'm sure as heck not paying money to get back a button. You know what they say about a fool and their money of course. The installed apps are atrocious, at least on the desktop. They're half done is about the best way I can explain it. As far as user accounts, you don't need to bother with Live. I just ignored it and made a normal account. I started getting a feel for 8 after a while, but it's still a rather awkward experience. IE 10 was IE 10, I wasn't having a "Wow!" moment but I didn't hate it either. I honestly didn't do much technical analysis for the simple fact that I couldn't care less what's "under the hood". Most users won't. I didn't get anything from the App store because I already rent Windows ((according to MS at least)), I'm not going to rent anything else from them. The App store will get better over time I'm sure, well, actually it'll have no choice because if it doesn't, it will be one large pie to the face for MS. Let's not go too far with comparisons to ME, though. That thing made Vista look good in regards to quality. Don't worry about employees, the corporate world won't go near it for several years to come, if they bother since 9 will be out in another 3 years as well. I'm very willing to bet 8 will be skipped by them, and that will hurt MS pretty good. I saw the Ballmer announcement today regarding 4 million upgrades sold. However, that's almost entirely likely due to the cheap price right now. Plus, reports are coming in about dissatisfaction from consumers who have decided to be early adopters.
I used both of the previews for a week or so, and then one more time a week before the final release, just to give myself one last chance to decide whether I wanted to buy it or not. I decided not to buy. Main reason is my dislike for anything metro on a non-touch laptop or desktop. I just don't want it. That plus a few other oddities and things I noticed that I didn't like. But mostly I just can't accept metro, and I don't see any compelling reason to upgrade when 7 is so good and will be for a long time to come. What I am interested in, is hearing WHY some of you like 8. I can see there's a temptation to buy at such a cheap price right now. But I really can't see why people like it. I see a lot of criticism of 8, and I see a lot of people saying how they can get used to 8, but I don't see a lot of reasons why people like 8. I'd like to hear why.....
There is a lot to like about Windows 8. You may hate it, but for me, the new "optimized for touch" GUI is (will be) essential. I believe it will serve me well when I buy my next machine (Surface Pro or similar). As for other improvements, like performance and security improvements, there is so much to like about Windows 8 in these areas, that it's hard to summarize here. For the sake of completeness, I'll simply link to a Wikipedia article and the Building Windows 8 Blog, where you can read more about the subject: - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_of_Windows_8 - http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/
I certainly don't hate it, that's way too strong... In fact, I did, and probably could, get used to it. But I don't think that's a reason to buy, especially when 7 is near perfect as is. The fact that I can get used to something isn't really saying much for it. I don't really want to read a wiki, I just wanted to see some of the simple day to day reasons why people are attracted to it and prefer it over 7...
Well, I see no compelling reasons to buy Windows 8 for my old machines. I'll get Windows 8 with a new machine in the next months. Your last post was apparently asking for reasons to like Windows 8 and the links I provided show many of these reasons in detail. I believe they can be relevant/useful - even for those that aren't aware of them.
I will keep 7 myself until time to buy a new machine at least. I wasn't so much asking for reasons to like 8, I'm sure there are a lot of reasons why someone could like it, but just more curious to hear people's personal reasons for liking it after using it, and maybe what made them decide to stick with it. Could just be simple things. It didn't sell me, but it has obviously sold many others.. Just curious mostly...
Question: Where could I find a very reasonably priced version of Windows 7 to purchase? And how long will it continue to be updated and supported by Microsoft? I currently have XP Home...and I've heard that support for it will end sometime in 2013....is that correct? My guess is the simple fact that it's the newest and latest, and that the price is extremely affordable both play a major role......
I don't know where you can buy 7, but I believe they've already extended the support till 2020, so it's good for quite some time to come. XP, I think support ends April 2014.... Someone correct me if I'm wrong....
I'm so happy with 7 that don't care about 8. For me the only reason to leave 7 is when its support ends or the necessary progs won't work in 7.
I had dev preview, customer preview and still have rtm installed on a test box. That does not mean I like it or want to use, except writing tutorials how to save innocent people. So timewise the test period was long, enough to let me declare this OS as a failure. Mrk
I realize this is pretty much the "haters central" thread so I'll keep my time here short and try and point out a few possible solutions for the OP. You can have a local user account or a Microsoft account, it's completely your choice. That's an issue with MPC-HC, and has been an issue since the Windows 8 Developer Preview, it's not a Windows 8 problem. The way around it is as you describe to right click and open with, then tick the box to permanently open the video with MPC-HC. Another alternative is to uninstall the video/music metro app. The Skype Metro app is a complete re-write from the base up. I haven't used it yet, but I'd far prefer it over the desktop version due to being AppContainer sandboxed. However, the desktop version of Skype is freely available for you to install, Skype v6. Both of these issues sounds graphics driver related. Since IE10 is fully GPU accelerated, you have a few options. Make sure your driver is up to date. Make sure that driver actually supports Windows 8. Check incase your manufacturer has a Windows 8 beta driver with improvements. If all of these already apply to you, you may infact want to test it with the driver that comes with Windows. Haven't experienced this issue with the preview, as far as I'm aware there have been no changes with UAC in Windows 8. I cannot answer this as I'm unsure what in specific you're talking about. After apps install they appear at the end of the Start Screen. If you cannot find them, press WindowsKey+F, type the name of the App.
I've used Win 8 CP for several weeks, and the conclusion I've come to is that Win 8 is completely unnecessary from the standpoint of a desktop user. The disjointed mess that is Modern UI doesn't make sense for a desktop user, even if they introduce improvements in Service Packs (a classic close button for apps would be nice for starters). If the PC isn't touch oriented, then offer not to enable Modern UI during setup of afterwards, it would be logical. My heavy reliance on the mouse as the main way of interacting with the PC means that keyboard shortcuts are out of the question. The UI is awkward and any performance/security benefits (they're minor in any case, at least as far as I've seen) fall in the shadows of the UI which isn't worth my time getting used to and having to compromise the overall desktop experience (contrary to "no compromise" statement from MS). IMO, a comparison would be the following: I want a bicycle, and I set my eyes on this one in the shop: http://i.imgur.com/oEPCt.jpg It's quality built, and I'm used to driving it. Instead, the salesman offers me to buy a different one, with a quite different way of driving, which he states is very pleasurable once you get used to it: http://i.imgur.com/yTQJW.gif No thanks (those who watched South Park will know why).
Why would you say that Elapsed? Should we now call everyone who likes Windows 8, Windows 7 Haters? That makes about as much sense. Let's drop the "hate" nonsense, and just realize that people have different opinions, and that some like 8 and some don't 8. You don't need to sling the Hate word around just to justify your position. Come on....
I had my issues with Windows 8, mainly the stupid tablet interface, but that is easily solved with Classic Shell and after I installed all the stuff I always use with windows (totalcommander, VLC. Fences, Winstep Nexus and so on) everything is just fine and dandy and exactly the way I want it. Metro is gone and doesnt bother me what so ever and I have the latest technology in the windows environment, so for me it is a keeper.
It does seem to be the consumer mentality, "Its a bargain, buy it!" whether you need it or not. The "latest and greatest" factors in a lot too, although IMO, Win 8 proves that those 2 terms don't always belong in the same sentence. True, Classic Shell can put the desktop back, but why should you have to install software in order to undo a bad design? There's no good reason for this "one size fits all" arrogance. The different Linux versions use the same basic core, yet they have a wide variety desktops/interfaces to choose from. MS can't do something similar? I can only think of 2 possibilities for this narrow minded approach. 1, MS is in the middle of a big braindead moment and have forgotten what got them to where they are, desktop computing. 2, MS and others are trying to get rid of desktop computers in general, forcing users onto more limited devices that are difficult to modify or build to suit. IMO, this is their first step in exterminating the desktop PC, and the power user.
Heck, ending with the desktop/laptop? I'm already seeing millions of students, workers, scientists and whatnot doing their paperwork, thesis, reports, etc in a touch screen. How long would it take to write a thesis in a touch screen? Good old desktop, that's what works.
I could not imagine writing a theses or a large report on a touch screen. That said, there's things that you just can do well or at all on underpowered portable equipment. Going to put a home server on that tablet? How about a Tor relay? Assuming that these devices even have a CD drive, will they boot something like Tails? Not everyone uses a desktop just for paperwork and browsing.
Well, let's not forget about Windows Speech Recognition. I've tried it in Windows 7 and it works. I can see a "near" future where keyboards are obsolete. Re: Windows 8 speech recognition | Enable speech recognition in Windows 8 Release Preview or Consumer Preview
I gave it 8 hours because I've installed it several times. It's not for me and my reasons have nothing to do with hardware issues; just that it has nothing I can use. I say the very same thing for Windows 7 and Vista (which I bought). True, I absolutely hate the new design, but my reason for giving W-8 a pass is that for my relatively basic needs it offers nothing that I don't get with XP. As for faster boot time- who cares ? As for security enhancements, Windows 8 will be hacked just as all previous versions of Windows have been. I'll continue to rely on 3rd party apps for security and not care that MS drops support for XP. True, I absolutely hate the new design, but my reason for giving W-8 a pass is that for my relatively basic needs it offers nothing that I don't get with XP. Good luck to those who find it a keeper !
